2 JANUARY 1953, Page 20

"Seeing Browning Plain"

Sia,—In stating in my review that the poet had "no deep moral message," I was combating the attitude of those Browning Society pundits who with F. J. Nettleship demanded on .every occasion: "For us today what is the lesson that the poet would teach ? " Unlike the Victorians, we do not today look to our poets for moral messages. We do, however, look to them for true emotion and for a scrupulous statement of their own experience. Here Browning offers us a real lesson. It is impossible, nevertheless, in my belief, to go to him for guidance "in the weightier matters of morality and religion." For here it is the religious teacher and not the poet who is the authority. Nor does this fact seem to me to rob Browning's poetry of any tittle