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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:40:47 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:40:47 -0700 |
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diff --git a/12817-h/12817-h.htm b/12817-h/12817-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a55e39 --- /dev/null +++ b/12817-h/12817-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,16056 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" + content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> + <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Robert Browning +, by Edward Dowden.</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + a {text-decoration: none;} + + P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + } + HR { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem span.i24 {display: block; margin-left: 12em;} + .poem .caesura {vertical-align: -200%;} + + [lang][title]:after { + content: " [Trans: " attr(title) "]"; + } + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12817 ***</div> + +<h3><b>The Temple Biographies</b></h3> +<h4>Edited by Dugald Macfadyen, M.A.</h4> +<h1>Robert Browning</h1> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img001"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 776px;" + alt="Robert Browning, from a portrait in oil, for which he sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice 1880." + title="Robert Browning, from a portrait in oil, for which he sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice 1880." + src="images/img001.jpg" /><br /> +<br /> +</p> +<h5><i>Robert Browning, +from a portrait in oil, +for which he sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice 1880.</i></h5> +<h1>ROBERT BROWNING</h1> +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>EDWARD DOWDEN</h2> +<h3>LITT.D., D.C.L., LL.D.</h3> +<h3>PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE +UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN</h3> +<div style="text-align: center;"><img + style="width: 327px; height: 392px;" alt="Editor's mark" + title="Editor's mark" src="images/img002.jpg" /><br /> +<br /> +<h3>1904 +LONDON: J.M. DENT & CO. +NEW YORK; E.P. DUTTON & CO.</h3> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<div style="text-align: center;" class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span><br /> +If I, too, should try and speak at times,<br /> +</span><span>Leading your love to where my love, perchance,<br /> +</span><span>Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew,<br /> +</span><span>Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p style="text-align: center;">—<i>Balaustion's Adventure</i>.> +</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><br /> +<h2>Editor's Preface</h2> +<br /> +<p>"In the case of those whom the public has learned to +honour and admire, there is a <i>biography of the mind</i>—the +phrase is Mr Gladstone's—that is a matter of +deep interest." In a life of Robert Browning it is +especially true that the biography we want is of this +nature, for its events are to be classed rather among +achievements of the human spirit than as objective +incidents, and its interest depends only in a secondary +sense on circumstance or movement in the public eye. +The special function of the present book in the growing +library of Browning literature is to give such a biography +of Browning's mind, associating his poems +with their date and origin, as may throw some light +on his inward development. Browning has become to +many, in a measure which he could hardly have conceived +possible himself, one of the authoritative +interpreters of the spiritual factors in human life. +His tonic optimism dissipates the grey atmosphere of +materialism, which has obscured the sunclad heights +of life as effectually as a fog. To see life through +Browning's eyes is to see it shot through and through +with spiritual issues, with a background of eternal +destiny; and to come appreciably nearer than the +general consciousness of our time to seeing it steadily +and seeing it whole. Those who prize his influence +know how to value everything which throws light on +the path by which he reached his resolute and confident +outlook.</p> +<p>It is almost possible to count on the fingers of one +hand the few men who could successfully write a book +of this character and scope. The Editor believes that, +in the present case, one of the very few has been found +who had the qualifications required. Much of the +apparent obscurity of Browning is due to his habit of +climbing up a precipice of thought, and then kicking +away the ladder by which he climbed. Dr Dowden +has with singular success readjusted the steps, so that +readers may follow the poet's climb. Those who are +not daunted by the Paracelsus and Sordello chapter, +where the subject requires some close and patient +attention, will find vigorous narrative and pellucid +exposition interwoven in such a way as to keep them +in intimate and constantly closer touch with the +"biography of Browning's mind."</p> +<p>D.M.</p> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<br /> +<h2>Preface</h2> +<p>An attempt is made in this volume to tell the story +of Browning's life, including, as part of it, a notice of +his books, which may be regarded as the chief of "his +acts and all that he did." I have tried to keep my +reader in constant contact with Browning's mind and +art, and thus a sense of the growth and development +of his genius ought to form itself before the close.</p> +<p>The materials accessible for a biography, apart from +Browning's published writings, are not copious. He +destroyed many letters; many, no doubt, are in private +hands. For some parts of his life I have been able +to add little to what Mrs Orr tells. But since her +biography of Browning was published a good deal of +interesting matter has appeared. The publication of +"The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth +Barrett Browning" has enabled me to construct a short, +close-knit narrative of the incidents that led up to +Browning's marriage. From that date until the death +of Mrs Browning her "Letters," edited by Mr Kenyon, +has been my chief source. My method has not been +that of quotation, but the substance of many letters is +fused, as far as was possible, into a brief, continuous story. +Two privately issued volumes of Browning's letters, +edited by Mr T.J. Wise, and Mr Wise's "Browning +Bibliography" have been of service to me. Mr Gosse's +"Robert Browning, Personalia," Mrs Ritchie's "Tennyson, +Ruskin and Browning," the "Life of Tennyson" by +his son, Mr Henry James's volumes on W.W. Story, +letters of Dante Rossetti, the diary of Mr W.M. +Rossetti, with other writings of his, memoirs, reminiscences +or autobiographies of Lady Martin, F.T. +Palgrave, Jowett, Sir James Paget, Gavan Duffy, +Robert Buchanan, Rudolf Lehmann, W.J. Stillman, +T.A. Trollope, Miss F.P. Cobbe, Miss Swanwick, and +others have been consulted. And several interesting +articles in periodicals, in particular Mrs Arthur +Bronson's articles "Browning in Venice" and "Browning +in Asolo," have contributed to my narrative. For +some information about Browning's father and mother, +and his connection with York Street Independent +Chapel, I am indebted to Mr F. Herbert Stead, +Warden of "The Robert Browning Settlement," +Walworth. I thank Messrs Smith, Elder and Co., +as representing Mr R. Barrett Browning, for permission +to make such quotations as I have ventured to make +from copyright letters. I thank the general Editor +of this series, the Rev. D. Macfadyen, for kind and +valuable suggestions.</p> +<p>My study of Browning's poems is chronological. +I recognise the disadvantages of this method, but I +also perceive certain advantages. Many years ago in +"Studies in Literature" I attempted a general view +of Browning's work, and wrote, as long ago as 1867, a +careful study of <i>Sordello</i>. What I now write may +suffer as well as gain from a familiarity of so many +years with his writings. But to make them visible +objects to me I have tried to put his poems outside +myself, and approach them with a fresh mind. +Whether I have failed or partly succeeded I am +unable to determine.</p> +<p>The analysis of <i>La Saisiaz</i> appeared—substantially—in +the little Magazine of the Home Reading Union, +and one or two other short passages are recovered +from uncollected articles of mine. I have incorporated +in my criticism a short passage from one of my wife's +articles on Browning in <i>The Dark Blue Magazine</i>, +making such modifications as suited my purpose, +and she has contributed a passage to the pages +which close this volume.</p> +<p>I had the privilege of some personal acquaintance +with Browning, and have several cordial letters of +his addressed to my wife and to myself. These I +have not thought it right to use.</p> +<p>E.D.</p> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<br /> +<h2>Contents</h2> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER I</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_I">CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH</a></p> +<p>Ancestry—Parents—Boyhood—Influence of Shelley—Pauline</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER II</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_II">PARACELSUS AND SORDELLO</a></p> +<p style="text-align: justify;">Visit to Russia—Paracelsus—His failures +and attainments—Sordello, +a companion poem—Its obscurity—Imaginative qualities—The +history of a soul +<br /> +</p> +<p>CHAPTER III</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_III">THE MAKER OF PLAYS</a></p> +<p>New acquaintances—Hatcham—Macready—Strafford—Venice—Bells +and Promegranates—A Blot on the 'Scutcheon—Characters +of passion—Characters of intellect</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER IV</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_IV">THE MAKER OF PLAYS</a>—<i>(continued)</i></p> +<p>Women of the dramas—Dramatic style—Pippa Passes—Dramatic +Lyrics and Romances—Poems of Love and of Art</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER V</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_V">LOVE AND MARRIAGE</a></p> +<p>First letters to Miss Barrett—Meeting—Progress in +friendship—Obstacles—Marriage</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER VI</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_VI">EARLY YEARS IN ITALY</a></p> +<p>Correspondence of R.B. and E.B.B.—Journey to +Italy—Pisa—Florence—Vallombrosa—Italian +politics—Casa Guidi-Friends—Son +born—Death of Browning's mother—Wanderings.</p> +<p><br /> +CHAPTER VII</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_VII">CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY</a></p> +<p>Publication—Movements of Religious +Thought—Dissent—Catholicism—Criticism—Difficulties +of Christian life—Imaginative +power of the poems—In Venice—Paris—England—Paris again—Coup +d'état</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER VIII</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_VIII">FROM 1851 TO 1855</a></p> +<p>Essay on Shelley—New acquaintances—Milsand—George Sand—London—Casa +Guidi—Spiritualism—Mr Sludge the Medium—Baths +of Lucca—Rome—London—Tennyson's Maud</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER IX</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_IX">MEN AND WOMEN</a></p> +<p>Rossetti's admiration—Beauty before teaching—The poet behind his +poems—Isolated poems—Groups—Poems of love—Poems of +Art—Poems of Religion</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER X</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_X">CLOSE OF MRS BROWNING'S LIFE</a></p> +<p>Paris—Kenyon's death—Legacies—Death of Mr Barrett—Winter +in Florence—Havre—Rome—Louis Napoleon—Landor—Siena—Poems +before Congress—Rome again—Modelling in Clay—Casa +Guidi—Death of Mrs Browning</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER XI</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_XI">LONDON: DRAMATIS PERSONAE</a></p> +<p>Desolation—Return to London—Pornic—Social life—Dramatis +Personae—Poems of music—Poems of hope and aspiration—A +Death in the Desert—Epilogue—Caliban upon Setebos—Poems +of Love</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER XII</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_XII">THE RING AND THE BOOK</a></p> +<p>Holiday excursions—Sainte Marie—Miss Barrett dies—Balliol College +and Jowett—Origin of the Ring and the Book—Its Plan—The +Persons—Count Guido—Pompilia—Caponsacchi—The Pope—Falsehood +subserving truth</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER XIII</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_XIII">POEMS ON CLASSICAL SUBJECTS</a></p> +<p>Saint-Aubin—Milsand—Miss Thackeray—Hervé Riel—Miss +Egerton-Smith—Summer wanderings—Balaustion's Adventure—Aristophanes' +Apology—The Agamemnon</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER XIV</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_XIV">PROBLEM AND NARRATIVE POEMS</a></p> +<p>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau—Fifine at the Fair—Red Cotton +Night-Cap Country—The Inn Album—Pachiarotto and other +Poems</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER XV</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_XV">SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY</a></p> +<p>La Saisiaz—Immortality—Two Poets of Croisic—Browning in +society—Daily +habits—Browning as a talker—Italy—Asolo—Mountain +retreats—Mrs Bronson—Venice</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER XVI</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_XVI">POET AND TEACHER IN OLD AGE</a></p> +<p>Popularity—Browning Society—Public honours—Dramatic Idyls—Spirit +of acquiescence—Jocoseria—Ferishtah's Fancies</p> +<br /> +<p>CHAPTER XVII</p> +<p><a href="#Chapter_XVII">CLOSING WORKS AND DAYS</a></p> +<p>Parleyings—Asolando—Mrs Bronson—At Asolo—Venice—Death—Place +in nineteenth-century poetry</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<a name="List_of_Illustrations"></a> +<h2>List of Illustrations</h2> +<p><a href="#img001">ROBERT BROWNING</a>, <i>from a portrait in oil, +for +which he sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice, 1880, +reproduced by kind permission of D.S. Curtis, +Esq. (photogravure)</i></p> +<p><a href="#img003">MAIN STREET OF ASOLO</a>, SHOWING BROWNING'S +HOUSE, <i>from a drawing by Miss D. Noyes</i></p> +<p><a href="#img004">ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING</a>, <i>from a drawing +in chalk by Field Talfourd in the National +Portrait Gallery</i></p> +<p><a href="#img005">ROBERT BROWNING</a>, <i>from an engraving by J.G. +Armytage</i></p> +<p><a href="#img006">THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE</a>, ROME, IN WHICH +THE BROWNINGS STAYED, <i>a photograph</i></p> +<p><a href="#img007">PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI</a>, BY HIMSELF, <i>a +detail +from the fresco in the Cathedral at Prato, from +a photograph by Alinari</i></p> +<p><a href="#img008">ANDREA DEL SARTO</a>, <i>from a print after the +portrait +by himself in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence</i></p> +<p><a href="#img009">PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO</a>, FLORENCE, WHERE +"THE BOOK" WAS FOUND BY BROWNING, +<i>from a photograph by Alinari</i></p> +<p><a href="#img010">THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI</a>, VENICE, <i>from a +drawing by Miss N. Erichsen</i></p> +<p><a href="#img011">SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING</a>, <i>from +a letter to D.S. Curtis, Esq.</i></p> +<p><a href="#img012">ROBERT BROWNING,</a> <i>from a photograph +(photogravure)</i></p> +<p><a href="#img013">THE PALAZZO REZZONICO</a>, VENICE, <i>from a +drawing +by Miss Katherine Kimball</i></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_I"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_1"></a>Chapter I</h2> +<h2>Childhood and Youth</h2> +<br /> +<p>The ancestry of Robert Browning has been traced<a name="FNanchor_1"></a><a + href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> +to an earlier Robert who lived in the service of Sir +John Bankes of Corfe Castle, and died in 1746. His +eldest son, Thomas, "was granted a lease for three +lives of the little inn, in the little hamlet of East +Woodyates and parish of Pentridge, nine miles south-west +of Salisbury on the road to Exeter." Robert, +born in 1749, the son of this Thomas, and grandfather +of the poet, became a clerk in the Bank of +England, and rose to be principal in the Bank Stock +Office. At the age of twenty-nine he married Margaret +Tittle, a lady born in the West Indies and possessed +of West Indian property. He is described by Mrs +Orr as an able, energetic, and worldly man. He lived +until his grandson was twenty-one years old. His +first wife was the mother of another Robert, the poet's +father, born in 1781. When the boy had reached the +age of seven he lost his mother, and five years later +his father married again. This younger Robert when +a youth desired to become an artist, but such a career +was denied to him. He longed for a University +education, and, through the influence of his stepmother, +this also was refused. They shipped the +young man to St Kitts, purposing that he should +<a name="Page_2"></a>oversee the West Indian estate. There, as Browning +on the authority of his mother told Miss Barrett, +"he conceived such a hatred to the slave-system ... +that he relinquished every prospect, supported himself +while there in some other capacity, and came back, +while yet a boy, to his father's profound astonishment +and rage."<a name="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> +At the age of twenty-two he obtained +a clerkship in the Bank of England, an employment +which, his son says, he always detested. Eight years +later he married Sarah Anna, daughter of William +Wiedemann, a Dundee shipowner, who was the son +of a German merchant of Hamburg. The young +man's father, on hearing that his son was a suitor to +Miss Wiedemann, had waited benevolently on her +uncle "to assure him that his niece would be thrown +away on a man so evidently born to be hanged."<a name="FNanchor_3"></a><a + href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> +In 1811 the new-married pair settled in Camberwell, +and there in a house in Southampton Street Robert +Browning—an only son—was born on May 7, 1812. +Two years later (Jan. 7, 1814) his sister, Sarah +Anna—an only daughter—known in later years as +Sarianna, a form adopted by her father, was born. +She survived her brother, dying in Venice on the +morning of April 22, 1903.<a name="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p> +<p>Robert Browning's father and mother were persons +who for their own sakes deserve to be remembered. +His father, while efficient in his work in the Bank, +<a name="Page_3"></a>was a wide and exact reader of literature, +classical as +well as modern. We are told by Mrs Orr of his +practice of soothing his little boy to sleep "by humming +to him an ode of Anacreon," and by Dr Moncure +Conway that he was versed in mediaeval legend, and +seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even +Talmudic personages with an intimate familiarity. +He wrote verses in excellent couplets of the +eighteenth century manner, and strung together +fantastic rhymes as a mode of aiding his boy in +tasks which tried the memory. He was a dexterous +draughtsman, and of his amateur handiwork in portraiture +and caricature—sometimes produced, as it +were, instinctively, with a result that was unforeseen—much +remains to prove his keen eye and his skill +with the pencil. Besides the curious books which he +eagerly collected, he also gathered together many +prints—those of Hogarth especially, and in early states. +He had a singular interest, such as may also be seen +in the author of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, in investigating +and elucidating complex criminal cases.<a name="FNanchor_5"></a><a + href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> He was +a lover of athletic sports and never knew ill-health. +For the accumulation of riches he had no talent and +no desire, but he had a simple wealth of affection +which he bestowed generously on his children and his +friends. "My father," wrote Browning, "is tender-hearted +to a fault.... To all women and children +he is chivalrous." "He had," writes Mr W.J. Stillman, +who knew Browning's father in Paris in his elder +years, "the perpetual juvenility of a blessed child. If +to live in the world as if not of it indicates a saintly +<a name="Page_4"></a>nature, then Robert Browning the elder was a +saint; +a serene, untroubled soul, conscious of no moral or +theological problem to disturb his serenity, and as +gentle as a gentle woman; a man in whom, it seemed +to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to +cloud his frank acceptance of life, as he found it come +to him.... His unworldliness had not a flaw."<a name="FNanchor_6"></a><a + href="#Footnote_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> To +Dante Rossetti he appeared, as an old man, "lovable +beyond description," with that "submissive yet highly +cheerful simplicity of character which often ... +appears in the family of a great man, who uses at +last what the others have kept for him." He is, +Rossetti continues, "a complete oddity—with a real +genius for drawing—but caring for nothing in the +least except Dutch boors,—fancy, the father of +Browning!—and as innocent as a child." Browning +himself declared that he had not one artistic taste in +common with his father—"in pictures, he goes 'souls +away' to Brauwer, Ostade, Teniers ... he would turn +from the Sistine Altar-piece to these—in music he +desiderates a tune 'that has a story connected with +it.'" Yet Browning inherited much from his father, +and was ready to acknowledge his gains. In <i>Development</i>, +one of the poems of his last volume, he recalls +his father's sportive way of teaching him at five years +old, with the aid of piled-up chairs and tables—the +cat for Helen, and Towzer and Tray as the Atreidai,—the +story of the siege of Troy, and, later, his urging +the boy to read the tale "properly told" in the translation +of Homer by his favourite poet, Pope. He +lived almost to the close of his eighty-fifth year, and +if he was at times bewildered by his son's poetry, he +<a name="Page_5"></a>came nearer to it in intelligent sympathy as he +grew +older, and he had for long the satisfaction of enjoying +his son's fame.</p> +<p>The attachment of Robert Browning to his mother—"the +true type of a Scottish gentlewoman," said +Carlyle—was deep and intimate. For him she was, +in his own phrase, "a divine woman"; her death in +1849 was to Browning almost an overwhelming blow. +She was of a nature finely and delicately strung. Her +nervous temperament seems to have been transmitted—robust +as he was in many ways—to her son. +The love of music, which her Scottish-German father +possessed in a high degree, leaping over a generation, +reappeared in Robert Browning. His capacity for +intimate friendships with animals—spider and toad +and lizard—was surely an inheritance from his mother. +Mr Stillman received from Browning's sister an +account of her mother's unusual power over both wild +creatures and household pets. "She could lure the +butterflies in the garden to her," which reminds us of +Browning's whistling for lizards at Asolo. A fierce +bull-dog intractable to all others, to her was docile +and obedient. In her domestic ways she was gentle +yet energetic. Her piety was deep and pure. Her +husband had been in his earlier years a member of +the Anglican communion; she was brought up in the +Scottish kirk. Before her marriage she became a +member of the Independent congregation, meeting +for worship at York Street, Lock's Fields, Walworth, +where now stands the Robert Browning Hall. Her husband +attached himself to the same congregation; +both were teachers in the Sunday School. Mrs +Browning kept, until within a few years of her death, +<a name="Page_6"></a>a missionary box for contributions to the London +Missionary Society. The conditions of membership +implied the acceptance of "those views of doctrinal +truth which for the sake of distinction are called +Calvinistic." Thus over the poet's childhood and +youth a religious influence presided; it was not sacerdotal, +nor was it ascetic; the boy was in those early +days, as he himself declared, "passionately religious." +Their excellent pastor was an entirely "unimaginative +preacher of the Georgian era," who held fast by the +approved method of "three heads and a conclusion." +Browning's indifference to the ministrations of Mr +Clayton was not concealed, and on one occasion he +received a rebuke in the presence of the congregation. +Yet the spirit of religion which surrounded and +penetrated him was to remain with him, under all its +modifications, to the end. "His face," wrote the Rev. +Edward White, "is vividly present to my memory +through the sixty years that have intervened. It was +the most wonderful face in the whole congregation—pale, +somewhat mysterious, and shaded with black, +flowing hair, but a face whose expression you remember +through a life-time. Scarcely less memorable +were the countenances of his father, mother and sister."<a + name="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a></p> +<p>Robert Browning, writes Mrs Orr, "was a handsome, +vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed an +unresting activity and a fiery temper." His energy +of mind made him a swift learner. After the elementary +lessons in reading had been achieved, he was +<a name="Page_7"></a>prepared for the neighbouring school of the Rev. +Thomas Ready by Mr Ready's sisters. Having +entered this school as a day-boarder, he remained +under Mr Ready's care until the year 1826. To +facile companionship with his school-fellows Browning +was not prone, but he found among them one or two +abiding friends. As for the rest, though he was no +winner of school prizes, he seems to have acquired a +certain intellectual mastery over his comrades; some +of them were formed into a dramatic <i>troupe</i> for the +performance of his boyish plays. Perhaps the better +part of his education was that of his hours at home. +He read widely in his father's excellent library. The +favourite books of his earliest years, Croxall's <i>Fables</i> +and Quarles's <i>Emblems</i>, were succeeded by others +which made a substantial contribution to his mind. +A list given by Mrs Orr includes Walpole's <i>Letters</i>, +Junius, Voltaire, and Mandeville's <i>Fable of the Bees</i>. +The first book he ever bought with his own money +was Macpherson's <i>Ossian</i>, and the first composition he +committed to paper, written years before his purchase +of the volume, was an imitation of Ossian, "whom," +says Browning, "I had not read, but conceived, through +two or three scraps in other books." His early feeling +for art was nourished by visits to the Dulwich Gallery, +to which he obtained an entrance when far under the +age permitted by the rules; there he would sit for an +hour before some chosen picture, and in later years he +could recall the "wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob's +vision," the Giorgione music-lesson, the "triumphant +Murillo pictures," "such a Watteau," and "all the +Poussins."<a name="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_8"></a>Among modern poets Byron at first with him held +the chief place. Boyish verses, written under the +Byronic influence, were gathered into a group when +the writer was but twelve years old; a title—<i>Incondita</i>—was +found, and Browning's parents had serious +intentions of publishing the manuscript. Happily the +manuscript, declined by publishers, was in the end +destroyed, and editors have been saved from the +necessity of printing or reprinting these crudities of a +great poet's childhood. Their only merit, he assured +Mr Gosse, lay in "their mellifluous smoothness." It +was an event of capital importance in the history of +Browning's mind when—probably in his thirteenth +year—he lighted, in exploring a book-stall, upon a +copy of one of the pirated editions of Shelley's <i>Queen +Mab</i> and other poems. Through the zeal of his good +mother on the boy's behalf the authorised editions +were at a later time obtained; and she added to her +gift the works, as far as they were then in print, of +Keats.<a name="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> +If ever there was a period of <i>Sturm und +Drang</i> in Browning's life, it was during the years in +which he caught from Shelley the spirit of the higher +revolt. A new faith and unfaith came to him, radiant +with colour, luminous with the brightness of dawn, and +uttered with a new, keen, penetrating melody. The +outward conduct of his life was obedient in all essentials +to the good laws of use and wont. He pursued his +various studies—literature, languages, music—with +energy. He was diligent—during a brief attendance—<a name="Page_9"></a>in +Professor Long's Greek class at University College—"a +bright, handsome youth," as a classfellow has +described him, "with long black hair falling over his +shoulders." He sang, he danced, he rode, he boxed, +he fenced. But below all these activities a restless +inward current ran. For a time he became, as Mrs +Orr has put it, "a professing atheist and a practising +vegetarian;" and together with the growing-pains of +intellectual independence there was present a certain +aggressive egoism. He loved his home, yet he chafed +against some of its social limitations. Of friendships +outside his home we read of that with Alfred Domett, +the 'Waring' of his poems, afterwards the poet and +the statesman of New Zealand; with Joseph Arnould, +afterwards the Indian judge; and with his cousin +James Silverthorne, the 'Charles' of Browning's pathetic +poem <i>May and Death</i>. We hear also of a tender +boyish sentiment, settling into friendship, for Miss +Eliza Flower, his senior by nine years, for whose +musical compositions he had an ardent admiration: +"I put it apart from all other English music I know," +he wrote as late as 1845, "and fully believe in it as +<i>the</i> music we all waited for." With her sister Sarah, +two years younger than Eliza, best known by her +married name Sarah Flower Adams and remembered +by her hymn, written in 1840, "Nearer my God to +Thee," he discussed as a boy his religious difficulties, +and in proposing his own doubts drew forth her latent +scepticism as to the orthodox beliefs. "It was in +answering Robert Browning;" she wrote, "that my +mind refused to bring forward argument, turned +recreant, and sided with the enemy." Something +of this period of Browning's <i>Sturm und Drang</i> +<a name="Page_10"></a>can be divined through the ideas and imagery of +<i>Pauline.</i><a name="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p> +<p>The finer influence of Shelley upon the genius of +Browning in his youth proceeded from something +quite other than those doctrinaire abstractions—the +formulas of revolution—which Shelley had caught up +from Godwin and certain French thinkers of the +eighteenth century. Browning's spirit from first to +last was one which was constantly reaching upward +through the attainments of earth to something that +lay beyond them. A climbing spirit, such as his, +seemed to perceive in Shelley a spirit that not only +climbed but soared. He could in those early days +have addressed to Shelley words written later, and +suggested, one cannot but believe, by his feeling for +his wife:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>You must be just before, in fine,<br /> +</span><span>See and make me see, for your part,<br /> +</span><span>New depths of the Divine!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Shelley opened up for his young and enthusiastic +follower new vistas leading towards the infinite, +towards the unattainable Best. Browning's only piece +of prose criticism—apart from scattered comments in +his letters—is the essay introductory to that volume +of letters erroneously ascribed to Shelley, which was +published when Browning was but little under forty +years old. It expresses his mature feelings and convictions; +and these doubtless contain within them as +their germ the experience of his youth.<a name="FNanchor_11"></a><a + href="#Footnote_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> Shelley +<a name="Page_11"></a>appears to him as a poet gifted with a fuller +perception +of nature and man than that of the average mind, and +striving to embody the thing he perceives "not so +much with reference to the many below, as to the One +above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends +all things in their absolute truth—an ultimate view +ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's +own soul." If Shelley was deficient in some subordinate +powers which support and reinforce the purely +poetic gifts, he possessed the highest faculty and in +this he lived and had his being. "His spirit invariably +saw and spoke from the last height to which it had +attained." What was "his noblest and predominating +characteristic" as a poet? Browning attempts to give +it definition: it was "his simultaneous perception of +Power and Love in the absolute, and of Beauty and +Good in the concrete, while he throws, from his +poet's station between both, swifter, subtler, and more +numerous films for the connexion of each with each, +than have been thrown by any modern artificer of +whom I have knowledge." In other words it was +Shelley's special function to fling an aerial bridge from +reality, as we commonly understand that word, to the +higher reality which we name the ideal; to set up an +aerial ladder—not less solid because it is aerial—upon +the earth, whose top reached to heaven. Such was +Browning's conception of Shelley, and it pays little +regard either to atheistic theory or vegetarian practice.</p> +<p>A time came when Robert Browning must make +choice of a future career. His interests in life were +<a name="Page_12"></a>manifold, but in some form or another art was the +predominant interest. His father remembered his +own early inclinations, and how they had been +thwarted; he recognised the rare gifts of his son, and +he resolved that he should not be immured in the +office of a bank. Should he plead at the bar? +Should he paint? Should he be a maker of music, as +he at one time desired, and for music he always possessed +an exceptional talent? When his father spoke +to him, Robert Browning knew that his sister was not +dependent on any effort of his to provide the means +of living. "He appealed," writes Mr Gosse, "to his +father, whether it would not be better for him to see +life in the best sense, and cultivate the powers of his +mind, than to shackle himself in the very outset of his +career by a laborious training, foreign to that aim. +... So great was the confidence of the father in the +genius of his son that the former at once acquiesced in +the proposal." It was decided that he should take to +what an old woman of the lake district, speaking of +"Mr Wudsworth," described as "the poetry business." +The believing father was even prepared to invest some +capital in the concern. At his expense <i>Paracelsus, +Sordello</i>, and <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> were published.</p> +<p>A poet may make his entrance into literature with +small or large inventions, by carving cherry-stones or +carving a colossus. Browning, the creator of men +and women, the fashioner of minds, would be a +sculptor of figures more than life-size rather than an +exquisite jeweller; the attempt at a Perseus of this +Cellini was to precede his brooches and buttons. He +planned, Mr Gosse tells us, "a series of monodramatic +epics, narratives of the life of typical souls." In a +<a name="Page_13"></a>modification of this vast scheme <i>Paracelsus</i>, +which +includes more speakers than one, and <i>Sordello</i>, which +is not dramatic in form, find their places. They were +preceded by <i>Pauline</i>, in the strictest sense a monodrama, +a poem not less large in conception than either +of the others, though this "fragment of a confession" +is wrought out on a more contracted scale.</p> +<p><i>Pauline</i>, published without the writer's name—his +aunt Silverthorne bearing the cost of publication—was +issued from the press in January 1833.<a name="FNanchor_12"></a><a + href="#Footnote_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> Browning +had not yet completed his twenty-first year. +When including it among his poetical works in 1867, +he declared that he did so with extreme repugnance +and solely with a view to anticipate unauthorised +republication of what was no more than a "crude +preliminary sketch," entirely lacking in good draughtsmanship +and right handling. For the edition of +twenty years later, 1888, he revised and corrected +<i>Pauline</i> without re-handling it to any considerable +extent. In truth <i>Pauline</i> is a poem from which +Browning ought not to have desired to detach his +mature self. Rarely does a poem by a writer so young +deserve better to be read for its own sake. It is an interesting +document in the history of its author's mind. +It gives promises and pledges which were redeemed +in full. It shows what dropped away from the poet +and what, being an essential part of his equipment, +was retained. It exhibits his artistic method in the +process of formation. It sets forth certain leading +thoughts which are dominant in his later work. The +first considerable production of a great writer must +<a name="Page_14"></a>always claim attention from the student of his +mind +and art.</p> +<p>The poem is a study in what Browning in his +<i>Fifine</i> terms "mental analysis"; it attempts to shadow +forth, through the fluctuating moods of the dying man, +a series of spiritual states. The psychology is sometimes +crude; subtle, but clumsily subtle; it is, however, essentially +the writer's own. To construe clearly the states of +mind which are adumbrated rather than depicted is +difficult, for Browning had not yet learnt to manifest +his generalised conceptions through concrete details, +to plunge his abstractions in reality. The speaker +in the poem tells us that he "rudely shaped his life +to his immediate wants"; this is intelligible, yet only +vaguely intelligible, for we do not know what were +these wants, and we do not see any rude shaping of +his life. We are told of "deeds for which remorse +were vain"; what were these deeds? did he, like +Bunyan, play cat on Sunday, or join the ringers of +the church bells? "Instance, instance," we cry impatiently. +And so the story remains half a shadow. +The poem is dramatic, yet, like so much of Browning's +work, it is not pure drama coming from profound +sympathy with a spirit other than the writer's own; +it is only hybrid drama, in which the <i>dramatis persona</i> +thinks and moves and acts under the necessity of expounding +certain ideas of the poet. Browning's puppets +are indeed too often in his earlier poems moved by +intellectual wires; the hands are the hands of Luria or +Djabal, but the voice is the showman's voice. A +certain intemperance in the pursuit of poetic beauty, +strange and lovely imagery which obscures rather +than interprets, may be regarded as in <i>Pauline</i> the +<a name="Page_15"></a>fault or the glory of youth; a young heir arrived +at +his inheritance will scatter gold pieces. The verse +has caught something of its affluent flow, its wavelike +career, wave advancing upon wave, from Shelley:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;<br /> +</span><span>He rises on the toe; that spirit of his<br /> +</span><span>In aspiration lifts him from the earth.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The aspiration in Browning's later verse is a complex +of many forces; here it is a simple poetic +enthusiasm.</p> +<p>By virtue of its central theme <i>Pauline</i> is closely +related to the poems which at no great distance +followed—<i>Paracelsus</i> and <i>Sordello</i>. Each is a study +of the flaws which bring genius to all but ruin, a +study of the erroneous conduct of life by men of +extraordinary powers. In each poem the chief +personage aspires and fails, yet rises—for Browning +was not of the temper to accept ultimate failures, and +postulated a heaven to warrant his optimistic creed—rises +at the close from failure to a spiritual recovery, +which may be regarded as attainment, but an attainment, +as far as earth and its uses are concerned, +marred and piteous; he recovers in the end his true +direction, but recovers it only for service in worlds +other than ours which he may hereafter traverse. +He has been seduced or conquered by alien forces +and through some inward flaw; he has been faithless +to his highest faculties; he has not fulfilled his seeming +destiny; yet before death and the darkness of +death arrive, light has come; he perceives the wanderings +of the way, and in one supreme hour or in one +shining moment he gives indefeasible pledges of the +loyalty which he has forfeited. Shelley in <i>Alastor</i>, the +<a name="Page_16"></a>influence of which on Browning in writing <i>Pauline</i> +is +evident, had rebuked the idealist within himself, who +would live in lofty abstractions to the loss of human +sympathy and human love. Browning in <i>Pauline</i> also +recognises this danger, but he indicates others—the risk +of the lower faculties of the mind encroaching upon +and even displacing the higher, the risk of the spirit of +aggrandisement, even in the world of the imagination, +obtaining the mastery over the spirit of surrender to +that which is higher than self. It is quite right and +needful to speak of the "lesson" of Browning's poem, +and the lesson of <i>Pauline</i> is designed to inculcate first +loyalty to a man's highest power, and secondly a +worshipping loyalty and service to that which transcends +himself, named by the speaker in <i>Pauline</i> by +the old and simple name of God.</p> +<p>Was it the problem of his own life—that concerning +the conduct of high, intellectual and spiritual powers—which +Browning transferred to his art, creating +personages other than himself to be exponents of his +theme? We cannot tell; but the problem in varied +forms persists from poem to poem. The poet imagined +as twenty years of age, who makes his fragment of a +confession in <i>Pauline</i>, is more than a poet; he is rather +of the Sordello type than of the type represented in +Eglamor and Aprile.<a name="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> +Through his imagination he +would comprehend and possess all forms of life, of +beauty, of joy in nature and in humanity; but he must +also feel himself at the centre of these, the lord and +master of his own perceptions and creations; and yet, +<a name="Page_17"></a>at the same time, this man is made for the +worship +and service of a power higher than self. How is such +a nature as this to attain its true ends? What are +its special dangers? If he content himself with the +exercise of the subordinate faculties, intellectual +dexterity, wit, social charm and mastery, he is lost; +if he should place himself at the summit, and cease +to worship and to love, he is lost. He cannot alter +his own nature; he cannot ever renounce his intense +consciousness of self, nor even the claim of self to a +certain supremacy as the centre of its own sympathies +and imaginings. So much is inevitable, and is right. +But if he be true to his calling as poet, he will task +his noblest faculty, will live in it, and none the less +look upward, in love, in humility, in the spirit of loyal +service, in the spirit of glad aspiration, to that Power +which leans above him and has set him his earthly +task.</p> +<p>Such reduced to a colourless and abstract statement +is the theme dealt with in <i>Pauline</i>. The young poet, +who, through a fading autumn evening, lies upon his +death-bed, has been faithless to his high calling, and +yet never wholly faithless. As the pallid light declines, +he studies his own soul, he reviews his past, he traces +his wanderings from the way, and all has become clear. +He has failed for the uses of earth; but he recognises +in himself capacities and desires for which no adequate +scope could ever have been found in this life; and +restored to the spirit of love, of trust, by such love, +such trust as he can give Pauline, he cannot deny the +witnessing audible within his own heart to a future +life which may redeem the balance of his temporal +loss. The thought which plays so large a part in +<a name="Page_18"></a>Browning's later poetry is already present and +potent +here.</p> +<p>Two incidents in the history of a soul—studied by +the speaker under the wavering lights of his hectic +malady and fluctuating moods of passion—are dealt +with in a singularly interesting and original way. He +describes, with strange and beautiful imagery, the +cynical, bitter pleasure—few of us do not know it—which +the intellectual faculties sometimes derive from +mocking and drawing down to their own level the +spiritual powers, the intuitive powers, which are +higher than they, higher, yet less capable of justification +or verification by the common tests of sense and +understanding. The witchcraft of the brain degrades +the god in us:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And then I was a young witch whose blue eyes,<br /> +</span><span>As she stood naked by the river springs,<br /> +</span><span>Drew down a god: I watched his radiant form<br /> +</span><span>Growing less radiant, and it gladdened me.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What he presents with such intensity of imaginative +power Browning must have known—even if it were +but for moments—by experience. And again, there is +impressive truth and originality in the description of +the state of the poet's mind which succeeded the wreck +of his early faith and early hopes inspired by the +voice of Shelley—the revolutionary faith in liberty, +equality and human perfectibility. Wordsworth in +<i>The Prelude</i>—unpublished when Browning wrote +<i>Pauline</i>—which is also the history of a poet's mind, +has described his own experience of the loss of all +these shining hopes and lofty abstractions, and the +temper of mind which he describes is one of moral +chaos and spiritual despair. The poet of <i>Pauline</i> +<a name="Page_19"></a>turns from political and social abstractions to +real +life, and the touch of reality awakens him as if from +a splendid dream; but his mood is not so sane as +that of despair. He falls back, with a certain joy, +upon the exercise of his inferior powers; he wakes +suddenly and "without heart-wreck ":</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>First went my hopes of perfecting mankind,<br /> +</span><span>Next—faith in them, and then in freedom's self<br /> +</span><span>And virtue's self, then my own motives, ends,<br /> +</span><span>And aims and loves, and human love went last.<br /> +</span><span>I felt this no decay, because new powers<br /> +</span><span>Rose as old feelings left—wit, mockery,<br /> +</span><span>Light-heartedness; for I had oft been sad,<br /> +</span><span>Mistrusting my resolves, but now I cast<br /> +</span><span>Hope joyously away; I laughed and said<br /> +</span><span>"No more of this!"<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is difficult to believe that Browning is wholly +dramatic here; we seem to discover something of that +period of <i>Sturm und Drang</i>, when his mood grew +restless and aggressive. The homage paid to Shelley, +whose higher influence Browning already perceived to +be in large measure independent of his creed of +revolution, has in it certainly something of the spirit +of autobiography. In this enthusiastic admiration for +Shelley there is nothing to regret, except the unhappy +extravagance of the name "Suntreader," which he +invented as a title for the poet of <i>Alastor</i> and +<i>Prometheus Unbound.</i></p> +<p>The attention of Mr W.J. Fox, a Unitarian +minister of note, had been directed to Browning's +early unpublished verse by Miss Flower. In the +<i>Monthly Repository</i> (April 1833) which he then +edited, Mr Fox wrote of <i>Pauline</i> with admiration, +and Browning was duly grateful for this earliest public +<a name="Page_20"></a>recognition of his genius as a poet. In the <i>Athenaeum</i> +Allen Cunningham made an effort to be appreciative +and sympathetic. John Stuart Mill desired to be the +reviewer of <i>Pauline</i> in <i>Taifs Magazine</i>; there, however, +the poem had been already dismissed with one +contemptuous phrase. It found few readers, but the +admiration of one of these, who discovered <i>Pauline</i> +many years later, was a sufficient compensation for the +general indifference or neglect. "When Mr Browning +was living in Florence, he received a letter from a +young painter whose name was quite unknown to him, +asking him whether he were the author of a poem +called <i>Pauline</i>, which was somewhat in his manner, +and which the writer had so greatly admired that he +had transcribed the whole of it in the British Museum +reading-room. The letter was signed D.G. Rossetti, +and thus began Mr Browning's acquaintance with this +eminent man."<a name="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a></p> +<p><br /> +<span style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</span></p> + +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_1">[1]</a></div> +<div class="note"><p> By Dr Furnivall; see <i>The Academy</i>, April 12, 1902.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_2">[2]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," ii. 477.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_3">[3]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letter of R.B. to E.B.B.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_4">[4]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Dr Moncure Conway states that Browning told him that the +original +name of the family was De Buri. According to Mrs Orr, Browning +"neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogical past +which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members of his +family."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_5">[5]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Quoted by Mr Sharp in his "Life of Browning," p. 21, +<i>n</i>., from Mrs +Fraser Cockran.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_6">[6]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Autobiography of a Journalist," i. 277.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_7"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_7">[7]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> For my quotations and much of the above information I am +indebted +to Mr F. Herbert Stead, Warden of the Robert Browning Settlement, +Walworth. In Robert Browning Hall are preserved the baptismal +registers of Robert (June 14th, 1812), and Sarah Anna Browning, with +other documents from which I have quoted.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_8"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_8">[8]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Letters of R.B. and E.B.B</i>., i. 528, 529; and (for +Ossian), ii. 469.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_9"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_9">[9]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Browning in a letter to Mr Wise says that this happened "some time +before 1830 (or even earlier). The books," he says, "were obtained in +the +<i>regular way</i>, from Hunt and Clarke." Mr Gosse in <i>Personalia</i> +gives a +different account, pp. 23, 24.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_10"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_10">[10]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The quotations from letters above are taken from J.C. Hadden's +article +"Some Friends of Browning" in <i>Macmillan's Magazine</i>, Jan. 1898.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_11"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_11">[11]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Later in life Browning came to think unfavourably of Shelley +as a +man and to esteem him less highly as a poet. He wrote in December +1885 to Dr Furnivall: "For myself I painfully contrast my notions of +Shelley the <i>man</i> and Shelley, well, even the <i>poet</i>, with +what +they were +sixty years ago." He declined Dr Furnivall's invitation to him to +accept +the presidency of "The Shelley Society."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_12"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_12">[12]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Even the publishers—Saunders and Otley—did not know the +author's +name.—"Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," i. 403.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_13"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_13">[13]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "V.A. xx," following the quotation from Cornelius Agrippa +means +"Vixi annos xx," <i>i.e.</i> "the imaginary subject of the poem was of +that +age."—Browning to Mr T.J. Wise.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_14"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_14">[14]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Edmund Gosse: "Robert Browning Personalia," pp. 31, 32. Mr W. +M. Rossetti in "D.G. Rossetti, his Family Letters," i. 115, gives the +summer of 1850 as the date of his brother's letter; and says, no doubt +correctly, that Browning was in Venice at the time. Mr Sharp prints a +letter of Browning's on his early acquaintance with Rossetti, and on +the +incident recorded above. I may here note that "Richmond," appended, +with a date, to <i>Pauline</i>, was a fancy or a blind; Browning never +resided +at Richmond.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_II"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_21"></a>Chapter II</h2> +<h2>Paracelsus and Sordello</h2> +<br /> +<p>There is little of incident in Browning's life to be +recorded for the period between the publication of +<i>Pauline</i> and the publication of <i>Paracelsus</i>. During +the winter of 1833-1834 he spent three months in +Russia, "nominally," says Mrs Orr, "in the character +of secretary" to the Russian consul-general, Mr Benckhausen. +Memories of the endless pine-forests through +which he was driven on the way to St Petersburg may +have contributed long afterwards to descriptive passages +of <i>Ivan Ivanovitch.</i></p> +<p>In 1842 or 1843 he wrote a drama in five acts to +which was given the name "Only a Player-girl"; the +manuscript lay for long in his portfolio and never saw +the light. "It was Russian," he tells Miss Barrett, +"and about a fair on the Neva, and booths and +droshkies and fish-pies and so forth, with the Palaces +in the background."<a name="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> +Late in life, at Venice, Browning +became acquainted with an old Russian, Prince +Gagarin, with whom he competed successfully for an +hour in recalling folk-songs and national airs of Russia +<a name="Page_22"></a>caught up during the visit of 1833-34. "His +memory," +said Gagarin, "is better than my own, on which I have +hitherto piqued myself not a little."<a name="FNanchor_16"></a><a + href="#Footnote_16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> Perhaps it was +his wanderings abroad that made Browning at this +time desire further wanderings. He thought of a +diplomatic career, and felt some regret when he failed +to obtain an appointment for which he had applied in +connection with a mission to Persia.</p> +<p>In the winter of 1834 Browning was at work on +<i>Paracelsus</i>, which, after disappointments with other +houses, was accepted, on terms that secured the publisher +from risk, by Effingham Wilson, and appeared before +midsummer of the following year. The subject had +been suggested by Count Amédée de Ripert-Monclar, +a young French royalist, engaged in secret service on +behalf of the dethroned Bourbons. To him the poem +is dedicated. For a befitting treatment of the story +of Paracelsus special studies were necessary, and +Browning entered into these with zeal, taking in his +poem—as he himself believed—only trifling liberties +with the matter of history. In solitary midnight walks +he meditated his theme and its development. "There +was, in particular," Mr Sharp tells us, "a wood near +Dulwich, whither he was wont to go." Mr Sharp adds +that at this time Browning composed much in the +open air, and that "the glow of distant London" at +night, with the thought of its multitudinous human +life, was an inspiring influence. The sea which spoke +to Browning with most expressive utterances was +always the sea of humanity.</p> +<p>In its combination of thought with passion, and +<a name="Page_23"></a>not less in its expression of a certain premature +worldly wisdom, <i>Paracelsus</i> is an extraordinary output +of mind made by a writer who, when his work was +accomplished, had not completed his twenty-third year. +The poem is the history of a great spirit, who has +sought lofty and unattainable ends, who has fallen +upon the way and is bruised and broken, but who +rises at the close above his ruined self, and wrings +out of defeat a pledge of ultimate victory. In a +preface to the first edition, a preface afterwards +omitted, Browning claims originality, or at least +novelty, for his artistic method; "instead of having +recourse to an external machinery of incidents to +create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I +have ventured to display somewhat minutely the mood +itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the +agency by which it is influenced and determined, to +be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate +throughout, if not altogether excluded." The +poem, though dramatic, is not a drama, and canons +which are applicable to a piece intended for stage-representation +would here—Browning pleads—be +rather a hindrance than a help. Perhaps Browning +regarded the action which can be exhibited on the +stage as something external to the soul, and imagined +that the naked spirit can be viewed more intimately +than the spirit clothed in deed and in circumstance. +If this was so, his conceptions were somewhat crude; +with the true dramatic poet action is the hieroglyph +of the soul, and many a secret may be revealed in this +language, amassing as it does large meanings into one +luminous symbol, which cannot be set forth in an +elaborate intellectual analysis. We think to probe +<a name="Page_24"></a>the depths, and perhaps never get far below the +surface. But the flash and outbreak of a fiery spirit, +amid a tangle of circumstance, springs to the surface +from the very centre, and reveals its inmost energies.</p> +<p>Paracelsus, as presented in the poem, is a man of +pre-eminent genius, passionate intellect, and inordinate +intellectual ambition. If it is meant that he +should be the type of the modern man of science, +Browning has missed his mark, for Paracelsus is in +fact almost as much the poet as the man of science; +but it is true that the cautious habits of the inductive +student of nature were rare among the enthusiastic +speculators of Renaissance days, and the Italian successor +of Paracelsus—Giordano Bruno—was in reality, +in large measure, what Browning has here conceived +and exhibited. Paracelsus is a great revolutionary +spirit in an epoch of intellectual revolution; it is +as much his task to destroy as to build up; he has +broken with the past, and gazes with wild-eyed hopes +into the future, expecting the era of intellectual liberty +to dawn suddenly with the year One, and seeing in +himself the protagonist of revolution. Such men as +Paracelsus, whether their sphere be in the political, +the religious, or the intellectual world, are men of +faith; a task has been laid on each of them; a +summons, a divine mandate, has been heard. But is +the summons authentic? is the mandate indeed +divine? In the quiet garden at Würzburg, while +the autumn sun sinks behind St Saviour's spire, Festus—the +faithful Horatio to this Hamlet of science—puts +his questions and raises his doubts first as to the end +and aim of Paracelsus, his aspiration towards absolute +knowledge, and secondly, as to the means proposed +<a name="Page_25"></a>for its attainment—means which reject the service +of +all predecessors in the paths of knowledge; which +depart so widely from the methods of his contemporaries; +which seek for truth through strange and casual +revelations; which leave so much to chance. Very +nobly has Browning represented the overmastering +force of that faith which genius has in itself, and +which indeed is needed to sustain it in the struggle +with an incredulous or indifferent world. The end +itself is justified by the mandate of God; and as for +the means, truth is not to be found only or chiefly by +gathering up stray fragments from without; truth +lies buried within the soul, as jewels in the mine, and +the chances and changes and shocks of life are required +to open a passage for the shining forth of this +inner light. Festus is overpowered less by reason +than by the passion of faith in his younger and greater +fellow-student; and the gentle Michal is won from her +prophetic fears half by her affectionate loyalty to the +man, half by the glow and inspiration of one who +seems to be a surer prophet than her mistrusting self. +And in truth the summons to Paracelsus is authentic; +he is to be a torch-bearer in the race. His errors are +his own, errors of the egoism of genius in an age of +intellectual revolution; he casts away the past, and +that is not wise, that is not legitimate; he anticipates +for himself the full attainment of knowledge, which +belongs not to him but to humanity during revolving +centuries; and although he sets before himself the +service of man as the outcome of all his labours—and +this is well—at the same time he detaches himself +from his fellow-men, regards them from a regal height, +would decline even their tribute of gratitude, and +<a name="Page_26"></a>would be the lofty benefactor rather than the +loving +helpmate of his brethren. Is it meant then that +Paracelsus ought to have contented himself with being +like his teacher Trithemius and the common +masters of the schools? No, for these rested with +an easy self-satisfaction in their poor attainments, and +he is called upon to press forward, and advance from +strength to strength, through attainment or through +failure to renewed and unending endeavour. His +dissatisfaction, his failure is a better thing than their +success and content in that success. But why should +he hope in his own person to forestall the slow advance +of humanity, and why should the service of the +brain be alienated from the service of the heart?</p> +<p>There are many ways in which Browning could +have brought Paracelsus to a discovery of his error. +He might have learnt from his own experience the +aridity of a life which is barren of love. Some +moment of supreme pity might have come to him, +in which he, the possessor of knowledge, might have +longed to offer consolation to some suffering fellow, +and have found the helplessness of knowledge to +console. Browning's imagination as a romantic poet +craved a romantic incident and a romantic <i>mise-en-scène</i>. +In the house of the Greek conjuror at Constantinople, +Paracelsus, now worn by his nine years' wanderings, +with all their stress and strain, his hair already +streaked with grey, his spirit somewhat embittered +by the small success attending a vast effort, his moral +nature already somewhat deteriorated and touched +with the cynicism of experience and partial failure, +shall encounter the strange figure of Aprile, the living +wraith of a poet who has also failed, who "would love +<a name="Page_27"></a>infinitely and be loved," and who in gazing upon +the +end has neglected all the means of attainment; and +from him, or rather by a reflex ray from this Aprile, +his own error shall be flashed on the consciousness +of the foiled seeker for knowledge. The invention +of Browning is certainly not lacking in the quality of +strangeness in beauty; yet some readers will perhaps +share the feeling that it strains, without convincing, +the imagination. As we read the first speeches +addressed by the moon-struck poet to the wandering +student of science, and read the moon-struck replies, +notwithstanding the singular beauty of certain dramatic +and lyrical passages, we are inclined to ask—Is this, +indeed, a conjuror's house at Constantinople, or one +of Browning's "mad-house cells?" and from what +delusions are the harmless, and the apparently +dangerous, lunatic suffering? The lover here is +typified in the artist; but the artist may be as +haughtily isolated from true human love as the +man of science, and the fellowship with his kind which +Paracelsus needs can be poorly learnt from such a +distracted creature as Aprile. It is indeed Aprile's +example and the fate which has overtaken him rather +than his wild words which startle Paracelsus into a +recognition of his own error. But the knowledge +that he has left love out of his scheme of life is no +guarantee that he will ever acquire the fervour and +the infinite patience of love. The whole scene, with +its extravagant poetic beauties and high-pitched +rhetoric, leaves a painful impression of unreality, not +in the shallower but in the deepest sense of that +word.</p> +<p>For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous +<a name="Page_28"></a>experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense +of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not +amiss. These could find no place in Browning's +presentation of Aprile, but it is certain that Browning +himself was a much more complex person than the dying +lover of love who became the instructor of Paracelsus. +When the scene shifts from Constantinople to Basil, +and the illustrious Professor holds converse with Festus +by the blazing logs deep into the night, and at length +morning arises "clouded, wintry, desolate and cold," +we listen with unflagging attention and entire imaginative +conviction; and, when silence ensues, a wonder +comes upon us as to where a young man of three-and-twenty +acquired this knowledge of the various bitter +tastes of life which belong to maturer experience, and +how he had mastered such precocious worldly wisdom. +Paracelsus,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The wondrous Paracelsus, life's dispenser,<br /> +</span><span>Fate's commissary, idol of the schools<br /> +</span><span>And courts,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>chews upon his worldly success and extracts its acrid +juices. This is not the romantic melancholy of youth, +which dreams of infinite things, but the pain of manhood, +which feels the limitations of life, which can laugh at +the mockery of attainment, which is sensible of the +shame that dwells at the heart of glory, yet which +already has begun to hanker after the mean delights +of the world, and cannot dispense with the sorry +pleasures of self-degradation. The kind, calm Pastor +of Einsiedeln sees at first only the splendour that +hangs around the name of his early comrade, the +hero of his hopes. And Paracelsus for a while would +forbear with tender ruth to shatter his friend's illusion, +<a name="Page_29"></a>would veil, if that were possible, the canker +which has +eaten into his own heart. But in the tumult of old +glad memories and present griefs, it ceases to be +possible; from amid the crew of foolish praisers he +must find one friend having the fidelity of genuine +insight; he must confess his failure, and once for all +correct the prophecy of Michal that success would +come and with it wretchedness—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I have not been successful, and yet am<br /> +</span><span>Most miserable; 'tis said at last.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>A certain manly protectiveness towards Festus and +Michal, with their happy Aennchen and Aureole in +the quiet home at Einsiedeln, remains to Paracelsus; +there is in it now more than a touch of "the devotion +to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow."</p> +<p>When, driven from Basil as a quack amid the +hootings of the crowd, Paracelsus once again +"aspires"; but it is from a lower level, with energy +less certain, and with a more turbid passion. Upon +such soiled and draggled wings can he ever soar +again? His strength is the strength of fever; his +gaiety is wild and bitter; he urges his brain with +artificial stimulants. And he, whose need was love, +has learnt hatred and scorn. In his earlier quest for +truth he had parted with youth and joy; he had +grown grey-haired and lean-handed before the time. +Now, in his new scheme of life, he will not sever truth +from enjoyment; he will snatch at the meanest +delights; before death comes, something at least shall +thus be gained. And yet he has almost lost the +capacity for pleasures apart from those of a wolfish +hunger for knowledge; and he despises his baser aims +<a name="Page_30"></a>and his extravagant speeches. Could life only be +begun anew with temperate hopes and sane aspirings! +But he has given his pledges and will abide by them; +he must submit to be hunted by the gods to the end. +Before he parts from Festus at the Alsatian inn, a +softer mood overtakes him. Blinded by his own +passion, Paracelsus has had no sense to divine the +sorrow of his friend, and Festus has had no heart to +obtrude such a sorrow as this. Only at the last +moment, and in all gentleness, it must be told—Michal +is dead. In Browning's earliest poem Pauline +is no more than a name and a shadow. The creator +of Ottima and Colombe, of Balaustion and Pompilia +had much to tell of womanhood. Michal occupies, +as is right, but a small space in the history of +Paracelsus, yet her presence in the poem and her +silent withdrawal have a poignant influence. We +see her as maiden and hear of her as mother, her face +still wearing that quiet and peculiar light</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Like the dim circlet floating round a pearl.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And now, as the strong men of Shakespeare's play +spoke of the dead Portia in the tent, Paracelsus and +Festus talk of the pastor of Einsiedeln's gentle wife. +Festus speaks in assured hope, Paracelsus in daring +surmise, of a life beyond the grave, and finally with +a bitter return upon himself from his sense of her +tranquillity in death:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And Michal sleeps among the roots and dews,<br /> +</span><span>While I am moved at Basil, and full of schemes<br /> +</span><span>For Nuremberg, and hoping and despairing,<br /> +</span><span>As though it mattered how the farce plays out,<br /> +</span><span>So it be quickly played!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_31"></a>It is the last cry of his distempered egoism +before the +closing scene.</p> +<p>In the dim and narrow cell of the Hospital of St +Sebastian, where he lies dying, Paracelsus at last +"attains"—attains something higher than a Professor's +chair at Basil, attains a rapture, not to be expressed, in +the joy which draws him onward, and a lucid comprehension +of the past that lies behind. All night the faithful +Festus has watched beside the bed; the mind of the +dying man is working as the sea works after a +tempest, and strange wrecks of memory float past +in troubled visions. In the dawning light the clouds +roll away, a great calm comes upon his spirit, and he +recognises his friend. It is laid upon him, before he +departs, to declare the meaning of his life. This +life of his had been no farce or failure; in his +degree he has served mankind, and what <i>is</i> the service +of man but the true praise of God? He perceives +now the errors of the way; he had been dazzled by +knowledge and the power conferred by knowledge; +he had not understood God's plan of gradual evolution +through the ages; he had laboured for his race in +pride rather than in love; he had been maddened by +the intellectual infirmities, the moral imperfections of +men, whereas he ought to have recognised even in +these the capacities of a creature in progress to a +higher development. Now, at length, he can follow +in thought the great circle of God's creative energy, +ever welling forth from Him in vast undulations, ever +tending to return to Him again, which return Godwards +is already foretold in the nature of man by august +anticipations, by strange gleams of splendour, by +cares and fears not bounded by this our earth.</p> +<p><a name="Page_32"></a>Were <i>Paracelsus</i> a poem of late instead +of early +origin in Browning's poetical career, we should +probably have received no such open prophecy as +this. The scholar of the Renaissance, half-genius, +half-charlatan, would have casuistically defended or +apologised for his errors, and through the wreathing +mists of sophistry would have shot forth ever and +anon some ray of truth.</p> +<p>We receive from <i>Paracelsus</i> an impression of the +affluence of youth. There is no husbanding of resources, +and perhaps too little reserve of power. +Where the poet most abandons himself to his ardour +of thought and imagination he achieves his highest +work. The stress and tension of his enthusiasm are +perhaps too continuous, too seldom relieved by spaces +of repose. It is all too much of a Mazeppa ride; +there are times when we pray for a good quarter of an +hour of comfortable dulness, or at least of wholesome +bovine placidity. The laws of such a poem are wholly +determined from within. The only question we have +a right to ask is this—Has the poet adequately dealt +with his subject, adequately expressed his idea? The +division of the whole into five parts may seem to have +some correspondency with the five acts of a tragedy; +but here the stage is one of the mind, and the acts +are free to contract or to expand themselves as the +gale of thought or passion rises or subsides. If a +spiritual anemometer were invented it would be found +that the wind which drives through the poem maintains +often and for long an astonishing pace. The +strangely beautiful lyric passages interspersed through +the speeches are really of a slower movement than the +dramatic body of the poem; they are, by comparison, +<a name="Page_33"></a>resting-places. The perfumed closet of the song +of +Paracelsus in Part IV. is "vowed to quiet" (did +Browning ever compose another romanza as lulling as +this?), and the Maine glides so gently in the lyric of +Festus (Part V.) that its murmuring serves to bring +back sanity to the distracted spirit of the dying +Aureole. There are youthful excesses in <i>Paracelsus</i>; +some vague, rhetorical grandeurs; some self-conscious +sublimities which ought to have been oblivious of self; +some errors of over-emphasis; some extravagances of +imagery and of expression. The wonderful passage +which describes "spring-wind, as a dancing psaltress," +passing over the earth, is marred by the presence of +"young volcanoes"</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i24">"cyclops-like<br /> +</span><span>Staring together with their eyes on flame,"<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>which young volcanoes were surely the offspring of +the "young earthquake" of Byron. But these are, as +the French phrase has it, defects of the poem's qualities. +A few pieces of base metal are flung abroad unawares +together with the lavish gold.</p> +<p>A companion poem to <i>Paracelsus</i>—so described by +Browning to Leigh Hunt—was conceived by the poet +soon after the appearance of the volume of 1835. +When <i>Strafford</i> was published two years later, we learn +from a preface, afterwards omitted, that he had been +engaged on <i>Sordello</i>. Browning desired to complete +his studies for this poem of Italy among the scenes +which it describes. The manuscript was with him in +Italy during his visit of 1838; but the work was not +to be hastily completed. <i>Sordello</i> was published in +1840, five years after <i>Paracelsus</i>. In the chronological +order of Browning's poems, by virtue of the +<a name="Page_34"></a>date of origin, it lies close to the earlier +companion +piece; in the logical order it is the completion of a +group of poems—<i>Pauline, Paracelsus, Sordello</i>—which +treat of the perplexities, the trials, the failures, the +ultimate recovery of men endowed with extraordinary +powers; it is one more study of the conduct of genius +amid the dangers and temptations of life. Here we +may rightly disregard the order of publication, and +postpone the record of external incidents in Browning's +poetical development, in order to place <i>Sordello</i> in its +true position, side by side with <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p> +<p>How the subject of <i>Sordello</i> was suggested to +Browning we do not know; the study of Dante may +have led him to a re-creation of the story of Dante's +predecessor; after having occupied in imagination the +old towns of Germany and Switzerland—Würzburg +and Basil, Colmar and Salzburg—he may have longed +for the warmth and colour of Italy; after the Renaissance +with its revolutionary speculations, he may have +wished to trace his way back to the Middle Age, +when men lived and moved under the shadow of one +or the other of two dominant powers, apparently fixed +in everlasting rivalry—the Emperor and the Pope.</p> +<p>"The historical decoration," wrote Browning, in the +dedicatory letter of 1863, to his friend Milsand, "was +purposely of no more importance than a background +requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the +development of a soul: little else is worth study." +Undoubtedly the history of a soul is central in the +poem; but the drawings of Italian landscape, so sure +in outline, so vivid in colour; the views of old Italian +city life, rich in the tumult of townsfolk, military +chieftains, men-at-arms; the pictures of sombre interiors, +<a name="Page_35"></a>and southern gardens, the hillside castle amid +its vines, +the court of love with its contending minstrels, the +midnight camp lit by its fires; and, added to these, +the Titianesque portraits of portly magnifico and gold-haired +maiden, and thought-worn statist make up an +environment which has no inconsiderable poetic value +of its own, feeding, as it does, the inner eye with +various forms and dyes, and leaving the "spirit in +sense" more wealthy. With a theme so remote from +the common consciousness of his own day, Browning +conceived that there would be an advantage in being +his own commentator and interpreter, and hence he +chose the narrative in preference to the dramatic form; +thus, he supposed he could act the showman and stand +aside at times, to expound his own intentions. Unhappily, +in endeavouring to strengthen and concentrate +his style, he lost that sense of the reader's distance +from himself which an artist can never without risk +forget; in abbreviating his speech his utterance +thickened; he created new difficulties by a legerdemain +in the construction of sentences; he assumed +in his public an alertness of intelligence equal to his +own. When it needs a leaping-pole to pass from +subject to verb across the chasm of a parenthesis, when +a reader swings himself dubiously from relative to +some one of three possible antecedents, when he springs +at a meaning through the fissure of an undeveloped +exclamatory phrase, and when these efforts are demanded +again and again, some muscular fatigue naturally +ensues. Yet it is true that when once the right +connections in these perplexing sentences have been +established, the sense is flashed upon the mind with +singular vividness; then the difficulty has ceased to +<a name="Page_36"></a>exist. And thus, in two successive stages of +study, +the same reader may justly censure <i>Sordello</i> for its +obscurity of style, and justly applaud it for a remarkable +lucidity in swiftness. Intelligent, however, as +Browning was, it implied a curious lack of intelligence +to suppose that a poem of many thousand lines written +I in shorthand would speedily find decipherers. If we +may trust the words of Westland Marston, recorded +by Mr W.M. Rossetti in <i>The Preraphaelite Brotherhood +Journal</i> (26 February 1850), Browning imagined +that his shorthand was Roman type of unusual clearness: +"Marston says that Browning, before publishing +<i>Sordello</i>, sent it to him to read, saying that this time +I the public should not accuse him at any rate of being +unintelligible." What follows in the <i>Journal</i> is of interest, +but can hardly be taken as true to the letter: +"Browning's system of composition is to write down +on a slate, in prose, what he wants to say, and then +turn it into verse, striving after the greatest amount of +condensation possible; thus, if an exclamation will +suggest his meaning, he substitutes this for a whole +sentence." In climbing an antique tower we may +obtain striking flashes of prospect through the slits +and eyelet-holes which dimly illuminate the winding +stair, but to combine these into an intelligible landscape +is not always easy. Browning's errors of style +are in part attributable to his unhappy application of a +passage in a letter of Caroline Fox which a friend had +shown him. She stated that her acquaintance John +Sterling had been repelled by the "verbosity" of +<i>Paracelsus</i>: "Doth Mr Browning know," she asked, +"that Wordsworth will devote a fortnight or more to +the discovery of a single word that is the one fit for +<a name="Page_37"></a>his sonnet?"<a name="FNanchor_17"></a><a + href="#Footnote_17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> Browning was determined to +avoid +"verbosity"; but the method which seems to have +occurred to him was that of omitting many needful +though seemingly insignificant words, and jamming +together the words that gleam and sparkle; with the +result that the mind is at once dazzled and fatigued.</p> +<p>Sordello, the Italian singer of the thirteenth century, +is conceived by Browning as of the type which he had +already presented in the speaker of <i>Pauline</i>, only that +here the poet is not infirm in will, and, though loved by +Palma, he is hardly a lover. Like the speaker of <i>Pauline</i> +he is preoccupied with an intense self-consciousness, the +centre of his own imaginative creations, and claiming +supremacy over these. He craves some means of +impressing himself upon the world, some means of +deploying the power that lies coiled within him, not +through any gross passion for rule but in order that he +may thus manifest himself to himself at the full. He +is as far as possible removed from that type of the +worshipping spirit exhibited in Aprile, and in the poet +Eglamor, whom Sordello foils and subdues in the +contest of song. The fame as a singer which comes +suddenly to him draws Sordello out of his Goito solitude +to the worldly society of Mantua, and his experiences +of disillusion and half voluntary self-degradation +are those which had been faintly shadowed forth in +<i>Pauline</i>, and exhibited more fully—and yet with a +difference—in the Basil experiences of Paracelsus. Like +the poet of <i>Pauline</i>, after his immersion in worldliness, +Sordello again seeks solitude, and recovers a portion +of his higher self; but solitude cannot content one +who is unable to obtain the self-manifestation which +<a name="Page_38"></a>his nature demands without the aid of others who +may furnish an external body for the forces that lie +suppressed within him. Suddenly and unexpectedly +the prospect of a political career opens before him. +May it not be that he will thus obtain what he needs, +and find in the people the instrument of his own +thoughts, his passions, his aspirations, his imaginings, +his will? May not the people become the body in +which his spirit, with all its forces, shall incarnate +itself? Coming into actual acquaintance with the +people for the first time, the sight of their multiform +miseries, their sorrows, even their baseness lays hold +of Sordello; it seems as if it were they who were +about to make <i>him</i> their instrument, the voice through +which their inarticulate griefs should find expression; +he is captured by those whom he thought to capture. +By all his personal connections he is of the Imperial +party—a Ghibellin; but, studying the position of +affairs, he becomes convinced that the cause of the +Pope is one with the cause of the people. At this +moment vast possibilities of political power suddenly +widen upon his view; Sordello, the minstrel, a poor +archer's son, is discovered to be in truth the only son +of the great Ghibellin chieftain, Salinguerra; he is +loved by Palma, who, with her youth and beauty, +brings him eminent station, authority, and a passion +of devoted ambition on his behalf; his father flings +upon Sordello's neck the baldric which constitutes +him the Emperor's representative in Northern Italy. +The heart and brain of Sordello become the field of +conflict between fierce, contending forces. All that is +egoistic in his nature cries out for a life of pride and +power and joy. At best it is but little that he could +<a name="Page_39"></a>ever do to serve the suffering multitude. And yet +should he falter because he cannot gain for them the +results of time? Is it not his part to take the single +step in their service, though it can be no more than a +step? In the excitement of this supreme hour of +inward strife Sordello dies; but he dies a victor; like +Paracelsus he also has "attained"; the Imperial +baldric is found cast below the dead singer's feet.</p> +<p>This, in brief, is the "history of a soul" which +Browning has imagined in his <i>Sordello</i>. And the +conclusion of the whole matter can be briefly stated: +the primary need of such a nature as Sordello's—and +we can hardly doubt that Browning would have +assigned himself a place in the class to which the poet +of his imagination belongs—is that of a Power above +himself, which shall deliver him from egoism, and +whose loyal service shall concentrate and direct his +various faculties, and this a Power not unknown or +remote, but one brought near and made manifest; or, +in other words, it is the need of that which old religion +has set forth as God in Christ. Sordello in his final +decision in favour of true service to the people had, +like Paracelsus, given his best praise to God, had +given his highest pledge of loyalty to whatever is +Divine in life. And therefore, though he has failed +in all his high designs, his failure is in the end a +success. He, like Paracelsus, had read that bitter +sentence which declares that "collective man outstrips +the individual":—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>"God has conceded two sights to a man—<br /> +</span><span>One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,<br /> +</span><span>The other, of the minute's work, man's first<br /> +</span><span>Step to the plan's completion."<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_40"></a>And the poor minute's work assigned him by the +divine law of justice and pity he accepts as his whole +life's task. It is true that though he now clearly sees +the end, he has not perhaps recognised the means. +If Sordello contemplated political action as his mode +of effecting that minute's work, he must soon have +discovered, were his life prolonged, that not thus can +a poet live in his highest faculty, or render his +worthiest service. The poet—and speaking in his own +person Browning makes confession of his faith—can +adequately serve his mistress, "Suffering Humanity," +only as a poet. Sordello failed to render into song +the highest thoughts and aspirations of Italy; but +Dante was to follow and was not to fail. The +minstrel's last act—his renunciation of selfish power +and pleasure, his devotion to what he held to be the +cause of the people, the cause of humanity, was indeed +his best piece of poetry; by virtue of that act Sordello +was not a beaten man but a conqueror.</p> +<p>These prolonged studies—<i>Paracelsus, Sordello</i>, and, +on a more contracted scale, <i>Pauline</i>—each a study in +"the development of a soul," gain and lose through +the immaturity of the writer. He had, as yet, brought +only certain of his faculties into play, or, at least, he +had not as yet connected with his art certain faculties +which become essential characteristics of his later work. +There is no humour in these early poems, or (since +Naddo and the critic tribe of <i>Sordello</i> came to qualify +the assertion) but little; there is no wise casuistry, in +which falsehood is used as the vehicle of truth; the +psychology, however involved it may seem, is really +too simple; the central personages are too abstract—knowledge +and love and volition do not exhaust the +<a name="Page_41"></a>soul; action and thought are not here +incorporated +one with the other; a deed is not the interpreter of +an idea; an idea is first exhibited by the poet and the +deed is afterwards set forth as its consequence; the +conclusions are too patently didactic or doctrinaire; +we suspect that they have been motives determining +the action; our scepticism as to the disinterested +conduct of the story is aroused by its too plainly +deduced moral. We catch the powers at play which +ought to be invisible; we fiddle with the works of the +clock till it ceases to strike. Yet if only a part of +Browning's mind is alive in these early poems, the +faculties brought into exercise are the less impeded by +one another; the love of beauty is not tripped up by +a delight in the grotesque. And there is a certain +pleasure in attending to prophecy which has not learnt +to hide itself in casuistry. The analysis of a state of +mind, pursued in <i>Sordello</i> with an effort that is sometimes +fatiguing and not always successful, is presently +followed by a superb portrait—like that of +Salinguerra—painted by the artist, not the analyst, and so +admirable is it that in our infirmity we are tempted +to believe that the process of flaying and dissection +alters the person of a man or woman as Swift has +said, considerably for the worse.</p> +<br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<div class="note"> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_15"></a> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="#FNanchor_15">[15]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The supposition of Mr Sharp and Mr Gosse that Browning visited +Italy after having seen St Petersburg is an error. His first visit to +Italy +was that of 1838. I may note here that in a letter to E.B.B. (vol. ii. +443) Browning refers to having been in Holland some ten years since; +the date of his letter is August 18, 1846.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_16"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_16">[16]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Bronson; Browning in Venice. <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, +Feb. 1902. +pp. 160, 161.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_17"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_17">[17]</a></div> +</div> +</div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Orr's "Handbook to Browning," pp. 10, 11.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_III"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_42"></a>Chapter III</h2> +<h2>The Maker of Plays</h2> +<p>The publication of <i>Paracelsus</i> did not gain for Browning +a large audience, but it brought him friends and +acquaintances who gave his life a delightful expansion +in its social relations. John Forster, the critic, biographer +and historian, then unknown to him, reviewed +the poem in the <i>Examiner</i> with full recognition of its +power and promise. Browning gratefully commemorated +a lifelong friendship with Forster, nearly a score +of years later, in the dedication of the 1863 edition +of his poetical works. Mrs Orr recites the names of +Carlyle, Talfourd, R. Hengist Horne, Leigh Hunt, +Procter, Monckton Milnes, Dickens, Wordsworth, +Landor, among those of distinguished persons who +became known to Browning at this period.<a name="FNanchor_18"></a><a + href="#Footnote_18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> His +"simple and enthusiastic manner" is referred to by the +actor Macready in his diary; "he looks and speaks +more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw." +Browning's face was one of rare intelligence and full of +changing expression. He was not tall, but in early +years he was slight, was graceful in his movements, +<a name="Page_43"></a>and held his head high. His dark brown hair hung +in wavy masses upon his neck. His voice had in early +manhood a quality, afterwards lost, which Mr Sharp +describes as "flute-like, clear, sweet and resonant." +Slim, dark, and very handsome are the words chosen +by Mrs Bridell-Fox to characterise the youthful +Browning as he reappeared to her memory; "And—may +I hint it?"—she adds, "just a trifle of a dandy, +addicted to lemon-coloured kid gloves and such things, +quite 'the glass of fashion and the mould of form.' +But full of ambition, eager for success, eager for fame, +and, what is more, determined to conquer fame and to +achieve success." Yet the correct and conventional +Browning could also fire up for lawlessness—"frenetic +to be free." He was hail-fellow well-met, we are told—but +is this part of a Browning legend?—with tramps +and gipsies, and he wandered gladly, whether through +devout sympathy or curiosity of mood we know not, +into Little Bethels and other tents of spiritual Ishmael.</p> +<p>From Camberwell Browning's father moved to a +house at Hatcham, transporting thither his long rows +of books, together with those many volumes which lay +still unwritten in the "celle fantastyk" of his son. +"There is a vast view from our greatest hill," wrote +Browning; a vast view, though Wordsworth had +scorned the Londoner's hill—"Hill? <i>we</i> call that, such +as that, a <i>rise</i>." Here he read and wrote, enjoyed his +rides on the good horse "York," and cultivated friendship +with a toad in the pleasant garden, for he had a +peculiar interest, as his poems show, in creatures that +live a shy, mysterious life apart from that of man, and +the claim of beauty, as commonly understood, was not +needed to win his regard. Browning's eye was an +<a name="Page_44"></a>instrument made for exact and minute records of +natural phenomena. "I have heard him say," Mr +Sharp writes, "that at that time"—speaking of his +earlier years—"his faculty of observation would not +have appeared despicable to a Seminole or an Iroquois." +Such activity of the visual nerve differs widely from +the wise passiveness or brooding power of the Wordsworthian +mode of contemplation. Browning's life was +never that of a recluse who finds in nature and communion +with the anima mundi a counterpoise to the +attractions of human society. Society fatigued him, +yet he would not abandon its excitements. A mystic—though +why it should be so is hard to say—does +not ordinarily affect lemon-coloured kid gloves, as did +the Browning of Mrs Bridell-Fox's recollection. The +mysticism of Browning's temper of mind came not by +withdrawal from the throng of positive facts, but by +pushing through these to the light beyond them, or +by the perception of some spear-like shaft of light +piercing the denseness, which was serviceable as the +sheathe or foil. And of course it was among men +and women that he found suggestions for some of his +most original studies.</p> +<p>An introduction to Macready which took place at +Mr Fox's house towards the close of November 1835 +was fruitful in consequences. A month later Browning +was Macready's guest at Elstree, the actor's resting-place +in the country. His fellow-traveller, then +unknown to him, in the coach from London was +John Forster; in Macready's drawing-room the poet +and his critic first formed a personal acquaintance. +Browning had for long been much interested in the +stage, but only as a spectator. His imagination now +<a name="Page_45"></a>turned towards dramatic authorship with a view to +theatrical performance. A play on a subject from +later Roman history, <i>Narses</i>, was thought of and was +cast aside. The success of Talfourd's <i>Ion</i>, after the +first performance of which (May 26, 1836) Browning +supped in the author's rooms with Macready, Wordsworth, +and Landor, probably raised high hopes of a +like or a greater success for some future drama of his +own. "Write a play, Browning," said Macready, as +they left the house, "and keep me from going to +America." "Shall it be historical or English?" +Browning questioned, as the incident is related by +Mrs Orr, "What do you say to a drama on Strafford?" +The life of Stafford by his friend Forster, just published, +which during an illness of the author had been revised +in manuscript by Browning, probably determined +the choice of a subject.</p> +<p>By August the poet had pledged himself to achieve +this first dramatic adventure. The play was produced +at Covent Garden on May 1st, 1837, by Macready, +who himself took the part of Strafford. Helen Faucit, +then a novice on the stage, gave an adequate rendering +of the difficult part of Lady Carlisle. For the rest, +the complexion of the piece, as Browning describes +it, after one of the latest rehearsals, was "perfect +gallows." Great historical personages were presented +by actors who strutted or slouched, who whimpered +or drawled. The financial distress at Covent Garden +forbade any splendour or even dignity of scenery or +of costumes.<a name="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19"><sup>[19]</sup></a> +The text was considerably altered—and +<a name="Page_46"></a>not always judiciously—from that of the printed +play, +which had appeared before its production on the stage. +Yet on the first night <i>Strafford</i> was not damned, and +on the second it was warmly applauded.<a name="FNanchor_20"></a><a + href="#Footnote_20"><sup>[20]</sup></a> After the +fifth performance the wretched Pym refused to save +his mother England even once more, and the play +was withdrawn. Browning declared to his friends +that never again, as long as he might live, would +he write a play. Whining not being to his taste, he +averted his eyes and set himself resolutely to work +upon <i>Sordello</i>.