Liberalism was so inevitably involved in the poet's whole view of existence, that even a thoughtful and imaginative Conservative would feel that Browning was bound to be a Liberal.

His mind was possessed, perhaps even to excess, by a belief in growth and energy and in the ultimate utility of error.

He held the great central Liberal doctrine, a belief in a certain destiny of the human spirit beyond, and perhaps even independent of, our own sincerest convictions.

The world was going right he felt, most probably in his way, but certainly in its own way.

The sonnet which he wrote in later years, entitled "Why I am a Liberal," expresses admirably this philosophical root of his politics.