careless-earnest

Updated: May 3, 2025

In this poem Browning reverts to his earlier method of clearly and simply dividing the evil from the good. We are not embarrassed by the mingling of truth with sophistry; our instinctive sympathies are not held in check, but are on the contrary reinforced by the undisguised sympathies of the writer. We are no more in doubt where wrong and where justice lie than if Count Gismond were confronting Count Gauthier. The avenger, indeed, is no champion of romance; he is only a young English snob, a little slow of brain, a little unrefined in manner, a "clumsy giant handsome creature," who for a year has tried to acquire under an accomplished tutor the lore of cynical worldliness, and has not succeeded, for he is manly and honest, and has the gentleness of strength; "for ability, all's in the rough yet." Of his education the best part is that he has once loved and been thwarted in his love. And now in a careless-earnest regard for his cousin his need is that of occupation for his big, idle boy's heart; he wants something to do, someone also to serve. Browning wishes to show the passion of righteousness, which suddenly flames forth and abolishes an evil thing as springing from no peculiar knightly virtue but from mere honest human nature. The huge boy, somewhat crude, somewhat awkward, with a moral temper still unclarified, has enough of our good, common humanity in him to hold no parley with utter wickedness, when once he fully apprehends its nature; therefore he springs upon it in one swift transport of rage and there and then makes an end of it. His big red hands are as much the instruments of divine justice as is the axe of Iv

Edward Dowden - Robert Browning