</p> +<p>"I sail this morning for Venice," Browning wrote +to a friend on Good Friday, 1838. He voyaged as +sole passenger on a merchantman, and soon was +on friendliest terms with the rough kindly captain. +For the first fortnight the sea was stormy and +Browning suffered much; as they passed through the +Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided him to +reach the deck, and a pulsing of home-pride—not +home-sickness—gave their origin to the patriotic +lines beginning, "Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent +to the north-west died away." Under the bulwark of +the <i>Norham Castle</i>, off the African coast, when the +fancy of a gallop on his Uncle Reuben's horse suddenly +presented itself in pleasant contrast with the tedium +of the hours on shipboard, he wrote in pencil, on the +flyleaf of Bartoli's Simboli, that most spirited of poems +which tell of the glory of motion—<i>How they brought +the good news from Ghent to Aix</i>. The only adventure +<a name="Page_47"></a>of the voyage was the discovery of an Algerine +pirate +ship floating keel uppermost; it righted suddenly +under the stress of ropes from the <i>Norham Castle</i>, +and the ghastly and intolerable dead—Algerines and +Spaniards—could not scare the British sailors eager +for loot; at last the battered hulk was cast loose, and +its blackness was seen reeling slowly off "into the +most gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world." +Having visited Venice, Vicenza and Padua—cities +and mountain solitudes, which gave their warmth and +colour to his unfinished poem—Browning returned +home by way of Tyrol, the Rhine, Liege and +Antwerp. It was his first visit to Italy and was a +time of enchantment. Fifty years later he recalled +the memories of these early days when his delight had +something insubstantial, magical in it, and the vision +was half perceived with the eye and half projected +from within:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>How many a year my Asolo,<br /> +</span><span>Since—one step just from sea to land—<br /> +</span><span>I found you, loved yet feared you so—<br /> +</span><span>For natural objects seemed to stand<br /> +</span><span>Palpably fire-clothed!<a name="FNanchor_21"></a><a + href="#Footnote_21"><sup>[21]</sup></a><br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Of evenings soon after his return to London Mrs +Bridell-Fox writes: "He was full of enthusiasm for +Venice, that Queen of Cities. He used to illustrate +his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces, +the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original kind +of etching. Taking up a bit of stray notepaper, he +would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper +about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and +then utilising the darker smears for clouds, shadows, +<a name="Page_48"></a>water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the +forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge or +gondola on the vague and dreamy surface he had +produced." The anticipations of genius had already +produced a finer etching than any of these, in those +lines of marvellous swiftness and intensity in <i>Paracelsus</i>, +which +describe Constantinople at the hour of sunset.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img003"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 787px;" + alt="MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE" + title="MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE" + src="images/img003.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE.</h5> +<h5><i>From a drawing by</i> Miss D. NOYES.</h5> +<p>The publication of <i>Sordello</i> (1840) did not improve +Browning's position with the public. The poem was +a challenge to the understanding of an aspirant reader, +and the challenge met with no response. An excuse +for not reading a poem of five or six thousand lines +is grateful to so infirm and shortlived a being as man. +And, indeed, a prophet, if prudent, may do well to +postpone the privilege of being unintelligible until he +has secured a considerable number of disciples of both +sexes. The reception of <i>Sordello</i> might have disheartened +a poet of less vigorous will than Browning; +he merely marched breast forward, and let <i>Sordello</i> lie +inert, until a new generation of readers had arisen. +The dramas, <i>King Victor and King Charles</i> and <i>The +Return of the Druses</i> (at first named "Mansoor the +Hierophant") now occupied his thoughts. Short +lyrical pieces were growing under his hand, and +began to form a considerable group. And one +fortunate day as he strolled alone in the Dulwich +wood—his chosen resort of meditation—"the image +flashed upon him of one walking thus alone through +life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of +his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though +unconscious influence at every step of it."<a name="FNanchor_22"></a><a + href="#Footnote_22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> In other +<a name="Page_49"></a>words Pippa had suddenly passed her poet in the +wood.</p> +<p>A cheap mode of issuing his works now in manuscript +was suggested to Browning by the publisher +Moxon. They might appear in successive pamphlets, +each of a single sheet printed in double-column, and +the series might be discontinued at any time if the +public ceased to care for it. The general title <i>Bells +and Pomegranates</i> was chosen; "beneath upon the +hem of the robe thou shalt make pomegranates of +blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the +hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round +about." Browning, as he explained to his readers +in the last number, meant to indicate by the title, +"Something like an alternation, or mixture, of music +with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with +thought"—such having been, in fact, one of the +most familiar of the Rabbinical interpretations designed +to expound the symbolism of this priestly decoration +prescribed in "Exodus." From 1841 to 1846 the +numbers of <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> successively +appeared; with the eighth the series closed. The +first number—<i>Pippa Passes</i>—was sold for sixpence; +when <i>King Victor and King Charles</i> was published in +the following year (1842), the price was raised to one +shilling. The third and the seventh numbers were +made up of short pieces—<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i> (1842), +<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i> (1845). <i>The Return +of the Druses</i> and <i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i>—Numbers +4 and 5—followed each other in the same year 1843. +<i>Colombe's Birthday</i>—the only number which is known +to survive in manuscript—came next in order (1844). +The last to appear was that which included <i>Luna</i>, +<a name="Page_50"></a>Browning's favourite among his dramas, and <i>A +Soul's +Tragedy</i>.<a name="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> +His sister, except in the instance of <i>Colombe</i>, +was Browning's amanuensis. On each title-page he is +named Robert Browning "Author of Paracelsus"—the +"wholly unintelligible" <i>Sordello</i> being passed over. +Talfourd, "Barry Cornwall," and John Kenyon (the +cousin of Elizabeth Barrett) were honoured with +dedications. In these pamphlets of Moxon, Browning's +wonderful apples of gold were certainly not presented +to the public in pictures or baskets of silver; yet the +possessor of the eight parts in their yellow paper +wrappers may now be congratulated. Only one of +the numbers—<i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i>—attained the +distinction of a second edition, and this probably +because the drama as published was helped to a +comparative popularity by its representation on the +stage.</p> +<p>This tragedy of young love and death was written +hastily—in four or five days—for Macready. Browning +while at work on his play, as we learn from a letter of +Dante Rossetti to Allingham, was kept indoors by a +slight indisposition; his father on going to see him +"was each day received boisterously and cheerfully +with the words: 'I have done another act, father.'"<a name="FNanchor_24"></a><a + href="#Footnote_24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> +Forster read the tragedy aloud from the manuscript for +Dickens, who wrote of it with unmeasured enthusiasm +in a letter, known to Browning only when printed +after the lapse of some thirty years: "Browning's play +has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow.... +I know no love like it, no passion like it, no moulding +<a name="Page_51"></a>of a splendid thing after its conception like +it." Things +had gone ill with Macready at Drury Lane, and when +the time for <i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i> drew near it is +evident that he feared further losses and would gladly +have been released from his promise to produce the +play; but Browning failed to divine the true state of +affairs. The tragedy was read to the company by a +grotesque, wooden-legged and red-nosed prompter, and +it was greeted with laughter. To make amends, +Macready himself undertook to read it aloud, but he +declared himself unable, in the disturbed state of his +mind, to appear before the public: his part—that of +Lord Tresham—must be taken by Phelps. From certain +rehearsals Phelps was unavoidably absent through +illness. Macready who read his lines on these occasions, +now was caught by the play, and saw possibilities +in the part of Tresham which fired his imagination. +He chose, almost at the last moment, to displace his +younger and less distinguished colleague. Browning, +on the other hand, insisted that Phelps, having been +assigned the part, should retain it. To baffle Macready +in his design of presenting the play to the public in a +mutilated form, Browning, aided by his publisher, +had the whole printed in four-and-twenty hours.<a name="FNanchor_25"></a><a + href="#Footnote_25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> A +rupture of the long-standing friendship with Macready +followed, nor did author and actor meet again until +after the great sorrow of Browning's life. "Mr +Macready too"—writes Mrs Orr—"had recently lost +his wife, and Mr Browning could only start forward, +<a name="Page_52"></a>grasp the hand of his old friend, and in a voice +choked +with emotion say, 'O Macready!'"</p> +<p>The tragedy was produced at Drury Lane on +February nth, 1843, with Phelps, who acted admirably +as Tresham, and Helen Faucit as Mildred. +Although it had been ill rehearsed and not a shilling +had been spent on scenery or dresses, it was received +with applause. To a call for the author, Browning, seated +in his box, declined to make any response. Thus, +not without some soreness of heart, closed his direct +connection with the theatre. He heard with pleasure +when in Italy that <i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i> was given +by Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre in November +1848, and with unquestionable success. A rendering +of <i>Colombe's Birthday</i> was projected by Charles Kean +in 1844, but the long delays, which were inevitable, +could not be endured by Browning, who desired to +print his play forthwith among the <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>. +It was not until nine years later that this +play, a veritable "All for love, or the world well lost," +was presented at the Haymarket, Helen Faucit appearing +as the Duchess. Soon after <i>Colombe's Birthday</i> +had been published, Browning sailed once more, in +the autumn of 1844, for Italy.<a name="FNanchor_26"></a><a + href="#Footnote_26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> As he journeyed +northwards and homewards, from Naples (where they +were performing an opera named <i>Sordello</i>) and Rome +he sought and obtained at Leghorn an interview with +Trelawny, the generous-hearted friend of Shelley, by +whose grave he had lately stood.<a name="FNanchor_27"></a><a + href="#Footnote_27"><sup>[27]</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_53"></a>Browning's work as a playwright, consisting of +eight +pieces, or nine if we include the later <i>In a Balcony</i>, is +sufficiently ample to enable us to form a trustworthy +estimate of his genius as seen in drama. Dramatic, in +the sense that he created and studied minds and +hearts other than his own, he pre-eminently was; if he +desired to set forth or to vindicate his most intimate +ideas or impulses, he effected this indirectly, by detaching +them from his own personality and giving +them a brain and a heart other than his own in which +to live and move and have their being. There is a +kind of dramatic art which we may term static, and +another kind which we may term dynamic. The +former deals especially with characters in position, the +latter with characters in movement.<a name="FNanchor_28"></a><a + href="#Footnote_28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> Passion and +thought may be exhibited and interpreted by dramatic +genius of either type; to represent passion and thought +and action—action incarnating and developing thought +and passion—the dynamic power is required. And by +action we are to understand not merely a visible deed, +but also a word, a feeling, an idea which has in it a direct +operative force. The dramatic genius of Browning was +in the main of the static kind; it studies with extraordinary +skill and subtlety character in position; it +attains only an imperfect or a laboured success with +character in movement. The <i>dramatis personae</i> are +ready at almost every moment, except the culminating +moments of passion, to fall away from action into +reflection and self-analysis. The play of mind upon +<a name="Page_54"></a>mind he recognises of course as a matter of +profound +interest and importance; but he catches the energy +which spirit transfers to spirit less in the actual moment +of transference than after it has arrived. Thought and +emotion with him do not circulate freely through a +group of persons, receiving some modification from +each. He deals most successfully with each individual +as a single and separate entity; each maintains his own +attitude, and as he is touched by the common influence +he proceeds to scrutinise it. Mind in these plays +threads its way dexterously in and out of action; it +is not itself sufficiently incorporated in action. The +progress of the drama is now retarded; and again, +as if the author perceived that the story had fallen +behind or remained stationary, it is accelerated by +sudden jerks. A dialogue of retrospection is a common +device at the opening of popular plays, with a view +to expound the position of affairs to the audience; +but a dramatic writer of genius usually works forward +through his dialogue to the end which he has set +before him. With Browning for the purpose of mental +analysis a dialogue of retrospection may be of higher +value than one which leans and presses towards the +future. The invisible is for him more important than +the visible; and so in truth it may often be; but +the highest dramatist will not choose to separate the +two. The invisible is best captured and is most +securely held in the visible.</p> +<p>As a writer of drama, Browning, who delights to +study the noblest attitudes of the soul, and to wring +a proud sense of triumph out of apparent failure, finds +his proper field in tragedy rather than in comedy. +<i>Colombe's Birthday</i> has a joyous ending, but the joy is +<a name="Page_55"></a>very grave and earnest, and the body of the play +is +made up of serious pleadings and serious hopes and +fears. There is no light-hearted mirth, no real gaiety +of temper anywhere in the dramas of Browning. +Pippa's gladness in her holiday from the task of silk-winding +is touched with pathos in the thought that +what is so bright <i>is</i> also so brief, and it is encompassed, +even within delightful Asolo, by the sins and sorrows +of the world. Bluphocks, with his sniggering wit and +his jingles of rhyme is a vagabond and a spy, who +only covers the shame of his nakedness with these rags +of devil-may-care good spirits. The genial cynicism +of Ogniben is excellent of its kind, and pleases the +palate like an olive amid wines; but this man of +universal intellectual sympathies is at heart the satirist +of moral illusions, the unmasker of self-deception, who +with long experience of human infirmities, has come +to chuckle gently over his own skill in dealing with +them; and has he not—we may ask—wound around +his own spirit some of the incurable illusions of worldly +wisdom? No—this is not gaiety; if Browning smiles +with his Ogniben, his smile is a comment upon the +weakness and the blindness of the self-deceiver.</p> +<p>Browning's tragedies are tragedies without villains. +The world is here the villain, which has baits and +bribes and snares wherewith to entangle its victims, +to lure down their mounting aspirations, to dull their +vision for the things far-off and faint; perhaps also +to make them prosperous and portly gentlemen, easy-going, +and amiably cynical, tolerant of evil, and +prudently distrustful of good. Yet truth is truth, +and fact is fact; worldly wisdom is genuine wisdom +after its kind; we shall be the better instructed if we +<a name="Page_56"></a>listen to its sage experience, if we listen, +understand, +and in all justice, censure. Ogniben can blandly and +skilfully conduct a Chiappino to his valley of +humiliation—"let him that standeth take heed lest he fall." +But what would the wisdom of Ogniben be worth in +its pronouncements on a Luria or a Colombe? Perhaps +even in such a case not wholly valueless. The self-pleased, +keen-sighted Legate might after all have +applauded a moral heroism or a high-hearted gallantry +which would ill accord with his own ingenious and +versatile spirit. Bishop Blougram—sleek, ecclesiastical +opportunist—was not insensible to the superior merits +of "rough, grand, old Martin Luther."</p> +<p>In Browning's nature a singularly keen, exploring +intelligence was united with a rare moral and spiritual +ardour, a passion for high ideals. In creating his +chief <i>dramatis persona</i> he distributes among them what +he found within himself, and they fall into two principal +groups—characters in which the predominating power +is intellect, and characters in which the mastery lies +with some lofty emotion. The intellect dealing with +things that are real and positive, those persons in whom +intelligence is supreme may too easily become the +children of this world; in their own sphere they are +wiser than the children of light; and they are skilled +in a moral casuistry by which they justify to themselves +the darkening of the light that is in them. +The passionate natures have an intelligence of their +own; they follow a gleam which is visible to them if +not to others; they discover, or rather they are discovered +by, some truth which flashes forth in one +inspired moment—the master-moment of a lifetime; +they possess the sublime certainty of love, loyalty, +<a name="Page_57"></a>devotion; if they err through a heroic folly and +draw +upon themselves ruin in things temporal, may there +not be some atom of divine wisdom at the heart of +the folly, which is itself indestructible, and which +ensures for them a welfare out of time and space? +Prophet and casuist—Browning is both; and to each +he will endeavour to be just; but his heart must give +a casting vote, and this cannot be in favour of the +casuist. Every self-transcending passion has in it a +divine promise and pledge; even the passion of the +senses if it has hidden within it one spark of self-annihilating +love may be the salvation of a soul. It +is Ottima, lifted above her own superb voluptuousness, +who cries—"Not me—to him, O God, be merciful." +The region of untrammelled, unclouded passion, of +spiritual intuition, and of those great words from +heaven, which pierce "even to the dividing asunder of +the joints and marrow," is, for Browning's imagination, +the East. The nations of the West—and, before all +others, the Italian race—are those of a subtly developed +intelligence. The worldly art of a Church-man, +ingenuities of theology having aided in refining +ingenuities of worldliness, is perhaps the finest exemplar +of unalloyed western brain-craft. But Italy is also a +land of passion; and therefore at once, for its ardours +of the heart—seen not in love alone but in carven +capital and on frescoed wall—and for its casuistries +of intellect, Browning looks to Italy for the material +best fitted to his artistry. Between that group of +personages whom we may call his characters of passion +and that group made up of his characters of intelligence, +lie certain figures of peculiar interest, by birth +and inheritance children of the East, and by culture +<a name="Page_58"></a>partakers, in a greater or a less degree, of the +characteristics +of the West—a Djabal, with his Oriental heart +entangled by Prankish tricks of sophistry; a Luria, +whose Moorish passion is enthralled by the fascination +of Florentine intellect, and who can make a return +upon himself with a half-painful western self-consciousness.</p> +<p>Loyalties, devotions, to a person, to a cause, to an +ideal, and the sacrifice of individual advantages, worldly +prosperity, temporal successes to these—such, stated +in a broad and general way, is the theme of special +interest to Browning in his dramas. These loyalties +may be well and wisely fixed, or they may contain a +portion of error and illusion. But in either case they +furnish a test of manly and womanly virtue. With a +woman the test is often proposed by love—by love as +set over against ease, or high station, or the pride of +power. Colombe of Ravestein is offered on the one +hand the restoration of her forfeited Duchy, the prospective +rank of Empress and partnership with a man, +who, if he cannot give love, is yet no ignoble wooer, a +man of honour, of intellect, and of high ambition; on +the other hand pleads the advocate of Cleves, a nameless +provincial, past his days of youth, lean and somewhat +worn, and burdened with the griefs and wrongs +of his townsfolk. Mere largeness in a life is something, +is much; but the quality of a life is more. +Valence has set the cause of his fellow-citizens above +himself; he has made the heart of the Duchess for +the first time thrill in sympathy with the life of her +people; he has placed his loyalty to her far above his +own hopes of happiness; he has urged his rival's +claims with unfaltering fidelity. It is not with any +<a name="Page_59"></a>backward glances of regret, any half-doubts, +prudent +reserves, or condescending qualifications that Colombe +gives herself to the advocate of the poor. She, in her +youth and beauty, has been happy during her year of +idlesse as play-Duchess of Juliers; she is happier now +as she abandons the court and, sure in her grave +choice, turns with a light and joyous laugh to welcome +the birthday gift of freedom and of love that has so +unexpectedly come to her. Having once made her +election, Colombe can throw away the world as gaily +as in some girlish frolic she might toss aside a rose.</p> +<p>The loyalty of men, their supreme devotion and +their test may, as with women, spring from the passion +of love; but other tests than this are often proposed +to them. With King Charles of Sardinia it is duty to +his people that summons him, from those modest and +tranquil ways of life of which he dreamed, to the cares +and toils of the crown. He has strength to accept +without faltering the burden that is laid upon him. +And if he falters at the last, and would resign to his +father, who reclaims it, the crown which God alone +should have removed, shall we assert confidently that +Browning's dramatic instinct has erred? The pity of +it—that his great father, daring in battle, profound in +policy, should stand before him an outraged, helpless +old man, craving with senile greed a gift from his son—the +pity of it revives an old weakness, an old instinct +of filial submission, in the heart of Charles. He has +tasked himself without sparing; he has gained the +affections of his subjects; he has conciliated a hostile +Europe; is not this enough? Or was it also in the +bond that he should tread a miserable father into the +dust? The test again of Luigi, in the third part of +<a name="Page_60"></a><i>Pippa Passes</i>, is that of one who sees all +the oppression +of his people, who is enamoured of the antique +ideal of liberty, and whose choice lies between a youth +of luxurious ease and the virtue of one heroic crime, +to be followed by the scaffold-steps, with youth cut +short. To him that overcometh and endureth unto +the end will God give the morning-star:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The gift of the morning-star! Have I God's +gift<br /> +</span><span>Of the morning-star?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And Luigi will adventure forth—it may be in a kind +of divine folly—as a doomsman commissioned by God +to free his Italy. The devotion of Luria to Florence +is partly of the imagination, and perhaps it is touched +with something of illusion. But the actual Florence, +with her astute politicians, her spies who spy upon +spies, her incurable distrusts, her sinister fears, her +ingrained ingratitude, is clearly exposed to him before +the end. Shall he turn the army, which is as much +his own as the sword he wields, joined with the forces +of Pisa, against the beautiful, faithless city? Or will +his passionate loyalty endure the test? Luria withdraws +from life, but not until he has made every +provision for the victory of Florence over her enemy; +nor does he die a defeated man; his moral greatness +has subdued all envies and all distrusts; at the close +everyone is true to him:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The only fault's with time;<br /> +</span><span>All men become good creatures: but so slow.<a + name="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29"><sup>[29]</sup></a><br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Once again in Browning's earliest play, the test for +the patriot Pym lies in the choice between two loyalties—one +<a name="Page_61"></a>to England and to freedom, the other to his early +friend and former comrade in politics. His faith in +Strafford dies hard; but it dies; he flings forward his +hopes for the grand traitor to England beyond the +confines of this life, and only the grieved unfaltering +justiciary remains. Browning's Pym is a figure neither +historically true nor dramatically effective; he is self-conscious +and sentimental, a patriot armed in paste-board +rhetoric. But the writer, let us remember, was +young; this was his first theatrical essay, and he was +somewhat showy of fine intentions. The loyalty of +Strafford to the King is too fatuous an instinct to +gain our complete sympathy. He rides gallantly into +the quicksand, knowing it to be such, and the quicksand, +as certainly as the worm of Nilus, will do its kind. +And yet though this is the vain romance of loyalty, in +it, as Browning conceives, lies the test of Strafford. +A self-renouncing passion of any kind is not so common +that we can afford to look on his king-worship with +scorn.</p> +<p>Over against these devotees of the ideal Browning +sets his worldlings, ranging from creatures as despicable +as the courtiers of Duchess Colombe to such men +of power and inexhaustible resource as the Nuncio +who confronts Djabal with his Druses, or the Papal +Legate whose easier and half-humorous task is to +dismiss to his private affairs at Lugo the four-and-twentieth +leader of revolt. To the same breed with +the courtiers of Colombe belong old Vane and Savile +of the court of Charles. To the same breed with the +Nuncio and the Legate, belongs Monsignor, who proves +himself more than a match for his hireling, the scoundrel +Intendant. In a happy moment Monsignor is startled +<a name="Page_62"></a>into indignant wrath; he does not exclaim with +the +Edmund of Shakespeare's tragedy "Some good I mean +to do before I die;" but his "Gag the villain!" is +a substantial contribution to the justice of our world. +Under the ennobling influence of Charles and his +Polyxena, the craft of D'Ormea is uplifted to a level +of real dignity; if he cannot quite attain the position +of a martyr for the truth, he becomes something better +than one who serves God at the devil's bidding. And +Braccio, plotter and betrayer, yet always with a certain +fidelity towards his mother-city, is won over to the +side of simple truth and righteousness by the overmastering +power of Luria's magnanimity. So precious, +after all—Browning would say—is the mere capacity +to recognise facts; if only a little grain of virtue +remains in the heart, this faculty of vision may make +some sudden discovery which shall prove to a worldling +that there exist facts, undeniable and of immense +potency, hitherto unknown to his philosophy of chicane. +Browning's vote is given, as has been said, and with +no uncertain voice, for his devotees of the ideal; but +the men of fine worldly brain-craft have a fascination +for him as they have for his Eastern Luria. In Djabal, +at once enthusiast and impostor, Browning may seem, +as often afterwards, to offer an apology for the palterer +with truth; but in the interests of truth itself, he +desires to study the strange phenomenon of the deceiver +who would fain half-deceive himself.</p> +<p><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;"><a style="font-weight: normal;" + name="Footnote_18"></a><a style="font-weight: normal;" + href="#FNanchor_18">[18]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Dr Moncure Conway in "The Nation" vol. i. (an article written +on +the occasion of Browning's death) says that he was told by Carlyle of +his +first meeting with Browning—as Carlyle rode upon Wimbledon Common +a "beautiful youth," walking there alone, stopped him and asked for his +acquaintance. The incident has a somewhat legendary air.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_19"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_19">[19]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Lady Martin (Helen Faucit), however, wrote in 1891 to Mrs +Ritchie: +"The play was mounted in all matters with great care ... minute +attention to accuracy of costume prevailed.... The scenery was alike +accurate."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_20"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_20">[20]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> On which occasion Browning—muffled up in a cloak—was asked +by +a stranger in the pit whether he was not the author of "Romeo and +Juliet" and "Othello." "No, so far as I am aware," replied Browning. +Two burlesques of Shakespeare by a Mr Brown or Brownley were in course +of performance in London. <i>Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.</i>, ii. 132.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_21"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_21">[21]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> From the Prologue to <i>Asolando</i>, Browning's last volume.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_22"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_22">[22]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Orr, "Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning," p. 54 +(1st ed.).</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_23"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_23">[23]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>A Soul's Tragedy</i> was written in 1843 or 1844, and +revised immediately +before publication. See Letters of R.B. and E.B.B., i. 474.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_24"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_24">[24]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of D.G. Rossetti to William Allingham, p. 168.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_25"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_25">[25]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The above statement is substantially that of Browning; +but on certain points his memory misled him. Whoever is interested +in the matter should consult Professor Lounsbury's valuable article +"A Philistine View of a Browning Play" in <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, +December 1899, where questions are raised and some corrections are +ingeniously made.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_26"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_26">[26]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> An uncle seems to have accompanied him. See <i>Letters of R.B. +and E.B.B</i>., i. 57: and (for Shelley's Grave) i. 292; for "Sordello" +at +Naples, i., 349.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_27"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_27">[27]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> In later years no friendship existed between the two. We read +in Mr. W.M. Rossetti's Diary for 1869, "4th July.... I see Browning +dislikes +Trelawny quite as much as Trelawny dislikes him (which is not a +little.)" +<i>Rossetti Papers</i>, p. 401.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_28"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_28">[28]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See Mr R. Holt Hutton's article on Browning in "Essays +Theological +and Literary."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_29"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_29">[29]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Luria withdraws from life "to prevent the harm Florence +will do herself by striking him." <i>Letters of R.B. and E.B.B</i>., +i. 427.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_IV"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_63"></a>Chapter IV</h2> +<h2>The Maker of Plays—<i>(Continued)</i></h2> +<br /> +<p>The women of the dramas, with one or two exceptions, +are composed of fewer elements than the men. +A variety of types is presented, but each personality +is somewhat constrained and controlled by its idea; +the free movement, the iridescence, the variety in oneness, +the incalculable multiplicity in unity, of real +character are not always present. They admit of +definition to a degree which places them at a distance +from the inexplicable open secrets of Shakespeare's +creation; they lack the simple mysteriousness, the +transparent obscurity of nature. With a master-key +the chambers of their souls can one after another be +unlocked. Ottima is the carnal passion of womanhood, +full-blown, dazzling in the effrontery of sin, yet +including the possibility, which Browning conceives as +existing at the extreme edge of every expansive ardour, +of being translated into a higher form of passion which +abolishes all thought of self. Anael, of <i>The Return of +the Druses</i>, is pure and measureless devotion. The +cry of "Hakeem!" as she falls, is not an act of faith +but of love; it pierces through the shadow of the +material falsehood to her one illuminated truth of +absolute love, like that other falsehood which sanctifies +the dying lips of Desdemona. The sin of Mildred is +the very innocence of sin, and does not really alter the +<a name="Page_64"></a>simplicity of her character; it is only the +girlish rapture +of giving, with no limitation, whatever may prove +a bounty to him whom she loves:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Come what, come will,<br /> +</span><span>You have been happy.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The remorse of Mildred is the remorse of innocence, +the anguish of one wholly unlearned in the dark colours +of guilt. This tragedy of Mildred and Mertoun is the +<i>Romeo and Juliet</i> of Browning's cycle of dramas. But +Mildred's cousin Guendolen, by virtue of her swift, +womanly penetration and her brave protectiveness of +distressed girlhood, is a kinswoman of Beatrice who +supported the injured daughter of Leonato in a comedy +of Shakespeare which rings with laughter.</p> +<p>Polyxena, the Queen of Sardinia—a daughter not +of Italy but of the Rhineland—is, in her degree, an +eighteenth century representative of the woman of the +ancient Teutonic tribes, grave, resolute, wise, and possessing +the authority of wisdom. She, whose heart and brain +work bravely together like loyal comrades, is strongly +but also simply, conceived as the helpmate, the counsellor, +and, in the old sense of the word, the comforter +of her husband. Something of almost maternal feeling, +as happens at times in real life, mingles with her wifely +affection for Charles, who indeed may prove on occasions +a fractious son. Like a wise guardian-angel she +remembers on these occasions that he is only a man, +and that men in their unwisdom may grow impatient +of unalleviated guardian-angelhood; he will by and by +discover his error, and she can bide her time. Perhaps, +like other heroines of Browning, Polyxena is too +constantly and uniformly herself; yet, no doubt, it is +<a name="Page_65"></a>right that opaline, shifting hues should not +disturb our +impression of a character whose special virtue is steadfastness. +The Queen of the English Charles, who is +eager to counsel, and always in her petulance and +folly to counsel ill, is slightly sketched; but she may +be thanked for one admirable speech—her first—when +Strafford, worn and fevered in the royal service, has +just arrived from Ireland, and passing out from his +interview with the King is encountered by her:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Is it over then?<br /> +</span><span>Why he looks yellower than ever! Well<br /> +</span><span>At least we shall not hear eternally<br /> +</span><span>Of service—services: he's paid at least.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The Lady Carlisle of the same play—a creature in +the main of Browning's imagination—had the play +been Elizabethan or Jacobean would have followed +her lord in a page's dress, have lived on half a smile +a day, and perhaps have succeeded in dying languishingly +and happily upon his sword; she is not quite +unreal, nor yet quite real; something much better than +a stage property and not wholly a living woman; +more of a Beaumont and Fletcher personage of the +boards—and as such effective—than a Shakespearian +piece of nature. The theatrical limbo to which such +almost but not quite embodied shadows ultimately +troop, is capacious.</p> +<p>In Browning's dramatic scene of 1853, <i>In a Balcony</i>, +he created with unqualified success "a very woman" +in the enamoured Queen, whose heart at fifty years +beats only more wildly and desperately than a girl's.<a + name="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> +The young lovers, Constance and Norbert, are a highly +<a name="Page_66"></a>meritorious pair, who express their passion in +excellent +and eloquent periods; we have seen their like before, +and since. But the Queen, with her unslaked thirst +for the visionary wells under the palm-trees, who finds +herself still amid the burning sands, is an original and +tragic figure—a royal Mlle. de Lespinasse, and crowned +with fiery and immitigable pain. Although she has +returned the "glare" of Constance with the glare of +"a panther," the Queen is large-hearted. The guards, +it is true, arrive as the curtain falls; but those readers +who have wasted their tender emotion on a couple of +afflicted prisoners or decapitated young persons, whom +mother Nature can easily replace, are mistaken. If +the Queen does not die that night, she will rise next +morning after sleepless hours, haggard, not fifty but +eighty years old, and her passion will, heroically slay +itself in an act of generosity.<a name="FNanchor_31"></a><a + href="#Footnote_31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> Little more, however, +than a situation is represented in this dramatic scene. +Of Browning's full-length portraits of women in the +<a name="Page_67"></a>dramas, the finest piece of work is the portrait +of the +happiest woman—the play-Duchess of Juliers, no +longer Duchess, but ever</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Our lady of dear Ravestein.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Colombe is no incarnated idea but a complete +human being, irreducible to a formula, whom we know +the better because there is always in her more of +exquisite womanhood to be discovered. Even the +too fortunate Valence—all readers of his own sex +must pronounce him too fortunate—will for ever be +finding her anew.</p> +<p>In the development of his dramatic style Browning +more and more lost sight of the theatre and its requirements; +his stage became more and more a stage +of the mind. <i>Strafford</i>, his first play, is the work of a +novice, who has little of the instinct for theatrical +effect, but who sets his brain to invent striking tableaux, +to prepare surprises, to exhibit impressive attitudes, +to calculate—not always successfully—the angle of +a speech, so that it may with due impact reach the +pit. The opening scene expounds the situation. In +the second Wentworth and Pym confront each other; +the King surprises them; Wentworth lets fall the +hand of Pym, as the stage tradition requires; as +Wentworth withdraws the Queen enters to unmake +what he has made, and the scene closes with a tableau +expressing the sentimental weakness of Charles:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Come, dearest!—look, the little fairy, now<br /> +</span><span>That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And so proceeds the tragedy, with much that ought +to be dear to the average actor, which yet is somehow +not always even theatrically happy. The pathos of +<a name="Page_68"></a>the closing scene where Strafford is discovered +in The +Tower, sitting with his children, is theatrical pathos +of the most correct kind, and each little speech of +little William and little Anne is uttered as much for +the audience as for their father, implying in every +word "See, how we, poor innocents, heighten the pity +of it." The hastily written <i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i> +is, perhaps, of Browning's dramas the best fitted for +theatrical representation. Yet it is incurably weak in +the motives which determine the action; and certain +passages are almost ludicrously undramatic. If +Romeo before he flung up his ladder of ropes had +paused, like Mertoun, to salute his mistress with a +tenor morceau from the opera, it is to be feared that +runaways' and other eyes would not have winked, +and that old Capulet would have come upon the +scene in his night-gown, prepared to hasten the +catastrophe with a long sword. Yet <i>A Blot in the +'Scutcheon</i>, with its breadth of outline, its striking +situations, and its mastery of the elementary passions—love +and wrath and pride and pity—gives us +assurance that Browning might have taken a place +of considerable distinction had he been born in an +age of great dramatic poetry. If it is weak in construction +so—though in a less degree—are Webster's +<i>Duchess of Malfi</i>, and Shakespeare's <i>Cymbeline</i>.</p> +<p>In <i>King Victor and King Charles</i> Browning adopted, +and no doubt deliberately, a plain, unfigured and uncoloured +style, as suiting both the characters and the +historical subject. The political background of this +play and that of <i>Strafford</i> hardly entitles either drama +to be named political. Browning was a student of +history, but it was individuals and not society that +<a name="Page_69"></a>interested him. The affairs of England and the +affairs +of Sardinia serve to throw out the figures of the chief +<i>dramatis persons</i>; those affairs are not considered for +their own sake. Certain social conditions are studied +as they enter into and help to form an individual. +The Bishop who orders his tomb at St Praxed's is +in part a product of the Italian Renaissance, but the +causes are seen only in their effects upon the character +of a representative person. If the plain, substantial +style of <i>King Victor and King Charles</i> is proper to a +play with such a hero as Charles and such a heroine +as Polyxena, the coloured style, rich in imagery, is no +less right in <i>The Return of the Druses</i>, where religious +and chivalric enthusiasm are blended with the enthusiasm +of the passion of love. But already Browning +was ceasing to bear in mind the conditions of the stage. +Certain pages where Djabal and Khalil, Djabal and +Anael, Anael and Loys are the speakers, might be described +as dialogues conducted by means of "asides," +and even the imagination of a reader resents a construction +of scenes which requires these duets of soliloquies, +these long sequences of the audible-inaudible. +With the "very tragical mirth" of the second part of +Chiappino's story of moral and political disaster, the +spectators and the stage have wholly disappeared from +Browning's theatre; the imaginary dialogue is highly +dramatic, in one sense of the word, and is admirable +in its kind, but we transport ourselves best to +the market-place of Faenza by sitting in an easy +chair.</p> +<p><i>Pippa Passes</i> is singular in its construction; scenes +detached, though not wholly disconnected, are strung +pendant-wise upon the gold thread, slender but suffi<a name="Page_70"></a>ciently +strong, of an idea; realism in art, as we now +call it, hangs from a fine idealism; this substantial +globe of earth with its griefs, its grossnesses, its +heroism, swings suspended from the seat of God. +The idea which gives unity to the whole is not a +mere fantasy. The magic practised by the unconscious +Pippa through her songs is of that genuine +and beautiful kind which the Renaissance men of +science named "Magia Naturalis." It is no fantasy +but a fact that each of us influences the lives of others +more or less every day, and at times in a peculiar +degree, in ways of which we are not aware. Let this +fact be seized with imaginative intensity, and let the +imagination render it into a symbol—we catch sight +of Pippa with her songs passing down the grass-paths +and under the pine-wood of Asolo. Her only service +to God on this one holiday of a toilsome year is to be +glad. She misconceives everything that concerns +"Asolo's Four Happiest Ones"—to her fancy Ottima +is blessed with love, Jules is no victim of an envious +trick, Luigi's content in his lot is deep and unassailable, +and Monsignor is a holy and beloved priest; +and, unawares to her, in modes far other than she had +imagined, each of her dreams comes true; even +Monsignor for one moment rises into the sacred +avenger of God. Her own service, though she knows +it not, is more than a mere twelve-hours' gladness; +she, the little silk-winder, rays forth the influences of +a heart that has the potency ascribed to gems of +unflawed purity; and such influences—here embodied +in the symbol of a song—are among the precious +realities of our life. Nowhere in literature has the +virtue of mere innocent gladness been more charm<a name="Page_71"></a>ingly +imagined than in her morning outbreak of +expectancy, half animal glee, half spiritual joy; the +"whole sunrise, not to be suppressed" is a limitless +splendour, but the reflected beam cast up from the +splash of her ewer and dancing on her poor ceiling +is the same in kind; in the shrub-house up the +hill-side are great exotic blooms, but has not +Pippa her one martagon lily, over which she queens +it? With God all service ranks the same, and she +shall serve Him all this long day by gaiety and +gratitude.</p> +<p><i>Pippa Passes</i> is a sequence of dramatic scenes, with +lyrics interspersed, and placed in a lyrical setting; the +figures dark or bright, of the painting are "ringed by +a flowery bowery angel-brood" of song. But before +his <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> were brought to a close +Browning had discovered in the short monodrama, +lyrical or reflective, the most appropriate vehicle for +his powers of passion and of thought. Here a single +situation sufficed; characters were seen rightly in +position; the action of the piece was wholly internal; +a passion could be isolated, and could be either traced +through its varying moods or seized in its moment of +culmination; the casuistry of the brain could be +studied apart,—it might have its say uninterrupted, or +it might be suddenly encountered and dissipated by +some spearlike beam of light from the heart or soul; +the traditions of a great literary form were not here a +cause of embarrassment; they need not, as in work +for the theatre, be laboriously observed or injuriously +violated; the poet might assert his independence and +be wholly original.</p> +<p>And original, in the best sense of the word—entirely +<a name="Page_72"></a>true to his highest self—Browning was in the +"Dramatic Lyrics" of 1842, and the "Dramatic +Romances and Lyrics" of 1845. His senses were at +once singularly keen and energetic, and singularly +capacious of delight; his eyes were active instruments +of observation, and at the same time were possessed +by a kind of rapture in form—and not least in fantastic +form—and a rapture still finer in the opulence and +variety of colour. In these poems we are caught into +what may truly be called an enthusiasm of the senses; +and presently we find that the senses, good for their +own sakes, are good also as inlets to the spirit. +Having returned from his first visit to southern Italy, +the sights and sounds, striking upon the retina and +the auditory nerve, with the intensity of a new experience, +still attack the eye and ear <i>as</i> he writes his +<i>Englishman in Italy</i>, and by virtue of their eager +obsession demand and summon forth the appropriate +word.<a name="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> +The fisherman from Amalfi pitches down +his basket before us,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>All trembling alive<br /> +</span><span>With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit,<br /> +</span><span>—You touch the strange lumps,<br /> +</span><span>And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner<br /> +</span><span>Of horns and of humps.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or it is the "quick rustle-down of the quail-nets," +or the "whistling pelt" of the olives, when Scirocco is +loose, that invades our ears. And by and by among +the mountains the play of the senses expands, and the +soul has its great word to utter:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_73"></a><span>God's own profound<br /> +</span><span>Was above me, and round me the mountains,<br /> +</span><span>And under, the sea,<br /> +</span><span>And within me, my heart to bear witness<br /> +</span><span>hat was and shall be.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Not less vivid is the vision of the light craft with its +lateen sail outside Triest, in which Waring—the Flying +Englishman—is seen "with great grass hat and kerchief +black," looking up for a moment, showing his "kingly +throat," till suddenly in the sunset splendour the boat +veers weather-ward and goes off, as with a bound, +"into the rose and golden half of the sky." And what +animal-painter has given more of the leonine wrath in +mane and tail and fixed wide eyes than Browning has +conveyed into his lion of King Francis with three strokes +of the brush? Or it is only a bee upon a sunflower +on which the gazer's eye is fixed, and we get the word +of Rudel:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And therefore bask the bees<br /> +</span><span>On my flower's breast, as on a platform broad.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or—a grief to booklovers!—the same eye is occupied +by all the grotesquerie of insect life in the +revel over that unhappy tome lurking in the plum +tree's crevice of Browning's <i>Garden Fancy</i>, which +creeps and crawls with beetle and spider, worm and +eft.<a name="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> +Or it is night and moonlight by the sandy +shore, and for a moment—before love enters—all +the mind of the impressionist artist lives merely in +the eye:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_74"></a><span>The grey sea and the +long black land;<br /> +</span><span>And the yellow half-moon large and low;<br /> +</span><span>And the startled little waves that leap<br /> +</span><span>In fiery ringlets from their sleep<br /> +</span><span>As I gain the cove with pushing prow.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If Browning did not rejoice in perfect health and +animal spirits—and in the letters to Miss Barrett we +hear of frequent headaches and find a reference to his +pale thin face as seen in a mirror—he had certainly +the imagination of perfect vitality and of those "wild +joys of living," sung by the young harper David in that +poem of <i>Saul</i>, which appeared as a fragment in the +<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, and as a whole ten years later, +with the awe and rapture of the spirit rising above +the rapture of the senses.<a name="FNanchor_34"></a><a + href="#Footnote_34"><sup>[34]</sup></a></p> +<p>Of these poems of 1842 and 1845 one <i>The Pied +Piper</i>, was written in the spirit of mere play and was +included in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> only to make up +a number, for which the printer required more copy. +One or two—the flesh and blood incarnations of the +wines of France and Hungary, <i>Claret</i> and <i>Tokay</i>, are +no more than clever caprices of the fancy. One, <i>The +Lost Lender</i>, remotely suggested by the conservatism +of Wordsworth's elder days, but possibly deflected by +some of the feeling attributed to Pym in relation to +Strafford of the drama, and certainly detached from +direct personal reference to Wordsworth, expresses +Browning's liberal sentiment in politics. One, the +stately <i>Artemis Prologuizes</i>, is the sole remaining fragment +of a classical drama, "Hippolytus and Aricia," +composed in 1840, "much against my endeavour," +<a name="Page_75"></a>wrote the poet,—a somewhat enigmatical +phrase—"while +in bed with a fever." A considerable number of +the poems may be grouped together as expressions or +demonstrations of various passions, central among which +is the passion of love. A few, and these conspicuous +for their masterly handling of novel themes, treat of +art, and the feeling for art as seen in the painter of +pictures or in the connoisseur. Nor is the interpretation +of religious emotion—though in a phase that may +be called abnormal—wholly forgotten.</p> +<p>With every passion that expands the spirit beyond +the bounds of self, Browning, as the dramas have made +evident to us, is in cordial sympathy. The reckless +loyalty, with its animal spirits and its dash of grief, +the bitterer because grief must be dismissed, of the +<i>Cavalier Tunes</i>, is true to England and to the time in +its heartiness and gallant bluffness. The leap-up of pride +and joy in a boy's heart at the moment of death in +his Emperor's cause could hardly be more intensely +imagined than it is in the poem of the French camp, +and all is made more real and vivid by the presence of +that motionless figure, intent on victory and sustaining +the weight of imperial anxieties, which yet cannot be +quite impassive in presence of a death so devoted. +And side by side with this poem of generous enthusiasm +is placed the poem of passion reduced to its extreme of +meanness, its most contracted form of petty spite and +base envy—the <i>Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister</i>; a +grotesque insect, spitting ineffectual poison, is placed +under the magnifying-glass of the comic spirit, and is +discovered to be—a brother in religion! A noble +hatred, transcending personal considerations, mingles +with a noble and solemn love—the passion of country—in +<a name="Page_76"></a>the Italian exile's record of his escape from +Austrian pursuers; with the clear-obscure of his +patriotic melancholy mingles the proud recollection of +the Italian woman who was his saviour, over whose +conjectured happiness as peasant wife and peasant +mother the exile bows with a tender joy. The examples +of abnormal passion are two—that of the +amorous homicide who would set on one perfect +moment the seal of eternity, in <i>Porphyria's Lover</i>, and +that of the other occupier of the mad-house cells, +Johannes Agricola, whose passion of religion is pushed +to the extreme of a mystical antinomianism.</p> +<p>Browning's poems of the love of man and woman +are seldom a simple lyrical cry, but they are not on +this account the less true in their presentment of that +curious masquer and disguiser—Love. When love +takes possession of a nature which is complex, affluents +and tributaries from many and various faculties run +into the main stream. With Browning the passion is +indeed a regal power, but intellect, imagination, fancy +are its office-bearers for a time; then in a moment it +resumes all authority into its own hands, resolves of a +sudden all that is complex into the singleness of joy +or pain, fuses all that is manifold into the unity of its +own life and being. His dramatic method requires +that each single faculty should be seen in the environment +of a character, and that its operations should be +clothed more or less in circumstance. And since love +has its ingenuities, its fine-spun and far-flung threads +of association, its occult symbolisms, Browning knows +how to press into the service of the central emotion +objects and incidents and imagery which may seem +remote or curious or fantastic or trivial or even +<a name="Page_77"></a>grotesque. In <i>Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli</i> +love +which cometh by the hearing of the ear (for Rudel is +a sun-worshipper who has never seen his sun) is a pure +imaginative devotion to the ideal. In <i>Count Gismond</i> +love is the deliverer; the motive of the poem is +essentially that of the Perseus and Andromeda myth +refined upon and mediaevalised. In <i>Cristine</i> love is +the interpreter of life; a moment of high passion +explains, and explains away, all else that would obscure +the vision of what is best and most real in this +our world and in the worlds that are yet unattained. +From a few lines written to illustrate a Venetian +picture by Maclise <i>In a Gondola</i> was evolved. If +Browning was not entirely accurate in his topography +of Venice, he certainly did not fail in his sense of the +depth and opulence of its colour. Here the abandonment +to passion is relieved by the quaint ingenuities +and fancies of love that seeks a momentary refuge +from its own excess, and then returns more eagerly +upon itself; and the shadow of death is ever at hand, +but like the shadows of a Venetian painter it glows +with colour.</p> +<p>The motives of two narrative poems, <i>The Glove</i> and +<i>The Flight of the Duchess</i>, have much in common; +they lie in the contrast between the world of convention +and the world of reality. In each the insulter of +proprieties, the breaker of bounds is a woman; in +each the choice lies between a life of pretended love +and vain dignities and a life of freedom and true love; +and in each case the woman makes her glad escape +from what is false to what is true. In restating the +incident of the glove Browning brings into play his +casuistry, but casuistry is here used to justify a passion +<a name="Page_78"></a>which the poet approves, to elucidate, not to +obscure, +what he represents as the truth of the situation. <i>The +Flight of the Duchess</i> in part took its rise "from a line, +'Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!'—the burden +of a song, which the poet, when a boy, heard a woman +singing on a Guy Fawkes' day." Some two hundred +lines were given to Hood for his magazine, at a time +when Hood needed help, and death was approaching +him. The poem was completed some months later. +It is written, like <i>The Glove</i>, in verse that runs for +swiftness' sake, and that is pleased to show its paces +on a road rough with boulder-like rhymes. The little +Duchess is a wild bird caged in the strangely twisted +wirework of artificial modes and forms. She is a +prisoner who is starved for real life, and stifles; the +fresh air and the open sky are good, are irresistible—and +that is the whole long poem in brief. Such a +small prisoner, all life and fire, was before many +months actually delivered from her cage in Wimpole +Street, and Robert Browning himself, growing in +stature amid his incantations, played the part of the +gipsy.</p> +<p>Another Duchess, who pined for freedom and never +attained it, has her cold obituary notice from her +bereaved Duke's lips in the <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i> of 1842. +<i>My Last Duchess</i> was there made a companion poem +to <i>Count Gismond</i>; they are the pictures of the bond-woman +and of the freed-woman in marriage. The +Italian Duchess revolts from the law of wifehood no +further than a misplaced smile or a faint half-flush, +betraying her inward breathings and beamings of the +spirit; the noose of the ducal proprieties is around +her throat, and when it tightens "then all smiles +<a name="Page_79"></a>stopped together." Never was an agony hinted with +more gentlemanly reserve. But the poem is remarkable +chiefly as gathering up into a typical representative +a whole phase of civilisation. The Duke is +Italian of Renaissance days; insensible in his egoistic +pride to the beautiful humanity alive before him; yet +a connoisseur of art to his finger-tips; and after all a +Duchess can be replaced, while the bronze of Glaus of +Innsbruck—but the glory of his possessions must not +be pressed, as though his nine hundred years old name +were not enough. The true gift of art—Browning in +later poems frequently insists upon this—is not for +the connoisseur or collector who rests in a material +possession, but for the artist who, in the zeal of +creation, presses through his own work to that unattainable +beauty, that flying joy which exists beyond +his grasp and for ever lures him forward. In <i>Pictor +Ignotus</i> the earliest study in his lives of the painters +was made by the poet. The world is gross, its touch +unsanctifies the sanctities of art; yet the brave audacity +of genius is able to penetrate this gross world +with spiritual fire. Browning's unknown painter is a +delicate spirit, who dares not mingle his soul with the +gross world; he has failed for lack of a robust faith, +a strenuous courage. But his failure is beautiful and +pathetic, and for a time at least his Virgin, Babe, and +Saint will smile from the cloister wall with their "cold, +calm, beautiful regard." And yet to have done otherwise +to have been other than this; to have striven +like that youth—the Urbinate—men praise so! +More remarkable, as the summary of a civilisation, +than <i>My Last Duchess</i>, is the address of the worldling +Bishop, who lies dying, to the "nephews" who are +<a name="Page_80"></a>sons of his loins. In its Paganism of +Christianity—which +lacks all the manly virtue of genuine Paganism—that +portion of the artistic Renaissance which leans +towards the world and the flesh is concentrated and +is given as in quintessential form. The feeble fingers +yet cling to the vanities of earth; the speaker babbles +not of green fields but of his blue lump of lapis-lazuli; +and the last word of all is alive only with senile +luxury and the malice of perishing recollection.</p> +<p><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30">[30]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>In a Balcony</i>, published in <i>Men and Women</i>, +1855, is said to have been written two years previously at the Baths +of Lucca.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_31"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_31">[31]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> I had written the above—and I leave it as I wrote it—before I +noticed +the following quoted from the letter of a friend by Mrs Arthur Bronson +in her article Browning in Venice: "Browning seemed as full of dramatic +interest in reading 'In a Balcony' as if he had just written it for our +benefit. One who sat near him said that it was a natural sequence that +the step of the guard should be heard coming to take Norbert to his +doom, +as, with a nature like the queen's, who had known only one hour of joy +in her sterile life, vengeance swift and terrible would follow on the +sudden +destruction of her happiness. 'Now I don't quite think that,' answered +Browning, as if he were following out the play as a spectator. 'The +queen has a large and passionate temperament, which had only once been +touched and brought into intense life. She would have died by a knife +in her heart. The guard would have come to carry away her dead body.' +'But I imagine that most people interpret it as I do,' was the reply. +'Then,' said Browning, with quick interest, 'don't you think it would +be +well to put it in the stage directions, and have it seen that they were +carrying her across the back of the stage?'"</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_32"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_32">[32]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Browning's eyes were in a remarkable degree unequal in their +power +of vision; one was unusually long-sighted; the other, with which he +could read the most microscopic print, unusually short-sighted.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_33"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_33">[33]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See a very interesting passage on Browning's "odd liking for +'vermin'" in <i>Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.</i>. i. 370, 371: "I always +liked +all those wild creatures God '<i>sets up for themselves</i>.'" "It +seemed +awful +to watch that bee—he seemed so <i>instantly</i> from the teaching of +God."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_34"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_34">[34]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Of the first part of <i>Saul</i> Mr Kenyon said finely that +"it reminded him +of Homer's shield of Achilles thrown into lyrical whirl and life" +<i>(Letters +R.B. and E.B.B</i>. i. 326).</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_V"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_81"></a>Chapter V</h2> +<h2>Love and Marriage</h2> +<br /> +<p>In 1841, John Kenyon, formerly a school-fellow of +Browning's father, now an elderly lover of literature +and of literary society, childless, wealthy, generous-hearted, +proposed to Browning that he should call +upon Elizabeth Barrett, Kenyon's cousin once removed, +who was already distinguished as a writer of ardent +and original verse. Browning consented, but the +poetess "through some blind dislike of seeing +strangers"—as she afterwards told a correspondent—declined, +alleging, not untruly, as a ground of refusal, +that she was then ailing in health.<a name="FNanchor_35"></a><a + href="#Footnote_35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> Three years +later Kenyon sent his cousin's new volumes of <i>Poems</i> as +a gift to Sarianna Browning; her brother, lately returned +from Italy, read these volumes with delight +and admiration, and found on one of the pages a +reference in verse to his "Pomegranates" of a kind +that could not but give him a vivid moment of +pleasure. Might he not relieve his sense of obligation +by telling Miss Barrett, in a letter, that he +admired her work? Mr Kenyon encouraged the suggestion, +and though to love and be silent might on +the whole have been more to Browning's liking, he +wrote—January 10, 1845—and writing truthfully he +<a name="Page_82"></a>wrote enthusiastically.<a name="FNanchor_36"></a><a + href="#Footnote_36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> Miss Barrett, never quite +recovered +from a riding accident in early girlhood, and +stricken down for long in both soul and body by the +shock of her brother's death by drowning, lay from +day to day and month to month, in an upper room +of her father's house in Wimpole Street, occupied, +upon her sofa, with her books and papers—her Greek +dramatists and her Elizabethan poets—shut out from +the world, with windows for ever closed, and with only +an occasional female visitor, to gossip of the social and +literary life of London. Never was a spirit of more +vivid fire enclosed within a tomb. The letter from +Browning, "the author of <i>Paracelsus</i> and King of the +mystics," threw her, she says, "into ecstasics." Her +reply has a thrill of pleasure running through its +graceful half-restraint, and she holds out a hope that +when spring shall arrive a meeting in the invalid +chamber between her and her new correspondent may +be possible.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><a name="img004"></a><img + style="width: 526px; height: 746px;" alt="ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING." + title="ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING." src="images/img004.jpg" /><br /> +<h5>ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.<br /> +<i>From a drawing in chalk by</i> FIELD TALFOURD <i>in the National +Portrait Gallery</i>.</h5> +<p>From the first a headlong yet delicate speed was in +her pen; from the first there was much to say. "Oh, +for a horse with wings!" Mr Browning, who had +praised her poems, must tell her their faults. He +must himself speak out in noble verse, not merely +utter himself through the masks of <i>dramatis personae</i>. +Can she, as he alleges, really help him by her sympathy, +by her counsel? Let him put ceremony aside +and treat her <i>en bon camerade</i>; he will find her "an +honest man on the whole." She intends to set about +knowing him as much as possible immediately. What +poets have been his literary sponsors? Are not the +critics wrong to deny contemporary genius? What +<a name="Page_83"></a>poems are those now in his portfolio? Is not +Æschylus the divinest of divine Greek spirits? but +how inadequately her correspondent has spoken of +Dante! Shall they indeed—as he suggests—write +something together? And then—is he duly careful +of his health, careful against overwork? And is not +gladness a duty? to give back to the world the joy +that God has given to his poet? Though, indeed, to +lean out of the window of this House of Life is for +some the required, perhaps the happiest attitude.</p> +<p>And why—replies the second voice—lean out of +the window? His own foot is only on the stair. +Where are the faults of her poems, of which she had +inquired? Yes, he will speak out, and he is now +planning such a poem as she demands. But she it +is, who has indeed spoken out in her verse? In his +portfolio is a drama about a Moor of Othello's country, +one Luria, with strange entanglings among his Florentines. +See this, and this, how grandly it is said in +the Greek of Eschylus! But Dante, all Dante is in +his heart and head. And he has seen Tennyson face +to face; and he knows and loves Carlyle; and he has +visited Sorrento and trod upon Monte Calvano. Oh, +the world in this year 1845 must be studied, though +solitude is best. He has been "polking" all night, +and walked home while the morning thrushes piped; +and it is true that his head aches. She shall read +and amend his manuscript poems. To hear from +her is better than to see anybody else. But when +shall he see her too?</p> +<p>So proceed from January to May the letters of +Rudel and the still invisible Lady of Wimpole Street. +It was happy comradeship on her part, but on his +<a name="Page_84"></a>it was already love. His spirit had recognised, +had +touched, a spirit, which included all that he most +needed, and union with which would be the most +certain and substantial prize offered by life. There +was nothing fatuous in this inward assurance; it was +the simplest and most self-evidencing truth. The +word "mistrustful"—"do not see me as long as you are +mistrustful of"—with its implied appeal to her generous +confidence, precipitated the visit. How could she +be mistrustful? Of course he may come: but the +wish to do so was unwisely exorbitant. On the +afternoon of May 20th, 1845, Browning first set eyes +on his future wife, a little figure, which did not rise +from the sofa, pale ringleted face, great eager, wistfully +pathetic eyes. He believed that she was suffering +from some incurable disease of the spine, and that +whatever remained to her of life must be spent in this +prostrate manner of an invalid.</p> +<p>A movement of what can only be imperfectly described +as pity entered into his feeling for her: it was +less pity than the joy of believing that he could confer +as well as receive. But his first thought on leaving +was only the fear that he might have stayed too long +or might have spoken too loud. The visit was on +Tuesday. On Thursday, Browning wrote the only +letter of the correspondence which has been destroyed, +one which overflowed with gratitude, and was immediately +and rightly interpreted by the receiver as +tending towards an offer, implied here, but not expressed, +of marriage. It was read in pain and +agitation; her heart indeed, but not her will, was +shaken; and, after a sleepless night, she wrote words +effective to bar—as she believed—all further advance +<a name="Page_85"></a>in a direction fatal to his happiness. The +intemperate +things he had said must be wholly forgotten between +them; or else she will not see him again; friends, +comrades in the life of the intellect they might continue +to be. For once and once only Browning lied to +Miss Barrett, and he lied a little awkwardly; his +letter was only one of too boisterous gratitude; his +punishment—that of one infinitely her inferior—was +undeserved; let her return to him the offending letter. +Returned accordingly it was, and immediately destroyed +by the writer. In happier days, Miss Barrett hoped to +recover what then would have been added to a hoard +which she treasured; but, Browning could not preserve +the words which she had condemned.</p> +<p>Wise guardian-angels smile at each other, gently +and graciously, when a lover is commanded to withdraw +and to reappear in the character of a friend. +An incoming tide may seem for a while to pause; +but by and by we look and the rock is covered. +Browning very dutifully submitted and became a +literary counsellor and comrade. The first stadium +in the progress of his fortunes opened in January +and closed before the end of May; the second closed +at the end of August. To a friend Miss Barrett, +assured that he never could be more, might well +be generous; visits were permitted, and it was left +to Browning to fix the days; the postal shuttle threw +swift and swifter threads between New Cross, Hatcham, +and 50 Wimpole Street. The verse of Tennyson, +the novels of George Sand were discussed; her translations +from the Greek were considered; his manuscript +poems were left for her corrections; but transcription +must not weary him into headaches; she would +<a name="Page_86"></a>herself by and by act as an amanuensis. Each of +the correspondents could not rest happy until the +other had been proved to be in every intellectual and +moral quality the superior. Browning's praise could +not be withheld; it seemed to his friend—and she +wrote always with crystalline sincerity—to be an +illusion which humbled her. Glad memories of Italy, +sad memories of England and the invalid life were +exchanged; there is nothing that she can teach him—she +declares—except grief. And yet to him the day +of his visit is his light through the dark week. He is +like an Eastern Jew who creeps through alleys in the +meanest garb, destitute to all wayfarers' eyes, who yet +possesses a hidden palace-hall of marble and gold. +Even in matters ecclesiastical, the footsteps of the two +friends had moved with one consent; each of them +preferred a chapel to a church; each was Puritan in +a love of simplicity in the things of religion; each +disowned the Puritan narrowness, and the grey aridity +of certain schools of dissent. On June 14—with the +warranty of her published poem which had told of +flowers sent in a letter—Browning encloses in his +envelope a yellow rose; and again and again summer +flowers arrive bringing colour and sweetness into the dim +city room. Once Miss Barrett can report that she +has been out of doors, and with no fainting-fit, yet +unable to venture in the carriage as far as the Park; +still her bodily strength is no better than that of a +tired bird; she is moreover, years older than her friend +(the difference was in fact that between thirty-nine +and thirty-three); and the thunder of a July storm +has shaken her nerves. There is some thought of her +seeking health as far off as Malta or even Alexandria; +<a name="Page_87"></a>but her father will jestingly have it that there +is +nothing wrong with her except "obstinacy and dry +toast." Thus cordially, gladly, sadly, and always +with quick leapings of the indomitable flame of the +spirit, these letters of friend to friend run on +during the midsummer days. Browning was willing +and happy to wait; a confidence possessed +him that in the end he would be known fully and +aright.</p> +<p>On August 25th came a great outpouring of feeling +from Miss Barrett. She took her friend so far into +her confidence as to speak plainly of the household +difficulties caused by her father's autocratic temper. +The conversation was immediately followed by a letter +in which she endeavoured to soften or qualify the +impression her words had given, and her heart, now +astir and craving sympathy, led her on to write of her +most sorrowful and sacred memories—those connected +with her brother's death. Browning was deeply moved, +most grateful for her trust in him, but she had forbidden +him to notice the record of her grief. He +longed to return confidence with confidence, to tell +what was urgent in his heart. But the bar of three +months since had not been removed, and he hesitated +to speak. His two days' silence was unintelligible to +his friend and caused her inexpressible anxiety. Could +any words of hers have displeased him? Or was he +seriously unwell? She wrote on August 30th a little +letter asking "the alms of just one line" to relieve her +fears. When snow-wreaths are loosened, a breath will +bring down the avalanche. It was impossible to receive +this appeal and not to declare briefly, decisively, +his unqualified trust in her, his entire devotion, his +<a name="Page_88"></a>assured knowledge of what would constitute his +supreme happiness.</p> +<p>Miss Barrett's reply is perfect in its disinterested +safe-guarding of his freedom and his future good as +she conceived it. She is deeply grateful, but she +cannot allow him to empty his water-gourds into +the sand. What could she give that it would not +be ungenerous to give? Yet his part has not been +altogether the harder of the two. The subject must +be left. Such subjects, however, could not be left until +the facts were ascertained. Browning would not urge +her a step beyond her actual feelings, but he must +know whether her refusal was based solely on her view +of his supposed interests. And with the true delicacy +of frankness she admits that even the sense of her own +unworthiness is not the insuperable obstacle. No—but +is she not a confirmed invalid? She thought that +she had done living when he came and sought her out. +If he would be wise, all these thoughts of her must be +abandoned. Such an answer brought a great calm to +Browning's heart; he did not desire to press her +further; let things rest; it is for her to judge; if +what she regards as an obstacle should be removed, +she will certainly then act in his best interests; to +himself this matter of health creates no difficulty; to +sit by her for an hour a day, to write out what was +in him for the world, and so to save his soul, would +be to attain his ideal in life. What woman would not +be moved to the inmost depths by such words? She +insists that his noble extravagances must in no wise +bind him; but all the bitternesses of life have been +taken away from her; henceforth she is his for everything +except to do him harm; the future rests with +<a name="Page_89"></a>God and with him. And amid the letters containing +these grave sentences, so full of fate, first appears a +reference to the pet name of her childhood—the "Ba" +which is all that here serves, like Swift's "little +language," to indulge a foolish tenderness; and the +translator of <i>Prometheus</i> is able to put Greek characters +to their most delightful use in her "<span lang="el" title="o philtate"></span>ω +φιλτατε."</p> +<p>In love-poetry of the Middle Age the allegorical +personage named "Danger" plays a considerable part, +and it is to be feared that Danger too often signified +a husband. In Wimpole Street that alarming personage +always meant a father. Edward Moulton Barrett +was a man of integrity in business, of fortitude in +adversity, of a certain stern piety, and from the +superior position of a domestic autocrat he could even +indulge himself in occasional fiats of affection. We +need not question that there were springs of water in +the rock, and in earlier days they had flowed freely. +But now if at night he visited his ailing daughter's +room for a few minutes and prayed with her and for +her, it meant that on such an occasion she was not +too criminal to merit the pious intercession. If he +called her "puss," it meant that she had not recently +been an undutiful child of thirty-nine or forty years +old. A circus-trainer probably rewards his educated +dogs and horses with like amiable familiarities, and +he is probably regarded by his troupe with affection +mingled with awe. Mr Barrett had been appointed +circus-trainer by the divine authority of parentage. +No one visited 50 Wimpole Street, where there were +grown-up sons as well as daughters, without special +permission from the lord of the castle; he authorised +the visits of Mr Browning, the poet, being fondly +<a name="Page_90"></a>assured that Mr Browning's intentions were not +those +of a burglar, or—worse—an amorous knight-errant. +If any daughter of his conceived the possibility of +transferring her prime love and loyalty from himself +to another, she was even as Aholah and Aholibah who +doted upon the Assyrians, captains, and rulers clothed +most gorgeously, all of them desirable young men. +"If a prince of Eldorado" said Elizabeth Barrett to +her sister Arabel, "should come with a pedigree of +lineal descent from some signory in the moon in one +hand, and a ticket of good behaviour from the nearest +Independent chapel in the other—" "Why, even then," +interrupted Arabel, "it would not <i>do</i>" One admirable +trait, however, Mr Moulton Barrett did possess—he +was nearly always away from home till six o'clock.</p> +<p>The design that Miss Barrett should winter abroad +was still under consideration, but the place now fixed +upon was Pisa. Suddenly, in mid-September, she finds +herself obliged to announce that "it is all over with +Pisa." Her father had vetoed the undutiful project, +and had ceased to pay her his evening visits; only +in his separate and private orisons were all her sins +remembered. To admit the fact that he did not love +her enough to give her a chance of recovery was +bitter, yet it could not be denied. Her life was now +a thing of value to herself, for it was precious to +another. She beat against the bars of her cage; +planned a rebellious flight; made inquiries respecting +ships and berths; but she could not travel alone; and +she would not subject either of her sisters to the +heavy displeasure of the ruler of the house. Robert +Browning held strong opinions on the duty of resisting +evil, and if evil assume the guise of parental +<a name="Page_91"></a>authority it is none the <i>less</i>—he +believed—to be +resisted. To submit to the will of another is often +easy; to act on one's own best judgment is hard; +our faculties were given us to put to use; to be +passively obedient is really to evade probation—so +with almost excessive emphasis Browning set forth a +cardinal article of his creed; but Elizabeth Barrett +was not, like him, "ever a fighter," and, after all, +London in 1845 was not bleak and grey as it had +been a year previously—"for reasons," to adopt a +reiterated word of the correspondence, "for reasons."</p> +<p>On two later occasions Browning sang the same +battle-hymn against the enemies of God and with a +little too much vehemence—not to say truculence—as +is the way with earnest believers. His gentler +correspondent could not tolerate the thought of +duelling, and she disapproved of punishment by death. +Browning argues that for one who values the good +opinion of society—not for himself—that good +opinion is a possession which may, like other possessions, +be defended at the risk of a man's life, and as +for capital punishment, is not evil to be suppressed at +any price? Is not a miscreant to be expelled out of +God's world? The difference of opinion was the first +that had arisen between the friends, and Browning's +words carried with them a certain sense of pain in the +thought that they could in any thing stand apart. +Happily the theoretical fire-eater had faith superior +to his own arguments;—faith in a woman's insight +as finer than his own;—and he is let off with a gratified +rebuke for preternatural submissiveness and for arraying +her in pontifical garments of authority which hang +loose upon so small a figure. The other application of +<a name="Page_92"></a>his doctrine of resisting evil was even more +trying to +her feelings and the preacher was instant certainly out +of season. Not the least important personage in the +Wimpole Street house was Miss Barrett's devoted +companion Flush. Loyal and loving to his mistress +Flushie always was; yet to his lot some canine errors +fell; he eyed a visitor's umbrella with suspicion; he +resented perhaps the presence of a rival; he did not +behave nicely to a poet who had not written verses +in his honour; for which he was duly rebuked by his +mistress—the punishment was not capital—and was +propitiated with bags of cakes by the intruder. +When the day for their flight drew near Miss Barrett +proposed somewhat timidly that her maid Wilson +should accompany her to Italy, but she was gratefully +confident that Flush could not be left behind. Just +at this anxious moment a dreadful thing befell; a +gang of dog-stealers, presided over by the arch-fiend +Taylor, bore Flushie away into the horror of some +obscure and vulgar London alley. He was a difficult +dog to capture and his ransom must be in proportion +to his resistance. There was a terrible tradition of a +lady who had haggled about the sum demanded and +had received her dog's head in a parcel. Miss Barrett +was eager to part with her six guineas and rescue her +faithful companion from misery. Was this an occasion +for preaching from ethical heights the sin of making +a composition with evil-doers? Yet Browning, still +"a fighter" and armed with desperate logic, must +needs declaim vehemently against the iniquity of such +a bargain. It is something to rejoice at that he was +dexterously worsted in argument, being compelled to +admit that if Italian banditti were to carry off his +"<a name="Page_93"></a>Ba," he would pay down every farthing he might +have in the world to recover her, and this before he +entered on that chase of fifty years which was not to +terminate until he had shot down with his own hand +the receiver of the infamous bribe.</p> +<p>The journey of Miss Barrett to Pisa having been +for the present abandoned, friendship, now acknowledged +to be more than friendship, resumed its +accustomed ways. Visits, it was agreed, were not +to be too frequent—three in each fortnight might +prudently be ventured; but Wednesday might have +to be exchanged for Thursday or Saturday for Monday, +if on the first elected day Miss Mitford—dear and +generous friend—threatened to come with her talk, +talk, talk, or Mrs Jameson with her drawings and art-criticism, +or some unknown lion-huntress who had +thrown her toils, or kindly Mr Kenyon, who knew of +Browning's visits, and who when he called would peer +through his all-scrutinising spectacles with an air of +excessive penetration or too extreme unconsciousness. +And there were times—later on—when an avalanche +of aunts and uncles would precipitate itself on Wimpole +Street—perspicacious aunts and amiable uncles who +were wished as far off as Seringapatam, and who +wrung from an impatient niece—to whom indeed +they were dear—the cry "The barbarians are upon +us." Miss Barrett's sisters, the gentle Henrietta, who +preferred a waltz to the best sermon of an Independent +minister, and the more serious Arabel, who preferred +the sermon of an Independent minister to the best +waltz, were informed of the actual state of affairs. +They were trustworthy and sympathetic; Henrietta +had special reasons of her own for sympathy; Captain +<a name="Page_94"></a>Surtees Cook, who afterwards became her husband, +might be discussing affairs with her in the drawing-room +at the same time that Mr Browning the poet—"the +man of the pomegranates" as he was named +by Mr Barrett—held converse on literature with +Elizabeth in the upper chamber. The household was +honeycombed with treasons.</p> +<p>For the humours of superficial situations and passing +incidents Miss Barrett had a lively sense, and she +found some relief in playing with them; but with a +nature essentially truthful like hers the necessity of +concealment was a cause of distress. The position +was no less painful to Browning, and in the end it +became intolerable. Yet while there were obstructions +and winding ways in the shallows, in the depths +were flawless truth and inviolable love. What sentimental +persons fancy and grow effusive over was here +the simplest and yet always a miraculous reality—"He +of the heavens and earth brought us together so +wonderfully, holding two souls in his hand."<a name="FNanchor_37"></a><a + href="#Footnote_37"><sup>[37]</sup></a> In the +most illuminating words of each correspondent no +merely private, or peculiar feeling is expressed; it is +the common wave of human passion, the common love +of man and woman, that here leaps from the depths to +the height, and over which the iris of beauty ever and +anon appears with—it is true—an unusual intensity. +And so in reading the letters we have no sense of +prying into secrets; there are no secrets to be discovered; +what is most intimate is most common; +only here what is most common rises up to its highest +point of attainment. "I never thought of being happy +through you or by you or in you even, your good was +<a name="Page_95"></a>all my idea of good, and <i>is</i>" "Let me be +too near to +be seen.... Once I used to be more uneasy, and to +think that I ought to <i>make</i> you see me. But Love +is better than sight." "I love your love too much. +And <i>that</i> is the worst fault, my beloved, I can ever +find in my love of <i>you</i>." These are sentences that +tell of what can be no private possession, being as +liberal and free as our light and air. And if the +shadow of a cloud appears—appears and passes away—it +is a shadow that has floated over many other +hearts beside that of the writer: "How dreadfully +natural it would be to me, seem to me, if you <i>did</i> +leave off loving me! How it would be like the sun's +setting ... and no more wonder. Only, more darkness." +The old exchange of tokens, the old symbolisms—a +lock of hair, a ring, a picture, a child's penholder—are +good enough for these lovers, as they had been +for others before them. What is diffused through +many of the letters is gathered up and is delivered +from the alloy of superficial circumstance in the +"Sonnets from the Portuguese." in reading which we +are in the presence of womanhood—womanhood +delivered from death by love and from darkness by; +light—as much as in that of an individual woman. +And the disclosure in poems and in letters being +without reserve affects us as no disclosure, but simply +as an adequate expression of the truth universal.</p> +<p>One obstacle to the prospective marriage was steadily +diminishing in magnitude; Miss Barrett, with a new +joy in life, new hopes, new interests, gained in health +and strength from month to month. The winter of +1845-46 was unusually mild. In January one day +she walked—walked, and was not carried—downstairs +<a name="Page_96"></a>to the drawing-room. Spring came early that year; +in the first week of February lilacs and hawthorn were +in bud, elders in leaf, thrushes and white-throats in full +song. In April Miss Barrett gave pledges of her +confidence in the future by buying a bonnet; a little +like a Quaker's, it seemed to her, but the learned pronounced +it fashionable. Early in May, that bonnet, +with its owner and Arabel and Flush, appeared in +Regent's Park, while sunshine was filtering through +the leaves. The invalid left her carriage, set foot +upon the green grass, reached up and plucked a little +laburnum blossom ("for reasons"), saw the "strange +people moving about like phantoms of life," and felt +that she alone and the idea of one who was absent +were real—"and Flush," she adds with a touch of +remorse, "and Flush a little too." Many drives and +walks followed; at the end of May she feloniously +gathered some pansies, the flowers of Paracelsus, and +this notwithstanding the protest of Arabel, in the +Botanical Gardens, and felt the unspeakable beauty of +the common grass. Later in the year wild roses were +found at Hampstead; and on a memorable day the +invalid—almost perfect in health—was guided by +kind and learned Mrs Jameson through the pictures +and statues of the poet Rogers's collection. On yet +another occasion it was Mr Kenyon who drove her to +see the strange new sight of the Great Western train +coming in; the spectators procured chairs, but the +rush of people and the earth-thunder of the engine +almost overcame Miss Barrett's nerves, which on a +later trial shrank also from the more harmonious +thunder of the organ of the Abbey. Sundays came +when she enjoyed the privilege of sitting if not in a +<a name="Page_97"></a>pew at least in the secluded vestry of a Chapel, +and +joining unseen in those simple forms of prayer and +praise which she valued most. Altogether something +like a miracle in the healing of the sick had been +effected.</p> +<p>Money difficulty there was none. Browning, it is +true, was not in a position to undertake the expenses +of even such a simple household economy as they +both desired. He was prepared to seek for any +honourable service—diplomatic or other—if that were +necessary. But Miss Barrett was resolved against +task-work which might divert him from his proper +vocation as a poet. And, thanks to the affection of +an uncle, she had means—some £400 a year, capable +of considerable increase by re-investment of the +principal—which were enough for two persons who +could be content with plain living in Italy. Browning +still urged that he should be the bread-winner; he +implored that her money should be made over to her +own family, so that no prejudice against his action +could be founded on any mercenary feeling; but she +remained firm, and would consent only to its transference +to her two sisters in the event of his death. +And so the matter rested and was dismissed from the +thoughts of both the friends.</p> +<p>Having the great patience of love, Browning would +not put the least pressure upon Miss Barrett as to the +date of their marriage; if waiting long was for her +good, then he would wait. But matters seemed tending +towards the desired end. In January he begged +her to "begin thinking"; before that month had +closed it was agreed that they should look forward +to the late summer or early autumn as the time of +<a name="Page_98"></a>their departure to Italy. Not until March would +Miss +Barrett permit Browning to fetter his free will by any +engagement; then, to satisfy his urgent desire, she +declared that she was willing to chain him, rivet him—"Do +you feel how the little fine chain twists round and +round you? do you hear the stroke of the riveting?" +But the links were of a kind to be loosed if need be at +a moment's notice. June came, and with it a proposal +from a well-intentioned friend, Miss Bayley, to accompany +her to Italy, if, by and by, such a change of abode +seemed likely to benefit her health. Miss Barrett was +prepared to accept the offer if it seemed right to +Browning, or was ready, if he thought it expedient, to +wait for another year. His voice was given, with such +decision as was possible, in favour of their adhering to +the plan formed for the end of summer; they both +felt the present position hazardous and tormenting; +to wear the mask for another year would suffocate +them; they were "standing on hot scythes."</p> +<p>Accordingly during the summer weeks there is +much poring over guide-books to Italy; much weighing +of the merits of this place of residence and of that. +Shall it be Sorrento? Shall it be La Cava? or Pisa? +or Ravenna? or, for the matter of that, would not +Seven Dials be as happy a choice as any, if only they +could live and work side by side? There is much +balancing of the comparative ease and the comparative +cost of routes, the final decision being in favour of +reaching Italy by way of France. And as the time +draws nearer there is much searching of time-tables, in +the art of mastering which Robert Browning seems +hardly to have been an expert. May Mr Kenyon be +told? Or is it not kinder and wiser to spare him the +<a name="Page_99"></a>responsibility of knowing? Mrs Jameson, who had +made a friendly proposal similar to that of Miss +Bayley,—may she be half-told? Or shall she be +invited to join the travellers on their way? What +books shall be brought? What baggage? And how +may a box and a carpet bag be conveyed out of 50 +Wimpole Street with least observation?</p> +<p>It was deeply repugnant to Miss Barrett's feelings +to practise reserve on such a matter as this with her +father. Her happier companion had informed his +father and mother of their plans, and had obtained +from the elder Mr Browning a sum of money, asked +for as a loan rather than a gift, sufficient to cover the +immediate expenses of the journey. Mr Barrett was +entitled to all respect, and as for affection he received +from his daughter enough to make the appearance of +disloyalty to him carry a real pang to her heart. But +she believed that she had virtually no choice; her +nerves were not of iron; the roaring of the Great +Western express she might face but not an angry +father. A loud voice, and a violent "scene," such +as she had witnessed, until she fainted, when Henrietta +was the culprit, would have put an end to the Italian +project through mere physical collapse and ruin. Far +better therefore to withdraw quietly from the house, +and trust to the effect of a subsequent pleading in all +earnestness for reconciliation.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img005"></a><img style="width: 526px; height: 815px;" + alt="Yours very truly, Robert Browning." + title="Yours very truly, Robert Browning." src="images/img005.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>Yours very truly, Robert Browning. <i>From an +engraving by</i> J.G. ARMYTAGE.