Thus he really did want to say that God had indeed made man and woman
one flesh; that the sex relation was religious in this real sense that
even in our sin and despair we take it for granted and expect a sort of
virtue in it. The feelings of the bad husband about the good wife, for
instance, are about as subtle and entangled as any matter on this earth;
and Browning really had something to say about them. But he said it in
some of the plainest and most unmistakable words in all literature; as
lucid as a flash of lightning. "Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
Or again, he did really want to say that death and such moral terrors
were best taken in a military spirit; he could not have said it more
simply than: "I was ever a fighter; one fight more, the best and the
last." He did really wish to say that human life was unworkable unless
immortality were implied in it every other moment; he could not have
said it more simply: "leave now to dogs and apes; Man has for ever." The
obscurities were not merely superficial, but often covered quite
superficial ideas. He was as likely as not to be most unintelligible of
all in writing a compliment in a lady's album.
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