</h5> +<p>As summer passed into early autumn the sense of +dangers and difficulties accumulating grew acute. +"The ground," wrote Browning, "is crumbling from +beneath our feet with its chances and opportunities." +In one of the early days of August a thunder-storm +with torrents of rain detained him for longer than +<a name="Page_100"></a>usual at Wimpole Street; the lightning was the +lesser +terror of the day, for in the evening entered Mr +Barrett to his daughter with disagreeable questioning, +and presently came the words—accompanied by a +gaze of stern displeasure—"It appears that <i>that man</i> +has spent the whole day with you." The louring +cloud passed, but it was felt that visits to be prudent +must be rare; for the first time a week went by +without a meeting. Early in September George +Barrett, a kindly brother distinguished by his constant +air of dignity and importance, was commissioned to +hire a country house for the family at Dover or Reigate +or Tunbridge, while paperers and painters were to busy +themselves at Wimpole Street. The moment for +immediate action had come; else all chance of Italy +might be lost for the year 1846. "We must be +married directly," wrote Browning on the morning +when this intelligence arrived. Next day a marriage +license was procured. On the following morning, +Saturday, September 12th, accompanied by her maid +Wilson, Miss Barrett, after a sleepless night, left her +father's house with feet that trembled; she procured +a fly, fortified her shaken nerves with a dose of sal +volatile at a chemist's shop, and drove to Marylebone +Church, where the marriage service was celebrated in +the presence of two witnesses. As she stood and +knelt her central feeling was one of measureless trust, +a deep rest upon assured foundations; other women +who had stood there supported by their nearest +kinsfolk—parents or sisters—had one happiness she +did not know; she needed it less because she was +happier than they.<a name="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> +Then husband and wife parted. +<a name="Page_101"></a>Mrs Browning drove to the house of her blind +friend, +Mr Boyd, who had been made aware of the engagement. +On his sitting-room sofa she rested and sipped +his Cyprus wine; by and by arrived her sisters with +grave faces; the carriage was driven to Hampstead +Heath for the soothing happiness of the autumnal air +and sunshine; after which the three sisters returned +to their father's house; the wedding-ring was regretfully +taken off; and the prayer arose in Mrs Browning's +heart that if sorrow or injury should ever follow upon +what had happened that day for either of the two, it +might all fall upon her.</p> +<p>Browning did not again visit at 50 Wimpole Street; +it was enough to know that his wife was well, and +kept all these things gladly, tremblingly, in her heart. +For himself he felt that come what might his life had +"borne flower and fruit."<a name="FNanchor_39"></a><a + href="#Footnote_39"><sup>[39]</sup></a> On the Monday week +which succeeded the marriage the Barrett family were +to move to the country house that had been taken at +Little Bookham. On Saturday afternoon, a week +having gone by since the wedding, Mrs Browning and +Wilson, left what had been her home. Flush was +warned to make no demonstration, and he behaved +with admirable discretion. It was "dreadful" to +cause pain to her father by a voluntary act; but +another feeling sustained her:—"You <i>only</i>! As if one +said <i>God only</i>. And we shall have <i>Him</i> beside, I pray +of Him." At Hodgson's, the stationer and bookseller's, +they found Browning, and a little later husband and +wife, with the brave Wilson and the discreet Flush, +were speeding from Vauxhall to Southampton, in good +time to catch the boat for Havre. A north wind blew +<a name="Page_102"></a>them vehemently from the English coast. In the +newspaper announcements of the wedding the date +was to be omitted, and Browning rejected the suggestion +that on this occasion, and with reference to the +great event of his life, he should be defined to the +public as "the author of <i>Paracelsus</i>."</p> +<p><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35">[35]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Letters of E.B.B.</i>, i. 288.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_36"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_36">[36]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See <i>Letters of R.B. and E.B.B</i>., i. 281.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_37"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_37">[37]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> E.B.B. to R.B., March 30, 1846.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_38"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_38">[38]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> E.B.B. to R.B., Sept. 14, 1846.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_39"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_39">[39]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> R.B. to E.B.B., Sept. 14, 1846.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_VI"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_103"></a>Chapter VI</h2> +<h2>Early Years in Italy</h2> +<br /> +<p>The letters from which this story has been drawn +have from first to last one burden; in them deep +answers to deep; they happily are of a nature to +escape far from the pedantries of literary criticism. +It cannot be maintained that Browning quite equals +his correspondent in the discovery of rare and exquisite +thoughts and feelings; or that his felicity in giving +them expression is as frequent as hers. Even on +matters of literature his comments are less original +than hers, less penetrating, less illuminating. Her wit +is the swifter and keener. When Browning writes to +afford her amusement, he sometimes appears to us, +who are not greatly amused, a little awkward and +laborious. She flashes forth a metaphor which +embodies some mystery of feeling in an image entirely +vital; he, with a habit of mind of which he was +conscious and which often influences his poetry, fastens +intensely on a single point and proceeds to muffle this +in circumstance, assured that it will be all the more +vividly apparent when the right instant arrives and +requires this; but meanwhile some staying-power is +demanded from the reader. Neither correspondent +has the art of etching a person or a scene in a few +decisive lines; the gift of Carlyle, the gift of Carlyle's +brilliant wife is not theirs, perhaps because acid is +<a name="Page_104"></a>needed to bite an etcher's plate. And, indeed, +many +of the minor notabilities of 1845, whose names appear +in these letters, might hardly have repaid an etcher's +intensity of selective vision. Among the groups of +spirits who presented themselves to Dante there were +some wise enough not to expect that their names +should be remembered on earth; such shades may +stand in a background. It is, however, strange that +Browning who created so many living men and women +should in his letters have struck out no swift indelible +piece of portraiture; even here his is the inferior +touch. And yet throughout the whole correspondence +we cannot but be aware that his is the more massive +and the more complex nature; his intellect has +hardier thews; his passion has an energy which +corresponds with its mass; his will sustains his passion +and projects it forward. And towards Miss Barrett +his strength is seen as gentleness, his energy as an +inexhaustible patience of hope.</p> +<p>When Browning and his wife reached Paris, Mrs +Browning was worn out by the excitement and fatigue. +By a happy accident Mrs Jameson and her niece were +at hand, and when the first surprise, with kisses to both +fugitives, was over, she persuaded them to rest for a +week where they were, promising, if they consented, to +be their companion and aider until they arrived at +Pisa. Their "imprudence," in her eyes, was "the +height of prudence"; "wild poets or not" they were +"wise people." The week at Paris was given up to +quietude; once they visited the Louvre, but the hours +passed for the most part indoors; it all seemed strange +and visionary—"Whether in the body or out of the +body," wrote Mrs Browning, "I cannot tell scarcely." +<a name="Page_105"></a>From Paris and Orleans they proceeded southwards +in weather, which, notwithstanding some rains, was delightful. +From Avignon they went on pilgrimage to +Petrarch's Vaucluse; Browning bore his wife to a rock +in mid stream and seated her there, while Flush scurried +after in alarm for his mistress. In the passage from +Marseilles to Genoa, Mrs Browning was able to sit +on deck; the change of air, although gained at the +expense of some weariness, had done her a world +of good.</p> +<p>Early in October the journeying closed at Pisa. +Rooms were taken for six months in the great +Collegio Ferdinando, close to the Duomo and the +Leaning Tower, rooms not quite the warmest in +aspect. Mrs Jameson pronounced the invalid not +improved but transformed. The repose of the city, +asleep, as Dickens described it, in the sun and the +secluded life—a perpetual <i>tête-à-tête</i>, but +one so happy—suited +both the wedded friends; days of cloudless +weather, following a spell of rain, went by in "reading +and writing and talking of all things in heaven and +earth, and a little besides; and sometimes even laughing +as if we had twenty people to laugh with us, or +rather <i>hadn't</i>." Their sole acquaintance was an Italian +Professor of the University; for three months they +never looked at a newspaper; then a loophole on the +world was opened each evening by the arrival of the +Siècle. The lizards were silent friends of one poet, +and golden oranges gleamed over the walls to the +unaccustomed eyes of the other like sunshine gathered +into globes. They wandered through pine-woods and +drove until the purple mountains seemed not far off. +At the Lanfranchi Palace they thought of Byron, to +<a name="Page_106"></a>see a curl of whose hair or a glove from whose +hand, +Browning declares (so foolish was he and ignorant) he +would have gone farther than to see all Wordsworth, +Coleridge and Southey condensed in Rosicrucian +fashion into a vial. In the Campo Santo they listened +to a musical mass for the dead. In the Duomo they +heard the Friar preach. And early in the morning +their dreams were scattered by the harmonious clangour +of the church bells. "I never was happy before in +my life," wrote Mrs Browning. Her husband relieved +her of all housekeeping anxieties. At two o'clock +came a light dinner—perhaps thrushes and chianti—from +the <i>trattoria</i>; at six appeared coffee and milk-rolls; +at nine, when the pine-fire blazed, roast chestnuts +and grapes. Debts there were none to vex the spirits +of these prudent children of genius. If a poet could +not pay his butcher's and his baker's bills, Browning's +sympathies were all with the baker and the butcher. +"He would not sleep," wrote his wife, "if an unpaid +bill dragged itself by any chance into another week "; +and elsewhere: "Being descended from the blood of +all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of +dissenters, he has a sort of horror about the dreadful +fact of owing five shillings five days." Perhaps some +of this horror arose from the sense of that weight which +pecuniary cares hang upon all the more joyous mountings +of the mind. One grief and only one was still +present; Mr Barrett remained inexorable; his daughter +hoped that with time and patience his arms would +open to her again. It was a hope never to be fulfilled. +In the cordial comradeship of Browning's sister, +Sarianna, a new correspondent, there was a measure of +compensation.</p> +<p><a name="Page_107"></a>Already Browning had in view the collected +edition +of his Poetical Works which did not appear until +1849. The poems were to be made so lucid, "that +everyone who understood them hitherto" was to "lose +that mark of distinction." <i>Paracelsus</i> and <i>Pippa</i> were +to be revised with special care. The sales reported +by Moxon were considered satisfactory; but of course +the profits as yet were those of his wife's poems. "She +is," he wrote to his publisher, "there as in all else, as +high above me as I would have her."</p> +<p>It was at Pisa that the highest evidence of his wife's +powers as a poet came as an unexpected and wonderful +gift to her husband. In a letter of December +1845—more than a year since—she had confessed +that she was idle; and yet "silent" was a better +word she thought than "idle." Her apology was +that the apostle Paul probably did not work hard at +tent-making during the week that followed his hearing +of the unspeakable things. At the close of a letter +written on July 22, 1846, she wrote: "You shall see +some day at Pisa what I will not show you now. +Does not Solomon say that 'there is a time to read +what is written?' If he doesn't, he ought." The +time to read had now come. "One day, early in +1847," as Mr Gosse records what was told to him by +Browning, "their breakfast being over, Mrs Browning +went upstairs, while her husband stood at the window +watching the street till the table should be cleared. +He was presently aware of someone behind him, +although the servant was gone. It was Mrs Browning +who held him by the shoulder to prevent his turning +to look at her, and at the same time pushed a packet +of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him +<a name="Page_108"></a>to read that, and to tear it up if he did not +like it; +and then she fled again to her own room." The +papers were a transcript of those ardent poems which +we know as "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Some +copies were printed at Reading in 1847 for private +circulation with the title "Sonnets by E.B.B." The +later title under which they appeared among Mrs +Browning's Poems in the edition of 1850 was of +Browning's suggestion. His wife's proposal to name +them "Sonnets from the Bosnian" was dismissed +with words which allude to a poem of hers, "Catarina +to Camoens," that had long been specially dear to +him: "Bosnian, no! that means nothing. From the +Portuguese: they are Catarina's sonnets!"</p> +<p>Pisa with all its charm lacked movement and animation. +It was decided to visit Florence in April, and +there enjoy for some days the society of Mrs Jameson +before she left Italy. The coupé of the diligence was +secured, and on April 20th Mrs Jameson's "wild poets +but wise people" arrived at Florence. An excellent +apartment was found in the Via delle Belle Donne +near the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, and for +Browning's special delight a grand piano was hired. +When Mrs Browning had sufficiently recovered strength +to view the city and its surroundings her pleasure was +great: "At Pisa we say, 'How beautiful!' here we +say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe." They +had hoped for summer wanderings in Northern Italy; +but Florence held them throughout the year except +for a few days during which they attempted in vain +to find a shelter from the heat among the pines of +Vallombrosa. Provided with a letter of recommendation +to the abbot they set forth from their rooms at +<a name="Page_109"></a>early morning by vettura and from Pelago +onwards, +while Browning rode, Mrs Browning and Wilson in +basket sledges were slowly drawn towards the +monastery by white bullocks. A new abbot, a little +holy man with a red face, had been recently installed, +who announced that in his nostrils "a petticoat stank." +Yet in the charity of his heart he extended the three +days ordinarily permitted to visitors in the House of +Strangers to five; during which period beef and oil, +malodorous bread and wine and passages from the +"Life of San Gualberto" were vouchsafed to heretics +of both sexes; the mountains and the pinewoods in +their solemn dialect spoke comfortable words.</p> +<p>"Rolling or sliding down the precipitous path" they +returned to Florence in a morning glory, very merry, +says Mrs Browning, for disappointed people. Shelter +from the glare of August being desirable, a suite of +comparatively cool rooms in the Palazzo Guidi were +taken; they were furnished in good taste, and opened +upon a terrace—"a sort of balcony terrace which ... +swims over with moonlight in the evenings." From +Casa Guidi windows—and before long Mrs Browning +was occupied with the first part of her poem—something +of the life of Italy at a moment of peculiar +interest could be observed. Europe in the years 1847 +and 1848 was like a sea broken by wave after wave +of Revolutionary passion. Browning and his wife +were ardently liberal in their political feeling; but +there were differences in the colours of their respective +creeds and sentiments; Mrs Browning gave away her +imagination to popular movements; she was also +naturally a hero-worshipper; she hoped more enthusiastically +than he was wont to do; she was more readily +<a name="Page_110"></a>depressed; the word "liberty" for her had an +aureole +or a nimbus which glorified all its humbler and more +prosaic meanings. Browning, although in this year +1847 he made a move towards an appointment as +secretary to a mission to the Vatican, at heart cared +little for men in groups or societies; he cared greatly +for individuals, for the growth of individual character. +He had faith in a forward movement of society; but +the law of social evolution, as he conceived it, is not in +the hands of political leaders or ministers of state. +He valued liberty chiefly because each man here on +earth is in process of being tested, in process of being +formed, and liberty is the condition of a man's true +probation and development. Late in life he was +asked to give his answer to the question: "Why am I +a Liberal?" and he gave it succinctly in a sonnet +which he did not reprint in any edition of his Works, +although it received otherwise a wide circulation. It +may be cited here as a fragment of biography:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,<br /> +</span><span>All that I am now, all I hope to be,—<br /> +</span><span>Whence comes it save from fortune setting free<br /> +</span><span>Body and soul the purpose to pursue,<br /> +</span><span>God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,<br /> +</span><span>Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,<br /> +</span><span>These shall I bid men—each in his degree<br /> +</span><span>Also God-guided—bear, and gladly too?<br /> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>But little do or can the best of us:<br /> +</span><span>That little is achieved through Liberty.<br /> +</span><span>Who then dares hold—emancipated thus—<br /> +</span><span>His fellow shall continue bound? Not I<br /> +</span><span>Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss<br /> +</span><span>A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."<a + name="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40"><sup>[40]</sup></a><br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_111"></a>This is an excellent reason for the faith +that was in +Browning; he holds that individual progress depends +on individual freedom, and by that word he understands +not only political freedom but also emancipation +from intellectual narrowness and the bondage of injurious +convention. But Browning in his verse, setting +aside the early <i>Strafford</i>, nowhere celebrates a popular +political movement; he nowhere chaunts a paean, in +the manner of Byron or Shelley, in honour of the +abstraction "Liberty." Nor does he anywhere study +political phenomena or events except as they throw +light upon an individual character. Things and +persons that gave him offence he could summarily +dismiss from his mind—"Thiers is a rascal; I make +a point of not reading one word said by M. Thiers"; +"Proudhon is a madman; who cares for Proudhon?" +"The President's an ass; <i>he</i> is not worth thinking of."<a + name="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> +This may be admirable economy of intellectual force; +but it is not the way to understand the course of +public events; it does not indicate a political or a +historical sense. And, indeed, his writings do not +show that Browning possessed a political or a +historical sense in any high degree, save as a representative +person may be conceived by him as embodying +a phase of civilisation. When Mrs Trollope called +at Casa Guidi, Browning was only reluctantly present; +she had written against liberal institutions and against +the poetry of Victor Hugo, and that was enough. +Might it not have been more truly liberal to be patient +and understand the grounds of her prejudice? +"Blessed be the inconsistency of men!" exclaimed +Mrs Browning, for whose sake he tolerated the +<a name="Page_112"></a>offending authoress until by and by he came to +like +in her an agreeable woman.</p> +<p>On the anniversary of their wedding day Browning +and his wife saw from their window a brilliant procession +of grateful and enthusiastic Florentines stream +into the <i>Piazza</i>. Pitti with banners and <i>vivas</i> for the +space of three hours and a half It was the time +when the Grand Duke was a patriot and Pio Nono +was a liberal. The new helmets and epaulettes of +the civic guard proclaimed the glories of genuine +freedom. The pleasure of the populace was like that +of children, and perhaps it had some serious feeling +behind it. The incomparable Grand Duke had +granted a liberal constitution, and was led back from +the opera to the Pitti by the torchlights of a cheering +crowd—"through the dark night a flock of stars +seemed sweeping up the piazza." A few months later, +and the word of Mrs Browning is "Ah, poor Italy"; +the people are attractive, delightful, but they want +conscience and self reverence.<a name="FNanchor_42"></a><a + href="#Footnote_42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> Browning and she +painfully felt that they grew cooler and cooler on +the subject of Italian patriotism. A revolution had +been promised, but a shower of rain fell and the +revolution was postponed. Now it was the Grand +Duke <i>out</i>, and the bells rang, and a tree of liberty +was planted close to the door of Casa Guidi; six +weeks later it was the Grand Duke <i>in</i>, and the same +bells rang, and the tree of liberty was pulled down. +The Pope is well-meaning but weak; and before +long honorific epithets have to be denied him—he is +merely a Pope; his prestige and power over souls is +lost. The liberal Grand Duke is transformed into a +<a name="Page_113"></a>Duke decorated with Austrian titles. As for +France, +Mrs Browning had long since learnt from the books +she read with so much delight to feel a debt to the +country of Balzac and George Sand. She thought +that the unrest and the eager hopes of the French +Revolution, notwithstanding its errors, indicated at +least the conception of a higher ideal than any known +to the English people. Browning did not possess an +equal confidence in France; he did not accept her +view that the French occupation of Rome was capable +of justification; nor did he enter into her growing +hero-worship—as yet far from its full development—of +Louis Napoleon. Her admiration for Balzac he +shared, and it is probable that the death of the great +novelist moved him to keener regret than did the +death, at no considerable distance of time, of Wordsworth. +With French communism or socialism neither +husband nor wife, however republican in their faith, +had sympathy; they held that its tendency is to +diminish the influence of the individual, and that in +the end the progress of the mass is dependent on +the starting forth from the mass and the striding +forward of individual minds. They believed as firmly +as did Edmund Burke in the importance of what +Burke styles a natural aristocracy.</p> +<p>For four years—from 1847 to 1851—Browning +never crossed the confines of Italy. No duties +summoned him away, and he was happy in his +home. "We are as happy," he wrote in December +1847, "as two owls in a hole, two toads under a +tree-stump; or any other queer two poking creatures +that we let live after the fashion of their black hearts, +only Ba is fat and rosy; yes indeed." In spring they +<a name="Page_114"></a>drove day by day through the Cascine, passing on +the +way the carven window of the <i>Statue and the Bust</i>, +and "the stone called Dante's," whereupon</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned<br /> +</span><span>To Brunelleschi's church.<a name="FNanchor_43"></a><a + href="#Footnote_43"><sup>[43]</sup></a><br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And after tea there was the bridge of Trinita from +which to watch the sunsets turning the Arno to pure +gold while the moon and the evening-star hung aloft. +It was a life of retirement and of quiet work. Mrs +Browning mentions to a friend that for fifteen months +she could not make her husband spend a single evening +out—"not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of +Alfieri's," but what with music and books and writing +and talking, she adds, "we scarcely know how the +days go, it's such a gallop on the grass." The +"writing" included the revision and preparation for +the press of Browning's <i>Poems</i>, in two volumes, which +Chapman & Hall, more liberal than Moxon, had +undertaken to publish at their own risk, and which +appeared in 1849. Some care and thought were also +given by Browning to the alterations of text made in +the edition of his wife's Poems of the following year; +and for a time his own <i>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</i> +was an absorbing occupation. As to the "reading," +the chief disadvantage of Florence towards the middle +of the last century was the difficulty of seeing new +books of interest, whether French or English. Yet +<i>Vanity Fair</i> and <i>The Princess, Jane Eyre</i> and <i>Modern +Painters</i> somehow found their way to Casa Guidi.<a name="FNanchor_44"></a><a + href="#Footnote_44"><sup>[44]</sup></a></p> +<p>Casa Guidi proper, the Casa Guidi which held the +<a name="Page_115"></a>books and pictures and furniture and graceful +knick-knacks +chosen by its occupants, who were lovers of +beauty, dates only from 1848. Previously they had +been satisfied with a furnished apartment. Not long +before the unfurnished rooms were hired, a mistake in +choosing rooms which suffered from the absence of +sunshine and warmth gave Browning an opportunity +of displaying what to his wife's eyes appeared to be +unexampled magnanimity. The six months' rent was +promptly paid, and chambers on the Pitti "yellow with +sunshine from morning to evening" were secured. +"Any other man, a little lower than the angels," his +wife assured Miss Mitford, "would have stamped and +sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to +<i>his</i> being angry with <i>me</i> for any cause, except not +eating enough dinner, the sun would turn the wrong +way first." It seemed an excellent piece of economy +to take the spacious suite of unfurnished rooms in the +Via Maggio, now distinguished by the inscription +known to all visitors to Florence, which were to be +had for twenty-five guineas a year, and which, when +furnished, might be let during any prolonged absence +for a considerable sum. The temptation of a ground-floor +in the Frescobaldi Palace, and a garden bright +with camellias, to which Browning for a time inclined, +was rejected. At Casa Guidi the double terrace where +orange-trees and camellias also might find a place +made amends for the garden with its threatening cloud +of mosquitoes, "worse than Austrians"; every need of +space and height, of warmth and coolness seemed to +be met; and it only remained to expend the welcome +proceeds of the sale of books in the recreation of +gathering together "rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved +<a name="Page_116"></a>bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds and the +rest." +Before long Browning amused himself in picking up +for a few pauls this or that picture, on seeing which an +accomplished connoisseur, like Kirkup, would even +hazard the name of Cimabue or Ghirlandaio, or if not +that of Giotto, then the safer adjective Giottesque.</p> +<p>Although living the life of retirement which his +wife's uncertain state of health required, Browning +gradually obtained the acquaintance of several interesting +persons, of whom Kirkup, who has just been +mentioned, was one. "As to Italian society," wrote +Mrs Browning, "one may as well take to longing for +the evening star, for it seems quite inaccessible." But +the name of Elizabeth Barrett, if not yet that of +Robert Browning, was a sufficient introduction to +cultivated Englishmen and Americans who had made +Florence their home. Among the earliest of these +acquaintances were the American sculptor Powers, +Swedenborgian and spiritualist (a simple and genial +man, "with eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full +of light"), and Hillard, the American lawyer, who, in +his <i>Six months in Italy</i>, described Browning's conversation +as "like the poetry of Chaucer," meaning perhaps +that it was hearty, fresh, and vigorous, "or like his own +poetry simplified and made transparent." "It seems +impossible," Hillard goes on, "to think that he can +ever grow old." And of Mrs Browning: "I have +never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a +transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. +She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl." A +third American friend was one who could bring tidings +of Emerson and Hawthorne—Margaret Fuller of +"The Dial," now Countess d'Ossoli, "far better than +<a name="Page_117"></a>her writings," says Mrs Browning, "... not only +exalted but <i>exaltée</i> in her opinions, yet calm in +manner." Her loss, with that of her husband, on +their voyage to America deeply affected Mrs Browning. +"Was she happy in anything?" asks her sorrowing +friend. The first person seen on Italian soil when +Browning and his wife disembarked at Leghorn was +the brilliant and erratic Irish priest, "Father Prout" of +<i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, who befriended them with good +spirits and a potion of eggs and port wine when +Browning was ill in Florence, and chided Mrs Browning +as a "bambina" for her needless fears. Charles Lever +"with the sunniest of faces and cordialest of manners"—animal +spirits preponderating a little too much over +an energetic intellect—called on them at the Baths +of Lucca, but the acquaintance did not ripen into +friendship. And little Miss Boyle, one of the family of +the Earls of Cork, would come at night, at the hour of +chestnuts and mulled wine, to sparkle as vivaciously as +the pine-log that warmed her feet. These, with the +Hoppners, known to Shelley and Byron, a French +sculptress of royalist sympathies, Mlle. de Fauveau, +much admired by Browning, and one of the grandsons +of Goethe, who flits into and out of the scene, were a +compensation for the repulsiveness of certain English +folk at Florence who gathered together only for the +frivolities, and worse than frivolities, of foreign +wayfaring.</p> +<p>In March 1849 joy and sorrow met and mingled +in the lives of Browning and his wife. On the ninth +of that month a son was born at Casa Guidi, who six +weeks later was described by his mother as "a lovely, +fat, strong child, with double chin and rosy cheeks +<a name="Page_118"></a>and a great wide chest." He was baptised, with +the +simple Lutheran rites, Robert Wiedemann Barrett—the +"Wiedemann" in remembrance of the maiden name of +Browning's mother. From the first, Browning and his +wife, to adopt a phrase from one of her letters, caught +up their parental pleasures with a sort of passion.<a name="FNanchor_45"></a><a + href="#Footnote_45"><sup>[45]</sup></a> Mrs +Browning's letters croon with happiness in the beauty, +the strength, the intelligence, the kind-hearted disposition +of her boy. And the boy's father, from the days +when he would walk up and down the terrace of Casa +Guidi with the infant in his arms to the last days of +his life, felt to the full the gladness and the repose that +came with this strong bondage of his heart. When +little Wiedemann could frame imperfect speech upon +his lips he transformed that name into "Penini," +which abbreviated to "Pen" became serviceable for +domesticities. It was a fantastic derivation of +Nathaniel Hawthorne which connected Penini with +the colossal statue in Florence bearing the name of +"Apeninno." Flush for a time grew jealous, and not +altogether without cause.</p> +<p>But the joy was pursued and overtaken by sorrow. +A few days after the birth of his son came tidings of +the death of Browning's mother. He had loved her +with a rare degree of passion; the sudden reaction +from the happiness of his wife's safety and his son's +birth was terrible; it almost seemed a wrong to his +grief to admit into his consciousness the new gladness +of the time. In this conflict of emotions his spirits +and to some extent his health gave way. He could +not think of returning to his father's home without +extreme pain—"It would break his heart," he said, "to +<a name="Page_119"></a>see his mother's roses over the wall, and the +place +where she used to lay her scissors and gloves." He +longed that his father and sister should quit the home +of sorrow, and hasten to Florence; but this was not +to be. As for England, it could not be thought of as +much on his wife's account as his own. Her father held +no communication with her; supplicating letters remained +unnoticed; her brothers were temporarily estranged. +Her sister Henrietta had left her former home; having +"insulted" her father by asking his consent to her +marriage with Captain Surtees Cook, she had taken +the matter into her own hands; the deed was done, +and the name of his second undutiful daughter—married +to a person of moderate means and odiously +"Tractarian views"—was never again to be mentioned +in Mr Barrett's presence. England had become for +Mrs Browning a place of painful memories, and a +centre of present strife which she did not feel herself +as yet able to encounter.</p> +<p>The love of wandering, however, when successive +summers came, and Florence was ablaze with sunshine, +grew irresistible, and drove Browning and his household +to seek elsewhere for fresh interests or for coolness +and repose. In 1848, beguiled by the guide-book, +they visited Fano to find it quivering with heat, "the +very air swooning in the sun." Their reward at Fano +was that picture by Guercino of the guardian angel +teaching a child to pray, the thought of which Browning +has translated into song:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>We were at Fano, and three times we went<br /> +</span><span>To sit and see him in his chapel there,<br /> +</span><span>And drink his beauty to our soul's content<br /> +</span><span>—My angel with me too.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_120"></a>Ancona, where the poem was written, if its +last +line is historically true, followed Fano, among whose +brown rocks, "elbowing out the purple tides," and brown +houses—"an exfoliation of the rock"—they lived for a +week on fish and cold water. The tour included +Rimini and Ravenna, with a return to Florence by +Forli and a passage through the Apennines. Next +year—1849—when Pen was a few months old, the +drop of gipsy blood in Browning's veins, to which his +wife jestingly refers, tingled but faintly; it was Mrs +Browning's part to compel him, for the baby's sake and +hers, to seek his own good. They visited Spezzia and +glanced at the house of Shelley at Lerici; passed +through olive woods and vineyards, and rested in "a +sort of eagle's nest" at the highest habitable point of +the Baths of Lucca. Here the baby's great cheeks +grew rosier; Browning gained in spirits; and his wife +was able "to climb the hills and help him to lose +himself in the forests." When they wandered at noon +except for some bare-footed peasant or some monk +with the rope around his waist, it was complete solitude; +and on moonlit nights they sat by the waterfalls in +an atmosphere that had the lightness of mountain air +without its keenness. On one occasion they climbed +by dry torrent courses five miles into the mountains, +baby and all, on horseback and donkeyback—"such +a congregation of mountains; looking alive in the +stormy light we saw them by." It was certainly a +blessed transformation of the prostrate invalid in the +upper room at Wimpole Street. Setting aside his own +happiness, Browning could feel with regard to her and +his deep desire to serve her, that he had seen of the +travail of his soul, and in this matter was satisfied.</p> +<p><a name="Page_121"></a>The weeks at Siena of the year 1850 were not +quite so prosperous. During that summer Mrs +Browning had been seriously ill. When sufficiently +recovered she was carried by her husband to a villa +in the midst of vines and olives, a mile and a half or +two miles outside Siena, which commanded a noble +prospect of hills and plain. At first she could only +remain seated in the easy-chair which he found for her +in the city. For a day there was much alarm on behalf +of the boy, now able to run about, who lay with +heavy head and glassy eyes in a half-stupor; but +presently he was astir again, and his "singing voice" +was heard in the house and garden. Mrs Browning +in the fresh yet warm September air regained her +strength. Before returning to Florence, they spent a +week in the city to see the churches and the pictures +by Sodoma. Even little Wiedemann screamed for +church-interiors and developed remarkable imitative +pietisms of a theatrical kind. "It was as well," said +Browning, "to have the eyeteeth and the Puseyistical +crisis over together."</p> +<p>This comment, although no more than a passing +word spoken in play, gives a correct indication of +Browning's feeling, fully shared in by his wife, towards +the religious movement in England which was altering +the face of the established Church. "Puseyism" was +for them a kind of child's play which unfortunately +had religion for its play-ground; they viewed it with +a superior smile, in which there was more of pity than +of anger. Both of them, though one was a writer +for the stage and the other could read <i>Madame +Bovary</i> without flinching and approved the morals of +<i>La Dame aux Camélias</i>, had their roots in English +<a name="Page_122"></a>Puritanism.<a name="FNanchor_46"></a><a + href="#Footnote_46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> And now the time had come when +Browning was to embody some of his Puritan +thoughts and feelings relating to religion in a highly +original poem.</p> +<br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="Footnote_40"></a><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#FNanchor_40">[40]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Why am I a Liberal?" Edited by Andrew Reid. London, 1885.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_41"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_41">[41]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of E.B.B., i. 442.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_42"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_42">[42]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> To Miss Mitford, August 24, 1848.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_43"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_43">[43]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Casa Guidi Windows, i.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_44"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_44">[44]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Jane Eyre" was lent to E.B.B. by Mrs Story.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_45"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_45">[45]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>To Miss Mitford, Feb. 18, 1850.</i></p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_46"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_46">[46]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> In January 1859, Pen was reading an Italian translation of +<i>Monte +Cristo</i>, and announced, to his father's and mother's amusement, that +after +Dumas he would proceed to "papa's favourite book, <i>Madame Bovary</i>".</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_VII"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_123"></a>Chapter VII</h2> +<h2>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</h2> +<br /> +<p><i>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</i> was published by +Chapman & Hall in the year 1850. It was reported +to the author that within the first fortnight two +hundred copies had been sold, with which evidence +of moderate popularity he was pleased; but the initial +success was not maintained and subsequently the book +became, like <i>Sordello</i>, a "remainder." As early as +1845, in the opening days of the correspondence with +Miss Barrett, when she had called upon her friend to +speak as poet in his own person and to speak out, he +assured her that whereas hitherto he had only made +men and women utter themselves on his behalf and +had given the truth not as pure white light but +broken into prismatic hues, now he would try to +declare directly that which was in him. In place of +his men and women he would have her to be a companion +in his work, and yet, he adds, "I don't think +I shall let <i>you</i> hear, after all, the savage things about +Popes and imaginative religions that I must say." +We can only conjecture as to whether the theme of +the poem of 1850 was already in Browning's mind. +His wife's influence certainly was not unlikely to incline +him towards the choice of a subject which had +some immediate relation to contemporary thought. +She knew that poetry to be of permanent value +<a name="Page_124"></a>must do more than reflect a passing fashion; +that +in a certain sense it must in its essence be out of +time and space, expressing ideas and passions which +are parts of our abiding humanity. Yet she recognised +an advantage in pressing into what is permanent +through the forms which it assumes in the world immediately +around the artist. And even in 1845 the +design of such a poem as her own <i>Aurora Leigh</i> was +occupying her thoughts; she speaks of her intention +of writing a sort of "novel-poem, running into the +midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing-rooms +and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; +and so, meeting face to face and without mask the +Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth as I +conceive of it out plainly." Browning's poem did not +rush into drawing-rooms, but it stepped boldly into +churches and conventicles and the lecture-rooms of +theological professors.</p> +<p>The spiritual life individual and the spiritual life +corporate—these, to state it in a word, are the subjects +dealt with in the two connected poems of his +new volume; the spiritual life individual is considered +in <i>Easter Day</i>; the spiritual life corporate in <i>Christmas +Eve.</i> Browning, with the blood of all the Puritans in +him, as his wife expressed it, could not undervalue +that strain of piety which had descended from the +exiles at Geneva and had run on through the struggles +for religious liberty in the nonconformist religious +societies of the seventeenth century and the Evangelical +revival of times less remote. Looking around +him he had seen in his own day the progress of two +remarkable movements—one embodying, or professing +to embody, the Catholic as opposed to the Puritan +<a name="Page_125"></a>conception of religion, the other a free +critical movement, +tending to the disintegration of the traditional +dogma of Christianity, yet seeking to preserve and +maintain its ethical and even in part its religious influence. +The facts can be put concisely if we say +that one and the same epoch produced in England the +sermons of Spurgeon, the <i>Apologia pro vita sua</i> of +Newman, and the <i>Literature and Dogma</i> of Matthew +Arnold. To discuss these three conceptions of religion +adequately in verse would have been impossible even +for the argumentative genius of Dryden, and would +have converted a work of art into a theological treatise. +But three representative scenes might be painted, and +some truths of passionate feeling might be flung out +by way of commentary. Such was the design of the +poet of <i>Christmas Eve</i>.</p> +<p>To topple over from the sublime to the ridiculous +is not difficult. But the presence of humour might +save the sublimities from a fall, and Browning had +hitherto in his art made but slight and occasional use +of a considerable gift of humour which he possessed. +It was humour not of the highest or finest or subtlest +kind; it was very far from the humour of Shakespeare +or of Cervantes, which felt so profoundly all +the incongruities, majestic, pathetic, and laughable, of +human nature. But it had a rough vigour of its own; +it was united with a capacity for exact and shrewd +observation; and if it should ever lead him to play +the part of a satirist, the satire must needs be rather +that of love than of malice. One who esteemed so +highly the work of Balzac and of Flaubert might +well be surmised to have something in his composition +of what we now call the realist in art; and the work +<a name="Page_126"></a>of the realist might serve to sustain and +vindicate the +idealist's ventures of imaginative faith. The picture +of the lath-and-plaster entry of "Mount Zion" and of +the pious sheep—duly indignant at the interloper in +their midst—who one by one enter the fold, if not +worthy of Cervantes or of Shakespeare, is hardly +inferior to the descriptive passages of Dickens, and it +is touched, in the manner of Dickens, with pity for +these rags and tatters of humanity. The night, the +black barricade of cloud, the sudden apparition of the +moon, the vast double rainbow, and He whose sweepy +garment eddies onward, become at once more supernatural +and more unquestionably real because sublimity +springs out of grotesquerie. Is the vision of the face +of Christ an illusion?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The whole face turned upon me full,<br /> +</span><span>And I spread myself beneath it,<br /> +</span><span>As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it<br /> +</span><span>In the cleansing sun, his wool,—<br /> +</span><span>Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness<br /> +</span><span>Some defiled, discoloured web—<br /> +</span><span>So lay I saturate, with brightness.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Is this a phantom or a dream? Well, at least it +is certain that the witness has seen with his mortal +eyes the fat weary woman, and heard the mighty +report of her umbrella, "wry and flapping, a wreck of +whalebones." And the fat woman of Mount Zion +Chapel, with Love Lane at the back of it, may help +us to credit the awful vision of the Lord.</p> +<p>Thus the poem has the imaginative sensuousness +which art demands; it is not an argument but a series +of vivid experiences, though what is sensuous is here +tasked in the service of what is spiritual, and a com<a name="Page_127"></a>mentary +is added. The central idea of the whole is +that where love is, there is Christ; and the Christ of +this poem is certainly no abstraction, no moral ideal, +no transcendental conception of absolute charity, but +very God and very man, the Christ of Nazareth, who +dwelt among men, full of grace and truth. Literary +criticism which would interpret Browning's meaning in +any other sense may be ingenious, but it is not disinterested, +and some side-wind blows it far from the +mark.</p> +<p>Love with defective knowledge, he maintains, is of +more spiritual worth than knowledge with defective +love. Desiring to give salience to this idea, he deprives +his little pious conventicle of every virtue except +one—"love," and no other word is written on each +forehead of the worshippers. Browning, the artist and +student of art, was not insensible to the spiritual power +of beauty; and beauty is conspicuously absent from +the praise and prayer that went up from Mount Zion +chapel; its forms of worship are burlesque and uncouth. +Browning, the lover of knowledge, was not insensible +to the value of intelligence in things of religion; and +the congregation of Mount Zion sit on "divinely +flustered" under</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>the pig-of-lead-like pressure<br /> +</span><span>Of the preaching man's immense stupidity.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The pastor, whose words so sway his enraptured flock, +mangles the Holy Scriptures with a fine irreverence, +and pours forth his doctrine with an entirely self-satisfied +indifference to reason and common sense. +Nor has love accomplished its perfect work, for the +interloper who stands at the entry is eyed with inquisitorial +glances of pious exclusiveness—how has a +<a name="Page_128"></a>Gallio such as he ventured to take his station +among +the elect? Matthew Arnold, had he visited Mount +Zion, might have discoursed with a charmingly insolent +urbanity on the genius for ugliness in English dissent, +and the supreme need of bringing a current of new +ideas to play upon the unintelligent use of its +traditional formulae. And Matthew Arnold would +have been right. These are the precise subjects of +Browning's somewhat rough-and-ready satire. But +Browning adds that in Mount Zion, love, at least in +its rudiments, is present, and where love is, there is +Christ.</p> +<p>Of English nonconformity in its humblest forms +Browning can write, as it were, from within; he writes +of Roman Catholic forms of worship as one who stands +outside; his sympathy with the prostrate multitude +in St. Peter's at Rome is of an impersonal kind, +founded rather upon the recognition of an objective +fact than springing from an instinctive feeling. For +a moment he is carried away by the tide of their +devout enthusiasms; but he recovers himself to find +indeed that love is also here and therefore Christ is +present, but the worshippers fallen under "Rome's +gross yoke," are very infants in their need of these +sacred buffooneries and posturings and petticoatings; +infants</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Peevish as ever to be suckled,<br /> +</span><span>Lulled with the same old baby-prattle<br /> +</span><span>With intermixture of the rattle.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And this, though the time has come when love would +have them no longer infantile, but capable of standing +and walking, "not to speak of trying to climb." Such +a short and easy method of dealing with Roman +<a name="Page_129"></a>Catholic dogma and ritual cannot be commended +for +its intelligence; it is quite possible to be on the same +side as Browning without being as crude as he in +misconception. He does not seriously consider the +Catholic idea which regards things of sense as made +luminous by the spirit of which they are the envoys and +the ministers. It is enough for him to declare his own +creed which treats any intermediary between the human +soul and the Divine as an obstruction or a veil:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>My heart does best to receive in meekness<br /> +</span><span>That mode of worship, as most to his mind,<br /> +</span><span>Where earthly aids being left behind,<br /> +</span><span>His All in All appears serene<br /> +</span><span>With the thinnest human veil between,<br /> +</span><span>Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,<br /> +</span><span>The many motions of his spirit,<br /> +</span><span>Pass as they list to earth from heaven.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>This was the creed of Milton and of Bunyan; and +yet with both Milton and Bunyan the imagery of +the senses is employed as the means not of concealing +but revealing the things of the spirit.</p> +<p>From the lecture-room of Göttingen, with its destructive +and reconstructive criticism, Browning is even +farther removed than he is from the ritualisms of the +Roman basilica. Yet no caricature can be more +amiable than his drawing of the learned Professor, +so gentle in his aspect, so formidable in his conclusions, +who, gazing into the air with a pure abstracted look, +proceeds in a grave sweet voice to exhibit and analyse +the sources of the myth of Christ. In the Professor's +lecture-room Browning finds intellect indeed but only +the shadow of love. He argues that if the "myth" +of Christ be dissolved, the authority of Christ as a +<a name="Page_130"></a>teacher disappears; Christ is even inferior to +other +moralists by virtue of the fact that He made personal +claims which cannot be sustained. And whatever +may be Christ's merit as a teacher of the truth, the +motive to action which His life and words supplied +must cease to exist if it be shown that the divine +sacrifice of God manifest in the flesh is no more than +a figment of the devout imagination. At every point +the criticism of Browning is as far apart as it is +possible to conceive from the criticism set forth in +the later writings of Matthew Arnold. The one +writer regards the "myth" as no more than the grave-clothes +of a risen Christ whose essential virtue lies in +his sweet reasonableness and his morality touched with +enthusiasm. The other believes that if the wonderful +story of love be proved a fable, a profound alteration—and +an alteration for the worse—has been made in +the religious consciousness of Christendom. And +undoubtedly the difference between the supernatural +and the natural theories of Christianity is far greater +than Arnold represented it to be. But Browning at +this date very inadequately conceived the power of +Christ as a revealer of the fatherhood of God. In that +revelation, whether the Son of God was human or +divine, lay a truth of surpassing power, and a motive +of action capable of summoning forth the purest and +highest energies of the soul. That such is the case +has been abundantly evidenced by the facts of history. +Browning finds only much learning and the ghost of +dead love in the Göttingen lecture-room; and of +course it was easy to adapt his Professor's lecture +so as to arrive at this conclusion. But the process +and the conclusion are alike unjust.</p> +<p><a name="Page_131"></a>Having traversed the various forms of +Christian +faith and scepticism, the speaker in <i>Christmas Eve</i> +declines into a mood of lazy benevolence and mild +indifferentism towards each and all of these. Has +not Christ been present alike at the holding-forth of +the poor dissenting son of thunder, who tore God's +word into shreds, at the tinklings and posturings and +incense-fumes of Roman pietism, and even at the +learned discourse which dissolved the myth of his +own life and death? Why, then, over-strenuously take +a side? Why not regard all phases of belief or no-belief +with equal and serene regard? Such a mood +of amiable indifferentism is abhorrent to Browning's +feelings. The hem of Christ's robe passes wholly at +this point from the hand of the seer of visions in his +poem. One best way of worship there needs must be; +ours may indeed not be the absolutely best, but it +is our part, it is our probation to see that we strive +earnestly after what is best; yes, and strive with +might and main to confer upon our fellows the gains +which we have found. It may be God's part—we +trust it is—to bring all wanderers to the one fold at +last. As for us, we must seek after Him and find Him +in the mode required by our highest thought, our +purest passion. Here Browning speaks from his +central feeling. Only, we may ask, what if one's +truest self lie somewhere hidden amid a thousand +hesitating sympathies? And is not the world +spacious enough to include a Montaigne as well +as a Pascal or a Browning? Assuredly the world +without its Montaigne would be a poorer and a +less hospitable dwelling-place for the spirits of +men.</p> +<p><a name="Page_132"></a>Mrs Browning complained to her husband of +what +she terms the asceticism of <i>Easter Day</i>, the second +part of his volume of 1850; his reply was that it +stated "one side of the question." "Don't think," +Mrs Browning says, "that he has taken to the cilix—indeed +he has not—but it is his way to <i>see</i> things as +passionately as other people <i>feel</i> them." <i>Easter Day</i> +has nothing to say of religious life in Churches and +societies, nothing of the communities of public worship. +For the writer of this poem only three things +exist—God, the individual soul, and the world regarded +as the testing place and training place of the soul. +Browning has here a rigour of moral or spiritual +earnestness which may be called, by any one who so +pleases, Puritan in its kind and its intensity; he feels +the need, if we are to attain any approximation to the +Christian ideal, of the lit lamp and the girt loin. Two +difficulties in the Christian life in particular he chooses +to consider—first, the difficulty of faith in the things +of the spirit, and especially in what he regards as the +essential parts of the Christian story; and secondly, +the difficulty of obeying the injunction to renounce the +world. That we cannot grow to our highest attainment +by the old method enjoined by pagan philosophy—that +of living according to nature, he regards as +evident, for nature itself is warped and marred; it +groans and travails, and from its discords how shall +we frame a harmony? It was always his habit of +mind, he tells us, from his childhood onwards, to face +a danger and confront a doubt, and if there were anywhere +a lurking fear, to draw this forth from its hiding-place +and examine it in the light, even at the risk of +some mortal ill. Therefore he will press for an answer +<a name="Page_133"></a>to his present questionings; he will try +conclusions +to the uttermost.</p> +<p>As to the initial difficulty of faith, Browning with +a touch of scorn, assures us that evidences of spiritual +realities, evidences of Christianity—as they are styled—external +and internal will be readily found by him +who desires to find; convincing enough they are for +him who wants to be convinced. But in truth faith is +a noble venture of the spirit, an aspiring effort towards +what is best, even though what is best may never be +attained. The mole gropes blindly in unquestionably +solid clay; better be like the grasshopper "that spends +itself in leaps all day to reach the sun." A grasshopper's +leap sunwards—that is what we signify by +this word "faith."</p> +<p>But the difficulties of the Christian life only shift +their place when faith by whatever means has been +won. We are bidden to renounce the world: what +does the injunction mean? in what way shall it be +obeyed? "Ascetic" Mrs Browning named this poem; +and ascetic it is if by that word we understand the +counselling and exhorting to a noble exercise and +discipline; but Browning even in his poem by no +means wears the cilix, and no teaching can be more +fatal than his to asceticism in the narrower sense of +the word. To renounce the world, if interpreted aright, +is to extinguish or suppress no faculty that has been +given to man, but rather to put each faculty to its highest +uses:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>"Renounce the world!"—Ah, were it done<br /> +</span><span>By merely cutting one by one<br /> +</span><span>Your limbs off, with your wise head last,<br /> +</span><span>How easy were it!—how soon past,<br /> +</span><span>If once in the believing mood.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_134"></a>The harder and the higher renunciation is +this—to +choose the things of the spirit rather than the things +of sense, and again in accepting, as means of our +earthly discipline and development, the things of sense +to press through these to the things of the spirit which +lie behind and beyond and above them.</p> +<p>Such, and such alone, is the asceticism to which +Browning summons his disciple; it is the asceticism +of energy not that of atrophy; it does not starve the +senses, but reinforces the spirit; it results not in a +cloistered but a militant virtue. A certain self-denial +it may demand, but the self-denial becomes the condition +of a higher joy. And if life with its trials +frays the flesh, what matters it when the light of the +spirit shines through with only a fuller potency? In +the choice between sense and spirit, or, to put it more +generally, in the choice between what is higher and +less high, lies the probation of a soul, and also its +means of growth. And what is the meaning of this +mortal life—this strange phenomenon otherwise so +unintelligible—if it be not the moment in which a +soul is proved, the period in which a soul is shaped +and developed for other lives to come?</p> +<p>To forget that Browning is a preacher may suit a +dainty kind of criticism which detaches the idea of +beauty from the total of our humanity addressed by +the greater artists. But the solemn thoughts that are +taken up by beauty in such work, for example, as that +of Michael Angelo, are an essential element or an +essential condition of its peculiar character as a thing +of beauty. And armour, we know, may be as lovely +to the mere senses as a flower. Browning's doctrine +may sometimes protrude gauntly through his poetry; +<a name="Page_135"></a>but at his best—as in <i>Rabbi ben Ezra</i> or <i>Abt +Vogler</i>—the +thought of the poem is needful in the dance of +lyrical enthusiasm, as the male partner who takes +hands with beauty, and to separate them would bring +the dance to a sudden close. Both are present in +<i>Easter Day</i>, and we must watch the movement of the +two. In a passage already quoted from <i>Christmas +Eve</i> the face of Christ is nobly imagined as the sun +which bleaches a discoloured web. Here the poet's +imagination is as intense in its presentation of Christ +the doomsman:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>He stood there. Like the smoke<br /> +</span><span>Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke—<br /> +</span><span>I saw Him. One magnific pall<br /> +</span><span>Mantled in massive fold and fall<br /> +</span><span>His head, and coiled in snaky swathes<br /> +</span><span>About His feet; night's black, that bathes<br /> +</span><span>All else, broke, grizzled with despair,<br /> +</span><span>Against the soul of blackness there.<br /> +</span><span>A gesture told the mood within—<br /> +</span><span>That wrapped right hand which based the chin,—<br /> +</span><span>That intense meditation fixed<br /> +</span><span>On His procedure,—pity mixed<br /> +</span><span>With the fulfilment of decree.<br /> +</span><span>Motionless thus, He spoke to me,<br /> +</span><span>Who fell before His feet, a mass,<br /> +</span><span>No man now.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The picture of the final conflagration of the Judgment +Day is perhaps over-laboured, a descriptive <i>tour de +force</i>, horror piled upon horror with accumulative power,—a +picture somewhat too much in the manner of Martin; +and the verse does not lend itself to the sustained sublimity +of terror. The glow of Milton's hell is intenser, +and Milton's majestic instrumentation alone could +render the voices of its flames. The real awfulness +<a name="Page_136"></a>of Browning's Judgment Day dwells wholly in the +inner experiences of a solitary soul. The speaker +finds of a sudden that the doom is upon him, and +that in the probation of life his choice was earth, not +heaven. The sentence pronounced upon him is in +accordance with the election of his own will—let earth, +with all its beauty of nature, all its gifts of human +art, all its successes of the intellect, as he had conceived +and chosen them, be his. To his despair, +he finds that what he had prized in life, and what +is now granted to him cannot bring him happiness +or even content. The plenitude of beauty, of which +all partial beauty was but a pledge, is forever lost to +him. The glory of art, which lay beyond its poor actual +attainments, is lost. The joy of knowledge, with all those</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>grasps of guess<br /> +</span><span>Which pull the more into the less,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>is lost. And as to earth's best possession—love—had +he ever made a discovery through human love +of that which it forthshadows—the love that is perfect +and divine? Earth is no longer earth to the doomed +man, but the star of the god Rephan of which we +read in one of Browning's latest poems; in the horror +of its blank and passionless uniformity, untroubled by +any spiritual presences, he cowers at the Judge's feet, +and prays for darkness, hunger, toil, distress, if only +hope be also granted him:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Then did the form expand, expand—<br /> +</span><span>knew Him through the dread disguise<br /> +</span><span>As the whole God within his eyes<br /> +</span><span>Embraced me.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The Doomsman has in a moment become the +Saviour. In all this, if Browning has the burden +<a name="Page_137"></a>of a prophecy to utter, he utters it, after the +manner +of earlier prophets, as a vision. His art is sensuous +and passionate; his argument is transformed into a +series of imaginative experiences.</p> +<p>Mrs. Browning's illness during the summer and +early autumn of 1850 left her for a time more shaken +in health than she had been since her marriage. But +by the spring of the following year she had recovered +strength; and designs of travel were formed, which +should include Rome, North Italy, Switzerland, the +Rhine, Brussels, Paris and London. Almost at the +moment of starting for Rome at the end of April, the +plans were altered; the season was too far advanced +for going south; ways and means must be economised; +Rome might be postponed for a future visit; and +Venice would make amends for the present sacrifice. +And Venice in May and early June did indeed for a +time make amends. "I have been between heaven +and earth," Mrs. Browning wrote, "since our arrival +at Venice." The rich architecture, the colour, the +moonlight, the music, the enchanting silence made +up a unity of pleasures like nothing that she had +previously known. When evening came she and her +husband would follow the opera from their box +hired for "two shillings and eightpence English," +or sit under the moon in the piazza of St Mark +sipping coffee and reading the French papers. +But as the month went by, Browning lost appetite +and lost sleep. The "soothing, lulling, rocking +atmosphere" which suited Mrs. Browning made +him, after the first excitement of delight, grow +nervous and dispirited. They hastened away to +Padua, drove to Arqua, "for Petrarch's sake," passed +<a name="Page_138"></a>through Brescia in a flood of white moonlight, +and +having reached Milan climbed—the invalid of Wimpole +Street and her husband—to the topmost point +of the cathedral. From the Italian lakes they crossed +by the St Gothard to Switzerland, and omitting part +of their original scheme of wandering, journeyed in +twenty-four hours without stopping from Strasburg to +Paris.</p> +<p>In Paris they loitered for three weeks. Mrs. +Browning during the short visit which followed her +marriage had hardly seen the city. Bright shop-windows, +before which little Wiedemann would scream +with pleasure, restaurants and dinners <i>à la carte</i>, +full-foliaged +trees and gardens in the heart of the town +were a not unwelcome exchange for Italian church-interiors +and altar-pieces. Even "disreputable prints +and fascinating hats and caps" were appreciated as +proper to the genius of the place, and the writer of +<i>Casa Guidi Windows</i> had the happiness of seeing her +hero, M. le President, "in a cocked hat, and with a +train of cavalry, passing like a rocket along the +boulevards to an occasional yell from the Red." By +a happy chance they lighted in Paris upon Tennyson, +now Poet-laureate, whom Mrs. Browning had hitherto +known only through his poems; he was in the +friendliest mood, and urged that they should make +use of his house and servants during their stay in +England, an offer which was not refused, though there +was no intention of actually taking advantage of the +kindness. As for England, the thought of it, with +her father's heart and her father's door closed against +her, was bitter as wormwood to Mrs. Browning. "It's only +Robert," she wrote, "who is a patriot now, of us two."</p> +<p><a name="Page_139"></a>English soil as they stepped ashore was a +puddle, and +English air a fog. London lodgings were taken at 26 +Devonshire Street, and, although Mrs. Browning suffered +from the climate, they were soon dizzied and dazzled +by the whirl of pleasant hospitalities. An evening with +Carlyle ("one of the greatest sights in England"), a +dinner given by Forster at Thames Ditton, "in sight +of the swans," a breakfast with Rogers, daily visits +of Barry Cornwall, cordial companionship of Mrs. +Jameson, a performance by the Literary Guild actors, +a reading of <i>Hamlet</i> by Fanny Kemble—with these +distractions and such as these the two months flew +quickly. It was in some ways a relief when Pen's +faithful maid Wilson went for a fortnight to see her +kinsfolk, and Mrs. Browning had to take her place +and substitute for social racketing domestic cares. +The one central sorrow remained and in some respects +was intensified. She had written to her father, and +Browning himself wrote—"a manly, true, straight-forward +letter," she informs a friend, "... everywhere +generous and conciliating." A violent and unsparing +reply was made, and with it came all the letters that +his undutiful daughter had written to Mr. Barrett; not +one had been read or opened. He returned them +now, because he had not previously known how he could +be relieved of the obnoxious documents. "God takes +it all into his own hands," wrote Mrs. Browning, "and +I wait." Something, however, was gained; her brothers +were reconciled; Arabella Barrett was constant in +kindness; and Henrietta journeyed from Taunton +to London to enjoy a week in her company.</p> +<p>It was at Devonshire Street that Bayard Taylor, +the distinguished American poet and critic, made the +<a name="Page_140"></a>acquaintance of the Brownings, and the record of +his +visit gives a picture of Browning at the age of thirty-nine, +so clearly and firmly drawn that it ought not +to be omitted here: "In a small drawing-room on +the first floor I met Browning, who received me with +great cordiality. In his lively, cheerful manner, +quick voice, and perfect self-possession, he made the +impression of an American rather than an Englishman. +He was then, I should judge, about thirty-seven years +of age, but his dark hair was already streaked with +gray about the temples. His complexion was fair, +with perhaps the faintest olive tinge, eyes large, clear, +and gray, nose strong and well cut, mouth full and +rather broad, and chin pointed, though not prominent. +His forehead broadened rapidly upwards from the outer +angle of the eyes, slightly retreating. The strong +individuality which marks his poetry was expressed +not only in his face and head, but in his whole demeanour. +He was about the medium height, strong +in the shoulders, but slender at the waist, and his +movements expressed a combination of vigour and +elasticity." Mrs Browning with her slight figure, +pale face, shaded by chestnut curls, and grave eyes of +bluish gray, is also described; and presently entered to +the American visitor Pen, a blue-eyed, golden-haired +boy, who babbled his little sentences in Italian.</p> +<p>When, towards the close of September, Browning +and his wife left London for Paris, Carlyle by his own +request was their companion on the journey. Mrs +Browning feared that his irritable nerves would suffer +from the vivacities of little Pen, but it was not so; he +accepted with good humour the fact that the small +boy had not yet learned, like his own Teufelsdröckh, +<a name="Page_141"></a>the Eternal No: "Why, sir," exclaimed Carlyle, +"you +have as many aspirations as Napoleon!"<a name="FNanchor_47"></a><a + href="#Footnote_47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> At Dieppe, +Browning, as Carlyle records, "did everything, fought +for us, and we—that is, the woman, the child and I—had +only to wait and be silent." At Paris in the midst +of "a crowding, jangling, vociferous tumult, the brave +Browning fought for us, leaving me to sit beside the +woman." An apartment was found on the sunny side +of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, "pretty, cheerful, +carpeted rooms," far brighter and better than those of +Devonshire Street, and when, to Browning's amusement, +his wife had moved every chair and table +into the new and absolutely right position, they could +rest and be thankful. Carlyle spent several evenings +with them, and repaid the assistance which he received +in various difficulties from Browning's command of the +language, by picturesque conversations in his native +speech: "You come to understand perfectly," wrote +Mrs Browning, "when you know him, that his bitterness +is only melancholy, and his scorn sensibility." A +little later Browning's father and sister spent some +weeks in Paris. Here, at all events, were perfect +relations between the members of a family group; the +daughter here was her father's comrade with something +even of a maternal instinct; and the grandfather +discovered to his great satisfaction that his own talent +for drawing had descended to his grandchild.</p> +<p>The time was one when the surface of life in Paris +showed an unruffled aspect; but under the surface +were heavings of inward agitation. On the morning +of December 2nd the great stroke against the Republic +was delivered; the <i>coup d'état</i> was an accomplished +<a name="Page_142"></a>fact. Later in the day Louis Napoleon rode under +the +windows of the apartment in the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, +from the Carrousel to the Arc de l'Étoile. +To Mrs Browning it seemed the grandest of spectacles—"he +rode there in the name of the people after all." +She and her husband had witnessed revolutions in +Florence, and political upheavals did not seem so very +formidable. On the Thursday of bloodshed in the +streets—December 4th—Pen was taken out for his +usual walk, though not without certain precautions; as +the day advanced the excitement grew tense, and when +night fell the distant firing on the boulevards kept Mrs. +Browning from her bed till one o'clock. On Saturday +they took a carriage and drove to see the field of +action; the crowds moved to and fro, discussing the +situation, but of real disturbance there was none; next +day the theatres had their customary spectators and +the Champs-Elysées its promenaders. For the dishonoured +"Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité," as Mrs. +Browning heard it suggested, might now be inscribed +"Infanterie, Cavallerie, Artillerie."</p> +<p>Such may have been her husband's opinion, but such +was not hers. Her faith in the President had been +now and again shaken; her faith in the Emperor +became as time went on an enthusiasm of hero-worship. +The display of force on December 2nd impressed her +imagination; there was a dramatic completeness in +the whole performance; Napoleon represented the +people; a democrat, she thought, should be logical and +thorough; the vote of the millions entirely justified +their chief. Browning viewed affairs more critically, +more sceptically. "Robert and I," writes his wife +jestingly, "have had some domestic <i>émeutes</i>, because +<a name="Page_143"></a>he hates some imperial names." He detested all +Buonapartes, he would say, past, present, and to come,—an +outbreak explained by Mrs Browning to her +satisfaction, as being only his self-willed way of +dismissing a subject with which he refused to occupy +his thoughts, a mere escapade of feeling and known to +him as such. When all the logic and good sense were +on the woman's side, how could she be disturbed by +such masculine infirmities? Though only a very +little lower than the angels, he was after all that +humorous being—a man.</p> +<p><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47">[47]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Mrs Orr's Life and Letters of R.B.," 173.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_VIII"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_144"></a>Chapter VIII</h2> +<h2>1851 to 1855</h2> +<br /> +<p>It was during the month of the <i>coup d'état</i> that +Browning went back in thought to the poet of his +youthful love, and wrote that essay which was prefixed +to the volume of forged letters published as Shelley's +by Moxon in 1852. The essay is interesting as +Browning's only considerable piece of prose, and also +as an utterance made not through the mask of any +<i>dramatis persona</i>, but openly and directly from his own +lips. Though not without value as a contribution to +the study of Shelley's genius, it is perhaps chiefly of +importance as an exposition of some of Browning's +own views concerning his art. He distinguishes +between two kinds or types of poet: the poet who +like Shakespeare is primarily the "fashioner" of things +independent of his own personality, artistic creations +which embody some fact or reality, leaving it to others +to interpret, as best they are able, its significance; and +secondly the poet who is rather a "seer" than a +fashioner, who attempts to exhibit in imaginative form +his own conceptions of absolute truth, conceptions far +from entire adequacy, yet struggling towards completeness; +the poet who would shadow forth, as he himself +apprehends them, <i>Ideas</i>, to use the word of Plato, +"seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine +Hand"—which Ideas he discovers not so often in the +<a name="Page_145"></a>external world as in his own soul, this being +for him +"the nearest reflex of the absolute Mind." What a +poet of this second kind produces, as Browning finely +states it, will be less a work than an effluence. He is +attracted among external phenomena chiefly by those +which summon forth his inner light and power, "he +selects that silence of the earth and sea in which he +can best hear the beating of his individual heart, and +leaves the noisy, complex, yet imperfect exhibitions of +nature in the manifold experience of man around him, +which serve only to distract and suppress the working +of his brain." To this latter class of poets, although +in <i>The Cenci</i> and <i>Julian and Maddalo</i> he is eminent as +a "fashioner," Shelley conspicuously belongs. Mankind +cannot wisely dispense with the services of either +type of poet; at one time it chiefly needs to have that +which is already known interpreted into its highest +meanings; and at another, when the virtue of these interpretations +has been appropriated and exhausted, it +needs a fresh study and exploration of the facts of life +and nature—for "the world is not to be learned and +thrown aside, but reverted to and relearned." The +truest and highest point of view from which to regard +the poetry of Shelley is that which shows it as a +"sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment of +the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the +natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the +ideal."</p> +<p>For Browning the poet of <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> was +not that beautiful and ineffectual angel of Matthew +Arnold's fancy, beating in the void his luminous wings. +A great moral purpose looked forth from Shelley's +work, as it does, Browning would add, from all lofty +<a name="Page_146"></a>works of art. And it may be remarked that the +criticism of Browning's own writings which considers +not only their artistic methods and artistic success or +failure, but also their ethical and spiritual purport, is +entirely in accord with his thoughts in this essay. +Far from regarding Shelley as unpractical, he notes—and +with perfect justice—"the peculiar practicalness" +of Shelley's mind, which in his earlier years acted +injuriously upon both his conduct and his art. His +power to perceive the defects of society was accompanied +by as precocious a fertility to contrive remedies; +but his crudeness in theorising and his inexperience +in practice resulted in not a few youthful errors. +Gradually he left behind him "this low practical +dexterity"; gradually he learnt that "the best way +of removing abuses is to stand fast by truth. Truth +is one, as they are manifold; and innumerable negative +effects are produced by the upholding of one positive +principle." Browning urges that Shelley, before the +close, had passed from his doctrinaire atheism to what +was virtually a theistic faith. "I shall say what I +think," he adds—"had Shelley lived he would have +finally ranged himself with the Christians.... The +preliminary step to following Christ is the leaving the +dead to bury their dead." Perhaps this hypothetical +anticipation is to be classed with the surmise of +Cardinal Wiseman (if Father Prout rightly attributed +to that eminent ecclesiastic a review of <i>Men and +Women</i> in <i>The Rambler</i>) that Browning himself would +one day be found in the ranks of converts to Catholicism. +In each case a wish was father to the thought; +Browning recognised the fact that Shelley assigned a +place to love, side by side with power, among the +<a name="Page_147"></a>forces which determine the life and development +of +humanity, and with Browning himself "power" was a +synonym for the Divine will, and "love" was often an +equivalent for God manifest in Jesus Christ. One or +two other passages of the essay may be noted as +illustrating certain characteristics of the writer's modes +of thought and feeling: "Everywhere is apparent +Shelley's belief in the existence of Good, to which +Evil is an accident"—it is an optimist here, though +of a subtler doctrine than Shelley's, who is applauding +optimism. "Shelley was tender, though tenderness is +not always the characteristic of very sincere natures; +he was eminently both tender and sincere." Was +Browning consulting his own heart, which was always +sincere, and could be tender, but whose tenderness +sometimes disappeared in explosions of indignant +wrath? The principle, again, by which he determined +an artist's rank is in harmony with Browning's general +feeling that men are to be judged less by their actual +achievements than by the possibilities that lie unfolded +within them, and the ends to which they aspire, even +though such ends be unattained: "In the hierarchy +of creative minds, it is the presence of the highest +faculty that gives first rank, in virtue of its kind, not +degree; no pretension of a lower nature, whatever the +completeness of development or variety of effect, +impeding the precedency of the rarer endowment +though only in the germ." And, last, of the tardy +recognition of Shelley's genius as a poet, Browning +wrote in words which though, as he himself says, he +had always good praisers, no doubt express a thought +that helped to sustain him against the indifference of +the public to his poetry: "The misapprehensiveness of +<a name="Page_148"></a>his age is exactly what a poet is sent to +remedy: and +the interval between his operation and the generally +perceptible effect of it, is no greater, less indeed than +in many other departments of the great human effort. +The 'E pur si muove' of the astronomer was as bitter +a word as any uttered before or since by a poet over +his rejected living work, in that depth of conviction +which is so like despair." The volume in which +Browning's essay appeared was withdrawn from +circulation on the discovery of the fraudulent nature +of its contents. He had himself no opportunity of +inspecting the forged manuscripts, and no question of +authenticity was raised until several copies of the book +had passed into circulation.<a name="FNanchor_48"></a><a + href="#Footnote_48"><sup>[48]</sup></a></p> +<p>During the nine months spent in Paris, from +September 1851 to June 1852, Browning enlarged +the circle of his friends and made some new and +interesting acquaintances. Chief among friendships +was that with Joseph Milsand of Dijon, whose name +is connected with <i>Sordello</i> in the edition of Browning's +"Poetical Works" of the year 1863. Under the title +"La Poésie Anglaise depuis Byron," two articles by +Milsand were contributed to the "Revue des Deux +Mondes," the first on Tennyson, the second (published +15th August 1851) a little before the poet's arrival in +Paris, on Robert Browning. "Of all the poets known +to me," wrote his French critic, "he is the most capable +of summing up the conceptions of the religion, the +ethics, and the theoretic knowledge of our period in +forms which embody the beauty proper to such abstractions." +Such criticism by a thoughtful student +<a name="Page_149"></a>of our literature could not but prepare the way +pleasantly for personal acquaintance. Milsand, we +are told by his friend Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc), +having hesitated as to the propriety of printing a +passage in an article as yet unpublished, in which he +had spoken of the great sorrow of Mrs Browning's +early life—the death of her brother, went straight to +Browning, who was then in Paris, and declared that he +was ready to cancel what he had written if it would +cause her pain. "Only a Frenchman," exclaimed +Browning, grasping both hands of his visitor, "would +have done this." So began a friendship of an intimate +and most helpful kind, which closed only with Milsand's +death in 1886. To his memory is dedicated the +volume published soon after his death, <i>Parleyings +with certain People of Importance</i>. "I never knew or +shall know his like among men," wrote Browning; +and again: "No words can express the love I have +for him." And in <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i> it is +Milsand who is characterised in the lines:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>He knows more and loves better than the world<br /> +</span><span>That never heard his name and never may, ...<br /> +</span><span>What hinders that my heart relieve itself,<br /> +</span><span>O friend! who makest warm my wintry world,<br /> +</span><span>And wise my heaven, if there we consort too.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>In the correction of Browning's proof-sheets, and +especially in regulating the punctuation of his poems, +Milsand's friendly services were of high value. In +1858 when Browning happened to be at Dijon, and +had reason to believe, though in fact erroneously, +that his friend was absent in Paris, he went twice "in +a passion of friendship," as his wife tells a correspon<a + name="Page_150"></a>dent, +to stand before Maison Milsand, and muse, and +bless the threshold.<a name="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49"><sup>[49]</sup></a></p> +<p>Browning desired much to know Victor Hugo, but +his wish was never gratified. After December 2nd +Paris could not contain a spirit so fiery as Hugo's +was in hostility to the new régime and its chief +representative. Balzac, whom it would have been +a happiness even to look at, was dead. Lamartine +promised a visit, but for a time his coming was +delayed. By a mischance Alfred de Musset failed +to appear when Browning, expecting to meet him, was +the guest of M. Buloz. But Béranger was to be seen +"in his white hat wandering along the asphalte." The +blind historian Thierry begged Browning and his wife +to call upon him. At the house of Ary Scheffer, the +painter, they heard Mme. Viardot sing; and receptions +given by Lady Elgin and Mme. Mohl were means of +introduction to much that was interesting in the social +life of Paris. At the theatre they saw with the +deepest excitement "La Dame aux Camélias," which +was running its hundred nights. Caricatures in the +streets exhibited the occupants of the pit protected by +umbrellas from the rain of tears that fell from the +boxes. Tears, indeed, ran down Browning's cheeks, +though he had believed himself hardened against theatrical +pathos. Mrs Browning cried herself ill, and pronounced +the play painful but profoundly moral.</p> +<p>Mrs Browning's admiration of the writings of +George Sand was so great that it would have been a +sore disappointment to her if George Sand were to +prove inaccessible. A letter of introduction to her +<a name="Page_151"></a>had been obtained from Mazzini. "Ah, I am so +vexed +about George Sand," Mrs Browning wrote on Christmas +Eve; "she came, she has gone, and we haven't +met." In February she again was known to be for a +few days in Paris; Browning was not eager to push +through difficulties on the chance of obtaining an +interview, but his wife was all impatience: "' No,' said +I, 'you <i>shan't</i> be proud, and I <i>won't</i> be proud, and we +<i>will</i> see her. I won't die, if I can help it, without +seeing George Sand.'" A gracious reply and an +appointment came in response to their joint-petition +which accompanied Mazzini's letter. On the appointed +Sunday Browning and Mrs Browning—she wearing a +respirator and smothered in furs—drove to render +their thanks and homage to the most illustrious of +Frenchwomen. Mrs Browning with beating heart +stooped and kissed her hand. They found in George +Sand's face no sweetness, but great moral and intellectual +capacities; in manners and conversation she +was absolutely simple. Young men formed the +company, to whom she addressed counsel and command +with the utmost freedom and a conscious +authority. Through all her speech a certain undercurrent +of scorn, a half-veiled touch of disdain, was +perceptible. At their parting she invited the English +visitors to come again, kissed Mrs Browning on the +lips, and received Browning's kiss upon her hand. +The second call upon her was less agreeable. She sat +warming her feet in a circle of eight or nine ill-bred +men, representatives of "the ragged Red diluted with +the lower theatrical." If any other mistress of a +house had behaved so unceremoniously, Browning +declared that he would have walked out of the room; +<a name="Page_152"></a>and Mrs Browning left with the impression—"she +does not care for me." They had exerted themselves +to please her, but felt that it was in vain; "we +couldn't penetrate, couldn't really <i>touch</i> her." Once +Browning met her near the Tuileries and walked the +length of the gardens with her arm upon his. If +nothing further was to come of it, at least they had seen +a wonderful piece of work, which not to have been +blest withal would have discredited their travel. Only +to Mrs Browning's mortification the spectacle wanted +one detail indispensable to its completeness—the characteristic +cigarette was absent: "Ah, but I didn't see +her smoke." Life leaves us always something to desire.</p> +<p>Before the close of June 1852 they were again in +London, and found comfortable rooms at 58 Welbeck +Street. When the turmoil of the first days had +subsided, they visited "Kenyon the Magnificent"—so +named by Browning—at Wimbledon, at whose +table Landor, abounding in life and passionate energy +as in earlier days, was loud in his applause of the +genius of Louis Napoleon. Mazzini, his "intense eyes +full of melancholy illusions," called at their lodgings +in company with Mrs Carlyle, who seemed to Mrs +Browning not only remarkable for her play of ideas +but attaching through her feelings and her character.<a + name="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50"><sup>[50]</sup></a> +Florence Nightingale was also a welcome visitor, and +her visit was followed by a gift of flowers. Invitations +<a name="Page_153"></a>from country houses came in sheaves, and the +thought +of green fields is seductive in a London month of July; +but to remain in London was to be faithful to Penini—and +to the much-travelled Flush. Once the whole +household, with Flush included, breathed rural air for +two days with friends at Farnham, and Browning had +there the pleasure of meeting Charles Kingsley, whose +Christian Socialism seemed wild and unpractical +enough, but as for the man himself, brave, bold, +original, full of a genial kindliness, Mrs Browning +assures a correspondent that he could not be other +than "good and noble let him say or dream what he +will." It is stated by Mr W.M. Rossetti that Browning +first became acquainted with his brother Dante +Gabriel in the course of this summer. Coventry +Patmore gave him the manuscript of his unpublished +poems of 1853 to read. And Ruskin was now added +to the number of his personal acquaintances. "We +went to Denmark Hill yesterday, by agreement," +wrote Mrs Browning in September, "to see the +Turners—which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr +Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet +earnest—refined and truthful." At Lord Stanhope's +they were introduced to the latest toy of fashionable +occultism, the crystal ball, in which the seer beheld +Oremus, the spirit of the sun; the supernatural was +qualified for the faithful with luncheon and lobster +salad; "I love the marvellous," Mrs Browning frankly +declares. And of terrestrial wonders, with heaven +lying about them, and also India muslin and Brussels +lace, two were seen in the babies of Monckton Milnes +and Alfred Tennyson. Pen, because he was "troppo +grande," declined to kiss the first of these new-<a name="Page_154"></a>christened +wonders, but Pen's father, who went alone to +the baptism of Hallam Tennyson, distinguished himself +by nursing for some ten minutes and with accomplished +dexterity, the future Governor-General of Australia.</p> +<p>Yet with all these distractions, perhaps in part +because of them, the visit to England was not one of +Browning's happiest times. The autumn weather +confined Mrs Browning to her rooms. He was +anxious, vexed, and worn.<a name="FNanchor_51"></a><a + href="#Footnote_51"><sup>[51]</sup></a> It was a happiness when +Welbeck Street was left behind, and they were on the +way by Paris to their resting-place at Casa Guidi. +From a balcony overlooking one of the Paris +boulevards they witnessed, in a blaze of autumnal +sunshine, which glorified much military and civic +pomp, the reception of the new Emperor. Mrs +Browning's handkerchief waved frantically while she +prayed that God might bless the people in this the +chosen representative of a democracy. What were +Browning's thoughts on that memorable Saturday is +not recorded, but we may be sure that they were less +enthusiastic. Yet he enjoyed the stir and animation +of Paris, and after the palpitating life of the boulevards +found Florence dull and dead—no change, no variety. +The journey by the Mont Cenis route had not been +without its trying incidents. At Genoa, during several +days he was deeply depressed by the illness of his +wife, who lay on the sofa and seemed to waste away. +But Casa Guidi was reached at last, where it was more +like summer than November; the pleasant nest had +its own peculiar welcome for wanderers; again they enjoyed +the sunsets over the Arno, and Mrs Browning was +able to report herself free from cough and feeling very +<a name="Page_155"></a>well and very happy: "You can't think how we +have +caught up our ancient traditions just where we left them, +and relapsed into our former soundless, stirless, hermit +life. Robert has not passed an evening from home +since we came—just as if we had never known Paris."<a name="FNanchor_52"></a><a + href="#Footnote_52"><sup>[52]</sup></a></p> +<p>The political condition of Italy was, indeed, a grief +to both husband and wife. It was a state of utter +prostration—on all sides "the unanimity of despair." +The Grand Duke, the emancipator, had acquired a +respect and affection for the bayonets of Austria. +The Pope was "wriggling his venom into the heart of +all possibilities of free-thought and action." Browning +groaned "How long, O Lord, how long?" His +home-thoughts of England in contrast with Italy were +those of patriotism and pride. His wife was more +detached, more critical towards her native land. The +best symptom for Italian freedom was that if Italy +had not energy to act, she yet had energy to hate. +To be happy now they both must turn to imaginative +work, and gain all the gains possible from +private friendships. Browning was already occupied +with the poems included afterwards in +the volumes of <i>Men and Women</i>. Mrs Browning +was already engaged upon <i>Aurora Leigh</i>. "We +neither of us show our work to one another," she +wrote, "till it is finished. An artist must, I fancy, +either find or <i>make</i> a solitude to work in, if it is to be +good work at all." But as her husband's poems, one +by one, were completed, she saw them, and they +seemed to her as fine as anything he had done. +Away in England <i>Colombe's Birthday</i> was given on +the stage, with Helen Faucit in the leading part. +<a name="Page_156"></a>It was at least an indication that the public +had +not forgotten that Browning was a poet. Here +in Florence, although the hermit life was happy, +new friends—the gift of England—added to its +happiness. Frederick Tennyson, the Laureate's +brother, and himself a true poet in his degree, "a +dreamy, shy, speculative man," simple withal and +truthful, had married an Italian wife and was settled +for a time in Florence. To him Browning became +attached with genuine affection. Mrs Browning was +a student of the writings of Swedenborg, and she +tells much of her new friend in a single Swedenborgian +word—"selfhood, the <i>proprium</i>, is not in +him." Frederick Tennyson, though left in a state of +bewilderment by Browning's poetry, found the writer +of the poetry "a man of infinite learning, jest and +bonhommie, and moreover a sterling heart that reverbs +no hollowness."<a name="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53"><sup>[53]</sup></a> +Another intimate who charmed +them much was one of the attachés of the English +embassy, and a poet of unquestionable faculty, very +young, very gentle and refined, delicate and excitable, +full of sensibility, "full of all sorts of goodness and +nobleness," but somewhat dreamy and unpractical, +"visionary enough," writes Mrs Browning, "to suit +me," interested moreover in spiritualism, which suited +her well, "never," she unwisely prophesied, "to be a +great diplomatist." It was hardly, Mr Kenyon, the +editor of her letters, observes, a successful horoscope +of the destiny of Lord Lytton, the future Ambassador +at Paris and Viceroy of India.<a name="FNanchor_54"></a><a + href="#Footnote_54"><sup>[54]</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_157"></a>Early in 1853 Mrs Browning became much +interested in the reports which reached her—many +of these from America—of the "rapping spirits," who +in the 'fifties were busy in instructing chairs and tables +to walk in the way they should not go. "You know +I am rather a visionary," she wrote to Miss Mitford, +"and inclined to knock round at all the doors of the +present world to try to get out." Her Swedenborgian +studies had prepared her to believe that there were +communities of life in the visible and the invisible +worlds which did not permit of the one being wholly +estranged from the other. A clever person who loves +the marvellous will soon find by the sheer force of +logic that marvels are the most natural things in the +world. Should we not credit human testimony? +Should we not evict prejudice from our understandings? +Should we not investigate alleged facts? +Should we not keep an open mind? We cannot but +feel a certain sympathy with a woman of ardent nature +who fails to observe the bounds of intellectual +prudence. Browning himself with all his audacities +was pre-eminently prudent. He did not actively enter +into politics; he did not dabble in pseudo-science; he +was an artist and a thinker; and he made poems, and +amused himself with drawing, modelling in clay, and +the study of music. Mrs Browning squandered her +enthusiasms with less discretion. A good dose of +stupidity or an indignant energy of common-sense, +impatient of the nonsense of the thing, may be the +salvation of the average man. It is often the clever +people who would be entirely rational and unprejudiced +that best succeed in duping themselves at once by +their reason and their folly. A fine old crusted pre<a name="Page_158"></a>judice +commonly stands for a thousand acts of judgment +amassed into a convenient working result; a +single act of an individual understanding, or several +of such acts, will seldom contain an equal sum of +wisdom. Scientific discovery is not advanced by a +multitude of curious and ingenious amateurs in learned +folly. Whether the claims of spiritualism are warrantable +or fallacious, Mrs Browning, gifted as she was with +rare powers of mind, was not qualified to investigate +those claims; it was a waste of energy, from which +she could not but suffer serious risks and certain loss.</p> +<p>Before she had seen anything for herself she was a +believer—a believer, as she describes it, on testimony. +The fact of communication with the invisible world +appeared to her more important than anything that +had been communicated. The spirits themselves +"seem abundantly foolish, one must admit." Yet it +was clear to her that mankind was being prepared for +some great development of truth. She would keep +her eyes wide open to facts and her soul lifted up in +reverential expectation. By-and-by she felt the dumb +wood of the table panting and shivering with human +emotion. The dogmatism of Faraday in an inadequate +theory was simply unscientific, a piece of intellectual +tyranny. The American medium Home, she learnt +from her friends, was "turning the world upside down +in London with this spiritual influx." Two months +later, in July 1855, Mrs Browning and her husband +were themselves in London, and witnessed Home's +performances during a séance at Ealing. Miss de +Gaudrion (afterwards Mrs Merrifield), who was present +on that occasion, and who was convinced that the +"manifestations" were a fraud, wrote to Mrs Browning +<a name="Page_159"></a>for an expression of her opinion. The reply, as +might +be expected, declared the writer's belief in the genuine +character of the phenomena; such manifestations, she +admitted, in the undeveloped state of the subject were +"apt to be low"; but they were, she was assured, "the +beginning of access from a spiritual world, of which +we shall presently learn more perhaps." A letter +volunteered by Browning accompanied that of his +wife. He had, he said, to overcome a real repugnance +in recalling the subject; he could hardly understand +how another opinion was possible than that "the +whole display of 'hands,' 'spirit utterances,' etc., was +a cheat and imposture." It was all "melancholy stuff," +which a grain of worldly wisdom would dispose of in +a minute. "Mr Browning," the letter goes on, "has, +however, abundant experience that the best and rarest +of natures may begin by the proper mistrust of the +more ordinary results of reasoning when employed in +such investigations as these, go on to an abnegation +of the regular tests of truth and rationality in favour +of these particular experiments, and end in a voluntary +prostration of the whole intelligence before what is +assumed to transcend all intelligence. Once arrived +at this point, no trick is too gross—absurdities are +referred to 'low spirits,' falsehoods to 'personating +spirits'—and the one terribly apparent spirit, the +Father of Lies, has it all his own way." These +interesting letters were communicated to <i>The Times</i> +by Mr Merrifield (<i>Literary Supplement</i>, Nov. 28, +1902), and they called forth a short additional letter +from Mr R. Barrett Browning, the "Penini" of earlier +days. He mentions that his father had himself on +one occasion detected Home in a vulgar fraud; that +<a name="Page_160"></a>Home had called at the house of the Brownings, +and +was turned out of it. Mr Browning adds: "What, +however, I am more desirous of stating is that towards +the end of her life my mother's views on 'spiritual +manifestations' were much modified. This change +was brought about, in great measure, by the discovery +that she had been duped by a friend in whom she had +blind faith. The pain of the disillusion was great, but +her eyes were opened and she saw clearly."<a name="FNanchor_55"></a><a + href="#Footnote_55"><sup>[55]</sup></a> It must +be added, that letters written by Mrs Browning six +months before her death give no indication of this +change of feeling, but she admits that "sublime communications" +from the other world are "decidedly +absent," and that while no truth can be dangerous, +unsettled minds may lose their balance, and may do +wisely to avoid altogether the subject of spiritualism.</p> +<p>Browning's hostility arose primarily from his conviction +that the so-called "manifestations" were, as he +says, a cheat and imposture. He had grasped Home's +leg under the table while at work in producing "phenomena." +He had visited his friend, Seymour Kirkup, +had found the old man assisting at the trance of a +peasant girl named Mariana; and when Kirkup withdrew +for a moment, the entranced Mariana relieved +herself from the fatigue of her posturing, at the same +time inviting Browning with a wink to be a charitable +confederate in the joke by which she profited in admiration +and in pelf. Browning, who would have +waged immitigable war against the London dog-stealers, +and opposed all treaty with such rogues, even at the +cost of an unrecovered Flush, could not but oppose +the new trade of elaborate deception. But his feeling +<a name="Page_161"></a>was intensified by the personal repulsiveness of +the +professional medium. The vain, sleek, vulgar, emasculated, +neurotic type of creature, who became the +petted oracle of the dim-lighted room, was loathsome +in his eyes. And his respect for his wife's genius +made him feel that there was a certain desecration in +the neighbourhood to her of men whom he regarded +as verminous impostors. Yet he recognised her right +to think for herself, and she, on the other hand, +regarded his scepticism as rather his misfortune than +his crime.</p> +<p>It was a considerable time after his wife's death +that Browning's study of the impostor of the spiritualist +circles, "Mr Sludge the Medium," appeared in the +<i>Dramatis Personae</i> of 1864; the date of its composition +is Rome, 1859-60; but the observations which +that study sums up were accumulated during earlier +years, and if Mr Sludge is not a portrait of Home, that +eminent member of the tribe of Sludge no doubt +supplied suggestions for the poet's character-study. +Browning evidently wrote the poem with a peculiar +zest; its intellectual energy never flags; its imaginative +grip never slackens. If the Bishop, who orders +his tomb at St Praxed's, serves to represent the +sensuous glory and the moral void of one phase of the +Italian Renaissance, so, and with equal fidelity, does +Mr Sludge represent a phase of nineteenth century +materialism and moral grossness, which cannot extinguish +the cravings of the soul but would vulgarise +and degrade them with coarse illusions. Unhappily +the later poem differs from the earlier in being uglier +in its theme and of inordinate length. Browning, +somewhat in the manner of Ben Jonson when he +<a name="Page_162"></a>wrote <i>The Alchemist</i>, could not be +satisfied until he +had exhausted the subject to the dregs. The writer's +zeal from first to last knows no abatement, but it is +not every reader who cares to bend over the +dissecting-table, with its sick effluvia, during so +prolonged a demonstration.</p> +<p>"Mr Sludge the Medium" is not a mere attack on +spiritualism; it is a dramatic scene in the history of a +soul; and Browning, with his democratic feeling in +things of the mind, held that every soul however mean +is worth understanding. If the poem is a satire, it is +so only in a way that is inevitable. Browning's desire +is to be absolutely just, but sometimes truth itself +becomes perforce a satire. He takes an impostor at +the moment of extreme disadvantage; the "medium" +is caught in the very act of cheating; he will make a +clean breast of it; and his confession is made as nearly +as possible a vindication. The most contemptible of +creatures, in desperate straits, makes excellent play +with targe and dagger; the poetry of the piece is to +be found in the lithe attitudes, absolutely the best +possible under the circumstances, by which he maintains +both defence and attack. Half of the long <i>apologia</i> is +a criticism not of those who feast fools in their folly, +but of the fools who require a caterer for the feast; it +is a study of the methods by which dupes solicit and +educate a knave. The other half is Sludge's plea that, +knave though he be, he is not wholly knave; and +Browning, while absolutely rejecting the doctrine of so called +spiritualism, is prepared to admit that in the +composition of a Sludge there enters a certain portion +of truth, low in degree, perverted in kind, inoperative +to the ends of truth, yet a fragment of that without +<a name="Page_163"></a>which life itself were impossible even for the +meanest +organism in the shape of man.</p> +<p>Cowardly, cunning, insolent, greedy, effeminately +sensual, playing upon the vanity of his patrons, +playing upon their vulgar sentimentality, playing upon +their vulgar pietisms and their vulgar materialism, +Sludge after all is less the wronger than the wronged. +Who made him what he is? Who, keen and clear-sighted +enough in fields which they had not selected +as their special parade-ground for self-conceit, trained +him on to knavery and self-degradation? Who helped +him through his blunders with ingenious excuses—"the +manifestations are at first so weak"; or "Sludge is +himself disturbed by the strange phenomena"; or "a +doubter is in the company, and the spirits have grown +confused in their communications"? Who proceeded +to exhibit him as a lawful prize and possession, +staking their vanity on the success of his imposture? +Who awakened in him the artist's joy in rare invention? +Who urged him forward from modest to magnificent +lies? Who fed and flattered him? What ladies +bestowed their soft caresses on Sludge? And now +and again in his course of fraud did he not turn a +wistful eye towards any reckless tatterdemalion, if only +the vagrant lived in freedom and in truth?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>It's too bad, I say,<br /> +</span><span>Ruining a soul so!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And in the midst of gulls who persistently refuse +to be undeceived cheating is so "cruel easy." The +difficulty is rather that the cheating, even when +acknowledged, should ever be credited for what it +is. The medium has confessed! Yes, and to cheat +<a name="Page_164"></a>may be part of the medium nature; none the less +he +has the medium's gift of acting as a conductor between +the visible and the invisible worlds. Has he not told +secrets of the lives of his wondering clients which could +not have been known by natural means? And Sludge +chuckles "could not?"—could not be known by him +who in his seeming passivity is alive at every nerve with +the instinct of the detective, by him whose trade was</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Throwing thus<br /> +</span><span>His sense out, like an ant-eater's long tongue,<br /> +</span><span>Soft, innocent, warm, moist, impassible,<br /> +</span><span>And when 'twas crusted o'er with creatures—slick,<br /> +</span><span>Their juice enriched his palate. "Could not Sludge!"<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Haunters of the séance of every species are his +aiders and abettors—the unbeliever, whom believers +overwhelm or bribe to acquiescence, the fair votaries +who find prurient suggestions characteristic of the +genuine medium, the lover of the lie through the +natural love of it, the amateur, incapable of a real +conviction, who plays safely with superstition, the +literary man who welcomes a new flavour for the +narrative or the novel, the philosophic diner-out, who +wants the chopping-block of a disputable doctrine on +which to try the edge of his faculty. Is it his part, +Sludge asks indignantly, to be grateful to the patrons +who have corrupted and debased him?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Gratitude to these?<br /> +</span><span>The gratitude, forsooth, of a prostitute<br /> +</span><span>To the greenhorn and the bully.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The truculence of Sludge is not without warrant; +it is indeed no other than the truculence of Robert +Browning, "shaking his mane," as Dante Rossetti +<a name="Page_165"></a>described him in his outbreaks against the +spiritualists, +"with occasional foamings at the mouth."<a name="FNanchor_56"></a><a + href="#Footnote_56"><sup>[56]</sup></a></p> +<p>Where then is the little grain of truth which has +vitality amid the putrefaction of Sludge's nature? +Liar and cheat as he is, he cannot be sure "but there +was something in it, tricks and all." The spiritual +world, he feels, is as real as the material world; the +supernatural interpenetrates the natural at every point; +in little things, as in great things, God is present. +Sludge is aware of the invisible powers at every nerve:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I guess what's going on outside the veil,<br /> +</span><span>Just as the prisoned crane feels pairing-time<br /> +</span><span>In the islands where his kind are, so must fall<br /> +</span><span>To capering by himself some shiny night<br /> +</span><span>As if your back yard were a plot of spice.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>He cheats; yes, but he also apprehends a truth which +the world is blind to. Or, after all, is this cheating +when every lie is quick with a germ of truth? +Is not such lying as this a self-desecration, +if you will; but still more a strange, sweet self-sacrifice +in the service of truth? At the lowest is +it not required by the very conditions of our poor +mortal life, which remains so sorry a thing, so imperfect, +so unendurable until it is brought into fruitful +connection with a future existence? This world +of ours is a cruel, blundering, unintelligible world; +but let it be pervaded by an influx from the next +world, how quickly it rights itself! how intelligible +it all grows! And is the faculty of imagination, the +faculty which discovers the things of the spirit—put +to his own uses by the poet and even the historian—is +<a name="Page_166"></a>this a power which cheats its possessor, or +cheats +those for whose advantage he gives it play?</p> +<p>Browning's design is to exhibit even in this Sludge +the rudiments—coarse, perverted, abnormally directed +and ineffective for moral good—of that sublime +spiritual wisdom, which, turned to its proper ends +and aided by the highest intellectual powers, is +present—to take a lofty exemplar—in his Pope of +<i>The Ring and the Book</i>. It is not through spiritualism +so-called that Sludge has received his little grain of +truth; that has only darkened the glimmer of true +light which was in him. Yet liar and cheat and coward, +he is saved from a purely phantasmal existence by +this fibre of reality which was part of his original +structure. The epilogue—Sludge's outbreak against +his corrupter and tormentor—stands as evidence of +the fact that no purifying, no cleansing, no really +illuminating power remains in what is now only a +putrescent luminosity within him. His rage is natural +and dramatically true; a noble rage would be to his +honour. This is a base and poisonous passion with +no virtue in it, and the passion, flaring for a moment, +sinks idly into as base a fingering of Sludge's +disgraceful gains.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img006"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 741px;" + alt="THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS STAYED." + title="THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS STAYED." + src="images/img006.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS +STAYED.</h5> +<h5><i>From a photograph.</i></h5> +<p>The summer and early autumn of 1853 were +spent by Browning and his wife, as they had spent +the same season four years previously, at the Baths +of Lucca. Their house among the hills was shut in +by a row of plane-trees in which by day the cicale +were shrill; at evening fireflies lit up their garden. +The green rushing river—"a flashing scimitar that +cuts through the mountain"—the chestnut woods, +the sheep-walks, "the villages on the peaks of the +<a name="Page_167"></a>mountains like wild eagles," renewed their +former +delights.</p> +<p>On the longer excursions Browning slackened his +footsteps to keep pace with his wife's donkey; basins +of strawberries and cream refreshed the wanderers +after their exertion. "Oh those jagged mountains," +exclaims Mrs Browning, "rolled together like pre-Adamite +beasts, and setting their teeth against the +sky.... You may as well guess at a lion by a +lady's lap-dog as at Nature by what you see in +England. All honour to England, lanes and meadowland, +notwithstanding. To the great trees above all." +The sculptor Story and his family, whose acquaintance +they had made in Florence before Casa Guidi +had become their home, were their neighbours +at the Baths, and Robert Lytton was for a time +their guest. Browning worked at his <i>Men and Women</i>, +of which his wife was able to report in the autumn +that it was in an advanced state. <i>In a Balcony</i> was +the most important achievement of the summer. +"The scene of the declaration in <i>By the Fireside</i>" +Mrs Orr informs us, "was laid in a little adjacent +mountain-gorge to which Browning walked or rode."</p> +<p>Only a few weeks were given to Florence. In +perfect autumnal weather the occupants of Casa Guidi +started for Rome. The delightful journey occupied +eight days, and on the way the church of Assisi was +seen, and the falls of Terni—"that passion of the +waters,"—so Mrs Browning describes it, "which makes +the human heart seem so still." They entered Rome +in a radiant mood.—"Robert and Penini singing." +An apartment had been taken for them by their +friends the Storys in the Via Bocca di Leone, and +<a name="Page_168"></a>all was bright, warm, and full of comfort. Next +morning a shadow fell upon their happiness—the +Storys' little boy was seized with convulsions; in the +evening he was dead.<a name="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57"><sup>[57]</sup></a> +A second child—a girl—was +taken ill in the Brownings' house, and could not be +moved from where she lay in a room below their +apartment. Mrs Browning was in a panic for her +own boy, though his apple-red cheeks spoke of health. +Rome, for a time, was darkened with grief and +anxiety; nor did the city itself impress her as she +had expected: "It's a palimpsest Rome," she writes, +"a watering-place written over the antique." The +chief gains of these Roman months were those of +friendship and pleasant acquaintances added to those +already given by Italy. In rooms under those +occupied by the Brownings was Page the American +artist, who painted in colours then regarded as +"Venetian," now almost darkened out of existence, +as a gift for Mrs Browning, the portrait of Robert +Browning exhibited in the Royal Academy of +1856. Browning himself wrote to Story with enthusiasm +of Page's work. "I am much disappointed +in it," wrote Dante Rossetti to Allingham, "and shall +advise its non-exhibition." A second portrait painted +at this time—that by Fisher—is familiar to us through +a reproduction in the second volume of <i>The Letters of +Mrs Browning</i>. A rash act of the morning of the day +on which he entered Rome had deplorably altered +Browning's appearance. In what his wife calls a fit +of suicidal impatience, he perpetrated the high crime +and misdemeanour, and appeared before her wholly +<a name="Page_169"></a>unworthy of portraiture with clean-shaven cheeks +and chin. "I cried when I saw him," she tells his +sister, "I was so horror-struck." To mark the sin, +his beard, when once again he recovered his good +looks, was gray, but Mrs Browning cherished the +opinion that the argentine touch, as she terms it, gave +"a character of elevation and thought to his whole +physiognomy." To complete this history, it may be +added that in 1859 the moustache of his later portraits +was first doubtfully permitted and was presently +approved with decision as picturesque.<a name="FNanchor_58"></a><a + href="#Footnote_58"><sup>[58]</sup></a></p> +<p>Under all disadvantages of appearance Browning +made his way triumphantly in the English and +American society of Rome. The studios were open +to him. In Gibson's he saw the tinted Venus—"rather +a grisette than a goddess," pronounced Mrs +Browning. Harriet Hosmer, the young American +sculptress, working with true independence, high aims +and right woman's manliness, was both admired and +loved. Thackeray, with his daughters, called at the +apartment in the Bocca di Leone, bringing small-talk +in "handfuls of glittering dust swept out of salons." +Lockhart, snow-white in aspect, snow-cold in manner, +gave Browning emphatic commendation, though of a +negative kind—"He isn't at all," declared Lockhart, +"like a damned literary man." But of many interesting +acquaintances perhaps the most highly valued +were Fanny Kemble and her sister Adelaide Sartoris—Fanny +Kemble magnificent, "with her black hair +and radiant smile," her sympathetic voice, "her eyes and +eyelids full of utterance"—a very noble creature indeed; +Mrs Sartoris, genial and generous, more tolerant +<a name="Page_170"></a>than Fanny of Mrs Browning's wayward +enthusiasms, +eloquent in talk and passionate in song. "The +Kembles," writes Mrs Browning, "were our gain in +Rome."</p> +<p>Towards the end of May 1854 farewells were said, +and the Brownings returned from Rome, to Florence +by vettura. They had hoped to visit England, or +if this should prove impracticable, to take shelter +among the mountains from the summer heat. But +needful coin on which they had reckoned did not +arrive; and they resolved in prudence to sit still at +Florence and eat their bread and macaroni as poor +sensible folk should do. And Florence looked more +beautiful than ever after Rome; the nightingales sang +around the olive-trees and vineyards, not only by +starlight and fire-fly-light but in the daytime. "I +love the very stones of Florence," exclaims Mrs +Browning. Her friend Miss Mitford, now in England, +and sadly failing in health, hinted at a loan of money; +but the answer was a prompt, "Oh no! My husband +has a family likeness to Lucifer in being proud." +There followed a tranquil and a happy time, and both +<i>Men and Women</i> and <i>Aurora Leigh</i> maintained in the +writers a deep inward excitement of the kind that +leaves an enduring result. A little joint publication; +<i>Two Poems by E.B.B. and R.B</i>., containing <i>A Plea +for the Ragged Schools of London</i> and <i>The Twins</i>, was +sold at Miss Arabella Barrett's Ragged School bazaar +in 1854. It is now a waif of literature which collectors +prize. There is special significance in the <i>Date</i> and +<i>Dabitur</i>, the twins of Browning's poem, when we +bear in mind the occasion with which it was originally +connected.</p> +<p><a name="Page_171"></a>In the early weeks of 1855 Mrs Browning was +seriously ill; through feverish nights of coughing, she +had in her husband a devoted nurse. His sleepless +hours were troubled not only by anxiety on her +account but by a passionate interest in the heroisms +and miseries, of his fellow countrymen during the +Crimean winter: "when he is mild <i>he</i> wishes the +ministry to be torn to pieces in the streets, limb from +limb." Gradually his wife regained health, but she had +not long recovered when tidings of the death of Miss +Mitford came to sadden her. Not until April did she +feel once more a leap into life. Browning was now +actively at work in anticipation of printing his new +volumes during the approaching visit to England. +"He is four hours a day," his wife tells a correspondent, +"engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who transcribes +for him." And a little later she reports that +they will take to England between them some sixteen +thousand lines of verse, "eight on one side, eight on +the other," her husband's total being already completed, +her own still short of the sum by a thousand lines. +Allowance, as she pleads, had to be made for time +spent in seeing that "Penini's little trousers are +creditably frilled and tucked." On the whole, notwithstanding +illness and wrath directed against English +ministerial blunders, this year of life in Florence had +been rich in happiness—a "still dream-life, where if +one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the walls +and the pre-Giotto pictures ... surround us, ready +to quiet us again."<a name="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59"><sup>[59]</sup></a> +London lodgings did not look +inviting from the distance of Italy; but the summons +north was a summons to work, and could not be set aside.</p> +<p><a name="Page_172"></a>The midsummer of 1855 found Browning and his +wife in 13 Dorset Street, London, and Browning's +sister was with them. The faithful Wilson, Mrs +Browning's maid, had married a Florentine, Ferdinando +Romagnoli, and the husband also was now in their +service. The weeks until mid-October were occupied +with social pleasures and close proof-reading of the +sheets of <i>Men and Women</i><a name="FNanchor_60"></a><a + href="#Footnote_60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> Browning took his young +friend the artist Leighton to visit Ruskin, and was +graciously received. Carlyle was, as formerly, "in +great force, particularly in the damnatory clauses." +But the weather was drooping, the skies misty, the +air oppressive, and Mrs Browning, apart from these, +had special causes of depression. Her married sister +Henrietta was away in Taunton, and the cost of travel +prevented the sisters from meeting. Arabella Barrett—"my +one light in London" is Mrs Browning's +word—was too soon obliged to depart to Eastbourne. +And the Barrett household was disturbed by the undutifulness +of a son who had been guilty of the unpardonable +crime of marriage, and in consequence was +now exiled from Wimpole Street. In body and soul +Mrs Browning felt strong yearnings for the calm of +Casa Guidi.</p> +<p>The year 1855 was a fortunate year for English +poetry. <i>Men and Women</i> was published in the +autumn; the beautiful epilogue, addressed to E.B.B., +"There they are, my fifty men and women," was +written in Dorset Street. Tennyson's <i>Maud</i> had preceded +Browning's volumes by some months. It bewildered +the critics, but his brother poet did justice to +<a name="Page_173"></a>Tennyson's passionate sequence of dramatic +lyrics. +And though London in mid-autumn had emptied +itself Tennyson happened for a few days to be in +town. Two evenings he gave to the Brownings, "dined +with us," writes Mrs Browning, "smoked with us, +opened his heart to us (and the second bottle of port), +and ended by reading <i>Maud</i> through from end to end, +and going away at half-past two in the morning." +His delightful frankness and simplicity charmed his +hostess. "Think of his stopping in <i>Maud</i>," she goes +on, "every now and then—'There's a wonderful +touch! That's very tender! How beautiful that is!' +Yes and it <i>was</i> wonderful, tender, beautiful, and he +read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather music +than speech."</p> +<p>One of the few persons who were invited to meet +Tennyson on this occasion, Mr W.M. Rossetti, is still +living, and his record of that memorable evening +ought not to be omitted. "The audience was a +small one, the privilege accorded to each individual all +the higher: Mr and Mrs Browning, Miss Browning, +my brother, and myself, and I think there was one +more—either Madox Brown or else [Holman] Hunt +or Woolner ... Tennyson, seated on a sofa in a +characteristic attitude, and holding the volume near +his eyes ... read <i>Maud</i> right through. My brother +made two pen-and-ink sketches of him, and gave one +of them to Browning. So far as I remember, the +Poet-Laureate neither saw what Dante was doing, +nor knew of it afterwards. His deep grand voice, +with slightly chaunting intonation, was a noble vehicle +for the perusal of mighty verse. On it rolled, sonorous +and emotional. Dante Rossetti, according to Mr Hall +<a name="Page_174"></a>Caine, spoke of the incident in these terms: 'I +once +heard Tennyson read <i>Maud</i>; and, whilst the fiery +passages were delivered with a voice and vehemence +which he alone of living men can compass, the softer +passages and the songs made the tears course down +his cheeks.' ... After Tennyson and <i>Maud</i> came +Browning and <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>—read with as much +sprightly variation as there was in Tennyson of +sustained continuity. Truly a night of the gods, not +to be remembered without pride and pang."<a name="FNanchor_61"></a><a + href="#Footnote_61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> A +quotation from a letter of Dante Rossetti to Allingham +gives praise to Mrs Browning of a kind which resembles +Lockhart's commendation of her husband: "What a +delightful unliterary person Mrs Browning is to meet! +During two evenings when Tennyson was at their +house in London, Mrs Browning left Tennyson with +her husband and William and me (who were the +fortunate remnant of the male party) to discuss the +universe, and gave all her attention to some certainly +not very exciting ladies in the next room."<a name="FNanchor_62"></a><a + href="#Footnote_62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> Without +detracting from Mrs Browning's "unliterary" merits, +one may conjecture that the ladies who proved unexciting +to Rossetti were Arabella Barrett and +Sarianna Browning.</p> +<p><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48">[48]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Browning's Essay on Shelley was reprinted by Dr Furnivall in +"The +Browning Society's Papers," 1881-84, Part I.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_49"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_49">[49]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of E.B.B. ii. 284. On Milsand, the article "A French +friend +of Browning," by Th. Bentzon, is valuable and interesting.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_50"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_50">[50]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Orr says that Browning always thought Mrs Carlyle "a hard +and unlovable woman"; she adds, "I believe little liking was lost +between them." Mrs Ritchie, in her "Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, +and Browning" (pp. 250, 251), tells with spirit the story of Browning +and +Mrs Carlyle's kettle, which, on being told to "put it down," in an +absent +mood he planted upon her new carpet. "Ye should have been more +explicit," said Carlyle to his wife.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_51"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_51">[51]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See Letters of E.B.B. ii. 127.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_52"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_52">[52]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of E.B.B. ii. 99.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_53"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_53">[53]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letter of F. Tennyson, in Memoir of Alfred Tennyson, by his +son, +chapter xviii.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_54"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_54">[54]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mr Kenyon's note, vol. ii. 142 of Letters of E.B.B.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_55"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_55">[55]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Times Lit. Supplement</i>, Dec. 5, 1902.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_56"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_56">[56]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Miss Cobbe's testimony is similar, and Lehmann says that at +Home's +name Browning would grow pale with passion.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_57"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_57">[57]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See "Story and his Friends," by Henry James, 1903, vol. i. pp. +284, +285.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_58"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_58">[58]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of E.B.B., ii. 345.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_59"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_59">[59]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> E.B.B. to Ruskin, <i>Letters</i>, ii. 199.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_60"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_60">[60]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Which, however, did not prevent certain errors noted in a +letter of +Browning to Dante Rossetti.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_61"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_61">[61]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His "Family Letters," i. 190, 191.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_62"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_62">[62]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of D.G. Rossetti to William Allingham, 162. See Mrs +Browning's letter to Mrs Tennyson in Memoir of Tennyson by his son, +I vol. edition, p. 329.</p> +</div> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img007"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 839px;" alt="PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI." + title="PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI." src="images/img007.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI.</h5> +<h5><i>By himself. A detail from the fresco in the Cathedral at Praia +from a photograph by</i> ALINARI.</h5> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_IX"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_175"></a>Chapter IX</h2> +<h2>Men and Women</h2> +<br /> +<p>Rossetti expresses his first enthusiasm about <i>Men +and Women</i> in a word when he calls the poems "my +Elixir of Life." To Ruskin these, with other pieces +which he now read for the first time, were as he +declared in a rebellious mood, a mass of conundrums. +"He compelled me," Rossetti adds, "to sit down +before him and lay siege for one whole night; the +result of which was that he sent me next morning a +bulky letter to be forwarded to Browning, in which I +trust he told him he was the greatest man since +Shakespeare." The poems of the two new volumes +were the gradual growth of a considerable number of +years; since 1845 their author had published no +group of short poems, and now, at the age of forty-three, +he had attained the fulness of intellectual and +imaginative power, varied experience of life and +the artistic culture of Italy. The <i>Dramatis Personae</i> +of 1864 exhibits no decline from the high level +reached in the volumes of 1855; but is there any +later volume of miscellaneous poetry by Browning +which, taken as a whole, approaches in excellence the +collections of 1855 and 1864?</p> +<p>There is no need now to "lay siege" to the poems +of <i>Men and Women</i>; they have expounded themselves, +<a name="Page_176"></a>if ever they needed exposition; and the truth is +that +they are by no means nut-shells into which mottoes +meant for the construing of the intellect have been +inserted, but fruits rich in colour and perfume, a feast +for the imagination, the passions, the spirit in sense, +and also for the faculty of thought which lives in the +heart of these. If a criticism or a doctrine of life lies +in them—and that it should do so means that the +poet's total mind has been taken up into his art—Browning +conveys his doctrine not as such but as an +enthusiasm of living; his generalized truth saturates a +medium of passion and of beauty. In the Prologue +to <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> he compares the joy of poetry to +a swimmer's joy in the sea: the vigour that such +disport in sun and sea communicates is the vigour of +joyous play; afterwards, if we please, we can ascertain +the constituents of sea-water by a chemical analysis; +but the analysis will not convey to us the sensations +of the sunshine and the dancing brine. One of the +blank-verse pieces of <i>Men and Women</i> rebukes a +youthful poet of the transcendental school whose +ambition is to set forth "stark-naked thought" in +poetry. Why take the harp to his breast "only to +speak dry words across the strings"? Better hollo +abstract ideas through the six-foot Alpine horn of +prose. Boys may desire the interpretation into bare +ideas of those thronging objects which obsess their +senses and their feelings; men need art for the delight +of it, and the strength which comes through delight. +Better than the meaning of a rose is the rose itself +with its spirit enveloped in colour and perfume. And +so the poet for men will resemble that old mage John +of Halberstadt:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_177"></a><span>He with a 'look you!' +vents a brace of rhymes,<br /> +</span><span>And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,<br /> +</span><span>Over us, under, round us every side,<br /> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><br /> +<br /> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>Buries us with a glory, young once more,<br /> +</span><span>Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Browning in <i>Men and Women</i> is in truth a John of +Halberstadt; he enriches life with colour, warmth, +music, romance, not dissociated from thought and intellectual +energy, rather possessing and being possessed +by these. Not a single poem is "stark-naked +thought"; not a single poem is addressed solely to +the intellect; even <i>Bishop Blougram</i> is rather a +presentation of character than a train of argument or +a chain of ideas.</p> +<p>In few of these poems does Browning speak in his +own person; the verses addressed to his wife, which +present her with "his fifty men and women" and tell +of mysteries of love that can never be told, the lines, +<i>Memorabilia</i>, addressed to one who had seen Shelley, +and <i>Old Pictures in Florence</i>, are perhaps the only +exceptions to the dramatic character of the contents +of the two volumes. Yet through them all Browning's +mind is clearly discernible; and even his central +convictions, his working creed of life, can with no +sense of uncertainty be gathered from them. To +attribute to the writer the opinions and the feelings of +his <i>dramatis personae</i> would of course be the crudest of +mistakes. But when an idea persists through many +poems written at various times and seasons, when it +appears and reappears under various clothings of +circumstance, when it is employed as if it had a +crucial value, when it becomes a test or touchstone of +character, we cannot doubt that it is an intimate +<a name="Page_178"></a>possession of the writer's mind. Such an idea is +not +a mere playmate but rather a confidant. When, +again, after a tangle of casuistic reasoning or an embroilment +of contending feelings, some idea suddenly +flashes forth, and like a sword sunders truth from +falsehood and darkness from light, we may be assured +that it has more than a dramatic value. And, once +more, if again and again the same idea shows its power +over the feelings and inspires elevated lyrical utterance, +or if in pieces of casuistical brain-work it enters as a +passionate element and domineers by its own authority, +if it originates not debate but song or that from which +song is made, we know that the writer's heart has +embraced it as a truth of the emotions.</p> +<p>Because Browning had his own well-defined view of +truth, he could confidently lend his mind away to his +fifty or his hundred men and women. They served to +give his ideas a concrete body. By sympathy and by +intelligence he widened the basis of his own existence. +If the poet loses himself to find himself again through +sympathy with external nature, how much more and +in how many enriching ways through sympathy with +humanity! Thus new combinations of thought and +feeling are effected. Thus a kind of experiment is +made with our own ideas by watching how they behave +when brought into connection with these new combinations. +Truth is relative, and the best truth of our own +is worth testing under various conditions and circumstances. +The truth or falsehood which is not our own +has a right to say the best for itself that can be said. +Let truth and falsehood grapple. Let us hear the +counter-truth or the rival falsehood which is the +complement or the criticism of our own, and hear it +<a name="Page_179"></a>stated with the utmost skill. A Luther would +surely +be the wiser for an evening spent in company with a +Blougram; and Blougram has things to tell us which +Luther never knew. But precisely because truth is +relative we must finally adhere to our own perceptions; +they constitute the light for us; and the justice +we would do to others we must also render to ourselves. +A wide survey may be made from a fixed +centre. "Universal sympathies," Miss Barrett wrote +in one of the letters to her future husband, "cannot +make a man inconsistent, but on the contrary sublimely +consistent. A church tower may stand between the +mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand +fast: but the willow tree at the gable-end blown now +toward the north and now toward the south, while its +natural leaning is due east or west, is different altogether +... <i>as</i> different as a willow tree from a +church tower."<a name="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63"><sup>[63]</sup></a></p> +<p>The fifty poems of <i>Men and Women</i>, with a few +exceptions, fall into three principal groups—those +which interpret various careers or moods or moments +of love; those which deal with the fine arts—painting, +poetry, music—and with these we may class, as +kindred in spirit, that poem which has for its subject +the passionate pursuit of knowledge, <i>A Grammarian's +Funeral</i>; and thirdly, those which are connected with +religious thought and feeling, or present scenes from +the history of religions. Two poems may be called +descriptive; both are Italian; both are founded upon +a rivalry of contrasts, but one, <i>Up at a Villa—Down +in the City</i>, is made up of humorous observations of +Italian city and country life, expressing the mundane +<a name="Page_180"></a>tastes and prudent economies of an Italian +person of +quality; the other, "<i>De Gustibus</i>—," which contrasts +the happy quietudes of English landscape with the +passionate landscape of the South, has romance at the +heart of its realism and an ardour of sentiment underlying +its pictorial vividness. <i>The Patriot</i> is again +Italian, suggested perhaps by the swift revolutions and +restorations which Browning had witnessed in Florence, +and again it uses with striking effect the principle of +contrast; the patriot who a year ago had his intoxicating +triumph is now on his way to the scaffold. His +year's toil for the good of his people has turned into a +year's misdeeds, his life is a failure; but Browning +characteristically wrings a victory out of defeat; the +crowd at the shambles' gate may hoot; it is better so, +for now the martyr can throw himself upon God, the +Paymaster of all his labourers at the close of day. +The most remarkable of these poems, which refuse to +take their places in a group, is that forlorn romance of +weary and depressed heroism, <i>Childe Roland to the +Dark Tower came</i>. It is in the main a fantaisie of +description; but involved with the descriptive study +is a romantic motive. The external suggestions for +the poem were no more than the words from <i>King +Lear</i> which form the title, a tower seen in the Carrara +mountains, a painting seen in Paris, and the figure of +a horse in the tapestry of the drawing-room of Casa +Guidi.<a name="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64"><sup>[64]</sup></a> +In his own mind Browning may have put +the question: Of all the feats of knight-errantry which +is the hardest? Not to combat with dragons, or +robbers, or salvage men; not to bear down rival +<a name="Page_181"></a>champions in a rapture of battle. Not these, but +to +cling to a purpose amid all that depresses the senses +at a time when the heart within us is also failing; to +advance where there is nothing to arouse energy by +opposition, and everything without and within to sap +the very life of the soul. Childe Roland is himself +hopeless and almost heartless; the plain to which the +leering cripple had pointed and over which he rides +is created in the utter indigence of nature—a very +nightmare of poverty and mean repulsiveness. And +yet he endures the test, and halts only when he faces +the Dark Tower and blows the blast upon his horn. +Browning was wise to carry his romance no further; +the one moment of action is enough; it is the breaking +of the spell, the waking from the nightmare, and +at that point the long-enduring quester may be left. +We are defrauded of nothing by the abrupt conclusion.</p> +<p>In the poems which treat of the love of man and +woman Browning regards the union of soul with soul +as the capital achievement of life, and also as affording +one of its chief tests. When we have formed these +into a group we perceive that the group falls in the +main into two divisions—poems which tell of attainment, +and poems which tell of failure or defeat. +Certain persons whose centre is a little hard kernel +of egoism may be wholly disqualified for the test +created by a generous passion. Browning does not +belabour with heavy invective the <i>Pretty Woman</i> of +his poem, who is born without a heart; she is a +flower-like creature and of her kind is perfect; only +the flower is to be gazed at, not gathered; or, if it +must be gathered, then at last to be thrown away. +The chief distinction between the love of man and +<a name="Page_182"></a>the love of woman, implied in various poems, is +this—the man at his most blissful moment cries +"What treasures I have obtained!" the woman cries +"What treasures have I to surrender and bestow?" +Hence the singleness and finality in the election of +passion made by a woman as compared with a man's +acquisitiveness of delight. The unequal exchange of +a transitory for an enduring surrender of self is the +sorrow which pulsates through the lines of <i>In a Year</i>, as +swift and broken with pauses as the beating of a heart:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Dear, the pang is brief,<br /> +</span><span>Do thy part,<br /> +</span><span>Have thy pleasure! How perplexed<br /> +</span><span>Grows belief!<br /> +</span><span>Well, this cold clay clod<br /> +</span><span>Was man's heart:<br /> +</span><span>Crumble it and what comes next?<br /> +</span><span>Is it God?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And with no chilling of love on the man's part, this +is the point of central pain, in that poem of exquisite +and pathetic distrust at the heart of trust and admiration, +<i>Any Wife to any Husband</i>; noble and faithful as +the husband has been, still he is only a man. But +elsewhere Browning does justice to the pure chivalry +of a man's devotion. Caponsacchi's joy is the joy of a +saviour who himself is saved; the great event of his +life by which he is lifted above self is single and +ultimate; his soul is delivered from careless egoism +once and for ever; the grace of love is here what the +theologians called invincible grace, and invincible +grace, we know, results in final perseverance. Even +here in <i>Men and Women</i> two contrasted poems assure +us that, while the passion of a man may be no more +<a name="Page_183"></a>than <i>Love in a Life</i>, it may also be an +unweariable +<i>Life in a Love</i>.</p> +<p>Of the poems of attainment one—<i>Respectability</i>—has +the spirit of youth and gaiety in it. Here love makes +its gallant bid for freedom, fires up for lawlessness, if +need be, and at least sets convention at defiance:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The world's good word!—the Institute!<br /> +</span><span>Guizot receives Montalembert!<br /> +</span><span>Eh? Down the court three lampions flare:<br /> +</span><span>Set forward your best foot!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But, after all, this love may be no more than an +adventure of the boulevard and the attic in the manner +of Béranger's gay Bohemianism. The distance is wide +between such élan of youthful passion and the fidelity +which is inevitable, and on which age has set its seal, +in that poem of perfect attainment, <i>By the Fireside</i>. +This is the love which completes the individual life +and at the same time incorporates it with the life +of humanity, which unites as one the past and the +present, and which, owing no allegiance of a servile +kind to time, becomes a pledge for futurity. +Browning's personal experience is here taken up +into his imagination and transfigured, but its substance +remains what it had been in literal fact.</p> +<p>The poems of failure are more numerous, and they +range through various degrees and kinds of failure. +It is not death which can bring the sense of failure to +love. In <i>Evelyn Hope</i> all the passion has been on the +man's side; all possibilities of love in the virginal +heart of the dead girl, all her warmth and sweetness, +had been folded in the bud. But death, in the mood +of infinite tenderness and unfulfilled aspiration which +the poem expresses, seems no bar to some far-off +<a name="Page_184"></a>attainment, of which the speaker's passion, +breaking +through time, is the assurance, an attainment the +nature of which he cannot divine but which will +surely explain the meaning of things that are now +obscure. Perhaps the saddest and the most hopeless +kind of failure is that in which, to borrow an image +from the old allegory, the arrow of love all but flies to +the mark and yet just misses it. This is the subject +of a poem equally admirable in its descriptive and its +emotional passages, <i>Two in the Campagna</i>. The line +"One near one is too far," might serve as its motto. +Satisfaction is all but reached and never can be +reached. Two hearts touch and never can unite. +One drop of the salt estranging sea is as unplumbed +as the whole ocean. And the only possible end is</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Infinite passion, and the pain<br /> +</span><span>Of finite hearts that yearn.<a name="FNanchor_65"></a><a + href="#Footnote_65"><sup>[65]</sup></a><br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Compared with such a failure as this an offer of love +rejected, rejected with decision but not ungenerously, +may be accounted a success. There is something +tonic to a brave heart in the putting forth of will, even +though it encounter an obstacle which cannot be removed. +Such is the mood which is presented in +<i>One Way of Love</i>; the foiled lover has at least made +his supreme effort; it has been fruitless, but he thinks +with satisfaction that he has played boldly for the +prize, and never can he say that it was not worth +risking all on the bare chance of success:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!<br /> +</span><span>Lose who may—I still can say<br /> +</span><span>Those who win heaven, blest are they!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_185"></a>So, too, in <i>The Last Ride together</i>, +the lover is +defeated but he is not cast down, and he remains +magnanimous throughout the grief of defeat. Who +in this our life—he reflects—statesman or soldier, +sculptor or poet, attains his complete ideal? He has +been granted the grace of one hour by his mistress' +side, and he will carry the grateful recollection of +this with him into the future as his inalienable and +his best possession. With these generous rejections and +magnanimous acceptances of failure stands in contrast +<i>A Serenade at the Villa</i>, where the lover's devotion is +met only by obdurate insensibility or, worse, by an +irritated sense of the persecution and plague of such +love, and where all things seem to conspire to leave +his pain mere pain, bitter and unredeemed.</p> +<p>In these examples, though love has been frustrated +in its aim, the cause of failure did not lie in any +infirmity of the lover's heart or will. But what if the +will itself be supine, what if it dallies and delays, +consults the convenience of occasions, observes the +indications of a shallow prudence, slackens its pace +towards the goal, and meanwhile the passion languishes +and grows pale from day to day, until the day of love +has waned, and the passion dies in a twilight hour +through mere inanition? Such a failure as this seems to +Browning to mean the perishing of a soul, or of more souls +than one. He takes in <i>The Statue and the Bust</i> a case +where the fulfilment of passion would have been a crime. +The lady is a bride of the Riccardi; to win her, now a +wedded wife, would be to violate the law of God and man. +Nevertheless it is her face which has "filled the empty +sheath of a man" with a blade for a knight's adventure—The</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Duke grew straightway brave and wise.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_186"></a>And then follow delays of convenience, +excuses, +postponements, and the Duke's flood of passion +dwindles to a thread, and is lost in the sandy flats +of life:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam<br /> +</span><span>The glory dropped from their youth and love,<br /> +</span><span>And both perceived they had dreamed a dream.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Their end was a crime, but Browning's contention +is that a crime may serve for a test as well as a +virtue; in that test the Duke and the lady had alike +failed through mere languor of soul:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost<br /> +</span><span>Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,<br /> +</span><span>Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Had Tennyson treated the same subject he would +probably have glorified their action as a victorious +obedience to the law of self-reverence and self-control.</p> +<p>The reunion and the severance of lovers are presented +in three poems. Winter, chill without but +warm within, with its pastimes of passion, the energies +of joy breaking forth in play, is contrasted in <i>A Lovers' +Quarrel</i> with springtime, all gladness without and a +strange void and shiver at the heart of things, because +alienation has taken the place of camaraderie between +the lover and his mistress. The mass and intensity +of colour in the stanza which dashes in a sketch of the +Pampas, with its leagues of sunflowers, and a wild +horse, "black neck and eyeballs keen" appearing +through them, almost afflict the reader's sense of sight. +There is a fine irony in the title of the other poem of +contention, <i>A Womans Last Word</i>: In a quarrel a +<a name="Page_187"></a>woman will have the last word, and here it +is—the +need of quietude for a little while that she may recover +from the bewildering stroke of pain, and then +entire oblivion of the wrong with unmeasured self-surrender. +The poem of union, <i>Love among the Ruins</i>, +is constructed in a triple contrast; the endless pastures +prolonged to the edge of sunset, with their infinity of +calm, are contrasted with the vast and magnificent +animation of the city which once occupied the plain +and the mountain slopes. The lover keeps at arm's-length +from his heart and brain what yet fills them all +the while; here in this placid pasture-land is one vivid +point of intensest life; here where once were the +grandeur and tumult of the enormous city is that +which in a moment can abolish for the lover all its +glories and its shames. His eager anticipation of +meeting his beloved, face to face and heart to heart, +is not sung, after the manner of Burns, as a jet of unmingled +joy; he delays his rapture to make its arrival +more entirely rapturous; he uses his imagination to +check and to enhance his passion; and the poem, +though not a simple cry of the heart, is entirely true +as a rendering of emotion which has taken imagination +into its service. In like manner <i>By the Fireside, +A Serenade at the Villa</i>, and <i>Two in the Campagna</i>, +include certain studies of nature and its moods, sometimes +with a curiously minute observation of details; +and these serve as the overture to some intense +moment of joy or pain, or form the orchestration +which sustains or reinforces a human voice.</p> +<p>Of the pieces relating to art those connected with +the art of poetry are the least valuable. <i>Transcendentalism</i> +sets forth the old doctrine that poetry +<a name="Page_188"></a>must be sensuous and passionate, leaving it to +philosophy +to deal with the naked abstractions of the +intellect. <i>How it strikes a Contemporary</i> shows by a +humorous example how a poet's character and private +life may be misconceived and misrepresented by those +among whom he moves. <i>Popularity</i> maintains that +the poet who is in the highest sense original, an +inventor of new things, may be wholly disregarded +for long, while his followers and imitators secure both +the porridge and the praise; one day God's hand, +which holds him, will open and let out all the beauty. +The thought is an obvious one enough, but the image +of the fisher and the murex, in which the thought is +embodied, affords opportunity for stanzas glowing with +colour. Two poems, and each of them a remarkable +poem, are interpretations of music. One, <i>Master +Hugues of Saxe-Gotha</i>, is a singularly successful +<i>tour de force</i>, if it is no more. Poetry inspired by +music is almost invariably the rendering of a sentiment +or a mood which the music is supposed to +express; but here, in dealing with the fugue of his +imaginary German composer, Browning finds his inspiration +not in the sentiment but in the structure +of the composition; he competes, as it were, in +language with the art or science of the contrapuntist, +and evolves an idea of his own from its complexity +and elaboration. The poem of Italian music, <i>A +Toccata of Galuppi's</i>, wholly subordinates the science +to the sentiment of the piece. It is steeped in the +melancholy of pleasure; Venice of the eighteenth +century lives before us with its mundane joys, its +transitory passions, its voluptuous hours; and in the +midst of its warmth and colour a chill creeps upon +<a name="Page_189"></a>our senses and we shiver. Browning's artistic +self-restraint +is admirable; he has his own truth to utter +aloud if he should please; but here he will not play +the prophet; the life of eighteenth-century Venice is +dust and ashes; the poet will say not a word more +than the musician has said in his toccata; the ruthlessness +of time and death make him a little remorseful; +it is enough, and too much, that through this +music of the hours of love and pleasure we should +hear, as it were, the fall of the clay upon a coffin-lid.</p> +<p>Shelley was more impressed by the sculpture than +the paintings of Italy. There are few evidences of +the influence of the most ideal of the arts that appeal +to the mind through the eye in Browning's poetry; +and his sympathies would be more apt to respond to +such work as Michael Angelo's, which sends the +spectator beyond itself, than to the classical work +which has the absoluteness and the calm of attained +perfection.<a name="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66"><sup>[66]</sup></a> +The sensuous and the spiritual qualities +of colour were vividly felt by him; a yellowing old +marble seemed perhaps to impose itself with a cold +authority upon the imagination. But the suggestion +of two portrait busts of the period of classical decadence, +one in marble representing a boy, and the +other the powerful head of a man in granite, gave +rise to <i>Protus</i>, one of the few flawless poems of +Browning. His mastery over the rhymed couplet is +nowhere seen to greater advantage, unless it be in +a few passages of <i>Sordello</i>. The poem is, however, +more a page from history than a study in the fine arts; +and Browning's imagination has made it a page which +lives in our memory through a pathos veiled under +<a name="Page_190"></a>strong objective touches, never protruding +itself sentimentally +in quest of tenderness or pity.</p> +<p>"I spent some most delightful time," Rossetti wrote +to Allingham shortly after the publication of <i>Men and +Women</i>, "with Browning at Paris, both in the evenings +and at the Louvre, where (and throughout conversation) +I found his knowledge of early Italian art beyond +that of any one I ever met—<i>encyclopedically</i> beyond +that of Ruskin himself." The poem <i>Old Pictures at +Florence</i>, which Rossetti calls "a jolly thing," and +which is that and much more, is full of Browning's +learned enthusiasm for the early Italian painters, and +it gives a reason for the strong attraction which their +adventures after new beauty and passion had for him +as compared with the faultless achievements of classical +sculpture. Greek art, according to Browning, by presenting +unattainable ideals of material and mundane +perfection, taught men to submit. Early Christian art, +even by faultily presenting spiritual ideals, not to be +attained on earth but to be pursued through an immortal +life, taught men to aspire. The aim of these +painters was not to exhibit strength or grace, joy or +grief, rage or love in their complete earthly attainment, +but rather to</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Make new hopes shine through the flesh they +fray,<br /> +</span><span>New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:<br /> +</span><span>To bring the invisible full into play!<br /> +</span><span>Let the visible go to the dogs—what matters?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img008"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 764px;" alt="ANDREA DEL SARTO." + title="ANDREA DEL SARTO." src="images/img008.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>ANDREA DEL SARTO.</h5> +<h5><i>From a print after the portrait by himself in the Uffizi +Gallery, +Florence</i>.</h5> +<p>The prophecy with which the poem concludes, of a +great revival of Italian art consequent on the advent +of political and intellectual liberty, has not obtained +fulfilment in the course of the half century that has +elapsed since it was uttered. Browning's doctrine that +<a name="Page_191"></a>aspiration towards what is higher is more to be +valued +in art than the attainment of what is lower is a leading +motive in the admirable dramatic monologue +placed in the lips of Andrea del Sarto, the faultless +painter. His craftsmanship is unerring; whatever he +imagines he can achieve; nothing in line or in colour is +other than it ought to be; and yet precisely because he +has succeeded, his failure is profound and irretrievable:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,<br /> +</span><span>Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey<br /> +</span><span>Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>He could set right the arm which is wrongly put in +Rafael's work that fronts him; but "all the play, the +insight and the stretch" of Rafael are lacking in his +own faultless lines. He looks back regretfully to his +kingly days at Fontainebleau with the royal Francis, +when what seemed a veritable fire was in his heart. +And he tries to find an excuse for his failure as artist +and as man in the coldness of his beautiful Lucrezia—for +he who has failed in the higher art has also failed +in the higher love—Lucrezia, who values his work +only by the coins it brings in, and who needs those +coins just now for one whose whistle invites her away. +All might be so much better otherwise! Yet otherwise +he cannot choose that it should be; his art must +remain what it is—not golden but silver-grey; and +his Lucrezia may attend to the Cousin's whistle if only +she retains the charm, not to be evaded, of her beauty.<a + name="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67"><sup>[67]</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_192"></a>Browning does not mean that art in its +passionate +pursuit of the highest ends should be indifferent to +the means, or that things spiritual do not require as +adequate a sensuous embodiment as they are capable +of receiving from the painter's brush or the poet's pen. +Were art a mere symbol or suggestion, two bits of +sticks nailed crosswise might claim to be art as +admirable as any. What is the eye for, if not to see +with vivid exactness? what is the hand for, if not to +fashion things as nature made them? It is through +body that we reach after the soul; and the passion +for truth and reality is a passion for the invisible +which is expressed in and through these. Such is the +pleading of Fra Lippo Lippi, the tonsured painter +caught out of bounds, in that poem in which the +dramatic monologue of Browning attains its perfection +of life and energy. Fra Lippo is intoxicated by the +mere forms and colours of things, and he is assured +that these mean intensely and mean well:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The beauty and the wonder and the power,<br /> +</span><span>The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,<br /> +</span><span>Changes, surprises—and God made it all!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>These are the gospel to preach which he girds loin +and lights the lamp, though he may perforce indulge +a patron in shallower pieties of the conventional order, +and though it is not all gospel with him, for now and +again, when the moon shines and girls go skipping +and singing down Florence streets—"Zooks, sir, flesh +and blood, that's all I'm made of!" Fra Lippo with +his outbreaks of frank sensuality is far nearer to +Browning's kingdom of heaven than is the faultless +painter; he presses with ardour towards his proper +goal in art; he has full faith in the ideal, but with him +<a name="Page_193"></a>it is to be sought only through the real; or +rather it +need not be sought at all, for one who captures any +fragment of reality captures also undesignedly and +inevitably its divine significance.<a name="FNanchor_68"></a><a + href="#Footnote_68"><sup>[68]</sup></a></p> +<p>The same doctrine which is applied to art in <i>Old +Pictures in Florence</i>, that high aims, though unattained, +are of more worth than a lower achievement, is applied, +and with a fine lyrical enthusiasm, to the pursuit of +knowledge in <i>A Grammarian's Funeral</i>. The time is +"shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe"; +the place—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>a tall mountain, citied to the top,<br /> +</span><span>Crowded with culture!—<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>is imagined to suit the idea of the poem. The dead +scholar, borne to the summit for burial on the shoulders +of his disciples, had been possessed by the aspiration +of Paracelsus—to know; and, unlike Paracelsus, he +had never sought on earth both to know and to enjoy. +He has been the saint and the martyr of Renaissance +philology. For the genius of such a writer as the +author of <i>Hudibras</i>, with his positive intellect and +dense common sense, there could hardly have been +found a fitter object for mockery than this remorseless +and indefatigable pedant. Browning, through the +singing voices of the dead master's disciples, exalts +him to an eminence of honour and splendid fame. To +a scholar Greek particles may serve as the fittest test +<a name="Page_194"></a>of virtue; this glorious pedant has postponed +life and +the enjoyments of life to future cycles of existence; +here on earth he expends a desperate passion—upon +what? Upon the dryasdust intricacies of grammar; +and it is not as though he had already attained; he +only desperately follows after:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>That low man seeks a little thing to do,<br /> +</span><span>Sees it and does it:<br /> +</span><span>This high man, with a great thing to pursue,<br /> +</span><span>Dies ere he knows it.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But again the grammarian, like the painter, does not +strive after a vague, transcendental ideal; he is not as +one that beateth the air; his quest for knowledge +is definite and positive enough; he throws all care +for infinite things, except the infinite of philological +accuracy, upon God; and the viaticum of his last +moments is one more point of grammar.</p> +<p>Two of the poems of <i>Men and Women</i> are pages +tragic-grotesque and pathetic-grotesque from the history +of religion. In <i>The Heretic s Tragedy</i> John, Master +of the Temple, burns alive in Paris square for his sins +against the faith and Holy Church; the glow of the +blazing larch and pine almost reaches the reader of +the stanzas; the great petals of this red rose of flame +bend towards him; the gust of sulphur offends his +nostrils. And the rage of piety is hotter than the +fire; it is a mingled passion, compounded of delight +in the fierce spectacle, a thrilling ecstacy at the sight +of a fellow-creature tortured, the self-complacency of +conscious orthodoxy, and the horrible zeal of the +Lord's house. Yet though the event is sung by one +of the rejoicing orthodox, somehow we are made to +feel that when John the apostate, bound in the flames +<a name="Page_195"></a>and gagged, prays to Jesus Christ to save him, +that +prayer may have been answered. This passage from +the story of the age of faith was not selected with a +view to please the mediaeval revivalists of the nineteenth +century, but in truth its chief value is not +theological or historical but artistic. <i>Holy Cross Day</i>, +a second fragment from history, does not fall from the +sublime to the ridiculous but rises from the ridiculous +to the sublime. The picture of the close-packed Jews +tumbling or sidling churchwards to hear the Christian +sermon (for He saith "Compel them to come in") and +to partake of heavenly grace has in it something of +Rembrandt united with something of Callot. Such a +crew of devout impostors is at once comic and piteous. +But while they are cared for in the merciful bowels of +the Church, and groan out the expected compunction, +their ancient piety is not extinct; their hearts burn +in them with the memory of Jacob's House and of +Jerusalem. Christ at least was of their kindred, and +if they wronged Him in past time, they will not wrong +Him now by naming these who outrage and insult +them after His name.</p> +<p>The historical distortions of the religion of Christ +do not, however, disturb the faith of Browning in the +Christian revelation of Divine love. In <i>Cleon</i> he exhibits +the failure of Paganism, even in its forms of +highest culture, to solve the riddle of life and to answer +the requirements of the human spirit. All that regal +power liberally and wisely used can confer belongs to +Protus in his Tyranny; all that genius, and learning +and art can confer is the possession of Cleon; and a +profound discouragement has settled down upon the +soul of each. The race progresses from point to point; +<a name="Page_196"></a>self-consciousness is deepened and quickened as +generation succeeds generation; the sympathies of +the individual are multiplied and extended. But he +that increases knowledge, increases sorrow; most progress +is most failure; the soul climbs the heights only +to perish there. Every day the sense of joy grows +more acute; every day the soul grows more enlarged; +and every day the power to put our best +attainments to use diminishes. "And how dieth +the wise man? As the fool. Therefore I hated life; +yea, I hated all my labour that I had taken under the +sun." The poem is, indeed, an Ecclesiastes of pagan +religion. The assurance of extinction is the worm +which gnaws at the heart of the rose:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>It is so horrible<br /> +</span><span>I dare at times imagine to my need<br /> +</span><span>Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,<br /> +</span><span>Unlimited in capability<br /> +</span><span>For joy, as this is in desire for joy.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But this is no better than a dream; Zeus could not +but have revealed it, were it possible. Browning does +not bring his Cleon, as Pater brings his Marius, into +the Christian catacombs, where the image of the +Shepherd bearing his lamb might interpret the mystery +of death, nor to that house of Cecilia where Marius +sees a new joy illuminating every face. Cleon has +heard of Paulus and of Christus, but who can suppose +that a mere barbarian Jew</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Hath access to a secret shut from us?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The doctrine of Christ, preached on the island by +certain slaves, is reported by an intelligent listener to +be one which no sane man can accept. And Cleon +<a name="Page_197"></a>will not squander the time that might be well +employed +in studying the proportions of a man or in combining +the moods of music—the later hours of a philosopher +and a poet—on the futile creed of slaves.</p> +<p>Immortality and Divine love—these were the great +words pronounced by Paul and by Christ. <i>Cleon</i> is the +despairing cry of Pagan culture for the life beyond +the grave which would attune to harmony the dissonances +of earth, and render intelligible its mournful +obscurities. <i>Saul</i>, in the completed form of 1855, and +<i>An Epistle of Karshish</i> are, the one a prophecy, the +other a divination, of the mystery of the love of God +in the life and death of his Son. The culminating +moment in the effort of David by which he rouses to +life the sunken soul of the King, the moment towards +which all others tend, is that in which he finds in his +own nature love as God's ultimate gift, and assured +that in this, as in other gifts, the creature cannot +surpass the Creator, he breaks forth into a prophecy +of God's love made perfect in weakness:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>O Saul, it shall be<br /> +</span><span>A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me<br /> +</span><span>Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like +this hand<br /> +</span><span>Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the +Christ stand!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What follows in the poem is only the awe, the +solemnity of this discovery which has come not through +any processes of reasoning but by a passionate interpretation +of the enthusiasm of love and self-sacrifice +in David's own heart; only this awe, and the seeming +extension of his throbbing emotion and pent knowledge +over the face of external nature, until night passes and +with the dawn earth and heaven resume their wonted +ways. The case of Lazarus as studied by Karshish +<a name="Page_198"></a>the Arabian physician results not in a rapturous +prophecy +like that of David, but in a stupendous conjecture +of the heart which all the scepticism of the +brain of a man of science cannot banish or reduce to +insignificance. The unaccountable fascination of this +case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy, is not to be +resisted; Karshish would write, if he could, of more +important matters than the madman of Bethany; he +would record his discoveries in scalp-disease, describe +the peculiar qualities of Judea's gum-tragacanth, and +disclose the secret of those virtues derived from the +mottled spiders of the tombs. But the face of Lazarus, +patient or joyous, the strange remoteness in his gaze, +his singular valuations of objects and events, his great +ardour, his great calm, his possession of some secret +which gives new meanings to all things, the perfect +logic of his irrationality, his unexampled gentleness +and love—these are memories which the keen-sighted +Arabian physician is unable to put by, so curious, so +attaching a potency lies in the person of this man who +holds that he was dead and rose again, Karshish has +a certain sense of shame that he, a man learned in all +the wisdom of his day, should be so deeply moved. +And yet how the thought of the secret possessed by +this Judean maniac—it is the secret of Jesus—fills +and expands the soul!</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The very God! think, Abib: dost thou think?<br /> +</span><span>So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too—<br /> +</span><span>So through the thunder comes a human voice<br /> +</span><span>Saying "O heart I made, a heart beats here!<br /> +</span><span>Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!<br /> +</span><span>Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,<br /> +</span><span>But love I gave thee, with myself to love,<br /> +</span><span>And thou must love me who have died for thee!"<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_199"></a>Science has at least something to consider in +a +thought so strangely potent.</p> +<p>A nineteenth-century sceptic's exposition of his +Christian faith is the paradoxical subject of <i>Bishop +Blougram's Apology</i>, and it is one which admirably +suited that side of Browning's genius which leaned +towards intellectual casuistry. But the poem is not +only skilful casuistry—and casuistry, let it be remembered, +is not properly the art of defending falsehood +but of determining truth,—it is also a character-study +chosen from the age of doubt; a dramatic monologue +with an appropriate <i>mise en scène</i>; a display of fence +and thrust which as a piece of art and wit rewards an +intelligent spectator. That Cardinal Wiseman sat for +the Bishop's portrait is a matter of little consequence; +the merit of the study is independent of any connection +with an individual; it answers delightfully the cynical—yet +not wholly cynical—question: How, for our +gain in both worlds, can we best economise our scepticism +and make a little belief go far?<a name="FNanchor_69"></a><a + href="#Footnote_69"><sup>[69]</sup></a> The nineteenth +century is not precisely the age of the martyrs, or, if +we are to find them, we must in general turn to politics +and to science; Bishop Blougram does not pique +himself on a genius for martyrdom; if he fights with +beasts, it is on this occasion with a very small one, +a lynx of the literary tribe, and in the arena of his +own dining-room over the after-dinner wine. He is +pre-eminently a man of his time, when the cross and +its doctrine can be comfortably borne; both he and +his table-companion, honoured for this one occasion +only with the episcopal invitation, appreciate the good +<a name="Page_200"></a>things of this world, but the Bishop has a vast +advantage +over the maker of "lively lightsome articles" +for the reviews, and he uses his advantage, it must be +confessed, to the full. We are in company with no +petty man while we read the poem and hear the great +Bishop roll out, with easy affluence, his long crumpled +mind. He is delightfully frank and delightfully +subtle; concealing himself by self-disclosure; opulent +in ideas; shifting the pea of truth dexterously under +the three gilded thimbles; blandly condescending and +amiably contemptuous; a little feline, for he allows +his adversary a moment's freedom to escape and then +pounces upon him with the soft-furred claws; assured +of his superiority in the game, yet using only half his +mind; fencing with one arm pinioned; chess-playing +with a rook and pawn given to his antagonist; or +shall we say chess-playing blindfold and seeing every +piece upon the board? Is <i>Bishop Blougram's Apology</i> +a poem at all? some literary critics may ask. And +the answer is that through it we make acquaintance +with one of Browning's most genial inventions—the +great Bishop himself, and that if Gigadibs were not +present we could never have seen him at the particular +angle at which he presents himself in his condescending +play with truths and half-truths and quarter-truths, +adapted to a smaller mind than his own. The sixteenth +century gave us a Montaigne, and the seventeenth +century a Pascal. Why should not the nineteenth +century of mundane comforts, of doubt troubled +by faith, and faith troubled by doubt, produce a new +type—serious yet humorous—in an episcopal Pascal-Montaigne?</p> +<p>Browning's moral sympathies, we may rest assured, +<a name="Page_201"></a>do not go with one who like Blougram finds +satisfaction +in things realised on earth; one who declines—at +least as he represents himself for the purposes of +argument—to press forward to things which he cannot +attain but might nobly follow after. But Browning's +intellectual interest is great in seeing all that a Blougram +can say for himself; and as a destructive piece +of criticism directed against the position of a Gigadibs +what he says may really be effective. The Bishop +frankly admits that the unqualified believer, the enthusiast, +is more fortunate than he; he, Sylvester +Blougram, is what he is, and all that he can do is to +make the most of the nature allotted to him. That +there has been a divine revelation he cannot absolutely +believe; but neither can he absolutely disbelieve. +Unbelief is sterile; belief is fruitful, certainly for this +world, probably for the next, and he elects to believe. +Having chosen to believe, he cannot be too pronounced +and decisive in his faith; he will never attempt to +eliminate certain articles of the <i>credenda</i>, and so +"decrassify" his faith, for to this process, if once begun, +there is no end; having donned his uniform, he +will wear it, laces and spangles and all. True, he has +at times his chill fits of doubt; but is not this the +probation of faith? Does not a life evince the ultimate +reality that is within us? Are not acts the evidence +of a final choice, of a deepest conviction? And +has he not given his vote for the Christian religion?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>With me faith means perpetual unbelief<br /> +</span><span>Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,<br /> +</span><span>Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>When the time arrives for a beatific vision Blougram +will be ready to adapt himself to the new state of +<a name="Page_202"></a>things. Is not the best pledge of his capacity +for +future adaptation to a new environment this—that +being in the world he is worldly? We must not +lose the training of each successive stage of evolution +by for ever projecting ourselves half way into the +next. So rolls on the argument to its triumphant +conclusion—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Fool or knave?<br /> +</span><span>Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave<br /> +</span><span>When there's a thousand diamond weights between?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Only at the last, were it not that we know that +there is a firmer ground for Blougram than this on +which he takes his stand in after-dinner controversy, +we might be inclined to close the subject by adapting +to its uses the title of a pamphlet connected with the +Kingsley and Newman debate—"But was not Mr +Gigadibs right after all?" Worsted in sword-play he +certainly was; but the soul may have its say, and the +soul, armed with its instincts of truth, is a formidable +challenger.</p> +<br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63">[63]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of R.B. and E.B.B., i. 388.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_64"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_64">[64]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Orr's Handbook to Browning's Works, 266, note. For the +horse, see stanzas xiii. xiv. of the poem.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_65"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_65">[65]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> This poem is sometimes expounded as a sigh for the infinite, +which no +human love can satisfy. But the simpler conception of it as expressing +a +love almost but not altogether complete seems the truer.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_66"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_66">[66]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Browning's delight a few years later in modelling in clay was +great.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_67"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_67">[67]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Andrew Crosse, in her article, "John Kenyon and his +Friends" +(<i>Temple Bar Magazine</i>, April 1900), writes: "When the Brownings +were +living in Florence, Kenyon had begged them to procure for him a copy +of the portrait in the Pitti of Andrea del Sarto and his wife. Mr +Browning +was unable to get the copy made with any promise of satisfaction, and +so wrote the exquisite poem of Andrea del Sarto—and sent it to Kenyon!"</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_68"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_68">[68]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The writer of this volume many years ago pointed out to +Browning +his transposition of the chronological places of Fra Lippo Lippi and +Masaccio ("Hulking Tom") in the history of Italian art. Browning +vigorously maintained that he was in the right; but recent students do +not support his contention. At the same time an error in +<i>Transcendentalism</i>, +where Browning spoke of "Swedish Boehme," was indicated. +He acknowledged the error and altered the text to "German Boehme."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_69"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_69">[69]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Browning maintained to Gavan Duffy that his treatment of the +Cardinal +was generous.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_X"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_203"></a>Chapter X</h2> +<h2>Close of Mrs Browning's Life</h2> +<br /> +<p>When <i>Men and Women</i> was published in the autumn +of 1855 the Brownings were again in Paris. An impulsive +friend had taken an apartment for them in the +Rue de Grenelle, facing east, and in all that concerned +comfort splendidly mendacious. After some weeks +of misery and illness Mrs Browning was conveyed to +less glittering but more hospitable rooms in the Rue +du Colisée by a desperate husband—"That darling +Robert carried me into the carriage, swathed past +possible breathing, over face and respirator in woollen +shawls. No, he wouldn't set me down even to walk +up the fiacre steps, but shoved me in upside down in +a struggling bundle."<a name="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70"><sup>[70]</sup></a> +Happily the winter was of a +miraculous mildness. Mrs Browning worked <i>Aurora +Leigh</i> in "a sort of <i>furia</i>," and Browning set himself +to the task—a fruitless one as it proved—of rehandling +and revising <i>Sordello</i>: "I lately gave time and pains," +he afterwards told Milsand in his published dedication +of the poem, "to turn my work into what the many +might,—instead of what the few must—like: but after +all I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave +as I find it"—proud but warrantable words. Some +of his leisure was given to vigorous and not unsuccessful +efforts in drawing. At the theatre he saw Ristori +<a name="Page_204"></a>as Medea and admired her, but with +qualifications. +At Monckton Milnes's dinner-table he met Mignet and +Cavour, and George Sand crowned with an ivy-wreath +and "looking like herself." Mrs Browning records +with pleasure that her husband's hostility to the +French government had waned; at least he admitted +that he was sick of the Opposition.</p> +<p>In May 1856 tidings from London of the illness of +Kenyon caused him serious anxiety; he would gladly +have hastened to attend upon so true and dear a friend, +but this Kenyon would not permit. A month later he +and Mrs Browning were in occupation of Kenyon's +house in Devonshire Place, which he had lent to them +for the summer, but the invalid had sought for restoration +of his health in the Isle of Wight. On the day +that Mr Barrett heard of his daughter's arrival he +ordered his family away from London. Mrs Browning +once more wrote to him, but the letter received no +answer. "Mama," said little Pen earnestly, "if you've +been very, very naughty I advise you to go into the +room and say,'<i>Papa, I'll be dood</i>.'" But the situation, +as Mrs Browning sadly confesses, was hopeless. Some +companionship with her sister Arabel and her brothers +was gained by a swift departure from London in +August for Ventnor whither the Wimpole Street household, +leaving its master behind, had been banished, +and there "a happy sorrowful two weeks" were spent. +At Cowes a grief awaited Browning and his wife, for +they found Kenyon kind as ever but grievously broken +in health and depressed in spirits. A short visit to +Mrs Browning's married sister at Taunton closed the +summer and autumn in England. Before the end of +October they were on their way to Florence. "The +<a name="Page_205"></a>Brownings are long gone back now," wrote Dante +Rossetti in December, "and with them one of my +delights—an evening resort where I never felt unhappy. +How large a part of the real world, I wonder, are those +two small people?—taking meanwhile so little room +in any railway carriage and hardly needing a double +bed at the inn."</p> +<p>The great event of the autumn for the Brownings +and for the lovers of English poetry was the publication +of <i>Aurora Leigh</i>. Its popularity was instantaneous; +within a fortnight a second edition was called +for; there was no time to alter even a comma. "That +golden-hearted Robert," writes Mrs Browning, "is in +ecstasies about it—far more than if it all related to a +book of his own." The volume was dedicated to John +Kenyon; but before the year was at an end Kenyon +was dead. Since the birth of their son he had enlarged +the somewhat slender incomings of his friends by the +annual gift of one hundred pounds, "in order," says the +editor of Mrs Browning's Letters, "that they might be +more free to follow their art for its own sake only." +By his will he placed them for the future above all +possibility of straitened means. To Browning he left +6,500 <i>l</i>., to Mrs Browning 4,500 <i>l</i>. "These," adds +Mr F.G. Kenyon, "were the largest legacies in a very +generous will—the fitting end to a life passed in acts +of generosity and kindness to those in need." The +gain to the Brownings was shadowed by a sense of +loss. "Christmas came," says Mrs Browning, "like a +cloud." For the length of three winter months she did +not stir out of doors. Then arrived spring and sunshine, +carnival time and universal madness in Florence, +with streets "one gigantic pantomime." Penini begged +<a name="Page_206"></a>importunately for a domino, and could not be +refused; +and Penini's father and mother were for once drawn +into the vortex of Italian gaiety. When at the great +opera ball a little figure in mask and domino was +struck on the shoulder with the salutation "Bella +mascherina!" it was Mrs Browning who received the +stroke, with her husband, also in domino, by her side. +The absence of real coarseness in the midst of so +much seeming license, and the perfect social equality +gave her a gratifying impression of her Florentines.</p> +<p>In April it was summer weather; the drives of +former days in the Cascine and to Bellosguardo, where +a warm-hearted friend, Miss Isa Blagden, occupied a +villa, were resumed. An American authoress of wider +fame since her book of 1852 than even the authoress +of <i>Aurora Leigh</i>, Mrs Beecher Stowe, was in Florence, +and somewhat to their surprise she charmed both +Browning and his wife by her simplicity and earnestness, +her gentle voice and refinement of manner—"never," +says Mrs Browning, "did lioness roar more +softly." All pointed to renewed happiness; but +before April was over pain of a kind that had a +peculiar sting left Mrs Browning for a time incapable +of any other feeling. Her father was dead, and no +word of affection had been uttered at the last; if there +was water in the rock it never welled forth. The kindly +meant effort of a relative to reopen friendly communications +between Mr Barrett and his daughters, not many +months previously, had for its only result the declaration +that they had disgraced the family.<a name="FNanchor_71"></a><a + href="#Footnote_71"><sup>[71]</sup></a> At first +Mrs Browning was crushed and could shed no tear; +she remained for many days in a state of miserable +<a name="Page_207"></a>prostration; it was two months before she could +write +a letter to anyone outside the circle of her nearest +kinsfolk.</p> +<p>Once more the July heat in Florence—"a composition +of Gehenna and Paradise"—drove the +Brownings to the Baths of Lucca. Miss Blagden +followed them, and also young Lytton came, ailing, it +was thought, from exposure to the sun. His indisposition +soon grew serious and declared itself as a gastric +fever. For eight nights Isa Blagden sat by his bedside +as nurse; for eight other nights Browning took her +place. His own health remained vigorous. Each +morning he bathed in a rapid mountain stream; each +evening and morning he rode a mountain pony; and +in due time he had the happiness of seeing the patient, +although still weak and hollow cheeked, convalescent +and beginning to think of "poems and apple puddings," +as Mrs Browning declares, "in a manner other +than celestial." It had been a summer, she said in +September, full of blots, vexations, anxieties. Three +days after these words were written a new and grave +anxiety troubled her and her husband, for their son, +who had been looking like a rose—"like a rose +possessed by a fairy" is his mother's description—was +attacked in the same way as Lytton. "Don't be unhappy +for <i>me</i>" said Pen; "think it's a poor little boy +in the street, and be just only a little sorry, and not +unhappy at all." Within less than a fortnight he was +well enough to have "agonising visions of beefsteak pies +and buttered toast seen in <i>mirage</i>"; but his mother +mourned for the rosy cheeks and round fat little +shoulders, and confessed that she herself was worn +out in body and soul.</p> +<p><a name="Page_208"></a>The winter at Florence was the coldest for +many +years; the edges of the Arno were frozen; and in the +spring of 1858 Mrs Browning felt that her powers +of resistance, weakened by a year of troubles and +anxieties, had fallen low. Browning himself was in +vigorous health. When he called in June on Hawthorne +he looked younger and even handsomer than +he had looked two years previously, and his gray hairs +seemed fewer. "He talked," Hawthorne goes on, "a +wonderful quantity in a little time." That evening the +Hawthornes spent at Casa Guidi. Mrs Browning is +described by the American novelist as if she were one +of the singular creatures of his own imagination—no +earthly woman but one of the elfin race, yet sweetly +disposed towards human beings; a wonder of charm +in littleness; with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice; +"there is not such another figure in the world; and +her black ringlets cluster into her neck, and make her +face look whiter by their sable perfection." Browning +himself was "very efficient in keeping up conversation +with everybody, and seemed to be in all parts of the +room and in every group at the same moment; a +most vivid and quick-thoughted person—logical and +common-sensible, as, I presume, poets generally are +in their daily talk." "His conversation," says Hawthorne, +speaking of a visit to Miss Blagden at Bellosguardo, +"has the effervescent aroma which you cannot +catch even if you get the very words that seem to be +imbued with it.... His nonsense is of very genuine +and excellent quality, the true babble and effervescence +of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play +among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a +child."</p> +<p><a name="Page_209"></a>When summer came it was decided to join +Browning's father and sister in Paris, and accompany +them to some French seaside resort, where Mrs +Browning could have the benefit of a course of warm +salt-water baths. To her the sea was a terror, but +railway-travelling was repose, and Browning suggested +on the way from Marseilles to Paris that they might +"ride, ride together, for ever ride" during the remainder +of their lives in a first-class carriage with for-ever +renewed supplies of French novels and <i>Galignanis</i>. +They reached Paris on the elder Mr Browning's birthday, +and found him radiant at the meeting with his +son and grandson, looking, indeed, ten years younger +than when they had last seen his face. Paris, Mrs +Browning declares, was her "weakness," Italy her +"passion"; Florence itself was her "chimney-corner," +where she "could sulk and be happy." The life of +the brilliant city, which "murmurs so of the fountain +of intellectual youth for ever and ever," quickened her +heart-beats; its new architectural splendours told of +the magnificence in design and in its accomplishment +of her hero the Emperor. And here she and her +husband met their helpful friend of former days, +Father Prout, and they were both grieved and cheered +by the sight of Lady Elgin, a paralytic, in her garden-chair, +not able to articulate a word, but bright and +gracious as ever, "the eloquent soul full and radiant, +alive to both worlds." The happiness in presence of +such a victory of the spirit was greater than the +pain.</p> +<p>Having failed to find agreeable quarters at Etretat, +where Browning in a "fine phrenzy" had hired a +wholly unsuitable house with a potato-patch for view, +<a name="Page_210"></a>and escaped from his bad bargain, a loser of +some +francs, at his wife's entreaty, they settled for a short +time at Havre—"detestable place," Mrs Browning +calls it—in a house close to the sea and surrounded +by a garden. On a bench by the shore Mrs Browning +could sit and win back a little strength in the bright +August air. The stay at Havre, depressing to +Browning's spirits, was for some eight weeks. In +October they were again in Paris, where Mrs +Browning's sister, Arabel, was their companion. The +year was far advanced and a visit to England was +not in contemplation. Towards the middle of the +month they were once more in motion, journeying by +slow stages to Florence. A day was spent at Chambéry +"for the sake of les Charmettes and Rousseau." +When Casa Guidi was at length reached, it was only +a halting-place on the way to Rome. Winter had +suddenly rushed in and buried all Italy in snow; but +when they started for Rome in a carriage kindly lent +by their American friends, the Eckleys, it was again +like summer. The adventures of the way were chiefly +of a negative kind—occasioned by precipices over which +they were not thrown, and banditti who never came +in sight; but in a quarrel between oxen-drivers, one +of whom attacked the other with a knife, Browning +with characteristic energy dashed between them to +the terror of the rest of the party; his garments were +the only serious sufferers from his zeal as mediator.</p> +<p>The apartment engaged at Rome was that of the +earlier visit of 1853-54, in the Via Bocca di Leone, +"rooms swimming all day in sunshine." On Christmas +morning Mrs Browning was able to accompany her +husband to St Peter's to hear the silver trumpets. +<a name="Page_211"></a>But January froze the fountains, and the north +wind +blew with force. Mrs Browning had just completed +a careful revision <i>of Aurora Leigh</i>, and now she could +rest, enjoy the sunshine streaming through their six +windows, or give herself up to the excitement of +Italian politics as seen through the newspapers in +the opening of a most eventful year. "Robert and +I," she wrote on the eve of the declaration of war +between Austria and Victor Emmanuel, "have been +of one mind lately on these things, which comforts +me much." She had also the satisfaction of health +enjoyed at least by proxy, for her husband had never +been more full of vigour and the spirit of enjoyment. +In the freezing days of January he was out of his bed +at six o'clock, and away for a brisk morning walk with +Mr Eckley. The loaf at breakfast diminished "by +Gargantuan slices." Into the social life of Rome he +threw himself with ardour. For a fortnight immediately +after Christmas he was out every night, +sometimes with double and treble engagements. "Dissipations," +says Mrs Browning, "decidedly agree with +Robert, there's no denying that, though he's horribly +hypocritical, and 'prefers an evening with me at +home.'" He gathered various coloured fragments of +life from the outer world and brought them home to +brighten her hours of imprisonment.</p> +<p>When they returned to Florence in May the Grand +Duke had withdrawn, the city was occupied by French +troops, and there was unusual animation in the streets. +Browning shared to some extent in his wife's alienation +from the policy of England, and believed, but +with less than her enthusiastic confidence, in the good +intentions towards Italy of the French Emperor. He +<a name="Page_212"></a>subscribed his ten scudi a month to the Italian +war-fund, +and rewarded Pen for diligence in his lessons +with half a paul a day, which the boy might give as +his own contribution to the cause of Italian independence. +The French and the Italian tricolour flags, +displayed by Pen, adorned the terrace. In June the +sun beat upon Florence with unusual fierceness, but +it was a month of battles, and with bulletins of the +war arriving twice a day they could not bear to +remove to any quiet retreat at a distance from the +centre. It was not curiosity that detained them but +the passion for Italy, the joy in generous effort and +great deeds. In the rebound, as Mrs Browning +expresses it, from high-strung hopes and fears for +Italy they found themselves drawn to the theatre, +where Salvini gave his wonderful impersonation of +Othello and his Hamlet, "very great in both, Robert +thought," so commented Mrs Browning, "as well +as I."<a name="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72"><sup>[72]</sup></a> +The strain of excitement was indeed excessive +for Mrs Browning's failing physical strength; +there was in it something almost febrile. Yet the +fact is noteworthy that the romantic figures secured +much less of her interest than the men of prudent +statesmanship. She esteemed Cavour highly; she +wholly distrusted Mazzini. She justified Louis +Napoleon in concessions which she regarded as an +<a name="Page_213"></a>unavoidable part of diplomacy directed to ends +which +could not be immediately attained. Garibaldi was +a "hero," but somewhat alarming in his heroisms—a +"grand child," "not a man of much brain." After the +victories of Magenta and Solferino came what seemed +to many the great betrayal of Villafranca. For a +day the busts and portraits of the French Emperor +suddenly disappeared from the shop-windows of +Florence, and even Mrs Browning would not let her +boy wear his Napoleon medal. But the busts returned +to their places, and Mrs Browning's faith in +Napoleon sprang up anew; it was not he who was +the criminal; the selfish powers of Europe had "forced +his hand" and "truncated his great intentions." She +rejoiced in the magnificent spectacle of dignity and +calm presented by the people of Italy. And yet her +fall from the clouds to earth on the announcement +of peace with Austria was a shattering experience. +Sleep left her, or if she slept her dreams were affected +by "inscrutable articles of peace and endless provisional +governments." Night after night her husband +watched beside her, and in the day he not only gave +his boy the accustomed two hours' lesson on the +piano, but replaced the boy's mother as teacher of +those miscellaneous lessons, which had been her +educational province. "Robert has been perfect to +me," expressed Mrs Browning's feelings in a word.</p> +<p>Another anxiety gave Browning an opportunity +which he turned to account in a way that renders +honour and gratitude his due from all lovers of +English letters. At a great old age Landor, who +resided with his family at Fiesole, still retained his +violent and intractable temper; in his home there +<a name="Page_214"></a>was much to excite his leonine wrath and sense +of +intolerable wrong. Three times he had quitted his +villa, with vows never to return to it, and three times +he had been led back. When for a fourth time—like +a feeble yet majestic Lear—one hot summer day, +toward noon, he flung himself, or was flung, out of +doors with only a few pauls in his pocket, it was to +Casa Guidi that he made his way broken-hearted, yet +breathing forth wrath.<a name="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73"><sup>[73]</sup></a> +Browning had often said, as +his wife tells her sister-in-law, that he owed more as +a writer to Landor than to any other contemporary.<a name="FNanchor_74"></a><a + href="#Footnote_74"><sup>[74]</sup></a> +He resolved to set things right, if possible; and if +not, to make the best of a case that could not be +entirely amended. A visit to the villa assured him +that reconciliation was out of the question. He provided +for Landor's immediate wants; communicated +with Landor's brothers in England, who were prompt +in arranging for a regular allowance to be administered +by Browning; became the old man's guide +and guardian; soothed his wounded spirit, although, +according to Mrs Browning, not often happy when +he attempted compliments, with generous words and +ready quotations from Landor's own writings; and +finally settled him in Florence under the care of Mrs +Browning's faithful maid Wilson, who watched over +him during the remainder of his life.<a name="FNanchor_75"></a><a + href="#Footnote_75"><sup>[75]</sup></a> To his incredulous +wife Browning spoke of Landor's sweetness +<a name="Page_215"></a>and gentleness, nor was he wrong in ascribing +these +qualities to the old lion. She admitted that he had +generous impulses, but feared that her husband would +before long become, like other friends of Landor, the +object of some enraged suspicion. "Nothing coheres +in him," she writes, "either in his opinions, or, I fear, +affections." But Landor, whose courtesy and refinement +she acknowledges, had also a heart that was +capable of loyal love and gratitude. After the first +burst of rage against the Fiesole household had spent +itself, he beguiled the time in perpetuating his indignations +in an innocent and classical form—that +of Latin alcaics directed against one private and +one public foe—his wife and the Emperor Louis +Napoleon.<a name="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76"><sup>[76]</sup></a></p> +<p>Lander's affairs threatened to detain the Brownings +in Florence longer than they desired, now that peace +had come and it was not indispensable to run out of +doors twice a day in order to inspect the bulletins. +But after three weeks of very exhausting illness, Mrs +Browning needed change of air. As soon as her +strength allowed, she was lifted into a carriage and +they journeyed, as in the year 1850, to the neighbourhood +of Siena. She reached the villa which had +been engaged by Story's aid, with the sense of "a +peculiar frailty of being." Though confined to the +house, the fresher air by day and the night winds +gradually revived her strength and spirits. The +silence and repose were "heavenly things" to her: +the "pretty dimpled ground covered by low vine<a name="Page_216"></a>yards" +rested her eyes and her mind; and for +excitements, instead of reports of battle-fields there +were slow-fading scarlet sunsets over purple hills. +A kind Prussian physician, Gresonowsky, who had +attended Mrs Browning in Florence, and who entered +sympathetically into her political feelings, followed +her uninvited to Siena and gave her the benefit of +his care, declining all recompense. The good friends +from America, the Storys, were not far off, and Landor, +after a visit to Story, was placed in occupation of +rooms not a stone's-cast from their villa. With Pen it +was a time of rejoicing, for his father had bought the +boy a Sardinian pony of the colour of his curls, and +he was to be seen galloping through the lanes "like +Puck," to use Browning's comparison, on a dragon-fly's +back.<a name="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77"><sup>[77]</sup></a></p> +<p>The gipsy instinct, the desire of wandering, had +greatly declined with both husband and wife since the +earlier days in Italy. Yet when they returned to Casa +Guidi it was only for six weeks. Even at the close of +the visit to Siena Mrs Browning had recovered but a +slender modicum of strength; she did not dare to +enter the cathedral, for there were steps to climb. +At Florence she felt her old vitality return and her +spirits rose. But the climate of Rome was considered +by Dr Gresonowsky more suitable for winter, and +towards the close of November they took their departure, +flying from the Florentine tramontana. The +carriage was furnished with novels of Balzac, and +Pen's pony was of the party. The rooms taken in +the Via del Tritone were bright and sunny; but a +<a name="Page_217"></a>rash visit to the jeweller Castellani, to see +and touch +the swords presented by Roman citizens to Napoleon +III. and Victor Emmanuel, threw back Mrs Browning +into all her former troubles of a delicate chest and +left her "as weak as a rag." Tidings of the death of +Lady Elgin seemed to tell only of a peaceful release +from a period of imprisonment in the body, but the +loss of Mrs Jameson was a painful blow. Rome at a +time of grave political apprehensions was almost empty +of foreigners; but among the few Americans who +had courage to stay were the sculptor Gibson and +Theodore Parker—now near the close of his life—whose +<i>tête-à-têtes</i> were eloquent of beliefs and +disbeliefs. +As the spring advanced the authoress of +"The Mill on the Floss" was reported to be now and +again visible in Rome, "with her elective affinity," as +Mrs Browning puts it, "on the Corso walking, or in +the Vatican musing. Always together." A grand-daughter +of Lord Byron—"very quiet and very +intense"—was among the visitors at the Via del +Tritone, and Lady Marion Alford, "very eager about +literature and art and Robert," for all which eagernesses +Mrs Browning felt bound to care for her. The artists +Burne-Jones and Prinsep had made Browning's acquaintance +at Siena; Prinsep now introduced him to +some of the by-ways of popular life in Rome. Together +they witnessed the rivalry of two improvisatori +poetic gamecocks, whose efforts were stimulated by the +announcement that a great poet from England was +present; together they listened to the forbidden +Hymn to Garibaldi played in Gigi's <i>osteria</i>, witnessed +the dignified blindness of the Papal gendarmes to the +offence, while Gigi liberally plied them with drink; +<a name="Page_218"></a>and together, to relieve the host of all fear of +more +revolutionary airs, they took carriages with their +musicians and drove to see the Coliseum by moonlight.<a + name="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78"><sup>[78]</sup></a></p> +<p>The project of a joint volume of poems on the +Italian question by Browning and his wife, which had +made considerable progress towards realisation, had +been dropped after Villafranca, when Browning destroyed +his poem; but Mrs Browning had advanced +alone and was now revising proofs of her slender +contribution to the poetry of politics, <i>Poems before +Congress.</i> She wrote them, she says, simply to deliver +her soul—"to get the relief to my conscience and +heart, which comes from a pent-up word spoken or +a tear shed." She can hardly have anticipated that +they would be popular in England; but she was not +prepared for one poem which denounced American +slavery being misinterpreted into a curse pronounced +upon England. "Robert was <i>furious</i>" against the +offending Review, she says; "I never saw him so +enraged about a criticism;" but by-and-by he "didn't +care a straw." His wife, on the other hand, was more +deeply pained by the blindness and deafness of the +British public towards her husband's genius; nobody +"except a small knot of pre-Rafaelite men" did him +justice; his publisher's returns were a proof of this not +to be gainsaid—not one copy of his poems had for six +months been sold, while in America he was already a +power. For the poetry of political enthusiasm he had +certainly no vocation. When Savoy was surrendered +to France Mrs Browning suffered some pain lest +her Emperor's generosity might seem compromised. +<a name="Page_219"></a>Browning admitted that the liberation of Italy +was +a great action, adding cynically of his future Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau, "But he has taken eighteen-pence +for it, which is a pity." During the winter +he wrote much. "Robert deserves no reproaches," +his wife tells her friend Miss Haworth in May, "for +he has been writing a good deal this winter—working +at a long poem, which I have not seen a line of, and +producing short lyrics which I have seen, and may +declare worthy of him." Mr F.G. Kenyon conjectures +that the long poem is not unlikely to have +been <i>Mr Sludge the Medium</i>, for Home's performances, +as he says, were at this time rampant.<a name="FNanchor_79"></a><a + href="#Footnote_79"><sup>[79]</sup></a> As hitherto, +both husband and wife showed their poems each to +the other only when the poems were complete; thus +like a pair of hardy friends they maintained their +independence. Even when they read, there was no +reading aloud; Mrs Browning was indefatigable in +her passion for books; her husband, with muscular +energy impatient for action, found it impossible to +read for long at a single sitting.</p> +<p>On June 4th 1860 they left Rome, travelling by +vettura through Orvieto and Chiusi to their home in +Florence.<a name="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80"><sup>[80]</sup></a> +The journey fatigued Mrs Browning, but +on arriving they had the happiness of finding Landor +well; he looked not less than magnificent, displaying +"the most beautiful sea-foam of a beard ... all in a +curl and white bubblement of beauty." Wilson had +the old man under happy control; only once had he +<a name="Page_220"></a>thrown his dinner out of the window; that he +should +be at odds with all the world was inevitable, and that +all the world should be in the wrong was exhilarating +and restorative. The plans for the summer were +identical with those of the preceding year; the same +"great lonely villa" near Siena was occupied again; +the same "deep soothing silence" lapped to rest Mrs +Browning's spirits; Landor, her "adopted son"—a son +of eighty-six years old—was hard by as he had been +last summer. The neighbourhood of Miss Blagden +was this year an added pleasure. "The little eager +lady," as Henry James describes her, "with gentle, +gay black eyes," had seen much, read much, written +already a little (with more to follow), but better than +all else were her generous heart and her helpful hand. +The season was one of unusual coolness for Italy. +Pen's pony, as before, flashed through the lanes and +along the roads. Browning had returned from Rome +in robust health, and looking stouter in person than +six months previously. Now, while a tenant of the +Villa Alberti, he spent his energies in long rides, +sometimes rides of three or four continuous hours. +On returning from such careers on horseback little +inclination, although he had his solitary room in which +to work, remained for the pursuit of poetry.</p> +<p>The departure for Rome was early—about +September; in the Via Felice rooms were found. +A new and great sorrow had fallen upon Mrs +Browning—her sister Henrietta, Mrs Surtees Cook, +was dead, leaving behind her three young children. +Mrs Browning could not shed tears nor speak of +her grief: she felt tired and beaten by the pain; and +tried to persuade herself that for one who believed +<a name="Page_221"></a>the invisible world to be so near, such pain was +but +a weakness. Her husband was able to do little, but +he shared in his degree in the sense of loss, and protected +her from the intrusion of untimely visitors. +Sir John Bowring was admitted because he presented +a letter of introduction and had intimate relations +with the French Emperor; his ridicule of the volunteer +movement in England, with its cry of "Riflemen, +form!" was grateful to Mrs Browning's political feelings. +French troops were now in Rome; their purpose was +somewhat ambiguous; but Pen had fraternised with +the officers on the Pincio, had learnedly discussed +Chopin and Stephen Heller with them, had been +assured that they did not mean to fight for the Holy +Father, and had invited "ever so many of them" to +come and see mamma—an invitation which they were +too discreet to accept. Mrs Browning's excitement +about public affairs had somewhat abated; yet she +watched with deep interest the earlier stages of the great +struggle in America; and she did not falter in her +hopes for Italy; by intrigues and smuggling the +newspapers which she wished to see were obtained +through the courteous French generals. But her +spirits were languid; "I gather myself up by fits +and starts," she confesses, "and then fall back."</p> +<p>Apart from his anxieties for his wife's health and +the unfailing pleasure in his boy, whom a French or +Italian abbé now instructed, Browning was wholly +absorbed in one new interest. He had long been an +accomplished musician; in Paris he had devoted +himself to drawing; now his passion was for modelling +in clay, and the work proceeded under the direction +and in the studio of his friend, the sculptor Story. +<a name="Page_222"></a>His previous studies in anatomy stood him in +good +stead; he made remarkable progress, and six hours +a day passed as if in an enchantment. He ceased +even to read; "nothing but clay does he care for," +says Mrs Browning smilingly, "poor lost soul." The +union of intellectual energy with physical effort in +such work gave him the complete satisfaction for +which he craved. His wife "grudged a little," she +says, the time stolen from his special art of poetry; +but she saw that his health and spirits gained from +his happy occupation. Of late, he had laboured +irregularly at verse; fits of active effort were followed +by long intervals during which production seemed +impossible. And some vent was necessary for the +force coiled up within him; if this were not to be +obtained, he wore himself out with a nervous impatience—"beating +his dear head," as Mrs Browning +describes it, "against the wall, simply because he sees +a fly there, magnified by his own two eyes almost +indefinitely into some Saurian monster." Now he was +well and even exultant—"nothing ever," he declared, +"made him so happy before." Of advancing years—Browning +was now nearly forty-nine—the only +symptoms were that he had lost his youthful slightness +of figure, and that his beard and hair were somewhat +blanched by time. "The women," his wife wrote to +his sister, "adore him everywhere far too much for +decency," and to herself he seemed "infinitely handsomer +and more attractive" than when, sixteen years +previously, she had first seen him. On the whole +therefore she was well pleased with his new passion +for clay, and could wish for him loads of the plastic +stuff in which to riot. Afterwards, in his days of +<a name="Page_223"></a>sorrow in London, when he compared the colour of +his life to that of a snow-cloud, it seemed to him as +if one minute of these months at Rome would yield +him gold enough to make the brightness of a year; +he longed for the smell of the wet clay in Story's +studio, where the songs of the birds, and the bleat +of a goat coming through the little door to the +left, were heard.<a name="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81"><sup>[81]</sup></a></p> +<p>While hoping and planning for the future, his wife +was not unaware of her own decline. "For the first +time," she writes about December, "I have had pain +in looking into Penini's face lately—which you will +understand." And a little earlier: "I wish to live +just as long as, and no longer than to grow in the +soul." The winter was mild, though snow had fallen +once; a spell of colder weather was reserved for the +month of May. They thought of meeting Browning's +father and sister in some picturesque part of the forest +of Fontainebleau, or, if that should prove unsuitable, +perhaps at Trouville. Mrs Browning, who had +formerly enjoyed the stir of life in Paris, now shrank +from its noise and bustle. Her wish would be to +creep into a cave for the whole year. At eight o'clock +each evening she left her sitting-room and sofa, and +was in bed. Yet she trusted that when she could +venture again into the open air she would be more +capable of enduring the friction of the world. In +May she felt stronger, and saw visitors, among whom +was Hans Andersen, "very earnest, very simple, very +childlike."<a name="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82"><sup>[82]</sup></a> +A little later she was cast down by the +<a name="Page_224"></a>death of Cavour—"that great soul which meditated +and made Italy"; she could hardly trust herself to +utter his name. It was evident to Browning that the +journey to France could not be undertaken without +serious risk. They had reached Casa Guidi, and there +for the present she must take her rest.</p> +<p>The end came swiftly, gently. A bronchial attack, +attended with no more than the usual discomfort, +found her with diminished power of resistance. +Browning had forebodings of evil, though there +seemed to be no special cause to warrant his apprehension. +On the last evening—June 28, 1861—she +herself had no anticipation of what was at hand, +and talked of their summer plans. When she slept, +her slumber was heavy and disturbed. At four in +the morning her husband was alarmed and sent to +summon the doctor; but she assured him that his +fears were exaggerated. Then inestimable words +were spoken which lived forever in his heart. And +so "smilingly, happily, with a face like a girl's," resting +her head upon her husband's cheek, she passed away.<a name="FNanchor_83"></a><a + href="#Footnote_83"><sup>[83]</sup></a></p> +<p><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="Footnote_70"></a><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#FNanchor_70">[70]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of E.B.B. (To Mrs Jameson), ii. 221.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_71"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_71">[71]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> F.G. Kenyon. <i>Letters of E.B.B.</i>, ii. 263.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_72"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_72">[72]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Browning was intimately acquainted," writes Miss Anna +Swanwick, +"with Salvini." What especially lived in Browning's memory as +transcending +everything else he had witnessed on the stage was Salvini's +impersonation of the blind Oedipus, and in particular one incident: a +hand is laid on the blind man's shoulder, which he supposes the hand of +one of his sons; he discovers it to be the hand of Antigone; the sudden +transition from a look of fiery hate to one of ineffable tenderness was +unsurpassable in its mastery of dramatic expression. (Condensed from +"Anna Swanwick, a Memoir and Recollections," 1903, pp. 132, 133.)</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_73"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_73">[73]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Story says that Landor "was turned out of doors by his wife +and +children." He had conveyed the villa to his wife. It is Story who +compares +Landor to King Lear. "Conversations in a Studio," p. 436.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_74"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_74">[74]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letters of E.B.B., ii. 354.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_75"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_75">[75]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> When Browning at Rome was invited to dine with the Prince of +Wales (March 1859) by the desire of Queen Victoria, Mrs Browning told +him to "eschew compliments," of his infelicity in uttering which she +gives amusing examples. <i>Letters of E.B.B</i>., ii. 309, 310.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_76"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_76">[76]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> On Browning's action in the affairs of Landor see Forster's +<i>Life of +Landor</i>, and the letters of Browning in vol. ii. of Henry James's +<i>Life of +Story</i> (pp. 6-11).</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_77"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_77">[77]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See, for this residence at Siena, an interesting letter of +Story to C. +Eliot Norton in Henry James's <i>W.W. Story</i>, vol. ii. pp. 14, 15.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_78"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_78">[78]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Condensed from information given by Prinsep to Mrs Orr, +<i>Life and +Letters of R.B.</i>, pp. 234-37.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_79"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_79">[79]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Letters of E.B.B.</i>, ii. 388, note. Mr Kenyon suggests +<i>A Death in +the Desert</i> as at least possibly meant. <i>The Ring and the Book</i> +"certainly +had not yet been begun."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_80"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_80">[80]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the +journey +to Story: Henry James's <i>W.W. Story</i>, ii. pp. 50-52.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_81"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_81">[81]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> H. James's <i>W.W. Story</i>, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_82"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_82">[82]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Henry James tells of a children's party at the Palazzo +Barberini, +Rome, of several years earlier, when Hans Andersen read "The Ugly +Duckling," and Browning, "The Pied Piper"; which led to "a grand +march through the spacious Barberini apartment, with Story doing his +best on a flute in default of bagpipes." <i>W.W. Story</i>, vol. i.p. +286.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_83"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_83">[83]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The circumstances of Mrs Browning's death are described as +above, +but with somewhat fuller detail, in a letter of Browning to Miss +Haworth, +July 20, 1861, first printed by Mrs Orr. Many details of interest will +be +found in a long letter of Story, Henry James's <i>W.W. Story</i>, vol. +ii. +pp. +61-68: "She talked with him and jested and gave expression to her love +in the tenderest words; then, feeling sleepy, and he supporting her in +his arms, she fell into a doze. In a few minutes, suddenly, her head +dropped forward. He thought she had fainted, but she had gone for +ever." A painful account of the funeral service, "blundered through +by a fat English parson," is given by Story.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_XI"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_225"></a>Chapter XI</h2> +<h2>London: Dramatis Personae</h2> +<br /> +<p>The grief of the desolate man was an uncontrollable +passion; his heart was strong and all its strength +entered into its sorrow. Miss Blagden, "perfect in all +kindness," took motherly possession of the boy, and +persuaded his father to accompany Penini to her villa +at Bellosguardo. When all that was needful at Casa +Guidi had been done, Browning's first thought was to +abandon Italy for many a year, and hasten to London, +there to have speech for a day or two at least with +Mrs Browning's sister Arabel. "The cycle is complete," +he said, looking round the sitting-room of Casa +Guidi. "I want my new life," he wrote, "to resemble +the last fifteen years as little as possible." Yet while +he stayed in the accustomed rooms he held himself +together; "when I was moved," he says, "I began to +go to pieces."<a name="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84"><sup>[84]</sup></a> +Yet something remained to sustain him.</p> +<p>To one who has habitually given as well as received +much not the least of the pangs of separation arises +from the incapacity to render any further direct +service. It fortified Browning's heart to know that +much could be done, and in ways which his wife would +have approved and desired, for her child. And as he +himself had been also her care, it was his business now +<a name="Page_226"></a>to see that his life fulfilled itself aright. +Yet he breaks +out in July: "No more 'house-keeping' for me, even +with my family. I shall grow still, I hope—but my +root is taken, and remains." From the outward +paraphernalia of death Browning, as Mrs Orr notices, +shrank with aversion; it was partly the instinct by +which a man seeks to preserve what is most sacred +and most strong in his own feelings from the poor +materialisms and the poor sentimentalisms of the grave; +partly a belief that any advance of the heart towards +what has been lost may be rather hindered than helped +by the external circumstance surrounding the forsaken +body. Browning took measures that his wife's grave +should be duly cared for, given more than common +distinction; but Florence became a place from which +even for his own sake and the sake of her whose +spirit lived within him he must henceforth keep +aloof.</p> +<p>The first immediate claim upon Browning was that +of duty to his father. On August 1st he left Florence +for Paris, accompanied by Isa Blagden, who still +watched over him and the boy. Two months were +spent with his sister and the old man, still hale and +strong of heart, at a place "singularly unspoiled, fresh +and picturesque, and lovely to heart's content"—so +Browning describes it—St Enogat, near St Malo. +The solitary sea, the sands, the rocks, the green country +gave him at least a breathing-space. Then he proceeded +to London, not without an outbreak of his +characteristic energy in over-coming the difficulties—which +involved two hours of "weary battling"—of +securing a horse-box for Pen's pony. At Amiens +Tennyson, with his wife and children, was on the +<a name="Page_227"></a>platform. Browning pulled his hat over his face +and +was unrecognised.<a name="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85"><sup>[85]</sup></a> +In "grim London," as he had +called it, though with a quick remorse at recollection +of the kindness awaiting him, he had the comfort of +daily intercourse with Miss Arabel Barrett.</p> +<p>It was decided that an English education, but not +that of a public school, would be best for the boy; +the critical time for taking "the English stamp" must +not be lost; his father's instruction, aided by that of +a tutor, would suffice to prepare him for the University, +and he would have the advantage of the motherly +care of his mother's favourite sister. Browning distrusted, +he says to Story, "ambiguous natures and +nationalities." Thus he bound himself to England +and to London, while at times he sighed for the beauty +of Italian hills and skies. He shrank from society, +although before long old friends, and especially Procter, +infirm and deaf, were not neglected. He found, or +made, business for himself; had "never so much to +do or so little pleasure in doing it." The discomfort +of London lodgings was before long exchanged for +the more congenial surroundings of a house by the +water-side in Warwick Crescent, which he occupied +until 1887, two years before his death. The furniture +and tapestries of Casa Guidi gave it an air of +comfort and repose. "It was London," writes Mrs +Ritchie, referring to her visits of a later date, "but +London touched by some indefinite romance; the +canal used to look cool and deep, the green trees used +to shade the Crescent.... The house was an ordinary +London house, but the carved oak furniture and +tapestries gave dignity to the long drawing-rooms, and +<a name="Page_228"></a>pictures and books lined the stairs. In the +garden at +the back dwelt, at the time of which I am writing, two +weird gray geese, with quivering silver wings and long +throats, who used to come and meet their master +hissing and fluttering." In 1866 an owl—for Browning +still indulged a fantasy of his own in the choice +of pets—was "the light of our house," as a letter +describes this bird of darkness, "for his tameness and +engaging ways." The bird would kiss its master on +the face, tweak his hair, and if one said "Poor old +fellow!" in a commiserating voice would assume +a sympathetic air of depression.<a name="FNanchor_86"></a><a + href="#Footnote_86"><sup>[86]</sup></a> Miss Barrett lived +hard by, in Delamere Terrace. With her on Sundays +Browning listened at Bedford Chapel to the sermons +of a non-conformist preacher, Thomas Jones, to some +of which when published in 1884, he prefixed an introduction. +"The Welsh poet-preacher" was a man of +humble origin possessed of a natural gift of eloquence, +which, with his "liberal humanity," drew Browning to +become a hearer of his discourses.</p> +<p>He made no haste to give the public a new volume +of verse. Mrs Browning had mentioned to a correspondent, +not long before her death, that her husband +had then a considerable body of lyrical poetry in a +state of completion. An invitation to accept the +editorship of the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, on Thackeray's +retirement, was after some hesitation declined. He +was now partly occupied with preparing for the press +whatever writings by his wife seemed suitable for +publication. In 1862 he issued with a dedication "to +grateful Florence" her <i>Last Poems</i>; in 1863, her +<i>Greek Christian Poets</i>; in 1865 he prepared a volume +<a name="Page_229"></a>of Selections from her poems, and had the +happiness +of knowing that the number of her readers had rather +increased than diminished. The efforts of self-constituted +biographers to make capital out of the incidents +of her life, and to publish such letters of hers as could +be laid hands on, moved him to transports of indignation, +which break forth in a letter to his friend Miss +Blagden with unmeasured violence: what he felt with +the "paws" of these blackguards in his "very bowels" +God knows; beast and scamp and knave and fool +are terms hardly strong enough to relieve his wrath. +Such sudden whirls of extreme rage were rare, yet +were characteristic of Browning, and were sometimes +followed by regret for his own distemperature. In +1862 a gratifying task was laid on him—that of +superintending the three volume edition of his Poetical +Works which was published in the following year. +At the same time his old friend Forster, with help from +Procter, was engaged in preparing the first—and the +best—of the several Selections from Browning's poems; +it was at once an indication of the growing interest in +his writings and an effective means towards extending +their influence. He set himself steadily to work out what +was in him; he waited no longer upon his casual moods, +but girded his loins and kept his lamp constantly lit. +His genius, such as it was—this was the field given him +to till, and he must see that it bore fruit. "I certainly +will do my utmost to make the most of my poor self before +I die"—so he wrote in 1865. There were gains in +such a resolved method of work; but there were also +losses. A man of so active a mind by planting +himself before a subject could always find something +to say; but it might happen that such sheer brain-<a name="Page_230"></a>work +was carried on by plying other faculties than +those which give its highest value to poetry.<a name="FNanchor_87"></a><a + href="#Footnote_87"><sup>[87]</sup></a></p> +<p>In the late summer and early autumn of 1862 +Browning, in company with his son, was among the +Pyrenees at "green pleasant little Cambo, and then at +Biarritz crammed," he says, "with gay people of whom +I know nothing but their outsides." The sea and +sands were more to his liking than the gay people.<a name="FNanchor_88"></a><a + href="#Footnote_88"><sup>[88]</sup></a> +He had with him one book and no other—a Euripides, +in which he read vigorously, and that the readings +were fruitful his later poetry of the Greek drama bears +witness. At present however his creative work lay in +another direction; the whole of "the Roman murder +story"—the story of Pompilia and Guido and +Caponsacchi—he describes as being pretty well in his +head. It needed a long process of evolution before +the murder story could uncoil its sinuous lengths in a +series of volumes. The visit to Ste-Marie "a wild +little place in Brittany" near Pornic, in the summer of +1863—a visit to be repeated in the two summers +immediately succeeding—is directly connected with +two of the poems of <i>Dramatis Personae</i>. The story +of <i>Gold Hair</i> and the landscape details of <i>James Lee's +Wife</i> are alike derived from Pornic. The solitude of +the little Breton hamlet soothed Browning's spirit. +The "good, stupid and dirty" people of the village +<a name="Page_231"></a>were seldom visible except on Sunday; there were +solitary walks of miles to be had along the coast; +fruit and milk, butter and eggs in abundance, and +these were Browning's diet. "I feel out of the very +earth sometimes," he wrote, "as I sit here at the +window.... Such a soft sea, and such a mournful +wind!" But the lulling charm of the place which, +though so different, brought back the old Siena mood, +did not convert him into an idler. The mornings, +which began betimes, were given to work; in his way +of desperate resolve to be well occupied he informs +Miss Blagden (Aug. 18, 1863) that having yesterday +written a poem of 120 lines, he means to keep writing +whether he likes it or not.<a name="FNanchor_89"></a><a + href="#Footnote_89"><sup>[89]</sup></a></p> +<p>"With the spring of 1863," writes Mr Gosse, "a +great change came over Browning's habits. He had +refused all invitations into society; but now, of evenings, +after he had put his boy to bed, the solitude +weighed intolerably upon him. He told the present +writer [Mr Gosse] long afterwards, that it suddenly +occurred to him on one such spring night in 1863 that +this mode of life was morbid and unworthy, and, then +and there, he determined to accept for the future every +suitable invitation which came to him." "Accordingly," +goes on Mr Gosse, "he began to dine out, and in +the process of time he grew to be one of the most +familiar figures of the age at every dinner-table, +concert-hall, and place of refined entertainment in +London. This, however, was a slow process." Mrs +Ritchie refers to spoken words of Browning which +<a name="Page_232"></a>declared that it was "a mere chance whether he +should +live in the London house that he had taken and join +in social life, or go away to some quiet retreat, and be +seen no more." It was in a modified form the story of +the "fervid youth grown man," in his own "Daniel +Bartoli," who in his desolation, after the death of +his lady,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Trembled on the verge<br /> +</span><span>Of monkhood: trick of cowl and taste of scourge<br /> +</span><span>He tried: then, kicked not at the pricks perverse,<br /> +</span><span>But took again, for better or for worse,<br /> +</span><span>The old way of the world, and, much the same<br /> +</span><span>Man o' the outside, fairly played life's game.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Probably Browning had come to understand that in +his relation to the past he was not more loyal in +solitude than he might be in society; it was indeed +the manlier loyalty to bear his full part in life. And +as to his art, he felt that, with sufficient leisure to +encounter the labour he had enjoined upon himself, +it mattered little whether the remaining time was spent +in a cave or in a court; strength may encounter the +seductions either of the hermitage or of the crowd and +still be the victor:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Strength may conclude in Archelaos' court,<br /> +</span><span>And yet esteem the silken company<br /> +</span><span>So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown,<br /> +</span><span>For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve.<br /> +</span><span>Strength amid crowds as late in solitude<br /> +</span><span>May lead the still life, ply the wordless task.<a + name="FNanchor_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90"><sup>[90]</sup></a><br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>One cannot prescribe a hygiene to poets; the poet +of passionate contemplation, such as was Wordsworth, +could hardly quicken or develop his peculiar faculty +<a name="Page_233"></a>by devotion to the entertainments of successive +London seasons. And perhaps it is not certain that +the genius of Browning was wholly a gainer by the +superficial excitations of the dinner table and the +reception room. But the truth is, as Mrs Browning +had observed, that his energy was not exhausted by +literary work, and that it preyed upon himself if no +means of escape were found. If he was not at the +piano, or shaping clay, or at the drawing-board, or +walking fast and far, inward disturbances were set up +which rent and frayed his mind. The pleasures of +society both fatigued and rested Browning; they +certainly relieved him from the troubles of super-abundant +force.</p> +<p>In 1864 <i>Dramatis Personae</i> was published. It +might be described as virtually a third volume of <i>Men +and Women</i>. And yet a certain change of tone is +discernible. Italy is no longer the background of +the human figures. There is perhaps less opulence +of colour; less of the manifold "joys of living." If +higher points in the life of the spirit are not touched, +the religious feeling has more of inwardness and is +more detached from external historical fact than it had +ever been before; there is more sense of resistance to +and victory over whatever may seem adverse to the +life of the soul. In the poems which deal with love +the situations and postures of the spirit are less simple +and are sometimes even strained; the fantastic and +the grotesque occupy a smaller place; a plain dignity, a +grave solemnity of style is attained in passages of <i>A +Death in the Desert</i>, which had hardly been reached +before. Yet substantially the volume is a continuation +of the poems of 1855; except in one instance, where +<a name="Page_234"></a>Tennyson's method in <i>Maud</i>, that of a +sequence of +lyrics, is adopted, the methods are the same; the +predominating themes of <i>Men and Women</i>, love, art, +religion, are the predominating themes of <i>Dramatis +Personae.</i> A slight metrical complication—the internal +rhyme in the second line of each stanza of <i>Dîs aliter +visum</i> and in the third line of the quatrains of <i>May +and Death</i>—may be noted as indicating Browning's love +of new metrical experiments. In the former of these +poems the experiment cannot be called a success; the +clash of sounds, "a mass of brass," "walked and +talked," and the like, seems too much as if an accident +had been converted into a rule.</p> +<p><i>Mr Sludge, "the Medium</i>" the longest piece in the +volume, has been already noticed. The story of the +poor girl of Pornic, as Browning in a letter calls her, +attracted him partly because it presented a psychological +curiosity, partly because he cared to paint her +hair in words,—gold in contrast with that pallid face—as +much as his friend Rossetti might have wished +to display a like splendour with the strokes of his +brush:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Hair such a wonder of flix and floss,<br /> +</span><span>Freshness and fragrance—floods of it too!<br /> +</span><span>Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The story, which might gratify a cynical observer +of human nature, is treated by Browning without a +touch of cynicism, except that ascribed to the priest—good +easy man—who has lost a soul and gained an +altar. A saint <i>manqué</i>, whose legend is gruesome +enough, but more pathetic than gruesome, becomes for +the poet an involuntary witness of the Christian faith, +and a type of the mystery of moral evil; but the +<a name="Page_235"></a>psychological contrasts of the ambiguous +creature, +saint-sinner, and the visual contrast of</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>that face, like a silver wedge<br /> +</span><span>'Mid the yellow wealth,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>are of more worth than the sermon which the writer +preaches in exposition of his tale. Had the form of +the poem been Browning's favourite dramatic monologue, +we can imagine that an ingenious apologia, +convincing at least to Half-Pornic, could have been +offered for the perversity of the dying girl's rifting +every golden tress with gold.</p> +<p>No poem in the volume of <i>Dramatis Personae</i> is +connected with pictorial art, unless it be the few lines +entitled <i>A Face</i>, lines of which Emily Patmore, the +poet's wife, was the subject, and written, as Browning +seldom wrote, for the mere record of beauty. That +"little head of hers" is transferred to Browning's +panel in the manner of an early Tuscan piece of ideal +loveliness; in purity of outline and of colour the +delicate profile, the opening lips, the neck, the chin so +naturally ally themselves to painting that nature is +best comprehended through its imaginative transference +to art. As <i>Master Hugues</i> of the earlier collection +of poems converts a bewildering technique of +music into poetry, and discovers in its intricate construction +a certain interposing web spun by the brain +between the soul and things divine, so <i>Abt Vogler</i> +interprets music on the other side—that of immediate +inspiration, to which the constructive element—real +though slight—is subordinate. In the silence and +vacuity which follow the impromptu on his orchestrion, +the composer yearns, broods, aspires. Never were a +<a name="Page_236"></a>ghostly troop of sounds reanimated and +incarnated +into industrious life more actually than by Browning's +verse. They climb and crowd, they mount and march, +and then pass away; but the musician's spirit is borne +onward by the wind of his own mood, and it cannot +stay its flight until it has found rest in God; all that +was actual of harmonious sound has collapsed; but +the sense of a mystery of divine suggestion abides in +his heart; the partial beauty becomes a pledge of +beauty in its plenitude; and then by a gentle return +upon himself he resumes the life of every day, sobered, +quieted and comforted. The poem touches the +borderland where art and religion meet. The <i>Toccata +of Galuppi</i> left behind as its relics the melancholy of +mundane pleasure and a sense of its transitory existence. +The extemporising of <i>Abt Vogler</i> fills the +void which it has opened with the substance of things +hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.</p> +<p>Faith, victor over loss, in <i>Abt Vogler</i>, is victor over +temporal decay in <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>. The poem is the +song of triumph of devout old age. Neither the +shrunken sadness of Matthew Arnold's poem on old +age, nor the wise moderation and acquiescence in the +economy of force which an admirable poem by +Emerson expresses, can be found here; and perhaps +some stress and strain may be felt in Browning's effort +to maintain his position. It is no "vale of years" of +which <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> tells; old age is viewed as an +apex, a pinnacle, from which in thin translucent air +all the efforts and all the errors of the past can be reviewed; +the gifts of youth, the gifts of the flesh are +not depreciated; but the highest attainment is that +of knowledge won by experience—knowledge which +<a name="Page_237"></a>can divide good from evil and what is true from +what +merely seems, knowledge which can put a just valuation +not only on deeds but on every faint desire and +unaccomplished purpose, and not only on achievements +but failures. Possessed of such knowledge, +tried in the probation of life and not found wanting, +accepting its own peculiar trials, old age can enter +into the rest of a clear and solemn vision, confident +of being qualified at last to start forth upon that +"adventure brave and new" to which death is a +summons, and assured through experience that the +power which gives our life its law is equalled by a +superintending love. Ardour, and not lethargy, progress +and not decline, are here represented as the +characteristics of extreme old age. An enthusiasm +of effort and of strenuous endurance, an enthusiasm +of rest in knowledge, an enthusiasm of self-abandonment +to God and the divine purpose make +up the poem. At no time did Browning write +verse which soars with a more steadfast and impassioned +libration of wing. Death in <i>Rabbi Ben +Ezra</i> is death as a friend. In the lines entitled +<i>Prospice</i> it is death the adversary that is confronted +and conquered; the poem is an act of the faith which +comes through love; it is ascribed to no imaginary +speaker, and does not, indeed, veil its personal character. +No lonely adventure is here to reward the +victor over death; the transcendent joy is human +love recovered, which being once recovered, let whatever +God may please succeed. The verses are a +confession which gives the reason of that gallant +beating up against the wind, noticeable in many of +Browning's later poems. He could not cease from +<a name="Page_238"></a>hope; but hope and faith had much to encounter, +and sometimes he would reduce the grounds of his +hope to the lowest, as if to make sure against illusion +and to test the fortitude of hope even at its weakest. +The hope of immortality which was his own inevitably +extended itself beyond himself, and became an interpreter +of the mysteries of our earthly life. In +contrast with the ardent ideality of <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> +may be set the uncompromising realism of <i>Apparent +Failure</i>, with its poetry of the Paris morgue. The +lover of life will scrutinise death at its ugliest and +worst, blinking no hideous fact. Yet, even so, the +reverence for humanity—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Poor men, God made, and all for that!—<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>is not quenched, nor is the hope quenched that</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>After Last returns the First,<br /> +</span><span>Though a wide compass round be fetched,<br /> +</span><span>That what began best, can't end worst.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The optimism is unreasoned, and rightly so, for the +spirit of the poem, with its suggestive title, is not +argumentative. The sense of "the pity of it" in one +heart, remorse which has somehow come into existence +out of the obscure storehouse of nature, or out +of God, is the only justification suggested for a hope +that nature or God must at the last intend good and +not evil to the poor defeated abjects, who most abhorred +their lives in Paris yesterday. And the word "Nature" +here would be rejected by Browning as less than the truth.</p> +<p>In 1864 under somewhat altered conditions, and +from a ground somewhat shifted, Browning in <i>A +Death in the Desert</i> and the <i>Epilogue</i> to "Dramatis +Personae" continued his apology for the Christian +<a name="Page_239"></a>faith. The apologetics are, however, in the +first +instance poems, and they remain poems at the last. +The imaginary scene of the death of the Evangelist +John is rendered with the finest art; its dignity is +that of a certain noble bareness; in the dim-lighted +grotto are the aged disciple and the little group of +witnesses to whom he utters his legacy of words; at +the cave's edge is the Bactrian crying from time to +time his bird-like cry of assurance:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Outside was all noon and the burning blue.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The slow return of the dying man to consciousness +of his surroundings is as true as if it were studied +from a death-bed; his sudden awakening at the +words "I am the Resurrection and the Life" arrives +not as a dramatic surprise but as the simplest surprise +of nature—light breaking forth before sunset. The +chief speaker of the poem is chosen because the +argument is one concerning faith that comes through +love, and St John was the disciple who had learnt +love's deepest secrets. The dialectic proceeds along +large lines, which have only the subtlety of simplicity. +The verse moves gravely, tenderly, often weighted +with monosyllables; a pondering, dwelling verse; and +great single lines arise so naturally that while they +fill the mind with a peculiar power, they are felt to be +of one texture with the whole: this, for example,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>We would not lose<br /> +</span><span>The last of what might happen on his face;<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and this:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>When there was mid sea and the mighty things;<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and this:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Lie bare to the universal prick of light;<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_240"></a>and these:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,<br /> +</span><span>And could not write nor speak, but only loved.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Such lines, however, are made to be read <i>in situ</i>.</p> +<p>The faith of these latter days is the same as that +of the first century, and is not the same. The story +and the teaching of Christ had alike one end—to +plant in the human consciousness the assurance of +Divine Love, and to make us, in our degree, conscious +partakers of that love. Where love is, there is Christ. +Our conceptions of God are relative to our own understanding; +but God as power, God as a communicating +intelligence, God as love—Father, Son and Spirit—is +the utmost that we can conceive of things above us. +Let us now put that knowledge—imperfect though +it may be—to use. Power, intelligence, love—these +surround us everywhere; they are not mere projections +from our own brain or hand or heart; and by us they +are inconceivable otherwise than as personal attributes. +The historical story of Christ is not lost, for it has +grown into a larger assurance of faith. We are not +concerned with the linen clothes and napkins of the +empty sepulchre; Christ is arisen. Why revert to +discuss miracles? The work of miracles—whatever +they may have been—was long ago accomplished. +The knowledge of the Divine Love, its appropriation +by our own hearts, and the putting forth of that love +in our lives—such for us is the Christian faith, such is +the work of Christ accomplishing itself in humanity at +the present time. And the Christian story is no myth +but a reality, not because we can prove true the beliefs +of the first century, but because those beliefs contained +<a name="Page_241"></a>within them a larger and more enduring belief. +The +acorn has not perished because it has expanded into +an oak.</p> +<p>This, reduced here to the baldest statement, is in +substance the dying testimony of Browning's St John. +It is thrown into lyrical form as his own testimony +in the <i>Epilogue</i> to the volume of 1864. The voices +of singers, the sound of the trumpets of the Jewish +Dedication Day, when the glory of the Lord in His +cloud filled His house, have fallen silent. We are +told by some that the divine Face, known to early +Christian days as love, has withdrawn from earth for +ever, and left humanity enthroned as its sole representative:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Oh, dread succession to a dizzy post,<br /> +</span><span>Sad sway of sceptre whose mere touch appals.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Browning's reply is that to one whose eyes are +rightly informed the whole of nature and of human +life shows itself as a perpetual mystery of providential +care:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Why, where's the need of Temple, when the +walls<br /> +</span><span>O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls<br /> +</span><span>From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet calls?<br /> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,<br /> +</span><span>Or decomposes but to recompose,<br /> +</span><span>Become my universe that feels and knows.<a + name="FNanchor_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91"><sup>[91]</sup></a><br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>In the great poem of 1868-69, <i>The Ring and the +Book</i>, one speaker, the venerable Pope, like St John of +<a name="Page_242"></a><i>A Death in the Desert</i>, has almost reached +the term of +a long life: he is absorbed in the solemn weighing of +truth and falsehood, good and evil; his soul, like the +soul of the dying Evangelist:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Lies bare to the universal prick of light.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>He, if any of the speakers in that sequence of monologues, +expresses Browning's own highest thought. +And the Pope's exposition of the Christianity of our +modern age is identical with that of John. Man's +mind is but "a convex glass" in which is represented +all that by us can be conceived of God, "our known +unknown." The Pope has heard the Christian story +which is abroad in the world; he loves it and finds it +credible. God's power—that is clearly discernible in +the universe; His intelligence—that is no less evidently +present. What of love? The dread machinery of sin +and sorrow on this globe of ours seems to negative the +idea of divine love. The surmise of immortality may +indeed justify the ways of God to man; this "dread +machinery" may be needed to evolve man's highest +moral qualities. The acknowledgment of God in +Christ, the divine self-sacrifice of love, for the Pope, +as for St John, solves</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>All questions in the earth and out of it.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But whether the truth of the early centuries be an +absolute historic fact,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Or only truth reverberate, changed, made pass<br /> +</span><span>A spectrum into mind, the narrow eye—<br /> +</span><span>The same and not the same, else unconceived—<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>the Pope dare not affirm. Nor does he regard the +question as of urgent importance at the present day; +<a name="Page_243"></a>the effect of the Christian tale—historic fact, +or higher +fact expressed in myth—remains:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>So my heart be struck,<br /> +</span><span>What care I,—by God's gloved hand or the bare?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>By some means, means divinely chosen even if but a +child's fable-book, we have got our truth, and it suffices +for our training here on earth. Let us give over the endless +task of unproving and re-proving the already proved; +rather let us straightway put our truth to its proper uses.<a + name="FNanchor_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92"><sup>[92]</sup></a></p> +<p>If the grotesque occupies a comparatively small +place in <i>Dramatis Personae</i>, the example given is of +capital importance in this province of Browning's art. +The devil of Notre Dame, looking down on Paris, is +more effectively placed, but is hardly a more impressive +invention of Gothic fantasy than Caliban sprawling in +the pit's much mire,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his +chin,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>while he discourses, with a half-developed consciousness, +itself in the mire and scarcely yet pawing to get +free, concerning the nature of his Creator. The +grotesque here is not merely of the kind that addresses +the eye; the poem is an experiment in the grotesque +of thought; and yet fantastic as it seems, the whole +process of this monstrous Bridgewater treatise is +governed by a certain logic. The poem, indeed, is +<a name="Page_244"></a>essentially a fragment of Browning's own +Christian +apologetics; it stands as a burly gate-tower from which +boiling pitch can be flung upon the heads of assailants. +The poet's intention is not at all to give us a chapter +in the origins of religion; nor is Caliban a representative +of primitive man. A frequently recurring idea +with Browning is that expressed by Pope Innocent in +the passage already cited; the external world proves +the power of God; it proves His intelligence: but the +proof of love is derived exclusively from the love that +lives in the heart of man. Are you dissatisfied with +such a proof? Well, then, see what a god we can +construct out of intelligence and power, with love left +out! If this world is not a place of trial and training +appointed by love, then it is a scene of capricious +cruelty or capricious indifference on the part of our +Maker; His providence is a wanton sporting with our +weakness and our misery. Why were we brought into +being? To amuse His solitary and weary intelligence, +and to become the victims or the indulged manifestations +of His power. Why is one man selected for extreme +agony from which a score of his fellows escape? +Because god Setebos resembles Caliban, when through +mere caprice he lets twenty crabs march past him +unhurt and stones the twenty-first,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If any of the phenomena of nature lead us to infer +or imagine some law superior to the idle artistry +and reckless will of Setebos, that law is surely very +far away; it is "the Quiet" of Caliban's theology +which takes no heed of human life and has for its +outposts the cold unmoving stars.</p> +<p><a name="Page_245"></a>Except the short piece named <i>May and Death</i>, +which like Rossetti's poem of the wood-spurge, is +founded upon one of those freaks of association that +make some trival object the special remembrancer of +sorrow, the remaining poems of <i>Dramatis Personae</i>, +as originally published, are all poems of love. <i>A +Likeness</i>, skilfully contrived in the indirect directness +of its acknowledgment of love, its jealous privacy of +passion, and its irresistible delight in the homage +rendered by one who is not a lover, is no +exception. Not one of these poems tells of the +full assurance and abiding happiness of lovers. But +the warmth and sweetness of early passion are alive +under the most disastrous circumstances in <i>Confessions</i>. +The apothecary with his bottles provides a chart of +the scene of the boy-and-girl adventures; the professional +gravities of the parson put an edge on the +memory of the dear indiscretions; "summer's distillation," +to borrow a word from Shakespeare, makes +faint the odour of the bottle labelled "Ether"; the +mummy wheat from the coffin of old desire sprouts +up and waves its green pennons. <i>Youth and Art</i> may +be placed beside the earlier <i>Respectability</i> as two pages +out of the history of the encounters of prudence and +passion; youth and maiden alike, boy-sculptor and +girl-singer, prefer the prudence of worldly success to +the infinite prudence of love; and they have their +reward—that success in life which is failure. Like +the tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and Thisbe, +this is a poem of "very tragical mirth." And no less +tragically mirthful is <i>Dîs Aliter Visum</i>, a variation +on the same or a kindred theme, where our young +Bohemian sculptor is replaced by the elderly poet, +<a name="Page_246"></a>bent, wigged, and lamed, but sure of the +fortieth +chair in the Academy, and the lone she-sparrow of +the house-top by a young beauty, who adds to her +other attractions a vague, uninstructed yearning for +culture and entirely substantial possessions in the +three-per-cents. But the moral is the same—the folly +of being overwise, the wisdom of acting upon the +best promptings of the heart. In <i>Too Late</i> Browning +attempts to render a mood of passionate despair;—love +and the hopes of love are defeated by a +woman's sentence of rejection, her marriage, and, last, +her death; it reads, more than any other poem of the +writer, like a leaf torn out of "Wuthering Heights." +There is a fixity of grief which is more appalling +than this whirlblast; the souls that are wedged in +ice occupy a lower circle in the region of sorrow +than those which are driven before the gale. <i>The +Worst of it</i>—another poem of the failures of love—reverses +the conventional attitude of the wronged +husband; he ought, according to all recognised authorities +of drama and novel, rage against his faithless +wife, and commiserate his virtuous self; here he endeavours, +though vainly, to transfer every stain and +shame to himself from her; his anguish is all on her +behalf, or if on his own chiefly because he cannot +restore her purity or save her from her wrong done +against herself. It is a poem of moral stress and +strain, imagined with great intensity. Browning in +general isolates a single moment or mood of passion, +and studies it, with its shifting lights and shadows, +as a living microcosm; often it is a moment of crisis, +a moment of culmination. For once in <i>James Lee's +Wife</i> (named in the first edition by a stroke of per<a + name="Page_247"></a>versity +<i>James Lee</i>), he represents in a sequence of +lyrics a sequence of moods, and with singular success. +The season of the year is autumn, and autumn as +felt not among golden wheatfields, but on a barren +and rocky sea-coast; the processes of the declining +year, from the first touch of change to bareness everywhere, +accompany and accord with those of the +decline of hope in the wife's heart for any return of +her love. Her offence is that she has loved too +well; that she has laid upon her husband too great +a load of devotion; hostility might be met and vanquished; +but how can she deal with a heart which +love itself only petrifies? It should be a warning +to critics who translate dramatic poems into imaginary +biography to find that Browning, who had known so +perfect a success in the one love of his life, should +constantly present in work of imagination the ill +fortunes of love and lovers. Looking a little below +the surface we see that he could not write directly, +he could not speak effusively, of the joy that he had +known. But in all these poems he thinks of love as +a supreme possession in itself and as a revelation of +infinite things which lie beyond it; as a test of +character, and even as a pledge of perpetual advance +in the life of the spirit.</p> +<br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="Footnote_84"></a><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#FNanchor_84">[84]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letter to Story in Henry James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p. 91 +and +p. 97.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_85"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_85">[85]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> H. James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p. 100.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_86"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_86">[86]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Rossetti Papers," p. 302.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_87"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_87">[87]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> In 1863 Browning gave time and pains to revising his friend +Story's +<i>Roba di Roma</i>.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_88"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_88">[88]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> In 1864 Browning again "braved the awful Biarritz" and stayed +at +Cambo. On this occasion he visted Fontarabia. An interesting letter +from Cambo, undated as to time, is printed in Henry James's "W.W. +Story," vol. ii. pp. 153-156. The year—1864—may be ascertained by +comparing it with a letter addressed to F.T. Palgrave, given in +Palgrave's +Life, the date of this letter being Oct. 19, 1864. Browning in the +letter to Story speaks of "the last two years in the dear rough +Ste.-Marie."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_89"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_89">[89]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Was the poem <i>Gold Hair</i>? If three stanzas were added to +the first +draft before the poem appeared in <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i> the +number of +lines would have been 120. Stanzas 21, 22 and 23 were added in +the <i>Dramatis Personae</i> version.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_90"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_90">[90]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Aristophanes' Apology</i> (spoken of Euripides).</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_91"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_91">[91]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Compare with <i>Epilogue: Third Speaker</i> the lines from +<i>A Death in +the Desert</i>: +</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Then stand before that fact, that Life and +Death,<br /> +</span><span>Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,<br /> +</span><span>As though a star should open out, all sides,<br /> +</span><span>Grow the world on you, as it is my world.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_92"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_92">[92]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Statements by Mrs Orr with respect to Browning's relations to +Christianity +will be found on p. 319 and p. 373 of her Life of Browning. She +regarded "La Saisiaz" as conclusive proof of his "heterodox attitude." +Robert Buchanan, in the Epistle dedicatory to "The Outcast," alleges +that he questioned Browning as to whether he were a Christian, and that +Browning "thundered No!" The statement embodied in my text above +is substantially not mine but Browning's own. See on <i>Ferishtah's +Fancies</i> +in chapter xvi.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_XII"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_248"></a>Chapter XII</h2> +<h2>The Ring and the Book</h2> +<br /> +<p>The publication of <i>Dramatis Personae</i> marks an +advance in Browning's growing popularity; a second +edition, in which some improvements were effected, +was called for in 1864, the year of its first publication. +"All my new cultivators," Browning wrote, "are young +men"; many of them belonged to Oxford and Cambridge. +But he was resolved to consult his own taste, +to take his own way, and let popularity delay or +hasten as it would—"pleasing myself," he says, "or +aiming at doing so, and thereby, I hope, pleasing +God." His life had ordered itself as seemed best to +him—a life in London during the months in which +the tide flows and sparkles; then summer and autumn +quietude in some retreat upon the French coast. The +years passed in such a uniformity of work and rest, +with enjoyment accompanying each of these, that +they may almost be grasped in bundles. In 1865, +the holiday was again at Sainte-Marie, and the +weather was golden; but he noticed with regret that +the old church at Pornic, where the beautiful white +girl of his poem had been buried, was disappearing +to give space in front of a new and smart erection +of brick and stucco. His Florence, as he learnt, was +also altering, and he lamented the change. Every +detail of the Italian days lived in his memory; the +<a name="Page_249"></a>violets and ground ivy on a certain old wall; +the +fig tree behind the Siena villa, under which his wife +would sit and read, and "poor old Landor's oak." "I never +hear of any one going to Florence," he wrote in 1870, +"but my heart is twitched." He would like to "glide +for a long summer-day through the streets and between +the old stone-walls—unseen come and unheard go." +But he must guard himself against being overwhelmed +by recollection: "Oh, me! to find myself some late +sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned +to Florence—'ten minutes to the gate, ten minutes +<i>home</i>!' I think I should fairly end it all on the +spot."<a name="FNanchor_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93"><sup>[93]</sup></a></p> +<p>Other changes sadder than the loss of old Norman +pillars and ornaments, or new barbarous structures, run +up beside Poggio, were happening. In May 1866 +Browning's father, kind and cheery old man, was +unwell; in June Miss Browning telegraphed for her +brother, and he arrived in Paris twenty-four hours +before the end. The elder Browning had almost +completed his eighty-fifth year. To the last he retained +what his son described as "his own strange +sweetness of soul." It was the close of a useful, +unworldly, unambitious life, full of innocent enjoyment +and deep affection. The occasion was not one for +intemperate grief, but the sense of loss was great. +Miss Browning, whose devotion during many years +first to her mother, then to her widowed father, had +been entire, now became her brother's constant +companion. They rested for the summer at Le +Croisic, a little town in Brittany, in a delightfully +spacious old house, with the sea to right and left, +<a name="Page_250"></a>through whose great rushing waves Browning loved +to battle, and, inland, a wild country, picturesque with +its flap-hatted, white-clad, baggy-breeched villagers. +Their enjoyment was unspoilt even by some weeks of +disagreeable weather, and to the same place, which +Browning has described in his <i>Two Poets of Croisic</i>—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Croisic, the spit of sandy rock which juts<br /> +</span><span>Spitefully north,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>they returned in the following summer. During this +second visit (September 1867) that most spirited +ballad of French heroism, <i>Hervé Riel</i>, was written, +though its publication belongs to four years later.<a name="FNanchor_94"></a><a + href="#Footnote_94"><sup>[94]</sup></a></p> +<p>In June 1868 came grief of a kind that seemed to +cut him off from outward communication with a +portion of what was most precious in his past life. +Arabel Barrett, his wife's only surviving sister, who +had supported him in his greatest sorrow, died in +Browning's arms. "For many years," we are told by +Mr Gosse, "he was careful never to pass her house in +Delamere Terrace." Although not prone to superstition, +he had noted in July 1863 a dream of Miss +Barrett in which she imagined herself asking her dead +sister Elizabeth, "When shall I be with you?" and +received the answer, "Dearest, in five years." "Only +a coincidence," he adds in a letter to Miss Blagden, +"but noticeable." That summer, after wanderings in +France, Browning and his sister settled at Audierne, +on the extreme westerly point of Brittany, "a delightful, +quite unspoiled little fishing town," with the ocean +in front and green lanes and hills behind. It was in +<a name="Page_251"></a>every way an eventful year. In the autumn his +new +publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., produced the six-volume +edition of his Poetical Works, on the title-page +of which the author describes himself as "Robert +Browning, M.A., Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, +Oxford." The distinction, partly due to Jowett's +influence, had been conferred a year previously. In +1865, Browning, who desired that his son should be +educated at Oxford, first became acquainted with +Jowett. Acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship, +which was not the less genuine or cordial because Jowett +had but a qualified esteem for Browning's poems. +"Ought one to admire one's friend's poetry?" was a +difficult question of casuistry which the Master of +Balliol at one time proposed. Much of Browning's +work appeared to him to be "extravagant, perverse, +topsy-turvy"; "there is no rest in him," Jowett wrote +with special reference to the poems "Christmas Eve" +and "Easter Day," which he regarded as Browning's +noblest work. But for the man his admiration was +deep-based and substantial. After Browning's first +visit to him in June 1865, Jowett wrote that though +getting too old to make, as he supposed, new friends, +he had—he believed—made one. "It is impossible to +speak without enthusiasm of Mr Browning's open, +generous nature and his great ability and knowledge. +I had no idea that there was a perfectly sensible poet +in the world, entirely free from vanity, jealousy, or +any other littleness, and thinking no more of himself +than any ordinary man. His great energy is very +remarkable, and his determination to make the most +of the remainder of life. Of personal objects he +seems to have none except the education of his +<a name="Page_252"></a>son."<a name="FNanchor_95"></a><a + href="#Footnote_95"><sup>[95]</sup></a> Browning's visits to Oxford +and Cambridge did +not cease when he dropped away from the round of visiting +at country houses. He writes with frank enjoyment +of the almost interminable banquet given at +Balliol in the Lent Term, 1877, on the occasion of +the opening of the new Hall. Oxford conferred upon +him her D.C.L. in 1882, on which occasion a happy +undergraduate jester sent fluttering towards the new +Doctor's head an appropriate allusion in the form of a +red cotton night-cap. The Cambridge LL.D. was +conferred in 1879. In 1871 he was elected a Life +Governor of the University of London. In 1868 he +was invited to stand, with the certainty of election, +for the Lord Rectorship of the University of St +Andrews, as successor to John Stuart Mill, an honour +which he declined.<a name="FNanchor_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96"><sup>[96]</sup></a> +The great event of this year in +the history of his authorship was the publication in +November and December of the first two volumes of +<i>The Ring and the Book</i>. The two remaining volumes +followed in January and February 1869.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img009"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 942px;" + alt="PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS FOUND BY BROWNING." + title="PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS FOUND BY BROWNING." + src="images/img009.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" +WAS FOUND BY BROWNING.</h5> +<h5><i>From a photograph by</i> ALINARI.</h5> +<p>In June 1860 Browning lighted, among the litter +of odds and ends exposed for sale in the Piazza San +Lorenzo, Florence, upon the "square old yellow book," +part print, part manuscript, which contained the crude +fact from which his poem of the Franceschini murder +case was developed. The price was a lira, "eightpence +English just." As he leaned by the fountain +and walked through street and street, he read, and +had mastered the contents before his foot was on the +<a name="Page_253"></a>threshold of Casa Guidi<a name="FNanchor_97"></a><a + href="#Footnote_97"><sup>[97]</sup></a>. That night his brain was +a-work; pacing the terrace of Casa Guidi, while from +Felice church opposite came</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>the clear voice of the cloistered ones,<br /> +</span><span>Chanting a chant made for mid-summer nights,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>he gave himself up to the excitement of re-creating +the actors and re-enacting their deeds in his +imagination:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I fused my live soul and that inert stuff,<br /> +</span><span>Before attempting smithcraft.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>According to Mr Rudolf Lehmann, but possibly he +has antedated the incident, Browning at once conceived +the mode in which the subject could be treated in +poetry, and it was precisely the mode which was +afterwards adopted: "'When I had read the book,' so +Browning told me, 'my plan was at once settled. I +went for a walk, gathered twelve pebbles from the +road, and put them at equal distances on the parapet +that bordered it. Those represented the twelve +chapters into which the poem is divided, and I adhered +to that arrangement to the last.'"<a name="FNanchor_98"></a><a + href="#Footnote_98"><sup>[98]</sup></a> When in the autumn +he journeyed with his wife to Rome, the vellum-bound +quarto was with him, but the persons from whom he +sought further light about the murder and the trial +could give little information or none. Smithcraft did +not soon begin. He offered the story, "for prose +treatment" to Miss Ogle, so we are informed by Mrs +<a name="Page_254"></a>Orr, and, she adds, but with less assurance of +statement, +offered it "for poetic use to one of his leading +contemporaries." We have seen that in a letter of +1862 from Biarritz, Browning speaks of the Roman +murder case as being the subject of a new poem +already clearly conceived though unwritten. In the +last section of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, he refers to +having been in close converse with his old quarto of +the Piazza San Lorenzo during four years:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>How will it be, my four-years' intimate,<br /> +</span><span>When thou and I part company anon?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The publication of <i>Dramatis Personae</i> in 1864 +doubtless enabled Browning to give undivided attention +to his vast design. In October of that year he +advanced to actual definition of his scheme. When +staying in the south of France he visited the mountain +gorge which is connected with the adventure of the +Roland of romance, and there he planned the whole +poem precisely as it was carried out. "He says," Mr +W.M. Rossetti enters in his diary after a conversation +with Browning (15 March 1868), "he writes day by +day on a regular systematic plan—some three hours +in the early part of the day; he seldom or never, +unless in quite brief poems, feels the inspiring impulse +and sets the thing down into words at the same time—often +stores up a subject long before he writes it. +He has written his forthcoming work all consecutively—not +some of the later parts before the earlier."<a name="FNanchor_99"></a><a + href="#Footnote_99"><sup>[99]</sup></a></p> +<p>When Carlyle met Browning after the appearance +of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, he desired to be complimentary, +but was hardly more felicitous than Browning +<a name="Page_255"></a>himself had sometimes been when under a like +necessity: "It is a wonderful book," declared Carlyle, +"one of the most wonderful poems ever written. I +re-read it all through—all made out of an Old Bailey +story that might have been told in ten lines, and only +wants forgetting."<a name="FNanchor_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100"><sup>[100]</sup></a> +A like remark might have been +made respecting the book which, in its method and its +range of all English books most resembles Browning's +poem, and which may indeed be said to take among +prose works of fiction a similar place to that held +among poetical creations by Browning's tale of Guido +and Pompilia. Richardson's <i>Clarissa</i> consists of eight +volumes made out of an Old Bailey story, or what +might have been such, which one short newspaper +paragraph could have dismissed to a happy or sorrowful +oblivion. But then we should never have known two +of the most impressive figures invented by the imagination +of man, Clarissa and her wronger; and had we not +heard their story from all the participators and told +with Richardson's characteristic interest in the microscopy +of the human heart, it could never have possessed +our minds with that full sense of its reality which is the +experience of every reader. Out of the infinitesimally +little emerges what is great; out of the transitory +moments rise the forms that endure. It is of little +profit to discuss the question whether Richardson could +have effected his purpose in four volumes instead +of eight, or whether Browning ought to have contented +himself with ten thousand lines of verse instead of +twenty thousand. No one probably has said of either +work that it is too short, and many have uttered the +<a name="Page_256"></a>sentence of the critical Polonius—"This is too +long." +But neither <i>Clarissa</i> nor <i>The Ring and the Book</i> is +one of the Hundred Merry Tales; the purpose of each +writer is triumphantly effected; and while we wish +that the same effect could have been produced by +means less elaborate, it is not safe to assert confidently +that this was possible.</p> +<p>It has often been said that the story is told ten +times over by almost as many speakers; it would be +more correct to say that the story is not told even +once. Nine different speakers tell nine different stories, +stories of varying incidents about different persons—for +the Pompilia of Guido and the Pompilia of +Caponsacchi are as remote, each from other, as a +marsh-fire from a star, and so with the rest. In the +end we are left to invent the story for ourselves—not +indeed without sufficient guidance towards the truth +of things, since the successive speeches are a discipline +in distinguishing the several values of human +testimony. We become familiar with idols of the +cave, idols of the tribe, idols of the market-place, and +shall recognise them if we meet them again. Gossipry +on this side is checked and controlled by gossipry on +that; and the nicely balanced indifferentism of men +emasculate, blank of belief, who play with the realities +of life, is set forth with its superior foolishness of +wisdom. The advocacy which consists of professional +self-display is exhibited genially, humorously, an +advocacy horn-eyed to the truth of its own case, to +every truth, indeed, save one—that which commends +the advocate himself, his ingenious wit, and his flowers +of rhetoric. The criminal is allowed his due portion +of veracity and his fragment of truth—"What shall +<a name="Page_257"></a>a man give for his life?" He has enough truth +to enable him to fold a cloud across the light, to +wrench away the sign-posts and reverse their pointing +hands, to remove the land-marks, to set up false signal +fires upon the rocks. And then are heard three +successive voices, each of which, and each in a different +way, brings to our mind the words, "But there is a +spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty +giveth them understanding." First the voice of the +pure passion of manhood, which is naked and unashamed;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">a voice terrible in its sincerity, +absolute in<br /> +its abandonment to truth, prophet-like in its carelessness +of personal consequences, its carelessness of all except +the deliverance of a message—and yet withal a courtly +voice, and, if it please, ironical. It is as if Elihu the +son of Barachel stood up and his wrath were kindled: +"Behold my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it +is ready to burst like new bottles. I will speak that +I may be refreshed." And yet we dare not say that +Caponsacchi's truth is the whole truth; he speaks like +a man newly converted, still astonished by the supernatural +light, and inaccessible to many things visible +in the light of common day. Next, a voice from one +who is human indeed "to the red-ripe of the heart," +but who is already withdrawn from all the turbulence +and turbidity of life; the voice of a woman who is +still a child; of a mother who is still virginal; of +primitive instinct, which comes from God, and spiritual +desire kindled by that saintly knighthood that had +saved her; a voice from the edge of the world, where +the dawn of another world has begun to tremble and +grow luminous,—uttering its fragment of the truth. +Last, the voice of old age, and authority and matured +<a name="Page_258"></a>experience, and divine illumination, old age +encompassed +by much doubt and weariness and human infirmity, +a solemn, pondering voice, which, with God +somewhere in the clear-obscure, goes sounding on a +dim and perilous way, until in a moment this voice of +the anxious explorer for truth changes to the voice +of the unalterable justicer, the armed doomsman of +righteousness.</span></p> +<p>Truth absolute is not attained by any one of the +speakers; that, Browning would say, is the concern of +God. And so, at the close, we are directed to take +to heart the lesson</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>That our human speech is naught,<br /> +</span><span>Our human testimony false, our fame<br /> +</span><span>And human estimation words and wind.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But there are degrees of approximation to truth and +of remoteness from it. Truth as apprehended by pure +passion, truth as apprehended by simplicity of soul +("And a little child shall lead them"), truth as apprehended +by spiritual experience—such respectively make +up the substance of the monologues of Caponsacchi, +of Pompilia, and of the Pope. For the valuation, +however, of this loftier testimony we require a sense +of the level ground, even if it be the fen-country. +A perception of the heights must be given by exhibiting +the plain. If we were carried up in the air +and heard these voices how should we know for +certain that we had not become inhabitants of some +Cloudcuckootown? And the plain is where we ordinarily +live and move; it has its rights, and is worth +understanding for its own sake. Therefore we shall +mix our mind with that of "Half-Rome" and "The +Other Half-Rome" before we climb any mounts of +<a name="Page_259"></a>transfiguration or enter any city set upon a +hill. The +"man in the street" is a veritable person, and it is +good that we should make his acquaintance; even +the man in the <i>salon</i> may speak his mind if he will; +such shallow excitements, such idle curiosities as theirs +will enable us better to appreciate the upheaval to the +depths in the heart of Caponsacchi, the quietude, and +the rapt joy in quietude, of Pompilia, the profound +searchings of spirit that proceed all through the droop +of that sombre February day in the closet of the Pope. +And, then, at the most tragic moment and when +pathos is most poignant, life goes on, and the world +is wide, and laughter is not banished from earth. +Therefore Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Procurator +of the Poor, shall make his ingenious notes +for the defence of Count Guido, and cite his precedents +and quote his authorities, and darken counsel with +words, all to be by and by ecclesiasticized and +regularized and Latinized and Ciceroized, while more +than half the good man's mind is occupied with +thought of the imminent "lovesome frolic feast" on +his boy Cinone's birth-night, which shall bring with it +lamb's fry and liver, stung out of its monotony of +richness by parsley-sprigs and fennel. Yes, and we +shall hear also the other side—how, in a florilegium +of Latin, selected to honour aright the Graces and the +Muses and the majesty of Law, Johannes-Baptista +Bottinius can do justice to his client and to his own +genius by showing, with due exordium and argument +and peroration, that Pompilia is all that her worst +adversaries allege, and yet can be established innocent, +or not so very guilty, by her rhetorician's learning and +legal deftness in quart and tierce.</p> +<p><a name="Page_260"></a>The secondary personages in Richardson's +"Clarissa" +grow somewhat faint in our memories; but the figures +of his heroine and of Lovelace remain not only uneffaceable +but undimmed by time. Four of the +<i>dramatis personae</i> of Browning's poem in like manner +possess an enduring life, which shows no decline or +abatement after the effect of the monologues by the +other speakers has been produced and the speakers +themselves almost forgotten. Count Guide Franceschini +is not a miracle of evil rendered credible, like +Shakespeare's Iago, nor a strange enormity of tyrannous +hate and lust like the Count Cenci of Shelley. +He has no spirit of diabolic revelry in crime; no +feeling for its delicate artistry; he is under no spell +of fascination derived from its horror. He is clumsy +in his fraud and coarse in his violence. Sin may have +its strangeness in beauty; but Guido does not gleam +with the romance of sin. If Browning once or twice +gives his fantasy play, it is in describing the black +cave of a palace at Arezzo into which the white +Pompilia is borne, the cave and its denizens—the +"gaunt gray nightmare" of a mother, mopping and +mowing in the dusk, the brothers, "two obscure goblin +creatures, fox-faced this, cat-clawed the other," with +Guido himself as the main monster. Yet the Count, +short of stature, "hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of +beard" is not a monster but a man; possessed of +intellectual ability and a certain grace of bearing when +occasion requires; although wrenched and enfeebled +by the torture of the rack he holds his ground, has +even a little irony to spare, and makes a skilful defence. +Browning does not need a lithe, beautiful, mysterious +human panther, and is content with a plain, prosaic, +<a name="Page_261"></a>serviceable villain, who would have been +disdained +by the genius of the dramatist Webster as wanting +in romance. But like some of Webster's saturnine, +fantastic assistants or tools in crime, Guido has failed +in everything, is no longer young, chews upon the +bitter root of failure, and is half-poisoned by its acrid +juices. He is godless in an age of godless living; +cynical in a cynical generation; and ever and anon +he betrays the licentious imagination of an age of +license. He plays a poor part in the cruel farce of +life, and snarls against the world, while clinging +desperately to the world and to life. A disinterested +loyalty to the powers of evil might display a certain +gallantry of its own, but, though Guido loathes goodness, +his devotion to evil has no inverted chivalry in +it—there is always a valid reason, a sordid motive +for his rage. And in truth he has grounds of complaint, +which a wave of generous passion would have +swept away, but which, following upon the ill successes +of his life, might well make a bad man mad. His +wife, palmed off upon the representative of an ancient +and noble house, is the child of a nameless father and +a common harlot of Rome; she is repelled by his +person; and her cold submission to what she has +been instructed in by the Archbishop as the duties +of a wife is more intolerable than her earlier remoter +aversion. He is cheated of the dowry which lured +him to marriage. He is pointed at with smiling scorn +by the gossips of Arezzo. A gallant of the troop of +Satan might have devised and executed some splendid +revenge; but Guido is ever among the sutlers and +camp-followers of the fiend, who are base before they +are bold. When he makes his final pleading for life +<a name="Page_262"></a>in the cell of the New Prison by Castle Angelo, +the +animal cry, like that of a wild cat on whom the teeth of +the trap have closed, is rendered shrill by the intensity +of imagination with which he pictures to himself the +apparatus of the scaffold and the hideous circumstance +of his death. His effort, as far as it is rational, is to +transfer the guilt of his deeds to anyone or everyone +but himself. When all other resources fail he boldly +lays the offence upon God, who has made him what +he is. It was a fine audacity of Browning in imagining +the last desperate shriek of the wretched man, uttered +as the black-hatted Brotherhood of Death descend the +stairs singing their accursed psalm, to carry the +climax of appeal to the powers of charity, "Christ,—Maria,—God," +one degree farther, and make the +murderer last of all cry upon his victim to be his +saviour from the death which he dares to name by +the name of his own crime, a name which that crime +might seem to have sequestered from all other uses:—</p> +<p>"Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"</p> +<p>Pompilia is conceived by Browning not as a pale, +passive victim, but as strong with a vivid, interior +life, and not more perfect in patience than in her +obedience to the higher law which summons her to +resistance to evil and championship of the right. +Her purity is not the purity of ice but of fire. When +the Pope would find for himself a symbol to body +forth her soul, it is not a lily that he thinks of but +a rose. Others may yield to the eye of God a "timid +leaf" and an "uncertain bud,"</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>While—see how this mere chance sown, +cleft-nursed seed<br /> +</span><span>That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot<br /> +</span><span>Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,<br /> +</span><a name="Page_263"></a><span>Spreads itself, one wide glory of +desire<br /> +</span><span>To incorporate the whole great sun it loves<br /> +</span><span>From the inch-height whence it looks and longs. My flower,<br /> +</span><span>My rose, I gather for the breast of God.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>As she lies on her pallet, dying "in the good house +that helps the poor to die," she is far withdrawn from +the things of time; her life, with all its pleasures and +its pains, seems strange and far away—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Looks old, fantastic and impossible:<br /> +</span><span>I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Two possessions, out of what life has brought, +remain with her—the babe, who while yet unborn +had converted her from a sufferer to a defender, and +the friend who has saved her soul. Even motherhood +itself is not the deepest thing in Pompilia's nature. +The little Gaetano, whom she had held in her arms +for three days, will change; he will grow great, strong, +stern, a tall young man, who cannot guess what she +was like, who may some day have some hard thought +of her. He too withdraws into the dream of earth. +She can never lose him, and yet lose him she surely +must; all she can do is by dying to give him "out-right +to God, without a further care," so to be safe. +But one experience of Pompilia's life was quite out +of time, and belongs by its mere essence to eternity. +Having laid her babe away with God, she must not +even "think of him again, for gratitude"; and her +last breath shall spend itself in doing service to earth by +striving to make men know aright what earth will for a +time possess and then, forever, heaven—God's servant, +man's friend, the saviour of the weak, the foe of all who +are vile—and to the gossips of Arezzo and of Rome the +fribble and coxcomb and light-of-love priest, Caponsacchi.</p> +<p><a name="Page_264"></a>If any point in the whole long poem, <i>The +Ring and +the Book</i>, can be described as central, it must be found +in the relations, each to the other, of Caponsacchi and +Pompilia. The truth of it, as conceived by Browning, +could hardly be told otherwise than in poetry, for it +needs the faith that comes through spiritual beauty to +render it comprehensible and credible, and such beauty +is best expressed by art. It is easy to convince the +world of a passion between the sexes which is simply +animal; nor is art much needed to help out the proof. +Happily the human love, in which body and soul play +in varying degrees their parts, and each an honoured +part, is in widest commonalty spread. But the love +that is wholly spiritual seems to some a supernatural +thing, and if it be not discredited as utterly unreal +(which at certain periods, if literature be a test, has +been the case), it is apt to appear as a thing phantom-like, +tenuous, and cold. But, in truth, this reality +once experienced makes the other realities appear the +shadows, and it is an ardour as passionate as any that +is known to man. Its special note is a deliverance from +self with a joy in abandonment to some thing other +than self, like that which has been often recorded as +an experience in religious conversion; when Bunyan, +for example, ceased from the efforts to establish his +own righteousness and saw that righteousness above +him in the eternal heavens, he walked as a man +suddenly illuminated, and could hardly forbear telling +his joy to the crows upon the plough-land; and so, +in its degree, with the spiritual exaltation produced by +the love of man and woman when it touches a certain +rare but real altitude. If a poet can succeed in lifting +up our hearts so that they may know for actual the +<a name="Page_265"></a>truth of these things, he has contributed an +important +fragment towards an interpretation of human life. +And this Browning has assuredly done. The sense +of a power outside oneself whose influence invades the +just-awakened man, the conviction that the secret of +life has been revealed, the lying passive and prone to +the influx of the spirit, the illumination, the joy, the +assurance that old things have passed away and that +all things have become new, the acceptance of a +supreme law, the belief in a victory obtained over time +and death, the rapture in a heart prepared for all self-sacrifice, +entire immolation—these are rendered by +Browning with a fidelity which if reached solely by +imagination is indeed surprising, for who can discover +these mysteries except through a personal experience?<a + name="FNanchor_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101"><sup>[101]</sup></a> +If the senses co-operate—as perhaps they do—in such +mysteries, they are senses in a state of transfiguration, +senses taken up into the spirit—"Whether in the body +or out of the body I cannot tell." When Caponsacchi +bears the body of Pompilia in a swoon to her chamber +in the inn at Castelnuovo, it is as if he bore the host. +From the first moment when he set eyes upon her +in the theatre,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange and +sad,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>he is delivered from his frivolous self, he is solemnized +and awed; the form of his worship is self-sacrifice; +his first word to her—"I am yours "—is</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>An eternity<br /> +</span><span>Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth<br /> +</span><span>O' the soul that then broke silence.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_266"></a>To abstain from ever seeing her again would +be joy +more than pain if this were duty to her and to God. +For him the mere revelation of Pompilia would suffice. +His inmost feeling is summed up with perfect adequacy +in a word to the Judges: "You know this is not love, +Sirs—it is faith."</p> +<p>There is another kind of faith which comes not +suddenly through passion but slowly through thought +and action and trial, and the long fidelity of a life. It +is that of which Milton speaks in the lines:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Till old experience do attain<br /> +</span><span>To something of Prophetic strain.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>This is the faith of Browning's Pope Innocent, who up +to extreme old age has kept open his intelligence both +on the earthward and the Godward sides, and who, +being wholly delivered from self by that devotion to +duty which is the habit of his mind, can apprehend the +truth of things and pronounce judgment upon them +almost with the certitude of an instrument of the divine +righteousness. And yet he is entirely human, God's +vicegerent and also an old man, learned in the secrets +of the heart, patient in the inquisition of facts, weighing +his documents, scrutinising each fragment of +evidence, burdened by the sense of responsibility, +cheered also by the opportunity of true service, +grave but not sad—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute,<br /> +</span><span>With prudence, probity and—what beside<br /> +</span><span>From the other world he feels impress at times;<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>a "grey ultimate decrepitude," yet visited by the +spiritual fire which touches a soul whose robe of +flesh is worn thin; not unassailed by doubts as to +<a name="Page_267"></a>the justice of his final decision, but assured +that his +part is confidently to make the best use of the powers +with which he has been entrusted; young of heart, if +also old, in his rejoicing in goodness and his antipathy +to evil.</p> +<p><i>The Ring and the Book</i> is a great receptacle into +which Browning poured, with an affluence that perhaps +is excessive, all his powers—his searchings for truth, +his passion, his casuistry, his feeling for beauty, his +tenderness, his gift of pity, his veiled memories of +what was most precious in the past, his hopes for the +future, his worldly knowledge, his unworldly aspirations, +his humour, such as it was, robust rather than delicate. +Could the three monologues which tell how in various +ways it strikes a Roman contemporary have been fused +into a single dialogue, could the speeches of the two +advocates have been briefly set over, one against the +other, instead of being drawn out at length, we might +still have got the whole of Browning's mind. But we +must take things as we find them, and perhaps a +skilled writer knows his own business best. Never +was Browning's mastery in narrative displayed with +such effect as in Caponsacchi's account of the flight to +Rome, which is not mere record, but record winged +with lyrical enthusiasm. Never was his tenderness so +deep or poignant as in his realisation of the motherhood +of Pompilia. Never were the gropings of +intellect and the intuitions of the spirit shown by him +in their weakness and their strength with such a lucid +subtlety as in the deliberations and decisions of the +Pope. The whole poem which he compares to a ring +was the ring of a strong male finger; but the posy of +the ring, and the comparison is again his own, tells +<a name="Page_268"></a>how it was a gift hammered and filed during the +years of smithcraft "in memoriam"; in memory and +also with a hope.</p> +<p>The British Public, whom Browning addresses at +the close of his poem, and who "liked him not" during +so many years, now when he was not far from sixty +went over to his side. <i>The Ring and the Book</i> almost +immediately passed into a second edition. The decade +from 1869 onwards is called by Mrs Orr the fullest +period in Browning's life. His social occupations and +entertainments both in London and for a time as a +visitor at country-houses became more numerous and +absorbing, yet he had energy for work as well as for +play. During these ten years no fewer than nine new +volumes of his poetry appeared. None of them are +London poems, and Italy is for the present almost +forgotten; it is the scene of only two or three short +pieces, which are included in the volume of 1876—<i>Pacchiarotto +and how he worked in distemper; with +other Poems</i>. The other pieces of the decade as +regards their origin fall with a single exception into +two groups; first those of ancient Greece, suggested +by Browning's studies in classical drama; secondly +those, which in a greater or less degree, are connected +with his summer wanderings in France and Switzerland. +The dream-scene of Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau is +Leicester Square; but this also is one of the poems +of France. <i>The Inn Album</i> alone is English in its +characters and their surroundings. Such a grouping +of the works of the period is of a superficial nature, +and it can be readily dismissed. It brings into +prominence, however, the fact that Browning, while +resolved to work out what was in him, lay open to +<a name="Page_269"></a>casual suggestions. He had acquired certain +methods +which he could apply to almost any topic. He had +confidence that any subject on which he concentrated +his powers of mind could be compelled to yield +material of interest. It cannot be said that he +exercised always a wise discretion in the choice of +subjects; these ought to have been excellent in themselves; +he trusted too much to the successful issue of +the play of his own intellect and imagination around +and about his subjects. <i>The Ring and the Book</i> had +given him practice, extending over several years, in +handling the large dramatic monologue. Now he +was prepared to stretch the dramatic monologue +beyond the bounds, and new devices were invented +to keep it from stagnating and to carry it forward. +Imaginary disputants intervene in the monologue; +there are objections, replies, retorts; a second player +in the game not being found, the speaker has to play +against himself.</p> +<p>In the story of the Roman murder-case fancy was +mingled with fact, and truth with falsehood, with a +view to making truth in the end the more salient. +The poet had used to the full his dramatic right of +throwing himself into intellectual sympathy with +persons towards whom he stood in moral antagonism +or at least experienced an inward sense of alienation. +The characteristic of much of his later poetry is that it +is for ever tasking falsehood to yield up truth, for ever +(to employ imagery of his own) as a swimmer beating +the treacherous water with the feet in order that the +head may rise higher into the pure air made for the +spirit's breathing. Browning's genius united an intellect +which delighted in the investigation of complex +<a name="Page_270"></a>problems with a spiritual and emotional nature +manifesting +itself in swift and simple solutions of those +problems; it united an analytic or discursive power +supplied by the head with an intuitive power springing +from the heart. He employed his brain to twist and +tangle a Gordian knot in order that in a moment it +might be cut with the sword of the spirit. In the +earlier poems his spiritual ardours and intuitions were +often present throughout, and without latency, without +reserve; impassioned truth often flashed upon the +reader through no intervening or resisting medium. +In <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, and in a far greater degree +in some subsequent poems, while the supreme authority +resides in the spiritual intuitions or the passions of the +heart, their instantaneous, decisive work waits until +a prolonged casuistry has accomplished its utmost; +falsehood seems almost more needful in the process of +the poet than truth. And yet it is never actually so. +Rather to the poet, as a moral explorer, it appeared a +kind of cowardice to seek truth only where it may +easily be found; the strenuous hunter will track it +through all winding ways of error; it is thrown out as +a spot of intense illumination upon a background of +darkness; it leaps forth as the flash of the search-light +piercing through a mist. The masculine +characters in the poems are commonly made the +exponents of Browning's intellectual casuistry—a +Hohenstiel-Schwangau, an Aristophanes; and they +are made to say the best and the most truthful words +that can be uttered by such as they are and from +such positions as theirs; the female characters, a +Balaustion, the Lady of Sorrows in <i>The Inn Album</i>, +and others are often revealers of sudden truth, which +<a name="Page_271"></a>with them is either a divine revelation—the +vision +seen from a higher and clearer standpoint—or a +dictate of pure human passion. Eminent moments in +life had an extraordinary interest for Browning—moments +when life, caught up out of the habitual +ways and the lower levels of prudence, takes its +guidance and inspiring motive from an immediate +discovery of truth through some noble ardour of the +heart. Therefore it did not seem much to him to +task his ingenuity through almost all the pages of a +laborious book in creating a tangle and embroilment +of evil and good, of truth and falsehood, in view of +the fact that a shining moment is at last to spring +forward and do its work of severing absolutely and +finally right from wrong, and shame from a splendour +of righteousness. Browning's readers longed at times, +and not without cause, for the old directness and the +old pervading presence of spiritual and impassioned +truth.<a name="FNanchor_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102"><sup>[102]</sup></a></p> +<br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Footnote_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93">[93]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letter to Miss Blagden, Feb. 24, 1870, given by Mrs Orr, p. +287.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_94"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_94">[94]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Vivid descriptions of Le Croisic at an earlier date may be +found in +one of Balzac's short stories.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_95"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_95">[95]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Life of Jowett</i> by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, i. 400, +401.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_96"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_96">[96]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> A repeated invitation in 1877 was also declined. In 1875 Browning +was +nominated by the Independent Club to the office of Lord Rector of +Glasgow University.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_97"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_97">[97]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Such a book would naturally attract Browning, who, like his +father, +had an interest in celebrated criminal cases. In his <i>Memories</i> +(p. +338), +Kegan Paul records his surprise at a dinner-party where the +conversation +turned on murder, to find Browning acquainted "to the minutest detail" +with every <i>cause célèbre</i> of that kind within +living memory.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_98"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_98">[98]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>An Artist's Reminiscences</i>, by R. Lehmann (1894), p. +224.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_99"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_99">[99]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Rossetti Papers, p. 302.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_100"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_100">[100]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> So the story was told by Dante Rossetti, as recorded by Mrs +Gilchrist; +she says that she believed the story was told of himself by Carlyle.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_101"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_101">[101]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi's +monologue, II. +936-973, beginning with "Thought? nay, sirs, what shall follow was not +thought."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_102"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_102">[102]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> I have used here some passages already printed in my +<i>Studies in +Literature</i>.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_XIII"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_272"></a>Chapter XIII</h2> +<h2>Poems on Classical Subjects</h2> +<br /> +<p>During these years, 1869-1878, Browning's outward +life maintained its accustomed ways. In the summer +of 1869 he wandered with his son and his sister, in +company with his friends of Italian days, the Storys, +in Scotland, and at Lock Luichart Lodge visited Lady +Ashburton.<a name="FNanchor_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103"><sup>[103]</sup></a> +Three summers, those of 1870, 1872 +and 1873 were spent at Saint-Aubin, a wild "un-Murrayed" +village on the coast of Normandy, where +Milsand occupied a little cottage hard by. At night +the light-house of Havre shot forth its beam, and it +was with "a thrill" that Browning saw far off the spot +where he had once sojourned with his wife.<a name="FNanchor_104"></a><a + href="#Footnote_104"><sup>[104]</sup></a> "I don't +think we were ever quite so thoroughly washed by the +sea-air from all quarters as here," he wrote in August +1870. Every morning, as Mme. Blanc (Th. Bentzon) +tells us, he might be seen "walking along the sands +with the small Greek copy of Homer which was his +constant companion. On Sunday he went with the +Milsands ... to a service held in the chapel of the +Chateau Blagny, at Lion-sur-Mer, for the few Protestants +of that region. They were generally accom<a name="Page_273"></a>panied +by a young Huguenot peasant, their neighbour, +and Browning with the courtesy he showed to every +woman, used to take a little bag from the hands of +the strong Norman girl, notwithstanding her entreaties." +The visit of 1870 was saddened by the knowledge of +what France was suffering during the progress of the +war. He lingered as long as possible for the sake of +comradeship with Milsand, around whose shoulder +Browning's arm would often lie as they walked +together on the beach.<a name="FNanchor_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105"><sup>[105]</sup></a> +But communication with +England became daily more and more difficult. +Milsand insisted that his friend should instantly +return. It is said by Mme. Blanc that Browning was +actually suspected by the peasants of a neighbouring +village of being a Prussian spy. Not without difficulty +he and his sister reached Honfleur, where an English +cattle-boat was found preparing to start at midnight +for Southampton.</p> +<p>Two years later Miss Thackeray was also on the +coast of Normandy and at no great distance. "It was +a fine hot summer," she writes, "with sweetness and +completeness everywhere; the cornfields gilt and far-stretching, +the waters blue, the skies arching high +and clear, and the sunsets succeeding each other in +most glorious light and beauty." Some slight misunderstanding +on Browning's part, the fruit of mischief-making +gossipry, which caused constraint between +him and his old friend was cleared away by the good +offices of Milsand. While Miss Thackeray sat writing, +with shutters closed against the blazing sun, Browning +himself "dressed all in white, with a big white umbrella +<a name="Page_274"></a>under his arm," arrived to take her hand with +all his +old cordiality. A meeting of both with the Milsands, +then occupying a tiny house in a village on the outer +edges of Luc-sur-mer, soon followed, and before the +sun had fallen that evening they were in Browning's +house upon the cliff at Saint-Aubin. "The sitting-room +door opened to the garden and the sea beyond—fresh-swept +bare floor, a table, three straw chairs, one +book upon the table. Mr Browning told us it was +the only book he had with him. The bedrooms were +as bare as the sitting-room, but I remember a little +dumb piano standing in a corner, on which he used to +practise in the early morning. I heard Mr Browning +declare they were perfectly satisfied with their little +house; that his brains, squeezed as dry as a sponge, +were only ready for fresh air."<a name="FNanchor_106"></a><a + href="#Footnote_106"><sup>[106]</sup></a> Perhaps Browning's +"only book" of 1872 contained the dramas of +Æschylus, for at Fontainebleau where he spent some +later weeks of the year these were the special subject +of his study. It was at Saint-Aubin in 1872 that he +found the materials for his poem of the following year, +and to Miss Thackeray's drowsy name for the district,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Symbolic of the place and people too,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><i>White Cotton Night-Cap Country</i>, the suggestion of +Browning's title <i>Red Cotton Night-Cap Country</i> is due. +To her the poem is dedicated.</p> +<p>Browning's interest in those who were rendered +homeless and destitute in France during the Prussian +invasion was shown in a practical way in the spring +of 1871. He had for long been averse to the publication +of his poems in magazines and reviews. In 1864 +<a name="Page_275"></a>he had gratified his American admirers by +allowing +<i>Gold Hair</i> and <i>Prospice</i> to appear in the <i>Atlantic +Monthly</i> previous to their inclusion in <i>Dramatis +Persona.</i> A fine sonnet written in 1870, suggested +by the tower erected at Clandeboye by Lord Dufferin +in memory of his mother, Helen, Countess of Gifford, +had been inserted in some undistributed copies of a +pamphlet, "Helen's Tower," privately printed twenty +years previously; the sonnet was published at the +close of 1883 in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, but was +not given a place by Browning in the collected editions +of his Poetical Works. In general he felt that the +miscellaneous contents of a magazine, surrounding a +poem, formed hardly an appropriate setting for such +verse as his. In February 1871, however, he offered +to his friend and, publisher Mr Smith the ballad of +<i>Hervé Riel</i> for use in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i> of +March, +venturing for once, as he says, to puff his wares and +call the verses good. His purpose was to send something +to the distressed people of Paris, and one +hundred guineas, the sum liberally fixed by Mr +Smith as the price of the poem, were duly forwarded—the +gift of the English poet and his Breton hero. +The facts of the story had been forgotten and were +denied at St Malo; the reports of the French Admiralty +were examined and indicated the substantial +accuracy of the poem. On one point Browning +erred; it was not a day's holiday to be spent with his +wife "la Belle Aurore" which the Breton sailor +petitioned for as the reward of his service, but a "congé +absolu," the holiday of a life-time. In acknowledging +his error to Dr Furnivall, and adding an explanation +of its cause, he dismissed the subject with the word, +"<a name="Page_276"></a>Truth above all things; so treat the matter as +you +please."<a name="FNanchor_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107"><sup>[107]</sup></a></p> +<p>For the purposes of holiday-making the resources of +the northern French coast, with which Browning's ballad +of the Croisickese pilot is associated, were, says Mrs +Orr, becoming exhausted. Yet some rest and refreshment +after the heavy tax upon his strength made by +a London season with its various claims were essential +to his well-being. His passion for music would not +permit him during his residence in town to be absent +from a single important concert; the extraordinary +range of his acquaintance with the works of great and +even of obscure composers was attested by Halle. In +his sonnet of 1884, inscribed in the Album to Mr +Arthur Chappell, <i>The Founder of the Feast</i>, a poem +not included in any edition of his works, he recalls +these evenings of delight:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,<br /> +</span><span>My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,<br /> +</span><span>When, night by night—ah, memory, how it haunts!—<br /> +</span><span>Music was poured by perfect ministrants,<br /> +</span><span>By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Long since in Florence he had become acquainted +with Miss Egerton-Smith, who loved music like himself, +and was now often his companion at public +performances in London. She was wealthy, and with +too little confidence in her power to win the regard of +others, she lived apart from the great world. In 1872 +Browning lost the warm-hearted and faithful friend +who had given him such prompt, womanly help in his +worst days of grief—Miss Blagden. Her place in his +<a name="Page_277"></a>memory remained her own. Miss Egerton-Smith +might seem to others wanting in strength of feeling +and cordiality of manner. Browning knew the sensitiveness +of her nature, which responded to the touch of +affection, and he could not fail to discover her true +self, veiled though it was by a superficial reserve. And +as he knew her, so he wrote of her in the opening of +his <i>La Saisiaz</i>:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>You supposed that few or none had known and +loved you in the world:<br /> +</span><span>May be! flower that's full-blown tempts the butterfly, not +flower that's furled.<br /> +</span><span>But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and +let expand<br /> +</span><span>Bud to bell and out-spread flower-shape at the least warm +touch of hand<br /> +</span><span>—Maybe throb of heart, beneath which,—quickening farther +than it knew,—<br /> +</span><span>Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and +unguessed hue.<br /> +</span><span>Disembosomed, re-embosomed,—must one memory suffice,<br /> +</span><span>Prove I knew an Alpine rose which all beside named +Edelweiss?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Miss Egerton-Smith was the companion and house-mate +of Browning and his sister in their various +summer wanderings from 1874 to 1877. In the +first of these years the three friends occupied a house +facing the sea at the village of Mers near Tréport. +Browning at this time was much absorbed by his +<i>Aristophanes' Apology</i>. "Here," writes Mrs Orr, "with +uninterrupted quiet, and in a room devoted to his +use, Mr Browning would work till the afternoon was +advanced, and then set off on a long walk over the +cliffs, often in the face of a wind, which, as he wrote +of it at the time, he could lean against as if it were a +<a name="Page_278"></a>wall." The following summers were spent at +Villers +in Normandy (1875), at the Isle of Arran (1876), and +in the upland country of the Salève, near Geneva. +During the visit to the Salève district, where Browning +and his sister with Miss Egerton-Smith occupied a +chalet named La Saisiaz, he was, Mrs Orr tells us, +"unusually depressed and unusually disposed to regard +the absence from home as a banishment." Yet the +place seemed lovely to him in its solitude and its +beauty; the prospect of Geneva, with lake and plain +extended below, varying in appearance with the shifting +of clouds, was repose to his sense of sight. He +bathed twice each day in the mountain stream—"a +marvel of delicate delight framed in with trees." He +read and rested; and wrote but little or not at all. +Suddenly the repose of La Saisiaz was broken up; +the mood of languorous pleasure and drowsy discontent +was at an end. While preparing to join her +friend on a long-intended mountain climb Miss +Egerton-Smith, with no forewarning, died. The +shock was for a time overwhelming. When Browning +returned to London the poem <i>La Saisiaz</i>, the record +of his inquisition into the mystery of death, of his +inward debate concerning a future life, was written. +It was the effort of resilience in his spirit in opposition +to that stroke which deprived him of the friend +who was so near and dear.</p> +<p>The grouping of the works produced by Browning +from the date of the publication of <i>The Ring and the +Book</i> (1868) to the publication of <i>La Saisias</i> (1878), +which is founded upon the occasions that suggested +them, has only an external and historical interest. +The studies in the Greek drama and the creations to +<a name="Page_279"></a>which these gave rise extend at intervals over +the +whole decade. <i>Balaustion's Adventure</i> was published +in 1871, <i>Aristophanes' Apology</i> in 1875, the translation +of <i>The Agamemnon of Æschylus</i> in 1877. Two of the +volumes of this period, <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> +(1871) and <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> (1872) are casuistical +monologues, and these, it will be observed, lie side by +side in the chronological order. The first of the pair +is concerned with public and political life, with the +conduct and character of a man engaged in the affairs +of state; the second, with a domestic question, the +casuistry of wedded fidelity and infidelity, from which +the scope of the poem extends itself to a wider survey +of human existence and its meanings.<a name="FNanchor_108"></a><a + href="#Footnote_108"><sup>[108]</sup></a> Two of the +volumes are narrative poems, each tending to a tragic +crisis; <i>Red Cotton Night-Cap Country</i> (1873) is a story +entangled with questions relating to religion; <i>The Inn +Album</i> (1875) is a tragedy of the passion of love. +The volume of 1876, <i>Pacchiarotto with other Poems</i>, is +the miscellaneous gathering of lyrical and narrative +pieces which had come into being during a period of +many years. Finally in <i>La Saisiaz</i> Browning, writing +in his own person, records the experience of his spirit +in confronting the problem of death. But it was part +of his creed that the gladness of life may take hands +with its grief, that the poet who would live mightily +must live joyously; and in the volume which contained +his poem of strenuous and virile sorrow he did not +refrain from including a second piece, <i>The two Poets of +Croisic</i>, which has in it much matter of honest mirth, +and closes with the declaration that the test of great<a name="Page_280"></a>ness +in an artist lies in his power of converting his +more than common sufferings into a more than +common joy.</p> +<p><i>Balaustion's Adventure</i>, dedicated to the Countess +Cowper by whom the transcript from Euripides was +suggested, or, as Browning will have it, prescribed, +proved, as the dedication declares, "the most delightful +of May-month amusements" in the spring of 1871. +It was the happiest of thoughts to give the version of +Euripides' play that setting which has for its source +a passage at the close of Plutarch's life of Nicias. +The favours bestowed by the Syracusans upon +Athenian slaves and fugitives who could delight them +by reciting or singing the verses of Euripides is not +to be marvelled at, says Plutarch, "weying a reporte +made of a ship of the city of Caunus, that on a time +being chased thether by pyrates, thinking to save +themselves within their portes, could not at the first +be received, but had repulse: howbeit being demaunded +whether they could sing any of Euripides songes, and +aunswering that they could, were straight suffered to +enter, and come in."<a name="FNanchor_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109"><sup>[109]</sup></a> +From this root blossomed +Browning's romance of the Rhodian girl, who saves +her country folk and wins a lover and a husband by +her delight in the poetry of one who was more highly +honoured abroad than in his own Athens. Perhaps +Browning felt that an ardent girl would be the best +interpreter of the womanly heroism and the pathos of +"that strangest, saddest, sweetest song," of Euripides. +Of all its author's dramas the Alkestis is the most +appropriate to the occasion, for it is the poem of a +great deliverance from death, and here in effect it +<a name="Page_281"></a>delivers from death, or worse, the fugitives +from the +pirate-bark, "at destruction's very edge," who are the +suppliants to Syracuse. In accepting the task imposed +upon him Browning must have felt that no +other play of Euripides could so entirely have borne +out the justice of the characterisation of the poet by +Mrs Browning in the lines which he prefixed to +<i>Balaustions Adventure</i>:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Our Euripides the human,<br /> +</span><span>With his droppings of warm tears.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>"If the Alkestis is not the masterpiece of the genius +of Euripides," wrote Paul de Saint-Victor, "it is perhaps +the masterpiece of his heart."<a name="FNanchor_110"></a><a + href="#Footnote_110"><sup>[110]</sup></a></p> +<p>Balaustion herself, not a rose of "the Rosy Isle" +but its wild-pomegranate-flower, since amid the verdure +of the tree "you shall find food, drink, odour all at +once," is Hellenic in her bright and swift intelligence, +her enthusiasm for all noble things of the mind, the +grace of every movement of her spirit, her culture and +her beauty. The atmosphere of the poem, which +encircles the translation, is singularly luminous and +animating; the narrative of the adventure is rapid yet +always lucid; the verse leaps buoyantly like a wave +of the sea. Balaustion tells her tale to the four Greek +girls, her companions, amid the free things of nature, +the overhanging grape vines, the rippling stream,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Outsmoothing galingale and watermint,<br /> +</span><span>Its mat-floor,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and in presence of the little temple Baccheion, with its +sanctities of religion and of art. By a happy and +original device the transcript of the Alkestis is much +<a name="Page_282"></a>more than a translation; it is a translation +rendered +into dramatic action—for we see and hear the performers +and they are no longer masked—and this is +accompanied with a commentary or an interpretation. +Never was a more graceful apology for the function +of the critic put forward than that of Balaustion:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>'Tis the poet speaks:<br /> +</span><span>But if I, too, should try and speak at times,<br /> +</span><span>Leading your love to where my love, perchance,<br /> +</span><span>Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew—<br /> +</span><span>Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Browning has not often played the part of a critic, +and the interpretation of a poet's work by a poet has +the double value of throwing light upon the mind of +the original writer and the mind of his commentator.</p> +<p>The life of mortals and the life of the immortal +gods are brought into a beautiful relation throughout +the play. It is pre-eminently human in its grief and +in its joy; yet at every point the divine care, the +divine help surrounds and supports the children of +earth, with their transitory tears and smiles. Apollo +has been a herdsman in the service of Admetos; +Herakles, most human of demigods, is the king's friend +and guest. The interest of the play for Browning +lay especially in three things—the pure self-sacrifice +of the heroine, devotion embodied in one supreme +deed; and no one can heighten the effect with which +Euripides has rendered this; secondly, the joyous, +beneficent strength of Herakles, and this Browning has +felt in a peculiar degree, and by his commentary has +placed it in higher relief; and thirdly, the purification +and elevation through suffering of the character of +Admetos; here it would be rash to assert that +<a name="Page_283"></a>Browning has not divined the intention of +Euripides, +but certainly he has added something of his own. +It has been maintained that Browning's interpretation +of the spiritual significance of the drama is a beautiful +perversion of the purpose of the Greek poet; that +Admetos needs no purification; that in accepting his +wife's offer to be his substitute in dying, the king +was no craven but a king who recognised duty to the +state as his highest duty. The general feeling of readers +of the play does not fall in with this ingenious plea. +Browning, as appears from his imagined recast of the +theme, which follows the transcript, had considered +and rejected it. If Admetos is to be in some degree +justified, it can only be by bearing in mind that the +fact by which he shall himself escape from death is +of Apollo's institution, and that obedience to the +purpose of Apollo rendered self-preservation a kind +of virtue. But Admetos makes no such defence of +his action when replying to the reproaches of his +father, and he anticipates that the verdict of the world +will be against him. Browning undoubtedly presses +the case against Admetos far more strongly than does +Euripides, who seems to hold that a man weak in one +respect, weak when brought to face the test of death, +may yet be strong in the heroic mastery of grief +which is imposed upon him by the duties of hospitality. +Readers of the Winter's Tale have sometimes +wondered whether there could be much rapture of +joy in the heart of the silent Hermione when she +received back her unworthy husband. If Admetos +remained at the close of the play what he is understood +by Browning to have been at its opening, reunion +with a self-lover so base could hardly have flushed +<a name="Page_284"></a>with gladness the spirit of Alkestis just +escaped from +the shades.<a name="FNanchor_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111"><sup>[111]</sup></a> +But Alkestis, who had proved her own +loyalty by deeds, values deeds more than words. +When dying she had put her love into an act, and +had refrained from mere words of wifely tenderness; +death put an end to her services to her husband; she +felt towards him as any wife, if Browning's earlier +poem be true, may feel to any husband; but still she +could render a service to her children, and she exacts +from Admetos the promise that he will never place +a stepmother over them. His allegiance to this vow +is an act, and it shall be for Alkestis the test of his +entire loyalty. And the good Herakles, who enjoys +a glorious jest amazingly, and who by that jest can +benevolently retort upon Admetos for his concealment of +Alkestis' death—for now the position is reversed and the +king shall receive her living, and yet believe her dead—Herakles +contrives to put Admetos to that precise +test which is alone sufficient to assure Alkestis of his +fidelity. Words are words; but here is a deed, and +Admetos not only adheres to his pledge, but demonstrates +to her that for him to violate it is impossible. +She may well accept him as at length proved to be +her very own.</p> +<p>Browning, who delights to show how good is +brought out of evil, or what appears such to mortal +<a name="Page_285"></a>eyes, is not content with this. He must trace +the +whole process of the purification of the soul of Admetos, +by sorrow and its cruel yet beneficent reality, and in +his commentary he emphasises each point of development +in that process. When his wife lies at the +point of death the sorrow of Admetos is not insincere, +but there was a childishness in it, for he would not +confront the fact that the event was of his own election. +Presently she has departed, and he begins to taste +the truth, to distinguish between a sorrow rehearsed +in fancy and endured in fact. In greeting Herakles +he rises to a manlier strain, puts tears away, and +accepts the realities of life and death; he will not add +ill to ill, as the sentimentalist does, but will be just +to the rights of earth that remain; he catches some +genuine strength from the magnanimous presence of +the hero-god. He renders duty to the dead; is quieted; +and enters more and more into the sternness of his +solitary wayfaring. In dealing with the ignoble wrangle +with old Pheres the critic is hard set; but Balaustion, +speaking as interpreter for Browning, explains that for +a little the king lapses back from the firmer foothold +which he had attained. Perhaps it would have been +wiser to admit that Euripides has marred his own work +by this grim tragic-comic encounter of crabbed age and +youth. But it is true that one who has much to give, +like Alkestis, gives freely; and one who has little to +give, like Pheres, clutches that little desperately and is +starved not only in possessions but in soul. For +Browning the significance of the scene lies in the idea, +which if not just is ingenious, that the encounter with +Pheres has an educational value for Admetos; he detests +his father because he sees in him an image of his own +<a name="Page_286"></a>egoism, and thus he learns more profoundly to +hate +his baser self. When the body of Alkestis has been +borne away and the king re-enters his desolate halls +the full truth breaks in upon him; nothing can be as +it has been before—"He stared at the impossible mad +life"; he has learnt that life, which yet shall be +rightly lived, is a harder thing than death:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>He was beginning to be like his wife.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And those around him felt that having descended in +grief so far to the truth of things, he could not but +return to the light an altered and a better man. +Instructed so deeply in the realities of sorrow, Admetos +is at last made worthy to receive the blessed realities +of joy with the words,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>When I betray her, though she is no more,<br /> +</span><span>May I die.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The regeneration of Admetos is accomplished. How +much in all this exposition is derived from the play, +how much is added to it, may be left for the consideration +of the reader who will compare the original +with the transcript.</p> +<p>If the character of Admetos is somewhat lowered +by Browning beneath the conception of the Greek +dramatist, to allow room for its subsequent elevation, +the conception of Herakles is certainly heightened. +We shall not say that Balaustion is the speaker and that +Herakles is somewhat of a woman's hero. Browning +himself fully enters into Balaustion's enthusiasm. And +the presence of the strong, joyous helper of men is in +truth an inspiring one. The great voice that goes +before him is itself a <i>Sursum corda!</i>—a challenge and +a summons to whatever manliness is in us. And the +<a name="Page_287"></a>best of it is that sauntering the pavement or +crossing +the ferry we may happen to encounter this face of +Herakles:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O +superb! I see what is coming;<br /> +</span><span>I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the slaves of runners +clearing the way,<br /> +</span><span>I hear victorious drums.<br /> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>This face is a life-boat.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>For Walt Whitman too had seen Brother Jonathan +Herakles, and indeed the face of the strong and tender +wound-dresser was itself as the face of a calmer +Herakles to many about to die. The speeches of the +demigod in Browning's transcript require an abundant +commentary, but it is the commentary of an irrepressible +joy, an outbreak of enthusiasm which will +not be controlled. The glorious Gargantuan creature, +in the best sense Rabelaisian, is uplifted by Browning +into a very saint of joyous effort; no pallid ascetic, +indeed, beating his breast with the stone, but a +Christian saint of Luther's school, while at the same +time a somewhat over-boisterous benevolent Paynim +giant:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world!<br /> +</span><span>I think this is the authentic sign and sea!<br /> +</span><span>Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,<br /> +</span><span>And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts<br /> +</span><span>Into a rage to suffer for mankind,<br /> +</span><span>And recommence at sorrow.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Something of the Herakles ideal appears again and again +in other poems of Browning. His Breton sailor, Hervé +Riel, has more than a touch of the Heraclean frankness +of gaiety in arduous effort. His Ivàn Ivànovitch +<a name="Page_288"></a>wields the axe and abolishes a life with the +Heraclean +joy in righteousness. And in the last of Browning's +poems, not without a pathetically over-boisterous effort +and strain, there is the suggestion of an ideal conception +of himself as a Herakles-Browning; the old man +tries at least to send his great voice before him.</p> +<p>The new Admetos, new Alkestis, imagined by +Balaustion at the close of the poem, are wedded +lovers who, like the married in Pompilia's dream of +heaven, "know themselves into one." For them the +severance of death has become an impossible thing; +and therefore no place is left for Herakles in this +treatment of the story. It expresses Browning's +highest conception of the union of soul with soul:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Therewith her whole soul entered into his,<br /> +</span><span>He looked the look back, and Alkestis died—<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>died only to be rejected by Hades, as still living, and +with a more potent life, in her husband's heart and +will. Yet the mortal cloud is round these mortals +still; they cannot see things as the gods see. And, +for all their hopes and endeavours, the earth which +they would renew and make as heaven, remains the +old incredulous, unconverted earth,—"Such is the envy +Gods still bear mankind." And in such an earth, if +not for them, assuredly for others, Herakles may find +great deeds to do.</p> +<p>Balaustion has the unique distinction of being +heroine throughout two of Browning's poems; and of +both we may say that the genius of Euripides is the +hero. <i>Aristophanes' Apology</i> is written from first to +last with unflagging energy; the translation of the +"Herakles" which it includes is a masculine and +<a name="Page_289"></a>masterly effort to transport the whole sense and +spirit +of the original into English verse, and the rendering +of the choral passages into lyric form gives it an +advantage over the transcript of the "Alkestis." +Perhaps not a little of the self-defence of Aristophanes +and his statement of the case against Euripides could +have been put as well or better in a critical essay in +prose; but the method of Browning enables him to +mingle, in a dramatic fashion, truth with sophistry, +and to make both serve his purpose of presenting not +only the case but the character of the great Greek +maker of comedy. Balaustion is no longer the ardent +girl of the days of her first adventure; she is a wife, +with the dignity, the authority of womanhood and +wifehood; she has known the life of Athens with its +evil and its good; she has been the favoured friend of +Euripides; she is capable of confronting his powerful +rival in popular favour, and of awing him into sobriety +and becoming manners; with an instinctive avoidance +she recoils from whatever is gross or uncomely; yet +she can do honour to the true light of intellect and +genius even though it shines through earth-born +vapours and amid base surroundings.</p> +<p>Athens, "the life and light of the whole world," has +sunk under the power of Sparta, and it can be henceforth +no home for Balaustion and her Euthukles. +The bark that bears them is bounding Rhodesward, +and the verse has in it the leap and race of the prow. +Balaustion, stricken at heart, yet feels that this tragedy +of Athens brings the tragic katharsis; the justice of +the gods is visible in it; and above man's wickedness +and folly she reaches to "yon blue liberality of heaven." +It seems as if the spirit which might have saved Athens +<a name="Page_290"></a>is that of the loins girt and the lamp lit which +was +embodied in the strenuous devotion of Euripides to +the highest things; and the spirit which has brought +Athens to its ruin is that expressed with a splendid +power through the work of Aristophanes. But +Aristophanes shall plead for himself and leave nothing +unsaid that can serve to vindicate him as a poet and +even as a moralist Thus only can truth in the end +stand clear, assured of its supremacy over falsehood +and over half-truth.</p> +<p>Nothing that Browning has written is more vividly +imagined than the encounter of Balaustion with +Aristophanes and his crew of revellers on the night +when the tidings of the death of Euripides reached +Athens; it rouses and controls the feelings with the +tumult of life and the sanctity of death, while also +imposing itself on the eye as a brilliant and a solemn +picture. The revellers scatter before the presence of +Balaustion, and she and the great traducer of Euripides +stand face to face. Nowhere else has Browning presented +this conception of the man of vast disorderly +genius, who sees and approves the better way and +splendidly follows the worse:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Such domineering deity<br /> +</span><span>Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine<br /> +</span><span>For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path<br /> +</span><span>Which, purpling, recognised the conqueror.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is as if male force, with the lust of the eye, the +lust of the flesh, and the pride of life behind it, were +met and held in check by the finer feminine force +resting for its support upon the divine laws. But in +truth Aristophanes is half on the side of Balaustion +<a name="Page_291"></a>and of Euripides; he must, indeed, make his +stand; +he is not one to falter or quail; and yet when the +sudden cloud falls upon his face he knows that it is +his part to make the worse appear the better cause, +knowing this all the more because the justice of +Balaustion's regard perceives and recognises his higher +self. Suddenly the Tuphon, "madding the brine +with wrath or monstrous sport," is transformed into +something like what the child saw once from the +Rhodian sea-coast (the old romantic poet in Browning +is here young once more):</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>All at once, large-looming from his wave,<br /> +</span><span>Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge,<br /> +</span><span>A sea-worn face, sad as mortality,<br /> +</span><span>Divine with yearning after fellowship.<br /> +</span><span>He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw;<br /> +</span><span>So much she sees now, and does reverence.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But in a moment the sea-god is again the sea-monster, +with "tail-splash, frisk of fin"; the majestic +Aristophanes relapses into the most wonderful of +mockers.</p> +<p>No passage in the poem is quite so impressive as +this through its strangeness in beauty. But the entry +of Sophocles—"an old pale-swathed majesty,"—at +the supper which followed the performance of the +play, is another of those passages to find which <i>in situ</i> +is a sufficient reward for reading many laborious pages +that might almost as well have been thrown into an +imaginary conversation in prose:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Then the grey brow sank low, and Sophokles<br /> +</span><span>Re-swathed him, sweeping doorward: mutely passed<br /> +</span><span>'Twixt rows as mute.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_292"></a>The critical study of comedy, its origin, its +development, +its function, its decline, is written with admirable +vigour, but the case of Aristophanes can be read elsewhere. +It is interesting, however, to note the argument +in support of the thesis that comedy points really +to ideals of humanity which are beyond human attainment; +that its mockery of man's infirmities implies a +conception of our nature which in truth is extra-human; +while tragedy on the contrary accepts man as he is, +in his veritable weakness and veritable strength, and +wrings its pity and its terror out of these. It is +Aristophanes who thus vindicates Euripides before the +revellers who have assembled in his own honour, and +they accept what seems to them a paradox as his finest +stroke of irony. But he has indeed after the solemn +withdrawal of Sophocles looked for a moment through +life and death, and seen in his hour of highest success +his depth of failure. For him, in this testing-time of +life, art has been the means of probation; he has +squandered the gifts bestowed upon him, which should +have been concentrated in the special task to which he +was summoned. He should have known—he did in +fact know—that the art which "makes grave" is +higher than that which "makes grin"; his own +peculiar duty was to advance his art one step beyond +his predecessors; to create a drama which should +bring into harmony the virtue of tragedy and the +virtue of comedy; to discover the poetry which</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Makes wise, not grave,—and glad,<br /> +</span><span>Not grinning: whereby laughter joins with tears.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Instead of making this advance he had retrograded; +and it remained for a poet of a far-off future in the +<a name="Page_293"></a>far-off Kassiterides—the Tin Isle which has +Stratford +at its heart—to accomplish the task on which Aristophanes +would not adventure. One way a brilliant +success was certain for Aristophanes; the other and +better way failure was possible; and he declined to +make the venture of faith. It is with this sense of +self-condemnation upon him that he essays his own +defence, and it is against this sense of self-condemnation +more than against the genius and the +methods of Euripides that he struggles. When +towards the close of the poem he takes in hand the +psalterion, and chants in splendid strains the story of +Thamuris, who aspired and failed, as he himself will +never do, the reader is almost won over to his side. +Browning, who felt the heights and depths of the lyric +genius of Aristophanes, would seem to have resolved +that in this song of "Thamuris marching," moving in +ecstasy amid the glories of an autumn morning, he +would dramatically justify his conception of the poet; +and never in his youth did Browning sing with a finer +rapture of spirit. But reading what follows, the record +of the subjugation of Athens, when the Athenian +people accept the ruin of their defences as if it were +but a fragment of Aristophanic comedy, we perceive +that this song, which breaks off with an uproar of +laughter, is the condemnation as well as the glory of +the singer.</p> +<p>The translation of <i>Agamemnon</i>, the preface to which +is dated "October 1st, 1877," was undertaken at the +request or command of Carlyle. The argument of the +preface fails to justify Browning's method. A translation +"literal at every cost save that of absolute violence +to our language" may be highly desirable; it is +<a name="Page_294"></a>commonly called a "crib"; and a crib contrived +by +one who is not only a scholar but a man of genius will +now and again yield a word or a phrase of felicitous +precision. But that a translation "literal at every +cost" should be put into verse is a wrong both to the +original and to the poetry of the language to which the +original is transferred; it assumes a poetic garb which +in assuming it rends to tatters. A translation into +verse implies that a certain beauty of form is part of +the writer's aim; it implies that a poem is to be reproduced +as a poem, and not as that bastard product +of learned ill judgment—a glorified crib; and a +glorified crib is necessarily a bad crib. Mrs Orr, who +tells us that Browning refused to regard even the first +of Greek writers as models of literary style, had no +doubt that the translation of the <i>Agamemnon</i> was +partly made for the pleasure of exposing the false +claims made on their behalf. Such a supposition does +not agree well with Browning's own Preface; but if he +had desired to prove that the <i>Agamemnon</i> can be so +rendered as to be barely readable, he has been singularly +successful. From first to last in the genius of +Browning there was an element, showing itself from +time to time, of strange perversity.</p> +<br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="Footnote_103"></a><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#FNanchor_103">[103]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Was this a "baffled visit," as described by Mr Henry James in +his +"Life of Story" (ii. 197), when the hostess was absent, and the guests +housed in an inn?</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_104"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_104">[104]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letter quoted by Mrs Orr, p. 288.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_105"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_105">[105]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The attitude is reproduced in a photograph from which a +woodcut is +given in Mme. Blanc's article "A French Friend of Browning."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_106"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_106">[106]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning," by Annie Ritchie, +pp. +291, 292.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_107"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_107">[107]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "A Bibliography of the Writings of Robert Browning," by T.J. +Wise, pp. 157, 158.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_108"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_108">[108]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Aristophanes' Apology</i> is connected with these poems by +its character +as a casuistical self-defence of the chief speaker.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_109"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_109">[109]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> North's "Plutarch," 1579, p. 599.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_110"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_110">[110]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Les Deux Masques," ii. 281.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_111"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_111">[111]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> A comment of Paul de Saint-Victor on the silence of the +recovered +Alkestis deserves to be quoted: "Hercule apprend à Admète +qu'il lui est +interdit d'entendre sa voix avant qu'elle soit purifiée de sa +consécration +aux Divinités infernales. J'aime mieux voir dans cette +réserve un scrupule +religieux du poète laissant à la morte sa dignité +d'Ombre. Alceste a été +nitiée aux profonds mystères de la mort; elle a vu +l'invisible, elle a +entendu l'ineffable; toute parole sortie de ses lèvres serait +une +divulgation +sacrilège. Ce silence mystérieux la spiritualise et la +rattache par un +dernier lien au monde éternel."</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_XIV"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_295"></a>Chapter XIV</h2> +<h2>Problem and Narrative Poems</h2> +<br /> +<p><i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>, which appeared in +December 1871, four months after the publication +of <i>Balaustions Adventure</i>, was written by Browning +during a visit to friends in Scotland. His interest in +modern politics was considerable, but in general it +remained remote from his work as a poet. He professed +himself a liberal, but he was a liberal who +because he was such, claimed the right of independent +judgment. He had rejoiced in the enfranchisement +of Italy. During the American Civil War he was +strongly on the side of the North, as letters to Story, +written when his private grief lay heavy upon him, +abundantly show. He was at one time a friend of the +movement in favour of granting the parliamentary +suffrage to women, but late in life his opinion on this +question altered. He was as decidedly opposed to the +proposals for a separate or subordinate Parliament for +Ireland as were his friends Carlyle and Tennyson and +Matthew Arnold. After the introduction of the Home +Rule Bill he could not bring himself, though requested +by a friend, to write words which would have expressed +or implied esteem for the statesman who had made +that most inopportune experiment in opportunism<a name="FNanchor_112"></a><a + href="#Footnote_112"><sup>[112]</sup></a> and +whose talents he admired. Yet for a certain kind of +<a name="Page_296"></a>opportunism—that which conserves rather than +destroys—Browning +thought that much might fairly be said. +To say this with a special reference to the fallen +Emperor of France he wrote his <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.</p> +<p>Browning's instinctive sympathies are not with the +"Saviour of Society," who maintains for temporary +reasons a tottering edifice. He naturally applauds +the man who builds on sure foundations, or the man +who in order to reach those foundations boldly +removes the accumulated lumber of the past. But +there are times when perhaps the choice lies only +between conservation of what is imperfect and the +attempt to erect an airy fabric which has no basis +upon the solid earth; and Browning on the whole +preferred a veritable <i>civitas hominum</i>, however remote +from the ideal, to a sham <i>civitas Dei</i> or a real +Cloudcuckootown. +"It is true, that what is settled by +custom, though it be not good, yet at least it is fit; +and those things, which have long gone together, are +as it were confederate within themselves; whereas +new things piece not so well; but though they help +by their utility, yet they trouble by their inconformity." +These words, of one whose worldly wisdom was more +profoundly studied than ever Browning's was, might +stand as a motto for the poem. But the pregnant +sentence of Bacon which follows these words should +be added—"All this is true if time stood still." +Browning's pleading is not a merely ingenious defence +of the untenable, either with reference to the general +thesis or its application to the French Empire. He +did not, like his wife, think of the Emperor as if he +were a paladin of modern romance; but he honestly +<a name="Page_297"></a>believed that he had for a time done genuine +service—though +not the highest—to France and to the +world. "My opinion of the solid good rendered +years ago," he wrote in September 1863 to Story, +"is unchanged. The subsequent deference to the +clerical party in France and support of brigandage is +poor work; but it surely is doing little harm to the +general good." And to Miss Blagden after the +publication of his poem: "I thought badly of him +at the beginning of his career, <i>et pour cause</i>; better +afterward, on the strength of the promises he made, +and gave indications of intending to redeem. I +think him very weak in the last miserable year." It +seemed to Browning a case in which a veritable +<i>apologia</i> was admissible in the interests of truth and +justice, and by placing this <i>apologia</i> in the mouth of +the Emperor himself certain sophistries were also +legitimate that might help to give the whole the +dramatic character which the purposes of poetry, as +the exposition of a complex human character, +required.</p> +<p>The misfortune was that in making choice of such +a subject Browning condemned himself to write with +his left hand, to fight with one arm pinioned, to +exhibit the case on behalf of the "Saviour of Society" +with his brain rather than with brain and heart +acting together. He was to demonstrate that in the +scale of spiritual colours there is a respectable place +for drab. This may be undertaken with skill and +vigour, but hardly with enthusiastic pleasure. <i>Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> is an interesting intellectual +exercise, and if this constitutes a poem, a poem it is; +but the theme is fitter for a prose discussion. Brown<a name="Page_298"></a>ing's +intellectual ability became a snare by which the +poet within him was entrapped. The music that he +makes here is the music of Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>So your fugue broadens and thickens,<br /> +</span><span>Greatens and deepens and lengthens,<br /> +</span><span>Till one exclaims—"But where's music, the dickens!"<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The mysterious Sphinx who expounds his riddle +and dissertates on himself in an imaginary Leicester +Square says many things that deserve to be considered; +but they are addressed to our understanding +in the first instance, and only in a secondary and +indirect way reach our feelings and our imagination. +The interest of the poem is virtually exhausted in a +single reading; to a true work of art we return again +and again for renewed delight. We return to <i>Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> as to a valuable store-house of +arguments or practical considerations in defence of a +conservative opportunism; but if we have once appropriated +these, we do not need the book. There +is a spirit of conservation, like that of Edmund Burke, +which has in it a wise enthusiasm, we might almost +say a wise mysticism. Browning's Prince is not a +conservator possessed by this enthusiasm. Something +almost pathetic may be felt in his sense that the +work allotted to him is work of mere temporary and +transitory utility. He has no high inspirations such +as support the men who change the face of the world. +The Divine Ruler who has given him his special +faculties, who has enjoined upon him his special tasks, +holds no further communication with him. But he +will do the work of a mere man in a man's strength, +<a name="Page_299"></a>such as it is; he cannot make new things; he can +use the thing he finds; he can for a term of years +"do the best with the least change possible"; he can +turn to good account what is already half-made; and +so, he believes, he can, in a sense, co-operate with God. +So long as he was an irresponsible dreamer, a mere +voice in the air, it was permitted him to indulge in +glorious dreams, to utter shining words. Now that +his feet are on the earth, now that his thoughts +convert themselves into deeds, he must accept the +limitations of earth. The idealists may put forth this +programme and that; his business is not with them +but with the present needs of the humble mass of +his people—"men that have wives and women that +have babes," whose first demand is bread; by intelligence +and sympathy he will effect "equal sustainment +everywhere" throughout society; and when the man +of genius who is to alter the world arises, such a man +most of all will approve the work of his predecessor, +who left him no mere "shine and shade" on which to +operate, but the good hard substance of common +human life.</p> +<p>All this is admirably put, and it is interesting to +find that Browning, who had rejoiced with Herakles +doing great deeds and purging the world of monsters, +could also honour a poor provisional Atlas whose task +of sustaining a poor imperfect globe upon his shoulders +is less brilliant but not perhaps less useful. Nor +would it be just to overlook the fact that in three or +four pages the poet asserts himself as more than the +prudent casuist. The splendid image of society as a +temple from which winds the long procession of powers +and beauties has in it something of the fine mysticism +<a name="Page_300"></a>of Edmund Burke.<a name="FNanchor_113"></a><a + href="#Footnote_113"><sup>[113]</sup></a> The record of the Prince's +early +and irresponsible aspirations for a free Italy—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught,<br /> +</span><span>Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine<br /> +</span><span>For ever!—<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>with what immediately follows, would have satisfied +the ardent spirit of Mrs Browning.<a name="FNanchor_114"></a><a + href="#Footnote_114"><sup>[114]</sup></a> And the +characterisation of the genius of the French nation, +whose lust for war and the glory of war Browning +censures as "the dry-rot of the race," rises brilliantly +out of its somewhat gray surroundings:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The people here,<br /> +</span><span>Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride<br /> +</span><span>Above her pride i' the race all flame and air<br /> +</span><span>And aspiration to the boundless Great,<br /> +</span><span>The incommensurably Beautiful—<br /> +</span><span>Whose very faulterings groundward come of flight<br /> +</span><span>Urged by a pinion all too passionate<br /> +</span><span>For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow:<br /> +</span><span>Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave<br /> +</span><span>Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous<br /> +</span><span>In Art, the—more than all—magnetic race<br /> +</span><span>To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is a passage conceived in the same spirit as the +great chaunt "O Star of France!" written, at the +same date, and with a recognition of both the virtues +and the shames of France, by the American poet of +Democracy. To these memorable fragments from +<i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> one other may be added—that +towards the close of the poem which applies +the tradition of the succession by murder of the +priesthood at the shrine of the Clitumnian god to the +<a name="Page_301"></a>succession of men of genius in the priesthood of +the +world—"The new power slays the old, but handsomely."</p> +<p>In <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> there is nothing +enigmatical. "It is just what I imagine the man +might, if he pleased, say for himself," so Browning +wrote to Miss Blagden soon after the publication of +the volume. Many persons, however, have supposed +that in <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> (1872) a riddle rather than a +poem was given to the world by the perversity of the +writer. When she comes to speak of this work +Browning's biographer Mrs Orr is half-apologetic; it +is for her "a piece of perplexing cynicism." The +origin of the poem was twofold. The external +suggestion came from the fact that during one of +his visits to Pornic, Browning had seen the original +of his Fifine, and she lived in his memory as a subject +of intellectual curiosity and imaginative interest. The +internal suggestion, as Mrs Orr hints, lay in a certain +mood of resentment against himself arising from the +fact that the encroachments of the world seemed to +estrange in some degree a part of his complex being +from entire fidelity to his own past. The world, in +fact, seemed to be playing with Browning the part of +a Fifine. If this were so, it would be characteristic of +Browning that he should face round upon the world +and come to an explanation with his adversary. But +this could not in a printed volume be done in his own +person; he was not one to take the public into his +confidence. The discussion should be removed as far +as possible from his own circumstances and even his +own feelings. It should be a dramatic debate on the +subject of fidelity and infidelity, on the bearings of +the apparent to the true, on the relation of reality in +<a name="Page_302"></a>this our mortal life to illusion. As he studied +the +subject it assumed new significances and opened up +wider issues. An actual Elvire and an actual Fifine +may be the starting points, but by-and-by Elvire shall +stand for all that is permanent and substantial in +thought and feeling, Fifine for all that is transitory +and illusive. The question of conjugal fidelity is as +much the subject of <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> as the virtue of +tar-water is the subject of Berkeley's <i>Siris</i>. The poem +is in fact Browning's <i>Siris</i>—a chain of thoughts and +feelings, reaching with no break in the chain, from a +humble basis to the heights of speculation.</p> +<p>But before all else <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> is a poem. Of +all the longer poems which followed <i>The Ring and the +Book</i> it is the most sustained and the most diversified +in imaginative power. To point out passages of +peculiar beauty, passages vivid in feeling, original in +thought, would here be out of place; for the brilliance +and vigour are unflagging, and what we have to complain +of is the lack of some passages of repose. The +joy in freedom—freedom accepting some hidden law—of +these poor losels and truants from convention, who +stroll it and stage it, the gypsy figure of Fifine in page-costume, +the procession of imagined beauties—Helen, +Cleopatra, the Saint of Pornic Church—the half-emerging, +half-undelivered statue by Michelagnolo, the praise +of music as nearer to the soul than words, sunset at +Saint-Marie, the play of the body in the sea at noontide +(with all that it typifies), woman as the rillet +leaping to the sea, woman as the dolphin that upbears +Orion, the Venetian carnival, which is the carnival of +human life, darkness fallen upon the plains, and through +the darkness the Druidic stones gleaming—all these +<a name="Page_303"></a>are essentially parts of the texture of the +poem, yet +each has a lustre or a shimmer or grave splendour of +its own.</p> +<p>It is strange that any reader should have supposed +either the Prologue or the Epilogue to be uttered by +the imaginary speaker of the poem. Both shadow +forth the personal feelings of Browning; the prologue +tells of the gladness he still found both in the world of +imagination and the world of reality, over which hovers +the spirit that had once been so near his own, the +spirit that is near him still, yet moving on a different +plane, perhaps wondering at or pitying this life of his, +which yet he accepts with cheer and will turn to the +best account; the epilogue veils behind its grim +humour the desolate feeling that came upon him again +and again as a householder in this house of life, for +behind the happiness which he strenuously maintained, +there lay a great desolation. But the last word of +the epilogue—"Love is all and Death is nought" is a +word of sustainment wrung out of sorrow. These +poems have surely in them no "perplexing cynicism," +nor has the poem enclosed between them, when it is +seen aright. Browning's idea in the poem he declared +in reply to a question of Dr Furnivall, "was to show +merely how a Don Juan might justify himself, partly +by truth, somewhat by sophistry." No more unhappy +misnomer than this "Don Juan" could have been +devised for the curious, ingenious, learned experimenter +in life, no man of pleasure, in the vulgar sense of the +word, but a deliberate explorer of thoughts and things, +who argues out his case with so much fine casuistry +and often with the justest conceptions of human character +and conduct. If we could discover a dividing +<a name="Page_304"></a>line between his truth and his sophistry, we +might +discover also that the poem is no exceptional work of +Browning, for which an apology is required, but of a +piece with his other writings and in harmony with the +body of thought and feeling expressed through them. +Now it is certain that as Browning advanced in years +he more and more distrusted the results of the intellect +in its speculative research; he relied more and more +upon the knowledge that comes through or is embodied +in love. Love by its very nature implies a relation; what +is felt is real for us. But the intellect, which aspires +to know things as they are, forever lands us in illusions—illusions +needful for our education, and therefore far +from unprofitable, to be forever replaced by fresh +illusions; and the only truth we thus attain is the +conviction that truth there assuredly is, that we must +forever reach after it, and must forever grasp its +shadow. Theologies, philosophies, scientific theories—these +change like the shifting and shredding clouds +before our eyes, and are forever succeeded by clouds +of another shape and hue. But the knowledge involved +in love is veritable and is verified at least for us who +love. While in his practice he grew more scientific in +research for truth, and less artistic in his desire for +beauty, such was the doctrine which Browning upheld.</p> +<p>The speaker in <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> is far more a +seeker for knowledge than he is a lover. And he has +learnt, and learnt aright, that by illusions the intellect +is thrown forward towards what may relatively be +termed the truth; through shadows it advances upon +reality. When he argues that philosophies and +theologies are the fizgigs of the brain, its Fifines the +false which lead us onward to Elvire the true, he +<a name="Page_305"></a>expresses an idea which Browning has repeatedly +expressed in <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> and which, certainly, +was an idea he had made his own. And if a man +approaches the other sex primarily with a view to +knowledge, with a view to confirm and to extend his +own self-consciousness and to acquire experience of +the strength and the weakness of womanhood, it is +true that he will be instructed more widely, if not +more deeply, by Elvire supplemented by Fifine than +by Elvire alone. The sophistry of the speaker in +Browning's poem consists chiefly in a juggle between +knowledge and love, and in asserting as true of love +what Browning held to be, in the profoundest sense, +true of knowledge. The poet desires, as Butler in his +"Analogy" desired, to take lower ground than his +own; but the curious student of man and woman, of +love and knowledge—imagination aiding his intellect—is +compelled, amid his sophistical jugglings, to work +out his problems upon Browning's own lines, and he +becomes a witness to Browning's own conclusions. +Saul, before the poem closes, is also among the +prophets. For him, as for Browning, "God and the +soul stand sure." He sees, as Browning sees, man +reaching upward through illusions—religious theories, +philosophical systems, scientific hypotheses, artistic +methods, scholarly attainments—to the Divine. The +Pornic fair has become the Venice carnival, and this +has grown to the vision of man's life, in which the +wanton and coquette named a philosophy or a theology +has replaced the gipsy in tricot. The speaker misapplies +to love and the truths obtained by love Browning's +doctrine concerning knowledge. And yet, even +so, he is forced to confess, however inconsistent his +<a name="Page_306"></a>action may be with his belief, that the +permanent—which +is the Divine—can be reached through a single, +central point of human love, but not through any vain +attempt to manufacture an infinite by piecing together +a multitude of detached points:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>His problem posed aright<br /> +</span><span>Was—"From a given point evolve the infinite!"<br /> +</span><span>Not—"Spend thyself in space, endeavouring to joint<br /> +</span><span>Together, and so make infinite, point and point:<br /> +</span><span>Fix into one Elvire a Fair-ful of Fifines!"<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If he continues his experiments, they are experiments +of the senses or of the intellect, which he knows +can bring no profit to the heart: "Out of thine own +mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant." He +will undoubtedly—let this be frankly acknowledged—grow +in a certain kind of knowledge, and as certainly +he will dwindle in the higher knowledge that comes +through love. The poem is neither enigmatical nor +cynical, but in entire accord with Browning's own +deepest convictions and highest feelings.<a name="FNanchor_115"></a><a + href="#Footnote_115"><sup>[115]</sup></a></p> +<p>Although in his later writings Browning rendered +ever more and more homage to the illuminating power +of the affections, his methods unfortunately became, +as has been said, more and more scientific, or—shall +we say?—pseudo-scientific. Art jealously selects its +subjects, those which possess in a high degree spiritual +or material beauty, or that more complete beauty +which unites the two. Science accepts any subject +which promises to yield its appropriate truth. Browning, +probing after psychological truth, became too +<a name="Page_307"></a>indifferent to the truth of beauty. Or shall we +say +that his vision of beauty became enlarged, so that in +laying bare by dissection the anatomy of any poor +corpse, he found an artistic joy in studying the enlacements +of veins and nerves? To say this is perhaps +to cheat oneself with words. His own defence would, +doubtless, have been a development of two lines which +occur near the close of <i>Red Cotton Night-Cap Country</i>:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and +embrace<br /> +</span><span>Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And he would have pleaded that art, which he styles</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The love of loving, rage<br /> +</span><span>Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things<br /> +</span><span>For truth's sake, whole and sole,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>may "crush itself" for sake of the truth which is its +end and aim. But the greatest masters have not +sought for beauty merely or mainly in the dissection +of ugliness, nor did they find their rejoicing in artistic +suicide for the sake of psychological discovery. To +Browning such a repulsive story as that of <i>Red Cotton +Night-Cap Country</i> served now as well as one which in +earlier days would have attracted him by its grandeur +or its grace. Here was a fine morbid growth, an +exemplary moral wen, the enormous product of two +kinds of corruption—sensuality and superstition, and +what could be a more fortunate field for exploration +with aid of the scalpel? The incidents of the poem +were historical and were recent. Antoine Mellerio, +the sometime jeweller of Paris, had flung himself from +his belvedere in 1870; the suit, which raised the +question of his sanity at the date when his will had +been signed, was closed in 1872; the scene of his +<a name="Page_308"></a>death was close to Browning's place of summer +sojourn, +Saint-Aubin. The subject lay close to Browning's +hand. It was an excellent subject for a short story +of the kind that gets the name of realistic. It was an +unfortunate subject for a long poem. But the botanist +who desires to study vegetable physiology does not +require a lily or a rose. Browning who viewed things +from the ethical as well as the psychological standpoint +was attracted to the story partly because it was, +he thought, a story with a moral. He did not merely +wish to examine as a spiritual chemist the action of +Castilian blood upon a French brain, to watch and +make a report upon the behaviour of inherited faith +when brought into contact with acquired scepticism—the +scepticism induced by the sensual temperament of +the boulevards; he did not merely wish to exhibit the +difficulties and dangers of a life divided against itself. +His purpose was also to rebuke that romantic sentimentalism +which would preserve the picturesque lumber +of ruined faiths and discredited opinions, that have +done their work, and remain only as sources of danger +to persons who are weak of brain and dim of sight. +Granted the conditions, it was, Browning maintains, +an act of entire sanity on the part of his sorry hero, +Monsieur Léonce Miranda, to fling himself into mid +air, to put his faith to the final test, and trust to our +Blessed Lady, the bespangled and bejewelled Ravissante, +to bear him in safety through the air. But the +conditions were deplorable; and those who declined +to assist in carting away the rubbish of medievalism +are responsible for Léonce Miranda's bloody night-cap.</p> +<p>The moral is just, and the story bears it well. Yet +Browning's own conviction that man's highest and +<a name="Page_309"></a>clearest faith is no more than a shadow of the +unattainable +truth may for a moment give us pause. +An iconoclast, even such an iconoclast as Voltaire, is +ordinarily a man of unqualified faith in the conclusions +of the intellect. If our best conceptions of things +divine be but a kind of parable, why quarrel with the +parables accepted by other minds than our own? +The answer is twofold. First Browning was not a +sceptic with respect to the truths attained through +love, and he held that mankind had already attained +through love truths that condemned the religion of +self-torture and terrified propitiations, which led Léonce +Miranda to reduce his right hand and his left to +carbonised stumps and dragged him kneeling along +the country roads to manifest his devotion to the +image of the Virgin. Secondly he held that our +education through intellectual illusions is a progressive +education, and that to seek to live in an obsolete +illusion is treason against humanity. Therefore his +exhortation is justified by his logic:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Quick conclude<br /> +</span><span>Removal, time effects so tardily,<br /> +</span><span>Of what is plain obstruction; rubbish cleared,<br /> +</span><span>Let partial-ruin stand while ruin may,<br /> +</span><span>And serve world's use, since use is manifold.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The tower which once served as a belfry may possibly +be still of use to some Father Secchi to "tick Venus +off in transit"; only never bring bell again to the +partial-ruin,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>To damage him aloft, brain us below,<br /> +</span><span>When new vibrations bury both in brick.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>For which sane word, if not for all the pages of his +poem, we may feel gratefully towards the writer. It +<a name="Page_310"></a>is the word of Browning the moralist. The study +of +the double-minded hero belongs to Browning the +psychologist. The admirable portrait of Clara, the +successful adventuress, harlot and favoured daughter +of the Church, is the chief gift received through this +poem from Browning the artist. She is a very +admirable specimen of her kind—the <i>mamestra brassicae</i> +species of caterpillar, and having with beautiful aplomb +outmanoeuvred and flouted the rapacious cousinry, Clara +is seen at the last, under the protection of Holy Church, +still quietly devouring her Miranda leaf—such is the irony +of nature, and the merit of a perfect digestive apparatus.</p> +<p>The second narrative poem of this period, <i>The Inn +Album</i> (1875), is in truth a short series of dramatic +scenes, placed in a narrative frame-work. It is as +concentrated as <i>Red Cotton Night-Cap Country</i> is +diffuse; and the unities of time and place assist the +tragic concentration. A recast of <i>The Inn Album</i> might +indeed have appeared as a drama on the Elizabethan +stage side by side with such a brief masterpiece, piteous +and terrible, as "A Yorkshire Tragedy"; it moves +with a like appalling rapidity towards the climax and +the catastrophe. The incident of the attempted +barter of a discarded mistress to clear off the score +of a gambling debt is derived from the scandalous +chronicle of English nineteenth century society.<a name="FNanchor_116"></a><a + href="#Footnote_116"><sup>[116]</sup></a> +Browning's tale of crime was styled on its appearance +by a distinguished critic of Elizabethan drama the +story of a "penny dreadful." He was right; but he +should have added that some of the most impressive +and elevated pieces of our dramatic literature have +<a name="Page_311"></a>had sources of no greater dignity. The story of +the +"penny dreadful" is here rehandled and becomes a +tragedy of which the material part is only a translation +into external deed of a tragedy of the soul. The +<i>dramatis personae</i>, as refashioned from the crude fact +and the central passions of the poem, were such as +would naturally call forth what was characteristic in +Browning's genius. A martyr of love, a traitor to +love, an avenger of love,—these are the central figures. +The girlish innocence of the cousin is needed only as +a ray of morning sunlight to relieve the eye that is +strained and pained by the darkness and the pallor of +the faces of the exponents of passion. And a like +effect is produced by the glimpses of landscape, rich +in the English qualities of cultured gladness and +repose, which Browning so seldom presented, but +which are perfectly rendered here:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The wooded watered country, hill and dale<br /> +</span><span>And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,<br /> +</span><span>A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift<br /> +</span><span>O' the sun-touched dew.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>We must feel that life goes on with leisurely happiness +outside the little room that isolates its tragic +occupants; the smoke from fires of turf and wood +is in the air; cottagers are at their morning cookery. +After all the poet of the inn album was well inspired +in his eloquent address:—"Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious +spot!" and only certain incidents, which time +will soon efface, have touched the salutation with irony.</p> +<p>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 +<a name="Page_312"></a>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 Ivàn Ivànovitch.</p> +<p>The traitor of the poem is "refinement every inch +from brow to boot-heel"; and in this respect it cannot +be said that Browning's villain departs widely from +the conventional, melodramatic villain of the stage. He +has perhaps like the stage villain a little too much +<a name="Page_313"></a>of that cheap knowingness, which is the +theatrical +badge of the complete man of the world, but which +gentlemen in actual life do not ordinarily affect. +There is here and elsewhere in Browning's later poetry +somewhat too free an indulgence in this cheap knowingness, +as if with a nod and a wink he would inform +us that he has a man of the world's acquaintance with +the shady side of life; and this is not quite good art, +nor is it quite good manners. The vulgarity of the +man in the street may have a redeeming touch of +animal spirits, if not of <i>naïveté</i>, in it; the +vulgarity +of the man in the club, "refinement every inch" is +beyond redemption. The exhibition of Browning's +traitor as having slipped lower and lower down the +slopes of baseness because he has been false to his +one experience of veritable love may remind us also +of the melodramatic stage villain; but the tragic and +pathetic motives of melodrama, its demonstrative +heroisms, its stage generosities, its striking attitudes, +are really fictions founded upon fact, and the facts +which give some credit to the stage fictions remain +for the true creator of tragedy to discover and interpret +aright. The melodramatic is often the truth falsely +or feebly handled; the same truth handled aright may +become tragic. There is much in Shakespeare's plays +which if treated by an inferior artist would at once +sink from tragedy to melodrama. Browning escapes +from melodrama but not to such a safe position that +we can quite forget its neighbourhood. When the +traitor of this poem is withdrawn—as was Guido—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Into that sad obscure sequestered state<br /> +</span><span>Where God unmakes but to remake the soul<br /> +</span><span>He else made first in vain,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_314"></a>there will be found in him that he knew the +worth +of love, that he saw the horror of the void in +which he lived, and that for a moment—though too +late—a sudden wave of not ignoble passion overwhelmed +his baser self, even if only to let the fangs +of the treacherous rock reappear in their starkness +and cruelty.</p> +<p>The lady, again, with her superb statue-like beauty, +her low wide brow</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Oppressed by sweeps of hair<br /> +</span><span>Darker and darker as they coil and swathe<br /> +</span><span>The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>her passion, her despair, her recovery through chilling +to ice the heart within her, her reawakening to life, +and the pain of that return to sensation, her measureless +scorn of her betrayer, her exposure of his last +fraud, and her self-sought death—the lady is dangerously +near the melodramatic heroine, and yet she is not +a melodramatic but a tragic figure. Far more than +Pompilia, who knew the joy of motherhood, is she +the martyr of love. And yet, before she quits life, +in her protective care of that somewhat formidable, +somewhat ungainly baby, the huge boy, her champion, +hero and snob, she finds a comforting maternal instinct +at work:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Did you love me once?<br /> +</span><span>Then take love's last and best return! I think<br /> +</span><span>Womanliness means only motherhood;<br /> +</span><span>All love begins and ends there,—roams enough,<br /> +</span><span>But, having run the circle, rests at home.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Her husband, good man, will not suffer acutely for +her loss; he will be true to duty, and continue to dose +<a name="Page_315"></a>his flock with the comfortable dogma of +hell-fire, in +which not one of them believes.</p> +<p>The <i>Pacchiarotto</i> volume of 1876 was the first collection +of miscellaneous poetry put forth by Browning +since the appearance, twelve years previously, of +<i>Dramatis Personae</i><a name="FNanchor_117"></a><a + href="#Footnote_117"><sup>[117]</sup></a> There is, of course, +throughout +the whole the presence of a vigorous personality; we +can in an occasional mood tumble and toss even in +the rough verse of <i>Pacchiarotto</i>, as we do on a choppy +sea on which the sun is a-shine, and which invigorates +while it—not always agreeably—bobs our head, and +dashes down our throat. But vigour alone does not +produce poetry, and it may easily run into a kind +of good-humoured effrontery. The speciality of the +volume as compared with its predecessors is that it +contains not a little running comment by Browning +upon himself and his own work, together with a jocular-savage +reply to his unfriendly critics. There is a +little too much in all this of the robustious Herakles +sending his great voice before him. An author ought +to be aware of the fact that no pledge to admire him +and his writings has been administered to every one +who enters the world, and that as sure as he attracts, +so surely must he repel. In the <i>Epilogue</i> the poet +informs his readers that those who expect from him, +or from any poet, strong wine of verse which is also +sweet demand the impossible. Sweet the strong wine +can become only after it has long lain mellowing in +the cask. The experience of Browning's readers contradicted +the assertion. Some who drank the good +wines of 1855 and of 1864 in the year of the vintages +<a name="Page_316"></a>found that they were strong and needed no +keeping +to be sweet. Wine-tasters must make distinctions, +and the quality of the yield of 1876 does not entitle +it to be remembered as an extraordinary year.</p> +<p>The poem from which the volume was named tells +in verse, "timed by raps of the knuckle," how the +painter Pacchiarotto must needs become a world-reformer, +or at least a city-reformer in his distressed +Siena, with no good results for his city and with +disastrous results for himself. He learns by unsavoury +experience his lesson, to hold on by the +paint-brush and maul-stick, and do his own work, +accepting the mingled evil and good of life in a +spirit of strenuous—not indolent—<i>laissez-faire</i>, playing, +as energetically as a human being can, his own +part, and leaving others to play theirs, assured that +for all and each this life is the trial-time and test +of eternity, the rehearsal for the performance in a +future world, and "Things rarely go smooth at +Rehearsal." Browning's joy in difficult rhyming as +seen in this serio-grotesque jingle was great; some +readers may be permitted to wish that many of his +rhymes were not merely difficult but impossible. At +a dinner given by Sir Leslie Stephen he met successfully +the challenge to produce a rhyme for "rhinoceros," +and for Tennyson's diversion he delivered himself of +an impromptu in which rhymes were found for +"Ecclefechan" and "Craigenputtock." But in rhyming +ingenuity Browning is inferior to the author of +"Hudibras," in a rhymer's elegant effrontery he is +inferior to the author of "Don Juan." Browning's +good-humoured effrontery in his rhymes expects too +much good-humour from his reader, who may be +<a name="Page_317"></a>amiable enough to accept rough and ready +successes, +but cannot often be delighted by brilliant gymnastics +of sound and sense. In like manner it asks for a +particularly well-disposed reader to appreciate the wit +of Browning's retort upon his critics: "You are +chimney-sweeps," he sings out in his great voice, +"listen! I have invented several insulting nicknames +for you. Decamp! or my housemaid will fling the +slops in your faces." This may appear to some +persons to be genial and clever. It certainly has none of +the exquisite malignity of Pope's poisoned rapier. Perhaps +it is a little dull; perhaps it is a little outrageous.</p> +<p>The Browning who masks as Shakespeare in <i>At the +Mermaid</i> disclaims the ambition of heading a poetical +faction, condemns the Byronic <i>Welt-schmerz</i>, and announces +his resolvedly cheerful acceptance of life. +Elsewhere he assures his readers that though his +work is theirs his life is his own; he will not unlock +his heart in sonnets. Such is the drift of the verses +entitled <i>House</i>; a peep through the window is permitted, +but "please you, no foot over threshold of +mine." This was not Shakespeare's wiser way; if he +hid himself behind his work, it was with the openness +and with the taciturnity of Nature. He did not stand +in the window of his "House" declaring that he was +not to be seen; he did not pull up and draw down +the blind to make it appear that he was at home and +not at home. In the poem <i>Shop</i> Browning continues +his assurances that he is no Eglamor to whom verse +is "a temple-worship vague and vast." Verse-making +is his trade as jewel-setting and jewel-selling is the +goldsmith's—but do you suppose that the poet lives +no life of his own?—how and where it is not for you +<a name="Page_318"></a>to guess, only be certain it is far away from +his counter +and his till. These poems were needless confidences +to the public that no confidences would be vouchsafed +to them.</p> +<p>But the volume of 1876 contains better work than +these pieces of self-assertion. The two love-lyrics +<i>Natural Magic</i> and <i>Magical Nature</i> have each of +them a surprise of beauty; the one tells of the fairy-tale +of love, the other of its inward glow and gem-like +stability. <i>Bifurcation</i> is characteristic of the writer; +the woman who chooses duty rather than love may +have done well, but she has chosen the easier way and +perhaps has evaded the probation of life; the man +who chooses passion rather than duty has slipped and +stumbled, but his was the harder course and perhaps +the better. Which of the two was sinner? which +was saint? To be impeccable may be the most +damning of offences. In <i>St Martin's Summer</i> the +eerie presence of ghosts of dead loves, haunting a +love that has grown upon the graves of the past, is +a check upon passion, which by a sudden turn at the +close triumphs in a victory that is defeat. <i>Fears and +Scruples</i> is a confession of the trials of theistic faith in +a world from which God seems to be an absentee. +What had been supposed to be letters from our friend +are proved forgeries; what we called his loving actions +are the accumulated results of the natural law of +heredity. Yet even if theism had to be abandoned, +it would have borne fruit:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>All my days I'll go the softlier, sadlier<br /> +</span><span>For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill<br /> +</span><span>Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier<br /> +</span><span>Lives my friend because I love him still?"<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_319"></a>And the friend will value love all the more +which +persists through the obstacles of partial ignorance.<a + name="FNanchor_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118"><sup>[118]</sup></a> +The blank verse monologue <i>A Forgiveness</i>, Browning's +"Spanish Tragedy," is a romance of passion, subtle in +its psychology, tragic in its action. Out of its darkness +gleams especially one resplendent passage—the +description of those weapons of Eastern workmanship—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Horror coquetting with voluptuousness—<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>one of which is the instrument chosen by the husband's +hatred, now replacing his contempt, to confer on his +wife a death that is voluptuous. The grim-grotesque +incident from the history of the Jews in Italy related +in <i>Filippo Baldinucci</i> recalls the comedy and the pathos +of <i>Holy Cross Day</i>, to which it is in every respect +inferior. The Jew of the centuries of Christian persecution +is for Browning's imagination a being +half-sublime +and half-grotesque, and wholly human. +<i>Cenciaja</i>, a note in verse connected with Shelley's +<i>Cenci</i>, would be excellent as a note in prose appended +to the tragedy, explaining, as it does, why the Pope, +inclining to pardon Beatrice, was turned aside from +his purposes of mercy; it rather loses than gains in +value by having been thrown into verse. To recover +our loyalty to Browning as a poet, which this volume +sometimes puts to the test, we might well reserve +<i>Numpholeptos</i> for the close. The pure and disempassioned +in womanly form is brought face to face +with the passionate and sullied lover, to whom her +charm is a tyranny; she is no warm sun but a white +moon rising above this lost Endymion, who never +<a name="Page_320"></a>slumbers but goes forth on hopeless quests at +the +bidding of his mistress, and wins for all his reward +the "sad, slow, silver smile," which is now pity, now +disdain, and never love. The subjugating power of +chaste and beautiful superiority to passion over this +mere mortal devotee is absolute and inexorable. Is +the nymph an abstraction and incarnation of something +that may be found in womanhood? Is she an +embodiment of the Ideal, which sends out many +questers, and pities and disdains them when they +return soiled and defeated? Soft and sweet as she +appears, she is <i>La belle Dame sans merci</i>, and her +worshipper is as desperately lost as the knight-at-arms +of Keats's poem.</p> +<br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Footnote_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112">[112]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> See Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. p. 417.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_113"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_113">[113]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Pages 46, 47 of the first edition.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_114"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_114">[114]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Pages 58-60.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_115"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_115">[115]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> It may here be noted that Dante Rossetti in a morbid mood +supposed +that certain passages of <i>Fifine</i> were directed against himself; +and +so +ceased his friendship with Browning.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_116"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_116">[116]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Fanny Kemble also derived from the story of Lord De Ros the +subject +of her "English Tragedy."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_117"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_117">[117]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Some sentences in what follows are taken from a notice of the +volume +which I wrote on its appearance for <i>The Academy</i>.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_118"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_118">[118]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See Browning's letter to Mr Kingsland in "Robert Browning" by +W. +G. Kingsland (1890), pp. 32, 33.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_XV"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_321"></a>Chapter XV</h2> +<h2>Solitude and Society</h2> +<br /> +<p>The volume which consists of <i>La Saisiaz</i> and <i>The +Two Poets of Croisic</i> (1878) brings the work of this +decade to a close.<a name="FNanchor_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119"><sup>[119]</sup></a> +<i>La Saisiaz</i>, the record of thoughts +that were awakened during that solitary clamber to +the summit of Salève after the death of Miss Egerton-Smith, +is not an elegy, but it remains with us as a +memorial of friendship. In reading it we discern the +tall white figure of the "stranger lady," leaning through +the terrace wreaths of leaf and bloom, or pacing that +low grass-path which she had loved and called her +own. It serves Browning's purpose in the poem that +she should have been one of those persons who in this +world have not manifested all that lies within them. +Does she still exist, or is she now no more than the +thing which lies in the little enclosure at Collonge? +The poem after its solemn and impressive prelude +becomes the record of an hour's debate of the writer +with himself—a debate which has a definite aim and +is brought to a definite issue. In conducting that +debate on immortality, Browning is neither Christian +nor anti-Christian. The Christian creed involves a +question of history; he cannot here admit historical +considerations; he will see the matter out as he is an in<a + name="Page_322"></a>dividual +soul, on the grounds suggested by his individual +consciousness and his personal knowledge. It may be +that any result he arrives at is a result for himself alone.</p> +<p>But why conduct an argument in verse? Is not +prose a fitter medium for such a discussion? The +answer is that the poem is more than an argument; it +is the record in verse of an experience, the story of a +pregnant and passionate hour, during which passion +quickened the intellect; and the head, while resisting +all illusions of the heart, was roused to that resistance +by the heart itself. Such an hour is full of events; it +may be almost epic in its plenitude of action; but the +events are ideas. The frame and setting of the +discussion also are more than frame and setting; they +co-operate with the thoughts; they form part of the +experience. The poet is alone among the mountains, +with dawn and sunset for associates, Jura thrilled to +gold at sunrise, Salève in its evening rose-bloom, Mont-Blanc +which strikes greatness small; or at night he is +beneath the luminous worlds which</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>One by one came lamping—chiefly that +prepotency of Mars.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>While he climbs towards the summit he is aware of +"Earth's most exquisite disclosures, heaven's own God +in evidence"; he stands face to face with Nature—"rather +with Infinitude." All through his mountain +ascent the vigour of life is aroused within him; and, +as he returns—there is her grave.</p> +<p>The idea of a future life, for which this earthly life +serves as an education and a test, is so central with +Browning, so largely influences all his feelings and +penetrates all his art, that it is worth while to attend +to the course of his argument and the nature of his +<a name="Page_323"></a>conclusion. He puts the naked question to +himself—What +does death mean? Is it total extinction? Is it +a passage into life?—without any vagueness, without +any flattering metaphor; he is prepared to accept or +endure any answer if only it be the truth. Whether +his discussion leads to a trustworthy result or not, the +sincerity and the energy of his endeavour after truth +serve to banish all supine and half-hearted moods. +The debate, of which his poem is a report, falls into +two parts: first, a statement of facts; secondly, a +series of conjectures—conjectures and no more—rising +from the basis of facts that are ascertained. To put +the question, "Shall I survive death?" is to assume +that I exist and that something other than myself +exists which causes me now to live and presently to +die. The nature of this power outside myself I do +not know; we may for convenience call it "God." +Beyond these two facts—myself and a power environing +me—nothing is known with certainty which has +any bearing on the matter in dispute. I am like a +floating rush borne onward by a stream; whither +borne the rush cannot tell; but rush and stream are +facts that cannot be questioned.</p> +<p>Knowing that I exist—Browning goes on—I know +what for me is pain and what is pleasure. And, however +it may be with others, for my own part I can +pronounce upon the relation of joy to sorrow in this +my life on earth:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I must say—or choke in silence——"Howsoever +came my fate,<br /> +</span><span>Sorrow did and joy did nowise—life well +weighed—preponderate."<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If this failure be ordained by necessity, I shall bear +it as best I can; but, if this life be all, nothing shall +<a name="Page_324"></a>force me to say that life has proceeded from a +cause +supreme in goodness, wisdom, and power. What I +find here is goodness always intermixed with evil; +wisdom which means an advance from error to the confession +of ignorance; power that is insufficient to adapt +a human being to his surroundings even in the degree +in which a worm is fitted to the leaf on which it feeds.</p> +<p>Browning tacitly rejects the idea that the world is +the work of some blind, force; and undoubtedly our +reason, which endeavours to reduce all things in nature +to rational conceptions, demands that we should conceive +the world as rational rather than as some wild +work of chance. Upon one hypothesis, and upon one +alone, can the life of man upon this globe appear the +result of intelligence:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I have lived then, done and suffered, loved +and hated, learnt and taught<br /> +</span><span>This—there is no reconciling wisdom with a world +distraught,<br /> +</span><span>Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the +aim,<br /> +</span><span>If (to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the +same!)<br /> +</span><span>If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,<br /> +</span><span>And life, time,—with all their chances, changes,—just +probation—space,<br /> +</span><span>Mine for me.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Grant this hypothesis, and all changes from irrational +to rational, from evil to good, from pain to a strenuous +joy:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Only grant a second life, I acquiesce<br /> +</span><span>In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst +assaults<br /> +</span><span>Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more +exalts<br /> +</span><span>Gain about to be.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Thus out of defeat springs victory; never are we so +near to knowledge as when we are checked at the +<a name="Page_325"></a>bounds of ignorance; beauty is felt through its +opposite; +good is known through evil; truth shows its potency +when it is confronted by falsehood;</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>While for love—Oh how but, losing love, does +whoso loves succeed<br /> +</span><span>By the death-pang to the birth-throe—learning what is love +indeed?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Yet at best this idea of a future life remains a conjecture, +an hypothesis, a hope, which gives a key to +the mysteries of our troubled earthly state. Browning +proceeds to argue that such a hope is all that we can +expect or ought to desire. The absolute assurance of +a future life and of rewards and punishments consequent +on our deeds in the present world would defeat +the very end for which, according to the hypothesis, +we are placed here; it would be fatal to the purpose +of our present life considered as a state of probation. +What such a state of probation requires is precisely what +we have—hope; no less than this and no more. Does +our heaven overcloud because we lack certainty? No:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Hope the arrowy, just as constant, comes to +pierce its gloom, compelled<br /> +</span><span>By a power and by a purpose which, if no one else beheld,<br /> +</span><span>I behold in life, so—hope!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Such is the conclusion with Browning of the whole +matter. It is in entire accordance with a letter which +he wrote two years previously to a lady who supposed +herself to be dying, and who had thanked him for +help derived from his poems: "All the help I can +offer, in my poor degree, is the assurance that I see +ever <i>more</i> reason to hold by the same hope—and that +by no means in ignorance of what has been advanced +to the contrary.... God bless you, sustain you, and +<a name="Page_326"></a>receive you." To Dr Moncure Conway, who had lost +a son, Browning wrote: "If I, who cannot, would +restore your son, He who can, will." And Mr Rudolph +Lehmann records his words in conversation: "I have +doubted and denied it [a future life], and I fear have +even printed my doubts; but now I am as deeply +convinced that there is something after death. If you +ask me what, I no more know it than my dog knows +who and what I am. He knows that I am there and +that is enough for him."<a name="FNanchor_120"></a><a + href="#Footnote_120"><sup>[120]</sup></a></p> +<p>Browning's confession in <i>La Saisias</i> that the sorrow +of his life outweighed its joy is not inconsistent with +his habitual cheerfulness of manner. Such estimates +as this are little to be trusted. One great shock of +pain may stand for ever aloof from all other experiences; +the pleasant sensations of many days pass +from our memory. We cannot tell. But that Browning +supposed himself able to tell is in itself worthy of +note. In <i>The Two Poets of Croisic</i>, which was written +in London immediately after <i>La Saisiaz</i>, and which, +though of little intrinsic importance, shows that +Browning was capable of a certain grace in verse +that is light, he pleads that the power of victoriously +dealing with pain and transforming it into strength +may be taken as the test of a poet's greatness:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse,<br /> +</span><span>Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear,<br /> +</span><span>Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face<br /> +</span><span>Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>This is good counsel for art; but not wholly wise +counsel for life. Sorrow, indeed, is not wronged by a +<a name="Page_327"></a>cheerfulness cultivated and strenuously +maintained; +but gladness does suffer a certain wrong. Sunshine +comes and goes; the attempt to substitute any unrelieved +light for sunshine is somewhat of a failure at +the best. Shadows and brightness pursuing each +other according to the course of nature make more for +genuine happiness than does any stream of moral +electricity worked from a dynamo of the will. It is +pleasanter to encounter a breeze that sinks and swells, +that lingers and hastens, than to face a vigorous and +sustained gale even of a tonic quality. Browning's +unfailing cheer and cordiality of manner were admirable; +they were in part spontaneous, in part an +acceptance of duty, in part a mode of self-protection; +they were only less excellent than the varying moods +of a simple and beautiful nature.</p> +<p>When <i>La Saisiaz</i> appeared Browning was sixty-six +years old. He lived for more than eleven years +longer, during which period he published six volumes +of verse, showing new powers as a writer of brief poetic +narrative and as a teacher through parables; but he +produced no single work of prolonged and sustained +effort—which perhaps was well. His physical vigour +continued for long unabated. He still enjoyed the +various pleasures and excitements of the London +season; but it is noted by Mrs Orr that after the +death of Miss Egerton-Smith he "almost mechanically +renounced all the musical entertainments to which she +had so regularly accompanied him." His daily habits +were of the utmost regularity, varying hardly at all +from week to week. He was averse, says Mrs Orr, +"to every hought of change," and chose rather to +adapt himself to external conditions than to enter on +<a name="Page_328"></a>the effort of altering them; "what he had done +once +he was wont, for that very reason, to continue doing." +A few days after Browning's death a journalist +obtained from a photographer, Mr Grove, who had +formerly been for seven years in Browning's service, +the particulars as to how an ordinary day during the +London season went by at Warwick Crescent. Browning +rose without fail at seven, enjoyed a plate of +whatever fruit—strawberries, grapes, oranges—were +in season; read, generally some piece of foreign +literature, for an hour in his bedroom; then bathed; +breakfasted—a light meal of twenty minutes; sat by +the fire and read his <i>Times</i> and <i>Daily News</i> till ten; +from ten to one wrote in his study or meditated with +head resting on his hand. To write a letter was the +reverse of a pleasure to him, yet he was diligent in +replying to a multitude of correspondents. His lunch, +at one, was of the lightest kind, usually no more than +a pudding. Visits, private views of picture exhibitions +and the like followed until half-past five. At seven +he dined, preferring Carlowitz or claret to other wines, +and drinking little of any. But on many days the +dinner was not at home; once during three successive +weeks he dined out without the omission of a day. +He returned home seldom at a later hour than half-past +twelve; and at seven next morning the round +began again. During his elder years, says Mr Grove, +he took little interest in politics. He was not often a +church-goer, but discussed religious matters earnestly +with his clerical friends. He loved not only animals but +flowers, and when once a Virginia creeper entered +the study window at Warwick Crescent, it was not +expelled but trained inside the room. To his +<a name="Page_329"></a>servants he was a considerate friend rather than +a +master.</p> +<p>So far Mr Grove as reported in the <i>Pall Mall +Gazette</i> (Dec 16, 1889).</p> +<p>Many persons have attempted to describe Browning +as he appeared in society; there is a consensus of +opinion as to the energy and cordiality of his way of +social converse; but it is singular that, though some +records of his out-pourings as a talker exist, very +little is on record that possesses permanent value. +Perhaps the best word that can be quoted is that +remembered by Sir James Paget—Browning's recommendation +of Bach's "Crucifixus—et sepultus—et +resurrexit" as a cure for want of belief. He did not +fling such pointed shafts as those of Johnson which +still hang and almost quiver where they struck. His +energy did not gather itself up into sentences but +flowed—and sometimes foamed—in a tide. Cordial +as he was, he could be also vehemently intolerant, and +sometimes perhaps where his acquaintance with the +subject of his discourse was not sufficient to warrant a +decided opinion.<a name="FNanchor_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121"><sup>[121]</sup></a> +He appeared, says his biographer, +"more widely sympathetic in his works than in his +life"; with no moral selfishness he was, adds Mrs Orr, +intellectually self-centred; and unquestionably the +statement is correct. He could suffer fools, but not +always gladly. Speaking of earlier days in Italy, T.A. +Trollope observes that, while he was never rough +or discourteous even to the most exasperating fool, +"the men used to be rather afraid of Browning." His +cordiality was not insincere; but it belonged to his +<a name="Page_330"></a>outer, not his inner self. With the exception of +Milsand, he appears to have admitted no man to his +heart, though he gave a portion of his intellect to +many. His friends, in the more intimate sense of the +word, were women, towards whom his feeling was that +of comradeship and fraternal affection without over-much +condescension or any specially chivalric sentiment. +When early in their acquaintance Miss +Barrett promised Browning that he would find her +"an honest man on the whole," she understood her +correspondent, who valued a good comrade of the +other sex, and had at the same time a vivid sense of +the fact that such a comrade was not so unfortunate +as to be really a man.</p> +<p>Let witnesses be cited and each give his fragment of +evidence. Mr W.J. Stillman, an excellent observer, was +specially impressed in his intercourse with Browning, +by the mental health and robustness of a nature sound +to the core; "an almost unlimited intellectual vitality, +and an individuality which nothing could infringe on, +but which a singular sensitiveness towards others prevented +from ever wounding even the most morbid +sensibility; a strong man armed in the completest +defensive armour, but with no aggressiveness."<a name="FNanchor_122"></a><a + href="#Footnote_122"><sup>[122]</sup></a> A +writer in the first volume of <i>The New Review</i>, +described Browning as a talker in general society +so faithfully that it is impossible to improve on what +he has said: "It may safely be alleged," he writes, +"that no one meeting Mr Browning for the first time, +and unfurnished with a clue, would guess his vocation. +He might be a diplomatist, a statesman, a discoverer, +or a man of science. But, whatever were his calling, +<a name="Page_331"></a>we should feel that it must be essentially +practical.... +His conversation corresponds to his appearance. It +abounds in vigour, in fire, in vivacity. Yet all the +time it is entirely free from mystery, vagueness, or +technical jargon. It is the crisp, emphatic and powerful +discourse of a man of the world, who is incomparably +better informed than the mass of his congeners. Mr +Browning is the readiest, the blithest, and the most +forcible of talkers. Like the Monsignore in <i>Lothair</i> +he can 'sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee,' +and when he deals in criticism the edge of his sword +is mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity. +The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the +pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lend their +special emphasis to the condemnation." The mental +quality which most impressed Mr W.M. Rossetti in +his communications with Browning was, he says, +"celerity "—"whatever he had to consider or speak +about, he disposed of in the most forthright +style." His method was of the greatest directness; +"every touch told, every nail was hit on the head." +He was not a sustained, continuous speaker, nor exactly +a brilliant one; "but he said something pleasant +and pointed on whatever turned up; ... one felt +his mind to be extraordinarily rich, while his facility, +accessibility, and <i>bonhomie</i>, softened but did not by +any means disguise the sense of his power."<a name="FNanchor_123"></a><a + href="#Footnote_123"><sup>[123]</sup></a> Browning's +discourse with a single person who was a favoured +acquaintance was, Mr Gosse declares, "a very much +finer phenomenon than when a group surrounded him." +Then "his talk assumed the volume and the tumult +<a name="Page_332"></a>of a cascade. His voice rose to a shout, sank to +a +whisper, ran up and down the gamut of conversational +melody.... In his own study or drawing-room, +what he loved was to capture the visitor in a low +arm-chair's "sofa-lap of leather", and from a most +unfair vantage of height to tyrannize, to walk round +the victim, in front, behind, on this side, on that, +weaving magic circles, now with gesticulating arms +thrown high, now grovelling on the floor to find some +reference in a folio, talking all the while, a redundant +turmoil of thoughts, fancies, and reminiscences flowing +from those generous lips."<a name="FNanchor_124"></a><a + href="#Footnote_124"><sup>[124]</sup></a></p> +<p>Mr Henry James in his "Life of Story"<a name="FNanchor_125"></a><a + href="#Footnote_125"><sup>[125]</sup></a> is less +pictorial, but he is characteristically subtle in his +rendering of the facts. He brings us back, however, +to Browning as seen in society. He speaks of the +Italian as a comparatively idyllic period which seemed +to be "built out," though this was not really the case, +by the brilliant London period. It was, he says, as +if Browning had divided his personal consciousness +into two independent compartments. The man of the +world "walked abroad, showed himself, talked, right +resonantly, abounded, multiplied his connections, did +his duty." The poet—an inscrutable personage—"sat +at home and knew, as well he might, in what +quarters of <i>that</i> sphere to look for suitable company." +"The poet and the 'member of society' were, in a +word, dissociated in him as they can rarely elsewhere +have been.... The wall that built out the idyll (as +we call it for convenience) of which memory and +imagination were virtually composed for him, stood +<a name="Page_333"></a>there behind him solidly enough, but subject to +his +privilege of living almost equally on both sides of it. +It contained an invisible door, through which, working +the lock at will, he could softly pass, and of which he +kept the golden key—carrying about the same with +him even in the pocket of his dinner waistcoat, yet +even in his most splendid expansions showing it, happy +man, to none." Tennyson, said an acquaintance of +Miss Anna Swanwick, "hides himself behind his +laurels, Browning behind the man of the world." +She declares that her experience was more fortunate; +that she seldom heard Browning speak without feeling +that she was listening to the poet, and that on more +than one occasion he spoke to her of his wife<a name="FNanchor_126"></a><a + href="#Footnote_126"><sup>[126]</sup></a>. But +many witnesses confirm the impression which is so +happily put into words by Mr Henry James. The +"member of society" protected the privacy of the poet. +The questions remain whether the poet did not suffer +from such protection; whether, beside the superfluous +forces which might be advantageously disposed of at +the drawing-board or in thumping wet clay, some of +the forces proper to the poet were not drawn away +and dissipated by the incessant demands of Society; +whether while a sufficient fund of energy for the +double life was present with Browning, the peculiar +energy of the poet did not undergo a certain deterioration. +The doctrine of the superiority of the heart to +the intellect is more and more preached in Browning's +poetry; but the doctrine itself is an act of the intellect. +The poet need not perhaps insist on the doctrine if he +creates—as Browning did in earlier years—beautiful +<a name="Page_334"></a>things which commend themselves, without a +preacher, +to our love.</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1878, after seventeen years of +absence from Italy, Browning was recaptured by its +charm, and henceforward to the close of his life Venice +and the Venetian district became his accustomed place +of summer refreshment and repose. For a time, with +his sister as his companion, he paused at a hotel near +the summit of the Splügen, enjoyed the mountain air, +walked vigorously, and wrote, with great rapidity, says +Mrs Orr, his poem of Russia, <i>Ivàn Ivànovitch</i>. +When +a boy he had read in Bunyan's "Life and Death of +Mr Badman" the story of "Old Tod", and with this +still vivid in his memory, he added to his Russian tale +the highly unidyllic "idyl" of English life, <i>Ned Bratts</i>. +It was thus that subjects for poems suddenly presented +themselves to Browning, often rising up as it were +spontaneously out of the remote past. "There comes +up unexpectedly," he wrote in a letter to a friend, +"some subject for poetry, which has been dormant, +and apparently dead, for perhaps dozens of years. A +month since I wrote a poem of some two hundred +lines ['Donald'] about a story I heard more than +forty years ago, and never dreamed of trying to repeat, +wondering how it had so long escaped me; and so it +has been with my best things."<a name="FNanchor_127"></a><a + href="#Footnote_127"><sup>[127]</sup></a> Before the close of +September the travellers were in a rough but pleasant +albergo at Asolo, which Browning had not seen since +his first Italian journey more than forty years previously. +"Such things," he writes, "have begun and +ended with me in the interval!" Changes had taken +<a name="Page_335"></a>place in the little city; yet much seemed +familiar and +therefore the more dreamlike. The place had indeed +haunted him in his dreams; he would find himself +travelling with a friend, or some mysterious stranger, +when suddenly the little town sparkling in the sunshine +would rise before him. "Look! look there is +Asolo," he would cry, "do let us go there!" And +always, after the way of dreams, his companions would +declare it impossible and he would be hurried away.<a + name="FNanchor_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128"><sup>[128]</sup></a> +From the time that he actually saw again the city +that he loved this recurring dream was to come no +more. He wandered through the well-known places, +and seeking for an echo in the Rocca, the ruined +fortress above the town, he found that it had not lost +its tongue. A fortnight at Venice in a hotel where +quiet and coolness were the chief attractions, prepared +the way for many subsequent visits to what he afterwards +called "the dearest place in the world." Everything +in Venice, says Mrs Bronson, charmed him: +"He found grace and beauty in the <i>popolo</i> whom he +paints so well in the Goldoni sonnet. The poorest +street children were pretty in his eyes. He would +admire a carpenter or a painter, who chanced to be at +work in the house, and say to me 'See the fine poise +of the head ... those well-cut features. You might +fancy that man in the crimson robe of a Senator as +you see them in Tintoret's canvas.'"</p> +<p>But these are reminiscences of later days. It was +in 1880 that Browning made the acquaintance of +his American friend Mrs Arthur Bronson, whose kind +hospitalities added to the happiness of his visits to +<a name="Page_336"></a>Asolo and to Venice, who received, as if it were +a +farewell gift, the dedication of his last volume, and +who, not long before her death in 1901, published +interesting articles on "Browning in Asolo" and +"Browning in Venice" in <i>The Century Magazine</i>. +The only years in which he did not revisit Venice +were 1882, 1884 and 1886, and in each of these years +his absence was occasioned by some unforeseen mis-adventure. +In 1882 the floods were out, and he +proceeded no farther than Verona. Could he have +overcome the obstacles and reached Venice, he feared +that he might have been incapable of enjoying it. +For the first time in his life he was lamed by what +he took for an attack of rheumatism, "caught," he says, +"just before leaving St Pierre de Chartreuse, through +my stupid inadvertence in sitting with a window open +at my back—reading the Iliad, all my excuse!—while +clad in a thin summer suit, and snow on the hills and +bitterness every where."<a name="FNanchor_129"></a><a + href="#Footnote_129"><sup>[129]</sup></a> In 1884 his sister's illness +at first forbade travel to so considerable a distance. +The two companions were received by another +American friend, Mrs Bloomfield Moore, at the Villa +Berry, St Moritz, and when she was summoned across +the Atlantic, at her request they continued to occupy +her villa. The season was past; the place deserted; +but the sun shone gloriously. "We have walked +every day," Browning wrote at the end of September, +"morning and evening—afternoon I should say—two +or three hours each excursion, the delicious mountain +air surpassing any I was ever privileged to breathe. +My sister is absolutely herself again, and something +over: I was hardly in want of such doctor<a name="Page_337"></a>ing."<a + name="FNanchor_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130"><sup>[130]</sup></a> +Two years later Miss Browning was ailing again, +and they did not venture farther than Wales. At the +Hand Hotel, Llangollen, they were at no great distance +from Brintysilio, the summer residence of their friends Sir +Theodore and Lady Martin—in earlier days the Lady +Carlisle and Colombe of Browning's plays.<a name="FNanchor_131"></a><a + href="#Footnote_131"><sup>[131]</sup></a> Mrs Orr +notices that Browning, Liberal as he declared himself, +was now very favourably impressed by the services to +society of the English country gentleman. "Talk of +abolishing that class of men!" he exclaimed, "they +are the salt of the earth!" She adds, as worthy of +remark, that he attended regularly the afternoon +Sunday service in the parish church at Llantysilio, +where now a tablet of Lady Martin's placing marks +the spot. Churchgoing was not his practice in +London; "but I do not think," says Mrs Orr, "he +ever failed in it at the Universities or in the country." +At Venice it was his custom to be present with his +sister at the services of a Waldensian chapel, where +"a certain eloquent pastor," as Mrs Bronson describes +him, was the preacher. A year before his death +Browning in a letter to Lady Martin recalls the +happy season in the Vale of Llangollen—"delightful +weeks—each tipped with a sweet starry Sunday at the +little church leading to the House Beautiful where we +took our rest of an evening spent always memorably."</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img010"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 841px;" + alt="THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE." + title="THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE." src="images/img010.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE.</h5> +<h5><i>From a drawing by</i> Miss N. ERICHSEN.</h5> +<p>Before passing on to Venice, where repose was +mingled with excitement, Browning was accustomed +to seek a renewal of physical energy, after the fatigues +of London, in some place not too much haunted by +<a name="Page_338"></a>the English tourist, where he could walk for +hours in +the clear mountain air. In 1881 and 1882 it was St +Pierre de Chartreuse, from which he visited the Grande +Chartreuse, and heard the midnight mass; in 1883 +and 1885 it was Gressoney St Jean in the Val d'Aosta—the +"delightful Gressoney" of the Prologue to +<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>, where "eggs, milk, cheese, fruit" +sufficed "for gormandizing"; in 1888 it was the yet +more beautiful Primiero, near Feltre. In the previous +year he had, for the second time, stayed at St Moritz. +These were seasons of abounding life. St Pierre was +only "a wild little clump of cottages on a mountain +amid loftier mountains," with the roughest of little inns +for its hotel; but its primitive arrangements suited +Browning well and were bravely borne by his sister.<a + name="FNanchor_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132"><sup>[132]</sup></a> +From Gressoney in September 1885 he wrote: "We +are all but alone, the brief 'season' being over, and +only a chance traveller turning up for a fortnight's +lodging. We take our walks in the old way; two and +a half hours before breakfast, three after it, in the +most beautiful country I know. Yesterday the three +hours passed without our meeting a single man, +woman, or child; one man only was discovered at a +distance at the foot of a mountain we had climbed."<a + name="FNanchor_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133"><sup>[133]</sup></a> +All things pleased him; an August snowstorm at St +Moritz was made amends for by "the magnificence of +the mountain and its firs black against the universal +white"; it served moreover as an illustration of a +passage in the Iliad, the only book that accompanied +him from England: "The days glide away uneventfully, +<i>nearly</i>, and I breathe in the pleasant idleness at every +<a name="Page_339"></a>pore. I have no few acquaintances here—nay, some +old friends—but my intimates are the firs on the hillside, +and the myriad butterflies all about it, every +bright wing of them under the snow to-day, which +ought not to have been for a fortnight yet."<a name="FNanchor_134"></a><a + href="#Footnote_134"><sup>[134]</sup></a> And +from Primiero in 1888, when his strength had considerably +declined, a letter tells of unabated pleasure; +of mountains "which morning and evening, in turn, +transmute literally to gold," with at times a silver +change; of the valley "one green luxuriance"; of the +tiger-lilies in the garden above ten feet high, every +bloom and every leaf faultless; and of the captive +fox, "most engaging of little vixens," who, to Browning's +great joy, broke her chain and escaped.<a name="FNanchor_135"></a><a + href="#Footnote_135"><sup>[135]</sup></a> As each +successive volume that he published seemed to him +his best, so of his mountain places of abode the +last always was the loveliest.</p> +<p>At Venice for a time the quiet Albergo dell' +Universo suited Browning and his sister well, but +when Mrs Bronson pressed them to accept the use +of a suite of rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati +and the kind offer was accepted, the gain was +considerable; and the <i>Palazzo</i> has historical associations +dating from the fifteenth century which pleased +Browning's imagination. It was his habit to rise early, +and after a light breakfast to visit the Public Gardens +with his sister. He had many friends—Mrs Bronson +is our informant—whose wants or wishes he bore in +mind—the prisoned elephant, the baboon, the kangaroo, +the marmosets, the pelicans, the ostrich; three times, +<a name="Page_340"></a>with strict punctuality, he made his rounds, and +then +returned to his apartment. At noon appeared the +second and more substantial breakfast, at which Italian +dishes were preferred. Browning wrote passionately +against the vivisection of animals, and strenuously +declaimed against the decoration of a lady's hat with +the spoils of birds—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Clothed with murder of His best<br /> +</span><span>Of harmless beings.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>He praised God—for pleasure as he teaches us is +praise—by heartily enjoying ortolans, "a dozen +luscious lumps" provided by the cook of the +Giustiniani-Recanati palace; to vary his own phrasing, +he was</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Fed with murder of His best<br /> +</span><span>Of harmless beings,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and laughed, innocently enough, with his good sister +over the delicious "mouthfuls for cardinals."<a name="FNanchor_136"></a><a + href="#Footnote_136"><sup>[136]</sup></a> As if +the pleasure of the eye in beauty gained at a bird's +expense were more criminal than the gusto of the +tongue in lusciousness, curbed by piquancy, gained at +the expense of a dozen other birds! At three o'clock +came the gondola, and it was often directed to the +Lido. "I walk, even in wind and rain, for a couple +of hours on Lido," Browning wrote when nearly +seventy, "and enjoy the break of sea on the strip of +sand as much as Shelley did in those old days."<a name="FNanchor_137"></a><a + href="#Footnote_137"><sup>[137]</sup></a> +And to another friend: "You don't know how absolutely +well I am after my walking, not on the +mountains merely, but on the beloved Lido. Go there, +<a name="Page_341"></a>if only to stand and be blown about by the sea +wind."<a name="FNanchor_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138"><sup>[138]</sup></a> +At one time he even talked of completing an unfinished +villa on the Lido from which "the divine sunsets" +could be seen, but the dream-villa faded after the +manner of such dreams. Sunsets, however, and sunrises +never faded from Browning's brain. "I will not +praise a cloud however bright," says Wordsworth, +although no one has praised them more ardently than +he. From Pippa's sunrise to the sunrises of mornings +when his life drew towards its close, Browning lavished +his praise upon the scenery of the sky. A passage +quoted by Mrs Orr from a letter written a little more +than a year before his death is steeped in colour; when +<i>Pippa Passes</i> becomes the prey of the annotating +editor it will illuminate his page: "Every morning at +six I see the sun rise.... My bedroom window +commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the +few sea-gulls flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep +shadow, and the clouds in a long purple rack, behind +which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till presently +all the rims are on fire with gold, and last of all the +orb sends before it a long column of its own essence +apparently: so my day begins." The sea-gulls of +which this extract speaks were, Mrs Bronson tells us, +a special delight to Browning. On a day of gales +"he would stand at the window and watch them as +they sailed to and fro, a sure sign of heavy storms in +the Adriatic." To him, as he declared, they were +even more interesting than the doves of St Mark.</p> +<p>Sometimes his walks, guided by Mrs Bronson's +daughter, "the best cicerone in the world," he said, were +through the narrowest by-streets of the city, where he +<a name="Page_342"></a>rejoiced in the discovery, or what he supposed +to be +discovery, of some neglected stone of Venice. Occasionally +he examined curiously the monuments of the +churches. His American friend tells at length the +story of a search in the Church of San Niccolò for the +tomb of the chieftain Salinguerra of Browning's own +<i>Sordello</i>. At times he entered the bric-a-brac shops, +and made a purchase of some piece of old furniture or +tapestry. His rule "never to buy anything without +knowing exactly what he wished to do with it" must +have been interpreted liberally, for when about to move +in June 1887 from Warwick Crescent to De Vere +Gardens many treasures acquired in Italy were, Mrs +Orr tells us, stowed away in the house which he was +on the point of leaving. And the latest bibelot was +always the most enchanting: "Like a child with a +new toy," says Mrs Bronson, "he would carry it himself +(size and weight permitting) into the gondola, +rejoice over his chance in finding it, and descant +eloquently upon its intrinsic merits." Thus, or with his +son's assistance, came to De Vere Gardens brass lamps +that had hung in Venetian chapels, the silver Jewish +"Sabbath lamp," and the "four little heads"—the +seasons—after which, Browning declared, he would not +buy another thing for the house.<a name="FNanchor_139"></a><a + href="#Footnote_139"><sup>[139]</sup></a> Returning from his +walks on the Lido or wanderings through the little +<i>calli</i>, he showed that unwise half-disdain, which an +unenlightened +masculine Herakles might have shown, for +the blessedness of five o'clock tea. At dinner he was +in his toilet what Mr Henry James calls the "member +of society," never the poet whose necktie is a dithyramb. +Good sense was his habit if not his foible. +<a name="Page_343"></a>And why should we deny ourselves here the +pleasure +of imagining Miss Browning at these pleasant ceremonies, +as Mrs Bronson describes her, wearing "beautiful +gowns of rich and sombre tints, and appearing each +day in a different and most dainty French cap and +quaint antique jewels"? If other guests were not +present, sometimes a visit to the theatre followed. +The Venetian comedies of Gallina especially pleased +Browning; he went to his spacious box at the Goldoni +evening after evening, and did not fail to express his +thanks to his "brother dramatist" for the enjoyment +he had received. In his <i>Toccata of Galuppi</i> he had +expressed the melancholy which underlies the transitory +gaiety of eighteenth-century life in Venice; but he +could also remember its innocent gladnesses without this +sense of melancholy. When in 1883 the committee +of the Goldoni monument asked Browning to contribute +a poem to their Album he immediately complied with +the request. It was "scribbled off," according to +Mrs Orr, while Professor Molmenti's messenger was +waiting; it was ready the day after the request reached +him, says Mrs Bronson, and was probably "carefully +thought out before he put pen to paper." It catches, +in the happiest temper, the spirit of Goldoni's sunniest +plays:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>There throng the People: how they come and go,<br /> +</span><span>Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb—see—<br /> +</span><span>On Piazza, Calle, under Portico<br /> +</span><span>And over Bridge! Dear King of Comedy,<br /> +</span><span>Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so,<br /> +</span><span>Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The brightness and lightness of southern life soothed +Browning's northern strenuousness of mood. He would +<a name="Page_344"></a>enumerate of a morning the crimes of "the wicked +city" +as revealed by the reports of the public press—a +gondolier's oars had been conveyed away, a piece of +linen a-dry had corrupted the virtue of some lightfingered +Autolycus of the canals!<a name="FNanchor_140"></a><a + href="#Footnote_140"><sup>[140]</sup></a> Yet all the while +much of his heart remained with his native land. He +could not be happy without his London daily paper; +Mrs Orr tells us how deeply interested he was in the +fortunes of the British expedition for the relief of +General Gordon.</p> +<p>In 1885 Browning's son for the first time since his +childhood was in Italy. With Venice he was in his +father's phrase "simply infatuated." For his son's sake, +but also with the thought of a place of retreat when +perhaps years should bring with them feebleness of +body, Browning entered into treaty with the owner, an +Austrian and an absentee, for the purchase of the +Manzoni Palazzo on the Grand Canal. He considered +it the most beautiful house in Venice. Ruskin had +described it in the "Stones of Venice" as "a perfect +and very rich example of Byzantine Renaissance." It +wholly captured the imagination of Browning. He not +only already possessed it in his dream, but was busy +opening new windows to admit the morning sunshine, +and throwing out balconies, while leaving undisturbed +the rich façade with its medallions in coloured marble. +The dream was never realised. The vendor, Marchese +Montecucculi, hoping to secure a higher price, drew +back. Browning was about to force him by legal proceedings +to fulfil his bargain, when it was discovered +that the walls were cracked and the foundations were +untrustworthy. To his great mortification the whole +<a name="Page_345"></a>scheme had to be abandoned. It was not until his +son in 1888, the year after his marriage, acquired +possession of the Palazzo Rezzonico—"a stately temple +of the rococo" is Mr Henry James's best word for it—that +Browning ceased to think with regret of the lost +Manzoni. At no time, however, did he design a voluntary +abandonment of his life in England. When in +full expectation of becoming the owner of the Palazzo +Manzoni he wrote to Dr Furnivall: "Don't think I +mean to give up London till it warns me away; when +the hospitalities and innumerable delights grow a +burden.... Pen will have sunshine and beauty about +him, and every help to profit by these, while I and my +sister have secured a shelter when the fogs of life grow +too troublesome."</p> +<br /> +<p><br /> +<span style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</span></p> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_119"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_119">[119]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Some parts of what follows on <i>La Saisiaz</i> have already +appeared in +print in a forgotten article of mine on that poem.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_120"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_120">[120]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "An Artist's Reminiscences," by R. Lehmann (1894), p. 231.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_121"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_121">[121]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Thus he declaimed to Robert Buchanan against Walt Whitman's +writings, with which, according to Buchanan, he had little acquaintance.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_122"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_122">[122]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Autobiography of a Journalist," ii. 210.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_123"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_123">[123]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> From the first of three valuable articles by Mr Rossetti in +<i>The +Magazine of Art</i> (1890) on "Portraits of Robert Browning."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_124"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_124">[124]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Robert Browning, "Personalia," by Edmund Gosse, pp. 81, 82.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_125"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_125">[125]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_126"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_126">[126]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Anna Swanwick, "A Memoir by Mary L. Bruce," pp. 130, 131. To +Dr Furnivall he often spoke of Mrs Browning.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_127"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_127">[127]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> From Mrs Bronson's article in <i>The Century Magazine</i>, +"Browning +in Venice."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_128"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_128">[128]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Related more fully in Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in +Asolo" in +<i>The Century Magazine</i>.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_129"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_129">[129]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Bronson's "Browning in Venice" in <i>The Century +Magazine</i>.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_130"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_130">[130]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 28, 1884.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_131"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_131">[131]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Some notices of Browning in Wales occur in Sir T. Martin's +"Life of +Lady Martin."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_132"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_132">[132]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Letter to Dr Furnivall, August 29, 1881.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_133"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_133">[133]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 7, 1885.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_134"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_134">[134]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> To Dr Furnivall, August 21, 1887.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_135"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_135">[135]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> See for fuller details the letter in Mrs Orr's <i>Life of +Browning</i>, pp. 407, +408.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_136"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_136">[136]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> So described by Mrs Bronson.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_137"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_137">[137]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> To Dr Furnivall, Oct. 11, 1881.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_138"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_138">[138]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Quoted by Mrs Bronson.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_139"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_139">[139]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Orr, "Life of Browning," p. 400.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_140"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_140">[140]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Bronson records this.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_XVI"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_346"></a>Chapter XVI</h2> +<h2>Poet and Teacher in Old Age</h2> +<br /> +<p>During the last decade of his life Browning's influence +as a literary power was assured. The publication +indeed of <i>The Ring and the Book</i> in 1868 did much +to establish his reputation with those readers who are +not watchers for a new planet but revise their astronomical +charts upon authority. He noted with satisfaction +that fourteen hundred copies of <i>Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> were sold in five days, and +says of <i>Balaustion's Adventure</i> "2500 in five months +is a good sale for the likes of me." The later volumes +were not perhaps more popular, but they sent readers +to the earlier poems, and successive volumes of Selections +made these easily accessible. That published by +Moxon in 1865, and dedicated in words of admiration +and friendship to Tennyson, by no means equalled in +value the earlier Selections made by John Forster. The +volume of 1872—dedicated also to Tennyson—which +has been frequently reprinted, was arranged upon a +principle, the reference of which to the poems chosen +is far from clear—"by simply stringing together certain +pieces"; Browning wrote, "on the thread of an imaginary +personality, I present them in succession, rather +as the natural development of a particular experience +than because I account them the most noteworthy +portion of my work." We can perceive that some +<a name="Page_347"></a>poems of love are brought together, and some of +art, +and that the series closes with poems of religious thought +or experience, but such an order is not strictly observed, +and the "imaginary personality"—the thread—seems +to be imaginary in the fullest sense of the word. Yet +it is of interest to observe that something of a psychological-dramatic +arrangement was at least designed. +A second series of Selections followed in 1880. Browning +was accepted by many admirers not only as a poet +but as a prophet. "Tennyson and I seem now to be +regarded as the two kings of Brentford," he said +laughingly in 1879.<a name="FNanchor_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141"><sup>[141]</sup></a> +The later-enthroned king was +soon to have an interesting court. In 1881 The +Browning Society, founded by Dr Furnivall—initiator +of so much work that is invaluable to the student of +our literature—and Miss E.H. Hickey, herself a poet, +began its course. At first, according to Mrs Orr, +Browning "treated the project as a joke," but when +once he understood it to be serious, "he did not oppose +it." He felt, however, that before the public he must +stand aloof from its work: "as Wilkes was no Wilkeite," +he wrote to Edmund Yates, "I am quite other than a +Browningite." With a little nervousness as to the +discretion which the Society might or might not show, +he felt grateful for the interest in his writings demonstrated +by persons many of whom had been unknown +to him even by name. He was always ready to furnish +Dr Furnivall with a note of facts or elucidation. His +old admirers had made him somewhat too much of +a peculiar and private possession. A propaganda of +younger believers could not be unwelcome to one +who had for so many years been commonly regarded +<a name="Page_348"></a>as an obscure heretic—not even an heresiarch—of +literature.</p> +<p>Other honours accompanied his old age. In 1884 +he received the LL.D. of the University of Edinburgh, +and again declined to be nominated for the Lord +Rectorship of the University of St Andrews. Next +year he accepted the Honorary Presidency of the Five +Associated Societies of Edinburgh. In 1886 he +was appointed Foreign Correspondent to the Royal +Academy, a sinecure post rendered vacant by the +death of Lord Houghton. Though so vigorous in +talk, Browning could not make a public speech, or +he shrank from such an effort; none of the honours +which he accepted were such as to put him to this test. +During many years he was President of the New +Shakspere Society. His veneration for Shakespeare +is expressed in a sonnet entitled <i>The Names</i>, written +for the Book of the Show held in the Albert Hall, +May 1884, on behalf of the Fulham Road Hospital +for Women; it was not included in the edition of his +works which he was superintending during the last +two years of his life. Browning was not wholly +uninterested in the attempts made to transfer the +glory of the Shakespearian drama to Bacon; he +agreed with Spedding that whatever else might be +a matter of doubt, it was certain that the author of +the "Essays" could not have been the author of the +plays. On another question it is perhaps worth recording +his opinion—he could see nothing of Shakespeare, +he declared, in the tragedy of <i>Titus Andronicus</i>.</p> +<p>In 1879 appeared <i>Dramatic Idyls</i> and in the +following year <i>Dramatic Idyls, Second Series</i>. They +differed in two respects from the volumes of mis<a name="Page_349"></a>cellaneous +poetry which Browning had previously +published. Hitherto the contents of his collections of +verse in the main fell into three groups—poems which +were interpretations of the passion of love, poems which +dealt with art and artists, poems which were inspired +by the ideas and emotions of religion. Unless we +regard <i>Ned Bratts</i> as a poem of religious experience, +we may say that these themes are wholly absent from +the <i>Dramatic Idyls</i>. Secondly, the short story in verse +for the first time becomes predominant, or rather +excludes other forms, and the short story here is in +general not romantic or fantastic, but what we understand +by the word "realistic." The outward body of +the story is in several instances more built up by +cumulative details than formerly, which gives it an +air of solidity or massiveness, and is less expressed +through a swift selection of things essential. And +this may lead a reader to suppose that the story is +more a narrative of external incidents than is actually +the case. In truth, though the "corporal rind" of the +narrative bulks upon our view, the poet remains +essentially the psychologist. The narrative interest is +not evenly distributed over the whole as it is in the +works of such a writer as Chaucer, who loves narrative +for its own sake. There is ordinarily a crisis, a +culmination, a decisive and eventful invasion or outbreak +of spiritual passion to which we are led up by +all that precedes it. If the poem should be humorous, +it works up to some humorous point, or surprise. The +narrative is in fact a picture that hangs from a nail, +and the nail here is some vivid moment of spiritual +experience, or else some jest which also has its crisis. +A question sometimes arises as to whether the central +<a name="Page_350"></a>motive is sufficient to bear the elaborate +apparatus; +for the parts of the poem do not always justify +themselves except by reference to their centre, in +the case, for example, of <i>Doctor</i>——, the thesis is that +a bad wife is stronger than death; the jest culminates +at the point where the Devil upon sight of his formidable +spouse flies from the bed's-head of one who is +about to die, and thus allows his victim to escape the +imminent death. The question, "Will the jest sustain +a poem of such length?" is a fair one, and a good-natured +reader will stretch a point and say that he +has not after all been so ill amused, which he might +also say of an Ingoldsby Legend; but even a good-natured +reader will hardly return to <i>Doctor</i> —— with +pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have +made an admirable poem, for the interest would have +been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his +descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a +changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. +With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of +the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much +out of breath to be capable of laughter. In like +manner few persons except the Browning enthusiast, +who is not responsible for his fervour, will assert that +either the jest or the frankly cynical moral of <i>Pietro +of Abano</i> compensates for the jolting in a springless +waggon over a rough road and a long. We make the +acquaintance of a magician who with knowledge uninspired +by love has kicks and cuffs for his reward, and +the acquaintance of an astute Greek, who, at least in +his dream of life, imposed upon him by the art of magic, +exploits the talents of his friend Pietro, and gains the +prize of his astuteness, having learnt to rule men by +<a name="Page_351"></a>the potent spell of "cleverness uncurbed by +conscience." +The cynicism is only inverted morality, and implies +that the writer is the reverse of cynical; but it lacks +the attractive sub-acid flavour of a delicate cynicism, +which insinuates its prophylactic virus into our veins, +and the humour of the poem, ascending from stage to +stage until we reach Pietro's final failure, is cumbrous +and mechanical.</p> +<p>The two series of <i>Dramatic Idyls</i> included some conspicuous +successes. The classical poems <i>Pheidippides</i>, +<i>Echetlos</i>, <i>Pan and Luna</i>, idyls heroic and mythological, +invite us by their beauty to return to them again and +again. Browning's sympathy with gallantry in action, +with self-devotion to a worthy cause, was never more +vividly rendered than in the first of these poems. +The runner of Athens is a more graceful brother of +the Breton sailor who saved a fleet for France; but +the vision of majestical Pan in "the cool of a cleft" +exalts our human heroism into relation with the divine +benevolence, and the reward of release from labour is +proportionally higher than a holiday with the "belle +Aurore." Victory and then domestic love is the +human interpretation of Pan's oracular promise; but +the gifts of the gods are better than our hopes and it +proves to be victory and death:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>He flung down his shield,<br /> +</span><span>Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the +Fennel-field<br /> +</span><span>And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs +through,<br /> +</span><span>Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through +clay,<br /> +</span><span>Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died—the bliss!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The companion poem of Marathon, the story of the +nameless clown, the mysterious holder of the ploughshare, +is not less inspiring. The unknown champion, +<a name="Page_352"></a>so plain in his heroic magnitude of mind, so +brilliant +as he flashes in the van, in the rear, is like the incarnated +genius of the soil, which hides itself in the +furrow and flashes into the harvest; and it is his glory +to be obscured for ever by his deed—"the great +deed ne'er grows small." Browning's development +of the Vergilian myth—"si credere dignum est"—of +Pan and Luna astonishes by its vehement sensuousness +and its frank chastity; and while the beauty of the +Girl-moon and the terror of her betrayal are realised +with the utmost energy of imagination, we are made to +feel that all which happens is the transaction of a +significant dream or legend.</p> +<p>In contrast with these classical pieces, <i>Halbert and +Hob</i> reads like a fragment from some Scandinavian +saga telling of the life of forlorn and monstrous +creatures, cave-dwellers, who are less men than beasts. +Yet father and son are indeed men; the remorse which +checks the last outrage against paternity is the touch +of the finger of God upon human hearts; and though +old Halbert sits dead,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>With an outburst blackening still the old bad +fighting face,<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and young Hob henceforth goes tottering, muttering, +mumbling with a mindless docility, they are, like +Browning's men of the Paris morgue, only "apparent +failures"; there was in them that spark of divine +illumination which can never be wholly extinguished. +Positive misdeeds, the presence of a wild crew of evil +passions, do not suffice to make Browning's faith or +hope falter. It is the absence of human virtue which +appals him; if the salt have lost its savour wherewith +shall it be salted? This it is which condemns to a +<a name="Page_353"></a>swift, and what the poem represents as a just, +abolishment +from earth the mother who in <i>Ivàn Ivànovitch</i> +has given her children to the wolves, and has thereby +proved the complete nullity of her womanhood. For +her there is no possible redemption; she must cease to +cumber the ground. Ivàn acts merely as the instinctive +doomsman of Nature or of God, and the old village +Pope, who, as the veil of life grows thin, is feeling after +the law above human law, justifies the wielder of the +axe, which has been no instrument of vengeance but +simply an exponent of the wholesome vitality of earth. +The objection that carpenters and joiners, who assume +the Heraklean task of purging the earth of monsters, +must be prepared to undergo a period of confinement +at the pleasure of the Czar in a Criminal Lunatic +Asylum is highly sensible, and wholly inappropriate, +belonging, as it does, to a plane of thought and feeling +other than that in which the poem moves. But perhaps +it is not a defect of feeling to fail in admiration of that +admired final tableau in which the formidable carpenter +is discovered building a toy Kremlin for his five +children. We can take for granted that the excellent +homicide, having done so simple a bit of the day's +work as that of decapitating a fellow-creature, proceeds +tranquilly to other innocent pleasures and duties; we +do not require the ostentatious theatrical group, with +limelight effects on the Kremlin and the honey-coloured +beard, displayed for our benefit just before the curtain +is rung down.<a name="FNanchor_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142"><sup>[142]</sup></a></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img011"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 759px;" + alt="SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING." + title="SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING." src="images/img011.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING.</h5> +<h5><i>From a letter to D.S. CURTIS, Esq.</i></h5> +<p><a name="Page_354"></a><i>Martin Relph</i> is a story of life-long +remorse, self-condemnation +and self-denunciation; there is something +approaching the supernatural, and yet terribly +real, in the figure of the strange old man with a beard +as white as snow, standing, on a bright May day, in +monumental grief, and exposing his ulcerated heart to +the spectators who form for him a kind of posterity. +One instant's failure in the probation of life, one +momentary syncope of his better nature long years +ago, has condemned his whole after-existence to become +a climbing of the purgatorial mount, with an +agony of pain annually renewed at the season when +the earth rejoices. Only a high-strung delicate spirit +is capable of such a perennial passion of penitence. +<i>Ned Bratts</i> may be described as a companion, but a +contrasted piece. It is a story of sudden conversion +and of penitence taking an immediate and highly +effective form. The humour of the poem, which is +excellent of its kind, resembles more the humour of +Rowlandson than that of Hogarth. The Bedford +Court House on the sweltering Midsummer Day, the +Puritan recusants, reeking of piety and the cow-house +conventicle, the Judges at high jinks upon the bench—to +whom, all in a muck-sweat and ablaze with the +fervour of conversion, enter Black Ned, the stout +publican, and big Tab, his slut of a wife,—these are +drawn after the broad British style of humorous +illustration, which combines a frank exaggeration of +the characteristic lines with, at times, a certain grace +in deformity. Here at least is downright belief in the +<a name="Page_355"></a>invisible, here is genuine conviction driven +home by +the Spirit of God and the terror of hell-fire. Black +Ned and the slut Tabby as yet may not seem the +most suitable additions to the company of the blessed +who move singing</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>In solemn troops and sweet societies;<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>but when a pair of lusty sinners desire nothing so +much as to be hanged, and that forthwith, we may +take it that they are resolved, as "Christmas" was, to +quit the City of Destruction; and the saints above +have learnt not to be fastidious as they bend over +repentant rogues. Thanks to the grace of God and +John Bunyan's book, husband and wife triumphantly +aspire to and attain the gallows; "they were lovely and +pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were +not divided." A wise economy of spiritual force!—for +while their effectual calling cannot be gainsaid, the +final perseverance of these interesting converts, had +they lingered on the pilgrims' way, as Ned is painfully +aware, might have been less of a certainty.</p> +<p>Browning's method as a story-teller may be studied +with special advantage in <i>Clive</i>. The circumstances +under which the tale is related have to be caught at +by the reader, which quickens his attention and keeps +him on the alert; this device is, of course, not in itself +difficult, but to employ it with success is an achievement +requiring skill; it is a device proper to the dramatic +or quasi-dramatic form; the speaker, who is by no +means a Clive, has to betray something of his own +character, and at the same time to set forth the character +of the hero of his tale; the narrative must tend to a +moment of culmination, a crisis; and that this should +<a name="Page_356"></a>involve a paradox—Clive's fear, in the present +instance, +being not that the antagonist's pistol, presented at his +head, should be discharged but rather that it should be +remorsefully or contemptuously flung away—gives the +poet an opportunity for some subtle or some passionate +casuistry. The effect of the whole is that of a stream +or a shock from an electric battery of mind, for which +the story serves as a conductor. It is not a simple but +a highly complex species of narrative. In <i>Muléykeh</i>, +one of the most delightful of Browning's later poems, +uniting, as it does, the poetry of the rapture of swift +motion with the poetry of high-hearted passion, the +narrative leads up to a supreme moment, and this +resolves itself through a paradox of the heart. Shall +Hóseyn recover his stolen Pearl of a steed, but recover +her dishonoured in the race, or abandon her to the +captor with her glory untarnished? It is he himself +who betrays himself to loss and grief, for to perfect +love, pride in the supremacy of the beloved is more +than possession; and thus as Clive's fear was courage, +as Ivan's violation of law was obedience to law, so +Hóseyn's loss is Hóseyn's gain. In each case Browning's +casuistry is not argumentative; it lies in an +appeal to some passion or some intuition that is above +our common levels of passion or of insight, and his +power of uplifting his reader for even a moment into +this higher mood is his special gift as a poet. We can +return safely enough to the common ground, but we +return with a possession which instructs the heart.</p> +<p>A mood of acquiescence, which does not displace +the moods of aspiration and of combat but rather +floats above them as an atmosphere, was growing +familiar to Browning in these his elder years. He had +<a name="Page_357"></a>sought for truth, and had now found all that +earth was +likely to yield him, of which not the least important +part was a conviction that much of our supposed +knowledge ends in a perception of our ignorance. +He was now disposed to accept what seemed to be +the providential order that truth and error should +mingle in our earthly life, that truth should be served +by illusion; he would not rearrange the disposition +of things if he could. He was inclined to hold by the +simple certainties of our present life and to be content +with these as provisional truths, or as temporary +illusions which lead on towards the truth. In the +<i>Pisgah Sights</i> of the <i>Pacchiarotto</i> volume he had +imagined this mood of acquiescence as belonging to +the hour of death. But old age in reality is an earlier +stage in the process of dying, and with all his ardour +and his energy, Browning was being detached from the +contentions and from some of the hopes and aspirations +of life. And because he was detached he could +take the world to his heart, though in a different +temper from that of youth or middle age; he could +limit his view to things that are near, because their +claim upon his passions had diminished while their +claim upon his tenderness had increased. He could +smile amiably, for to the mood of acquiescence a smile +seems to be worth more than an argument. He could +recall the thoughts of love, and reanimate them in his +imagination, and could love love with the devotion of +an old man to the most precious of the things that +have been. Some of an old man's jests may be found +in <i>Jocoseria</i>, some of an old man's imaginative passion +in <i>Asolando</i>, and in both volumes, and still more clearly +in <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> may be seen an old man's spirit +<a name="Page_358"></a>of acquiescence, or to use a catch-word of +Matthew +Arnold, the epoch of concentration which follows an +epoch of expansion. But the embrace of earth and +the things of earth is like the embrace, with a pathos +in its ardour, which precedes a farewell. From the +first he had recognised the danger on the one hand of +settling down to browse contentedly in the paddock of +our earthly life, and on the other hand the danger of +ignoring our limitations, the danger of attempting to +"thrust in earth eternity's concerns." In his earlier +years he had chiefly feared the first of these two +dangers, and even while pointing out, as in <i>Paracelsus</i>, +the errors of the seeker for absolute knowledge or for +absolute love, he had felt a certain sympathy with such +glorious transgressors. He had valued more than any +positive acquisitions of knowledge those "grasps of +guess, which pull the more into the less." Now such +guesses, such hopes were as precious to him as ever, +but he set more store than formerly by the certainties—certainties +even if illusions—of the general heart of +man. These are the forms of thought and feeling +divinely imposed upon us; we cannot do better than +to accept them; but we must accept them only as +provisional, as part of our education on earth, as a +needful rung of the ladder by which we may climb to +higher things. And the faith which leads to such +acquiescence also results in the acceptance of hopes as +things not be struggled for but rested in as a substantial +portion of the divine order of our lives. In autumn +come for spirits rightly attuned these pellucid halcyon +days of the Indian summer.</p> +<p>In <i>Jocoseria</i>, which appeared in Browning's seventy-first +year (1883), he shows nothing of his boisterous +<a name="Page_359"></a>humour, but smiles at our human infirmities from +the +heights of experience. The prop of Israel, the much-enlightened +master, "Eximious Jochanan Ben Sabbathai," +when his last hour is at hand has to confess +that all his wisdom of life lies in his theoric; in +practice he is still an infant; striving presumptuously +in boyhood to live an angel, now that he comes to +die he is hardly a man. And Solomon himself is no +more than man; the truth-compelling ring extorts +the confession that an itch of vanity still tickles and +teazes him; the Queen of Sheba, seeker for wisdom +and patroness of culture, after all likes wisdom best +when its exponents are young men tall and proper, +and prefers to the solution of the riddles of life by +elderly monarchs one small kiss from a fool. Lilith +in a moment of terror acknowledges that her dignified +reserve was the cloak of passion, and Eve acknowledges +that her profession of love was transferred to the +wrong man; both ladies recover their self-possession +and resume their make-believe decorums, and Adam, +like a gallant gentleman, will not see through what is +transparent. These are harmless jests at the ironies +of life. Browning's best gifts in this volume, that +looks pale beside its predecessors, are one or two +short lyrics of love, which continue the series of his +latest lyrical poems, begun in the exquisite prologue +to <i>La Saisiaz</i> and the graceful epilogue to <i>The Two +Poets of Croisic</i>, and continued in the songs of +<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> and <i>Asolando</i>—not the least +valuable part of the work of his elder years. His +strength in this volume of 1883 is put into that +protest of human righteousness against immoral conceptions +of the Deity uttered by Ixion from his wheel +<a name="Page_360"></a>of torture. Rather than obey an immoral supreme +Power, as John Stuart Mill put it, "to Hell I will go"—and +such is the cry of Browning's victim of Zeus. +He is aware that in his recognition of righteousness he +is himself superior to the evil god who afflicts him; +and as this righteousness is a moral quality, and no +creation of his own consciousness but rather imposed +upon it as an eternal law, he rises past Zeus to the +Potency above him, after which even the undeveloped +sense of a Caliban blindly felt when he discovered a +Quiet above the bitter god Setebos; but the Quiet of +Caliban is a negation of those evil attributes of the +supreme Being, which he reflects upwards from his +own gross heart, not the energy of righteousness which +Ixion demands in his transcendent "Potency." Into +this poem went the energy of Browning's heart and +imagination; some of his matured wisdom entered +into <i>Jochanan Hakkadosh</i>, of which, however, the +contents are insufficient to sustain the length. The +saint and sage of Israel has at the close of his life +found no solution of the riddle of existence. Lover, +bard, soldier, statist, he has obtained in each of his +careers only doubts and dissatisfaction. Twelve +months added to a long life by the generosity of his +admirers, each of whom surrenders a fragment of his +own life to prolong that of the saint, bring him no +clearer illumination—still all is vanity and vexation +of spirit. Only at the last, when by some unexpected +chance, a final opportunity of surveying the past and +anticipating the future is granted him, all has become +clear. Instead of trying to solve the riddle he accepts +it. He sees from his Pisgah how life, with all its confusions +and contrarieties, is the school which educates +<a name="Page_361"></a>the soul and fits it for further wayfaring. The +ultimate +faith of Jochanan the Saint had been already expressed +by Browning:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Over the ball of it,<br /> +</span><span>Peering and prying,<br /> +</span><span>How I see all of it,<br /> +</span><span>Life there, outlying!<br /> +</span><span>Roughness and smoothness,<br /> +</span><span>Shine and defilement,<br /> +</span><span>Grace and uncouthness:<br /> +</span><span>One reconcilement.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But even to his favourite disciple the sage is unable so +to impart the secret that Tsaddik's mind shall really +embrace it.</p> +<p>The spirit of the saint of Israel is also the spirit of +that wise Dervish of Browning's invention (1884), the +Persian Ferishtah. The volume is frankly didactic, +and Browning, as becomes a master who would make +his lessons easy to children, teaches by parables and +pictures. In reading <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> we might +suppose that we were in the Interpreter's House, and +that the Interpreter himself was pointing a moral with +the robin that has a spider in his mouth, or the hen +walking in a fourfold method towards her chickens. +The discourses of the Dervish are in the main theological +or philosophical; the lyrics, which are interposed +between the discourses or discussions, are amatory. In +Persian Poetry much that at first sight might be +taken for amatory has in its inner meaning a mystical +theological sense. Browning reverses the order of +such poetry; he gives us first his doctrine concerning +life or God, and gives it clothed in a parable; then in +a lyric the subject is retracted into the sphere of +human affections, and the truth of theology condenses +<a name="Page_362"></a>itself into a corresponding truth respecting the +love of +man and woman.</p> +<p>Throughout the series of poems it is not a Persian +Dervish who is the speaker and teacher; we hear the +authentic voice of the Dervish born in Camberwell in +the year 1812—Ferishtah-Browning. The doctrine +set forth is the doctrine of Browning; the manner of +speech is the manner of the poet. The illustrations +and imagery are often Oriental; the ideas are those +of a Western thinker; yet no sense of discordance is +produced. The parable of the starving ravens fed by +an eagle serves happily as an induction; let us become +not waiters on providence, but workers with providence; +and to feed hungry souls is even more needful than +to feed hungry bodies:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I starve in soul:<br /> +</span><span>So may mankind: and since men congregate<br /> +</span><span>In towns, not woods—to Ispahan forthwith!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Such is the lesson of energetic charity. And the +lesson for the acceptance of providential gifts is that +put in words by the poor melon-seller, once the Shah's +Prime Minister—words spoken in the spirit of the +afflicted Job—"Shall we receive good at the hand of +God and shall we not receive evil?"<a name="FNanchor_143"></a><a + href="#Footnote_143"><sup>[143]</sup></a> Or rather—Shall +not our hearts even in the midst of evil be lifted up +in gratitude at the remembrance of the good which +we have received? Browning proceeds, under a transparent +veil of Oriental fable, to consider the story of +the life of Christ. Do we believe in that tale of wonder +<a name="Page_363"></a>in the full sense of the word belief? The more +it +really concerns us, the more exacting grow our demands +for evidence of its truth; an otiose assent is +easy, but this has none of the potency of genuine conviction. +And, after all, intellectual assent is of little +importance compared with that love for the Divine +which may co-exist as truly with denial as with assent. +<i>The Family</i> sets forth, through a parable, the wisdom +of accepting and living in our human views of things +transcendent. Why pray to God at all? Why not +rather accept His will and His Providential disposition +of our lives as absolutely wise, and right? That, +Browning replies, may be the way of the angels. We +are men, and it is God's will that we should feel and +think as men:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Be man and nothing more—<br /> +</span><span>Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears,<br /> +</span><span>And craves and deprecates, and loves and loathes,<br /> +</span><span>And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes<br /> +</span><span>And show God granted most, denying all.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The same spirit of acceptance of our intellectual and +moral limitations is applied in <i>The Sun</i> to the defence +of anthropomorphic religion. Our spirit, burdened +with the good gifts of life, looks upward for relief +in gratitude and praise; but we can praise and thank +only One who is righteous and loving, as we conceive +righteousness and love. Let us not strive to pass +beyond these human feelings and conceptions. Perhaps +they are wholly remote from the unknown reality. +They are none the less the conceptions proper to +humanity; we have no capacities with which to correct +them; let us hold fast by our human best, and preserve, +as the preacher very correctly expressed it, "the +<a name="Page_364"></a>integrity of our anthropomorphism." The +"magnified +non-natural man," and "the three Lord Shaftesburys" +of Matthew Arnold's irony are regarded with no fine +scorn by the intellect of Browning. His early Christian +faith has expanded and taken the non-historical form +of a Humanitarian Theism, courageously accepted, not +as a complete account of the Unknowable, but as the +best provisional conception which we are competent +to form. This theism involves rather than displaces +the truth shadowed forth in the life of Christ. The +crudest theism would seem to him far more reasonable +than to direct the religious emotions towards a "stream +of tendency."</p> +<p>The presence of evil in a world created and governed +by One all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving, is justified in +<i>Mirhab Shah</i> as a necessity of our education. How +shall love be called forth unless there be the possibility +of self-sacrifice? How shall our human sympathy be +perfected unless there be pain? What room is there +for thanks to God or love of man if earth be the scene +of such a blank monotony of well-being as may be +found in the star Rephan? But let us not call evil +good, or think pain in itself a gain. God may see +that evil is null, and that pain is gain; for us the +human view, the human feeling must suffice. This +justification of pain as a needful part of an education +is, however, inapplicable to never-ending retributive +punishment. Such a theological horror Browning rejects +with a hearty indignation, qualified only by a +humorous contempt, in his apologue of <i>A Camel-driver</i>; +her driver, if the camel bites, will with good +cause thwack, and so instruct the brute that mouths +should munch not bite; he will not, six months after<a name="Page_365"></a>wards, +thrust red-hot prongs into the soft of her flesh +to hiss there. And God has the advantage over the +driver of seeing into the camel's brain and of knowing +precisely what moved the creature to offend. The +poem which follows is directed against asceticism. Self-sacrifice +for the sake of our fellows is indeed "joy +beyond joy." As to the rest—the question is not +whether we fast or feast, but whether, fasting or +feasting, we do our day's work for the Master. If we +would supply joy to our fellows, it is needful that we +should first know joy ourselves—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Browning's argument is not profound, and could +adroitly be turned against himself; but his temperament +would survive his argument; his capacity for +manifold pleasures was great, and he not only valued +these as good in themselves, but turned them to +admirable uses. A feast of the senses was to him as +spiritually precious as a fast might be to one who only +by fasting could attain to higher joys than those of +sense. And this, he would maintain, is a better condition +for a human being than that which renders +expedient the plucking out of an eye, the cutting off +of a hand. Joy for Browning means praise and gratitude; +and in recognising the occasions for such praise +and thanks let us not wind ourselves too high. Let +us praise God for the little things that are so considerately +fitted to our little human wants and desires. +The morning-stars will sing together without our help; +if we must choose our moment for a <i>Te Deum</i>, let it +be when we have enjoyed our plate of cherries. The +glorious lamp in the Shah's pavilion lightens other +<a name="Page_366"></a>eyes than mine; but to think that the Shah's +goodness +has provided slippers for my feet in my own small +chamber, and of the very colour that I most affect! +Nor, in returning thanks, should it cause us trouble +that our best thanks are poor, or even that they are +mingled with an alloy of earthly regards, "mere +man's motives—"</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy,—<br /> +</span><span>Some smatch thereof,—in best and purest love<br /> +</span><span>Preferred thy earthly father? Dust thou art,<br /> +</span><span>Dust shall be to the end.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Our little human pleasures—do they seem unworthy +to meet the eye of God? That is a question put by +distrust and spiritual pride. God gives each of us His +little plot, within which each of us is master. The +question is not what compost, what manure, makes +fruitful the soil; we need not report to the Lord of the +soil the history of our manures; let us treat the ground +as seems best, if only we bring sacks to His granary +in autumn. Nay, do not I also tickle the palate of +my ass with a thistle-bunch, so heartening him to do +his work?</p> +<p>In <i>A Pillar at Sebzevah</i>, Ferishtah-Browning confronts +the objection that he has deposed knowledge +and degraded humanity to the rank of an ass whose +highest attainment is to love—what? "Husked +lupines, and belike the feeder's self." The Dervish +declares without shrinking the faith that is in him:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>"Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know<br /> +</span><span>Is—I know nothing save that love I can<br /> +</span><span>Boundlessly, endlessly."<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img012"></a><img + style="width: 528px; height: 844px;" alt="Robert Browning" + title="Robert Browning" src="images/img012.jpg" /> +</p> +<p>If there be knowledge it shall vanish away; but charity +never faileth. As for knowledge, the prize is in the +<a name="Page_367"></a>process; as gain we must mistrust it, not as a +road +to gain:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Knowledge means<br /> +</span><span>Ever-renewed assurance by defeat<br /> +</span><span>That victory is somehow still to reach,<br /> +</span><span>But love is victory, the prize itself.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Grasping at the sun, a child captures an orange: +what if he were to scorn his capture and refuse to suck +its juice? The curse of life is this—that every supposed +accession to knowledge, every novel theory, is +accepted as a complete solution of the whole problem, +while every pleasure is despised as transitory or insubstantial. +In truth the drop of water found in the +desert sand is infinitely precious; the mirage is only a +mirage. Browning, who in this volume puts forth his +own doctrine of theism, his justification of prayer, his +belief in a superintending providence, his explanation +of the presence of evil in the world, is, of course, no +Pyrrhonist. He profoundly distrusts the capacity of +the intellect, acting as a pure organ of speculation, to +unriddle the mysteries of existence; he maintains, on +the other hand, that knowledge sufficient for the conduct +of our lives is involved in the simple experiences of +good and evil, of joy and sorrow. In reality Browning's +attitude towards truth approaches more nearly what +has now begun to style itself "Pragmatism" than it +approaches Pyrrhonism; but philosophers whose joy +is to beat the air may find that it is condemnatory of +their methods.</p> +<p>In his distrust of metaphysical speculation and in +regarding the affections as superior to the intellect, +Browning as a teacher has something in common with +Comte; but there is perhaps no creed so alien to his +<a name="Page_368"></a>nature as the creed of Positivism. The last of +Ferishtah's +discourses is concerned with the proportion which +happiness bears to pain in the average life of man, or +rather—for Browning is nothing if he is not individualistic—in +the life of each man as an individual. The +conclusion arrived at is that no "bean-stripe"—each +bean, white or black, standing for a day—is wholly +black, and that the more extended is our field of vision +the more is the general aspect of the "bean-stripe" of +a colour intermediate between the extremes of darkness +and of light. Before the poem closes, Browning +turns aside to consider the Positivist position. Why +give our thanks and praise for all the good things of +life to God, whose existence is an inference of the +heart derived from its own need of rendering gratitude +to some Being like ourselves? Are not these good +things the gifts of the race, of Humanity, and its +worthies who have preceded us and who at the present +moment constitute our environment of loving help? +Ferishtah's reply, which is far from conclusive, must +be regarded as no discussion of the subject but the +utterance of an isolated thought. Praise rendered to +Humanity and the heroes of the race simply reverts to +the giver of the praise; his own perceptions of what +is praiseworthy alone render praise possible; he must +first of all thank and praise the giver of such perceptions—God. +It is strange that Browning should fail +to recognise the fact that the Positivist would immediately +trace the power of moral perception to the +energies of Humanity in its upward progress from +primitive savagery to our present state of imperfect +development.</p> +<p>It has been necessary to transcribe in a reduced +<a name="Page_369"></a>form the teaching of Ferishtah, for this is the +clearest +record left by Browning of his own beliefs on the +most important of all subjects, this is an essential part +of his criticism of life, and at the same time it is little +less than a passage of autobiography. The poems are +admirable in their vigour, their humour, their seriousness, +their felicity of imagery. Yet the wisdom of +<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> is an old man's wisdom; we perceive +in it the inner life, as Baxter puts it, in speaking of +changes wrought by his elder years, quitting the leaves +and branches and drawing down to the root. But +when in prologue or epilogue to this volume or that +Browning touches upon the great happiness, the great +sorrow of his own life, he is always young. Here the +lyrical epilogue is inspired by a noble enthusiasm, and +closes with a surprise of beauty. What if all his happy +faith in the purpose of life, and the Divine presence +through all its course, were but a reflex from the +private and personal love that had once been his and +was still above and around him? Such a doubt contained +its own refutation:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Only, at heart's utmost joy and triumph, +terror<br /> +</span><span>Sudden turns the blood to ice: a chill wind disencharms<br /> +</span><span>All the late enchantment! What if all be error—<br /> +</span><span>If the halo irised round my head were, Love, thine arms?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>All the more, if this were so, must the speaker's heart +turn Godwards in gratitude. The whole design of the +volume with its theological parables and its beautiful +lyrics of human love implies that there is a correspondency +between the truths of religion and the truths of +the passion of love between man and woman.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;"><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="Footnote_141"></a><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#FNanchor_141">[141]</a> +</p> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mr Gosse: "Dictionary of National Biography," Supplement, i. +317.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_142"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_142">[142]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Of the mother in this poem, a writer in the "Browning +Society's +Papers," Miss E.D. West, said justly: "There is discernible in her no +soul which could be cleansed from guilt by any purgatorial process.... +Her fault had not been moral, had not been sin, to be punished by pain +inflicted on the soul; it was merely the uncounteracted primary +instinct of +self-preservation, and as such it is fitliest dealt with by the simple +depriving +her, without further penalty, of the very life which she had secured +for +herself at so horrible a cost."</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_143"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_143">[143]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> The story of the melon-seller was related by a correspondent +of <i>The +Times</i> in 1846, and is told by Browning in a letter to Miss Barrett +of +Aug. 6 of that year. Thus subjects of verse rose up in his memory after +many years.</p> +</div> +<hr style="height: 2px; width: 45%;" /> +<a name="Chapter_XVII"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_370"></a>Chapter XVII</h2> +<h2>Closing Works and Days</h2> +<br /> +<p><i>Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their +Day</i>, published in 1887, Browning's last volume but +one, betrays not the slightest decline in his mental +vigour. It suffers, however, from the fact that several +of the "Parleyings" are discussions—emotional, it is +true, as well as intellectual—of somewhat abstract +themes, that these discussions are often prolonged beyond +what the subject requires, and that the "People +of Importance" are in some instances not men and +women, but mere sounding-boards to throw out +Browning's own voice. When certain aspects or +principles of art are considered in <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>, +before us stands Brother Lippo himself, a living, +breathing figure, on whom our interest must needs +fasten whatever may be the subject of his discourse. +There is of course a propriety in connecting a debate +on evil in the world as a means to good with the +name of the author of "The Fable of the Bees," there +is no impropriety in connecting a study of the philosophy +of music with the name of Charles Avison the +Newcastle organist; but we do not make acquaintance +through the parleyings with either Avison or +Mandeville. This objection does not apply to all the +poems. The parleying <i>With Daniel Bartoli</i> is a story +of love and loss, admirable in its presentation of the +<a name="Page_371"></a>heroine and the unheroic hero. We are interested +in +Francis Furini, "good priest, good man, good painter," +before he begins to preach his somewhat portentous +sermon on evolution. And in the case of Christopher +Smart, the question why once and only once he was a +divinely inspired singer is the question which most +directly leads to a disclosure of his character as a poet. +The volume, however, as a whole, while Browning's +energy never flags, has a larger proportion than its +predecessors of what he himself terms "mere grey +argument"; and, as if to compensate this, it is remarkable +for sudden outbursts of imagination and +passion, as if these repressed for a time had carried +away the dykes and dams, and went on their career +in full flood. The description of the glory of sunrise +in <i>Bernard de Mandeville</i>, the description of the +Chapel in <i>Christopher Smart</i>, the praise of a woman's +beauty in <i>Francis Furini</i>, the amazing succession of +mythological <i>tours de force</i> in <i>Gerard de Lairesse</i>, the +delightful picture of the blackcap tugging at his prize, +a scrap of rag on the garden wall, amid the falling +snow of March, in the opening of <i>Charles Avison</i>—these +are sufficient evidence of the abounding force of +Browning's genius as a poet at a date when he had +passed the three score years and ten by half an added +decade. Nor would we willingly forget that magical +lyric of life and death, of the tulip beds and the daisied +grave-mound—"Dance, yellows and whites and reds"—which +closes <i>Gerard de Lairesse</i>. Wordsworth's +daffodils are hardly a more jocund company than +Browning's wind-tossed tulips; he accepts their gladness, +and yet the starved grass and daisies are more +to him than these:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_372"></a><span>Daisies and grass be +my heart's bed-fellows<br /> +</span><span>On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:<br /> +</span><span>Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Of failure in intellectual or imaginative force the +<i>Parleyings</i> show no symptom. But the vigour of +Browning's will did a certain wrong to his other +powers. He did not wait, as in early days, for the +genuine casual inspirations of pleasure. He made it +his task to work out all that was in him. And what +comes to a writer of genius is better than what is +laboriously sought. We may gather wood for the +altar, but the true fire must descend from heaven. +The speed and excitement kindled by one's own +exertions are very different from the varying stress +of a wind that bears one onward without the thump +and rattle of the engine-room. It would have been +a gain if Browning's indomitable steam-engines had +occasionally ceased to ply, and he had been compelled +to wait for a propitious breeze.</p> +<p>Philosophy, Love, Poetry, Politics, Painting (the +nude, with a discourse concerning evolution), Painting +again (the modern <i>versus</i> the mythological in art), +Music, and, if we add the epilogue, the Invention of +Printing—these are the successive themes of Browning's +<i>Parleyings</i>, and they are important and interesting +themes. Unfortunately the method of discussion is +neither sufficiently abstract for the lucid exposition +of ideas, nor sufficiently concrete for the pure communication +of poetic pleasure. Abstract and concrete +meet and take hands or jostle, too much as skeleton +and lady might in a <i>danse Macabre</i>. The spirit of +acquiescence—strenuous not indolent acquiescence—with +our intellectual limitations is constantly present. +<a name="Page_373"></a>Does man groan because he cannot comprehend the +mind outside himself which manifests itself in the +sun? Well, did not Prometheus draw the celestial +rays into the pin-point of a flame which man can +order, and which does him service? Is the fire a +little thing beside the immensity in the heavens +above us?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Little? In little, light, warmth, life are +blessed—<br /> +</span><span>Which, in the large, who sees to bless?<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or again—it is Christopher Smart, who triumphs for +once so magnificently in his "Song to David," and +fails, with all his contemporaries, in the poetry of +ambitious instruction. And why? Because for once +he was content with the first step that poetry should +take—to confer enjoyment, leaving instruction—the +fruit of enjoyment—to come later. True learning +teaches through love and delight, not through pretentious +didactics,—a truth forgotten by the whole tribe +of eighteenth century versifiers. And once more—does +Francis Furini paint the naked body in all its +beauty? Right! let him study precisely this divine +thing the body, before he looks upward; let him retire +from the infinite into his proper circumscription:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Only by looking low, ere looking high,<br /> +</span><span>Comes penetration of the mystery.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>So also with our view of the mingled good and evil +in the world; perhaps to some transcendent vision evil +may wholly disappear; perhaps we shall ourselves make +this discovery as we look back upon the life on earth. +Meanwhile it is as men that we must see things, and +even if evil be an illusion (as Browning trusts), it is a +<a name="Page_374"></a>needful illusion in our educational process, +since through +evil we become aware of good. Thus at every point +Browning accepts here, as in <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>, a +limited provisional knowledge as sufficient for our +present needs, with a sustaining hope which extends +into the future. On the other hand, if your affair is +not the sincerity of thought and feeling, but a design +to rule the mass of men for your own advantage, you +must act in a different spirit. Do not, in the manner +of Bubb Doddington, attempt to impose upon your +fellows with the obvious and worn-out pretence that +all you do has been undertaken on their behalf and +in their interests. There is a newer and a better +trick than that. Assume the supernatural; have a +"mission "; have a "message"; be earnest, with all +the authority of a divine purpose. Play boldly this +new card of statesmanship, and you may have from +time to time as many inconsistent missions and +messages as ambitious statecraft can suggest to you. +Through all your gyrations the admiring crowd will +still stand agape. Was Browning's irony of a cynical +philosophy of statesmanship suggested by his view of +the procedure of a politician, whom he had once +admired, whose talents he still recognised, but from +whom he now turned away with indignant aversion? +However this may have been, his poems which touch +on politics do not imply that respect for the people +thinking, feeling, and moving, in masses which is a +common profession with the liberal leaders of the +platform. Browning's liberalism was a form of his +individualism; he, like Shakespeare, had a sympathy +with the wants and affections of the humblest human +lives; and, like Shakespeare, he thought that foolish +<a name="Page_375"></a>or incompetent heads are often conjoined with +hearts +that in a high degree deserve respect.</p> +<p><i>Asolando</i>, the last volume of a long array, was +published in London on the last day of Browning's +life. As he lay dying in Venice, telegraphed tidings +reached his son of the eager demand for copies made +in anticipation of its appearance and of the instant +and appreciative reviews; Browning heard the report +with a quiet gratification. It is happy when praise in +departing is justified, and this was the case with a +collection of poems which to some readers seemed like +a revival of the poetry of its author's best years of +early and mid manhood. <i>Asolando</i> is, however, in the +main distinctly an autumn gathering, a handful of +flowers and fruit belonging to the Indian summer of +his genius. The Prologue is a confession, like that of +Wordsworth's great Ode, that a glory has passed away +from the earth. When first he set eyes on Asolo, +some fifty years previously, the splendour of Italian +landscape seemed that of</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Terror with beauty, like the Bush<br /> +</span><span>Burning yet unconsumed<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Now, while the beauty remains, the flame is extinct—"the +Bush is bare." Browning finds his consolation in +the belief that he has come nearer to the realities of +earth by discarding fancies, and that his wonder and awe +are more wisely directed towards the transcendent God +than towards His creatures. But in truth what the +mind confers is a fact and no fancy; the loss of what +Browning calls the "soul's iris-bow" is the loss of a +substantial, a divine possession. The <i>Epilogue</i> has in +it a certain energy, but the thews are those of an old +<a name="Page_376"></a>athlete, and through the energy we are conscious +of +the strain. The speaker pitches his voice high, as if +it could not otherwise be heard at a distance. The +<i>Reverie</i>, a speculation on the time when Power will +show itself fully and therefore be known as love, has +some of that vigorous intellectual garrulity which had +grown on Browning during the years when unhappily +for his poetry he came to be regarded chiefly as a +prophet and a sage. An old man rightly values the +truths which experience has made real for him; he +repeats them again and again, for they constitute the +best gift he can offer to his disciples; but his utterances +are not always directly inspired; they are sometimes +faintly echoed from an earlier inspiration. In the +<i>Reverie</i>, while accepting our limitations of knowledge, +which he can term ignorance in its contrast with the +vast unknown, Browning discovers in the moral consciousness +of man a prophecy of the ultimate triumph +of good over what we think of as evil, a prophecy of +the final reconciliation of love with power. And +among the laws of life is not merely submission but +aspiration:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Life is—to wake not sleep,<br /> +</span><span>Rise and not rest, but press<br /> +</span><span>From earth's level where blindly creep<br /> +</span><span>Things perfected, more or less,<br /> +</span><span>To the heaven's height, far and steep,<br /> +</span><span>Where amid what strifes and storms<br /> +</span><span>May wait the adventurous quest,<br /> +</span><span>Power is love.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The voice of the poet of <i>Paracelsus</i> and of <i>Rabbi Ben +Ezra</i> is still audible in this latest of his prophesyings. +And therefore he welcomes earth in his <i>Rephan</i>, earth, +<a name="Page_377"></a>with its whole array of failures and despairs, +as the fit +training-ground for man. Better its trials and losses +and crosses than a sterile uniformity of happiness; +better its strife than rest in any golden mean of excellence. +Nor are its intellectual errors and illusions +without their educational value. It is better, as +<i>Development</i>, with its recollections of Browning's childhood, +assures us that the boy should believe in Troy +siege, and the combats of Hector and Achilles, as +veritable facts of history, than bend his brow over +Wolfs Prolegomena or perplex his brain with moral +philosophies to grapple with which his mind is not +yet competent. By and by his illusions will disappear +while their gains will remain.</p> +<p>The general impression left by <i>Asolando</i> is that of +intellectual and imaginative vigour. The series of +<i>Bad Dreams</i> is very striking and original in both +pictorial and passionate power. <i>Dubiety</i> is a poem of +the Indian Summer, but it has the beauty, with a +touch of the pathos, proper to the time. The love +songs are rather songs of praise than of passion, but +they are beautiful songs of praise, and that entitled +<i>Speculative</i>, which is frankly a poem of old age, has +in it the genuine passion of memory. <i>White Witchcraft</i> +does in truth revive the manner of earlier +volumes. The</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Infinite passion and the pain<br /> +</span><span>Of finite hearts that yearn<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>told of in a poem of 1855 is present, with a touch of +humour to guard it from its own excess in the admirable +<i>Inapprehensiveness</i>. The speaker who may not +liberate his soul can perhaps identify a quotation, and +<a name="Page_378"></a>he gallantly accepts his humble rôle in +the tragi-comedy +of foiled passion:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>"No, the book<br /> +</span><span>Which noticed how the wall-growths wave," said she,<br /> +</span><span>"Was not by Ruskin."<br /> +</span><span>I said "Vernon Lee."<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And in the uttered "Vernon Lee" lies a vast renunciation +half comical and wholly tragic. There are jests +in the volume, and these, with the exception of <i>Ponte +dell' Angelo</i>, have the merit of brevity; they buzz +swiftly in and out, and do not wind about us with the +terror of voluminous coils, as sometimes happens when +Browning is in his mood of mirth. There are stories, +and they are told with spirit and with skill. In +<i>Beatrice Signorini</i> the story-teller does justice to the +honest jealousy of a wife and to the honest love of a +husband who returns from the wanderings of his +imagination to the frank fidelity of his heart. +Cynicism grows genial in the jest of <i>The Pope and +the Net</i>. In <i>Muckle-Mouth Meg</i>, laughter and kisses, +audible from the page, and a woman's art in love-craft, +turn tragedy in a hearty piece of comedy. <i>The Bean-Feast</i> +presents us with the latest transformation of the +Herakles ideal, where a good Christian Herakles, Pope +Sixtus of Rome, makes common cause with his spiritual +children in their humble pleasures of the senses. And in +contrast with this poem of the religion of joy is the story +of another ruler of Rome, the too fortunate Emperor +Augustus, who, in the shadow of the religion of fear +and sorrow, must propitiate the envy of Fate by turning +beggar once a year. A shivering thrill runs +through us as we catch a sight of the supreme +<a name="Page_379"></a>mendicant's "sparkling eyes beneath their +eyebrows' +ridge":</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>"He's God!" shouts Lucius Varus Rufus: "Man<br /> +</span><span>And worms'-meat any moment!" mutters low<br /> +</span><span>Some Power, admonishing the mortal-born.<br /> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>There were nobler sides of Paganism than this with +which Browning seems never to have had an adequate +sympathy. And yet the religion even of Marcus +Aurelius lacked something of the joy of the religion +of the thankful Pope who feasted upon beans.<a name="FNanchor_144"></a><a + href="#Footnote_144"><sup>[144]</sup></a></p> +<p>In the winter which followed his change of abode from +Warwick Crescent to the more commodious house in +De Vere Gardens, the winter of 1887-1888, Browning's +health and strength visibly declined; a succession of +exhausting colds lowered his vitality; yet he maintained +his habitual ways of life, and would not yield. +In August 1888 he started ill for his Italian holiday, and +travelled with difficulty and distress. But the rest +among the mountains at Primiero restored him. At +Venice he seemed as vigorous as he was joyous. And +when he returned to London in February 1889 the +improvement in his strength was in a considerable +measure maintained. Yet it was evident that the +<a name="Page_380"></a>physical vigour which had seemed invincible was +on +the ebb. In the early summer he paid the last of +those visits, which he so highly valued, to Balliol +College, Oxford. The opening week of June found +him at Cambridge. Mr Gosse has told how on the +first Sunday of that month Browning and he sat +together "in a sequestered part of the beautiful Fellows' +Garden of Trinity," under a cloudless sky, amid the +early foliage with double hawthorns in bloom, and +how the old man, in a mood of serenity and without +his usual gesticulation, talked of his own early life and +aspirations. He shrank that summer, says Mrs Orr, +from the fatigue of a journey to Italy and thought of +Scotland as a place of rest. But unfavourable weather +in early August forbade the execution of the plan. +An invitation from Mrs Bronson to her house at Asolo, +to be followed by the pleasure of seeing his son and +his son's wife in the Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice, were +attractions not to be resisted, and in company with +Miss Browning, he reached the little hill-town that +had grown so dear to him without mishap and even +without fatigue.</p> +<p>To the early days of July, shortly before his departure +for Italy, belong two incidents which may be placed +side by side as exhibiting two contrasted sides of +Browning's character. On the 5th of that month he +dined with the Shah, who begged for the gift of one +of his books. Next day he chose a volume the binding +of which might, as he says, "take the imperial eye"; +but the pleasure of the day was another gift, a gift to +a person who was not imperial. "I said to myself," +he wrote to his young friend the painter Lehmann's +daughter, addressed in the letter as "My beloved +<a name="Page_381"></a>Alma"—"I said to myself 'Here do I present my +poetry to a personage for whom I do not care three +straws; why should I not venture to do as much for +a young lady I love dearly, who, for the author's sake, +will not impossibly care rather for the inside than the +outside of the volume?' So I was bold enough to +take one and offer it for your kind acceptance, begging +you to remember in days to come that the author, +whether a good poet or not, was always, my Alma, +your affectionate friend, Robert Browning." A gracious +bowing of old age over the grace and charm of youth! +But the work of two days later, July 8th, was not +gracious. The lines "To Edward Fitzgerald," printed +in <i>The Athenaeum</i>, were dated on that day. It is stated +by Mrs Orr that when they were despatched to the +journal in which they appeared, Browning regretted +the deed, though afterwards he found reasons to justify +himself. Fitzgerald's reference to Mrs Browning caused +him a spasm of pain and indignation, nor did the pain +for long subside. The expression of his indignation +was outrageous in manner, and deficient in real power. +He had read a worse meaning into the unhappy words +than had been intended, and the writer was dead. +Browning's act was like an involuntary muscular contraction, +which he could not control. The lines sprang +far more from love than from hate. "I felt as if she +had died yesterday," he said. We cannot regret that +Browning was capable of such an offence; we can +only regret that what should have controlled his +cry of pain and rage did not operate at the right +moment.</p> +<p>In Asolo, beside "the gate," Mrs Bronson had found +and partly made what Mr Henry James describes as +"<a name="Page_382"></a>one of the quaintest possible little places of <i>villegiatura</i>"—La +Mura, the house, "resting half upon +the dismantled, dissimulated town-wall. No sweeter +spot in all the sweetnesses of Italy." Browning's last +visit to Asolo was a time of almost unmingled enjoyment. +"He seemed possessed," writes Mrs Orr, "by +a strange buoyancy, an almost feverish joy in life." +The thought that he was in Asolo again, which he had +first seen in his twenty-sixth year, and since then had +never ceased to remember with affection, was a happy +wonder to him. He would stand delighted on the +loggia of La Mura, looking out over the plain and +identifying the places of historical interest, some of +which were connected with his own "Sordello." Nor +was the later story forgotten of Queen Caterina Cornaro, +whose palace-tower overlooks Asolo, and whose secretary, +Cardinal Bembo, wrote <i>gli Asolani</i>, from which +came the suggestion for the title of Browning's forthcoming +volume. At times, as Mrs Bronson relates, +the beauty of the prospect was enough, with no +historical reminiscences, the plain with its moving +shadows, the mountain-ranges to the west, and southwards +the delicate outline of the Euganean Hills. "I +was right," said he, "to fall in love with this place fifty +years ago, was I not?"</p> +<p>The procedure of the day at Asolo was almost as +regular as that of a London day. The morning walk +with his sister, when everything that was notable was +noted by his keen eyes, the return, English newspapers, +proof-sheets, correspondence, the light mid-day meal, +the afternoon drive in Mrs Branson's carriage, tea upon +the loggia, the evening with music or reading, or visits +to the little theatre—these constituted an almost un<a name="Page_383"></a>varying +and happy routine. On his walks he delighted +to recognise little details of architecture which he had +observed in former years; or he would peer into the +hedgerows and watch the living creatures that lurked +there, or would "whistle softly to the lizards basking +on the low walls which border the roads, to try his old +power of attracting them."<a name="FNanchor_145"></a><a + href="#Footnote_145"><sup>[145]</sup></a> Sometimes a longer drive +(and that to Bassano was his favourite) required an +earlier start in the carriage with luncheon at some +little inn. "If we were ever late in returning to Asolo," +Mrs Bronson writes, "he would say 'Tell Vittorio to +drive quickly; we must not lose the sunset from the +loggia.' ... Often after a storm, the effects of sun +breaking through clouds before its setting, combined +with the scenery of plain and mountain, were such as +to rouse the poet to the greatest enthusiasm. Heedless +of cold or damp, forgetting himself completely, though +warmly wrapped to please others, he would gaze on +the changing aspects of earth and sky until darkness +covered everything from his sight."</p> +<p>When in the evenings Browning read aloud he did +not, like Tennyson, as described by Mr Rossetti, allow +his voice to "sway onward with a long-drawn chaunt" +which gave "noble value and emphasis to the metrical +structure and pauses." His delivery was full and distinctive, +but it "took much less account than Tennyson's +of the poem as a rhythmical whole; his delivery had +more affinity to that of an actor, laying stress on all +the light and shade of the composition—its touches of +character, the conversational points, its dramatic give-and-take. +In those qualities of elocution in which +Tennyson was strong, and aimed to be strong, Brown<a name="Page_384"></a>ing +was contentedly weak; and <i>vice versâ</i>."<a + name="FNanchor_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146"><sup>[146]</sup></a> +Sometimes, +like another great poet, Pope, he was deeply +affected by the passion of beauty or heroism or pathos +in what he read, and could not control his feelings. +Mrs Orr mentions that in reading aloud his translation +of the <i>Herakles</i>, he, like Pope in reading a passage of +his <i>Iliad</i>, was moved to tears. Dr Furnivall tells of +the mounting excitement with which he once delivered +in the writer's hearing his <i>Ixion</i>. When at La Mura +after his dreamy playing, on a spinet of 1522, old airs, +melodious, melancholy airs, Browning would propose +to read aloud, it was not his own poetry that he most +willingly chose. "No R.B. to-night," he would say; +"then with a smile, 'Let us have some real poetry'"; +and the volume would be one by Shelley or Keats, or +Coleridge or Tennyson. It was as a punishment to +his hostess for the crime of having no Shakespeare on +her shelves that he threatened her with one of his +"toughest poems"; but the tough poem, interpreted +by his emphasis and pauses, became "as clear and +comprehensible as one could possibly desire." In his +talk at Asolo "he seemed purposely to avoid deep and +serious topics. If such were broached in his presence +he dismissed them with one strong, convincing sentence, +and adroitly turned the current of conversation into a +shallower channel."</p> +<p>A project which came very near his heart was that +of purchasing from the municipal authorities a small +piece of ground, divided from La Mura by a ravine +clothed with olive and other trees, "on which stood an +unfinished building"—the words are Mrs Bronson's—"commanding +<a name="Page_385"></a>the finest view in Asolo." He desired +much to have a summer or autumn abode to which +he might turn with the assurance of rest in what most +pleased and suited him. In imagination, with his +characteristic eagerness, he had already altered and +added to the existing structure, and decided on the +size and aspect of the loggia which was to out-rival +that of La Mura. "'It shall have a tower,' he said, +'whence I can see Venice at every hour of the day, +and I shall call it "Pippa's Tower".... We will +throw a rustic bridge across the streamlet in the +ravine.'" And then, in a graver mood: "It may +not be for me to enjoy it long—who can say? But +it will be useful for Pen and his family.... But I +am good for ten years yet." And when his son +visited Asolo and approved of the project of Pippa's +Tower, Browning's happiness in his dream was complete. +It was on the night of his death that the +authorities of Asolo decided that the purchase might +be carried into effect.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><a name="img013"></a><img + style="width: 512px; height: 635px;" + alt="THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE." + title="THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE." src="images/img013.jpg" /><br /> +</p> +<h5>THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE.</h5> +<h5><i>From a drawing by</i> Miss KATHERINE KIMBALL.</h5> +<p>For a time during this last visit to Asolo Browning +suffered some inconvenience from shortness of breath +in climbing hills, but the discomfort passed away. +He looked forward to an early return to England, +spoke with pleasant anticipation of the soft-pedal +piano which his kind friend Mrs Bronson desired to +procure at Boston and place in his study in De Vere +Gardens, and he dreamed of future poetical achievements. +"Shall I whisper to you my ambition and my +hope?" he asked his hostess. "It is to write a tragedy +better than anything I have done yet. I think of it +constantly." With the end of October the happy days +at Asolo were at an end. On the first of November +<a name="Page_386"></a>he was in Venice, "magnificently lodged," he +says, +"in this vast palazzo, which my son has really shown +himself fit to possess, so surprising are his restorations +and improvements." At Asolo he had parted +from his American friend Story with the words, +"More than forty years of friendship and never a +break." In Venice he met an American friend of +more recent years, Professor Corson, who describes +him as stepping briskly, with a look that went everywhere, +and as cheerfully anticipating many more years +of productive work.<a name="FNanchor_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147"><sup>[147]</sup></a> +Yet in truth the end was near. +Dining with Mr and Mrs Curtis, where he read aloud +some poems of his forthcoming volume, he met a +London physician, Dr Bird. Next evening Dr Bird +again dined with Browning, who expressed confident +satisfaction as to his state of health, and held out his +wrist that his words might be confirmed by the regularity +and vigour of his pulse. The physician became +at once aware that Browning's confidence was +far from receiving the warrant in which he believed. +Still he maintained his customary two hours' walk +each day. Towards the close of November, on a day +of fog, he returned from the Lido with symptoms of +a bronchial cold. He dealt with the trouble as he +was accustomed, and did not take to his bed. Though +feeling scarcely fit to travel he planned his departure +for England after the lapse of four or five days. On +December 1st, an Italian physician was summoned, +and immediately perceived the gravity of the case. +Within a few days the bronchial trouble was subdued, +but failure of the heart was apparent. Some hours +<a name="Page_387"></a>before the end he said to one of his nurses, "I +feel +much worse. I know now that I must die." The +ebbing away of life was painless. As the clocks of +Venice were striking ten on the night of Thursday, +December 12, 1889, Browning died.<a name="FNanchor_148"></a><a + href="#Footnote_148"><sup>[148]</sup></a></p> +<p>He had never concerned himself much about his +place of burial. A lifeless body seemed to him only +an old vesture that had been cast aside. "He had +said to his sister in the foregoing summer," Mrs Orr +tells us, "that he wished to be buried wherever he +might die; if in England, with his mother; if in +France, with his father; if in Italy, with his wife." +The English cemetery in Florence had, however, been +closed. The choice seemed to lie between Venice, +which was the desire of the city, or, if the difficulties +could be overcome by the intervention of Lord +Dufferin, the old Florentine cemetery. The matter +was decided otherwise; a grave in Westminster Abbey +was proposed by Dean Bradley, and the proposal was +accepted.<a name="FNanchor_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149"><sup>[149]</sup></a> +A private service took place in the +<i>Palazzo Rezzonico</i>; the coffin, in compliance with +the civic requirements, was conveyed with public +honours to the chapel on the island of San Michele; +and from thence to the house in De Vere Gardens. +On the last day of the year 1889, in presence of a +<a name="Page_388"></a>great and reverent crowd, with solemn music +arranged +for the words of Mrs Browning's poem, "He giveth +his beloved sleep," the body of Browning was laid in +its resting-place in Poets' Corner.</p> +<p>To attempt at the present time to determine the +place of Browning in the history of English poetry is +perhaps premature. Yet the record of "How it +strikes a contemporary" may itself have a certain +historical interest. When estimates of this kind have +been revised by time even their errors are sometimes +instructive, or, if not instructive, are amusing. It is +probable that Tennyson will remain as the chief +representative in poetry of the Victorian period. +Browning, who was slower in securing an audience, +may be found to possess a more independent individuality. +Yet in truth no great writer is independent +of the influences of his age.</p> +<p>Browning as a poet had his origins in the romantic +school of English poetry; but he came at a time +when the romance of external action and adventure +had exhausted itself, and when it became necessary to +carry romance into the inner world where the adventures +are those of the soul. On the ethical and +religious side he sprang from English Puritanism. +Each of these influences was modified by his own +genius and by the circumstances of its development. +His keen observation of facts and passionate inquisition +of human character drew him in the direction +of what is termed realism. This combination of +realism with romance is even more strikingly seen in +an elder contemporary on whose work Browning +bestowed an ardent admiration, the novelist Balzac. +<a name="Page_389"></a>His Puritanism received important modifications +from +his wide-ranging artistic instincts and sympathies, and +again from the liberality of a wide-ranging intellect. +He has the strenuous moral force of Puritanism, but he +is wholly free from asceticism, except in the higher +significance of that word—the hardy discipline of an +athlete. Opinions count for less than the form and the +habitual attitudes of a soul. These with Browning were +always essentially Christian. He regarded our life on +earth as a state of probation and of preparation; +sometimes as a battle-field in which our test lies in +the choice of the worse or the better side and the +energy of devotion to the cause; sometimes as a +school of education, in the processes of which the +emotions play a larger part than the intellect. The +degrees in that school are not to be taken on earth. +And on the battle-field the final issue is not to be +determined here, so that what appears as defeat may +contain within it an assured promise of ultimate +victory. The attitudes of the spirit which were +most habitual with him were two—the attitude of +aspiration and the attitude of submission. These he +brought into harmony with each other by his conception +of human life as a period of training for a +higher life; we must make the most vigorous and +joyous use of our schooling, and yet we must press +towards what lies beyond it.</p> +<p>From the romantic poetry of the early years of the +nineteenth century comes a cry or a sigh of limitless +desire. Under the inspiration of the Revolutionary +movement passion had broken the bounds of the +eighteenth century ideal of balance and moderation. +With the transcendental reaction against a mechanical +<a name="Page_390"></a>view of the relation of God to the universe and +to +humanity the soul had put forth boundless claims and +unmeasured aspirations. In his poetic method each +writer followed the leadings of his own genius, without +reference to common rules and standards; the individualism +of the Revolutionary epoch asserted itself +to the full. These several influences helped to +determine the character of Browning's poetry. But +meeting in him the ethical and religious tendencies of +English Puritanism they acquired new significances +and assumed new forms. The cry of desire could not +turn, as it did with Byron, to cynicism; it must not +waste itself, as sometimes happened with Shelley, in +the air or the ether. It must be controlled by the +will and turned to some spiritual uses. The transcendental +feeling which Wordsworth most often +attained through an impassioned contemplation of +external nature must rest upon a broader basis and +include among its sources or abettors all the higher +passions of humanity. The Revolutionary individualism +must be maintained and extended; in his +methods Browning would acknowledge no master; he +would please himself and compel his readers to accept +his method even if strange or singular. As for the +mediaeval revival, which tried to turn aside, and in part +capture, the transcendental tendencies of his time, +Browning rejected it, in the old temper of English +Puritanism, on the side of religion; but on the side +of art it opened certain avenues upon which he +eagerly entered. The scientific movement of the +nineteenth century influenced him partly as a force +to be met and opposed by his militant transcendentalism. +Yet he gives definite expression in <i>Paracelsus</i> +<a name="Page_391"></a>to an idea of evolution both in nature and in +human +society, an idea of evolution which is, however, +essentially theistic. "All that seems proved in +Darwin's scheme," he wrote to Dr Furnivall in 1881, +"was a conception familiar to me from the beginning." +The positive influences of the scientific age in which +he lived upon Browning's work were chiefly these—first +it tended to intellectualise his instincts, compelling +him to justify them by a definite theory; and secondly +it co-operated with his tendency towards realism as a +student of the facts of human nature; it urged him +towards research in his psychology of the passions; +it supported him in his curious inquisition of the +phenomena of the world of mind.</p> +<p>Being a complete and a sane human creature, +Browning could not rest content with the vicious +asceticism of the intellect which calls itself scientific +because it refuses to recognise any facts that are not +material and tangible. Science itself, in the true sense of +the word, exists and progresses by ventures of imaginative +faith. And in all matters which involve good and +evil, hopes and fears, in all matters which determine the +conduct of life, no rational person excludes from his +view the postulates of our moral nature or should +exclude the final option of the will. The person whose +beliefs are determined by material facts alone and by +the understanding unallied with our other powers is +the irrational and unscientific person. Being a +complete and sane human creature, Browning was +assured that the visible order of things is part of a +larger order, the existence of which alone makes +human life intelligible to the reason. The understanding +being incapable of arriving unaided at a +<a name="Page_392"></a>decision between rival theories of life, and +neutrality +between these being irrational and illegitimate, he +rightly determined the balance with the weight of +emotion, and rightly acted upon that decision with all +the energy of his will. His chief intellectual error +was not that he undervalued the results of the intellect, +but that he imagined the existence as a part of sane +human nature, of a wholly irrational intellect which in +affairs of religious belief and conduct is indifferent +to the promptings of the emotions and the moral +nature.</p> +<p>Browning's optimism has been erroneously ascribed +to his temperament. He declared that in his personal +experience the pain of life outweighed its pleasure. +He remembered former pain more vividly than he +remembered pleasure. His optimism was part of the +vigorous sanity of his moral nature; like a reasonable +man, he made the happiness which he did not find. +If any person should censure the process of giving +objective validity to a moral postulate, he has only to +imagine some extra-human intelligence making a +study of human nature; to such an intelligence our +moral postulates would be objective facts and have +the value of objective evidence. That whole of which +our life on earth forms a part could not be conceived +by Browning as rational without also being conceived +as good.</p> +<p>All the parts of Browning's nature were vigorous, +and they worked harmoniously together. His +senses were keen and alert; his understanding was +both penetrating and comprehensive; his passions had +sudden explosive force and also steadfastness and +persistency; his will supported his other powers and +<a name="Page_393"></a>perhaps it had too large a share in his later +creative +work. His feeling for external nature was twofold; +he enjoyed colour and form—but especially colour—as +a feast for the eye, and returned thanks for his +meal as the Pope of his poem did for the bean-feast. +This was far removed from that passionate spiritual contemplation +of nature of the Wordsworthian mood. But +now and again for Browning external nature was, not +indeed suffused as for Wordsworth, but pierced and +shot through with spiritual fire. His chief interest, +however, was in man. The study of passions in their +directness and of the intellect in its tortuous ways +were at various times almost equally attractive to him. +The emotions which he chiefly cared to interpret were +those connected with religion, with art, and with the +relations of the sexes.</p> +<p>In his presentation of character Browning was far +from exhibiting either the universality or the disinterestedness +of Shakespeare. His sympathy with +action was defective. The affections arising from +hereditary or traditional relations are but slenderly +represented in his poetry; the passions which elect +their own objects are largely represented. Those +graceful gaieties arising from a long-established form +of society, which constitute so large a part of +Shakespeare's comedies, are almost wholly absent +from his work. His humour was robust but seldom +fine or delicate. In an age of intellectual and spiritual +conflict and trouble, his art was often deflected from +the highest ends by his concern on behalf of ideas. +He could not rest satisfied, it has been observed, with +contemplating the children of his imagination, nor find +the fulfilment of his aim in the fact of having given +<a name="Page_394"></a>them existence.<a name="FNanchor_150"></a><a + href="#Footnote_150"><sup>[150]</sup></a> It seems often as if his +purpose in +creating them was to make them serve as questioners, +objectors, and answerers in the great debate of conflicting +thoughts which proceeds throughout his poems. +His object in transferring his own consciousness into +the consciousness of some imagined personage seems +often to be that of gaining a new stand-point from +which to see another and a different aspect of the +questions concerning which he could not wholly satisfy +himself from any single point of view. He cannot be +content to leave his men and women, in Shakespeare's +disinterested manner, to look in various directions +according to whatever chanced to suit best the temper +and disposition he had imagined for them. They are +placed by him with their eyes turned in very much +the same direction, gazing towards the same problems, +the same ideas. And somehow Browning himself +seems to be in company with them all the time, learning +their different reports of the various aspects which +those problems or ideas present to each of them, and +choosing between the different reports in order to give +credence to that which seems true. The study of no +individual character would seem to him of capital +value unless that character contained something which +should help to throw light upon matters common to +all humanity, upon the inquiries either as to what it is, +or as to what are its relations to the things outside +humanity. This is not quite the highest form of +dramatic poetry. There is in it perhaps something +<a name="Page_395"></a>of the error of seeking too quick returns of +profit, and +of drawing "a circle premature," to use Browning's +own words, "heedless of far gain." The contents of +characters so conceived can be exhausted, whereas when +characters are presented with entire disinterestedness +they may seem to yield us less at first, but they +are inexhaustible. The fault—if it be one—lay partly +in Browning's epoch, partly in the nature of his genius. +Such a method of deflected dramatic characterisation +as his is less appropriate to regular drama than to the +monologue; and accordingly the monologue, reflective +or lyrical, became the most characteristic instrument +of his art.</p> +<p>There is little of repose in Browning's poetry. He +feared lethargy of heart, the supine mood, more than +he feared excess of passion. Once or twice he utters +a sigh for rest, but it is for rest after strife or labour. +Broad spaces of repose, of emotional tranquillity are +rare, if not entirely wanting, in his poetry. It is not +a high table-land, but a range, or range upon range, of +sierras. In single poems there is often a point or +moment in which passion suddenly reaches its +culmination. He flashes light upon the retina; he +does not spread truth abroad like a mantle but plunges +it downwards through the mists of earth like a searching +sword-blade. And therefore he does not always +distribute the poetic value of what he writes equally; +one vivid moment justifies all that is preparatory to +that great moment. His utterance, which is always +vigorous, becomes intensely luminous at the needful +points and then relapses, to its well-maintained vigour, +a vigour not always accompanied by the highest +poetical qualities. The music of his verse is entirely +<a name="Page_396"></a>original, and so various are its kinds, so +complex often +are its effects that it cannot be briefly characterised. +Its attack upon the ear is often by surprises, which, +corresponding to the sudden turns of thought and +leaps of feeling, justify themselves as right and +delightful. Yet he sometimes embarrasses his verse +with an excess of suspensions and resolutions. +Browning made many metrical experiments, some +of which were unfortunate: but his failures are +rather to be ascribed to temporary lapses into a +misdirected ingenuity than to the absence of metrical +feeling.</p> +<p>His chief influence, other than what is purely +artistic, upon a reader is towards establishing a connection +between the known order of things in which +we live and move and that larger order of which it is +a part. He plays upon the will, summoning it from +lethargy to activity. He spiritualises the passions by +showing that they tend through what is human towards +what is divine. He assigns to the intellect a +sufficient field for exercise, but attaches more value +to its efforts than to its attainments. His faith in an +unseen order of things creates a hope which persists +through the apparent failures of earth. In a true +sense he may be named the successor of Wordsworth, +not indeed as an artist but as a teacher. Substantially +the creed maintained by each was the same creed, +and they were both more emphatic proclaimers of it +than any other contemporary poets. But their ways +of holding and of maintaining that creed were far +apart. Wordsworth enunciated his doctrines as if he +had never met with, and never expected to meet with, +any gainsaying of them. He discoursed as a philosopher +<a name="Page_397"></a>might to a school of disciples gathered together +to be +taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it. He feared +chiefly not a counter creed but the materialising effects +of the industrial movement of his own day. Expecting +no contradiction, Wordsworth did not care to quit +his own standpoint in order that he might see how +things appear from the opposing side. He did not +argue but let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy +spoken in presence of an audience but not always +directly addressed to them. Browning's manner of +speech was very unlike this. He seems to address it +often to unsympathetic hearers of whose presence and +gainsaying attitude he could not lose sight. The +beliefs for which he pleaded were not in his day, as +they had been in Wordsworth's, part of a progressive +wave of thought. He occupied the disadvantageous +position of a conservative thinker. The later poet of +spiritual beliefs had to make his way not with, but +against, a great incoming tide of contemporary speculation. +Probably on this account Browning's influence +as a teacher will extend over a far shorter space of +time than that of Wordsworth. For Wordsworth is +self-contained, and is complete without reference to +the ideas which oppose his own. His work suffices +for its own explanation, and will always commend +itself to certain readers either as the system of a +philosophic thinker or as the dream of a poet. Browning's +thought where it is most significant is often more +or less enigmatical if taken by itself: its energetic +gestures, unless we see what they are directed +against, seem aimless beating the air. His thought, +as far as it is polemical, will probably cease to +interest future readers. New methods of attack will +<a name="Page_398"></a>call forth new methods of defence. Time will +make its discreet selection from his writings. And +the portion which seems most likely to survive is +that which presents in true forms of art the permanent +passions of humanity and characters of enduring +interest.</p> +<p><br /> +</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES: +<br /> +</p> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_144"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_144">[144]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the <i>Asolando</i> +poems. <i>Rosny</i>, <i>Beatrice Signorini</i> and <i>Flute-Music</i> +were +written in the +winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the <i>Bad Dreams</i> are, with +less +confidence, assigned to the same date. The <i>Ponte dell' Angelo</i> +"was +imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs Bronson's article +"Browning in Venice"). "<i>White Witchcraft</i> had been suggested in +the +same summer (1888) by a letter from a friend in the Channel Islands +which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there." <i>The Cardinal +and the Dog</i>, written with the <i>Pied Piper</i> for Macready's +son, is +a poem of +early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in Asolo" (<i>Century +Magazine</i>, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889 of <i>The +Lady +and +the Painter</i>.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_145"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_145">[145]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> Mrs Orr, <i>Life</i>, p. 414.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_146"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_146">[146]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., <i>Magazine of Art</i>, +1890, p. +182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_147"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_147">[147]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure Conway may +also be found.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_148"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_148">[148]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> "My father died without pain or suffering other than that of +weakness +or weariness"—so Mr R. Barrett Browning wrote to Mrs Bloomfield-Moore. +"His death was what death ought to be, but rarely is—so said +the doctor." (Quoted in an article on Browning by Mrs Bloomfield-Moore +in Lippincott's Magazine—Jan.—June 1890, p. 690.)</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_149"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_149">[149]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> A grave in the Abbey was at the same time offered for the body of +Browning's wife; the removal of her body from Florence would have +been against both the wishes of Browning and of the people of Florence. +It was therefore declined by Mr R. Barrett Browning. See his letter in +Mrs Bloomfield-Moore's article in Lippincott's Magazine, vol. xiv.</p> +</div> +<div style="text-align: left;"><a name="Footnote_150"></a><a + href="#FNanchor_150">[150]</a></div> +<div class="note"> +<p> E.D. West in the first of two papers, "Browning as a +Preacher," in +<i>The Dark Blue Magazine</i>. Browning esteemed these papers highly +and +in what follows I appropriate, with some modifications, a passage from +the first of them. The writer has consented to the use here made of the +passage, and has contributed a passage towards the close.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<a name="Index"></a> +<h2>Index</h2> +<p>[<i>The names of Robert Browning, the subject of this volume, and of +Elizabeth Barrett Browning are not included in the Index</i>.]</p> +<div style="text-align: left;"><i>Abt Vogler</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, +<a href="#Page_235">235</a>, +<a href="#Page_236">236</a><br /> +Adams, Sarah Flower, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br /> +Aeschylus (see <i>Agamemnon</i>), <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br /> +<i>Agamemnon</i>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, +<a href="#Page_294">294</a><br /> +Alford, Lady M., <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> +Ancona, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br /> +Andersen, Hans, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_83">224<i>n</i></a><br /> +<i>Andrea del Sarto</i>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a><br /> +<i>Any Wife to any Husband</i>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br /> +<i>Apparent Failure</i>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br /> +<i>Aristophanes' Apology</i>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a + href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a + href="#Page_293">293</a><br /> +Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, +<a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a><br /> +Arnould, Joseph, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br /> +Arran, Isle of, <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br /> +<i>Artemis Prologuizes</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br /> +Asceticism, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br /> +Ashburton, Lady, <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br /> +<i>Asolando</i>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>-<a href="#Page_379">379</a><br /> +Asolo, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a + href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>-<a + href="#Page_385">385</a><br /> +<i>At the Mermaid</i>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a><br /> +Audierne, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br /> +<i>Aurora Leigh</i>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, +<a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a + href="#Page_211">211</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +B<br /> +<br /> +Bach, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br /> +Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br /> +<i>Bad Dreams</i>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br /> +<i>Balaustion's Adventure</i>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a + href="#Page_280">280</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a + href="#Page_346">346</a><br /> +Balzac, H. de, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br /> +Barrett, Arabella, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, +<a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a + href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a + href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a + href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a + href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a + href="#Page_250">250</a><br /> +Barrett, Edward M., <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, +<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a + href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a + href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br /> +<a name="Barrett_Henrietta"></a>Barrett, Henrietta (Mrs Surtees Cook), <a + href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a + href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a + href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a + href="#Page_220">220</a><br /> +Bayley, Miss, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br /> +<i>Bean Feast</i>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br /> +<i>Beatrice Signorini</i>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br /> +<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br /> +Benckhausen, Mr, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br /> +<i>Bernard de Mandeville</i>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br /> +Biarritz, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br /> +<i>Bifurcation</i>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br /> +Bird, Dr, <a href="#Page_386">386</a><br /> +<i>Bishop Blougram</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a + href="#Page_199">199</a>-<a href="#Page_202">202</a><br /> +<i>Bishop orders his Tomb</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a + href="#Page_80">80</a><br /> +Blagden, Isa, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, +<a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a + href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a + href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a + href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a><br /> +Blanc, Mme., <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br /> +<i>Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a + href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, +<a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br /> +Bottinius, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br /> +Bowring, Sir J., <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br /> +Boyd, H.S., <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br /> +Boyle, Miss, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br /> +Bradley, Dean, <a href="#Page_387">387</a><br /> +Bridell-Fox, Mrs, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>-<a href="#Page_47">47</a><br /> +Bronson, Mrs A., <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, +<a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a + href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a + href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a + href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a + href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a + href="#Page_385">385</a><br /> +Browning, Robert (grandfather), <a href="#Page_1">1</a><br /> +Browning, Robert (father), <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_4">4</a>, +<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a + href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a><br /> +Browning, Robert, W.B. (son), <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a + href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a + href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a + href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a + href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a + href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a + href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a + href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_148">387<i>n</i></a><br /> +Browning, +Sarah Anna (mother), <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, +<a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br /> +Browning, +Sarah Anna, or Sarianna (sister), <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a + href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a + href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a + href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a + href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br /> +Buchanan, +Robert, <a href="#FNanchor_92">243<i>n</i></a>, <a + href="#FNanchor_121">329<i>n</i></a><br /> +Burne-Jones, +E., <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> +<i>By +the Fireside</i>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, +<a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +C<br /> +<br /> +<i>Caliban +upon Setebos</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, +<a href="#Page_360">360</a><br /> +Cambo, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br /> +Cambridge, +<a href="#Page_380">380</a><br /> +Caponsacchi, +<a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>-<a + href="#Page_266">266</a><br /> +Carlyle, +Mrs, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> +Carlyle, +Thomas, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a + href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a + href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a + href="#Page_254">254</a><br /> +Casa +Guidi, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br /> +<i>Cavalier +Tunes</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> +Cavour, +<a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a + href="#Page_224">224</a><br /> +<i>Cenciaja</i>, +<a href="#Page_319">319</a><br /> +Chapman +& Hall, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br /> +Chappell, +Arthur, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br /> +<i>Charles +Avison</i>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br /> +<i>Childe +Roland</i>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br /> +<i><a name="Christmas_Eve_and_Easter_Day"></a>Christmas Eve and Easter +Day</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>-<a + href="#Page_137">137</a><br /> +<i>Christopher +Smart</i>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a><br /> +"Clarissa," +<a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a><br /> +Clayton, +Rev. Mr, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br /> +<i>Cleon</i>, +<a href="#Page_195">195</a><br /> +<i>Clive</i>, +<a href="#Page_355">355</a><br /> +Cobbe, +Miss F.P., <a href="#FNanchor_56">165<i>n</i></a><br /> +<i>Colombe's +Birthday</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a + href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, +<a href="#Page_155">155</a><br /> +Conway, +Dr M., <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a + href="#Page_326">326</a><br /> +Cook, +Captain Surtees, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> +Cook, +Mrs Surtees, <i>see</i> <a href="#Barrett_Henrietta">Barrett, +Henrietta</a><br /> +Cornhill +Magazine, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br /> +<i>Count +Gismond</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> +Coup +d'état, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br /> +<i>Cristine</i>, +<a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> +Croisic, +<a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br /> +Crosse, +Mrs Andrew, <a href="#FNanchor_67">191<i>n</i></a><br /> +Curtis, +Mr and Mrs, <a href="#Page_386">386</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +D<br /> +<br /> +<i>Daniel +Bartoli</i>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br /> +Dante, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a + href="#Page_83">83</a>, +<a href="#Page_114">114</a><br /> +Davidson, +Captain, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +<i>Death +in the Desert</i>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, +<a href="#Page_240">240</a><br /> +<i>De +Gustibus</i>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br /> +<i>Development</i>, +<a href="#Page_377">377</a><br /> +De Vere +Gardens, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, +<a href="#Page_387">387</a><br /> +Dickens, +Charles, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br /> +<i>Dîs +Aliter Visum</i>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br /> +<i>Doctor</i>——, +<a href="#Page_350">350</a><br /> +Domett, +Alfred, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br /> +Dominus +Hyacinthus, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br /> +<i>Donald</i>, +<a href="#Page_334">334</a><br /> +<i>Dramatic +Idyls</i> (First and Second Series), <a href="#Page_348">348</a><br /> +<i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br /> +<i>Dramatic +Romances and Lyrics</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br /> +<i>Dramatis +Personae</i>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a + href="#Page_247">247</a><br /> +<i>Dubiety</i>, +<a href="#Page_377">377</a><br /> +Dufferin, +Lord, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br /> +Duffy, +C. Gavan, <a href="#FNanchor_69">199<i>n</i></a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +E<br /> +<br /> +<i>Easter +Day</i>, see <i><a href="#Christmas_Eve_and_Easter_Day">Christmas +Eve and Easter Day</a></i><br /> +<i>Echetlos</i>, +<a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a><br /> +Eckley, +Mr, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br /> +Egerton-Smith, +Miss, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, +<a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a><br /> +Elgin, +Lady, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> +Eliot, +George, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> +<i>Englishman +in Italy</i>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> +<i>Epilogue</i> +(to "Asolando"), <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br /> +<i>Epilogue</i> +(to "Dramatis Personae"), <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br /> +<i>Epilogue</i> +(to "Pacchiarotto" volume), <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br /> +<i>Epilogue</i> +(to "Two Poets of Croisic"), <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br /> +<i>Epistle +to Karshish</i>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br /> +Etretat, +<a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> +<i>Evelyn +Hope</i>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br /> +<br /> +F<br /> +<br /> +<i>Face, +A</i>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br /> +Fano, <a href="#Page_119">119</a><br /> +Faraday, +M., <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br /> +<a name="Faucit_Helen"></a>Faucit, Helen, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a + href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br /> +<i>Fears +and Scruples</i>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br /> +<i>Ferishtah's +Fancies</i>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>-<a href="#Page_369">369</a><br /> +<i>Fifine +at the Fair</i>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, +<a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_306">306</a><br /> +<i>Filippo +Baldinucci</i>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br /> +Fisher, +W., <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br /> +Fitzgerald, +Edward, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br /> +Flaubert, +G., <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, +<a href="#Page_125">125</a><br /> +<i>Flight +of the Duchess</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br /> +Flower, +Eliza, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> +Flower, +Sarah, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br /> +Flush, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a + href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a + href="#Page_153">153</a><br /> +<i>Forgiveness</i>, +<a href="#Page_319">319</a><br /> +Forster, +John, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a + href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br /> +<i>Founder +of the Feast</i>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br /> +Fox, +Caroline, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br /> +Fox, +W.J., <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> +<i>Fra +Lippo Lippi</i>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, +<a href="#Page_370">370</a><br /> +<i>Francis +Farini</i>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a><br /> +Fuller, +Margaret (see Ossoli, Countess d')<br /> +Furnivall, +F.J., <a href="#FNanchor_1">1<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, +<a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a + href="#FNanchor_130">337<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a + href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a + href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a + href="#Page_384">384</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +G<br /> +<br /> +Gagarin, +Prince, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br /> +<i>Garden +Fancy</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> +<i>Gerard +de Lairesse</i>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br /> +Gibson, +J., <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> +Gladstone, +W.E., <a href="#Page_295">295</a><br /> +<i>Glove</i>, +<a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br /> +<i>Gold +Hair</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, +<a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a + href="#Page_275">275</a><br /> +Goldoni, +<a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br /> +Gosse, +E., <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_14">20<i>n</i></a>, +<a href="#FNanchor_15">21<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a + href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a + href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_141">347<i>n</i></a>, <a + href="#Page_380">380</a><br /> +<i>Grammarian's +Funeral</i>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br /> +<i>Greek +Christian Poets</i>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br /> +Gresonowsky, +Dr, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br /> +Gressoney, +<a href="#Page_338">338</a><br /> +Grove, +Mr, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br /> +<i>Guardian +Angel</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a><br /> +Guido +Franceschini, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_262">262</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +H<br /> +<br /> +<i>Halbert +and Hob</i>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a><br /> +Hatcham, +<a href="#Page_43">43</a><br /> +Havre, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br /> +Hawthorne, +N., <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br /> +"Helen's +Tower," <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br /> +Herakles, +<a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a><br /> +<i>Heretic's +Tragedy</i>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br /> +<i>Hervé +Riel</i>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a + href="#Page_287">287</a><br /> +Hickey, +Miss E.H., <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br /> +Hillard, +G.S., <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br /> +<i>Hippolytus +and Aricia</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br /> +<i>Holy +Cross Day</i>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br /> +Home, +D.D., <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, +<a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a + href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br /> +Hosmer, +Harriet, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br /> +<i>House</i>, +<a href="#Page_317">317</a><br /> +<i>How +it strikes a Contemporary</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br /> +<i>How +they brought the Good News</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +Hugo, +Victor, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br /> +Hunt, +Leigh, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +I<br /> +<br /> +<i>Imperante +Augusta natus est</i>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a + href="#Page_379">379</a><br /> +<i>In a +Balcony</i>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, +<a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br /> +<i>In a +Gondola</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> +<i>Inapprehensiveness</i>, +<a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br /> +<i>In a +Year</i>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br /> +<i>Inn +Album</i>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, +<a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>-<a + href="#Page_315">315</a><br /> +<i>Ion</i>, +<a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> +<i>Italian +in England</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br /> +<i>Ivàn +Ivànovitch</i>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a + href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a><br /> +<i>Ixion</i>, +<a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, +<a href="#Page_384">384</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +J<br /> +<br /> +James, +Henry, <a href="#FNanchor_76">215<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#FNanchor_77">216<i>n</i></a>, +<a href="#FNanchor_79">219<i>n</i></a>,<br /> +<a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_81">223<i>n</i></a>, <a + href="#FNanchor_83">224<i>n</i></a>, +<a href="#FNanchor_84">225<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#FNanchor_103">272<i>n</i></a>,<br /> +<a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a + href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br /> +<i>James +Lee's Wife</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, +<a href="#Page_247">247</a><br /> +Jameson, +Anna, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a + href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a + href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br /> +<i>Jochanan +Hakkadosh</i>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a><br /> +<i>Jocoseria</i>, +<a href="#Page_358">358</a>-<a href="#Page_361">361</a><br /> +<i>Johannes +Agricola</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br /> +Jones, +Thomas, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br /> +Jowett, +Benjamin, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +K<br /> +<br /> +Kean, +Charles, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br /> +Kemble, +Fanny, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, +<a href="#FNanchor_116">310<i>n</i></a><br /> +Kenyon, +F.G., <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br /> +Kenyon, +John, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a + href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a + href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a + href="#Page_205">205</a><br /> +Kingsley, +Charles, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br /> +<i>King +Victor and King Charles</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a + href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, +<a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> +Kirkup, +Seymour, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +L<br /> +<br /> +"La Dame aux +Camélias," <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br /> +Lamartine, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br /> +La Mura, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br /> +Landor, +W.S., <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, +<a href="#Page_213">213</a>-<a href="#Page_215">215</a><br /> +<i>La Saisiaz</i>, +<a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, +<a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_326">326</a><br /> +<i>Last Poems</i>, +<a href="#Page_228">228</a><br /> +<i>Last Ride</i>, +<a href="#Page_185">185</a><br /> +Lehmann, R., +<a href="#FNanchor_56">165<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, +<a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br /> +Leighton, +F., <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br /> +Lever, +Charles, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br /> +Lido, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br /> +<i>Life in a +Love</i>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br /> +<i>Likeness</i>, +<a href="#Page_245">245</a><br /> +Llangollen, +Vale of, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br /> +Lockhart, +J.G., <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br /> +Long, +Professor, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br /> +<i>Lost +Leader</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br /> +Lounsbury, +Professor, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br /> +<i>Love +among the Ruins</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> +<i>Love in a +Life</i>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br /> +<i>Lover s +Quarrel</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br /> +Lucca, Baths +of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, +<a href="#Page_167">167</a><br /> +<i>Luria</i>, +<a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> +Lytton, +Robert, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, +<a href="#Page_207">207</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +M<br /> +<br /> +Maclise, +Daniel, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> +Macready, +W.C., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, +<a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a + href="#Page_52">52</a><br /> +"Madame +Bovary," <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a><br /> +<i>Magical +Nature</i>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br /> +<i>Mansoor +the Hierophant</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br /> +Marston, +Westland, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br /> +Martin, Lady +(<i>see</i> also <a href="#Faucit_Helen">Faucit, Helen</a>), +<a href="#Page_337">337</a><br /> +Martin, Sir +T., <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br /> +<i>Martin +Relph</i>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a><br /> +<i>Master +Hugues</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br /> +"Maud" +(Tennyson's), <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, +<a href="#Page_234">234</a><br /> +<i>May and +Death</i>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br /> +Mazzini, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a + href="#Page_212">212</a><br /> +Mellerio, +A., <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br /> +<i>Memorabilia</i>, +<a href="#Page_177">177</a><br /> +<i>Men and +Women</i>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, +<a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_202">202</a><br /> +Merrifield, +Mr and Mrs, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a><br /> +Mers, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br /> +Mignet, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> +Milsand, +Joseph, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, +<a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a + href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a + href="#Page_330">330</a><br /> +Mill, J.S., <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br /> +Milnes, +Monckton, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> +Milton, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br /> +Mitford, +Miss, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, +<a href="#Page_171">171</a><br /> +Monclar, A. +de Ripert, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br /> +Monodrama, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br /> +Montecuccoli, +Marchese, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br /> +Moore, Mrs +Bloomfield, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_148">387<i>n</i></a><br /> +Moxon, E., <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br /> +<i>Mr Sludge +the Medium</i>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> +<i>Muléykeh</i>, +<a href="#Page_356">356</a><br /> +Musset, A. +de, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br /> +<i>My Last +Duchess</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +N<br /> +<br /> +<i>Names</i>, +<a href="#Page_348">348</a><br /> +Napoleon, +Louis, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, +<a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a + href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a + href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a><br /> +<i>Narses</i>, +<a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> +<i>Natural +Magic</i>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br /> +<i>Ned Bratts</i>, +<a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, +<a href="#Page_354">354</a><br /> +Nightingale, +Florence, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> +"Nobly, +nobly Cape St Vincent," <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +<i>Numpholeptos</i>, +<a href="#Page_319">319</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +O<br /> +<br /> +Ogle, Miss, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br /> +<i>Old +Pictures in Florence</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a + href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br /> +<i>One Way +of Love</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br /> +<i>Only a +Player-Girl</i>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br /> +Orr, Mrs, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a + href="#Page_21">21</a>, +<a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_50">152<i>n</i></a>, <a + href="#FNanchor_64">180<i>n</i></a>, +<a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a + href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a + href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a + href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a + href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a + href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a + href="#Page_379">379<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a + href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a + href="#Page_387">387</a><br /> +Ossian, +Macpherson's, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br /> +Ossoli, +Countess d', <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +P<br /> +<br /> +<i>Pacchiarotto</i>, +<a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, +<a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_317">317</a><br /> +Page, Mr, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br /> +Paget, Sir +James, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br /> +Palazzo +Giustiniani Recanati, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br /> +Palazzo +Manzoni, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a><br /> +Palazzo +Rezzonico, <a href="#Page_345">345</a><br /> +Palgrave, +F.T., <a href="#FNanchor_87">230<i>n</i></a><br /> +<i>Paracelsus</i>, +<a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_33">33</a><br /> +Paris, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br /> +Parker, +Theodore, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> +<i>Parleyings +with Certain People</i>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>-<a + href="#Page_375">375</a><br /> +Patmore, +Emily, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br /> +<i>Patriot</i>, +<a href="#Page_180">180</a><br /> +<i>Pauline</i>, +<a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a><br /> +<i>Pheidippides</i>, +<a href="#Page_351">351</a><br /> +Phelps, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a + href="#Page_52">52</a><br /> +<i>Pictor +Ignotus</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br /> +<i>Pied Piper</i>, +<a href="#Page_74">74</a><br /> +<i>Pietro of +Abano</i>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a><br /> +Pio Nono, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br /> +<i>Pippa +Passes</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, +<a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a + href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> +Pippa's +Tower, <a href="#Page_385">385</a><br /> +<i>Pisgah +Sights</i>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a><br /> +Pisa, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-<a href="#Page_108">108</a><br /> +Plutarch, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br /> +<i>Poems +before Congress</i>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> +Pompilia, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a + href="#Page_263">263</a><br /> +Pope (in +"Ring and Book"), <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-<a href="#Page_242">242</a>, +<a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a + href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_267">267</a><br /> +<i>Pope and +the Net</i>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br /> +<i>Popularity</i>, +<a href="#Page_188">188</a><br /> +Pornic, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br /> +<i>Porphyria's +Lover</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br /> +Portraits, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br /> +Powers, H., <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br /> +<i>Pretty +Woman</i>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br /> +Primiero, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br /> +<i>Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a + href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a + href="#Page_346">346</a><br /> +Prinsep, V., +<a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> +Procter +("Barry Cornwall"), <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, +<a href="#Page_229">229</a><br /> +<i>Prologue</i> +(to "La Saisiaz"), <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br /> +<i>Prospice</i>, +<a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br /> +<i>Protus</i>, +<a href="#Page_189">189</a><br /> +Prout, +Father, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, +<a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> +"Puseyism," <a href="#Page_121">121</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +R<br /> +<br /> +<i>Rabbi ben +Ezra</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a + href="#Page_237">237</a><br /> +Ready, Rev. +T., <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br /> +<i>Red +Cotton Night-Cap Country</i>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a + href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a + href="#Page_310">310</a><br /> +<i>Rephan</i>, +<a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br /> +<i>Respectability</i>, +<a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br /> +<i>Return of +the Druses</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, +<a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> +<i>Reverie</i>, +<a href="#Page_376">376</a><br /> +Rhyming, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br /> +<i>Ring and +the Book</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>-<a + href="#Page_268">268</a><br /> +Ristori, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> +<a name="Ritchie_Mrs"></a>Ritchie, Mrs A. Thackeray, <a + href="#FNanchor_50">152<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a + href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br /> +Rome, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a + href="#Page_210">210</a><br /> +Rossetti, +D.G., <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a + href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a + href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a + href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a + href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a + href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_115">306<i>n</i></a><br /> +Rossetti, +W.M., <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, +<a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a + href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a><br /> +<i>Rudel</i>, +<a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> +Ruskin, +John, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +S<br /> +<br /> +Saint-Aubin, +<a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br /> +Saint-Enogat, +<a href="#Page_226">226</a><br /> +<i>St +Martin's Summer</i>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br /> +St Moritz, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br /> +St Pierre de +Chartreuse, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br /> +Sainte-Marie, +<a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br /> +Saint-Victor, +Paul de, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_111">284<i>n</i></a><br /> +Salève, +<a href="#Page_278">278</a><br /> +Salvini, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br /> +Sand, +George, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>-<a + href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> +Sartoris, +Adelaide, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br /> +<i>Saul</i>, +<a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br /> +<i>Selections</i> +(from Browning), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br /> +<i>Serenade +at the Villa</i>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> +Shah, the, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br /> +Shakespeare, +<a href="#Page_348">348</a><br /> +Sharp, +William, <a href="#FNanchor_14">20<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, +<a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> +Shelley, +P.B., <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a + href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a + href="#Page_144">144</a>-<a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> +<i>Shop</i>, +<a href="#Page_317">317</a><br /> +Siena, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a + href="#Page_249">249</a><br /> +Silverthorne, +James, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br /> +Smith, Mr, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br /> +Society, The +Browning, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br /> +<i>Soliloquy +in a Spanish Cloister</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> +<i>Solomon +and Balkis</i>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br /> +<i>Sonnets +from the Portuguese</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>,<a + href="#Page_108">108</a><br /> +<i>Sordello</i>, +<a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, +<a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> +<i>Soul's +Tragedy</i>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> +<i>Speculative</i>, +<a href="#Page_377">377</a><br /> +Spiritualism, +<a href="#Page_157">157</a>-<a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> +Stanhope, +Lord, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br /> +<i>Statue +and the Bust</i>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br /> +Stead, Mr +F.H., <a href="#FNanchor_7">6<i>n</i></a><br /> +Stephen, Sir +L., <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br /> +Sterling, +John, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br /> +Stillmann, +W.J., <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a><br /> +Story, W.W., +<a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, +<a href="#FNanchor_73">214<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a + href="#FNanchor_77">216<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#FNanchor_79">219<i>n</i></a>, +<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#FNanchor_83">224<i>n</i></a>, <a + href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a + href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a><br /> +Stowe, +Harriet B., <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br /> +<i>Strafford</i>, +<a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, +<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a + href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> +Swanwick, +Anna, <a href="#FNanchor_72">212<i>n</i></a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br /> +Swedenborg, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +T<br /> +<br /> +Talfourd, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br /> +Taylor, +Bayard, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br /> +Tennyson, +Alfred, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, +<a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a + href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br /> +Tennyson, +Frederick, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br /> +Tennyson, +Hallam, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br /> +Thackeray, +Miss, <i>see</i> <a href="#Ritchie_Mrs">Ritchie, Mrs</a><br /> +Thackeray, +W.M., <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br /> +<i>The Worst +of It</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br /> +<i>Toccata +of Galuppi's</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a><br /> +<i>Too Late</i>, +<a href="#Page_246">246</a><br /> +<i>Transcendentalism</i>, +<a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a + href="#FNanchor_68">193<i>n</i></a><br /> +Trelawny, +E.J., <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br /> +Trollope, +Mrs, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br /> +Trollope, +T.A., <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br /> +<i>Twins</i>, +<a href="#Page_170">170</a><br /> +<i>Two in +the Campagna</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> +<i>Two Poems +by E.B.B. and R. B</i>., <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br /> +<i>Two Poets +of Croisic</i>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, +<a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +U<br /> +<br /> +<i>Up at a +Villa</i>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +V<br /> +<br /> +Vallombrosa, +<a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br /> +Venice, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a + href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a + href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>-<a + href="#Page_388">388</a><br /> +Villers, <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +W<br /> +<br /> +<i>Waring</i>, +<a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> +Warwick +Crescent, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a><br /> +White, Rev. +E., <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br /> +<i>White +Witchcraft</i>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br /> +Whitman, +Walt, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, +<a href="#FNanchor_121">329<i>n</i></a><br /> +<i>Why am I +a Liberal</i>? <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br /> +Wiedemann, +William, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br /> +Wilson (Mrs +Browning's maid), <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, +<a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a + href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br /> +Wise, T.J., <a href="#FNanchor_13">16<i>n</i></a>, <a + href="#FNanchor_107">276<i>n</i></a><br /> +Wiseman, +Cardinal, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br /> +<i>Woman's +Last Word</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> +Wordsworth, +W., <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, +<a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Y<br /> +<br /> +Yates, +Edmund, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br /> +"York" (a +horse), <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br /> +York Street +Chapels, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br /> +<i>Youth and +Art</i>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br /> +</div> +<br /> +</div> +</div> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12817 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + + + |