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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12817 ***
+
+THE TEMPLE BIOGRAPHIES
+
+Edited by Dugald Macfadyen, M.A.
+
+Robert Browning
+
+[Illustration: _Robert Browning, from a portrait in oil, for which he
+sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice 1880._]
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+BY EDWARD DOWDEN
+
+LITT.D., D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
+
+
+1904
+
+
+
+     If I, too, should try and speak at times,
+    Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
+    Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew,
+    Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake.
+
+--_Balaustion's Adventure_.
+
+
+
+
+Editor's Preface
+
+
+"In the case of those whom the public has learned to honour and admire,
+there is a _biography of the mind_--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.
+
+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."
+
+D.M.
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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
+_Sordello_. 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.
+
+The analysis of _La Saisiaz_ 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 _The Dark Blue Magazine_, making such modifications as suited my
+purpose, and she has contributed a passage to the pages which close this
+volume.
+
+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.
+
+E.D.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
+
+Ancestry--Parents--Boyhood--Influence of Shelley--Pauline
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PARACELSUS AND SORDELLO
+
+Visit to Russia--Paracelsus--His failures and attainments--Sordello, a
+companion poem--Its obscurity--Imaginative qualities--The history of a
+soul
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MAKER OF PLAYS
+
+New acquaintances--Hatcham--Macready--Strafford--Venice--Bells and
+Promegranates--A Blot on the 'Scutcheon--Characters of
+passion--Characters of intellect
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE MAKER OF PLAYS--_(continued)_
+
+Women of the dramas--Dramatic style--Pippa Passes--Dramatic Lyrics and
+Romances--Poems of Love and of Art
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+LOVE AND MARRIAGE
+
+First letters to Miss Barrett--Meeting--Progress in
+friendship--Obstacles--Marriage
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EARLY YEARS IN ITALY
+
+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.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FROM 1851 TO 1855
+
+Essay on Shelley--New acquaintances--Milsand--George Sand--London--Casa
+Guidi--Spiritualism--Mr Sludge the Medium--Baths of
+Lucca--Rome--London--Tennyson's Maud
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MEN AND WOMEN
+
+Rossetti's admiration--Beauty before teaching--The poet behind his
+poems--Isolated poems--Groups--Poems of love--Poems of Art--Poems of
+Religion
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CLOSE OF MRS BROWNING'S LIFE
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LONDON: DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE RING AND THE BOOK
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+POEMS ON CLASSICAL SUBJECTS
+
+Saint-Aubin--Milsand--Miss Thackeray--Hervé Riel--Miss
+Egerton-Smith--Summer wanderings--Balaustion's Adventure--Aristophanes'
+Apology--The Agamemnon
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+PROBLEM AND NARRATIVE POEMS
+
+Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau--Fifine at the Fair--Red Cotton Night-Cap
+Country--The Inn Album--Pachiarotto and other Poems
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY
+
+La Saisiaz--Immortality--Two Poets of Croisic--Browning in
+society--Daily habits--Browning as a talker--Italy--Asolo--Mountain
+retreats--Mrs Bronson--Venice
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+POET AND TEACHER IN OLD AGE
+
+Popularity--Browning Society--Public honours--Dramatic Idyls--Spirit of
+acquiescence--Jocoseria--Ferishtah's Fancies
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+CLOSING WORKS AND DAYS
+
+Parleyings--Asolando--Mrs Bronson--At Asolo--Venice--Death--Place in
+nineteenth-century poetry
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _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)_
+
+MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE, _from a drawing by Miss
+D. Noyes_
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, _from a drawing in chalk by Field Talfourd
+in the National Portrait Gallery_
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _from an engraving by J.G. Armytage_
+
+THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS STAYED, _a
+photograph_
+
+PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI, BY HIMSELF, _a detail from the fresco in the
+Cathedral at Prato, from a photograph by Alinari_
+
+ANDREA DEL SARTO, _from a print after the portrait by himself in the
+Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
+
+PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS FOUND BY BROWNING,
+_from a photograph by Alinari_
+
+THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss N. Erichsen_
+
+SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING, _from a letter to D.S. Curtis, Esq._
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _from a photograph (photogravure)_
+
+THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss Katherine
+Kimball_
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+Childhood and Youth
+
+
+The ancestry of Robert Browning has been traced[1] 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 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."[2] 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."[3]
+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.[4]
+
+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, 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 _The Ring and the Book_, in investigating and elucidating
+complex criminal cases.[5] 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 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."[6] 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 _Development_, 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 came nearer to it in intelligent sympathy as he grew older,
+and he had for long the satisfaction of enjoying his son's fame.
+
+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 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."[7]
+
+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 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 _troupe_ 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 _Fables_ and Quarles's _Emblems_,
+were succeeded by others which made a substantial contribution to his
+mind. A list given by Mrs Orr includes Walpole's _Letters_, Junius,
+Voltaire, and Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_. The first book he ever
+bought with his own money was Macpherson's _Ossian_, 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."[8]
+
+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--_Incondita_--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 _Queen Mab_ 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.[9] If ever there was a period of _Sturm und Drang_
+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--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
+_May and Death_. 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 _the_ 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 _Sturm und
+Drang_ can be divined through the ideas and imagery of _Pauline._[10]
+
+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:
+
+    You must be just before, in fine,
+    See and make me see, for your part,
+    New depths of the Divine!
+
+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.[11] Shelley 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.
+
+A time came when Robert Browning must make choice of a future career.
+His interests in life were 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 _Paracelsus, Sordello_, and _Bells and Pomegranates_ were
+published.
+
+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
+modification of this vast scheme _Paracelsus_, which includes more
+speakers than one, and _Sordello_, which is not dramatic in form, find
+their places. They were preceded by _Pauline_, 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.
+
+_Pauline_, published without the writer's name--his aunt Silverthorne
+bearing the cost of publication--was issued from the press in January
+1833.[12] 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
+_Pauline_ without re-handling it to any considerable extent. In truth
+_Pauline_ 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 always claim attention
+from the student of his mind and art.
+
+The poem is a study in what Browning in his _Fifine_ 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 _dramatis persona_ 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
+_Pauline_ the 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:
+
+    'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;
+    He rises on the toe; that spirit of his
+    In aspiration lifts him from the earth.
+
+The aspiration in Browning's later verse is a complex of many forces;
+here it is a simple poetic enthusiasm.
+
+By virtue of its central theme _Pauline_ is closely related to the poems
+which at no great distance followed--_Paracelsus_ and _Sordello_. 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 _Alastor_, the
+influence of which on Browning in writing _Pauline_ 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
+_Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_ by the old and simple name of
+God.
+
+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 _Pauline_, is more than a poet; he is rather
+of the Sordello type than of the type represented in Eglamor and
+Aprile.[13] 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, 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.
+
+Such reduced to a colourless and abstract statement is the theme dealt
+with in _Pauline_. 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 Browning's later poetry is already present and
+potent here.
+
+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:
+
+    And then I was a young witch whose blue eyes,
+    As she stood naked by the river springs,
+    Drew down a god: I watched his radiant form
+    Growing less radiant, and it gladdened me.
+
+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 _The
+Prelude_--unpublished when Browning wrote _Pauline_--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 _Pauline_ 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 ":
+
+    First went my hopes of perfecting mankind,
+    Next--faith in them, and then in freedom's self
+    And virtue's self, then my own motives, ends,
+    And aims and loves, and human love went last.
+    I felt this no decay, because new powers
+    Rose as old feelings left--wit, mockery,
+    Light-heartedness; for I had oft been sad,
+    Mistrusting my resolves, but now I cast
+    Hope joyously away; I laughed and said
+    "No more of this!"
+
+It is difficult to believe that Browning is wholly dramatic here; we
+seem to discover something of that period of _Sturm und Drang_, 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 _Alastor_ and
+_Prometheus Unbound._
+
+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
+_Monthly Repository_ (April 1833) which he then edited, Mr Fox wrote of
+_Pauline_ with admiration, and Browning was duly grateful for this
+earliest public recognition of his genius as a poet. In the _Athenaeum_
+Allen Cunningham made an effort to be appreciative and sympathetic. John
+Stuart Mill desired to be the reviewer of _Pauline_ in _Taifs Magazine_;
+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 _Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_, 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."[14]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: By Dr Furnivall; see _The Academy_, April 12, 1902.]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," ii. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Letter of R.B. to E.B.B.]
+
+[Footnote 4: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 5: Quoted by Mr Sharp in his "Life of Browning," p. 21, _n_.,
+from Mrs Fraser Cockran.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Autobiography of a Journalist," i. 277.]
+
+[Footnote 7: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 528, 529; and (for
+Ossian), ii. 469.]
+
+[Footnote 9: 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 _regular way_, from Hunt and Clarke." Mr Gosse in
+_Personalia_ gives a different account, pp. 23, 24.]
+
+[Footnote 10: The quotations from letters above are taken from J.C.
+Hadden's article "Some Friends of Browning" in _Macmillan's Magazine_,
+Jan. 1898.]
+
+[Footnote 11: 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 _man_ and Shelley, well, even the _poet_, with
+what they were sixty years ago." He declined Dr Furnivall's invitation
+to him to accept the presidency of "The Shelley Society."]
+
+[Footnote 12: Even the publishers--Saunders and Otley--did not know the
+author's name.--"Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," i. 403.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "V.A. xx," following the quotation from Cornelius Agrippa
+means "Vixi annos xx," _i.e._ "the imaginary subject of the poem was of
+that age."--Browning to Mr T.J. Wise.]
+
+[Footnote 14: 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 _Pauline_, was a fancy or a blind; Browning never resided at
+Richmond.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Paracelsus and Sordello
+
+
+There is little of incident in Browning's life to be recorded for the
+period between the publication of _Pauline_ and the publication of
+_Paracelsus_. 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 _Ivan
+Ivanovitch._
+
+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."[15] 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 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."[16] 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.
+
+In the winter of 1834 Browning was at work on _Paracelsus_, 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.
+
+In its combination of thought with passion, and not less in its
+expression of a certain premature worldly wisdom, _Paracelsus_ 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 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.
+
+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 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 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?
+
+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
+_mise-en-scène_. 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
+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.
+
+For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous 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,
+
+    The wondrous Paracelsus, life's dispenser,
+    Fate's commissary, idol of the schools
+    And courts,
+
+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, 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--
+
+    I have not been successful, and yet am
+    Most miserable; 'tis said at last.
+
+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."
+
+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 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
+
+    Like the dim circlet floating round a pearl.
+
+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:
+
+    And Michal sleeps among the roots and dews,
+    While I am moved at Basil, and full of schemes
+    For Nuremberg, and hoping and despairing,
+    As though it mattered how the farce plays out,
+    So it be quickly played!
+
+It is the last cry of his distempered egoism before the closing scene.
+
+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 _is_
+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.
+
+Were _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+We receive from _Paracelsus_ 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, 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 _Paracelsus_; 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"
+
+                                "cyclops-like
+    Staring together with their eyes on flame,"
+
+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.
+
+A companion poem to _Paracelsus_--so described by Browning to Leigh
+Hunt--was conceived by the poet soon after the appearance of the volume
+of 1835. When _Strafford_ was published two years later, we learn from a
+preface, afterwards omitted, that he had been engaged on _Sordello_.
+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.
+_Sordello_ was published in 1840, five years after _Paracelsus_. In the
+chronological order of Browning's poems, by virtue of the date of
+origin, it lies close to the earlier companion piece; in the logical
+order it is the completion of a group of poems--_Pauline, Paracelsus,
+Sordello_--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 _Sordello_ in its true position, side by
+side with _Paracelsus_.
+
+How the subject of _Sordello_ 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.
+
+"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, 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 exist. And thus, in two
+successive stages of study, the same reader may justly censure
+_Sordello_ 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 _The Preraphaelite Brotherhood Journal_ (26 February 1850),
+Browning imagined that his shorthand was Roman type of unusual
+clearness: "Marston says that Browning, before publishing _Sordello_,
+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
+_Journal_ 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 _Paracelsus_: "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 his sonnet?"[17]
+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.
+
+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
+_Pauline_, only that here the poet is not infirm in will, and, though
+loved by Palma, he is hardly a lover. Like the speaker of _Pauline_ 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
+_Pauline_, and exhibited more fully--and yet with a difference--in the
+Basil experiences of Paracelsus. Like the poet of _Pauline_, 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 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 _him_ 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 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.
+
+This, in brief, is the "history of a soul" which Browning has imagined
+in his _Sordello_. 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":--
+
+    "God has conceded two sights to a man--
+    One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,
+    The other, of the minute's work, man's first
+    Step to the plan's completion."
+
+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.
+
+These prolonged studies--_Paracelsus, Sordello_, and, on a more
+contracted scale, _Pauline_--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 _Sordello_ 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 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
+_Sordello_ 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Mrs Bronson; Browning in Venice. _Cornhill Magazine_, Feb.
+1902. pp. 160, 161.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Mrs Orr's "Handbook to Browning," pp. 10, 11.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+The Maker of Plays
+
+The publication of _Paracelsus_ 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 _Examiner_ 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.[18] 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, 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.
+
+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? _we_
+call that, such as that, a _rise_." 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 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.
+
+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 turned towards dramatic authorship with a view to
+theatrical performance. A play on a subject from later Roman history,
+_Narses_, was thought of and was cast aside. The success of Talfourd's
+_Ion_, 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.
+
+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.[19] The text was considerably altered--and not always
+judiciously--from that of the printed play, which had appeared before
+its production on the stage. Yet on the first night _Strafford_ was not
+damned, and on the second it was warmly applauded.[20] 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 _Sordello_.
+
+"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 _Norham
+Castle_, 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--_How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix_. The only
+adventure of the voyage was the discovery of an Algerine pirate ship
+floating keel uppermost; it righted suddenly under the stress of ropes
+from the _Norham Castle_, 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:--
+
+    How many a year my Asolo,
+      Since--one step just from sea to land--
+    I found you, loved yet feared you so--
+      For natural objects seemed to stand
+    Palpably fire-clothed![21]
+
+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, 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
+_Paracelsus_, which describe Constantinople at the hour of sunset.
+
+[Illustration: MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss D. NOYES.]
+
+The publication of _Sordello_ (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 _Sordello_ might have disheartened a poet of less
+vigorous will than Browning; he merely marched breast forward, and let
+_Sordello_ lie inert, until a new generation of readers had arisen. The
+dramas, _King Victor and King Charles_ and _The Return of the Druses_
+(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."[22] In other words Pippa
+had suddenly passed her poet in the wood.
+
+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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ successively appeared;
+with the eighth the series closed. The first number--_Pippa Passes_--was
+sold for sixpence; when _King Victor and King Charles_ 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--_Dramatic
+Lyrics_ (1842), _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). _The Return of
+the Druses_ and _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--Numbers 4 and 5--followed
+each other in the same year 1843. _Colombe's Birthday_--the only number
+which is known to survive in manuscript--came next in order (1844). The
+last to appear was that which included _Luna_, Browning's favourite
+among his dramas, and _A Soul's Tragedy_.[23] His sister, except in the
+instance of _Colombe_, was Browning's amanuensis. On each title-page he
+is named Robert Browning "Author of Paracelsus"--the "wholly
+unintelligible" _Sordello_ 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--_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--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.
+
+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.'"[24] 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 of a
+splendid thing after its conception like it." Things had gone ill with
+Macready at Drury Lane, and when the time for _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_
+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.[25] 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, grasp the hand of his old
+friend, and in a voice choked with emotion say, 'O Macready!'"
+
+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 _A Blot in
+the 'Scutcheon_ was given by Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre in
+November 1848, and with unquestionable success. A rendering of
+_Colombe's Birthday_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_.
+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 _Colombe's Birthday_ had
+been published, Browning sailed once more, in the autumn of 1844, for
+Italy.[26] As he journeyed northwards and homewards, from Naples (where
+they were performing an opera named _Sordello_) 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.[27]
+
+Browning's work as a playwright, consisting of eight pieces, or nine if
+we include the later _In a Balcony_, 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.[28]
+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 _dramatis personae_ 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 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.
+
+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. _Colombe's Birthday_ has a joyous ending, but the joy is 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 _is_ 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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 _dramatis persona_ 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, 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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _Pippa Passes_, 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:
+
+    The gift of the morning-star! Have I God's gift
+    Of the morning-star?
+
+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:
+
+     The only fault's with time;
+    All men become good creatures: but so slow.[29]
+
+Once again in Browning's earliest play, the test for the patriot Pym
+lies in the choice between two loyalties--one 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 18: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 19: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 20: 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. _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B._, ii. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 21: From the Prologue to _Asolando_, Browning's last volume.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Mrs Orr, "Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning," p. 54
+(1st ed.).]
+
+[Footnote 23: _A Soul's Tragedy_ was written in 1843 or 1844, and
+revised immediately before publication. See Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.,
+i. 474.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Letters of D.G. Rossetti to William Allingham, p. 168.]
+
+[Footnote 25: 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 _The Atlantic Monthly_, December
+1899, where questions are raised and some corrections are ingeniously
+made.]
+
+[Footnote 26: An uncle seems to have accompanied him. See _Letters of
+R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 57: and (for Shelley's Grave) i. 292; for
+"Sordello" at Naples, i., 349.]
+
+[Footnote 27: 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.)" _Rossetti Papers_, p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 28: See Mr R. Holt Hutton's article on Browning in "Essays
+Theological and Literary."]
+
+[Footnote 29: Luria withdraws from life "to prevent the harm Florence
+will do herself by striking him." _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 427.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+The Maker of Plays--_(Continued)_
+
+
+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 _The Return of the Druses_, 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 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:--
+
+    Come what, come will,
+    You have been happy.
+
+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 _Romeo and Juliet_ 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.
+
+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
+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:--
+
+     Is it over then?
+    Why he looks yellower than ever! Well
+    At least we shall not hear eternally
+    Of service--services: he's paid at least.
+
+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.
+
+In Browning's dramatic scene of 1853, _In a Balcony_, 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.[30]
+The young lovers, Constance and Norbert, are a highly 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.[31] Little more,
+however, than a situation is represented in this dramatic scene. Of
+Browning's full-length portraits of women in the dramas, the finest
+piece of work is the portrait of the happiest woman--the play-Duchess of
+Juliers, no longer Duchess, but ever
+
+    Our lady of dear Ravestein.
+
+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.
+
+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. _Strafford_, 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:
+
+    Come, dearest!--look, the little fairy, now
+    That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!
+
+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 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 _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ 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 _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, 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
+_Duchess of Malfi_, and Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_.
+
+In _King Victor and King Charles_ 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 _Strafford_ hardly entitles either drama to be
+named political. Browning was a student of history, but it was
+individuals and not society that interested him. The affairs of England
+and the affairs of Sardinia serve to throw out the figures of the chief
+_dramatis persons_; 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 _King Victor and King Charles_ 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 _The Return of the
+Druses_, 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.
+
+_Pippa Passes_ is singular in its construction; scenes detached, though
+not wholly disconnected, are strung pendant-wise upon the gold thread,
+slender but sufficiently 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 charmingly 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.
+
+_Pippa Passes_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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.
+
+And original, in the best sense of the word--entirely 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 _as_ he writes his _Englishman in Italy_,
+and by virtue of their eager obsession demand and summon forth the
+appropriate word.[32] The fisherman from Amalfi pitches down his basket
+before us,
+
+     All trembling alive
+    With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit,
+    --You touch the strange lumps,
+    And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner
+     Of horns and of humps.
+
+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:
+
+     God's own profound
+    Was above me, and round me the mountains,
+     And under, the sea,
+    And within me, my heart to bear witness
+     hat was and shall be.
+
+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:
+
+    And therefore bask the bees
+    On my flower's breast, as on a platform broad.
+
+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 _Garden Fancy_, which creeps
+and crawls with beetle and spider, worm and eft.[33] 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:
+
+    The grey sea and the long black land;
+    And the yellow half-moon large and low;
+    And the startled little waves that leap
+    In fiery ringlets from their sleep
+    As I gain the cove with pushing prow.
+
+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 _Saul_, which appeared as
+a fragment in the _Bells and Pomegranates_, and as a whole ten years
+later, with the awe and rapture of the spirit rising above the rapture
+of the senses.[34]
+
+Of these poems of 1842 and 1845 one _The Pied Piper_, was written in the
+spirit of mere play and was included in _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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, _Claret_ and _Tokay_, are no more than clever caprices of the
+fancy. One, _The Lost Lender_, 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 _Artemis
+Prologuizes_, is the sole remaining fragment of a classical drama,
+"Hippolytus and Aricia," composed in 1840, "much against my endeavour,"
+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.
+
+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 _Cavalier Tunes_, 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
+_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_; 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 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 _Porphyria's Lover_, 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.
+
+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 grotesque.
+In _Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli_ 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 _Count Gismond_ love is the
+deliverer; the motive of the poem is essentially that of the Perseus and
+Andromeda myth refined upon and mediaevalised. In _Cristine_ 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 _In a
+Gondola_ 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.
+
+The motives of two narrative poems, _The Glove_ and _The Flight of the
+Duchess_, 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 which the poet approves, to elucidate, not to
+obscure, what he represents as the truth of the situation. _The Flight
+of the Duchess_ 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 _The Glove_, 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.
+
+Another Duchess, who pined for freedom and never attained it, has her
+cold obituary notice from her bereaved Duke's lips in the _Dramatic
+Lyrics_ of 1842. _My Last Duchess_ was there made a companion poem to
+_Count Gismond_; 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 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 _Pictor
+Ignotus_ 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 _My Last
+Duchess_, is the address of the worldling Bishop, who lies dying, to the
+"nephews" who are 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+
+[Footnote 30: _In a Balcony_, published in _Men and Women_, 1855, is
+said to have been written two years previously at the Baths of Lucca.]
+
+[Footnote 31: 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?'"]
+
+[Footnote 32: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 33: See a very interesting passage on Browning's "odd liking
+for 'vermin'" in _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B._. i. 370, 371: "I always
+liked all those wild creatures God '_sets up for themselves_.'" "It
+seemed awful to watch that bee--he seemed so _instantly_ from the
+teaching of God."]
+
+[Footnote 34: Of the first part of _Saul_ Mr Kenyon said finely that "it
+reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles thrown into lyrical whirl and
+life" _(Letters R.B. and E.B.B_. i. 326).]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+Love and Marriage
+
+
+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.[35] Three years later Kenyon sent his cousin's new volumes of
+_Poems_ 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
+wrote enthusiastically.[36] 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 _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+_From a drawing in chalk by_ FIELD TALFOURD _in the National Portrait
+Gallery_.]
+
+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
+_dramatis personae_. Can she, as he alleges, really help him by her
+sympathy, by her counsel? Let him put ceremony aside and treat her _en
+bon camerade_; 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 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.
+
+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?
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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; 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.
+
+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 assured knowledge of what would constitute his supreme happiness.
+
+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 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 _Prometheus_ is able to put Greek characters to their most
+delightful use in her "[Greek: o philtate]."
+
+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 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 _do_"
+One admirable trait, however, Mr Moulton Barrett did possess--he was
+nearly always away from home till six o'clock.
+
+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 authority it is none the _less_--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."
+
+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 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 "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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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."[37] 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 all my idea
+of good, and _is_" "Let me be too near to be seen.... Once I used to be
+more uneasy, and to think that I ought to _make_ you see me. But Love is
+better than sight." "I love your love too much. And _that_ is the worst
+fault, my beloved, I can ever find in my love of _you_." 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 _did_ 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.
+
+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 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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 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?
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: Yours very truly, Robert Browning. _From an engraving by_
+J.G. ARMYTAGE.]
+
+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 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 _that man_ 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.[38] Then husband and wife parted. 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.
+
+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."[39] 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 _only_! As if
+one said _God only_. And we shall have _Him_ 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 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 _Paracelsus_."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 35: _Letters of E.B.B._, i. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 36: See _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 37: E.B.B. to R.B., March 30, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 38: E.B.B. to R.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 39: R.B. to E.B.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+Early Years in Italy
+
+
+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 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.
+
+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." 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.
+
+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 _tête-à-tête_, 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 _hadn't_." 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
+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 _trattoria_; 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.
+
+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." _Paracelsus_ and _Pippa_ 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."
+
+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 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!"
+
+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
+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.
+
+"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 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:
+
+    "Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
+      All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
+      Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
+    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
+    God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
+      Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
+      These shall I bid men--each in his degree
+    Also God-guided--bear, and gladly too?
+
+    But little do or can the best of us:
+      That little is achieved through Liberty.
+    Who then dares hold--emancipated thus--
+      His fellow shall continue bound? Not I
+    Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
+      A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."[40]
+
+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
+_Strafford_, 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; _he_ is not worth thinking of."[41] 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 offending
+authoress until by and by he came to like in her an agreeable woman.
+
+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 _Piazza_. Pitti with banners and _vivas_ 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.[42] 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
+_out_, 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 _in_, 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 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.
+
+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 drove day by day through the Cascine,
+passing on the way the carven window of the _Statue and the Bust_, and
+"the stone called Dante's," whereupon
+
+    He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned
+    To Brunelleschi's church.[43]
+
+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 _Poems_, 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
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ 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 _Vanity Fair_ and _The Princess, Jane Eyre_ and
+_Modern Painters_ somehow found their way to Casa Guidi.[44]
+
+Casa Guidi proper, the Casa Guidi which held the 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 _his_ being angry with _me_ 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 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.
+
+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 _Six months in Italy_, 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 her
+writings," says Mrs Browning, "... not only exalted but _exaltée_ 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 _Fraser's Magazine_, 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.
+
+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 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.[45] 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:
+
+    We were at Fano, and three times we went
+     To sit and see him in his chapel there,
+    And drink his beauty to our soul's content
+    --My angel with me too.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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 _Madame Bovary_ without flinching and approved the morals of _La
+Dame aux Camélias_, had their roots in English Puritanism.[46] 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 40: "Why am I a Liberal?" Edited by Andrew Reid. London,
+1885.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Letters of E.B.B., i. 442.]
+
+[Footnote 42: To Miss Mitford, August 24, 1848.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Casa Guidi Windows, i.]
+
+[Footnote 44: "Jane Eyre" was lent to E.B.B. by Mrs Story.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _To Miss Mitford, Feb. 18, 1850._]
+
+[Footnote 46: In January 1859, Pen was reading an Italian translation of
+_Monte Cristo_, and announced, to his father's and mother's amusement,
+that after Dumas he would proceed to "papa's favourite book, _Madame
+Bovary_".]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+Christmas Eve and Easter Day
+
+
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ 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 _Sordello_, 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 _you_ 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 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 _Aurora
+Leigh_ 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.
+
+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
+_Easter Day_; the spiritual life corporate in _Christmas Eve._ 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 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 _Apologia pro vita sua_ of Newman, and the _Literature and
+Dogma_ 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 _Christmas Eve_.
+
+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 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?
+
+    The whole face turned upon me full,
+     And I spread myself beneath it,
+     As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it
+    In the cleansing sun, his wool,--
+     Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness
+    Some defiled, discoloured web--
+     So lay I saturate, with brightness.
+
+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.
+
+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
+commentary 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.
+
+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
+
+     the pig-of-lead-like pressure
+    Of the preaching man's immense stupidity.
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+
+    Peevish as ever to be suckled,
+    Lulled with the same old baby-prattle
+    With intermixture of the rattle.
+
+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 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:
+
+    My heart does best to receive in meekness
+    That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
+    Where earthly aids being left behind,
+    His All in All appears serene
+    With the thinnest human veil between,
+    Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
+     The many motions of his spirit,
+    Pass as they list to earth from heaven.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+Having traversed the various forms of Christian faith and scepticism,
+the speaker in _Christmas Eve_ 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.
+
+Mrs Browning complained to her husband of what she terms the asceticism
+of _Easter Day_, 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 _see_ things as passionately as other people _feel_ them."
+_Easter Day_ 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 to
+his present questionings; he will try conclusions to the uttermost.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+    "Renounce the world!"--Ah, were it done
+    By merely cutting one by one
+    Your limbs off, with your wise head last,
+    How easy were it!--how soon past,
+    If once in the believing mood.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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; but at his best--as in _Rabbi ben
+Ezra_ or _Abt Vogler_--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 _Easter Day_, and we must watch the movement of the two. In a
+passage already quoted from _Christmas Eve_ 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:
+
+     He stood there. Like the smoke
+    Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke--
+    I saw Him. One magnific pall
+    Mantled in massive fold and fall
+    His head, and coiled in snaky swathes
+    About His feet; night's black, that bathes
+    All else, broke, grizzled with despair,
+    Against the soul of blackness there.
+    A gesture told the mood within--
+    That wrapped right hand which based the chin,--
+    That intense meditation fixed
+    On His procedure,--pity mixed
+    With the fulfilment of decree.
+    Motionless thus, He spoke to me,
+    Who fell before His feet, a mass,
+    No man now.
+
+The picture of the final conflagration of the Judgment Day is perhaps
+over-laboured, a descriptive _tour de force_, 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 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
+
+     grasps of guess
+    Which pull the more into the less,
+
+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:
+
+    Then did the form expand, expand--
+    knew Him through the dread disguise
+    As the whole God within his eyes
+    Embraced me.
+
+The Doomsman has in a moment become the Saviour. In all this, if
+Browning has the burden 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _à la carte_, 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 _Casa Guidi Windows_ 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."
+
+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 _Hamlet_ 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.
+
+It was at Devonshire Street that Bayard Taylor, the distinguished
+American poet and critic, made the 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.
+
+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, the Eternal No: "Why, sir," exclaimed Carlyle, "you have
+as many aspirations as Napoleon!"[47] 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.
+
+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 _coup d'état_ was an accomplished 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."
+
+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 _émeutes_, because 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 47: "Mrs Orr's Life and Letters of R.B.," 173.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+1851 to 1855
+
+
+It was during the month of the _coup d'état_ 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
+_dramatis persona_, 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, _Ideas_, to use the
+word of Plato, "seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine
+Hand"--which Ideas he discovers not so often in the 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 _The Cenci_
+and _Julian and Maddalo_ 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."
+
+For Browning the poet of _Prometheus Unbound_ 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 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 _Men and
+Women_ in _The Rambler_) 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 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 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.[48]
+
+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 _Sordello_ 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 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, _Parleyings with certain People of Importance_. "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 _Red Cotton
+Nightcap Country_ it is Milsand who is characterised in the lines:
+
+    He knows more and loves better than the world
+    That never heard his name and never may, ...
+    What hinders that my heart relieve itself,
+    O friend! who makest warm my wintry world,
+    And wise my heaven, if there we consort too.
+
+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 correspondent, to stand before Maison Milsand, and muse, and
+bless the threshold.[49]
+
+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.
+
+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 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 _shan't_ be proud, and I _won't_ be proud, and we _will_ 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; 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 _touch_ 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.
+
+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.[50] Florence
+Nightingale was also a welcome visitor, and her visit was followed by a
+gift of flowers. Invitations 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-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.
+
+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.[51] 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 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."[52]
+
+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 _Men and Women_. Mrs Browning was
+already engaged upon _Aurora Leigh_. "We neither of us show our work to
+one another," she wrote, "till it is finished. An artist must, I fancy,
+either find or _make_ 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 _Colombe's Birthday_ was given on the stage, with Helen Faucit
+in the leading part. 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
+_proprium_, 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."[53] 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.[54]
+
+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 prejudice 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.
+
+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 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 _The Times_ by Mr
+Merrifield (_Literary Supplement_, 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 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."[55] 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _Dramatis Personae_ 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 wrote _The Alchemist_, 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.
+
+"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
+_apologia_ 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
+which life itself were impossible even for the meanest organism in the
+shape of man.
+
+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?
+
+     It's too bad, I say,
+    Ruining a soul so!
+
+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 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
+
+     Throwing thus
+    His sense out, like an ant-eater's long tongue,
+    Soft, innocent, warm, moist, impassible,
+    And when 'twas crusted o'er with creatures--slick,
+    Their juice enriched his palate. "Could not Sludge!"
+
+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?
+
+     Gratitude to these?
+    The gratitude, forsooth, of a prostitute
+    To the greenhorn and the bully.
+
+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 described him in his outbreaks against the spiritualists,
+"with occasional foamings at the mouth."[56]
+
+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:
+
+    I guess what's going on outside the veil,
+    Just as the prisoned crane feels pairing-time
+    In the islands where his kind are, so must fall
+    To capering by himself some shiny night
+    As if your back yard were a plot of spice.
+
+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 this a power
+which cheats its possessor, or cheats those for whose advantage he gives
+it play?
+
+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 _The Ring and the Book_. 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS
+STAYED.
+
+_From a photograph._]
+
+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 mountains like wild eagles," renewed
+their former delights.
+
+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 _Men and Women_, of which his wife was able to
+report in the autumn that it was in an advanced state. _In a Balcony_
+was the most important achievement of the summer. "The scene of the
+declaration in _By the Fireside_" Mrs Orr informs us, "was laid in a
+little adjacent mountain-gorge to which Browning walked or rode."
+
+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 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.[57] 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 _The Letters of Mrs Browning_. 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 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.[58]
+
+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 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."
+
+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
+_Men and Women_ and _Aurora Leigh_ maintained in the writers a deep
+inward excitement of the kind that leaves an enduring result. A little
+joint publication; _Two Poems by E.B.B. and R.B_., containing _A Plea
+for the Ragged Schools of London_ and _The Twins_, 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
+_Date_ and _Dabitur_, the twins of Browning's poem, when we bear in mind
+the occasion with which it was originally connected.
+
+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 _he_ 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."[59] 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.
+
+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
+_Men and Women_[60] 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.
+
+The year 1855 was a fortunate year for English poetry. _Men and Women_
+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 _Maud_ had preceded Browning's volumes by some
+months. It bewildered the critics, but his brother poet did justice to
+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 _Maud_ 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 _Maud_," she
+goes on, "every now and then--'There's a wonderful touch! That's very
+tender! How beautiful that is!' Yes and it _was_ wonderful, tender,
+beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather
+music than speech."
+
+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 _Maud_ 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
+Caine, spoke of the incident in these terms: 'I once heard Tennyson
+read _Maud_; 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 _Maud_ came Browning and _Fra Lippo Lippi_--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."[61] 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."[62] 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 48: Browning's Essay on Shelley was reprinted by Dr Furnivall
+in "The Browning Society's Papers," 1881-84, Part I.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Letters of E.B.B. ii. 284. On Milsand, the article "A
+French friend of Browning," by Th. Bentzon, is valuable and
+interesting.]
+
+[Footnote 50: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 51: See Letters of E.B.B. ii. 127.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Letters of E.B.B. ii. 99.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Letter of F. Tennyson, in Memoir of Alfred Tennyson, by
+his son, chapter xviii.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Mr Kenyon's note, vol. ii. 142 of Letters of E.B.B.]
+
+[Footnote 55: _Times Lit. Supplement_, Dec. 5, 1902.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Miss Cobbe's testimony is similar, and Lehmann says that
+at Home's name Browning would grow pale with passion.]
+
+[Footnote 57: See "Story and his Friends," by Henry James, 1903, vol. i.
+pp. 284, 285.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Letters of E.B.B., ii. 345.]
+
+[Footnote 59: E.B.B. to Ruskin, _Letters_, ii. 199.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Which, however, did not prevent certain errors noted in a
+letter of Browning to Dante Rossetti.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His "Family Letters," i. 190,
+191.]
+
+[Footnote 62: 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.]
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI.
+
+_By himself. A detail from the fresco in the Cathedral at Praia from a
+photograph by_ ALINARI.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+Men and Women
+
+
+Rossetti expresses his first enthusiasm about _Men and Women_ 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 _Dramatis
+Personae_ 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?
+
+There is no need now to "lay siege" to the poems of _Men and Women_;
+they have expounded themselves, 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 _Fifine at the Fair_ 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 _Men and Women_ 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:
+
+    He with a 'look you!' vents a brace of rhymes,
+    And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
+    Over us, under, round us every side,
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Buries us with a glory, young once more,
+    Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.
+
+Browning in _Men and Women_ 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 _Bishop Blougram_ is rather a
+presentation of character than a train of argument or a chain of ideas.
+
+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,
+_Memorabilia_, addressed to one who had seen Shelley, and _Old Pictures
+in Florence_, 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
+_dramatis personae_ 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 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.
+
+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 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 ... _as_ different as a willow tree from a
+church tower."[63]
+
+The fifty poems of _Men and Women_, 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, _A
+Grammarian's Funeral_; 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, _Up at a Villa--Down
+in the City_, is made up of humorous observations of Italian city and
+country life, expressing the mundane tastes and prudent economies of an
+Italian person of quality; the other, "_De Gustibus_--," 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. _The Patriot_ 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, _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
+came_. 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 _King Lear_ 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.[64] 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 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.
+
+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 _Pretty
+Woman_ 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 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 _In a Year_, as swift and broken with pauses as the beating
+of a heart:
+
+    Dear, the pang is brief,
+     Do thy part,
+    Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
+     Grows belief!
+    Well, this cold clay clod
+     Was man's heart:
+    Crumble it and what comes next?
+     Is it God?
+
+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, _Any Wife to any Husband_; 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 _Men and Women_ two contrasted poems assure us that, while the
+passion of a man may be no more than _Love in a Life_, it may also be
+an unweariable _Life in a Love_.
+
+Of the poems of attainment one--_Respectability_--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:
+
+    The world's good word!--the Institute!
+     Guizot receives Montalembert!
+     Eh? Down the court three lampions flare:
+    Set forward your best foot!
+
+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, _By the Fireside_. 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.
+
+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 _Evelyn Hope_ 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 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, _Two in the Campagna_.
+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
+
+     Infinite passion, and the pain
+    Of finite hearts that yearn.[65]
+
+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 _One Way of Love_; 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:
+
+    She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
+    Lose who may--I still can say
+    Those who win heaven, blest are they!
+
+So, too, in _The Last Ride together_, 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 _A Serenade at the Villa_,
+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.
+
+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 _The Statue
+and the Bust_ 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
+
+    Duke grew straightway brave and wise.
+
+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:
+
+    So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
+    The glory dropped from their youth and love,
+    And both perceived they had dreamed a dream.
+
+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:
+
+    And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+    Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
+    Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
+
+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.
+
+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 _A Lovers'
+Quarrel_ 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, _A
+Womans Last Word_: In a quarrel 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, _Love among the
+Ruins_, 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 _By the Fireside, A Serenade at the Villa_, and _Two in the
+Campagna_, 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.
+
+Of the pieces relating to art those connected with the art of poetry are
+the least valuable. _Transcendentalism_ sets forth the old doctrine that
+poetry must be sensuous and passionate, leaving it to philosophy to
+deal with the naked abstractions of the intellect. _How it strikes a
+Contemporary_ shows by a humorous example how a poet's character and
+private life may be misconceived and misrepresented by those among whom
+he moves. _Popularity_ 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, _Master Hugues of
+Saxe-Gotha_, is a singularly successful _tour de force_, 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, _A Toccata of
+Galuppi's_, 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 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.
+
+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.[66]
+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
+_Protus_, 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 _Sordello_. 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
+strong objective touches, never protruding itself sentimentally in
+quest of tenderness or pity.
+
+"I spent some most delightful time," Rossetti wrote to Allingham shortly
+after the publication of _Men and Women_, "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--_encyclopedically_ beyond that of Ruskin himself." The poem _Old
+Pictures at Florence_, 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
+
+    Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
+     New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
+    To bring the invisible full into play!
+     Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?
+
+[Illustration: ANDREA DEL SARTO.
+
+_From a print after the portrait by himself in the Uffizi Gallery,
+Florence_.]
+
+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
+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:
+
+    Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+    Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
+    Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
+
+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.[67]
+
+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:
+
+    The beauty and the wonder and the power,
+    The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
+    Changes, surprises--and God made it all!
+
+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 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.[68]
+
+The same doctrine which is applied to art in _Old Pictures in Florence_,
+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 _A Grammarian's Funeral_. The time is "shortly
+after the Revival of Learning in Europe"; the place--
+
+     a tall mountain, citied to the top,
+    Crowded with culture!--
+
+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 _Hudibras_, 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 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:
+
+    That low man seeks a little thing to do,
+     Sees it and does it:
+    This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
+     Dies ere he knows it.
+
+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.
+
+Two of the poems of _Men and Women_ are pages tragic-grotesque and
+pathetic-grotesque from the history of religion. In _The Heretic s
+Tragedy_ 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 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. _Holy Cross Day_, 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.
+
+The historical distortions of the religion of Christ do not, however,
+disturb the faith of Browning in the Christian revelation of Divine
+love. In _Cleon_ 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; 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:
+
+     It is so horrible
+    I dare at times imagine to my need
+    Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
+    Unlimited in capability
+    For joy, as this is in desire for joy.
+
+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
+
+    Hath access to a secret shut from us?
+
+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 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.
+
+Immortality and Divine love--these were the great words pronounced by
+Paul and by Christ. _Cleon_ 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. _Saul_, in
+the completed form of 1855, and _An Epistle of Karshish_ 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:
+
+     O Saul, it shall be
+    A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me
+    Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
+    Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!
+
+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 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!
+
+    The very God! think, Abib: dost thou think?
+    So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too--
+    So through the thunder comes a human voice
+    Saying "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+    Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+    Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
+    But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+    And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
+
+Science has at least something to consider in a thought so strangely
+potent.
+
+A nineteenth-century sceptic's exposition of his Christian faith is the
+paradoxical subject of _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, 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 _mise en
+scène_; 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?[69] 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 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
+_Bishop Blougram's Apology_ 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?
+
+Browning's moral sympathies, we may rest assured, 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 _credenda_, 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?
+
+    With me faith means perpetual unbelief
+    Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,
+    Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
+
+When the time arrives for a beatific vision Blougram will be ready to
+adapt himself to the new state of 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--
+
+     Fool or knave?
+    Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
+    When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
+
+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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 63: Letters of R.B. and E.B.B., i. 388.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Mrs Orr's Handbook to Browning's Works, 266, note. For the
+horse, see stanzas xiii. xiv. of the poem.]
+
+[Footnote 65: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Browning's delight a few years later in modelling in clay
+was great.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Mrs Andrew Crosse, in her article, "John Kenyon and his
+Friends" (_Temple Bar Magazine_, 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!"]
+
+[Footnote 68: 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
+_Transcendentalism_, where Browning spoke of "Swedish Boehme," was
+indicated. He acknowledged the error and altered the text to "German
+Boehme."]
+
+[Footnote 69: Browning maintained to Gavan Duffy that his treatment of
+the Cardinal was generous.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+Close of Mrs Browning's Life
+
+
+When _Men and Women_ 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."[70] Happily the winter was of a miraculous mildness. Mrs
+Browning worked _Aurora Leigh_ in "a sort of _furia_," and Browning set
+himself to the task--a fruitless one as it proved--of rehandling and
+revising _Sordello_: "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 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.
+
+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,'_Papa, I'll
+be dood_.'" 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 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."
+
+The great event of the autumn for the Brownings and for the lovers of
+English poetry was the publication of _Aurora Leigh_. 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 _l_., to
+Mrs Browning 4,500 _l_. "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 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.
+
+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 _Aurora Leigh_, 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.[71] At first Mrs
+Browning was crushed and could shed no tear; she remained for many days
+in a state of miserable prostration; it was two months before she could
+write a letter to anyone outside the circle of her nearest kinsfolk.
+
+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 _me_" 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 _mirage_"; 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.
+
+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."
+
+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 _Galignanis_. 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.
+
+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, 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.
+
+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. But January froze the fountains,
+and the north wind blew with force. Mrs Browning had just completed a
+careful revision _of Aurora Leigh_, 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.
+
+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 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."[72] 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 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.
+
+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 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.[73] 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.[74] 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.[75] To his incredulous wife Browning spoke of
+Landor's sweetness 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.[76]
+
+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 vineyards" 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.[77]
+
+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 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 _tête-à-têtes_
+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 _osteria_, witnessed the dignified blindness of the
+Papal gendarmes to the offence, while Gigi liberally plied them with
+drink; 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.[78]
+
+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, _Poems
+before Congress._ 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 _furious_" 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. 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 _Mr Sludge the Medium_, for Home's
+performances, as he says, were at this time rampant.[79] 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.
+
+On June 4th 1860 they left Rome, travelling by vettura through Orvieto
+and Chiusi to their home in Florence.[80] 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 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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. 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 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.[81]
+
+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."[82] A little later she was cast
+down by the 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.
+
+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.[83]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 70: Letters of E.B.B. (To Mrs Jameson), ii. 221.]
+
+[Footnote 71: F.G. Kenyon. _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 263.]
+
+[Footnote 72: "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.)]
+
+[Footnote 73: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Letters of E.B.B., ii. 354.]
+
+[Footnote 75: 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. _Letters of E.B.B_., ii. 309, 310.]
+
+[Footnote 76: On Browning's action in the affairs of Landor see
+Forster's _Life of Landor_, and the letters of Browning in vol. ii. of
+Henry James's _Life of Story_ (pp. 6-11).]
+
+[Footnote 77: See, for this residence at Siena, an interesting letter of
+Story to C. Eliot Norton in Henry James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 14,
+15.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Condensed from information given by Prinsep to Mrs Orr,
+_Life and Letters of R.B._, pp. 234-37.]
+
+[Footnote 79: _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 388, note. Mr Kenyon suggests _A
+Death in the Desert_ as at least possibly meant. _The Ring and the Book_
+"certainly had not yet been begun."]
+
+[Footnote 80: Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the
+journey to Story: Henry James's _W.W. Story_, ii. pp. 50-52.]
+
+[Footnote 81: H. James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.]
+
+[Footnote 82: 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." _W.W. Story_, vol. i.p. 286.]
+
+[Footnote 83: 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 _W.W.
+Story_, 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+London: Dramatis Personae
+
+
+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."[84] Yet something remained to sustain
+him.
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+platform. Browning pulled his hat over his face and was
+unrecognised.[85] 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.
+
+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 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.[86] 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.
+
+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 _Cornhill
+Magazine_, 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 _Last Poems_; in
+1863, her _Greek Christian Poets_; in 1865 he prepared a volume 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-work was carried on by plying other faculties than those which
+give its highest value to poetry.[87]
+
+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.[88] 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 _Dramatis Personae_. The story of _Gold Hair_ and the
+landscape details of _James Lee's Wife_ 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 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.[89]
+
+"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 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,
+
+     Trembled on the verge
+    Of monkhood: trick of cowl and taste of scourge
+    He tried: then, kicked not at the pricks perverse,
+    But took again, for better or for worse,
+    The old way of the world, and, much the same
+    Man o' the outside, fairly played life's game.
+
+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:
+
+    Strength may conclude in Archelaos' court,
+    And yet esteem the silken company
+    So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown,
+    For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve.
+    Strength amid crowds as late in solitude
+    May lead the still life, ply the wordless task.[90]
+
+One cannot prescribe a hygiene to poets; the poet of passionate
+contemplation, such as was Wordsworth, could hardly quicken or develop
+his peculiar faculty 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.
+
+In 1864 _Dramatis Personae_ was published. It might be described as
+virtually a third volume of _Men and Women_. 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 _A
+Death in the Desert_, which had hardly been reached before. Yet
+substantially the volume is a continuation of the poems of 1855; except
+in one instance, where Tennyson's method in _Maud_, that of a sequence
+of lyrics, is adopted, the methods are the same; the predominating
+themes of _Men and Women_, love, art, religion, are the predominating
+themes of _Dramatis Personae._ A slight metrical complication--the
+internal rhyme in the second line of each stanza of _Dîs aliter visum_
+and in the third line of the quatrains of _May and Death_--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.
+
+_Mr Sludge, "the Medium_" 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:
+
+    Hair such a wonder of flix and floss,
+    Freshness and fragrance--floods of it too!
+    Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross.
+
+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 _manqué_, 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 psychological
+contrasts of the ambiguous creature, saint-sinner, and the visual
+contrast of
+
+     that face, like a silver wedge
+    'Mid the yellow wealth,
+
+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.
+
+No poem in the volume of _Dramatis Personae_ is connected with pictorial
+art, unless it be the few lines entitled _A Face_, 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 _Master Hugues_ 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
+_Abt Vogler_ 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
+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 _Toccata of Galuppi_ left behind as its
+relics the melancholy of mundane pleasure and a sense of its transitory
+existence. The extemporising of _Abt Vogler_ fills the void which it has
+opened with the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
+unseen.
+
+Faith, victor over loss, in _Abt Vogler_, is victor over temporal decay
+in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. 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 _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ 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 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
+_Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is death as a friend. In the lines entitled _Prospice_
+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 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 _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ may be set the
+uncompromising realism of _Apparent Failure_, 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--
+
+    Poor men, God made, and all for that!--
+
+is not quenched, nor is the hope quenched that
+
+     After Last returns the First,
+    Though a wide compass round be fetched,
+    That what began best, can't end worst.
+
+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.
+
+In 1864 under somewhat altered conditions, and from a ground somewhat
+shifted, Browning in _A Death in the Desert_ and the _Epilogue_ to
+"Dramatis Personae" continued his apology for the Christian 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:
+
+    Outside was all noon and the burning blue.
+
+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,--
+
+     We would not lose
+    The last of what might happen on his face;
+
+and this:--
+
+    When there was mid sea and the mighty things;
+
+and this:--
+
+    Lie bare to the universal prick of light;
+
+and these:--
+
+    The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,
+    And could not write nor speak, but only loved.
+
+Such lines, however, are made to be read _in situ_.
+
+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 within them a larger
+and more enduring belief. The acorn has not perished because it has
+expanded into an oak.
+
+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 _Epilogue_ 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:
+
+    Oh, dread succession to a dizzy post,
+    Sad sway of sceptre whose mere touch appals.
+
+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:
+
+    Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
+    O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
+    From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet calls?
+
+    That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
+    Or decomposes but to recompose,
+    Become my universe that feels and knows.[91]
+
+In the great poem of 1868-69, _The Ring and the Book_, one speaker, the
+venerable Pope, like St John of _A Death in the Desert_, 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:
+
+    Lies bare to the universal prick of light.
+
+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
+
+    All questions in the earth and out of it.
+
+But whether the truth of the early centuries be an absolute historic
+fact,
+
+    Or only truth reverberate, changed, made pass
+    A spectrum into mind, the narrow eye--
+    The same and not the same, else unconceived--
+
+the Pope dare not affirm. Nor does he regard the question as of urgent
+importance at the present day; the effect of the Christian
+tale--historic fact, or higher fact expressed in myth--remains:
+
+     So my heart be struck,
+    What care I,--by God's gloved hand or the bare?
+
+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.[92]
+
+If the grotesque occupies a comparatively small place in _Dramatis
+Personae_, 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,
+
+    With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
+
+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
+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,
+
+    Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
+
+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.
+
+Except the short piece named _May and Death_, 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 _Dramatis Personae_, as originally
+published, are all poems of love. _A Likeness_, 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 _Confessions_. 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. _Youth and Art_ may be placed beside the earlier
+_Respectability_ 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 _Dîs Aliter Visum_, a variation on the same or a kindred theme, where
+our young Bohemian sculptor is replaced by the elderly poet, 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 _Too Late_ 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. _The Worst of it_--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 _James Lee's Wife_ (named in the first edition
+by a stroke of perversity _James Lee_), 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 84: Letter to Story in Henry James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p.
+91 and p. 97.]
+
+[Footnote 85: H. James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p. 100.]
+
+[Footnote 86: "Rossetti Papers," p. 302.]
+
+[Footnote 87: In 1863 Browning gave time and pains to revising his
+friend Story's _Roba di Roma_.]
+
+[Footnote 88: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 89: Was the poem _Gold Hair_? If three stanzas were added to
+the first draft before the poem appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_ the
+number of lines would have been 120. Stanzas 21, 22 and 23 were added in
+the _Dramatis Personae_ version.]
+
+[Footnote 90: _Aristophanes' Apology_ (spoken of Euripides).]
+
+[Footnote 91: Compare with _Epilogue: Third Speaker_ the lines from _A
+Death in the Desert_:
+
+    Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,
+    Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,
+    As though a star should open out, all sides,
+    Grow the world on you, as it is my world.
+
+[Footnote 92: 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
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ in chapter xvi.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+The Ring and the Book
+
+
+The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ 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 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 _home_!' I think I should fairly end it
+all on the spot."[93]
+
+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, 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 _Two Poets of
+Croisic_--
+
+    Croisic, the spit of sandy rock which juts
+     Spitefully north,
+
+they returned in the following summer. During this second visit
+(September 1867) that most spirited ballad of French heroism, _Hervé
+Riel_, was written, though its publication belongs to four years
+later.[94]
+
+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 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 son."[95] 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.[96] 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 _The Ring and the
+Book_. The two remaining volumes followed in January and February 1869.
+
+[Illustration: PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS
+FOUND BY BROWNING.
+
+_From a photograph by_ ALINARI.]
+
+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 threshold of Casa Guidi[97].
+That night his brain was a-work; pacing the terrace of Casa Guidi, while
+from Felice church opposite came
+
+     the clear voice of the cloistered ones,
+    Chanting a chant made for mid-summer nights,
+
+he gave himself up to the excitement of re-creating the actors and
+re-enacting their deeds in his imagination:
+
+    I fused my live soul and that inert stuff,
+    Before attempting smithcraft.
+
+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.'"[98] 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 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
+_The Ring and the Book_, he refers to having been in close converse with
+his old quarto of the Piazza San Lorenzo during four years:
+
+    How will it be, my four-years' intimate,
+    When thou and I part company anon?
+
+The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ 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."[99]
+
+When Carlyle met Browning after the appearance of _The Ring and the
+Book_, he desired to be complimentary, but was hardly more felicitous
+than Browning 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."[100] 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 _Clarissa_ 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 sentence of the critical
+Polonius--"This is too long." But neither _Clarissa_ nor _The Ring and
+the Book_ 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.
+
+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 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; a voice terrible in
+its sincerity, absolute in 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 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.
+
+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
+
+     That our human speech is naught,
+    Our human testimony false, our fame
+    And human estimation words and wind.
+
+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 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 _salon_ 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.
+
+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 _dramatis
+personae_ 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, 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
+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:--
+
+"Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
+
+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,"
+
+    While--see how this mere chance sown, cleft-nursed seed
+    That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot
+    Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,
+    Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire
+    To incorporate the whole great sun it loves
+    From the inch-height whence it looks and longs. My flower,
+    My rose, I gather for the breast of God.
+
+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--
+
+    Looks old, fantastic and impossible:
+    I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades.
+
+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.
+
+If any point in the whole long poem, _The Ring and the Book_, 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 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?[101] 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,
+
+    A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad,
+
+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
+
+     An eternity
+    Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth
+    O' the soul that then broke silence.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+    Till old experience do attain
+    To something of Prophetic strain.
+
+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--
+
+    Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute,
+    With prudence, probity and--what beside
+    From the other world he feels impress at times;
+
+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 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.
+
+_The Ring and the Book_ 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 how it was a gift hammered and filed
+during the years of smithcraft "in memoriam"; in memory and also with a
+hope.
+
+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. _The Ring and the Book_ 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--_Pacchiarotto and how he worked in distemper; with other Poems_.
+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. _The Inn Album_ 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 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. _The Ring and the Book_ 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.
+
+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 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 _The Ring and the Book_, 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 _The Inn Album_,
+and others are often revealers of sudden truth, which 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.[102]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 93: Letter to Miss Blagden, Feb. 24, 1870, given by Mrs Orr,
+p. 287.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Vivid descriptions of Le Croisic at an earlier date may be
+found in one of Balzac's short stories.]
+
+[Footnote 95: _Life of Jowett_ by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, i.
+400, 401.]
+
+[Footnote 96: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Such a book would naturally attract Browning, who, like
+his father, had an interest in celebrated criminal cases. In his
+_Memories_ (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 _cause célèbre_ of that kind within
+living memory.]
+
+[Footnote 98: _An Artist's Reminiscences_, by R. Lehmann (1894), p.
+224.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Rossetti Papers, p. 302.]
+
+[Footnote 100: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 101: The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi's
+monologue, II. 936-973, beginning with "Thought? nay, sirs, what shall
+follow was not thought."]
+
+[Footnote 102: I have used here some passages already printed in my
+_Studies in Literature_.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Poems on Classical Subjects
+
+
+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.[103] 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.[104] "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 accompanied 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.[105] 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.
+
+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 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."[106] 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,
+
+    Symbolic of the place and people too,
+
+_White Cotton Night-Cap Country_, the suggestion of Browning's title
+_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ is due. To her the poem is dedicated.
+
+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 he had gratified his American
+admirers by allowing _Gold Hair_ and _Prospice_ to appear in the
+_Atlantic Monthly_ previous to their inclusion in _Dramatis Persona._ 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 _Pall Mall Gazette_, 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 _Hervé Riel_ for use in the _Cornhill
+Magazine_ 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,
+"Truth above all things; so treat the matter as you please."[107]
+
+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, _The Founder of the Feast_, a poem not included in
+any edition of his works, he recalls these evenings of delight:
+
+      Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,
+    My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,
+      When, night by night--ah, memory, how it haunts!--
+      Music was poured by perfect ministrants,
+    By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim.
+
+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 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 _La Saisiaz_:
+
+    You supposed that few or none had known and loved you in the world:
+    May be! flower that's full-blown tempts the butterfly, not flower that's furled.
+    But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand
+    Bud to bell and out-spread flower-shape at the least warm touch of hand
+    --Maybe throb of heart, beneath which,--quickening farther than it knew,--
+    Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and unguessed hue.
+    Disembosomed, re-embosomed,--must one memory suffice,
+    Prove I knew an Alpine rose which all beside named Edelweiss?
+
+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 _Aristophanes' Apology_. "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 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 _La Saisiaz_, 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.
+
+The grouping of the works produced by Browning from the date of the
+publication of _The Ring and the Book_ (1868) to the publication of _La
+Saisias_ (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 which these gave rise extend at
+intervals over the whole decade. _Balaustion's Adventure_ was published
+in 1871, _Aristophanes' Apology_ in 1875, the translation of _The
+Agamemnon of Æschylus_ in 1877. Two of the volumes of this period,
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ (1871) and _Fifine at the Fair_ (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.[108] Two of the volumes are narrative poems, each tending to a
+tragic crisis; _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ (1873) is a story
+entangled with questions relating to religion; _The Inn Album_ (1875) is
+a tragedy of the passion of love. The volume of 1876, _Pacchiarotto with
+other Poems_, is the miscellaneous gathering of lyrical and narrative
+pieces which had come into being during a period of many years. Finally
+in _La Saisiaz_ 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, _The two Poets of
+Croisic_, which has in it much matter of honest mirth, and closes with
+the declaration that the test of greatness in an artist lies in his
+power of converting his more than common sufferings into a more than
+common joy.
+
+_Balaustion's Adventure_, 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."[109] 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 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 _Balaustions
+Adventure_:
+
+    Our Euripides the human,
+    With his droppings of warm tears.
+
+"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."[110]
+
+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,
+
+    Outsmoothing galingale and watermint,
+    Its mat-floor,
+
+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 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:
+
+     'Tis the poet speaks:
+    But if I, too, should try and speak at times,
+    Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
+    Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew--
+    Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake!
+
+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.
+
+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 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 with gladness the
+spirit of Alkestis just escaped from the shades.[111] 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.
+
+Browning, who delights to show how good is brought out of evil, or what
+appears such to mortal 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 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:
+
+    He was beginning to be like his wife.
+
+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,
+
+    When I betray her, though she is no more,
+    May I die.
+
+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.
+
+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
+_Sursum corda!_--a challenge and a summons to whatever manliness is in
+us. And the best of it is that sauntering the pavement or crossing the
+ferry we may happen to encounter this face of Herakles:
+
+    Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is coming;
+    I see the high pioneer-caps--I see the slaves of runners clearing the way,
+    I hear victorious drums.
+
+    This face is a life-boat.
+
+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:
+
+    Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world!
+    I think this is the authentic sign and sea!
+    Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
+    And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
+    Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
+    And recommence at sorrow.
+
+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
+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.
+
+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:
+
+    Therewith her whole soul entered into his,
+    He looked the look back, and Alkestis died--
+
+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.
+
+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. _Aristophanes' Apology_ is written from first to last with
+unflagging energy; the translation of the "Herakles" which it includes
+is a masculine and 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:
+
+     Such domineering deity
+    Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine
+    For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path
+    Which, purpling, recognised the conqueror.
+
+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 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):
+
+     All at once, large-looming from his wave,
+    Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge,
+    A sea-worn face, sad as mortality,
+    Divine with yearning after fellowship.
+    He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw;
+    So much she sees now, and does reverence.
+
+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.
+
+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 _in situ_ is a sufficient reward
+for reading many laborious pages that might almost as well have been
+thrown into an imaginary conversation in prose:
+
+    Then the grey brow sank low, and Sophokles
+    Re-swathed him, sweeping doorward: mutely passed
+    'Twixt rows as mute.
+
+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
+
+     Makes wise, not grave,--and glad,
+    Not grinning: whereby laughter joins with tears.
+
+Instead of making this advance he had retrograded; and it remained for a
+poet of a far-off future in the 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.
+
+The translation of _Agamemnon_, 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 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 _Agamemnon_ 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 _Agamemnon_ 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 103: 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?]
+
+[Footnote 104: Letter quoted by Mrs Orr, p. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 105: The attitude is reproduced in a photograph from which a
+woodcut is given in Mme. Blanc's article "A French Friend of Browning."]
+
+[Footnote 106: "Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning," by Annie
+Ritchie, pp. 291, 292.]
+
+[Footnote 107: "A Bibliography of the Writings of Robert Browning," by
+T.J. Wise, pp. 157, 158.]
+
+[Footnote 108: _Aristophanes' Apology_ is connected with these poems by
+its character as a casuistical self-defence of the chief speaker.]
+
+[Footnote 109: North's "Plutarch," 1579, p. 599.]
+
+[Footnote 110: "Les Deux Masques," ii. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 111: 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."]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+Problem and Narrative Poems
+
+
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, which appeared in December 1871, four
+months after the publication of _Balaustions Adventure_, 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[112] and whose talents he admired. Yet for a certain kind of
+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 _Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.
+
+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 _civitas hominum_, however remote from the
+ideal, to a sham _civitas Dei_ 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 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, _et pour cause_; 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 _apologia_ was admissible in the interests of truth
+and justice, and by placing this _apologia_ 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.
+
+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. _Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is an interesting intellectual exercise, and if
+this constitutes a poem, a poem it is; but the theme is fitter for a
+prose discussion. Browning'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:
+
+    So your fugue broadens and thickens,
+    Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
+    Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens!"
+
+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 _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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, 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.
+
+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 of Edmund Burke.[113] The record of the Prince's
+early and irresponsible aspirations for a free Italy--
+
+    Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught,
+    Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine
+    For ever!--
+
+with what immediately follows, would have satisfied the ardent spirit of
+Mrs Browning.[114] 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:--
+
+     The people here,
+    Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride
+    Above her pride i' the race all flame and air
+    And aspiration to the boundless Great,
+    The incommensurably Beautiful--
+    Whose very faulterings groundward come of flight
+    Urged by a pinion all too passionate
+    For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow:
+    Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave
+    Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous
+    In Art, the--more than all--magnetic race
+    To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind.
+
+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 _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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 succession of men of genius in the priesthood
+of the world--"The new power slays the old, but handsomely."
+
+In _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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 _Fifine at the Fair_ (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
+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 _Fifine at the Fair_ as the virtue of
+tar-water is the subject of Berkeley's _Siris_. The poem is in fact
+Browning's _Siris_--a chain of thoughts and feelings, reaching with no
+break in the chain, from a humble basis to the heights of speculation.
+
+But before all else _Fifine at the Fair_ is a poem. Of all the longer
+poems which followed _The Ring and the Book_ 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 are essentially parts of the texture of the poem,
+yet each has a lustre or a shimmer or grave splendour of its own.
+
+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 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.
+
+The speaker in _Fifine at the Fair_ 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
+expresses an idea which Browning has repeatedly expressed in
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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 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:
+
+     His problem posed aright
+    Was--"From a given point evolve the infinite!"
+    Not--"Spend thyself in space, endeavouring to joint
+    Together, and so make infinite, point and point:
+    Fix into one Elvire a Fair-ful of Fifines!"
+
+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.[115]
+
+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 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 _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_:
+
+    Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and embrace
+    Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself.
+
+And he would have pleaded that art, which he styles
+
+     The love of loving, rage
+    Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
+    For truth's sake, whole and sole,
+
+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 _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ 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 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.
+
+The moral is just, and the story bears it well. Yet Browning's own
+conviction that man's highest and 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:
+
+     Quick conclude
+    Removal, time effects so tardily,
+    Of what is plain obstruction; rubbish cleared,
+    Let partial-ruin stand while ruin may,
+    And serve world's use, since use is manifold.
+
+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,
+
+    To damage him aloft, brain us below,
+    When new vibrations bury both in brick.
+
+For which sane word, if not for all the pages of his poem, we may feel
+gratefully towards the writer. It 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 _mamestra brassicae_ 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.
+
+The second narrative poem of this period, _The Inn Album_ (1875), is in
+truth a short series of dramatic scenes, placed in a narrative
+frame-work. It is as concentrated as _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ is
+diffuse; and the unities of time and place assist the tragic
+concentration. A recast of _The Inn Album_ 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.[116] 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 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 _dramatis personae_, 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:
+
+    The wooded watered country, hill and dale
+    And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,
+    A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift
+    O' the sun-touched dew.
+
+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.
+
+In this poem Browning reverts to his earlier method of clearly and
+simply dividing the evil from the good. We are not embarrassed by the
+mingling of truth with sophistry; our instinctive sympathies are not
+held in check, but are on the contrary reinforced by the undisguised
+sympathies of the writer. We are no more in doubt where wrong and where
+justice lie than if Count Gismond were confronting Count Gauthier. The
+avenger, indeed, is no champion of romance; he is only a young English
+snob, a little slow of brain, a little unrefined in manner, a "clumsy
+giant handsome creature," who for a year has tried to acquire under an
+accomplished tutor the lore of cynical worldliness, and has not
+succeeded, for he is manly and honest, and has the gentleness of
+strength; "for ability, all's in the rough yet." Of his education the
+best part is that he has once loved and been thwarted in his love. And
+now in a careless-earnest regard for his cousin his need is that of
+occupation for his big, idle boy's heart; he wants something to do,
+someone also to serve. Browning wishes to show the passion of
+righteousness, which suddenly flames forth and abolishes an evil thing
+as springing from no peculiar knightly virtue but from mere honest human
+nature. The huge boy, somewhat crude, somewhat awkward, with a moral
+temper still unclarified, has enough of our good, common humanity in him
+to hold no parley with utter wickedness, when once he fully apprehends
+its nature; therefore he springs upon it in one swift transport of rage
+and there and then makes an end of it. His big red hands are as much the
+instruments of divine justice as is the axe of Ivàn Ivànovitch.
+
+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 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 _naïveté_, 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--
+
+    Into that sad obscure sequestered state
+    Where God unmakes but to remake the soul
+    He else made first in vain,
+
+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.
+
+The lady, again, with her superb statue-like beauty, her low wide brow
+
+     Oppressed by sweeps of hair
+    Darker and darker as they coil and swathe
+    The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black,
+
+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:
+
+     Did you love me once?
+    Then take love's last and best return! I think
+    Womanliness means only motherhood;
+    All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
+    But, having run the circle, rests at home.
+
+Her husband, good man, will not suffer acutely for her loss; he will be
+true to duty, and continue to dose his flock with the comfortable dogma
+of hell-fire, in which not one of them believes.
+
+The _Pacchiarotto_ volume of 1876 was the first collection of
+miscellaneous poetry put forth by Browning since the appearance, twelve
+years previously, of _Dramatis Personae_[117] 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
+_Pacchiarotto_, 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 _Epilogue_ 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 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.
+
+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--_laissez-faire_, 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 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.
+
+The Browning who masks as Shakespeare in _At the Mermaid_ disclaims the
+ambition of heading a poetical faction, condemns the Byronic
+_Welt-schmerz_, 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 _House_; 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 _Shop_ 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 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.
+
+But the volume of 1876 contains better work than these pieces of
+self-assertion. The two love-lyrics _Natural Magic_ and _Magical Nature_
+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.
+_Bifurcation_ 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 _St
+Martin's Summer_ 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. _Fears and Scruples_ 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:
+
+    All my days I'll go the softlier, sadlier
+     For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill
+    Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier
+     Lives my friend because I love him still?"
+
+And the friend will value love all the more which persists through the
+obstacles of partial ignorance.[118] The blank verse monologue _A
+Forgiveness_, 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--
+
+    Horror coquetting with voluptuousness--
+
+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 _Filippo Baldinucci_ recalls the comedy and the pathos
+of _Holy Cross Day_, 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. _Cenciaja_, a
+note in verse connected with Shelley's _Cenci_, 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 _Numpholeptos_ 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 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 _La belle Dame sans merci_, and her
+worshipper is as desperately lost as the knight-at-arms of Keats's poem.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 112: See Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. p. 417.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Pages 46, 47 of the first edition.]
+
+[Footnote 114: Pages 58-60.]
+
+[Footnote 115: It may here be noted that Dante Rossetti in a morbid mood
+supposed that certain passages of _Fifine_ were directed against
+himself; and so ceased his friendship with Browning.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Fanny Kemble also derived from the story of Lord De Ros
+the subject of her "English Tragedy."]
+
+[Footnote 117: Some sentences in what follows are taken from a notice of
+the volume which I wrote on its appearance for _The Academy_.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See Browning's letter to Mr Kingsland in "Robert
+Browning" by W. G. Kingsland (1890), pp. 32, 33.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Solitude and Society
+
+
+The volume which consists of _La Saisiaz_ and _The Two Poets of Croisic_
+(1878) brings the work of this decade to a close.[119] _La Saisiaz_, 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 individual 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.
+
+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
+
+    One by one came lamping--chiefly that prepotency of Mars.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:--
+
+    I must say--or choke in silence----"Howsoever came my fate,
+    Sorrow did and joy did nowise--life well weighed--preponderate."
+
+If this failure be ordained by necessity, I shall bear it as best I can;
+but, if this life be all, nothing shall 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.
+
+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:
+
+    I have lived then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
+    This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
+    Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
+    If (to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)
+    If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
+    And life, time,--with all their chances, changes,--just probation--space,
+    Mine for me.
+
+Grant this hypothesis, and all changes from irrational to rational, from
+evil to good, from pain to a strenuous joy:--
+
+     Only grant a second life, I acquiesce
+    In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst assaults
+    Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more exalts
+    Gain about to be.
+
+Thus out of defeat springs victory; never are we so near to knowledge as
+when we are checked at the bounds of ignorance; beauty is felt through
+its opposite; good is known through evil; truth shows its potency when
+it is confronted by falsehood;
+
+    While for love--Oh how but, losing love, does whoso loves succeed
+    By the death-pang to the birth-throe--learning what is love indeed?
+
+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:
+
+    Hope the arrowy, just as constant, comes to pierce its gloom, compelled
+    By a power and by a purpose which, if no one else beheld,
+    I behold in life, so--hope!
+
+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 _more_ 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 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."[120]
+
+Browning's confession in _La Saisias_ 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 _The Two Poets of Croisic_, which was written in London
+immediately after _La Saisiaz_, 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:
+
+     Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse,
+    Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear,
+    Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face
+    Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race.
+
+This is good counsel for art; but not wholly wise counsel for life.
+Sorrow, indeed, is not wronged by 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.
+
+When _La Saisiaz_ 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 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 _Times_ and
+_Daily News_ 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 servants he was a considerate friend rather than a master.
+
+So far Mr Grove as reported in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (Dec 16, 1889).
+
+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.[121] 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 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.
+
+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."[122] A writer in the
+first volume of _The New Review_, 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, 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 _Lothair_ 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 _bonhomie_, softened but did not by any
+means disguise the sense of his power."[123] 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 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."[124]
+
+Mr Henry James in his "Life of Story"[125] 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 _that_ 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 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[126]. 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 things which commend themselves, without a preacher,
+to our love.
+
+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, _Ivàn Ivànovitch_. 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, _Ned Bratts_. 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."[127] 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 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.[128] 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 _popolo_ 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.'"
+
+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 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
+_The Century Magazine_. 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."[129] 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 doctoring."[130] 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.[131] 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."
+
+[Illustration: THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss N. ERICHSEN.]
+
+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 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 _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 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.[132] 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."[133] 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, _nearly_, and I breathe in the pleasant
+idleness at every 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."[134] 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.[135] 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.
+
+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 _Palazzo_ 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, 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--
+
+     Clothed with murder of His best
+    Of harmless beings.
+
+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
+
+     Fed with murder of His best
+    Of harmless beings,
+
+and laughed, innocently enough, with his good sister over the delicious
+"mouthfuls for cardinals."[136] 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."[137] 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, if only to stand and be blown about by the sea
+wind."[138] 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
+_Pippa Passes_ 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.
+
+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 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 _Sordello_. 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.[139] Returning from his walks
+on the Lido or wanderings through the little _calli_, 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. 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 _Toccata of
+Galuppi_ 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:
+
+    There throng the People: how they come and go,
+     Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb--see--
+    On Piazza, Calle, under Portico
+     And over Bridge! Dear King of Comedy,
+    Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so,
+     Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!
+
+The brightness and lightness of southern life soothed Browning's
+northern strenuousness of mood. He would 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![140] 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 119: Some parts of what follows on _La Saisiaz_ have already
+appeared in print in a forgotten article of mine on that poem.]
+
+[Footnote 120: "An Artist's Reminiscences," by R. Lehmann (1894), p.
+231.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Thus he declaimed to Robert Buchanan against Walt
+Whitman's writings, with which, according to Buchanan, he had little
+acquaintance.]
+
+[Footnote 122: "Autobiography of a Journalist," ii. 210.]
+
+[Footnote 123: From the first of three valuable articles by Mr Rossetti
+in _The Magazine of Art_ (1890) on "Portraits of Robert Browning."]
+
+[Footnote 124: Robert Browning, "Personalia," by Edmund Gosse, pp. 81,
+82.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Anna Swanwick, "A Memoir by Mary L. Bruce," pp. 130, 131.
+To Dr Furnivall he often spoke of Mrs Browning.]
+
+[Footnote 127: From Mrs Bronson's article in _The Century Magazine_,
+"Browning in Venice."]
+
+[Footnote 128: Related more fully in Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in
+Asolo" in _The Century Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote 129: Mrs Bronson's "Browning in Venice" in _The Century
+Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote 130: To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 28, 1884.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Some notices of Browning in Wales occur in Sir T.
+Martin's "Life of Lady Martin."]
+
+[Footnote 132: Letter to Dr Furnivall, August 29, 1881.]
+
+[Footnote 133: To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 7, 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 134: To Dr Furnivall, August 21, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 135: See for fuller details the letter in Mrs Orr's _Life of
+Browning_, pp. 407, 408.]
+
+[Footnote 136: So described by Mrs Bronson.]
+
+[Footnote 137: To Dr Furnivall, Oct. 11, 1881.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Quoted by Mrs Bronson.]
+
+[Footnote 139: Mrs Orr, "Life of Browning," p. 400.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Mrs Bronson records this.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Poet and Teacher in Old Age
+
+
+During the last decade of his life Browning's influence as a literary
+power was assured. The publication indeed of _The Ring and the Book_ 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
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ were sold in five days, and says of
+_Balaustion's Adventure_ "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 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.[141] 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 as an obscure heretic--not even an
+heresiarch--of literature.
+
+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 _The Names_, 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 _Titus Andronicus_.
+
+In 1879 appeared _Dramatic Idyls_ and in the following year _Dramatic
+Idyls, Second Series_. They differed in two respects from the volumes of
+miscellaneous 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 _Ned Bratts_ as a poem of
+religious experience, we may say that these themes are wholly absent
+from the _Dramatic Idyls_. 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
+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 _Doctor_----, 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 _Doctor_ ---- 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 _Pietro of Abano_
+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 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.
+
+The two series of _Dramatic Idyls_ included some conspicuous successes.
+The classical poems _Pheidippides_, _Echetlos_, _Pan and Luna_, 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:
+
+     He flung down his shield,
+    Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field
+    And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
+    Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through clay,
+    Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died--the bliss!
+
+The companion poem of Marathon, the story of the nameless clown, the
+mysterious holder of the ploughshare, is not less inspiring. The unknown
+champion, 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.
+
+In contrast with these classical pieces, _Halbert and Hob_ 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,
+
+    With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting face,
+
+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 swift, and what the poem
+represents as a just, abolishment from earth the mother who in _Ivàn
+Ivànovitch_ 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.[142]
+
+[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING.
+
+_From a letter to D.S. CURTIS, Esq._]
+
+_Martin Relph_ 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. _Ned Bratts_ 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 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
+
+    In solemn troops and sweet societies;
+
+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.
+
+Browning's method as a story-teller may be studied with special
+advantage in _Clive_. 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 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 _Muléykeh_, 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.
+
+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 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 _Pisgah Sights_ of the
+_Pacchiarotto_ 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
+_Jocoseria_, some of an old man's imaginative passion in _Asolando_, and
+in both volumes, and still more clearly in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ may be
+seen an old man's spirit 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 _Paracelsus_, 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.
+
+In _Jocoseria_, which appeared in Browning's seventy-first year (1883),
+he shows nothing of his boisterous 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
+_La Saisiaz_ and the graceful epilogue to _The Two Poets of Croisic_,
+and continued in the songs of _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and _Asolando_--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
+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 _Jochanan
+Hakkadosh_, 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 the soul and fits it for further wayfaring. The ultimate faith
+of Jochanan the Saint had been already expressed by Browning:
+
+    Over the ball of it,
+    Peering and prying,
+    How I see all of it,
+    Life there, outlying!
+    Roughness and smoothness,
+    Shine and defilement,
+    Grace and uncouthness:
+    One reconcilement.
+
+But even to his favourite disciple the sage is unable so to impart the
+secret that Tsaddik's mind shall really embrace it.
+
+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 _Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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 itself into a corresponding truth respecting the love of man
+and woman.
+
+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:
+
+     I starve in soul:
+    So may mankind: and since men congregate
+    In towns, not woods--to Ispahan forthwith!
+
+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?"[143] 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 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. _The Family_ 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:
+
+      Be man and nothing more--
+    Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears,
+    And craves and deprecates, and loves and loathes,
+    And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes
+    And show God granted most, denying all.
+
+The same spirit of acceptance of our intellectual and moral limitations
+is applied in _The Sun_ 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 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."
+
+The presence of evil in a world created and governed by One all-wise,
+all-powerful, all-loving, is justified in _Mirhab Shah_ 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 _A Camel-driver_; 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 afterwards,
+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--
+
+    Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it!
+
+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 _Te Deum_, let it be when we have enjoyed our plate of
+cherries. The glorious lamp in the Shah's pavilion lightens other 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--"
+
+    Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy,--
+    Some smatch thereof,--in best and purest love
+    Preferred thy earthly father? Dust thou art,
+    Dust shall be to the end.
+
+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?
+
+In _A Pillar at Sebzevah_, 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:--
+
+    "Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know
+    Is--I know nothing save that love I can
+    Boundlessly, endlessly."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If there be knowledge it shall vanish away; but charity never faileth.
+As for knowledge, the prize is in the process; as gain we must
+mistrust it, not as a road to gain:--
+
+     Knowledge means
+    Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+    That victory is somehow still to reach,
+    But love is victory, the prize itself.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+It has been necessary to transcribe in a reduced 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
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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:
+
+    Only, at heart's utmost joy and triumph, terror
+      Sudden turns the blood to ice: a chill wind disencharms
+    All the late enchantment! What if all be error--
+      If the halo irised round my head were, Love, thine arms?
+
+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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 141: Mr Gosse: "Dictionary of National Biography," Supplement,
+i. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 142: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 143: The story of the melon-seller was related by a
+correspondent of _The Times_ 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+Closing Works and Days
+
+
+_Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_, 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 _Fra Lippo Lippi_, 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 _With Daniel Bartoli_ is a story of love and loss,
+admirable in its presentation of the 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 _Bernard de
+Mandeville_, the description of the Chapel in _Christopher Smart_, the
+praise of a woman's beauty in _Francis Furini_, the amazing succession
+of mythological _tours de force_ in _Gerard de Lairesse_, 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 _Charles
+Avison_--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 _Gerard
+de Lairesse_. 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:
+
+    Daisies and grass be my heart's bed-fellows
+    On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:
+    Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!
+
+Of failure in intellectual or imaginative force the _Parleyings_ 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.
+
+Philosophy, Love, Poetry, Politics, Painting (the nude, with a discourse
+concerning evolution), Painting again (the modern _versus_ the
+mythological in art), Music, and, if we add the epilogue, the Invention
+of Printing--these are the successive themes of Browning's _Parleyings_,
+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 _danse Macabre_. The spirit of
+acquiescence--strenuous not indolent acquiescence--with our intellectual
+limitations is constantly present. 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?
+
+    Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--
+    Which, in the large, who sees to bless?
+
+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:
+
+    Only by looking low, ere looking high,
+    Comes penetration of the mystery.
+
+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 needful illusion in our
+educational process, since through evil we become aware of good. Thus at
+every point Browning accepts here, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 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 or incompetent heads are
+often conjoined with hearts that in a high degree deserve respect.
+
+_Asolando_, 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. _Asolando_
+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
+
+    Terror with beauty, like the Bush
+    Burning yet unconsumed
+
+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 _Epilogue_ has in it a
+certain energy, but the thews are those of an old 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
+_Reverie_, 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 _Reverie_, 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:
+
+    Life is--to wake not sleep,
+     Rise and not rest, but press
+    From earth's level where blindly creep
+     Things perfected, more or less,
+    To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+    Where amid what strifes and storms
+     May wait the adventurous quest,
+    Power is love.
+
+The voice of the poet of _Paracelsus_ and of _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is still
+audible in this latest of his prophesyings. And therefore he welcomes
+earth in his _Rephan_, earth, 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 _Development_, 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.
+
+The general impression left by _Asolando_ is that of intellectual and
+imaginative vigour. The series of _Bad Dreams_ is very striking and
+original in both pictorial and passionate power. _Dubiety_ 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
+_Speculative_, which is frankly a poem of old age, has in it the genuine
+passion of memory. _White Witchcraft_ does in truth revive the manner of
+earlier volumes. The
+
+    Infinite passion and the pain
+    Of finite hearts that yearn
+
+told of in a poem of 1855 is present, with a touch of humour to guard it
+from its own excess in the admirable _Inapprehensiveness_. The speaker
+who may not liberate his soul can perhaps identify a quotation, and he
+gallantly accepts his humble rôle in the tragi-comedy of foiled
+passion:--
+
+     "No, the book
+    Which noticed how the wall-growths wave," said she,
+    "Was not by Ruskin."
+     I said "Vernon Lee."
+
+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 _Ponte dell' Angelo_, 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 _Beatrice Signorini_ 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 _The Pope and the Net_. In
+_Muckle-Mouth Meg_, laughter and kisses, audible from the page, and a
+woman's art in love-craft, turn tragedy in a hearty piece of comedy.
+_The Bean-Feast_ 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 mendicant's "sparkling
+eyes beneath their eyebrows' ridge":
+
+    "He's God!" shouts Lucius Varus Rufus: "Man
+    And worms'-meat any moment!" mutters low
+    Some Power, admonishing the mortal-born.
+
+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.[144]
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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 _The Athenaeum_,
+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.
+
+In Asolo, beside "the gate," Mrs Bronson had found and partly made what
+Mr Henry James describes as "one of the quaintest possible little
+places of _villegiatura_"--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 _gli
+Asolani_, 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?"
+
+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 unvarying 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."[145] 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."
+
+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, Browning was contentedly weak; and _vice versâ_."[146]
+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 _Herakles_, he, like Pope in reading a passage of his
+_Iliad_, was moved to tears. Dr Furnivall tells of the mounting
+excitement with which he once delivered in the writer's hearing his
+_Ixion_. 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."
+
+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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss KATHERINE KIMBALL.]
+
+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 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.[147] 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 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.[148]
+
+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.[149] A private service took place in the
+_Palazzo Rezzonico_; 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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. 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.
+
+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 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 _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 them existence.[150] 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 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.
+
+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
+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.
+
+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 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 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 144: Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the
+_Asolando_ poems. _Rosny_, _Beatrice Signorini_ and _Flute-Music_ were
+written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the _Bad Dreams_
+are, with less confidence, assigned to the same date. The _Ponte dell'
+Angelo_ "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs
+Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "_White Witchcraft_ 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."
+_The Cardinal and the Dog_, written with the _Pied Piper_ for Macready's
+son, is a poem of early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in
+Asolo" (_Century Magazine_, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889
+of _The Lady and the Painter_.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Mrs Orr, _Life_, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 146: W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., _Magazine of
+Art_, 1890, p. 182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.]
+
+[Footnote 147: "The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure
+Conway may also be found.]
+
+[Footnote 148: "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.)]
+
+[Footnote 149: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 150: E.D. West in the first of two papers, "Browning as a
+Preacher," in _The Dark Blue Magazine_. 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+[_The names of Robert Browning, the subject of this volume, and of
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning are not included in the Index_.]
+
+_Abt Vogler_
+Adams, Sarah Flower
+Aeschylus (see _Agamemnon_)
+_Agamemnon_
+Alford, Lady M.
+Ancona
+Andersen, Hans
+_Andrea del Sarto_
+_Any Wife to any Husband_
+_Apparent Failure_
+_Aristophanes' Apology_
+Arnold, Matthew
+Arnould, Joseph
+Arran, Isle of
+_Artemis Prologuizes_
+Asceticism
+Ashburton, Lady
+_Asolando_
+Asolo
+_At the Mermaid_
+Audierne
+_Aurora Leigh_
+
+
+B
+
+Bach
+Bacon, Francis
+_Bad Dreams_
+_Balaustion's Adventure_
+Balzac, H. de
+Barrett, Arabella
+Barrett, Edward M.
+Barrett, Henrietta (Mrs Surtees Cook)
+Bayley, Miss
+_Bean Feast_
+_Beatrice Signorini_
+_Bells and Pomegranates_
+Benckhausen, Mr
+_Bernard de Mandeville_
+Biarritz
+_Bifurcation_
+Bird, Dr
+_Bishop Blougram_
+_Bishop orders his Tomb_
+Blagden, Isa
+Blanc, Mme.
+_Blot in the 'Scutcheon_
+Bottinius
+Bowring, Sir J.
+Boyd, H.S.
+Boyle, Miss
+Bradley, Dean
+Bridell-Fox, Mrs
+Bronson, Mrs A.
+Browning, Robert (grandfather)
+Browning, Robert (father)
+Browning, Robert, W.B. (son)
+Browning, Sarah Anna (mother)
+Browning, Sarah Anna, or Sarianna (sister)
+Buchanan, Robert
+Burne-Jones, E.
+_By the Fireside_
+
+
+C
+
+_Caliban upon Setebos_
+Cambo
+Cambridge
+Caponsacchi
+Carlyle, Mrs
+Carlyle, Thomas
+Casa Guidi
+_Cavalier Tunes_
+Cavour
+_Cenciaja_
+Chapman & Hall
+Chappell, Arthur
+_Charles Avison_
+_Childe Roland_
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_
+_Christopher Smart_
+"Clarissa"
+Clayton, Rev. Mr
+_Cleon_
+_Clive_
+Cobbe, Miss F.P.
+_Colombe's Birthday_
+Conway, Dr M.
+Cook, Captain Surtees
+Cook, Mrs Surtees, _see_ Barrett, Henrietta
+Cornhill Magazine
+_Count Gismond_
+Coup d'état
+_Cristine_
+Croisic
+Crosse, Mrs Andrew
+Curtis, Mr and Mrs
+
+
+D
+
+_Daniel Bartoli_
+Dante
+Davidson, Captain
+_Death in the Desert_
+_De Gustibus_
+_Development_
+De Vere Gardens
+Dickens, Charles
+_Dîs Aliter Visum_
+_Doctor_ ----
+Domett, Alfred
+Dominus Hyacinthus
+_Donald_
+_Dramatic Idyls_ (First and Second Series)
+_Dramatic Lyrics_
+_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_
+_Dramatis Personae_
+_Dubiety_
+Dufferin, Lord
+Duffy, C. Gavan_
+
+
+E
+
+_Easter Day_, see _Christmas Eve and Easter Day
+Echetlos_
+Eckley, Mr
+Egerton-Smith, Miss
+Elgin, Lady
+Eliot, George
+_Englishman in Italy_
+_Epilogue_ (to "Asolando")
+_Epilogue_ (to "Dramatis Personae")
+_Epilogue_ (to "Pacchiarotto" volume)
+_Epilogue_ (to "Two Poets of Croisic")
+_Epistle to Karshish_
+Etretat
+_Evelyn Hope_
+
+F
+
+_Face, A_
+Fano
+Faraday
+Faucit, Helen
+_Fears and Scruples_
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_
+_Fifine at the Fair_
+_Filippo Baldinucci_
+Fisher, W.
+Fitzgerald, Edward
+Flaubert, G.
+_Flight of the Duchess_
+Flower, Eliza
+Flower, Sarah
+Flush
+_Forgiveness_
+Forster, John
+_Founder of the Feast_
+Fox, Caroline
+Fox, W.J.
+_Fra Lippo Lippi_
+_Francis Farini_
+Fuller, Margaret (see Ossoli, Countess d')
+Furnivall, F.J.
+
+
+G
+
+Gagarin, Prince
+_Garden Fancy_
+_Gerard de Lairesse_
+Gibson, J.
+Gladstone, W.E.
+_Glove_
+_Gold Hair_
+Goldoni
+Gosse, E.
+_Grammarian's Funeral_
+_Greek Christian Poets_
+Gresonowsky, Dr
+Gressoney
+Grove, Mr
+_Guardian Angel_
+Guido Franceschini
+
+
+H
+
+_Halbert and Hob_
+Hatcham
+Havre
+Hawthorne, N.
+"Helen's Tower"
+Herakles
+_Heretic's Tragedy_
+_Hervé Riel_
+Hickey, Miss E.H.
+Hillard, G.S.
+_Hippolytus and Aricia_
+_Holy Cross Day_
+Home, D.D.
+Hosmer, Harriet
+_House_
+_How it strikes a Contemporary_
+_How they brought the Good News_
+Hugo, Victor
+Hunt, Leigh
+
+
+I
+
+_Imperante Augusta natus est_
+_In a Balcony_
+_In a Gondola_
+_Inapprehensiveness_
+_In a Year_
+_Inn Album_
+_Ion_
+_Italian in England_
+_Ivàn Ivànovitch_
+_Ixion_
+
+
+J
+
+James, Henry
+_James Lee's Wife_
+Jameson, Anna
+_Jochanan Hakkadosh_,
+_Jocoseria_
+_Johannes Agricola_
+Jones, Thomas
+Jowett, Benjamin
+
+
+K
+
+Kean, Charles
+Kemble, Fanny
+Kenyon, F.G.
+Kenyon, John
+Kingsley, Charles
+_King Victor and King Charles_
+Kirkup, Seymour
+
+
+L
+
+"La Dame aux Camélias"
+Lamartine
+La Mura
+Landor, W.S.
+_La Saisiaz_
+_Last Poems_
+_Last Ride_
+Lehmann, R.
+Leighton, F.
+Lever, Charles
+Lido
+_Life in a Love_
+_Likeness_
+Llangollen, Vale of
+Lockhart, J.G.
+Long, Professor
+_Lost Leader_
+Lounsbury, Professor
+_Love among the Ruins_
+_Love in a Life_
+_Lover s Quarrel_
+Lucca, Baths of
+_Luria_
+Lytton, Robert
+
+
+M
+
+Maclise, Daniel
+Macready, W.C.
+"Madame Bovary"
+_Magical Nature_
+_Mansoor the Hierophant_
+Marston, Westland
+Martin, Lady (_see_ also Faucit, Helen)
+Martin, Sir T.
+_Martin Relph_
+_Master Hugues_
+"Maud" (Tennyson's)
+_May and Death_
+Mazzini
+Mellerio, A.
+_Memorabilia_
+_Men and Women_
+Merrifield, Mr and Mrs
+Mers
+Mignet
+Milsand, Joseph
+Mill, J.S.
+Milnes, Monckton
+Milton
+Mitford, Miss
+Monclar, A. de Ripert
+Monodrama
+Montecuccoli, Marchese
+Moore, Mrs Bloomfield
+Moxon, E.
+_Mr Sludge the Medium_
+_Muléykeh_
+Musset, A. de
+_My Last Duchess_
+
+
+N
+
+_Names_
+Napoleon, Louis
+_Narses_
+_Natural Magic_
+_Ned Bratts_
+Nightingale, Florence
+"Nobly, nobly Cape St Vincent"
+_Numpholeptos_
+
+
+O
+
+Ogle, Miss
+_Old Pictures in Florence_
+_One Way of Love_
+_Only a Player-Girl_
+Orr, Mrs
+Ossian, Macpherson's
+Ossoli, Countess d'
+
+
+P
+
+_Pacchiarotto_
+Page, Mr
+Paget, Sir James
+Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati
+Palazzo Manzoni
+Palazzo Rezzonico
+Palgrave, F.T.
+_Paracelsus_
+Paris
+Parker, Theodore
+_Parleyings with Certain People_
+Patmore, Emily
+_Patriot_
+_Pauline_
+_Pheidippides_
+Phelps
+_Pictor Ignotus_
+_Pied Piper_
+_Pietro of Abano_
+Pio Nono
+_Pippa Passes_
+Pippa's Tower
+_Pisgah Sights_
+Pisa
+Plutarch
+_Poems before Congress_
+Pompilia
+Pope (in "Ring and Book")
+_Pope and the Net_
+_Popularity_
+Pornic
+_Porphyria's Lover_
+Portraits
+Powers, H.
+_Pretty Woman_
+Primiero
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_
+Prinsep, V.
+Procter ("Barry Cornwall")
+_Prologue_ (to "La Saisiaz")
+_Prospice_
+_Protus_
+Prout, Father
+"Puseyism"
+
+
+R
+
+_Rabbi ben Ezra_
+Ready, Rev. T.
+_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_
+_Rephan_
+_Respectability_
+_Return of the Druses_
+_Reverie_
+Rhyming
+_Ring and the Book_
+Ristori
+Ritchie, Mrs A. Thackeray
+Rome
+Rossetti, D.G.
+Rossetti, W.M.
+_Rudel_
+Ruskin, John
+
+
+S
+
+Saint-Aubin
+Saint-Enogat
+_St Martin's Summer_
+St Moritz
+St Pierre de Chartreuse
+Sainte-Marie
+Saint-Victor, Paul de
+Salève
+Salvini
+Sand, George
+Sartoris, Adelaide
+_Saul_
+_Selections_ (from Browning)
+_Serenade at the Villa_
+Shah, the
+Shakespeare
+Sharp, William
+Shelley, P.B.
+_Shop_
+Siena
+Silverthorne, James
+Smith, Mr
+Society, The Browning
+_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_
+_Solomon and Balkis_
+_Sonnets from the Portuguese_
+_Sordello_
+_Soul's Tragedy_
+_Speculative_
+Spiritualism
+Stanhope, Lord
+_Statue and the Bust_
+Stead, Mr F.H.
+Stephen, Sir L.
+Sterling, John
+Stillmann, W.J.
+Story, W.W.
+Stowe, Harriet B.
+_Strafford_
+Swanwick
+Swedenborg
+
+
+T
+
+Talfourd
+Taylor, Bayard
+Tennyson, Alfred
+Tennyson, Frederick
+Tennyson, Hallam
+Thackeray, Miss, _see_ Ritchie, Mrs
+Thackeray, W.M.
+_The Worst of It_
+_Toccata of Galuppi's_
+_Too Late_
+_Transcendentalism_
+Trelawny, E.J.
+Trollope, Mrs
+Trollope, T.A.
+_Twins_
+_Two in the Campagna_
+_Two Poems by E.B.B. and R. B_.
+_Two Poets of Croisic_
+
+
+U
+
+_Up at a Villa_
+
+
+V
+
+Vallombrosa
+Venice, 47, 137, 334, 335, 339, 386-388
+Villers
+
+
+W
+
+_Waring_
+Warwick Crescent
+White, Rev. E.
+_White Witchcraft_
+Whitman, Walt
+_Why am I a Liberal_?
+Wiedemann, William
+Wilson (Mrs Browning's maid)
+Wise, T.J.
+Wiseman, Cardinal
+_Woman's Last Word_
+Wordsworth, W.
+
+
+Y
+
+Yates, Edmund
+"York" (a horse)
+York Street Chapels
+_Youth and Art_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12817 ***
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+<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 &amp; CO.
+NEW YORK; E.P. DUTTON &amp; 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;">&#8212;<i>Balaustion's Adventure</i>.&gt;
+</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>&#8212;the
+phrase is Mr Gladstone's&#8212;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&#8212;substantially&#8212;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&#8212;Parents&#8212;Boyhood&#8212;Influence of Shelley&#8212;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&#8212;Paracelsus&#8212;His failures
+and attainments&#8212;Sordello,
+a companion poem&#8212;Its obscurity&#8212;Imaginative qualities&#8212;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&#8212;Hatcham&#8212;Macready&#8212;Strafford&#8212;Venice&#8212;Bells
+and Promegranates&#8212;A Blot on the 'Scutcheon&#8212;Characters
+of passion&#8212;Characters of intellect</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER IV</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_IV">THE MAKER OF PLAYS</a>&#8212;<i>(continued)</i></p>
+<p>Women of the dramas&#8212;Dramatic style&#8212;Pippa Passes&#8212;Dramatic
+Lyrics and Romances&#8212;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&#8212;Meeting&#8212;Progress in
+friendship&#8212;Obstacles&#8212;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.&#8212;Journey to
+Italy&#8212;Pisa&#8212;Florence&#8212;Vallombrosa&#8212;Italian
+politics&#8212;Casa Guidi-Friends&#8212;Son
+born&#8212;Death of Browning's mother&#8212;Wanderings.</p>
+<p><br />
+CHAPTER VII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_VII">CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY</a></p>
+<p>Publication&#8212;Movements of Religious
+Thought&#8212;Dissent&#8212;Catholicism&#8212;Criticism&#8212;Difficulties
+of Christian life&#8212;Imaginative
+power of the poems&#8212;In Venice&#8212;Paris&#8212;England&#8212;Paris again&#8212;Coup
+d'&eacute;tat</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER VIII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_VIII">FROM 1851 TO 1855</a></p>
+<p>Essay on Shelley&#8212;New acquaintances&#8212;Milsand&#8212;George Sand&#8212;London&#8212;Casa
+Guidi&#8212;Spiritualism&#8212;Mr Sludge the Medium&#8212;Baths
+of Lucca&#8212;Rome&#8212;London&#8212;Tennyson's Maud</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER IX</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_IX">MEN AND WOMEN</a></p>
+<p>Rossetti's admiration&#8212;Beauty before teaching&#8212;The poet behind his
+poems&#8212;Isolated poems&#8212;Groups&#8212;Poems of love&#8212;Poems of
+Art&#8212;Poems of Religion</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER X</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_X">CLOSE OF MRS BROWNING'S LIFE</a></p>
+<p>Paris&#8212;Kenyon's death&#8212;Legacies&#8212;Death of Mr Barrett&#8212;Winter
+in Florence&#8212;Havre&#8212;Rome&#8212;Louis Napoleon&#8212;Landor&#8212;Siena&#8212;Poems
+before Congress&#8212;Rome again&#8212;Modelling in Clay&#8212;Casa
+Guidi&#8212;Death of Mrs Browning</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XI</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XI">LONDON: DRAMATIS PERSONAE</a></p>
+<p>Desolation&#8212;Return to London&#8212;Pornic&#8212;Social life&#8212;Dramatis
+Personae&#8212;Poems of music&#8212;Poems of hope and aspiration&#8212;A
+Death in the Desert&#8212;Epilogue&#8212;Caliban upon Setebos&#8212;Poems
+of Love</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XII">THE RING AND THE BOOK</a></p>
+<p>Holiday excursions&#8212;Sainte Marie&#8212;Miss Barrett dies&#8212;Balliol College
+and Jowett&#8212;Origin of the Ring and the Book&#8212;Its Plan&#8212;The
+Persons&#8212;Count Guido&#8212;Pompilia&#8212;Caponsacchi&#8212;The Pope&#8212;Falsehood
+subserving truth</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XIII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XIII">POEMS ON CLASSICAL SUBJECTS</a></p>
+<p>Saint-Aubin&#8212;Milsand&#8212;Miss Thackeray&#8212;Herv&eacute; Riel&#8212;Miss
+Egerton-Smith&#8212;Summer wanderings&#8212;Balaustion's Adventure&#8212;Aristophanes'
+Apology&#8212;The Agamemnon</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XIV</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XIV">PROBLEM AND NARRATIVE POEMS</a></p>
+<p>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau&#8212;Fifine at the Fair&#8212;Red Cotton
+Night-Cap Country&#8212;The Inn Album&#8212;Pachiarotto and other
+Poems</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XV</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XV">SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY</a></p>
+<p>La Saisiaz&#8212;Immortality&#8212;Two Poets of Croisic&#8212;Browning in
+society&#8212;Daily
+habits&#8212;Browning as a talker&#8212;Italy&#8212;Asolo&#8212;Mountain
+retreats&#8212;Mrs Bronson&#8212;Venice</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XVI</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XVI">POET AND TEACHER IN OLD AGE</a></p>
+<p>Popularity&#8212;Browning Society&#8212;Public honours&#8212;Dramatic Idyls&#8212;Spirit
+of acquiescence&#8212;Jocoseria&#8212;Ferishtah's Fancies</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XVII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XVII">CLOSING WORKS AND DAYS</a></p>
+<p>Parleyings&#8212;Asolando&#8212;Mrs Bronson&#8212;At Asolo&#8212;Venice&#8212;Death&#8212;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&#8212;an only son&#8212;was born on May 7, 1812.
+Two years later (Jan. 7, 1814) his sister, Sarah
+Anna&#8212;an only daughter&#8212;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&#8212;sometimes produced, as it
+were, instinctively, with a result that was unforeseen&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;with a real
+genius for drawing&#8212;but caring for nothing in the
+least except Dutch boors,&#8212;fancy, the father of
+Browning!&#8212;and as innocent as a child." Browning
+himself declared that he had not one artistic taste in
+common with his father&#8212;"in pictures, he goes 'souls
+away' to Brauwer, Ostade, Teniers ... he would turn
+from the Sistine Altar-piece to these&#8212;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&#8212;the
+cat for Helen, and Towzer and Tray as the Atreidai,&#8212;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&#8212;"the
+true type of a Scottish gentlewoman," said
+Carlyle&#8212;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&#8212;robust
+as he was in many ways&#8212;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&#8212;spider and toad
+and lizard&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Incondita</i>&#8212;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&#8212;probably in his thirteenth
+year&#8212;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&#8212;literature, languages, music&#8212;with
+energy. He was diligent&#8212;during a brief attendance&#8212;<a name="Page_9"></a>in
+Professor Long's Greek class at University College&#8212;"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&#8212;the
+formulas of revolution&#8212;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&#8212;apart from scattered comments in
+his letters&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;not less solid because it is aerial&#8212;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&#8212;his
+aunt Silverthorne bearing the cost of publication&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;for Browning
+was not of the temper to accept ultimate failures, and
+postulated a heaven to warrant his optimistic creed&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;that concerning
+the conduct of high, intellectual and spiritual powers&#8212;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&#8212;studied by
+the speaker under the wavering lights of his hectic
+malady and fluctuating moods of passion&#8212;are dealt
+with in a singularly interesting and original way. He
+describes, with strange and beautiful imagery, the
+cynical, bitter pleasure&#8212;few of us do not know it&#8212;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&#8212;even if it were
+but for moments&#8212;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&#8212;the revolutionary faith in liberty,
+equality and human perfectibility. Wordsworth in
+<i>The Prelude</i>&#8212;unpublished when Browning wrote
+<i>Pauline</i>&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;Saunders and Otley&#8212;did not know the
+author's
+name.&#8212;"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."&#8212;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 Am&eacute;d&eacute;e 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&#8212;as he himself believed&#8212;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&#8212;Browning pleads&#8212;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&#8212;Giordano Bruno&#8212;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 W&uuml;rzburg, while
+the autumn sun sinks behind St Saviour's spire, Festus&#8212;the
+faithful Horatio to this Hamlet of science&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and
+this is well&#8212;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-sc&egrave;ne</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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#8212;so described by
+Browning to Leigh Hunt&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Pauline, Paracelsus, Sordello</i>&#8212;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&#8212;W&uuml;rzburg
+and Basil, Colmar and Salzburg&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and yet with a
+difference&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and
+we can hardly doubt that Browning would have
+assigned himself a place in the class to which the poet
+of his imagination belongs&#8212;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":&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>"God has conceded two sights to a man&#8212;<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&#8212;and speaking in his own
+person Browning makes confession of his faith&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Paracelsus, Sordello</i>, and,
+on a more contracted scale, <i>Pauline</i>&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;like that of
+Salinguerra&#8212;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&#8212;may
+I hint it?"&#8212;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&#8212;"frenetic
+to be free." He was hail-fellow well-met, we are told&#8212;but
+is this part of a Browning legend?&#8212;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&#8212;"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"&#8212;speaking of his
+earlier years&#8212;"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&#8212;though
+why it should be so is hard to say&#8212;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&#8212;and
+<a name="Page_46"></a>not always judiciously&#8212;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&#8212;not
+home-sickness&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;Algerines and
+Spaniards&#8212;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&#8212;cities
+and mountain solitudes, which gave their warmth and
+colour to his unfinished poem&#8212;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:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>How many a year my Asolo,<br />
+</span><span>Since&#8212;one step just from sea to land&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>I found you, loved yet feared you so&#8212;<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&#8212;his chosen resort of meditation&#8212;"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"&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Pippa Passes</i>&#8212;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&#8212;<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>&#8212;Numbers
+4 and 5&#8212;followed each other in the same year 1843.
+<i>Colombe's Birthday</i>&#8212;the only number which is known
+to survive in manuscript&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;<i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i>&#8212;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&#8212;in four or five days&#8212;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&#8212;that of
+Lord Tresham&#8212;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"&#8212;writes Mrs Orr&#8212;"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&#8212;action incarnating and developing thought
+and passion&#8212;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&#8212;we may ask&#8212;wound around
+his own spirit some of the incurable illusions of worldly
+wisdom? No&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;sleek, ecclesiastical
+opportunist&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"Not me&#8212;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&#8212;and, before all
+others, the Italian race&#8212;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&#8212;seen not in love alone but in carven
+capital and on frescoed wall&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;it may be in a kind
+of divine folly&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;Browning would say&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;muffled up in a cloak&#8212;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&#8212;<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:&#8212;</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&#8212;a daughter not
+of Italy but of the Rhineland&#8212;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&#8212;her first&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;services: he's paid at least.<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>The Lady Carlisle of the same play&#8212;a creature in
+the main of Browning's imagination&#8212;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&#8212;and as such effective&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;all readers of his own sex
+must pronounce him too fortunate&#8212;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&#8212;not always successfully&#8212;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!&#8212;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&#8212;love
+and wrath and pride and pity&#8212;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&#8212;though in a less degree&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;here embodied
+in the symbol of a song&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;entirely
+<a name="Page_72"></a>true to his highest self&#8212;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&#8212;and not least in fantastic
+form&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;the Flying
+Englishman&#8212;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&#8212;a grief to booklovers!&#8212;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&#8212;before love enters&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;a somewhat enigmatical
+phrase&#8212;"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&#8212;though in a phase that may
+be called abnormal&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;a brother in religion! A noble
+hatred, transcending personal considerations, mingles
+with a noble and solemn love&#8212;the passion of country&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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!'&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;Browning in
+later poems frequently insists upon this&#8212;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&#8212;the Urbinate&#8212;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&#8212;which
+lacks all the manly virtue of genuine Paganism&#8212;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&#8212;and I leave it as I wrote it&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;as she afterwards told a correspondent&#8212;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&#8212;January 10, 1845&#8212;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&#8212;her Greek
+dramatists and her Elizabethan poets&#8212;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
+&AElig;schylus the divinest of divine Greek spirits? but
+how inadequately her correspondent has spoken of
+Dante! Shall they indeed&#8212;as he suggests&#8212;write
+something together? And then&#8212;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&#8212;replies the second voice&#8212;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"&#8212;"do not see me as long as you are
+mistrustful of"&#8212;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&#8212;as she believed&#8212;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&#8212;that of one infinitely her inferior&#8212;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&#8212;and she
+wrote always with crystalline sincerity&#8212;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&#8212;she
+declares&#8212;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&#8212;with the
+warranty of her published poem which had told of
+flowers sent in a letter&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#969;
+&#966;&#953;&#955;&#964;&#945;&#964;&#949;."</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&#8212;worse&#8212;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&#8212;" "Why, even then,"
+interrupted Arabel, "it would not <i>do</i>" One admirable
+trait, however, Mr Moulton Barrett did possess&#8212;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>&#8212;he
+believed&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;not to say truculence&#8212;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&#8212;not for himself&#8212;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;&#8212;faith in a woman's insight
+as finer than his own;&#8212;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&#8212;the punishment was not capital&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;dear and
+generous friend&#8212;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&#8212;later on&#8212;when an avalanche
+of aunts and uncles would precipitate itself on Wimpole
+Street&#8212;perspicacious aunts and amiable uncles who
+were wished as far off as Seringapatam, and who
+wrung from an impatient niece&#8212;to whom indeed
+they were dear&#8212;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&#8212;"the
+man of the pomegranates" as he was named
+by Mr Barrett&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;it is true&#8212;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&#8212;appears and passes away&#8212;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&#8212;a
+lock of hair, a ring, a picture, a child's penholder&#8212;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&#8212;womanhood
+delivered from death by love and from darkness by;
+light&#8212;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&#8212;walked, and was not carried&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;almost perfect in health&#8212;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&#8212;diplomatic or other&#8212;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&#8212;some &pound;400 a year, capable
+of considerable increase by re-investment of the
+principal&#8212;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&#8212;"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,&#8212;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&#8212;accompanied by a
+gaze of stern displeasure&#8212;"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&#8212;parents or sisters&#8212;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:&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;a perpetual <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>, but
+one so happy&#8212;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
+Si&egrave;cle. 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&#8212;perhaps thrushes and chianti&#8212;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&#8212;more than a year since&#8212;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 coup&eacute; 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&#8212;"a sort of balcony terrace which ...
+swims over with moonlight in the evenings." From
+Casa Guidi windows&#8212;and before long Mrs Browning
+was occupied with the first part of her poem&#8212;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,&#8212;<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&#8212;each in his degree<br />
+</span><span>Also God-guided&#8212;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&#8212;emancipated thus&#8212;<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&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;as yet far from its full development&#8212;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&#8212;from 1847 to 1851&#8212;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&#8212;"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 &amp; 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&#8212;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>exalt&eacute;e</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"&#8212;animal
+spirits preponderating a little too much over
+an energetic intellect&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;married
+to a person of moderate means and odiously
+"Tractarian views"&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;"an exfoliation of the rock"&#8212;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&#8212;1849&#8212;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&#8212;"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 Cam&eacute;lias</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 &amp; 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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;duly indignant at the interloper in
+their midst&#8212;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,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness<br />
+</span><span>Some defiled, discoloured web&#8212;<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&#8212;"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&#8212;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 G&ouml;ttingen, 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&#8212;and
+an alteration for the worse&#8212;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 G&ouml;ttingen 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&#8212;we
+trust it is&#8212;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&#8212;indeed
+he has not&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;as they are styled&#8212;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&#8212;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!"&#8212;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!&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;this strange phenomenon otherwise so
+unintelligible&#8212;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&#8212;as in <i>Rabbi ben Ezra</i> or <i>Abt
+Vogler</i>&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>That wrapped right hand which based the chin,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>That intense meditation fixed<br />
+</span><span>On His procedure,&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;love&#8212;had
+he ever made a discovery through human love
+of that which it forthshadows&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;the invalid of Wimpole
+Street and her husband&#8212;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>&agrave; 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&#8212;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&#8212;"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 Teufelsdr&ouml;ckh,
+<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&#8212;that is, the woman, the child and I&#8212;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-Elys&eacute;es, "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'&eacute;tat</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-Elys&eacute;es,
+from the Carrousel to the Arc de l'&Eacute;toile.
+To Mrs Browning it seemed the grandest of spectacles&#8212;"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&#8212;December 4th&#8212;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-Elys&eacute;es its promenaders. For the dishonoured
+"Libert&eacute;, Egalit&eacute;, Fraternit&eacute;," 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>&eacute;meutes</i>, because
+<a name="Page_143"></a>he hates some imperial names." He detested all
+Buonapartes, he would say, past, present, and to come,&#8212;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&#8212;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'&eacute;tat</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"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and
+with perfect justice&#8212;"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&#8212;"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"&#8212;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 Po&eacute;sie 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&#8212;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 r&eacute;gime 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 B&eacute;ranger 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 Cam&eacute;lias," 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&#8212;she wearing a
+respirator and smothered in furs&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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"&#8212;so
+named by Browning&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr
+Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet
+earnest&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;the gift of England&#8212;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&#8212;"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 attach&eacute;s 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&#8212;many
+of these from America&#8212;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&#8212;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 s&eacute;ance 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&#8212;absurdities are
+referred to 'low spirits,' falsehoods to 'personating
+spirits'&#8212;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&#8212;"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?"&#8212;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&#8212;slick,<br />
+</span><span>Their juice enriched his palate. "Could not Sludge!"<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>Haunters of the s&eacute;ance of every species are his
+aiders and abettors&#8212;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&#8212;put
+to his own uses by the poet and even the historian&#8212;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&#8212;coarse, perverted, abnormally directed
+and ineffective for moral good&#8212;of that sublime
+spiritual wisdom, which, turned to its proper ends
+and aided by the highest intellectual powers, is
+present&#8212;to take a lofty exemplar&#8212;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&#8212;Sludge's outbreak against
+his corrupter and tormentor&#8212;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&#8212;"a flashing scimitar that
+cuts through the mountain"&#8212;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&#8212;"that passion of the
+waters,"&#8212;so Mrs Browning describes it, "which makes
+the human heart seem so still." They entered Rome
+in a radiant mood.&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;a girl&#8212;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&#8212;that by Fisher&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;Fanny
+Kemble magnificent, "with her black hair
+and radiant smile," her sympathetic voice, "her eyes and
+eyelids full of utterance"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"my
+one light in London" is Mrs Browning's
+word&#8212;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&#8212;'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&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;and that it should do so means that the
+poet's total mind has been taken up into his art&#8212;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&#8212;those
+which interpret various careers or moods or moments
+of love; those which deal with the fine arts&#8212;painting,
+poetry, music&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#8212;," 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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Respectability</i>&#8212;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!&#8212;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 B&eacute;ranger's gay Bohemianism. The distance is wide
+between such &eacute;lan 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&#8212;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&#8212;he reflects&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;for
+he who has failed in the higher art has also failed
+in the higher love&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>a tall mountain, citied to the top,<br />
+</span><span>Crowded with culture!&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;the later hours of a philosopher
+and a poet&#8212;on the futile creed of slaves.</p>
+<p>Immortality and Divine love&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;it is the secret of Jesus&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;and casuistry, let it be remembered,
+is not properly the art of defending falsehood
+but of determining truth,&#8212;it is also a character-study
+chosen from the age of doubt; a dramatic monologue
+with an appropriate <i>mise en sc&egrave;ne</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&#8212;yet
+not wholly cynical&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;serious yet humorous&#8212;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&#8212;at
+least as he represents himself for the purposes of
+argument&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;"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&#8212;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 Colis&eacute;e by a desperate husband&#8212;"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&#8212;a fruitless one as it proved&#8212;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,&#8212;instead of what the few must&#8212;like: but after
+all I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave
+as I find it"&#8212;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&#8212;an evening resort where I never felt unhappy.
+How large a part of the real world, I wonder, are those
+two small people?&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;"a composition
+of Gehenna and Paradise"&#8212;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&#8212;"like a rose
+possessed by a fairy" is his mother's description&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"detestable place," Mrs Browning
+calls it&#8212;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 Chamb&eacute;ry
+"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;like
+a feeble yet majestic Lear&#8212;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&#8212;that
+of Latin alcaics directed against one private and
+one public foe&#8212;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&#8212;now near the close of his life&#8212;whose
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;tes</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&#8212;"very quiet and very
+intense"&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;a son
+of eighty-six years old&#8212;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&#8212;about
+September; in the Via Felice rooms were found.
+A new and great sorrow had fallen upon Mrs
+Browning&#8212;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&#8212;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 abb&eacute; 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&#8212;"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&#8212;"nothing ever," he declared,
+"made him so happy before." Of advancing years&#8212;Browning
+was now nearly forty-nine&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;June 28, 1861&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;so
+Browning describes it&#8212;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&#8212;which
+involved two hours of "weary battling"&#8212;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&#8212;for Browning
+still indulged a fantasy of his own in the choice
+of pets&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and the
+best&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;the story of Pompilia and Guido and
+Caponsacchi&#8212;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&#8212;a visit to be repeated in the two summers
+immediately succeeding&#8212;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&#8212;the internal
+rhyme in the second line of each stanza of <i>D&icirc;s aliter
+visum</i> and in the third line of the quatrains of <i>May
+and Death</i>&#8212;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,&#8212;gold in contrast with that pallid face&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;good
+easy man&#8212;who has lost a soul and gained an
+altar. A saint <i>manqu&eacute;</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&#8212;that of immediate
+inspiration, to which the constructive element&#8212;real
+though slight&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Poor men, God made, and all for that!&#8212;<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&#8212;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,&#8212;</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:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>When there was mid sea and the mighty things;<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>and this:&#8212;</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:&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;Father, Son and Spirit&#8212;is
+the utmost that we can conceive of things above us.
+Let us now put that knowledge&#8212;imperfect though
+it may be&#8212;to use. Power, intelligence, love&#8212;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&#8212;whatever
+they may have been&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;that is clearly discernible in
+the universe; His intelligence&#8212;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&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>The same and not the same, else unconceived&#8212;<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&#8212;historic fact,
+or higher
+fact expressed in myth&#8212;remains:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>So my heart be struck,<br />
+</span><span>What care I,&#8212;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&#8212;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>D&icirc;s 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&#8212;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;&#8212;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>&#8212;another poem of the failures of love&#8212;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&#8212;1864&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;'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>&#8212;</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>Herv&eacute; 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 &amp; 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&#8212;he believed&#8212;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 &quot;THE BOOK&quot; WAS FOUND BY BROWNING."
+ title="PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE &quot;THE BOOK&quot; 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&#8212;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&#8212;often
+stores up a subject long before he writes it.
+He has written his forthcoming work all consecutively&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;Maria,&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;God's servant,
+man's friend, the saviour of the weak, the foe of all who
+are vile&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;as perhaps they do&#8212;in such
+mysteries, they are senses in a state of transfiguration,
+senses taken up into the spirit&#8212;"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&#8212;"I am yours "&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute,<br />
+</span><span>With prudence, probity and&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;the
+vision
+seen from a higher and clearer standpoint&#8212;or a
+dictate of pure human passion. Eminent moments in
+life had an extraordinary interest for Browning&#8212;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 c&eacute;l&egrave;bre</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&#8212;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
+&AElig;schylus, 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>Herv&eacute; 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&#8212;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 "cong&eacute;
+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&#8212;ah, memory, how it haunts!&#8212;<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&#8212;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>&#8212;Maybe throb of heart, beneath which,&#8212;quickening farther
+than it knew,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and
+unguessed hue.<br />
+</span><span>Disembosomed, re-embosomed,&#8212;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 Tr&eacute;port.
+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 Sal&egrave;ve, near Geneva.
+During the visit to the Sal&egrave;ve 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&#8212;"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 &AElig;schylus</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&#8212;for we see and hear the performers
+and they are no longer masked&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;for now the position is reversed and the
+king shall receive her living, and yet believe her dead&#8212;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&#8212;"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>&#8212;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&#8212;O
+superb! I see what is coming;<br />
+</span><span>I see the high pioneer-caps&#8212;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, Herv&eacute;
+Riel, has more than a touch of the Heraclean frankness
+of gaiety in arduous effort. His Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch
+<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&#8212;<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,&#8212;"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&#8212;"an old pale-swathed majesty,"&#8212;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&#8212;he did in
+fact know&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;the Tin Isle which has
+Stratford
+at its heart&#8212;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&#8212;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 &agrave; Adm&egrave;te
+qu'il lui est
+interdit d'entendre sa voix avant qu'elle soit purifi&eacute;e de sa
+cons&eacute;cration
+aux Divinit&eacute;s infernales. J'aime mieux voir dans cette
+r&eacute;serve un scrupule
+religieux du po&egrave;te laissant &agrave; la morte sa dignit&eacute;
+d'Ombre. Alceste a &eacute;t&eacute;
+niti&eacute;e aux profonds myst&egrave;res de la mort; elle a vu
+l'invisible, elle a
+entendu l'ineffable; toute parole sortie de ses l&egrave;vres serait
+une
+divulgation
+sacril&egrave;ge. Ce silence myst&eacute;rieux la spiritualise et la
+rattache par un
+dernier lien au monde &eacute;ternel."</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&#8212;that which conserves rather than
+destroys&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;though
+not the highest&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;</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!&#8212;<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:&#8212;</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&#8212;<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&#8212;more than all&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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>&#8212;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&#8212;freedom accepting some hidden law&#8212;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&#8212;Helen,
+Cleopatra, the Saint of Pornic Church&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;imagination aiding his intellect&#8212;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&#8212;religious theories,
+philosophical systems, scientific hypotheses, artistic
+methods, scholarly attainments&#8212;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&#8212;which
+is the Divine&#8212;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&#8212;"From a given point evolve the infinite!"<br />
+</span><span>Not&#8212;"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&#8212;let this be frankly acknowledged&#8212;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&#8212;shall
+we say?&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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 L&eacute;once 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 L&eacute;once 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 L&eacute;once
+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&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;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:&#8212;"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 Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch.</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>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</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&#8212;as was Guido&#8212;</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&#8212;though too
+late&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;not always agreeably&#8212;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&#8212;not indolent&#8212;<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&#8212;but do you suppose that the poet lives
+no life of his own?&#8212;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&#8212;the
+description of those weapons of Eastern workmanship&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Horror coquetting with voluptuousness&#8212;<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 Sal&egrave;ve 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&#8212;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, Sal&egrave;ve 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&#8212;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&#8212;"rather
+with Infinitude." All through his mountain
+ascent the vigour of life is aroused within him; and,
+as he returns&#8212;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&#8212;What
+does death mean? Is it total extinction? Is it
+a passage into life?&#8212;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&#8212;conjectures and no more&#8212;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&#8212;myself and a power environing
+me&#8212;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&#8212;Browning goes on&#8212;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:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>I must say&#8212;or choke in silence&#8212;&#8212;"Howsoever
+came my fate,<br />
+</span><span>Sorrow did and joy did nowise&#8212;life well
+weighed&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;with all their chances, changes,&#8212;just
+probation&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;Oh how but, losing love, does
+whoso loves succeed<br />
+</span><span>By the death-pang to the birth-throe&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;strawberries, grapes, oranges&#8212;were
+in season; read, generally some piece of foreign
+literature, for an hour in his bedroom; then bathed;
+breakfasted&#8212;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&#8212;Browning's recommendation
+of Bach's "Crucifixus&#8212;et sepultus&#8212;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&#8212;and sometimes foamed&#8212;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 "&#8212;"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&#8212;an inscrutable personage&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;as Browning did in earlier years&#8212;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 Spl&uuml;gen, enjoyed the mountain air,
+walked vigorously, and wrote, with great rapidity, says
+Mrs Orr, his poem of Russia, <i>Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch</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&#8212;reading the Iliad, all my excuse!&#8212;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&#8212;afternoon I should say&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"delightful
+weeks&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;nay, some
+old friends&#8212;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&#8212;Mrs Bronson
+is our informant&#8212;whose wants or wishes he bore in
+mind&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;for pleasure as he teaches us is
+praise&#8212;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 Niccol&ograve; 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"&#8212;the
+seasons&#8212;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&#8212;see&#8212;<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&#8212;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 fa&ccedil;ade 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&#8212;"a stately temple
+of the rococo" is Mr Henry James's best word for it&#8212;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&#8212;dedicated also to Tennyson&#8212;which
+has been frequently reprinted, was arranged upon a
+principle, the reference of which to the poems chosen
+is far from clear&#8212;"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"&#8212;the thread&#8212;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&#8212;initiator
+of so much work that is invaluable to the student of
+our literature&#8212;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&#8212;not even an heresiarch&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#8212;&#8212;, 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> &#8212;&#8212; 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&#8212;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&#8212;"the great
+deed ne'er grows small." Browning's development
+of the Vergilian myth&#8212;"si credere dignum est"&#8212;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>Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch</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. Iv&agrave;n 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&#8212;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,&#8212;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!&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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>Mul&eacute;ykeh</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
+H&oacute;seyn 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
+H&oacute;seyn's loss is H&oacute;seyn'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&#8212;certainties
+even if illusions&#8212;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>&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;words spoken in the spirit of the
+afflicted Job&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;"</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Some smatch thereof,&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;what? "Husked
+lupines, and belike the feeder's self." The Dervish
+declares without shrinking the faith that is in him:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>"Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know<br />
+</span><span>Is&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;for Browning is nothing if he is not individualistic&#8212;in
+the life of each man as an individual. The
+conclusion arrived at is that no "bean-stripe"&#8212;each
+bean, white or black, standing for a day&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;emotional, it is
+true, as well as intellectual&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;"Dance, yellows and whites and reds"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;strenuous not indolent acquiescence&#8212;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&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Which, in the large, who sees to bless?<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>Or again&#8212;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&#8212;to confer enjoyment, leaving instruction&#8212;the
+fruit of enjoyment&#8212;to come later. True learning
+teaches through love and delight, not through pretentious
+didactics,&#8212;a truth forgotten by the whole tribe
+of eighteenth century versifiers. And once more&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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 r&ocirc;le in
+the tragi-comedy
+of foiled passion:&#8212;</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"&#8212;"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>"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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 vers&acirc;</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"&#8212;the words are Mrs Bronson's&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;but especially colour&#8212;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&#8212;if it be one&#8212;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"&#8212;so Mr R. Barrett Browning wrote to Mrs Bloomfield-Moore.
+"His death was what death ought to be, but rarely is&#8212;so said
+the doctor." (Quoted in an article on Browning by Mrs Bloomfield-Moore
+in Lippincott's Magazine&#8212;Jan.&#8212;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
+&amp; 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'&eacute;tat, <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>D&icirc;s
+Aliter Visum</i>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<i>Doctor</i>&#8212;&#8212;,
+<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>Herv&eacute;
+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>Iv&agrave;n
+Iv&agrave;novitch</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
+Cam&eacute;lias," <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>Mul&eacute;ykeh</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 />
+Sal&egrave;ve,
+<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>
+
+
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12817 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12817)
diff --git a/old/12817-8.txt b/old/12817-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Robert Browning
+
+Author: Edward Dowden
+
+Release Date: July 5, 2004 [EBook #12817]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TEMPLE BIOGRAPHIES
+
+Edited by Dugald Macfadyen, M.A.
+
+Robert Browning
+
+[Illustration: _Robert Browning, from a portrait in oil, for which he
+sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice 1880._]
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+BY EDWARD DOWDEN
+
+LITT.D., D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
+
+
+1904
+
+
+
+     If I, too, should try and speak at times,
+    Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
+    Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew,
+    Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake.
+
+--_Balaustion's Adventure_.
+
+
+
+
+Editor's Preface
+
+
+"In the case of those whom the public has learned to honour and admire,
+there is a _biography of the mind_--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.
+
+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."
+
+D.M.
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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
+_Sordello_. 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.
+
+The analysis of _La Saisiaz_ 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 _The Dark Blue Magazine_, making such modifications as suited my
+purpose, and she has contributed a passage to the pages which close this
+volume.
+
+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.
+
+E.D.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
+
+Ancestry--Parents--Boyhood--Influence of Shelley--Pauline
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PARACELSUS AND SORDELLO
+
+Visit to Russia--Paracelsus--His failures and attainments--Sordello, a
+companion poem--Its obscurity--Imaginative qualities--The history of a
+soul
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MAKER OF PLAYS
+
+New acquaintances--Hatcham--Macready--Strafford--Venice--Bells and
+Promegranates--A Blot on the 'Scutcheon--Characters of
+passion--Characters of intellect
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE MAKER OF PLAYS--_(continued)_
+
+Women of the dramas--Dramatic style--Pippa Passes--Dramatic Lyrics and
+Romances--Poems of Love and of Art
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+LOVE AND MARRIAGE
+
+First letters to Miss Barrett--Meeting--Progress in
+friendship--Obstacles--Marriage
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EARLY YEARS IN ITALY
+
+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.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FROM 1851 TO 1855
+
+Essay on Shelley--New acquaintances--Milsand--George Sand--London--Casa
+Guidi--Spiritualism--Mr Sludge the Medium--Baths of
+Lucca--Rome--London--Tennyson's Maud
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MEN AND WOMEN
+
+Rossetti's admiration--Beauty before teaching--The poet behind his
+poems--Isolated poems--Groups--Poems of love--Poems of Art--Poems of
+Religion
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CLOSE OF MRS BROWNING'S LIFE
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LONDON: DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE RING AND THE BOOK
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+POEMS ON CLASSICAL SUBJECTS
+
+Saint-Aubin--Milsand--Miss Thackeray--Hervé Riel--Miss
+Egerton-Smith--Summer wanderings--Balaustion's Adventure--Aristophanes'
+Apology--The Agamemnon
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+PROBLEM AND NARRATIVE POEMS
+
+Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau--Fifine at the Fair--Red Cotton Night-Cap
+Country--The Inn Album--Pachiarotto and other Poems
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY
+
+La Saisiaz--Immortality--Two Poets of Croisic--Browning in
+society--Daily habits--Browning as a talker--Italy--Asolo--Mountain
+retreats--Mrs Bronson--Venice
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+POET AND TEACHER IN OLD AGE
+
+Popularity--Browning Society--Public honours--Dramatic Idyls--Spirit of
+acquiescence--Jocoseria--Ferishtah's Fancies
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+CLOSING WORKS AND DAYS
+
+Parleyings--Asolando--Mrs Bronson--At Asolo--Venice--Death--Place in
+nineteenth-century poetry
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _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)_
+
+MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE, _from a drawing by Miss
+D. Noyes_
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, _from a drawing in chalk by Field Talfourd
+in the National Portrait Gallery_
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _from an engraving by J.G. Armytage_
+
+THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS STAYED, _a
+photograph_
+
+PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI, BY HIMSELF, _a detail from the fresco in the
+Cathedral at Prato, from a photograph by Alinari_
+
+ANDREA DEL SARTO, _from a print after the portrait by himself in the
+Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
+
+PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS FOUND BY BROWNING,
+_from a photograph by Alinari_
+
+THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss N. Erichsen_
+
+SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING, _from a letter to D.S. Curtis, Esq._
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _from a photograph (photogravure)_
+
+THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss Katherine
+Kimball_
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+Childhood and Youth
+
+
+The ancestry of Robert Browning has been traced[1] 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 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."[2] 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."[3]
+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.[4]
+
+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, 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 _The Ring and the Book_, in investigating and elucidating
+complex criminal cases.[5] 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 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."[6] 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 _Development_, 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 came nearer to it in intelligent sympathy as he grew older,
+and he had for long the satisfaction of enjoying his son's fame.
+
+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 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."[7]
+
+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 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 _troupe_ 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 _Fables_ and Quarles's _Emblems_,
+were succeeded by others which made a substantial contribution to his
+mind. A list given by Mrs Orr includes Walpole's _Letters_, Junius,
+Voltaire, and Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_. The first book he ever
+bought with his own money was Macpherson's _Ossian_, 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."[8]
+
+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--_Incondita_--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 _Queen Mab_ 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.[9] If ever there was a period of _Sturm und Drang_
+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--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
+_May and Death_. 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 _the_ 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 _Sturm und
+Drang_ can be divined through the ideas and imagery of _Pauline._[10]
+
+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:
+
+    You must be just before, in fine,
+    See and make me see, for your part,
+    New depths of the Divine!
+
+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.[11] Shelley 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.
+
+A time came when Robert Browning must make choice of a future career.
+His interests in life were 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 _Paracelsus, Sordello_, and _Bells and Pomegranates_ were
+published.
+
+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
+modification of this vast scheme _Paracelsus_, which includes more
+speakers than one, and _Sordello_, which is not dramatic in form, find
+their places. They were preceded by _Pauline_, 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.
+
+_Pauline_, published without the writer's name--his aunt Silverthorne
+bearing the cost of publication--was issued from the press in January
+1833.[12] 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
+_Pauline_ without re-handling it to any considerable extent. In truth
+_Pauline_ 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 always claim attention
+from the student of his mind and art.
+
+The poem is a study in what Browning in his _Fifine_ 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 _dramatis persona_ 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
+_Pauline_ the 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:
+
+    'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;
+    He rises on the toe; that spirit of his
+    In aspiration lifts him from the earth.
+
+The aspiration in Browning's later verse is a complex of many forces;
+here it is a simple poetic enthusiasm.
+
+By virtue of its central theme _Pauline_ is closely related to the poems
+which at no great distance followed--_Paracelsus_ and _Sordello_. 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 _Alastor_, the
+influence of which on Browning in writing _Pauline_ 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
+_Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_ by the old and simple name of
+God.
+
+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 _Pauline_, is more than a poet; he is rather
+of the Sordello type than of the type represented in Eglamor and
+Aprile.[13] 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, 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.
+
+Such reduced to a colourless and abstract statement is the theme dealt
+with in _Pauline_. 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 Browning's later poetry is already present and
+potent here.
+
+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:
+
+    And then I was a young witch whose blue eyes,
+    As she stood naked by the river springs,
+    Drew down a god: I watched his radiant form
+    Growing less radiant, and it gladdened me.
+
+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 _The
+Prelude_--unpublished when Browning wrote _Pauline_--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 _Pauline_ 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 ":
+
+    First went my hopes of perfecting mankind,
+    Next--faith in them, and then in freedom's self
+    And virtue's self, then my own motives, ends,
+    And aims and loves, and human love went last.
+    I felt this no decay, because new powers
+    Rose as old feelings left--wit, mockery,
+    Light-heartedness; for I had oft been sad,
+    Mistrusting my resolves, but now I cast
+    Hope joyously away; I laughed and said
+    "No more of this!"
+
+It is difficult to believe that Browning is wholly dramatic here; we
+seem to discover something of that period of _Sturm und Drang_, 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 _Alastor_ and
+_Prometheus Unbound._
+
+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
+_Monthly Repository_ (April 1833) which he then edited, Mr Fox wrote of
+_Pauline_ with admiration, and Browning was duly grateful for this
+earliest public recognition of his genius as a poet. In the _Athenaeum_
+Allen Cunningham made an effort to be appreciative and sympathetic. John
+Stuart Mill desired to be the reviewer of _Pauline_ in _Taifs Magazine_;
+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 _Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_, 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."[14]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: By Dr Furnivall; see _The Academy_, April 12, 1902.]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," ii. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Letter of R.B. to E.B.B.]
+
+[Footnote 4: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 5: Quoted by Mr Sharp in his "Life of Browning," p. 21, _n_.,
+from Mrs Fraser Cockran.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Autobiography of a Journalist," i. 277.]
+
+[Footnote 7: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 528, 529; and (for
+Ossian), ii. 469.]
+
+[Footnote 9: 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 _regular way_, from Hunt and Clarke." Mr Gosse in
+_Personalia_ gives a different account, pp. 23, 24.]
+
+[Footnote 10: The quotations from letters above are taken from J.C.
+Hadden's article "Some Friends of Browning" in _Macmillan's Magazine_,
+Jan. 1898.]
+
+[Footnote 11: 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 _man_ and Shelley, well, even the _poet_, with
+what they were sixty years ago." He declined Dr Furnivall's invitation
+to him to accept the presidency of "The Shelley Society."]
+
+[Footnote 12: Even the publishers--Saunders and Otley--did not know the
+author's name.--"Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," i. 403.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "V.A. xx," following the quotation from Cornelius Agrippa
+means "Vixi annos xx," _i.e._ "the imaginary subject of the poem was of
+that age."--Browning to Mr T.J. Wise.]
+
+[Footnote 14: 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 _Pauline_, was a fancy or a blind; Browning never resided at
+Richmond.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Paracelsus and Sordello
+
+
+There is little of incident in Browning's life to be recorded for the
+period between the publication of _Pauline_ and the publication of
+_Paracelsus_. 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 _Ivan
+Ivanovitch._
+
+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."[15] 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 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."[16] 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.
+
+In the winter of 1834 Browning was at work on _Paracelsus_, 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.
+
+In its combination of thought with passion, and not less in its
+expression of a certain premature worldly wisdom, _Paracelsus_ 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 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.
+
+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 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 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?
+
+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
+_mise-en-scène_. 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
+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.
+
+For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous 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,
+
+    The wondrous Paracelsus, life's dispenser,
+    Fate's commissary, idol of the schools
+    And courts,
+
+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, 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--
+
+    I have not been successful, and yet am
+    Most miserable; 'tis said at last.
+
+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."
+
+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 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
+
+    Like the dim circlet floating round a pearl.
+
+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:
+
+    And Michal sleeps among the roots and dews,
+    While I am moved at Basil, and full of schemes
+    For Nuremberg, and hoping and despairing,
+    As though it mattered how the farce plays out,
+    So it be quickly played!
+
+It is the last cry of his distempered egoism before the closing scene.
+
+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 _is_
+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.
+
+Were _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+We receive from _Paracelsus_ 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, 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 _Paracelsus_; 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"
+
+                                "cyclops-like
+    Staring together with their eyes on flame,"
+
+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.
+
+A companion poem to _Paracelsus_--so described by Browning to Leigh
+Hunt--was conceived by the poet soon after the appearance of the volume
+of 1835. When _Strafford_ was published two years later, we learn from a
+preface, afterwards omitted, that he had been engaged on _Sordello_.
+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.
+_Sordello_ was published in 1840, five years after _Paracelsus_. In the
+chronological order of Browning's poems, by virtue of the date of
+origin, it lies close to the earlier companion piece; in the logical
+order it is the completion of a group of poems--_Pauline, Paracelsus,
+Sordello_--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 _Sordello_ in its true position, side by
+side with _Paracelsus_.
+
+How the subject of _Sordello_ 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.
+
+"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, 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 exist. And thus, in two
+successive stages of study, the same reader may justly censure
+_Sordello_ 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 _The Preraphaelite Brotherhood Journal_ (26 February 1850),
+Browning imagined that his shorthand was Roman type of unusual
+clearness: "Marston says that Browning, before publishing _Sordello_,
+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
+_Journal_ 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 _Paracelsus_: "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 his sonnet?"[17]
+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.
+
+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
+_Pauline_, only that here the poet is not infirm in will, and, though
+loved by Palma, he is hardly a lover. Like the speaker of _Pauline_ 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
+_Pauline_, and exhibited more fully--and yet with a difference--in the
+Basil experiences of Paracelsus. Like the poet of _Pauline_, 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 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 _him_ 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 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.
+
+This, in brief, is the "history of a soul" which Browning has imagined
+in his _Sordello_. 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":--
+
+    "God has conceded two sights to a man--
+    One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,
+    The other, of the minute's work, man's first
+    Step to the plan's completion."
+
+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.
+
+These prolonged studies--_Paracelsus, Sordello_, and, on a more
+contracted scale, _Pauline_--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 _Sordello_ 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 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
+_Sordello_ 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Mrs Bronson; Browning in Venice. _Cornhill Magazine_, Feb.
+1902. pp. 160, 161.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Mrs Orr's "Handbook to Browning," pp. 10, 11.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+The Maker of Plays
+
+The publication of _Paracelsus_ 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 _Examiner_ 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.[18] 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, 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.
+
+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? _we_
+call that, such as that, a _rise_." 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 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.
+
+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 turned towards dramatic authorship with a view to
+theatrical performance. A play on a subject from later Roman history,
+_Narses_, was thought of and was cast aside. The success of Talfourd's
+_Ion_, 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.
+
+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.[19] The text was considerably altered--and not always
+judiciously--from that of the printed play, which had appeared before
+its production on the stage. Yet on the first night _Strafford_ was not
+damned, and on the second it was warmly applauded.[20] 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 _Sordello_.
+
+"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 _Norham
+Castle_, 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--_How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix_. The only
+adventure of the voyage was the discovery of an Algerine pirate ship
+floating keel uppermost; it righted suddenly under the stress of ropes
+from the _Norham Castle_, 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:--
+
+    How many a year my Asolo,
+      Since--one step just from sea to land--
+    I found you, loved yet feared you so--
+      For natural objects seemed to stand
+    Palpably fire-clothed![21]
+
+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, 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
+_Paracelsus_, which describe Constantinople at the hour of sunset.
+
+[Illustration: MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss D. NOYES.]
+
+The publication of _Sordello_ (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 _Sordello_ might have disheartened a poet of less
+vigorous will than Browning; he merely marched breast forward, and let
+_Sordello_ lie inert, until a new generation of readers had arisen. The
+dramas, _King Victor and King Charles_ and _The Return of the Druses_
+(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."[22] In other words Pippa
+had suddenly passed her poet in the wood.
+
+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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ successively appeared;
+with the eighth the series closed. The first number--_Pippa Passes_--was
+sold for sixpence; when _King Victor and King Charles_ 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--_Dramatic
+Lyrics_ (1842), _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). _The Return of
+the Druses_ and _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--Numbers 4 and 5--followed
+each other in the same year 1843. _Colombe's Birthday_--the only number
+which is known to survive in manuscript--came next in order (1844). The
+last to appear was that which included _Luna_, Browning's favourite
+among his dramas, and _A Soul's Tragedy_.[23] His sister, except in the
+instance of _Colombe_, was Browning's amanuensis. On each title-page he
+is named Robert Browning "Author of Paracelsus"--the "wholly
+unintelligible" _Sordello_ 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--_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--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.
+
+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.'"[24] 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 of a
+splendid thing after its conception like it." Things had gone ill with
+Macready at Drury Lane, and when the time for _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_
+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.[25] 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, grasp the hand of his old
+friend, and in a voice choked with emotion say, 'O Macready!'"
+
+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 _A Blot in
+the 'Scutcheon_ was given by Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre in
+November 1848, and with unquestionable success. A rendering of
+_Colombe's Birthday_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_.
+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 _Colombe's Birthday_ had
+been published, Browning sailed once more, in the autumn of 1844, for
+Italy.[26] As he journeyed northwards and homewards, from Naples (where
+they were performing an opera named _Sordello_) 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.[27]
+
+Browning's work as a playwright, consisting of eight pieces, or nine if
+we include the later _In a Balcony_, 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.[28]
+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 _dramatis personae_ 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 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.
+
+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. _Colombe's Birthday_ has a joyous ending, but the joy is 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 _is_ 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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 _dramatis persona_ 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, 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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _Pippa Passes_, 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:
+
+    The gift of the morning-star! Have I God's gift
+    Of the morning-star?
+
+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:
+
+     The only fault's with time;
+    All men become good creatures: but so slow.[29]
+
+Once again in Browning's earliest play, the test for the patriot Pym
+lies in the choice between two loyalties--one 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 18: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 19: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 20: 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. _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B._, ii. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 21: From the Prologue to _Asolando_, Browning's last volume.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Mrs Orr, "Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning," p. 54
+(1st ed.).]
+
+[Footnote 23: _A Soul's Tragedy_ was written in 1843 or 1844, and
+revised immediately before publication. See Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.,
+i. 474.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Letters of D.G. Rossetti to William Allingham, p. 168.]
+
+[Footnote 25: 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 _The Atlantic Monthly_, December
+1899, where questions are raised and some corrections are ingeniously
+made.]
+
+[Footnote 26: An uncle seems to have accompanied him. See _Letters of
+R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 57: and (for Shelley's Grave) i. 292; for
+"Sordello" at Naples, i., 349.]
+
+[Footnote 27: 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.)" _Rossetti Papers_, p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 28: See Mr R. Holt Hutton's article on Browning in "Essays
+Theological and Literary."]
+
+[Footnote 29: Luria withdraws from life "to prevent the harm Florence
+will do herself by striking him." _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 427.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+The Maker of Plays--_(Continued)_
+
+
+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 _The Return of the Druses_, 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 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:--
+
+    Come what, come will,
+    You have been happy.
+
+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 _Romeo and Juliet_ 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.
+
+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
+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:--
+
+     Is it over then?
+    Why he looks yellower than ever! Well
+    At least we shall not hear eternally
+    Of service--services: he's paid at least.
+
+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.
+
+In Browning's dramatic scene of 1853, _In a Balcony_, 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.[30]
+The young lovers, Constance and Norbert, are a highly 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.[31] Little more,
+however, than a situation is represented in this dramatic scene. Of
+Browning's full-length portraits of women in the dramas, the finest
+piece of work is the portrait of the happiest woman--the play-Duchess of
+Juliers, no longer Duchess, but ever
+
+    Our lady of dear Ravestein.
+
+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.
+
+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. _Strafford_, 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:
+
+    Come, dearest!--look, the little fairy, now
+    That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!
+
+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 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 _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ 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 _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, 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
+_Duchess of Malfi_, and Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_.
+
+In _King Victor and King Charles_ 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 _Strafford_ hardly entitles either drama to be
+named political. Browning was a student of history, but it was
+individuals and not society that interested him. The affairs of England
+and the affairs of Sardinia serve to throw out the figures of the chief
+_dramatis persons_; 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 _King Victor and King Charles_ 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 _The Return of the
+Druses_, 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.
+
+_Pippa Passes_ is singular in its construction; scenes detached, though
+not wholly disconnected, are strung pendant-wise upon the gold thread,
+slender but sufficiently 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 charmingly 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.
+
+_Pippa Passes_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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.
+
+And original, in the best sense of the word--entirely 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 _as_ he writes his _Englishman in Italy_,
+and by virtue of their eager obsession demand and summon forth the
+appropriate word.[32] The fisherman from Amalfi pitches down his basket
+before us,
+
+     All trembling alive
+    With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit,
+    --You touch the strange lumps,
+    And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner
+     Of horns and of humps.
+
+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:
+
+     God's own profound
+    Was above me, and round me the mountains,
+     And under, the sea,
+    And within me, my heart to bear witness
+     hat was and shall be.
+
+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:
+
+    And therefore bask the bees
+    On my flower's breast, as on a platform broad.
+
+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 _Garden Fancy_, which creeps
+and crawls with beetle and spider, worm and eft.[33] 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:
+
+    The grey sea and the long black land;
+    And the yellow half-moon large and low;
+    And the startled little waves that leap
+    In fiery ringlets from their sleep
+    As I gain the cove with pushing prow.
+
+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 _Saul_, which appeared as
+a fragment in the _Bells and Pomegranates_, and as a whole ten years
+later, with the awe and rapture of the spirit rising above the rapture
+of the senses.[34]
+
+Of these poems of 1842 and 1845 one _The Pied Piper_, was written in the
+spirit of mere play and was included in _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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, _Claret_ and _Tokay_, are no more than clever caprices of the
+fancy. One, _The Lost Lender_, 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 _Artemis
+Prologuizes_, is the sole remaining fragment of a classical drama,
+"Hippolytus and Aricia," composed in 1840, "much against my endeavour,"
+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.
+
+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 _Cavalier Tunes_, 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
+_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_; 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 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 _Porphyria's Lover_, 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.
+
+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 grotesque.
+In _Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli_ 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 _Count Gismond_ love is the
+deliverer; the motive of the poem is essentially that of the Perseus and
+Andromeda myth refined upon and mediaevalised. In _Cristine_ 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 _In a
+Gondola_ 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.
+
+The motives of two narrative poems, _The Glove_ and _The Flight of the
+Duchess_, 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 which the poet approves, to elucidate, not to
+obscure, what he represents as the truth of the situation. _The Flight
+of the Duchess_ 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 _The Glove_, 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.
+
+Another Duchess, who pined for freedom and never attained it, has her
+cold obituary notice from her bereaved Duke's lips in the _Dramatic
+Lyrics_ of 1842. _My Last Duchess_ was there made a companion poem to
+_Count Gismond_; 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 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 _Pictor
+Ignotus_ 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 _My Last
+Duchess_, is the address of the worldling Bishop, who lies dying, to the
+"nephews" who are 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+
+[Footnote 30: _In a Balcony_, published in _Men and Women_, 1855, is
+said to have been written two years previously at the Baths of Lucca.]
+
+[Footnote 31: 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?'"]
+
+[Footnote 32: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 33: See a very interesting passage on Browning's "odd liking
+for 'vermin'" in _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B._. i. 370, 371: "I always
+liked all those wild creatures God '_sets up for themselves_.'" "It
+seemed awful to watch that bee--he seemed so _instantly_ from the
+teaching of God."]
+
+[Footnote 34: Of the first part of _Saul_ Mr Kenyon said finely that "it
+reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles thrown into lyrical whirl and
+life" _(Letters R.B. and E.B.B_. i. 326).]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+Love and Marriage
+
+
+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.[35] Three years later Kenyon sent his cousin's new volumes of
+_Poems_ 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
+wrote enthusiastically.[36] 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 _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+_From a drawing in chalk by_ FIELD TALFOURD _in the National Portrait
+Gallery_.]
+
+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
+_dramatis personae_. Can she, as he alleges, really help him by her
+sympathy, by her counsel? Let him put ceremony aside and treat her _en
+bon camerade_; 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 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.
+
+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?
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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; 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.
+
+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 assured knowledge of what would constitute his supreme happiness.
+
+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 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 _Prometheus_ is able to put Greek characters to their most
+delightful use in her "[Greek: o philtate]."
+
+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 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 _do_"
+One admirable trait, however, Mr Moulton Barrett did possess--he was
+nearly always away from home till six o'clock.
+
+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 authority it is none the _less_--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."
+
+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 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 "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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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."[37] 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 all my idea
+of good, and _is_" "Let me be too near to be seen.... Once I used to be
+more uneasy, and to think that I ought to _make_ you see me. But Love is
+better than sight." "I love your love too much. And _that_ is the worst
+fault, my beloved, I can ever find in my love of _you_." 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 _did_ 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.
+
+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 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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 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?
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: Yours very truly, Robert Browning. _From an engraving by_
+J.G. ARMYTAGE.]
+
+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 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 _that man_ 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.[38] Then husband and wife parted. 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.
+
+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."[39] 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 _only_! As if
+one said _God only_. And we shall have _Him_ 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 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 _Paracelsus_."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 35: _Letters of E.B.B._, i. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 36: See _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 37: E.B.B. to R.B., March 30, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 38: E.B.B. to R.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 39: R.B. to E.B.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+Early Years in Italy
+
+
+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 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.
+
+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." 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.
+
+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 _tête-à-tête_, 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 _hadn't_." 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
+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 _trattoria_; 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.
+
+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." _Paracelsus_ and _Pippa_ 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."
+
+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 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!"
+
+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
+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.
+
+"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 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:
+
+    "Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
+      All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
+      Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
+    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
+    God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
+      Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
+      These shall I bid men--each in his degree
+    Also God-guided--bear, and gladly too?
+
+    But little do or can the best of us:
+      That little is achieved through Liberty.
+    Who then dares hold--emancipated thus--
+      His fellow shall continue bound? Not I
+    Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
+      A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."[40]
+
+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
+_Strafford_, 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; _he_ is not worth thinking of."[41] 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 offending
+authoress until by and by he came to like in her an agreeable woman.
+
+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 _Piazza_. Pitti with banners and _vivas_ 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.[42] 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
+_out_, 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 _in_, 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 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.
+
+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 drove day by day through the Cascine,
+passing on the way the carven window of the _Statue and the Bust_, and
+"the stone called Dante's," whereupon
+
+    He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned
+    To Brunelleschi's church.[43]
+
+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 _Poems_, 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
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ 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 _Vanity Fair_ and _The Princess, Jane Eyre_ and
+_Modern Painters_ somehow found their way to Casa Guidi.[44]
+
+Casa Guidi proper, the Casa Guidi which held the 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 _his_ being angry with _me_ 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 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.
+
+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 _Six months in Italy_, 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 her
+writings," says Mrs Browning, "... not only exalted but _exaltée_ 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 _Fraser's Magazine_, 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.
+
+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 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.[45] 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:
+
+    We were at Fano, and three times we went
+     To sit and see him in his chapel there,
+    And drink his beauty to our soul's content
+    --My angel with me too.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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 _Madame Bovary_ without flinching and approved the morals of _La
+Dame aux Camélias_, had their roots in English Puritanism.[46] 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 40: "Why am I a Liberal?" Edited by Andrew Reid. London,
+1885.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Letters of E.B.B., i. 442.]
+
+[Footnote 42: To Miss Mitford, August 24, 1848.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Casa Guidi Windows, i.]
+
+[Footnote 44: "Jane Eyre" was lent to E.B.B. by Mrs Story.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _To Miss Mitford, Feb. 18, 1850._]
+
+[Footnote 46: In January 1859, Pen was reading an Italian translation of
+_Monte Cristo_, and announced, to his father's and mother's amusement,
+that after Dumas he would proceed to "papa's favourite book, _Madame
+Bovary_".]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+Christmas Eve and Easter Day
+
+
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ 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 _Sordello_, 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 _you_ 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 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 _Aurora
+Leigh_ 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.
+
+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
+_Easter Day_; the spiritual life corporate in _Christmas Eve._ 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 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 _Apologia pro vita sua_ of Newman, and the _Literature and
+Dogma_ 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 _Christmas Eve_.
+
+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 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?
+
+    The whole face turned upon me full,
+     And I spread myself beneath it,
+     As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it
+    In the cleansing sun, his wool,--
+     Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness
+    Some defiled, discoloured web--
+     So lay I saturate, with brightness.
+
+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.
+
+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
+commentary 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.
+
+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
+
+     the pig-of-lead-like pressure
+    Of the preaching man's immense stupidity.
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+
+    Peevish as ever to be suckled,
+    Lulled with the same old baby-prattle
+    With intermixture of the rattle.
+
+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 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:
+
+    My heart does best to receive in meekness
+    That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
+    Where earthly aids being left behind,
+    His All in All appears serene
+    With the thinnest human veil between,
+    Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
+     The many motions of his spirit,
+    Pass as they list to earth from heaven.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+Having traversed the various forms of Christian faith and scepticism,
+the speaker in _Christmas Eve_ 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.
+
+Mrs Browning complained to her husband of what she terms the asceticism
+of _Easter Day_, 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 _see_ things as passionately as other people _feel_ them."
+_Easter Day_ 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 to
+his present questionings; he will try conclusions to the uttermost.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+    "Renounce the world!"--Ah, were it done
+    By merely cutting one by one
+    Your limbs off, with your wise head last,
+    How easy were it!--how soon past,
+    If once in the believing mood.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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; but at his best--as in _Rabbi ben
+Ezra_ or _Abt Vogler_--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 _Easter Day_, and we must watch the movement of the two. In a
+passage already quoted from _Christmas Eve_ 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:
+
+     He stood there. Like the smoke
+    Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke--
+    I saw Him. One magnific pall
+    Mantled in massive fold and fall
+    His head, and coiled in snaky swathes
+    About His feet; night's black, that bathes
+    All else, broke, grizzled with despair,
+    Against the soul of blackness there.
+    A gesture told the mood within--
+    That wrapped right hand which based the chin,--
+    That intense meditation fixed
+    On His procedure,--pity mixed
+    With the fulfilment of decree.
+    Motionless thus, He spoke to me,
+    Who fell before His feet, a mass,
+    No man now.
+
+The picture of the final conflagration of the Judgment Day is perhaps
+over-laboured, a descriptive _tour de force_, 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 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
+
+     grasps of guess
+    Which pull the more into the less,
+
+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:
+
+    Then did the form expand, expand--
+    knew Him through the dread disguise
+    As the whole God within his eyes
+    Embraced me.
+
+The Doomsman has in a moment become the Saviour. In all this, if
+Browning has the burden 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _à la carte_, 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 _Casa Guidi Windows_ 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."
+
+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 _Hamlet_ 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.
+
+It was at Devonshire Street that Bayard Taylor, the distinguished
+American poet and critic, made the 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.
+
+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, the Eternal No: "Why, sir," exclaimed Carlyle, "you have
+as many aspirations as Napoleon!"[47] 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.
+
+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 _coup d'état_ was an accomplished 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."
+
+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 _émeutes_, because 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 47: "Mrs Orr's Life and Letters of R.B.," 173.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+1851 to 1855
+
+
+It was during the month of the _coup d'état_ 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
+_dramatis persona_, 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, _Ideas_, to use the
+word of Plato, "seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine
+Hand"--which Ideas he discovers not so often in the 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 _The Cenci_
+and _Julian and Maddalo_ 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."
+
+For Browning the poet of _Prometheus Unbound_ 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 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 _Men and
+Women_ in _The Rambler_) 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 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 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.[48]
+
+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 _Sordello_ 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 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, _Parleyings with certain People of Importance_. "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 _Red Cotton
+Nightcap Country_ it is Milsand who is characterised in the lines:
+
+    He knows more and loves better than the world
+    That never heard his name and never may, ...
+    What hinders that my heart relieve itself,
+    O friend! who makest warm my wintry world,
+    And wise my heaven, if there we consort too.
+
+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 correspondent, to stand before Maison Milsand, and muse, and
+bless the threshold.[49]
+
+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.
+
+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 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 _shan't_ be proud, and I _won't_ be proud, and we _will_ 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; 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 _touch_ 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.
+
+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.[50] Florence
+Nightingale was also a welcome visitor, and her visit was followed by a
+gift of flowers. Invitations 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-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.
+
+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.[51] 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 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."[52]
+
+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 _Men and Women_. Mrs Browning was
+already engaged upon _Aurora Leigh_. "We neither of us show our work to
+one another," she wrote, "till it is finished. An artist must, I fancy,
+either find or _make_ 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 _Colombe's Birthday_ was given on the stage, with Helen Faucit
+in the leading part. 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
+_proprium_, 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."[53] 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.[54]
+
+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 prejudice 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.
+
+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 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 _The Times_ by Mr
+Merrifield (_Literary Supplement_, 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 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."[55] 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _Dramatis Personae_ 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 wrote _The Alchemist_, 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.
+
+"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
+_apologia_ 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
+which life itself were impossible even for the meanest organism in the
+shape of man.
+
+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?
+
+     It's too bad, I say,
+    Ruining a soul so!
+
+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 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
+
+     Throwing thus
+    His sense out, like an ant-eater's long tongue,
+    Soft, innocent, warm, moist, impassible,
+    And when 'twas crusted o'er with creatures--slick,
+    Their juice enriched his palate. "Could not Sludge!"
+
+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?
+
+     Gratitude to these?
+    The gratitude, forsooth, of a prostitute
+    To the greenhorn and the bully.
+
+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 described him in his outbreaks against the spiritualists,
+"with occasional foamings at the mouth."[56]
+
+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:
+
+    I guess what's going on outside the veil,
+    Just as the prisoned crane feels pairing-time
+    In the islands where his kind are, so must fall
+    To capering by himself some shiny night
+    As if your back yard were a plot of spice.
+
+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 this a power
+which cheats its possessor, or cheats those for whose advantage he gives
+it play?
+
+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 _The Ring and the Book_. 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS
+STAYED.
+
+_From a photograph._]
+
+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 mountains like wild eagles," renewed
+their former delights.
+
+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 _Men and Women_, of which his wife was able to
+report in the autumn that it was in an advanced state. _In a Balcony_
+was the most important achievement of the summer. "The scene of the
+declaration in _By the Fireside_" Mrs Orr informs us, "was laid in a
+little adjacent mountain-gorge to which Browning walked or rode."
+
+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 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.[57] 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 _The Letters of Mrs Browning_. 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 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.[58]
+
+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 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."
+
+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
+_Men and Women_ and _Aurora Leigh_ maintained in the writers a deep
+inward excitement of the kind that leaves an enduring result. A little
+joint publication; _Two Poems by E.B.B. and R.B_., containing _A Plea
+for the Ragged Schools of London_ and _The Twins_, 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
+_Date_ and _Dabitur_, the twins of Browning's poem, when we bear in mind
+the occasion with which it was originally connected.
+
+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 _he_ 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."[59] 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.
+
+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
+_Men and Women_[60] 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.
+
+The year 1855 was a fortunate year for English poetry. _Men and Women_
+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 _Maud_ had preceded Browning's volumes by some
+months. It bewildered the critics, but his brother poet did justice to
+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 _Maud_ 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 _Maud_," she
+goes on, "every now and then--'There's a wonderful touch! That's very
+tender! How beautiful that is!' Yes and it _was_ wonderful, tender,
+beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather
+music than speech."
+
+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 _Maud_ 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
+Caine, spoke of the incident in these terms: 'I once heard Tennyson
+read _Maud_; 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 _Maud_ came Browning and _Fra Lippo Lippi_--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."[61] 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."[62] 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 48: Browning's Essay on Shelley was reprinted by Dr Furnivall
+in "The Browning Society's Papers," 1881-84, Part I.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Letters of E.B.B. ii. 284. On Milsand, the article "A
+French friend of Browning," by Th. Bentzon, is valuable and
+interesting.]
+
+[Footnote 50: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 51: See Letters of E.B.B. ii. 127.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Letters of E.B.B. ii. 99.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Letter of F. Tennyson, in Memoir of Alfred Tennyson, by
+his son, chapter xviii.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Mr Kenyon's note, vol. ii. 142 of Letters of E.B.B.]
+
+[Footnote 55: _Times Lit. Supplement_, Dec. 5, 1902.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Miss Cobbe's testimony is similar, and Lehmann says that
+at Home's name Browning would grow pale with passion.]
+
+[Footnote 57: See "Story and his Friends," by Henry James, 1903, vol. i.
+pp. 284, 285.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Letters of E.B.B., ii. 345.]
+
+[Footnote 59: E.B.B. to Ruskin, _Letters_, ii. 199.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Which, however, did not prevent certain errors noted in a
+letter of Browning to Dante Rossetti.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His "Family Letters," i. 190,
+191.]
+
+[Footnote 62: 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.]
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI.
+
+_By himself. A detail from the fresco in the Cathedral at Praia from a
+photograph by_ ALINARI.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+Men and Women
+
+
+Rossetti expresses his first enthusiasm about _Men and Women_ 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 _Dramatis
+Personae_ 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?
+
+There is no need now to "lay siege" to the poems of _Men and Women_;
+they have expounded themselves, 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 _Fifine at the Fair_ 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 _Men and Women_ 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:
+
+    He with a 'look you!' vents a brace of rhymes,
+    And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
+    Over us, under, round us every side,
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Buries us with a glory, young once more,
+    Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.
+
+Browning in _Men and Women_ 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 _Bishop Blougram_ is rather a
+presentation of character than a train of argument or a chain of ideas.
+
+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,
+_Memorabilia_, addressed to one who had seen Shelley, and _Old Pictures
+in Florence_, 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
+_dramatis personae_ 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 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.
+
+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 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 ... _as_ different as a willow tree from a
+church tower."[63]
+
+The fifty poems of _Men and Women_, 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, _A
+Grammarian's Funeral_; 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, _Up at a Villa--Down
+in the City_, is made up of humorous observations of Italian city and
+country life, expressing the mundane tastes and prudent economies of an
+Italian person of quality; the other, "_De Gustibus_--," 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. _The Patriot_ 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, _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
+came_. 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 _King Lear_ 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.[64] 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 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.
+
+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 _Pretty
+Woman_ 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 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 _In a Year_, as swift and broken with pauses as the beating
+of a heart:
+
+    Dear, the pang is brief,
+     Do thy part,
+    Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
+     Grows belief!
+    Well, this cold clay clod
+     Was man's heart:
+    Crumble it and what comes next?
+     Is it God?
+
+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, _Any Wife to any Husband_; 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 _Men and Women_ two contrasted poems assure us that, while the
+passion of a man may be no more than _Love in a Life_, it may also be
+an unweariable _Life in a Love_.
+
+Of the poems of attainment one--_Respectability_--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:
+
+    The world's good word!--the Institute!
+     Guizot receives Montalembert!
+     Eh? Down the court three lampions flare:
+    Set forward your best foot!
+
+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, _By the Fireside_. 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.
+
+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 _Evelyn Hope_ 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 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, _Two in the Campagna_.
+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
+
+     Infinite passion, and the pain
+    Of finite hearts that yearn.[65]
+
+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 _One Way of Love_; 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:
+
+    She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
+    Lose who may--I still can say
+    Those who win heaven, blest are they!
+
+So, too, in _The Last Ride together_, 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 _A Serenade at the Villa_,
+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.
+
+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 _The Statue
+and the Bust_ 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
+
+    Duke grew straightway brave and wise.
+
+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:
+
+    So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
+    The glory dropped from their youth and love,
+    And both perceived they had dreamed a dream.
+
+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:
+
+    And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+    Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
+    Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
+
+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.
+
+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 _A Lovers'
+Quarrel_ 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, _A
+Womans Last Word_: In a quarrel 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, _Love among the
+Ruins_, 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 _By the Fireside, A Serenade at the Villa_, and _Two in the
+Campagna_, 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.
+
+Of the pieces relating to art those connected with the art of poetry are
+the least valuable. _Transcendentalism_ sets forth the old doctrine that
+poetry must be sensuous and passionate, leaving it to philosophy to
+deal with the naked abstractions of the intellect. _How it strikes a
+Contemporary_ shows by a humorous example how a poet's character and
+private life may be misconceived and misrepresented by those among whom
+he moves. _Popularity_ 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, _Master Hugues of
+Saxe-Gotha_, is a singularly successful _tour de force_, 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, _A Toccata of
+Galuppi's_, 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 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.
+
+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.[66]
+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
+_Protus_, 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 _Sordello_. 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
+strong objective touches, never protruding itself sentimentally in
+quest of tenderness or pity.
+
+"I spent some most delightful time," Rossetti wrote to Allingham shortly
+after the publication of _Men and Women_, "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--_encyclopedically_ beyond that of Ruskin himself." The poem _Old
+Pictures at Florence_, 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
+
+    Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
+     New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
+    To bring the invisible full into play!
+     Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?
+
+[Illustration: ANDREA DEL SARTO.
+
+_From a print after the portrait by himself in the Uffizi Gallery,
+Florence_.]
+
+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
+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:
+
+    Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+    Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
+    Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
+
+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.[67]
+
+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:
+
+    The beauty and the wonder and the power,
+    The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
+    Changes, surprises--and God made it all!
+
+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 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.[68]
+
+The same doctrine which is applied to art in _Old Pictures in Florence_,
+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 _A Grammarian's Funeral_. The time is "shortly
+after the Revival of Learning in Europe"; the place--
+
+     a tall mountain, citied to the top,
+    Crowded with culture!--
+
+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 _Hudibras_, 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 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:
+
+    That low man seeks a little thing to do,
+     Sees it and does it:
+    This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
+     Dies ere he knows it.
+
+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.
+
+Two of the poems of _Men and Women_ are pages tragic-grotesque and
+pathetic-grotesque from the history of religion. In _The Heretic s
+Tragedy_ 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 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. _Holy Cross Day_, 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.
+
+The historical distortions of the religion of Christ do not, however,
+disturb the faith of Browning in the Christian revelation of Divine
+love. In _Cleon_ 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; 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:
+
+     It is so horrible
+    I dare at times imagine to my need
+    Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
+    Unlimited in capability
+    For joy, as this is in desire for joy.
+
+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
+
+    Hath access to a secret shut from us?
+
+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 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.
+
+Immortality and Divine love--these were the great words pronounced by
+Paul and by Christ. _Cleon_ 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. _Saul_, in
+the completed form of 1855, and _An Epistle of Karshish_ 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:
+
+     O Saul, it shall be
+    A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me
+    Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
+    Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!
+
+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 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!
+
+    The very God! think, Abib: dost thou think?
+    So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too--
+    So through the thunder comes a human voice
+    Saying "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+    Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+    Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
+    But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+    And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
+
+Science has at least something to consider in a thought so strangely
+potent.
+
+A nineteenth-century sceptic's exposition of his Christian faith is the
+paradoxical subject of _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, 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 _mise en
+scène_; 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?[69] 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 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
+_Bishop Blougram's Apology_ 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?
+
+Browning's moral sympathies, we may rest assured, 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 _credenda_, 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?
+
+    With me faith means perpetual unbelief
+    Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,
+    Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
+
+When the time arrives for a beatific vision Blougram will be ready to
+adapt himself to the new state of 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--
+
+     Fool or knave?
+    Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
+    When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
+
+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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 63: Letters of R.B. and E.B.B., i. 388.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Mrs Orr's Handbook to Browning's Works, 266, note. For the
+horse, see stanzas xiii. xiv. of the poem.]
+
+[Footnote 65: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Browning's delight a few years later in modelling in clay
+was great.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Mrs Andrew Crosse, in her article, "John Kenyon and his
+Friends" (_Temple Bar Magazine_, 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!"]
+
+[Footnote 68: 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
+_Transcendentalism_, where Browning spoke of "Swedish Boehme," was
+indicated. He acknowledged the error and altered the text to "German
+Boehme."]
+
+[Footnote 69: Browning maintained to Gavan Duffy that his treatment of
+the Cardinal was generous.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+Close of Mrs Browning's Life
+
+
+When _Men and Women_ 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."[70] Happily the winter was of a miraculous mildness. Mrs
+Browning worked _Aurora Leigh_ in "a sort of _furia_," and Browning set
+himself to the task--a fruitless one as it proved--of rehandling and
+revising _Sordello_: "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 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.
+
+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,'_Papa, I'll
+be dood_.'" 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 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."
+
+The great event of the autumn for the Brownings and for the lovers of
+English poetry was the publication of _Aurora Leigh_. 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 _l_., to
+Mrs Browning 4,500 _l_. "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 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.
+
+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 _Aurora Leigh_, 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.[71] At first Mrs
+Browning was crushed and could shed no tear; she remained for many days
+in a state of miserable prostration; it was two months before she could
+write a letter to anyone outside the circle of her nearest kinsfolk.
+
+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 _me_" 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 _mirage_"; 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.
+
+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."
+
+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 _Galignanis_. 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.
+
+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, 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.
+
+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. But January froze the fountains,
+and the north wind blew with force. Mrs Browning had just completed a
+careful revision _of Aurora Leigh_, 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.
+
+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 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."[72] 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 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.
+
+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 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.[73] 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.[74] 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.[75] To his incredulous wife Browning spoke of
+Landor's sweetness 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.[76]
+
+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 vineyards" 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.[77]
+
+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 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 _tête-à-têtes_
+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 _osteria_, witnessed the dignified blindness of the
+Papal gendarmes to the offence, while Gigi liberally plied them with
+drink; 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.[78]
+
+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, _Poems
+before Congress._ 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 _furious_" 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. 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 _Mr Sludge the Medium_, for Home's
+performances, as he says, were at this time rampant.[79] 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.
+
+On June 4th 1860 they left Rome, travelling by vettura through Orvieto
+and Chiusi to their home in Florence.[80] 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 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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. 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 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.[81]
+
+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."[82] A little later she was cast
+down by the 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.
+
+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.[83]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 70: Letters of E.B.B. (To Mrs Jameson), ii. 221.]
+
+[Footnote 71: F.G. Kenyon. _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 263.]
+
+[Footnote 72: "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.)]
+
+[Footnote 73: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Letters of E.B.B., ii. 354.]
+
+[Footnote 75: 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. _Letters of E.B.B_., ii. 309, 310.]
+
+[Footnote 76: On Browning's action in the affairs of Landor see
+Forster's _Life of Landor_, and the letters of Browning in vol. ii. of
+Henry James's _Life of Story_ (pp. 6-11).]
+
+[Footnote 77: See, for this residence at Siena, an interesting letter of
+Story to C. Eliot Norton in Henry James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 14,
+15.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Condensed from information given by Prinsep to Mrs Orr,
+_Life and Letters of R.B._, pp. 234-37.]
+
+[Footnote 79: _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 388, note. Mr Kenyon suggests _A
+Death in the Desert_ as at least possibly meant. _The Ring and the Book_
+"certainly had not yet been begun."]
+
+[Footnote 80: Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the
+journey to Story: Henry James's _W.W. Story_, ii. pp. 50-52.]
+
+[Footnote 81: H. James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.]
+
+[Footnote 82: 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." _W.W. Story_, vol. i.p. 286.]
+
+[Footnote 83: 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 _W.W.
+Story_, 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+London: Dramatis Personae
+
+
+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."[84] Yet something remained to sustain
+him.
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+platform. Browning pulled his hat over his face and was
+unrecognised.[85] 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.
+
+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 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.[86] 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.
+
+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 _Cornhill
+Magazine_, 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 _Last Poems_; in
+1863, her _Greek Christian Poets_; in 1865 he prepared a volume 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-work was carried on by plying other faculties than those which
+give its highest value to poetry.[87]
+
+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.[88] 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 _Dramatis Personae_. The story of _Gold Hair_ and the
+landscape details of _James Lee's Wife_ 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 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.[89]
+
+"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 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,
+
+     Trembled on the verge
+    Of monkhood: trick of cowl and taste of scourge
+    He tried: then, kicked not at the pricks perverse,
+    But took again, for better or for worse,
+    The old way of the world, and, much the same
+    Man o' the outside, fairly played life's game.
+
+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:
+
+    Strength may conclude in Archelaos' court,
+    And yet esteem the silken company
+    So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown,
+    For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve.
+    Strength amid crowds as late in solitude
+    May lead the still life, ply the wordless task.[90]
+
+One cannot prescribe a hygiene to poets; the poet of passionate
+contemplation, such as was Wordsworth, could hardly quicken or develop
+his peculiar faculty 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.
+
+In 1864 _Dramatis Personae_ was published. It might be described as
+virtually a third volume of _Men and Women_. 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 _A
+Death in the Desert_, which had hardly been reached before. Yet
+substantially the volume is a continuation of the poems of 1855; except
+in one instance, where Tennyson's method in _Maud_, that of a sequence
+of lyrics, is adopted, the methods are the same; the predominating
+themes of _Men and Women_, love, art, religion, are the predominating
+themes of _Dramatis Personae._ A slight metrical complication--the
+internal rhyme in the second line of each stanza of _Dîs aliter visum_
+and in the third line of the quatrains of _May and Death_--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.
+
+_Mr Sludge, "the Medium_" 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:
+
+    Hair such a wonder of flix and floss,
+    Freshness and fragrance--floods of it too!
+    Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross.
+
+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 _manqué_, 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 psychological
+contrasts of the ambiguous creature, saint-sinner, and the visual
+contrast of
+
+     that face, like a silver wedge
+    'Mid the yellow wealth,
+
+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.
+
+No poem in the volume of _Dramatis Personae_ is connected with pictorial
+art, unless it be the few lines entitled _A Face_, 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 _Master Hugues_ 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
+_Abt Vogler_ 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
+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 _Toccata of Galuppi_ left behind as its
+relics the melancholy of mundane pleasure and a sense of its transitory
+existence. The extemporising of _Abt Vogler_ fills the void which it has
+opened with the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
+unseen.
+
+Faith, victor over loss, in _Abt Vogler_, is victor over temporal decay
+in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. 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 _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ 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 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
+_Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is death as a friend. In the lines entitled _Prospice_
+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 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 _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ may be set the
+uncompromising realism of _Apparent Failure_, 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--
+
+    Poor men, God made, and all for that!--
+
+is not quenched, nor is the hope quenched that
+
+     After Last returns the First,
+    Though a wide compass round be fetched,
+    That what began best, can't end worst.
+
+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.
+
+In 1864 under somewhat altered conditions, and from a ground somewhat
+shifted, Browning in _A Death in the Desert_ and the _Epilogue_ to
+"Dramatis Personae" continued his apology for the Christian 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:
+
+    Outside was all noon and the burning blue.
+
+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,--
+
+     We would not lose
+    The last of what might happen on his face;
+
+and this:--
+
+    When there was mid sea and the mighty things;
+
+and this:--
+
+    Lie bare to the universal prick of light;
+
+and these:--
+
+    The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,
+    And could not write nor speak, but only loved.
+
+Such lines, however, are made to be read _in situ_.
+
+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 within them a larger
+and more enduring belief. The acorn has not perished because it has
+expanded into an oak.
+
+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 _Epilogue_ 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:
+
+    Oh, dread succession to a dizzy post,
+    Sad sway of sceptre whose mere touch appals.
+
+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:
+
+    Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
+    O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
+    From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet calls?
+
+    That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
+    Or decomposes but to recompose,
+    Become my universe that feels and knows.[91]
+
+In the great poem of 1868-69, _The Ring and the Book_, one speaker, the
+venerable Pope, like St John of _A Death in the Desert_, 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:
+
+    Lies bare to the universal prick of light.
+
+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
+
+    All questions in the earth and out of it.
+
+But whether the truth of the early centuries be an absolute historic
+fact,
+
+    Or only truth reverberate, changed, made pass
+    A spectrum into mind, the narrow eye--
+    The same and not the same, else unconceived--
+
+the Pope dare not affirm. Nor does he regard the question as of urgent
+importance at the present day; the effect of the Christian
+tale--historic fact, or higher fact expressed in myth--remains:
+
+     So my heart be struck,
+    What care I,--by God's gloved hand or the bare?
+
+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.[92]
+
+If the grotesque occupies a comparatively small place in _Dramatis
+Personae_, 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,
+
+    With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
+
+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
+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,
+
+    Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
+
+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.
+
+Except the short piece named _May and Death_, 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 _Dramatis Personae_, as originally
+published, are all poems of love. _A Likeness_, 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 _Confessions_. 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. _Youth and Art_ may be placed beside the earlier
+_Respectability_ 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 _Dîs Aliter Visum_, a variation on the same or a kindred theme, where
+our young Bohemian sculptor is replaced by the elderly poet, 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 _Too Late_ 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. _The Worst of it_--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 _James Lee's Wife_ (named in the first edition
+by a stroke of perversity _James Lee_), 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 84: Letter to Story in Henry James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p.
+91 and p. 97.]
+
+[Footnote 85: H. James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p. 100.]
+
+[Footnote 86: "Rossetti Papers," p. 302.]
+
+[Footnote 87: In 1863 Browning gave time and pains to revising his
+friend Story's _Roba di Roma_.]
+
+[Footnote 88: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 89: Was the poem _Gold Hair_? If three stanzas were added to
+the first draft before the poem appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_ the
+number of lines would have been 120. Stanzas 21, 22 and 23 were added in
+the _Dramatis Personae_ version.]
+
+[Footnote 90: _Aristophanes' Apology_ (spoken of Euripides).]
+
+[Footnote 91: Compare with _Epilogue: Third Speaker_ the lines from _A
+Death in the Desert_:
+
+    Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,
+    Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,
+    As though a star should open out, all sides,
+    Grow the world on you, as it is my world.
+
+[Footnote 92: 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
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ in chapter xvi.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+The Ring and the Book
+
+
+The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ 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 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 _home_!' I think I should fairly end it
+all on the spot."[93]
+
+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, 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 _Two Poets of
+Croisic_--
+
+    Croisic, the spit of sandy rock which juts
+     Spitefully north,
+
+they returned in the following summer. During this second visit
+(September 1867) that most spirited ballad of French heroism, _Hervé
+Riel_, was written, though its publication belongs to four years
+later.[94]
+
+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 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 son."[95] 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.[96] 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 _The Ring and the
+Book_. The two remaining volumes followed in January and February 1869.
+
+[Illustration: PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS
+FOUND BY BROWNING.
+
+_From a photograph by_ ALINARI.]
+
+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 threshold of Casa Guidi[97].
+That night his brain was a-work; pacing the terrace of Casa Guidi, while
+from Felice church opposite came
+
+     the clear voice of the cloistered ones,
+    Chanting a chant made for mid-summer nights,
+
+he gave himself up to the excitement of re-creating the actors and
+re-enacting their deeds in his imagination:
+
+    I fused my live soul and that inert stuff,
+    Before attempting smithcraft.
+
+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.'"[98] 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 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
+_The Ring and the Book_, he refers to having been in close converse with
+his old quarto of the Piazza San Lorenzo during four years:
+
+    How will it be, my four-years' intimate,
+    When thou and I part company anon?
+
+The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ 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."[99]
+
+When Carlyle met Browning after the appearance of _The Ring and the
+Book_, he desired to be complimentary, but was hardly more felicitous
+than Browning 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."[100] 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 _Clarissa_ 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 sentence of the critical
+Polonius--"This is too long." But neither _Clarissa_ nor _The Ring and
+the Book_ 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.
+
+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 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; a voice terrible in
+its sincerity, absolute in 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 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.
+
+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
+
+     That our human speech is naught,
+    Our human testimony false, our fame
+    And human estimation words and wind.
+
+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 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 _salon_ 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.
+
+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 _dramatis
+personae_ 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, 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
+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:--
+
+"Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
+
+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,"
+
+    While--see how this mere chance sown, cleft-nursed seed
+    That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot
+    Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,
+    Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire
+    To incorporate the whole great sun it loves
+    From the inch-height whence it looks and longs. My flower,
+    My rose, I gather for the breast of God.
+
+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--
+
+    Looks old, fantastic and impossible:
+    I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades.
+
+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.
+
+If any point in the whole long poem, _The Ring and the Book_, 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 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?[101] 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,
+
+    A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad,
+
+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
+
+     An eternity
+    Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth
+    O' the soul that then broke silence.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+    Till old experience do attain
+    To something of Prophetic strain.
+
+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--
+
+    Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute,
+    With prudence, probity and--what beside
+    From the other world he feels impress at times;
+
+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 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.
+
+_The Ring and the Book_ 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 how it was a gift hammered and filed
+during the years of smithcraft "in memoriam"; in memory and also with a
+hope.
+
+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. _The Ring and the Book_ 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--_Pacchiarotto and how he worked in distemper; with other Poems_.
+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. _The Inn Album_ 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 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. _The Ring and the Book_ 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.
+
+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 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 _The Ring and the Book_, 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 _The Inn Album_,
+and others are often revealers of sudden truth, which 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.[102]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 93: Letter to Miss Blagden, Feb. 24, 1870, given by Mrs Orr,
+p. 287.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Vivid descriptions of Le Croisic at an earlier date may be
+found in one of Balzac's short stories.]
+
+[Footnote 95: _Life of Jowett_ by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, i.
+400, 401.]
+
+[Footnote 96: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Such a book would naturally attract Browning, who, like
+his father, had an interest in celebrated criminal cases. In his
+_Memories_ (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 _cause célèbre_ of that kind within
+living memory.]
+
+[Footnote 98: _An Artist's Reminiscences_, by R. Lehmann (1894), p.
+224.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Rossetti Papers, p. 302.]
+
+[Footnote 100: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 101: The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi's
+monologue, II. 936-973, beginning with "Thought? nay, sirs, what shall
+follow was not thought."]
+
+[Footnote 102: I have used here some passages already printed in my
+_Studies in Literature_.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Poems on Classical Subjects
+
+
+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.[103] 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.[104] "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 accompanied 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.[105] 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.
+
+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 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."[106] 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,
+
+    Symbolic of the place and people too,
+
+_White Cotton Night-Cap Country_, the suggestion of Browning's title
+_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ is due. To her the poem is dedicated.
+
+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 he had gratified his American
+admirers by allowing _Gold Hair_ and _Prospice_ to appear in the
+_Atlantic Monthly_ previous to their inclusion in _Dramatis Persona._ 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 _Pall Mall Gazette_, 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 _Hervé Riel_ for use in the _Cornhill
+Magazine_ 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,
+"Truth above all things; so treat the matter as you please."[107]
+
+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, _The Founder of the Feast_, a poem not included in
+any edition of his works, he recalls these evenings of delight:
+
+      Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,
+    My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,
+      When, night by night--ah, memory, how it haunts!--
+      Music was poured by perfect ministrants,
+    By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim.
+
+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 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 _La Saisiaz_:
+
+    You supposed that few or none had known and loved you in the world:
+    May be! flower that's full-blown tempts the butterfly, not flower that's furled.
+    But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand
+    Bud to bell and out-spread flower-shape at the least warm touch of hand
+    --Maybe throb of heart, beneath which,--quickening farther than it knew,--
+    Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and unguessed hue.
+    Disembosomed, re-embosomed,--must one memory suffice,
+    Prove I knew an Alpine rose which all beside named Edelweiss?
+
+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 _Aristophanes' Apology_. "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 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 _La Saisiaz_, 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.
+
+The grouping of the works produced by Browning from the date of the
+publication of _The Ring and the Book_ (1868) to the publication of _La
+Saisias_ (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 which these gave rise extend at
+intervals over the whole decade. _Balaustion's Adventure_ was published
+in 1871, _Aristophanes' Apology_ in 1875, the translation of _The
+Agamemnon of Æschylus_ in 1877. Two of the volumes of this period,
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ (1871) and _Fifine at the Fair_ (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.[108] Two of the volumes are narrative poems, each tending to a
+tragic crisis; _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ (1873) is a story
+entangled with questions relating to religion; _The Inn Album_ (1875) is
+a tragedy of the passion of love. The volume of 1876, _Pacchiarotto with
+other Poems_, is the miscellaneous gathering of lyrical and narrative
+pieces which had come into being during a period of many years. Finally
+in _La Saisiaz_ 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, _The two Poets of
+Croisic_, which has in it much matter of honest mirth, and closes with
+the declaration that the test of greatness in an artist lies in his
+power of converting his more than common sufferings into a more than
+common joy.
+
+_Balaustion's Adventure_, 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."[109] 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 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 _Balaustions
+Adventure_:
+
+    Our Euripides the human,
+    With his droppings of warm tears.
+
+"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."[110]
+
+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,
+
+    Outsmoothing galingale and watermint,
+    Its mat-floor,
+
+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 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:
+
+     'Tis the poet speaks:
+    But if I, too, should try and speak at times,
+    Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
+    Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew--
+    Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake!
+
+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.
+
+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 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 with gladness the
+spirit of Alkestis just escaped from the shades.[111] 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.
+
+Browning, who delights to show how good is brought out of evil, or what
+appears such to mortal 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 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:
+
+    He was beginning to be like his wife.
+
+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,
+
+    When I betray her, though she is no more,
+    May I die.
+
+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.
+
+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
+_Sursum corda!_--a challenge and a summons to whatever manliness is in
+us. And the best of it is that sauntering the pavement or crossing the
+ferry we may happen to encounter this face of Herakles:
+
+    Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is coming;
+    I see the high pioneer-caps--I see the slaves of runners clearing the way,
+    I hear victorious drums.
+
+    This face is a life-boat.
+
+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:
+
+    Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world!
+    I think this is the authentic sign and sea!
+    Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
+    And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
+    Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
+    And recommence at sorrow.
+
+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
+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.
+
+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:
+
+    Therewith her whole soul entered into his,
+    He looked the look back, and Alkestis died--
+
+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.
+
+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. _Aristophanes' Apology_ is written from first to last with
+unflagging energy; the translation of the "Herakles" which it includes
+is a masculine and 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:
+
+     Such domineering deity
+    Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine
+    For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path
+    Which, purpling, recognised the conqueror.
+
+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 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):
+
+     All at once, large-looming from his wave,
+    Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge,
+    A sea-worn face, sad as mortality,
+    Divine with yearning after fellowship.
+    He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw;
+    So much she sees now, and does reverence.
+
+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.
+
+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 _in situ_ is a sufficient reward
+for reading many laborious pages that might almost as well have been
+thrown into an imaginary conversation in prose:
+
+    Then the grey brow sank low, and Sophokles
+    Re-swathed him, sweeping doorward: mutely passed
+    'Twixt rows as mute.
+
+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
+
+     Makes wise, not grave,--and glad,
+    Not grinning: whereby laughter joins with tears.
+
+Instead of making this advance he had retrograded; and it remained for a
+poet of a far-off future in the 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.
+
+The translation of _Agamemnon_, 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 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 _Agamemnon_ 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 _Agamemnon_ 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 103: 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?]
+
+[Footnote 104: Letter quoted by Mrs Orr, p. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 105: The attitude is reproduced in a photograph from which a
+woodcut is given in Mme. Blanc's article "A French Friend of Browning."]
+
+[Footnote 106: "Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning," by Annie
+Ritchie, pp. 291, 292.]
+
+[Footnote 107: "A Bibliography of the Writings of Robert Browning," by
+T.J. Wise, pp. 157, 158.]
+
+[Footnote 108: _Aristophanes' Apology_ is connected with these poems by
+its character as a casuistical self-defence of the chief speaker.]
+
+[Footnote 109: North's "Plutarch," 1579, p. 599.]
+
+[Footnote 110: "Les Deux Masques," ii. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 111: 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."]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+Problem and Narrative Poems
+
+
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, which appeared in December 1871, four
+months after the publication of _Balaustions Adventure_, 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[112] and whose talents he admired. Yet for a certain kind of
+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 _Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.
+
+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 _civitas hominum_, however remote from the
+ideal, to a sham _civitas Dei_ 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 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, _et pour cause_; 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 _apologia_ was admissible in the interests of truth
+and justice, and by placing this _apologia_ 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.
+
+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. _Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is an interesting intellectual exercise, and if
+this constitutes a poem, a poem it is; but the theme is fitter for a
+prose discussion. Browning'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:
+
+    So your fugue broadens and thickens,
+    Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
+    Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens!"
+
+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 _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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, 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.
+
+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 of Edmund Burke.[113] The record of the Prince's
+early and irresponsible aspirations for a free Italy--
+
+    Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught,
+    Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine
+    For ever!--
+
+with what immediately follows, would have satisfied the ardent spirit of
+Mrs Browning.[114] 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:--
+
+     The people here,
+    Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride
+    Above her pride i' the race all flame and air
+    And aspiration to the boundless Great,
+    The incommensurably Beautiful--
+    Whose very faulterings groundward come of flight
+    Urged by a pinion all too passionate
+    For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow:
+    Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave
+    Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous
+    In Art, the--more than all--magnetic race
+    To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind.
+
+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 _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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 succession of men of genius in the priesthood
+of the world--"The new power slays the old, but handsomely."
+
+In _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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 _Fifine at the Fair_ (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
+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 _Fifine at the Fair_ as the virtue of
+tar-water is the subject of Berkeley's _Siris_. The poem is in fact
+Browning's _Siris_--a chain of thoughts and feelings, reaching with no
+break in the chain, from a humble basis to the heights of speculation.
+
+But before all else _Fifine at the Fair_ is a poem. Of all the longer
+poems which followed _The Ring and the Book_ 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 are essentially parts of the texture of the poem,
+yet each has a lustre or a shimmer or grave splendour of its own.
+
+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 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.
+
+The speaker in _Fifine at the Fair_ 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
+expresses an idea which Browning has repeatedly expressed in
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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 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:
+
+     His problem posed aright
+    Was--"From a given point evolve the infinite!"
+    Not--"Spend thyself in space, endeavouring to joint
+    Together, and so make infinite, point and point:
+    Fix into one Elvire a Fair-ful of Fifines!"
+
+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.[115]
+
+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 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 _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_:
+
+    Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and embrace
+    Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself.
+
+And he would have pleaded that art, which he styles
+
+     The love of loving, rage
+    Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
+    For truth's sake, whole and sole,
+
+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 _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ 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 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.
+
+The moral is just, and the story bears it well. Yet Browning's own
+conviction that man's highest and 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:
+
+     Quick conclude
+    Removal, time effects so tardily,
+    Of what is plain obstruction; rubbish cleared,
+    Let partial-ruin stand while ruin may,
+    And serve world's use, since use is manifold.
+
+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,
+
+    To damage him aloft, brain us below,
+    When new vibrations bury both in brick.
+
+For which sane word, if not for all the pages of his poem, we may feel
+gratefully towards the writer. It 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 _mamestra brassicae_ 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.
+
+The second narrative poem of this period, _The Inn Album_ (1875), is in
+truth a short series of dramatic scenes, placed in a narrative
+frame-work. It is as concentrated as _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ is
+diffuse; and the unities of time and place assist the tragic
+concentration. A recast of _The Inn Album_ 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.[116] 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 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 _dramatis personae_, 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:
+
+    The wooded watered country, hill and dale
+    And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,
+    A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift
+    O' the sun-touched dew.
+
+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.
+
+In this poem Browning reverts to his earlier method of clearly and
+simply dividing the evil from the good. We are not embarrassed by the
+mingling of truth with sophistry; our instinctive sympathies are not
+held in check, but are on the contrary reinforced by the undisguised
+sympathies of the writer. We are no more in doubt where wrong and where
+justice lie than if Count Gismond were confronting Count Gauthier. The
+avenger, indeed, is no champion of romance; he is only a young English
+snob, a little slow of brain, a little unrefined in manner, a "clumsy
+giant handsome creature," who for a year has tried to acquire under an
+accomplished tutor the lore of cynical worldliness, and has not
+succeeded, for he is manly and honest, and has the gentleness of
+strength; "for ability, all's in the rough yet." Of his education the
+best part is that he has once loved and been thwarted in his love. And
+now in a careless-earnest regard for his cousin his need is that of
+occupation for his big, idle boy's heart; he wants something to do,
+someone also to serve. Browning wishes to show the passion of
+righteousness, which suddenly flames forth and abolishes an evil thing
+as springing from no peculiar knightly virtue but from mere honest human
+nature. The huge boy, somewhat crude, somewhat awkward, with a moral
+temper still unclarified, has enough of our good, common humanity in him
+to hold no parley with utter wickedness, when once he fully apprehends
+its nature; therefore he springs upon it in one swift transport of rage
+and there and then makes an end of it. His big red hands are as much the
+instruments of divine justice as is the axe of Ivàn Ivànovitch.
+
+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 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 _naïveté_, 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--
+
+    Into that sad obscure sequestered state
+    Where God unmakes but to remake the soul
+    He else made first in vain,
+
+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.
+
+The lady, again, with her superb statue-like beauty, her low wide brow
+
+     Oppressed by sweeps of hair
+    Darker and darker as they coil and swathe
+    The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black,
+
+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:
+
+     Did you love me once?
+    Then take love's last and best return! I think
+    Womanliness means only motherhood;
+    All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
+    But, having run the circle, rests at home.
+
+Her husband, good man, will not suffer acutely for her loss; he will be
+true to duty, and continue to dose his flock with the comfortable dogma
+of hell-fire, in which not one of them believes.
+
+The _Pacchiarotto_ volume of 1876 was the first collection of
+miscellaneous poetry put forth by Browning since the appearance, twelve
+years previously, of _Dramatis Personae_[117] 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
+_Pacchiarotto_, 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 _Epilogue_ 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 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.
+
+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--_laissez-faire_, 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 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.
+
+The Browning who masks as Shakespeare in _At the Mermaid_ disclaims the
+ambition of heading a poetical faction, condemns the Byronic
+_Welt-schmerz_, 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 _House_; 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 _Shop_ 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 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.
+
+But the volume of 1876 contains better work than these pieces of
+self-assertion. The two love-lyrics _Natural Magic_ and _Magical Nature_
+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.
+_Bifurcation_ 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 _St
+Martin's Summer_ 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. _Fears and Scruples_ 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:
+
+    All my days I'll go the softlier, sadlier
+     For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill
+    Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier
+     Lives my friend because I love him still?"
+
+And the friend will value love all the more which persists through the
+obstacles of partial ignorance.[118] The blank verse monologue _A
+Forgiveness_, 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--
+
+    Horror coquetting with voluptuousness--
+
+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 _Filippo Baldinucci_ recalls the comedy and the pathos
+of _Holy Cross Day_, 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. _Cenciaja_, a
+note in verse connected with Shelley's _Cenci_, 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 _Numpholeptos_ 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 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 _La belle Dame sans merci_, and her
+worshipper is as desperately lost as the knight-at-arms of Keats's poem.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 112: See Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. p. 417.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Pages 46, 47 of the first edition.]
+
+[Footnote 114: Pages 58-60.]
+
+[Footnote 115: It may here be noted that Dante Rossetti in a morbid mood
+supposed that certain passages of _Fifine_ were directed against
+himself; and so ceased his friendship with Browning.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Fanny Kemble also derived from the story of Lord De Ros
+the subject of her "English Tragedy."]
+
+[Footnote 117: Some sentences in what follows are taken from a notice of
+the volume which I wrote on its appearance for _The Academy_.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See Browning's letter to Mr Kingsland in "Robert
+Browning" by W. G. Kingsland (1890), pp. 32, 33.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Solitude and Society
+
+
+The volume which consists of _La Saisiaz_ and _The Two Poets of Croisic_
+(1878) brings the work of this decade to a close.[119] _La Saisiaz_, 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 individual 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.
+
+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
+
+    One by one came lamping--chiefly that prepotency of Mars.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:--
+
+    I must say--or choke in silence----"Howsoever came my fate,
+    Sorrow did and joy did nowise--life well weighed--preponderate."
+
+If this failure be ordained by necessity, I shall bear it as best I can;
+but, if this life be all, nothing shall 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.
+
+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:
+
+    I have lived then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
+    This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
+    Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
+    If (to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)
+    If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
+    And life, time,--with all their chances, changes,--just probation--space,
+    Mine for me.
+
+Grant this hypothesis, and all changes from irrational to rational, from
+evil to good, from pain to a strenuous joy:--
+
+     Only grant a second life, I acquiesce
+    In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst assaults
+    Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more exalts
+    Gain about to be.
+
+Thus out of defeat springs victory; never are we so near to knowledge as
+when we are checked at the bounds of ignorance; beauty is felt through
+its opposite; good is known through evil; truth shows its potency when
+it is confronted by falsehood;
+
+    While for love--Oh how but, losing love, does whoso loves succeed
+    By the death-pang to the birth-throe--learning what is love indeed?
+
+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:
+
+    Hope the arrowy, just as constant, comes to pierce its gloom, compelled
+    By a power and by a purpose which, if no one else beheld,
+    I behold in life, so--hope!
+
+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 _more_ 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 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."[120]
+
+Browning's confession in _La Saisias_ 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 _The Two Poets of Croisic_, which was written in London
+immediately after _La Saisiaz_, 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:
+
+     Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse,
+    Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear,
+    Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face
+    Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race.
+
+This is good counsel for art; but not wholly wise counsel for life.
+Sorrow, indeed, is not wronged by 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.
+
+When _La Saisiaz_ 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 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 _Times_ and
+_Daily News_ 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 servants he was a considerate friend rather than a master.
+
+So far Mr Grove as reported in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (Dec 16, 1889).
+
+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.[121] 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 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.
+
+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."[122] A writer in the
+first volume of _The New Review_, 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, 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 _Lothair_ 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 _bonhomie_, softened but did not by any
+means disguise the sense of his power."[123] 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 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."[124]
+
+Mr Henry James in his "Life of Story"[125] 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 _that_ 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 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[126]. 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 things which commend themselves, without a preacher,
+to our love.
+
+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, _Ivàn Ivànovitch_. 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, _Ned Bratts_. 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."[127] 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 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.[128] 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 _popolo_ 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.'"
+
+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 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
+_The Century Magazine_. 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."[129] 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 doctoring."[130] 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.[131] 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."
+
+[Illustration: THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss N. ERICHSEN.]
+
+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 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 _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 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.[132] 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."[133] 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, _nearly_, and I breathe in the pleasant
+idleness at every 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."[134] 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.[135] 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.
+
+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 _Palazzo_ 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, 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--
+
+     Clothed with murder of His best
+    Of harmless beings.
+
+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
+
+     Fed with murder of His best
+    Of harmless beings,
+
+and laughed, innocently enough, with his good sister over the delicious
+"mouthfuls for cardinals."[136] 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."[137] 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, if only to stand and be blown about by the sea
+wind."[138] 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
+_Pippa Passes_ 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.
+
+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 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 _Sordello_. 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.[139] Returning from his walks
+on the Lido or wanderings through the little _calli_, 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. 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 _Toccata of
+Galuppi_ 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:
+
+    There throng the People: how they come and go,
+     Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb--see--
+    On Piazza, Calle, under Portico
+     And over Bridge! Dear King of Comedy,
+    Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so,
+     Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!
+
+The brightness and lightness of southern life soothed Browning's
+northern strenuousness of mood. He would 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![140] 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 119: Some parts of what follows on _La Saisiaz_ have already
+appeared in print in a forgotten article of mine on that poem.]
+
+[Footnote 120: "An Artist's Reminiscences," by R. Lehmann (1894), p.
+231.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Thus he declaimed to Robert Buchanan against Walt
+Whitman's writings, with which, according to Buchanan, he had little
+acquaintance.]
+
+[Footnote 122: "Autobiography of a Journalist," ii. 210.]
+
+[Footnote 123: From the first of three valuable articles by Mr Rossetti
+in _The Magazine of Art_ (1890) on "Portraits of Robert Browning."]
+
+[Footnote 124: Robert Browning, "Personalia," by Edmund Gosse, pp. 81,
+82.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Anna Swanwick, "A Memoir by Mary L. Bruce," pp. 130, 131.
+To Dr Furnivall he often spoke of Mrs Browning.]
+
+[Footnote 127: From Mrs Bronson's article in _The Century Magazine_,
+"Browning in Venice."]
+
+[Footnote 128: Related more fully in Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in
+Asolo" in _The Century Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote 129: Mrs Bronson's "Browning in Venice" in _The Century
+Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote 130: To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 28, 1884.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Some notices of Browning in Wales occur in Sir T.
+Martin's "Life of Lady Martin."]
+
+[Footnote 132: Letter to Dr Furnivall, August 29, 1881.]
+
+[Footnote 133: To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 7, 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 134: To Dr Furnivall, August 21, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 135: See for fuller details the letter in Mrs Orr's _Life of
+Browning_, pp. 407, 408.]
+
+[Footnote 136: So described by Mrs Bronson.]
+
+[Footnote 137: To Dr Furnivall, Oct. 11, 1881.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Quoted by Mrs Bronson.]
+
+[Footnote 139: Mrs Orr, "Life of Browning," p. 400.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Mrs Bronson records this.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Poet and Teacher in Old Age
+
+
+During the last decade of his life Browning's influence as a literary
+power was assured. The publication indeed of _The Ring and the Book_ 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
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ were sold in five days, and says of
+_Balaustion's Adventure_ "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 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.[141] 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 as an obscure heretic--not even an
+heresiarch--of literature.
+
+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 _The Names_, 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 _Titus Andronicus_.
+
+In 1879 appeared _Dramatic Idyls_ and in the following year _Dramatic
+Idyls, Second Series_. They differed in two respects from the volumes of
+miscellaneous 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 _Ned Bratts_ as a poem of
+religious experience, we may say that these themes are wholly absent
+from the _Dramatic Idyls_. 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
+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 _Doctor_----, 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 _Doctor_ ---- 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 _Pietro of Abano_
+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 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.
+
+The two series of _Dramatic Idyls_ included some conspicuous successes.
+The classical poems _Pheidippides_, _Echetlos_, _Pan and Luna_, 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:
+
+     He flung down his shield,
+    Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field
+    And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
+    Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through clay,
+    Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died--the bliss!
+
+The companion poem of Marathon, the story of the nameless clown, the
+mysterious holder of the ploughshare, is not less inspiring. The unknown
+champion, 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.
+
+In contrast with these classical pieces, _Halbert and Hob_ 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,
+
+    With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting face,
+
+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 swift, and what the poem
+represents as a just, abolishment from earth the mother who in _Ivàn
+Ivànovitch_ 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.[142]
+
+[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING.
+
+_From a letter to D.S. CURTIS, Esq._]
+
+_Martin Relph_ 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. _Ned Bratts_ 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 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
+
+    In solemn troops and sweet societies;
+
+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.
+
+Browning's method as a story-teller may be studied with special
+advantage in _Clive_. 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 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 _Muléykeh_, 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.
+
+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 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 _Pisgah Sights_ of the
+_Pacchiarotto_ 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
+_Jocoseria_, some of an old man's imaginative passion in _Asolando_, and
+in both volumes, and still more clearly in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ may be
+seen an old man's spirit 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 _Paracelsus_, 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.
+
+In _Jocoseria_, which appeared in Browning's seventy-first year (1883),
+he shows nothing of his boisterous 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
+_La Saisiaz_ and the graceful epilogue to _The Two Poets of Croisic_,
+and continued in the songs of _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and _Asolando_--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
+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 _Jochanan
+Hakkadosh_, 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 the soul and fits it for further wayfaring. The ultimate faith
+of Jochanan the Saint had been already expressed by Browning:
+
+    Over the ball of it,
+    Peering and prying,
+    How I see all of it,
+    Life there, outlying!
+    Roughness and smoothness,
+    Shine and defilement,
+    Grace and uncouthness:
+    One reconcilement.
+
+But even to his favourite disciple the sage is unable so to impart the
+secret that Tsaddik's mind shall really embrace it.
+
+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 _Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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 itself into a corresponding truth respecting the love of man
+and woman.
+
+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:
+
+     I starve in soul:
+    So may mankind: and since men congregate
+    In towns, not woods--to Ispahan forthwith!
+
+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?"[143] 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 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. _The Family_ 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:
+
+      Be man and nothing more--
+    Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears,
+    And craves and deprecates, and loves and loathes,
+    And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes
+    And show God granted most, denying all.
+
+The same spirit of acceptance of our intellectual and moral limitations
+is applied in _The Sun_ 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 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."
+
+The presence of evil in a world created and governed by One all-wise,
+all-powerful, all-loving, is justified in _Mirhab Shah_ 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 _A Camel-driver_; 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 afterwards,
+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--
+
+    Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it!
+
+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 _Te Deum_, let it be when we have enjoyed our plate of
+cherries. The glorious lamp in the Shah's pavilion lightens other 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--"
+
+    Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy,--
+    Some smatch thereof,--in best and purest love
+    Preferred thy earthly father? Dust thou art,
+    Dust shall be to the end.
+
+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?
+
+In _A Pillar at Sebzevah_, 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:--
+
+    "Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know
+    Is--I know nothing save that love I can
+    Boundlessly, endlessly."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If there be knowledge it shall vanish away; but charity never faileth.
+As for knowledge, the prize is in the process; as gain we must
+mistrust it, not as a road to gain:--
+
+     Knowledge means
+    Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+    That victory is somehow still to reach,
+    But love is victory, the prize itself.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+It has been necessary to transcribe in a reduced 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
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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:
+
+    Only, at heart's utmost joy and triumph, terror
+      Sudden turns the blood to ice: a chill wind disencharms
+    All the late enchantment! What if all be error--
+      If the halo irised round my head were, Love, thine arms?
+
+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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 141: Mr Gosse: "Dictionary of National Biography," Supplement,
+i. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 142: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 143: The story of the melon-seller was related by a
+correspondent of _The Times_ 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+Closing Works and Days
+
+
+_Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_, 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 _Fra Lippo Lippi_, 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 _With Daniel Bartoli_ is a story of love and loss,
+admirable in its presentation of the 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 _Bernard de
+Mandeville_, the description of the Chapel in _Christopher Smart_, the
+praise of a woman's beauty in _Francis Furini_, the amazing succession
+of mythological _tours de force_ in _Gerard de Lairesse_, 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 _Charles
+Avison_--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 _Gerard
+de Lairesse_. 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:
+
+    Daisies and grass be my heart's bed-fellows
+    On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:
+    Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!
+
+Of failure in intellectual or imaginative force the _Parleyings_ 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.
+
+Philosophy, Love, Poetry, Politics, Painting (the nude, with a discourse
+concerning evolution), Painting again (the modern _versus_ the
+mythological in art), Music, and, if we add the epilogue, the Invention
+of Printing--these are the successive themes of Browning's _Parleyings_,
+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 _danse Macabre_. The spirit of
+acquiescence--strenuous not indolent acquiescence--with our intellectual
+limitations is constantly present. 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?
+
+    Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--
+    Which, in the large, who sees to bless?
+
+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:
+
+    Only by looking low, ere looking high,
+    Comes penetration of the mystery.
+
+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 needful illusion in our
+educational process, since through evil we become aware of good. Thus at
+every point Browning accepts here, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 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 or incompetent heads are
+often conjoined with hearts that in a high degree deserve respect.
+
+_Asolando_, 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. _Asolando_
+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
+
+    Terror with beauty, like the Bush
+    Burning yet unconsumed
+
+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 _Epilogue_ has in it a
+certain energy, but the thews are those of an old 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
+_Reverie_, 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 _Reverie_, 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:
+
+    Life is--to wake not sleep,
+     Rise and not rest, but press
+    From earth's level where blindly creep
+     Things perfected, more or less,
+    To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+    Where amid what strifes and storms
+     May wait the adventurous quest,
+    Power is love.
+
+The voice of the poet of _Paracelsus_ and of _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is still
+audible in this latest of his prophesyings. And therefore he welcomes
+earth in his _Rephan_, earth, 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 _Development_, 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.
+
+The general impression left by _Asolando_ is that of intellectual and
+imaginative vigour. The series of _Bad Dreams_ is very striking and
+original in both pictorial and passionate power. _Dubiety_ 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
+_Speculative_, which is frankly a poem of old age, has in it the genuine
+passion of memory. _White Witchcraft_ does in truth revive the manner of
+earlier volumes. The
+
+    Infinite passion and the pain
+    Of finite hearts that yearn
+
+told of in a poem of 1855 is present, with a touch of humour to guard it
+from its own excess in the admirable _Inapprehensiveness_. The speaker
+who may not liberate his soul can perhaps identify a quotation, and he
+gallantly accepts his humble rôle in the tragi-comedy of foiled
+passion:--
+
+     "No, the book
+    Which noticed how the wall-growths wave," said she,
+    "Was not by Ruskin."
+     I said "Vernon Lee."
+
+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 _Ponte dell' Angelo_, 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 _Beatrice Signorini_ 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 _The Pope and the Net_. In
+_Muckle-Mouth Meg_, laughter and kisses, audible from the page, and a
+woman's art in love-craft, turn tragedy in a hearty piece of comedy.
+_The Bean-Feast_ 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 mendicant's "sparkling
+eyes beneath their eyebrows' ridge":
+
+    "He's God!" shouts Lucius Varus Rufus: "Man
+    And worms'-meat any moment!" mutters low
+    Some Power, admonishing the mortal-born.
+
+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.[144]
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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 _The Athenaeum_,
+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.
+
+In Asolo, beside "the gate," Mrs Bronson had found and partly made what
+Mr Henry James describes as "one of the quaintest possible little
+places of _villegiatura_"--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 _gli
+Asolani_, 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?"
+
+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 unvarying 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."[145] 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."
+
+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, Browning was contentedly weak; and _vice versâ_."[146]
+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 _Herakles_, he, like Pope in reading a passage of his
+_Iliad_, was moved to tears. Dr Furnivall tells of the mounting
+excitement with which he once delivered in the writer's hearing his
+_Ixion_. 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."
+
+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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss KATHERINE KIMBALL.]
+
+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 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.[147] 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 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.[148]
+
+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.[149] A private service took place in the
+_Palazzo Rezzonico_; 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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. 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.
+
+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 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 _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 them existence.[150] 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 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.
+
+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
+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.
+
+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 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 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 144: Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the
+_Asolando_ poems. _Rosny_, _Beatrice Signorini_ and _Flute-Music_ were
+written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the _Bad Dreams_
+are, with less confidence, assigned to the same date. The _Ponte dell'
+Angelo_ "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs
+Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "_White Witchcraft_ 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."
+_The Cardinal and the Dog_, written with the _Pied Piper_ for Macready's
+son, is a poem of early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in
+Asolo" (_Century Magazine_, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889
+of _The Lady and the Painter_.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Mrs Orr, _Life_, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 146: W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., _Magazine of
+Art_, 1890, p. 182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.]
+
+[Footnote 147: "The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure
+Conway may also be found.]
+
+[Footnote 148: "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.)]
+
+[Footnote 149: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 150: E.D. West in the first of two papers, "Browning as a
+Preacher," in _The Dark Blue Magazine_. 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+[_The names of Robert Browning, the subject of this volume, and of
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning are not included in the Index_.]
+
+_Abt Vogler_
+Adams, Sarah Flower
+Aeschylus (see _Agamemnon_)
+_Agamemnon_
+Alford, Lady M.
+Ancona
+Andersen, Hans
+_Andrea del Sarto_
+_Any Wife to any Husband_
+_Apparent Failure_
+_Aristophanes' Apology_
+Arnold, Matthew
+Arnould, Joseph
+Arran, Isle of
+_Artemis Prologuizes_
+Asceticism
+Ashburton, Lady
+_Asolando_
+Asolo
+_At the Mermaid_
+Audierne
+_Aurora Leigh_
+
+
+B
+
+Bach
+Bacon, Francis
+_Bad Dreams_
+_Balaustion's Adventure_
+Balzac, H. de
+Barrett, Arabella
+Barrett, Edward M.
+Barrett, Henrietta (Mrs Surtees Cook)
+Bayley, Miss
+_Bean Feast_
+_Beatrice Signorini_
+_Bells and Pomegranates_
+Benckhausen, Mr
+_Bernard de Mandeville_
+Biarritz
+_Bifurcation_
+Bird, Dr
+_Bishop Blougram_
+_Bishop orders his Tomb_
+Blagden, Isa
+Blanc, Mme.
+_Blot in the 'Scutcheon_
+Bottinius
+Bowring, Sir J.
+Boyd, H.S.
+Boyle, Miss
+Bradley, Dean
+Bridell-Fox, Mrs
+Bronson, Mrs A.
+Browning, Robert (grandfather)
+Browning, Robert (father)
+Browning, Robert, W.B. (son)
+Browning, Sarah Anna (mother)
+Browning, Sarah Anna, or Sarianna (sister)
+Buchanan, Robert
+Burne-Jones, E.
+_By the Fireside_
+
+
+C
+
+_Caliban upon Setebos_
+Cambo
+Cambridge
+Caponsacchi
+Carlyle, Mrs
+Carlyle, Thomas
+Casa Guidi
+_Cavalier Tunes_
+Cavour
+_Cenciaja_
+Chapman & Hall
+Chappell, Arthur
+_Charles Avison_
+_Childe Roland_
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_
+_Christopher Smart_
+"Clarissa"
+Clayton, Rev. Mr
+_Cleon_
+_Clive_
+Cobbe, Miss F.P.
+_Colombe's Birthday_
+Conway, Dr M.
+Cook, Captain Surtees
+Cook, Mrs Surtees, _see_ Barrett, Henrietta
+Cornhill Magazine
+_Count Gismond_
+Coup d'état
+_Cristine_
+Croisic
+Crosse, Mrs Andrew
+Curtis, Mr and Mrs
+
+
+D
+
+_Daniel Bartoli_
+Dante
+Davidson, Captain
+_Death in the Desert_
+_De Gustibus_
+_Development_
+De Vere Gardens
+Dickens, Charles
+_Dîs Aliter Visum_
+_Doctor_ ----
+Domett, Alfred
+Dominus Hyacinthus
+_Donald_
+_Dramatic Idyls_ (First and Second Series)
+_Dramatic Lyrics_
+_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_
+_Dramatis Personae_
+_Dubiety_
+Dufferin, Lord
+Duffy, C. Gavan_
+
+
+E
+
+_Easter Day_, see _Christmas Eve and Easter Day
+Echetlos_
+Eckley, Mr
+Egerton-Smith, Miss
+Elgin, Lady
+Eliot, George
+_Englishman in Italy_
+_Epilogue_ (to "Asolando")
+_Epilogue_ (to "Dramatis Personae")
+_Epilogue_ (to "Pacchiarotto" volume)
+_Epilogue_ (to "Two Poets of Croisic")
+_Epistle to Karshish_
+Etretat
+_Evelyn Hope_
+
+F
+
+_Face, A_
+Fano
+Faraday
+Faucit, Helen
+_Fears and Scruples_
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_
+_Fifine at the Fair_
+_Filippo Baldinucci_
+Fisher, W.
+Fitzgerald, Edward
+Flaubert, G.
+_Flight of the Duchess_
+Flower, Eliza
+Flower, Sarah
+Flush
+_Forgiveness_
+Forster, John
+_Founder of the Feast_
+Fox, Caroline
+Fox, W.J.
+_Fra Lippo Lippi_
+_Francis Farini_
+Fuller, Margaret (see Ossoli, Countess d')
+Furnivall, F.J.
+
+
+G
+
+Gagarin, Prince
+_Garden Fancy_
+_Gerard de Lairesse_
+Gibson, J.
+Gladstone, W.E.
+_Glove_
+_Gold Hair_
+Goldoni
+Gosse, E.
+_Grammarian's Funeral_
+_Greek Christian Poets_
+Gresonowsky, Dr
+Gressoney
+Grove, Mr
+_Guardian Angel_
+Guido Franceschini
+
+
+H
+
+_Halbert and Hob_
+Hatcham
+Havre
+Hawthorne, N.
+"Helen's Tower"
+Herakles
+_Heretic's Tragedy_
+_Hervé Riel_
+Hickey, Miss E.H.
+Hillard, G.S.
+_Hippolytus and Aricia_
+_Holy Cross Day_
+Home, D.D.
+Hosmer, Harriet
+_House_
+_How it strikes a Contemporary_
+_How they brought the Good News_
+Hugo, Victor
+Hunt, Leigh
+
+
+I
+
+_Imperante Augusta natus est_
+_In a Balcony_
+_In a Gondola_
+_Inapprehensiveness_
+_In a Year_
+_Inn Album_
+_Ion_
+_Italian in England_
+_Ivàn Ivànovitch_
+_Ixion_
+
+
+J
+
+James, Henry
+_James Lee's Wife_
+Jameson, Anna
+_Jochanan Hakkadosh_,
+_Jocoseria_
+_Johannes Agricola_
+Jones, Thomas
+Jowett, Benjamin
+
+
+K
+
+Kean, Charles
+Kemble, Fanny
+Kenyon, F.G.
+Kenyon, John
+Kingsley, Charles
+_King Victor and King Charles_
+Kirkup, Seymour
+
+
+L
+
+"La Dame aux Camélias"
+Lamartine
+La Mura
+Landor, W.S.
+_La Saisiaz_
+_Last Poems_
+_Last Ride_
+Lehmann, R.
+Leighton, F.
+Lever, Charles
+Lido
+_Life in a Love_
+_Likeness_
+Llangollen, Vale of
+Lockhart, J.G.
+Long, Professor
+_Lost Leader_
+Lounsbury, Professor
+_Love among the Ruins_
+_Love in a Life_
+_Lover s Quarrel_
+Lucca, Baths of
+_Luria_
+Lytton, Robert
+
+
+M
+
+Maclise, Daniel
+Macready, W.C.
+"Madame Bovary"
+_Magical Nature_
+_Mansoor the Hierophant_
+Marston, Westland
+Martin, Lady (_see_ also Faucit, Helen)
+Martin, Sir T.
+_Martin Relph_
+_Master Hugues_
+"Maud" (Tennyson's)
+_May and Death_
+Mazzini
+Mellerio, A.
+_Memorabilia_
+_Men and Women_
+Merrifield, Mr and Mrs
+Mers
+Mignet
+Milsand, Joseph
+Mill, J.S.
+Milnes, Monckton
+Milton
+Mitford, Miss
+Monclar, A. de Ripert
+Monodrama
+Montecuccoli, Marchese
+Moore, Mrs Bloomfield
+Moxon, E.
+_Mr Sludge the Medium_
+_Muléykeh_
+Musset, A. de
+_My Last Duchess_
+
+
+N
+
+_Names_
+Napoleon, Louis
+_Narses_
+_Natural Magic_
+_Ned Bratts_
+Nightingale, Florence
+"Nobly, nobly Cape St Vincent"
+_Numpholeptos_
+
+
+O
+
+Ogle, Miss
+_Old Pictures in Florence_
+_One Way of Love_
+_Only a Player-Girl_
+Orr, Mrs
+Ossian, Macpherson's
+Ossoli, Countess d'
+
+
+P
+
+_Pacchiarotto_
+Page, Mr
+Paget, Sir James
+Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati
+Palazzo Manzoni
+Palazzo Rezzonico
+Palgrave, F.T.
+_Paracelsus_
+Paris
+Parker, Theodore
+_Parleyings with Certain People_
+Patmore, Emily
+_Patriot_
+_Pauline_
+_Pheidippides_
+Phelps
+_Pictor Ignotus_
+_Pied Piper_
+_Pietro of Abano_
+Pio Nono
+_Pippa Passes_
+Pippa's Tower
+_Pisgah Sights_
+Pisa
+Plutarch
+_Poems before Congress_
+Pompilia
+Pope (in "Ring and Book")
+_Pope and the Net_
+_Popularity_
+Pornic
+_Porphyria's Lover_
+Portraits
+Powers, H.
+_Pretty Woman_
+Primiero
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_
+Prinsep, V.
+Procter ("Barry Cornwall")
+_Prologue_ (to "La Saisiaz")
+_Prospice_
+_Protus_
+Prout, Father
+"Puseyism"
+
+
+R
+
+_Rabbi ben Ezra_
+Ready, Rev. T.
+_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_
+_Rephan_
+_Respectability_
+_Return of the Druses_
+_Reverie_
+Rhyming
+_Ring and the Book_
+Ristori
+Ritchie, Mrs A. Thackeray
+Rome
+Rossetti, D.G.
+Rossetti, W.M.
+_Rudel_
+Ruskin, John
+
+
+S
+
+Saint-Aubin
+Saint-Enogat
+_St Martin's Summer_
+St Moritz
+St Pierre de Chartreuse
+Sainte-Marie
+Saint-Victor, Paul de
+Salève
+Salvini
+Sand, George
+Sartoris, Adelaide
+_Saul_
+_Selections_ (from Browning)
+_Serenade at the Villa_
+Shah, the
+Shakespeare
+Sharp, William
+Shelley, P.B.
+_Shop_
+Siena
+Silverthorne, James
+Smith, Mr
+Society, The Browning
+_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_
+_Solomon and Balkis_
+_Sonnets from the Portuguese_
+_Sordello_
+_Soul's Tragedy_
+_Speculative_
+Spiritualism
+Stanhope, Lord
+_Statue and the Bust_
+Stead, Mr F.H.
+Stephen, Sir L.
+Sterling, John
+Stillmann, W.J.
+Story, W.W.
+Stowe, Harriet B.
+_Strafford_
+Swanwick
+Swedenborg
+
+
+T
+
+Talfourd
+Taylor, Bayard
+Tennyson, Alfred
+Tennyson, Frederick
+Tennyson, Hallam
+Thackeray, Miss, _see_ Ritchie, Mrs
+Thackeray, W.M.
+_The Worst of It_
+_Toccata of Galuppi's_
+_Too Late_
+_Transcendentalism_
+Trelawny, E.J.
+Trollope, Mrs
+Trollope, T.A.
+_Twins_
+_Two in the Campagna_
+_Two Poems by E.B.B. and R. B_.
+_Two Poets of Croisic_
+
+
+U
+
+_Up at a Villa_
+
+
+V
+
+Vallombrosa
+Venice, 47, 137, 334, 335, 339, 386-388
+Villers
+
+
+W
+
+_Waring_
+Warwick Crescent
+White, Rev. E.
+_White Witchcraft_
+Whitman, Walt
+_Why am I a Liberal_?
+Wiedemann, William
+Wilson (Mrs Browning's maid)
+Wise, T.J.
+Wiseman, Cardinal
+_Woman's Last Word_
+Wordsworth, W.
+
+
+Y
+
+Yates, Edmund
+"York" (a horse)
+York Street Chapels
+_Youth and Art_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING ***
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Robert Browning
+
+Author: Edward Dowden
+
+Release Date: July 5, 2004 [EBook #12817]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<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 &amp; CO.
+NEW YORK; E.P. DUTTON &amp; 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;">&#8212;<i>Balaustion's Adventure</i>.&gt;
+</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>&#8212;the
+phrase is Mr Gladstone's&#8212;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&#8212;substantially&#8212;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&#8212;Parents&#8212;Boyhood&#8212;Influence of Shelley&#8212;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&#8212;Paracelsus&#8212;His failures
+and attainments&#8212;Sordello,
+a companion poem&#8212;Its obscurity&#8212;Imaginative qualities&#8212;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&#8212;Hatcham&#8212;Macready&#8212;Strafford&#8212;Venice&#8212;Bells
+and Promegranates&#8212;A Blot on the 'Scutcheon&#8212;Characters
+of passion&#8212;Characters of intellect</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER IV</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_IV">THE MAKER OF PLAYS</a>&#8212;<i>(continued)</i></p>
+<p>Women of the dramas&#8212;Dramatic style&#8212;Pippa Passes&#8212;Dramatic
+Lyrics and Romances&#8212;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&#8212;Meeting&#8212;Progress in
+friendship&#8212;Obstacles&#8212;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.&#8212;Journey to
+Italy&#8212;Pisa&#8212;Florence&#8212;Vallombrosa&#8212;Italian
+politics&#8212;Casa Guidi-Friends&#8212;Son
+born&#8212;Death of Browning's mother&#8212;Wanderings.</p>
+<p><br />
+CHAPTER VII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_VII">CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY</a></p>
+<p>Publication&#8212;Movements of Religious
+Thought&#8212;Dissent&#8212;Catholicism&#8212;Criticism&#8212;Difficulties
+of Christian life&#8212;Imaginative
+power of the poems&#8212;In Venice&#8212;Paris&#8212;England&#8212;Paris again&#8212;Coup
+d'&eacute;tat</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER VIII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_VIII">FROM 1851 TO 1855</a></p>
+<p>Essay on Shelley&#8212;New acquaintances&#8212;Milsand&#8212;George Sand&#8212;London&#8212;Casa
+Guidi&#8212;Spiritualism&#8212;Mr Sludge the Medium&#8212;Baths
+of Lucca&#8212;Rome&#8212;London&#8212;Tennyson's Maud</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER IX</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_IX">MEN AND WOMEN</a></p>
+<p>Rossetti's admiration&#8212;Beauty before teaching&#8212;The poet behind his
+poems&#8212;Isolated poems&#8212;Groups&#8212;Poems of love&#8212;Poems of
+Art&#8212;Poems of Religion</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER X</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_X">CLOSE OF MRS BROWNING'S LIFE</a></p>
+<p>Paris&#8212;Kenyon's death&#8212;Legacies&#8212;Death of Mr Barrett&#8212;Winter
+in Florence&#8212;Havre&#8212;Rome&#8212;Louis Napoleon&#8212;Landor&#8212;Siena&#8212;Poems
+before Congress&#8212;Rome again&#8212;Modelling in Clay&#8212;Casa
+Guidi&#8212;Death of Mrs Browning</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XI</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XI">LONDON: DRAMATIS PERSONAE</a></p>
+<p>Desolation&#8212;Return to London&#8212;Pornic&#8212;Social life&#8212;Dramatis
+Personae&#8212;Poems of music&#8212;Poems of hope and aspiration&#8212;A
+Death in the Desert&#8212;Epilogue&#8212;Caliban upon Setebos&#8212;Poems
+of Love</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XII">THE RING AND THE BOOK</a></p>
+<p>Holiday excursions&#8212;Sainte Marie&#8212;Miss Barrett dies&#8212;Balliol College
+and Jowett&#8212;Origin of the Ring and the Book&#8212;Its Plan&#8212;The
+Persons&#8212;Count Guido&#8212;Pompilia&#8212;Caponsacchi&#8212;The Pope&#8212;Falsehood
+subserving truth</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XIII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XIII">POEMS ON CLASSICAL SUBJECTS</a></p>
+<p>Saint-Aubin&#8212;Milsand&#8212;Miss Thackeray&#8212;Herv&eacute; Riel&#8212;Miss
+Egerton-Smith&#8212;Summer wanderings&#8212;Balaustion's Adventure&#8212;Aristophanes'
+Apology&#8212;The Agamemnon</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XIV</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XIV">PROBLEM AND NARRATIVE POEMS</a></p>
+<p>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau&#8212;Fifine at the Fair&#8212;Red Cotton
+Night-Cap Country&#8212;The Inn Album&#8212;Pachiarotto and other
+Poems</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XV</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XV">SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY</a></p>
+<p>La Saisiaz&#8212;Immortality&#8212;Two Poets of Croisic&#8212;Browning in
+society&#8212;Daily
+habits&#8212;Browning as a talker&#8212;Italy&#8212;Asolo&#8212;Mountain
+retreats&#8212;Mrs Bronson&#8212;Venice</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XVI</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XVI">POET AND TEACHER IN OLD AGE</a></p>
+<p>Popularity&#8212;Browning Society&#8212;Public honours&#8212;Dramatic Idyls&#8212;Spirit
+of acquiescence&#8212;Jocoseria&#8212;Ferishtah's Fancies</p>
+<br />
+<p>CHAPTER XVII</p>
+<p><a href="#Chapter_XVII">CLOSING WORKS AND DAYS</a></p>
+<p>Parleyings&#8212;Asolando&#8212;Mrs Bronson&#8212;At Asolo&#8212;Venice&#8212;Death&#8212;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&#8212;an only son&#8212;was born on May 7, 1812.
+Two years later (Jan. 7, 1814) his sister, Sarah
+Anna&#8212;an only daughter&#8212;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&#8212;sometimes produced, as it
+were, instinctively, with a result that was unforeseen&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;with a real
+genius for drawing&#8212;but caring for nothing in the
+least except Dutch boors,&#8212;fancy, the father of
+Browning!&#8212;and as innocent as a child." Browning
+himself declared that he had not one artistic taste in
+common with his father&#8212;"in pictures, he goes 'souls
+away' to Brauwer, Ostade, Teniers ... he would turn
+from the Sistine Altar-piece to these&#8212;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&#8212;the
+cat for Helen, and Towzer and Tray as the Atreidai,&#8212;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&#8212;"the
+true type of a Scottish gentlewoman," said
+Carlyle&#8212;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&#8212;robust
+as he was in many ways&#8212;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&#8212;spider and toad
+and lizard&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Incondita</i>&#8212;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&#8212;probably in his thirteenth
+year&#8212;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&#8212;literature, languages, music&#8212;with
+energy. He was diligent&#8212;during a brief attendance&#8212;<a name="Page_9"></a>in
+Professor Long's Greek class at University College&#8212;"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&#8212;the
+formulas of revolution&#8212;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&#8212;apart from scattered comments in
+his letters&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;not less solid because it is aerial&#8212;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&#8212;his
+aunt Silverthorne bearing the cost of publication&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;for Browning
+was not of the temper to accept ultimate failures, and
+postulated a heaven to warrant his optimistic creed&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;that concerning
+the conduct of high, intellectual and spiritual powers&#8212;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&#8212;studied by
+the speaker under the wavering lights of his hectic
+malady and fluctuating moods of passion&#8212;are dealt
+with in a singularly interesting and original way. He
+describes, with strange and beautiful imagery, the
+cynical, bitter pleasure&#8212;few of us do not know it&#8212;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&#8212;even if it were
+but for moments&#8212;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&#8212;the revolutionary faith in liberty,
+equality and human perfectibility. Wordsworth in
+<i>The Prelude</i>&#8212;unpublished when Browning wrote
+<i>Pauline</i>&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;Saunders and Otley&#8212;did not know the
+author's
+name.&#8212;"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."&#8212;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 Am&eacute;d&eacute;e 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&#8212;as he himself believed&#8212;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&#8212;Browning pleads&#8212;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&#8212;Giordano Bruno&#8212;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 W&uuml;rzburg, while
+the autumn sun sinks behind St Saviour's spire, Festus&#8212;the
+faithful Horatio to this Hamlet of science&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and
+this is well&#8212;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-sc&egrave;ne</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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#8212;so described by
+Browning to Leigh Hunt&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Pauline, Paracelsus, Sordello</i>&#8212;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&#8212;W&uuml;rzburg
+and Basil, Colmar and Salzburg&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and yet with a
+difference&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and
+we can hardly doubt that Browning would have
+assigned himself a place in the class to which the poet
+of his imagination belongs&#8212;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":&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>"God has conceded two sights to a man&#8212;<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&#8212;and speaking in his own
+person Browning makes confession of his faith&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Paracelsus, Sordello</i>, and,
+on a more contracted scale, <i>Pauline</i>&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;like that of
+Salinguerra&#8212;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&#8212;may
+I hint it?"&#8212;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&#8212;"frenetic
+to be free." He was hail-fellow well-met, we are told&#8212;but
+is this part of a Browning legend?&#8212;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&#8212;"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"&#8212;speaking of his
+earlier years&#8212;"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&#8212;though
+why it should be so is hard to say&#8212;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&#8212;and
+<a name="Page_46"></a>not always judiciously&#8212;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&#8212;not
+home-sickness&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;Algerines and
+Spaniards&#8212;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&#8212;cities
+and mountain solitudes, which gave their warmth and
+colour to his unfinished poem&#8212;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:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>How many a year my Asolo,<br />
+</span><span>Since&#8212;one step just from sea to land&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>I found you, loved yet feared you so&#8212;<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&#8212;his chosen resort of meditation&#8212;"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"&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Pippa Passes</i>&#8212;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&#8212;<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>&#8212;Numbers
+4 and 5&#8212;followed each other in the same year 1843.
+<i>Colombe's Birthday</i>&#8212;the only number which is known
+to survive in manuscript&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;<i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i>&#8212;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&#8212;in four or five days&#8212;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&#8212;that of
+Lord Tresham&#8212;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"&#8212;writes Mrs Orr&#8212;"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&#8212;action incarnating and developing thought
+and passion&#8212;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&#8212;we may ask&#8212;wound around
+his own spirit some of the incurable illusions of worldly
+wisdom? No&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;sleek, ecclesiastical
+opportunist&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"Not me&#8212;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&#8212;and, before all
+others, the Italian race&#8212;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&#8212;seen not in love alone but in carven
+capital and on frescoed wall&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;it may be in a kind
+of divine folly&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;Browning would say&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;muffled up in a cloak&#8212;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&#8212;<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:&#8212;</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&#8212;a daughter not
+of Italy but of the Rhineland&#8212;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&#8212;her first&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;services: he's paid at least.<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>The Lady Carlisle of the same play&#8212;a creature in
+the main of Browning's imagination&#8212;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&#8212;and as such effective&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;all readers of his own sex
+must pronounce him too fortunate&#8212;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&#8212;not always successfully&#8212;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!&#8212;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&#8212;love
+and wrath and pride and pity&#8212;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&#8212;though in a less degree&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;here embodied
+in the symbol of a song&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;entirely
+<a name="Page_72"></a>true to his highest self&#8212;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&#8212;and not least in fantastic
+form&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;the Flying
+Englishman&#8212;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&#8212;a grief to booklovers!&#8212;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&#8212;before love enters&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;a somewhat enigmatical
+phrase&#8212;"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&#8212;though in a phase that may
+be called abnormal&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;a brother in religion! A noble
+hatred, transcending personal considerations, mingles
+with a noble and solemn love&#8212;the passion of country&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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!'&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;Browning in
+later poems frequently insists upon this&#8212;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&#8212;the Urbinate&#8212;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&#8212;which
+lacks all the manly virtue of genuine Paganism&#8212;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&#8212;and I leave it as I wrote it&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;as she afterwards told a correspondent&#8212;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&#8212;January 10, 1845&#8212;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&#8212;her Greek
+dramatists and her Elizabethan poets&#8212;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
+&AElig;schylus the divinest of divine Greek spirits? but
+how inadequately her correspondent has spoken of
+Dante! Shall they indeed&#8212;as he suggests&#8212;write
+something together? And then&#8212;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&#8212;replies the second voice&#8212;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"&#8212;"do not see me as long as you are
+mistrustful of"&#8212;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&#8212;as she believed&#8212;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&#8212;that of one infinitely her inferior&#8212;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&#8212;and she
+wrote always with crystalline sincerity&#8212;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&#8212;she
+declares&#8212;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&#8212;with the
+warranty of her published poem which had told of
+flowers sent in a letter&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#969;
+&#966;&#953;&#955;&#964;&#945;&#964;&#949;."</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&#8212;worse&#8212;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&#8212;" "Why, even then,"
+interrupted Arabel, "it would not <i>do</i>" One admirable
+trait, however, Mr Moulton Barrett did possess&#8212;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>&#8212;he
+believed&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;not to say truculence&#8212;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&#8212;not for himself&#8212;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;&#8212;faith in a woman's insight
+as finer than his own;&#8212;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&#8212;the punishment was not capital&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;dear and
+generous friend&#8212;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&#8212;later on&#8212;when an avalanche
+of aunts and uncles would precipitate itself on Wimpole
+Street&#8212;perspicacious aunts and amiable uncles who
+were wished as far off as Seringapatam, and who
+wrung from an impatient niece&#8212;to whom indeed
+they were dear&#8212;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&#8212;"the
+man of the pomegranates" as he was named
+by Mr Barrett&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;it is true&#8212;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&#8212;appears and passes away&#8212;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&#8212;a
+lock of hair, a ring, a picture, a child's penholder&#8212;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&#8212;womanhood
+delivered from death by love and from darkness by;
+light&#8212;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&#8212;walked, and was not carried&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;almost perfect in health&#8212;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&#8212;diplomatic or other&#8212;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&#8212;some &pound;400 a year, capable
+of considerable increase by re-investment of the
+principal&#8212;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&#8212;"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,&#8212;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&#8212;accompanied by a
+gaze of stern displeasure&#8212;"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&#8212;parents or sisters&#8212;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:&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;a perpetual <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>, but
+one so happy&#8212;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
+Si&egrave;cle. 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&#8212;perhaps thrushes and chianti&#8212;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&#8212;more than a year since&#8212;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 coup&eacute; 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&#8212;"a sort of balcony terrace which ...
+swims over with moonlight in the evenings." From
+Casa Guidi windows&#8212;and before long Mrs Browning
+was occupied with the first part of her poem&#8212;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,&#8212;<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&#8212;each in his degree<br />
+</span><span>Also God-guided&#8212;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&#8212;emancipated thus&#8212;<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&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;as yet far from its full development&#8212;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&#8212;from 1847 to 1851&#8212;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&#8212;"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 &amp; 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&#8212;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>exalt&eacute;e</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"&#8212;animal
+spirits preponderating a little too much over
+an energetic intellect&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;married
+to a person of moderate means and odiously
+"Tractarian views"&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;"an exfoliation of the rock"&#8212;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&#8212;1849&#8212;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&#8212;"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 Cam&eacute;lias</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 &amp; 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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;duly indignant at the interloper in
+their midst&#8212;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,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness<br />
+</span><span>Some defiled, discoloured web&#8212;<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&#8212;"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&#8212;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 G&ouml;ttingen, 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&#8212;and
+an alteration for the worse&#8212;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 G&ouml;ttingen 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&#8212;we
+trust it is&#8212;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&#8212;indeed
+he has not&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;as they are styled&#8212;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&#8212;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!"&#8212;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!&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;this strange phenomenon otherwise so
+unintelligible&#8212;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&#8212;as in <i>Rabbi ben Ezra</i> or <i>Abt
+Vogler</i>&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>That wrapped right hand which based the chin,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>That intense meditation fixed<br />
+</span><span>On His procedure,&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;love&#8212;had
+he ever made a discovery through human love
+of that which it forthshadows&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;the invalid of Wimpole
+Street and her husband&#8212;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>&agrave; 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&#8212;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&#8212;"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 Teufelsdr&ouml;ckh,
+<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&#8212;that is, the woman, the child and I&#8212;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-Elys&eacute;es, "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'&eacute;tat</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-Elys&eacute;es,
+from the Carrousel to the Arc de l'&Eacute;toile.
+To Mrs Browning it seemed the grandest of spectacles&#8212;"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&#8212;December 4th&#8212;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-Elys&eacute;es its promenaders. For the dishonoured
+"Libert&eacute;, Egalit&eacute;, Fraternit&eacute;," 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>&eacute;meutes</i>, because
+<a name="Page_143"></a>he hates some imperial names." He detested all
+Buonapartes, he would say, past, present, and to come,&#8212;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&#8212;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'&eacute;tat</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"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and
+with perfect justice&#8212;"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&#8212;"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"&#8212;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 Po&eacute;sie 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&#8212;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 r&eacute;gime 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 B&eacute;ranger 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 Cam&eacute;lias," 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&#8212;she wearing a
+respirator and smothered in furs&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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"&#8212;so
+named by Browning&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr
+Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet
+earnest&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;the gift of England&#8212;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&#8212;"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 attach&eacute;s 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&#8212;many
+of these from America&#8212;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&#8212;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 s&eacute;ance 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&#8212;absurdities are
+referred to 'low spirits,' falsehoods to 'personating
+spirits'&#8212;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&#8212;"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?"&#8212;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&#8212;slick,<br />
+</span><span>Their juice enriched his palate. "Could not Sludge!"<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>Haunters of the s&eacute;ance of every species are his
+aiders and abettors&#8212;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&#8212;put
+to his own uses by the poet and even the historian&#8212;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&#8212;coarse, perverted, abnormally directed
+and ineffective for moral good&#8212;of that sublime
+spiritual wisdom, which, turned to its proper ends
+and aided by the highest intellectual powers, is
+present&#8212;to take a lofty exemplar&#8212;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&#8212;Sludge's outbreak against
+his corrupter and tormentor&#8212;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&#8212;"a flashing scimitar that
+cuts through the mountain"&#8212;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&#8212;"that passion of the
+waters,"&#8212;so Mrs Browning describes it, "which makes
+the human heart seem so still." They entered Rome
+in a radiant mood.&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;a girl&#8212;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&#8212;that by Fisher&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;Fanny
+Kemble magnificent, "with her black hair
+and radiant smile," her sympathetic voice, "her eyes and
+eyelids full of utterance"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"my
+one light in London" is Mrs Browning's
+word&#8212;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&#8212;'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&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;and that it should do so means that the
+poet's total mind has been taken up into his art&#8212;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&#8212;those
+which interpret various careers or moods or moments
+of love; those which deal with the fine arts&#8212;painting,
+poetry, music&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#8212;," 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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<i>Respectability</i>&#8212;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!&#8212;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 B&eacute;ranger's gay Bohemianism. The distance is wide
+between such &eacute;lan 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&#8212;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&#8212;he reflects&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;for
+he who has failed in the higher art has also failed
+in the higher love&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>a tall mountain, citied to the top,<br />
+</span><span>Crowded with culture!&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;the later hours of a philosopher
+and a poet&#8212;on the futile creed of slaves.</p>
+<p>Immortality and Divine love&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;it is the secret of Jesus&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;and casuistry, let it be remembered,
+is not properly the art of defending falsehood
+but of determining truth,&#8212;it is also a character-study
+chosen from the age of doubt; a dramatic monologue
+with an appropriate <i>mise en sc&egrave;ne</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&#8212;yet
+not wholly cynical&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;serious yet humorous&#8212;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&#8212;at
+least as he represents himself for the purposes of
+argument&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;"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&#8212;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 Colis&eacute;e by a desperate husband&#8212;"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&#8212;a fruitless one as it proved&#8212;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,&#8212;instead of what the few must&#8212;like: but after
+all I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave
+as I find it"&#8212;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&#8212;an evening resort where I never felt unhappy.
+How large a part of the real world, I wonder, are those
+two small people?&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;"a composition
+of Gehenna and Paradise"&#8212;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&#8212;"like a rose
+possessed by a fairy" is his mother's description&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"detestable place," Mrs Browning
+calls it&#8212;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 Chamb&eacute;ry
+"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;like
+a feeble yet majestic Lear&#8212;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&#8212;that
+of Latin alcaics directed against one private and
+one public foe&#8212;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&#8212;now near the close of his life&#8212;whose
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;tes</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&#8212;"very quiet and very
+intense"&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;a son
+of eighty-six years old&#8212;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&#8212;about
+September; in the Via Felice rooms were found.
+A new and great sorrow had fallen upon Mrs
+Browning&#8212;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&#8212;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 abb&eacute; 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&#8212;"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&#8212;"nothing ever," he declared,
+"made him so happy before." Of advancing years&#8212;Browning
+was now nearly forty-nine&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;June 28, 1861&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;so
+Browning describes it&#8212;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&#8212;which
+involved two hours of "weary battling"&#8212;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&#8212;for Browning
+still indulged a fantasy of his own in the choice
+of pets&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;and the
+best&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;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"&#8212;the story of Pompilia and Guido and
+Caponsacchi&#8212;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&#8212;a visit to be repeated in the two summers
+immediately succeeding&#8212;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&#8212;the internal
+rhyme in the second line of each stanza of <i>D&icirc;s aliter
+visum</i> and in the third line of the quatrains of <i>May
+and Death</i>&#8212;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,&#8212;gold in contrast with that pallid face&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;good
+easy man&#8212;who has lost a soul and gained an
+altar. A saint <i>manqu&eacute;</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&#8212;that of immediate
+inspiration, to which the constructive element&#8212;real
+though slight&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Poor men, God made, and all for that!&#8212;<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&#8212;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,&#8212;</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:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>When there was mid sea and the mighty things;<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>and this:&#8212;</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:&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;Father, Son and Spirit&#8212;is
+the utmost that we can conceive of things above us.
+Let us now put that knowledge&#8212;imperfect though
+it may be&#8212;to use. Power, intelligence, love&#8212;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&#8212;whatever
+they may have been&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;that is clearly discernible in
+the universe; His intelligence&#8212;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&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>The same and not the same, else unconceived&#8212;<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&#8212;historic fact,
+or higher
+fact expressed in myth&#8212;remains:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>So my heart be struck,<br />
+</span><span>What care I,&#8212;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&#8212;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>D&icirc;s 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&#8212;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;&#8212;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>&#8212;another poem of the failures of love&#8212;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&#8212;1864&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;'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>&#8212;</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>Herv&eacute; 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 &amp; 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&#8212;he believed&#8212;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 &quot;THE BOOK&quot; WAS FOUND BY BROWNING."
+ title="PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE &quot;THE BOOK&quot; 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&#8212;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&#8212;often
+stores up a subject long before he writes it.
+He has written his forthcoming work all consecutively&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;Maria,&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;God's servant,
+man's friend, the saviour of the weak, the foe of all who
+are vile&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;as perhaps they do&#8212;in such
+mysteries, they are senses in a state of transfiguration,
+senses taken up into the spirit&#8212;"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&#8212;"I am yours "&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute,<br />
+</span><span>With prudence, probity and&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;the
+vision
+seen from a higher and clearer standpoint&#8212;or a
+dictate of pure human passion. Eminent moments in
+life had an extraordinary interest for Browning&#8212;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 c&eacute;l&egrave;bre</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&#8212;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
+&AElig;schylus, 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>Herv&eacute; 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&#8212;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 "cong&eacute;
+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&#8212;ah, memory, how it haunts!&#8212;<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&#8212;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>&#8212;Maybe throb of heart, beneath which,&#8212;quickening farther
+than it knew,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and
+unguessed hue.<br />
+</span><span>Disembosomed, re-embosomed,&#8212;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 Tr&eacute;port.
+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 Sal&egrave;ve, near Geneva.
+During the visit to the Sal&egrave;ve 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&#8212;"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 &AElig;schylus</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&#8212;for we see and hear the performers
+and they are no longer masked&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;for now the position is reversed and the
+king shall receive her living, and yet believe her dead&#8212;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&#8212;"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>&#8212;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&#8212;O
+superb! I see what is coming;<br />
+</span><span>I see the high pioneer-caps&#8212;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, Herv&eacute;
+Riel, has more than a touch of the Heraclean frankness
+of gaiety in arduous effort. His Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch
+<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&#8212;<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,&#8212;"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&#8212;"an old pale-swathed majesty,"&#8212;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&#8212;he did in
+fact know&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;the Tin Isle which has
+Stratford
+at its heart&#8212;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&#8212;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 &agrave; Adm&egrave;te
+qu'il lui est
+interdit d'entendre sa voix avant qu'elle soit purifi&eacute;e de sa
+cons&eacute;cration
+aux Divinit&eacute;s infernales. J'aime mieux voir dans cette
+r&eacute;serve un scrupule
+religieux du po&egrave;te laissant &agrave; la morte sa dignit&eacute;
+d'Ombre. Alceste a &eacute;t&eacute;
+niti&eacute;e aux profonds myst&egrave;res de la mort; elle a vu
+l'invisible, elle a
+entendu l'ineffable; toute parole sortie de ses l&egrave;vres serait
+une
+divulgation
+sacril&egrave;ge. Ce silence myst&eacute;rieux la spiritualise et la
+rattache par un
+dernier lien au monde &eacute;ternel."</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&#8212;that which conserves rather than
+destroys&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;though
+not the highest&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;"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&#8212;</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!&#8212;<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:&#8212;</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&#8212;<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&#8212;more than all&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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>&#8212;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&#8212;freedom accepting some hidden law&#8212;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&#8212;Helen,
+Cleopatra, the Saint of Pornic Church&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;imagination aiding his intellect&#8212;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&#8212;religious theories,
+philosophical systems, scientific hypotheses, artistic
+methods, scholarly attainments&#8212;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&#8212;which
+is the Divine&#8212;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&#8212;"From a given point evolve the infinite!"<br />
+</span><span>Not&#8212;"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&#8212;let this be frankly acknowledged&#8212;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&#8212;shall
+we say?&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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 L&eacute;once 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 L&eacute;once 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 L&eacute;once
+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&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;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:&#8212;"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 Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch.</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>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</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&#8212;as was Guido&#8212;</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&#8212;though too
+late&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;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&#8212;not always agreeably&#8212;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&#8212;not indolent&#8212;<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&#8212;but do you suppose that the poet lives
+no life of his own?&#8212;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&#8212;the
+description of those weapons of Eastern workmanship&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Horror coquetting with voluptuousness&#8212;<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 Sal&egrave;ve 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&#8212;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, Sal&egrave;ve 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&#8212;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&#8212;"rather
+with Infinitude." All through his mountain
+ascent the vigour of life is aroused within him; and,
+as he returns&#8212;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&#8212;What
+does death mean? Is it total extinction? Is it
+a passage into life?&#8212;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&#8212;conjectures and no more&#8212;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&#8212;myself and a power environing
+me&#8212;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&#8212;Browning goes on&#8212;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:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>I must say&#8212;or choke in silence&#8212;&#8212;"Howsoever
+came my fate,<br />
+</span><span>Sorrow did and joy did nowise&#8212;life well
+weighed&#8212;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&#8212;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,&#8212;with all their chances, changes,&#8212;just
+probation&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;Oh how but, losing love, does
+whoso loves succeed<br />
+</span><span>By the death-pang to the birth-throe&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;strawberries, grapes, oranges&#8212;were
+in season; read, generally some piece of foreign
+literature, for an hour in his bedroom; then bathed;
+breakfasted&#8212;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&#8212;Browning's recommendation
+of Bach's "Crucifixus&#8212;et sepultus&#8212;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&#8212;and sometimes foamed&#8212;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 "&#8212;"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&#8212;an inscrutable personage&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;as Browning did in earlier years&#8212;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 Spl&uuml;gen, enjoyed the mountain air,
+walked vigorously, and wrote, with great rapidity, says
+Mrs Orr, his poem of Russia, <i>Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch</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&#8212;reading the Iliad, all my excuse!&#8212;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&#8212;afternoon I should say&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;"delightful
+weeks&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;nay, some
+old friends&#8212;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&#8212;Mrs Bronson
+is our informant&#8212;whose wants or wishes he bore in
+mind&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;for pleasure as he teaches us is
+praise&#8212;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 Niccol&ograve; 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"&#8212;the
+seasons&#8212;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&#8212;see&#8212;<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&#8212;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 fa&ccedil;ade 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&#8212;"a stately temple
+of the rococo" is Mr Henry James's best word for it&#8212;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&#8212;dedicated also to Tennyson&#8212;which
+has been frequently reprinted, was arranged upon a
+principle, the reference of which to the poems chosen
+is far from clear&#8212;"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"&#8212;the thread&#8212;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&#8212;initiator
+of so much work that is invaluable to the student of
+our literature&#8212;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&#8212;not even an heresiarch&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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>&#8212;&#8212;, 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> &#8212;&#8212; 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&#8212;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&#8212;"the great
+deed ne'er grows small." Browning's development
+of the Vergilian myth&#8212;"si credere dignum est"&#8212;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>Iv&agrave;n Iv&agrave;novitch</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. Iv&agrave;n 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&#8212;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,&#8212;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!&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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>Mul&eacute;ykeh</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
+H&oacute;seyn 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
+H&oacute;seyn's loss is H&oacute;seyn'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&#8212;certainties
+even if illusions&#8212;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>&#8212;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"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;words spoken in the spirit of the
+afflicted Job&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;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&#8212;</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&#8212;"</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy,&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Some smatch thereof,&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;what? "Husked
+lupines, and belike the feeder's self." The Dervish
+declares without shrinking the faith that is in him:&#8212;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><span>"Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know<br />
+</span><span>Is&#8212;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:&#8212;</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&#8212;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&#8212;for Browning is nothing if he is not individualistic&#8212;in
+the life of each man as an individual. The
+conclusion arrived at is that no "bean-stripe"&#8212;each
+bean, white or black, standing for a day&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;<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&#8212;emotional, it is
+true, as well as intellectual&#8212;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>&#8212;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&#8212;"Dance, yellows and whites and reds"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;strenuous not indolent acquiescence&#8212;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&#8212;<br />
+</span><span>Which, in the large, who sees to bless?<br />
+</span></div>
+</div>
+<p>Or again&#8212;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&#8212;to confer enjoyment, leaving instruction&#8212;the
+fruit of enjoyment&#8212;to come later. True learning
+teaches through love and delight, not through pretentious
+didactics,&#8212;a truth forgotten by the whole tribe
+of eighteenth century versifiers. And once more&#8212;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&#8212;"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&#8212;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 r&ocirc;le in
+the tragi-comedy
+of foiled passion:&#8212;</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"&#8212;"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>"&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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 vers&acirc;</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"&#8212;the words are Mrs Bronson's&#8212;"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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;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&#8212;but especially colour&#8212;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&#8212;if it be one&#8212;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"&#8212;so Mr R. Barrett Browning wrote to Mrs Bloomfield-Moore.
+"His death was what death ought to be, but rarely is&#8212;so said
+the doctor." (Quoted in an article on Browning by Mrs Bloomfield-Moore
+in Lippincott's Magazine&#8212;Jan.&#8212;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
+&amp; 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'&eacute;tat, <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>D&icirc;s
+Aliter Visum</i>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<i>Doctor</i>&#8212;&#8212;,
+<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>Herv&eacute;
+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>Iv&agrave;n
+Iv&agrave;novitch</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
+Cam&eacute;lias," <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>Mul&eacute;ykeh</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 />
+Sal&egrave;ve,
+<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>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Robert Browning
+
+Author: Edward Dowden
+
+Release Date: July 5, 2004 [EBook #12817]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TEMPLE BIOGRAPHIES
+
+Edited by Dugald Macfadyen, M.A.
+
+Robert Browning
+
+[Illustration: _Robert Browning, from a portrait in oil, for which he
+sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice 1880._]
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+BY EDWARD DOWDEN
+
+LITT.D., D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
+
+
+1904
+
+
+
+     If I, too, should try and speak at times,
+    Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
+    Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew,
+    Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake.
+
+--_Balaustion's Adventure_.
+
+
+
+
+Editor's Preface
+
+
+"In the case of those whom the public has learned to honour and admire,
+there is a _biography of the mind_--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.
+
+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."
+
+D.M.
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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
+_Sordello_. 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.
+
+The analysis of _La Saisiaz_ 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 _The Dark Blue Magazine_, making such modifications as suited my
+purpose, and she has contributed a passage to the pages which close this
+volume.
+
+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.
+
+E.D.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
+
+Ancestry--Parents--Boyhood--Influence of Shelley--Pauline
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PARACELSUS AND SORDELLO
+
+Visit to Russia--Paracelsus--His failures and attainments--Sordello, a
+companion poem--Its obscurity--Imaginative qualities--The history of a
+soul
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MAKER OF PLAYS
+
+New acquaintances--Hatcham--Macready--Strafford--Venice--Bells and
+Promegranates--A Blot on the 'Scutcheon--Characters of
+passion--Characters of intellect
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE MAKER OF PLAYS--_(continued)_
+
+Women of the dramas--Dramatic style--Pippa Passes--Dramatic Lyrics and
+Romances--Poems of Love and of Art
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+LOVE AND MARRIAGE
+
+First letters to Miss Barrett--Meeting--Progress in
+friendship--Obstacles--Marriage
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EARLY YEARS IN ITALY
+
+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.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY
+
+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'etat
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FROM 1851 TO 1855
+
+Essay on Shelley--New acquaintances--Milsand--George Sand--London--Casa
+Guidi--Spiritualism--Mr Sludge the Medium--Baths of
+Lucca--Rome--London--Tennyson's Maud
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MEN AND WOMEN
+
+Rossetti's admiration--Beauty before teaching--The poet behind his
+poems--Isolated poems--Groups--Poems of love--Poems of Art--Poems of
+Religion
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CLOSE OF MRS BROWNING'S LIFE
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LONDON: DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE RING AND THE BOOK
+
+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
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+POEMS ON CLASSICAL SUBJECTS
+
+Saint-Aubin--Milsand--Miss Thackeray--Herve Riel--Miss
+Egerton-Smith--Summer wanderings--Balaustion's Adventure--Aristophanes'
+Apology--The Agamemnon
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+PROBLEM AND NARRATIVE POEMS
+
+Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau--Fifine at the Fair--Red Cotton Night-Cap
+Country--The Inn Album--Pachiarotto and other Poems
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY
+
+La Saisiaz--Immortality--Two Poets of Croisic--Browning in
+society--Daily habits--Browning as a talker--Italy--Asolo--Mountain
+retreats--Mrs Bronson--Venice
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+POET AND TEACHER IN OLD AGE
+
+Popularity--Browning Society--Public honours--Dramatic Idyls--Spirit of
+acquiescence--Jocoseria--Ferishtah's Fancies
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+CLOSING WORKS AND DAYS
+
+Parleyings--Asolando--Mrs Bronson--At Asolo--Venice--Death--Place in
+nineteenth-century poetry
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _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)_
+
+MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE, _from a drawing by Miss
+D. Noyes_
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, _from a drawing in chalk by Field Talfourd
+in the National Portrait Gallery_
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _from an engraving by J.G. Armytage_
+
+THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS STAYED, _a
+photograph_
+
+PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI, BY HIMSELF, _a detail from the fresco in the
+Cathedral at Prato, from a photograph by Alinari_
+
+ANDREA DEL SARTO, _from a print after the portrait by himself in the
+Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
+
+PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS FOUND BY BROWNING,
+_from a photograph by Alinari_
+
+THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss N. Erichsen_
+
+SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING, _from a letter to D.S. Curtis, Esq._
+
+ROBERT BROWNING, _from a photograph (photogravure)_
+
+THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss Katherine
+Kimball_
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+Childhood and Youth
+
+
+The ancestry of Robert Browning has been traced[1] 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 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."[2] 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."[3]
+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.[4]
+
+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, 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 _The Ring and the Book_, in investigating and elucidating
+complex criminal cases.[5] 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 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."[6] 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 _Development_, 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 came nearer to it in intelligent sympathy as he grew older,
+and he had for long the satisfaction of enjoying his son's fame.
+
+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 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."[7]
+
+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 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 _troupe_ 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 _Fables_ and Quarles's _Emblems_,
+were succeeded by others which made a substantial contribution to his
+mind. A list given by Mrs Orr includes Walpole's _Letters_, Junius,
+Voltaire, and Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_. The first book he ever
+bought with his own money was Macpherson's _Ossian_, 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."[8]
+
+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--_Incondita_--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 _Queen Mab_ 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.[9] If ever there was a period of _Sturm und Drang_
+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--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
+_May and Death_. 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 _the_ 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 _Sturm und
+Drang_ can be divined through the ideas and imagery of _Pauline._[10]
+
+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:
+
+    You must be just before, in fine,
+    See and make me see, for your part,
+    New depths of the Divine!
+
+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.[11] Shelley 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.
+
+A time came when Robert Browning must make choice of a future career.
+His interests in life were 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 _Paracelsus, Sordello_, and _Bells and Pomegranates_ were
+published.
+
+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
+modification of this vast scheme _Paracelsus_, which includes more
+speakers than one, and _Sordello_, which is not dramatic in form, find
+their places. They were preceded by _Pauline_, 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.
+
+_Pauline_, published without the writer's name--his aunt Silverthorne
+bearing the cost of publication--was issued from the press in January
+1833.[12] 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
+_Pauline_ without re-handling it to any considerable extent. In truth
+_Pauline_ 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 always claim attention
+from the student of his mind and art.
+
+The poem is a study in what Browning in his _Fifine_ 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 _dramatis persona_ 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
+_Pauline_ the 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:
+
+    'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;
+    He rises on the toe; that spirit of his
+    In aspiration lifts him from the earth.
+
+The aspiration in Browning's later verse is a complex of many forces;
+here it is a simple poetic enthusiasm.
+
+By virtue of its central theme _Pauline_ is closely related to the poems
+which at no great distance followed--_Paracelsus_ and _Sordello_. 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 _Alastor_, the
+influence of which on Browning in writing _Pauline_ 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
+_Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_ by the old and simple name of
+God.
+
+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 _Pauline_, is more than a poet; he is rather
+of the Sordello type than of the type represented in Eglamor and
+Aprile.[13] 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, 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.
+
+Such reduced to a colourless and abstract statement is the theme dealt
+with in _Pauline_. 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 Browning's later poetry is already present and
+potent here.
+
+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:
+
+    And then I was a young witch whose blue eyes,
+    As she stood naked by the river springs,
+    Drew down a god: I watched his radiant form
+    Growing less radiant, and it gladdened me.
+
+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 _The
+Prelude_--unpublished when Browning wrote _Pauline_--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 _Pauline_ 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 ":
+
+    First went my hopes of perfecting mankind,
+    Next--faith in them, and then in freedom's self
+    And virtue's self, then my own motives, ends,
+    And aims and loves, and human love went last.
+    I felt this no decay, because new powers
+    Rose as old feelings left--wit, mockery,
+    Light-heartedness; for I had oft been sad,
+    Mistrusting my resolves, but now I cast
+    Hope joyously away; I laughed and said
+    "No more of this!"
+
+It is difficult to believe that Browning is wholly dramatic here; we
+seem to discover something of that period of _Sturm und Drang_, 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 _Alastor_ and
+_Prometheus Unbound._
+
+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
+_Monthly Repository_ (April 1833) which he then edited, Mr Fox wrote of
+_Pauline_ with admiration, and Browning was duly grateful for this
+earliest public recognition of his genius as a poet. In the _Athenaeum_
+Allen Cunningham made an effort to be appreciative and sympathetic. John
+Stuart Mill desired to be the reviewer of _Pauline_ in _Taifs Magazine_;
+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 _Pauline_ 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 _Pauline_, 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."[14]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: By Dr Furnivall; see _The Academy_, April 12, 1902.]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," ii. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Letter of R.B. to E.B.B.]
+
+[Footnote 4: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 5: Quoted by Mr Sharp in his "Life of Browning," p. 21, _n_.,
+from Mrs Fraser Cockran.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Autobiography of a Journalist," i. 277.]
+
+[Footnote 7: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 528, 529; and (for
+Ossian), ii. 469.]
+
+[Footnote 9: 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 _regular way_, from Hunt and Clarke." Mr Gosse in
+_Personalia_ gives a different account, pp. 23, 24.]
+
+[Footnote 10: The quotations from letters above are taken from J.C.
+Hadden's article "Some Friends of Browning" in _Macmillan's Magazine_,
+Jan. 1898.]
+
+[Footnote 11: 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 _man_ and Shelley, well, even the _poet_, with
+what they were sixty years ago." He declined Dr Furnivall's invitation
+to him to accept the presidency of "The Shelley Society."]
+
+[Footnote 12: Even the publishers--Saunders and Otley--did not know the
+author's name.--"Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.," i. 403.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "V.A. xx," following the quotation from Cornelius Agrippa
+means "Vixi annos xx," _i.e._ "the imaginary subject of the poem was of
+that age."--Browning to Mr T.J. Wise.]
+
+[Footnote 14: 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 _Pauline_, was a fancy or a blind; Browning never resided at
+Richmond.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Paracelsus and Sordello
+
+
+There is little of incident in Browning's life to be recorded for the
+period between the publication of _Pauline_ and the publication of
+_Paracelsus_. 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 _Ivan
+Ivanovitch._
+
+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."[15] 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 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."[16] 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.
+
+In the winter of 1834 Browning was at work on _Paracelsus_, 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
+Amedee 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.
+
+In its combination of thought with passion, and not less in its
+expression of a certain premature worldly wisdom, _Paracelsus_ 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 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.
+
+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 Wuerzburg, 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 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 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?
+
+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
+_mise-en-scene_. 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
+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.
+
+For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous 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,
+
+    The wondrous Paracelsus, life's dispenser,
+    Fate's commissary, idol of the schools
+    And courts,
+
+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, 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--
+
+    I have not been successful, and yet am
+    Most miserable; 'tis said at last.
+
+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."
+
+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 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
+
+    Like the dim circlet floating round a pearl.
+
+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:
+
+    And Michal sleeps among the roots and dews,
+    While I am moved at Basil, and full of schemes
+    For Nuremberg, and hoping and despairing,
+    As though it mattered how the farce plays out,
+    So it be quickly played!
+
+It is the last cry of his distempered egoism before the closing scene.
+
+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 _is_
+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.
+
+Were _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+We receive from _Paracelsus_ 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, 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 _Paracelsus_; 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"
+
+                                "cyclops-like
+    Staring together with their eyes on flame,"
+
+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.
+
+A companion poem to _Paracelsus_--so described by Browning to Leigh
+Hunt--was conceived by the poet soon after the appearance of the volume
+of 1835. When _Strafford_ was published two years later, we learn from a
+preface, afterwards omitted, that he had been engaged on _Sordello_.
+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.
+_Sordello_ was published in 1840, five years after _Paracelsus_. In the
+chronological order of Browning's poems, by virtue of the date of
+origin, it lies close to the earlier companion piece; in the logical
+order it is the completion of a group of poems--_Pauline, Paracelsus,
+Sordello_--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 _Sordello_ in its true position, side by
+side with _Paracelsus_.
+
+How the subject of _Sordello_ 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--Wuerzburg 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.
+
+"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, 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 exist. And thus, in two
+successive stages of study, the same reader may justly censure
+_Sordello_ 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 _The Preraphaelite Brotherhood Journal_ (26 February 1850),
+Browning imagined that his shorthand was Roman type of unusual
+clearness: "Marston says that Browning, before publishing _Sordello_,
+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
+_Journal_ 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 _Paracelsus_: "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 his sonnet?"[17]
+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.
+
+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
+_Pauline_, only that here the poet is not infirm in will, and, though
+loved by Palma, he is hardly a lover. Like the speaker of _Pauline_ 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
+_Pauline_, and exhibited more fully--and yet with a difference--in the
+Basil experiences of Paracelsus. Like the poet of _Pauline_, 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 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 _him_ 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 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.
+
+This, in brief, is the "history of a soul" which Browning has imagined
+in his _Sordello_. 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":--
+
+    "God has conceded two sights to a man--
+    One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,
+    The other, of the minute's work, man's first
+    Step to the plan's completion."
+
+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.
+
+These prolonged studies--_Paracelsus, Sordello_, and, on a more
+contracted scale, _Pauline_--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 _Sordello_ 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 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
+_Sordello_ 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Mrs Bronson; Browning in Venice. _Cornhill Magazine_, Feb.
+1902. pp. 160, 161.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Mrs Orr's "Handbook to Browning," pp. 10, 11.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+The Maker of Plays
+
+The publication of _Paracelsus_ 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 _Examiner_ 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.[18] 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, 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.
+
+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? _we_
+call that, such as that, a _rise_." 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 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.
+
+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 turned towards dramatic authorship with a view to
+theatrical performance. A play on a subject from later Roman history,
+_Narses_, was thought of and was cast aside. The success of Talfourd's
+_Ion_, 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.
+
+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.[19] The text was considerably altered--and not always
+judiciously--from that of the printed play, which had appeared before
+its production on the stage. Yet on the first night _Strafford_ was not
+damned, and on the second it was warmly applauded.[20] 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 _Sordello_.
+
+"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 _Norham
+Castle_, 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--_How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix_. The only
+adventure of the voyage was the discovery of an Algerine pirate ship
+floating keel uppermost; it righted suddenly under the stress of ropes
+from the _Norham Castle_, 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:--
+
+    How many a year my Asolo,
+      Since--one step just from sea to land--
+    I found you, loved yet feared you so--
+      For natural objects seemed to stand
+    Palpably fire-clothed![21]
+
+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, 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
+_Paracelsus_, which describe Constantinople at the hour of sunset.
+
+[Illustration: MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss D. NOYES.]
+
+The publication of _Sordello_ (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 _Sordello_ might have disheartened a poet of less
+vigorous will than Browning; he merely marched breast forward, and let
+_Sordello_ lie inert, until a new generation of readers had arisen. The
+dramas, _King Victor and King Charles_ and _The Return of the Druses_
+(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."[22] In other words Pippa
+had suddenly passed her poet in the wood.
+
+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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ successively appeared;
+with the eighth the series closed. The first number--_Pippa Passes_--was
+sold for sixpence; when _King Victor and King Charles_ 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--_Dramatic
+Lyrics_ (1842), _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). _The Return of
+the Druses_ and _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--Numbers 4 and 5--followed
+each other in the same year 1843. _Colombe's Birthday_--the only number
+which is known to survive in manuscript--came next in order (1844). The
+last to appear was that which included _Luna_, Browning's favourite
+among his dramas, and _A Soul's Tragedy_.[23] His sister, except in the
+instance of _Colombe_, was Browning's amanuensis. On each title-page he
+is named Robert Browning "Author of Paracelsus"--the "wholly
+unintelligible" _Sordello_ 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--_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--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.
+
+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.'"[24] 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 of a
+splendid thing after its conception like it." Things had gone ill with
+Macready at Drury Lane, and when the time for _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_
+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.[25] 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, grasp the hand of his old
+friend, and in a voice choked with emotion say, 'O Macready!'"
+
+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 _A Blot in
+the 'Scutcheon_ was given by Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre in
+November 1848, and with unquestionable success. A rendering of
+_Colombe's Birthday_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_.
+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 _Colombe's Birthday_ had
+been published, Browning sailed once more, in the autumn of 1844, for
+Italy.[26] As he journeyed northwards and homewards, from Naples (where
+they were performing an opera named _Sordello_) 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.[27]
+
+Browning's work as a playwright, consisting of eight pieces, or nine if
+we include the later _In a Balcony_, 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.[28]
+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 _dramatis personae_ 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 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.
+
+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. _Colombe's Birthday_ has a joyous ending, but the joy is 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 _is_ 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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 _dramatis persona_ 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, 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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _Pippa Passes_, 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:
+
+    The gift of the morning-star! Have I God's gift
+    Of the morning-star?
+
+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:
+
+     The only fault's with time;
+    All men become good creatures: but so slow.[29]
+
+Once again in Browning's earliest play, the test for the patriot Pym
+lies in the choice between two loyalties--one 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 18: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 19: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 20: 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. _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B._, ii. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 21: From the Prologue to _Asolando_, Browning's last volume.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Mrs Orr, "Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning," p. 54
+(1st ed.).]
+
+[Footnote 23: _A Soul's Tragedy_ was written in 1843 or 1844, and
+revised immediately before publication. See Letters of R.B. and E.B.B.,
+i. 474.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Letters of D.G. Rossetti to William Allingham, p. 168.]
+
+[Footnote 25: 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 _The Atlantic Monthly_, December
+1899, where questions are raised and some corrections are ingeniously
+made.]
+
+[Footnote 26: An uncle seems to have accompanied him. See _Letters of
+R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 57: and (for Shelley's Grave) i. 292; for
+"Sordello" at Naples, i., 349.]
+
+[Footnote 27: 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.)" _Rossetti Papers_, p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 28: See Mr R. Holt Hutton's article on Browning in "Essays
+Theological and Literary."]
+
+[Footnote 29: Luria withdraws from life "to prevent the harm Florence
+will do herself by striking him." _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 427.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+The Maker of Plays--_(Continued)_
+
+
+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 _The Return of the Druses_, 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 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:--
+
+    Come what, come will,
+    You have been happy.
+
+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 _Romeo and Juliet_ 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.
+
+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
+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:--
+
+     Is it over then?
+    Why he looks yellower than ever! Well
+    At least we shall not hear eternally
+    Of service--services: he's paid at least.
+
+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.
+
+In Browning's dramatic scene of 1853, _In a Balcony_, 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.[30]
+The young lovers, Constance and Norbert, are a highly 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.[31] Little more,
+however, than a situation is represented in this dramatic scene. Of
+Browning's full-length portraits of women in the dramas, the finest
+piece of work is the portrait of the happiest woman--the play-Duchess of
+Juliers, no longer Duchess, but ever
+
+    Our lady of dear Ravestein.
+
+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.
+
+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. _Strafford_, 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:
+
+    Come, dearest!--look, the little fairy, now
+    That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!
+
+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 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 _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ 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 _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, 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
+_Duchess of Malfi_, and Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_.
+
+In _King Victor and King Charles_ 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 _Strafford_ hardly entitles either drama to be
+named political. Browning was a student of history, but it was
+individuals and not society that interested him. The affairs of England
+and the affairs of Sardinia serve to throw out the figures of the chief
+_dramatis persons_; 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 _King Victor and King Charles_ 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 _The Return of the
+Druses_, 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.
+
+_Pippa Passes_ is singular in its construction; scenes detached, though
+not wholly disconnected, are strung pendant-wise upon the gold thread,
+slender but sufficiently 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 charmingly 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.
+
+_Pippa Passes_ 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 _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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.
+
+And original, in the best sense of the word--entirely 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 _as_ he writes his _Englishman in Italy_,
+and by virtue of their eager obsession demand and summon forth the
+appropriate word.[32] The fisherman from Amalfi pitches down his basket
+before us,
+
+     All trembling alive
+    With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit,
+    --You touch the strange lumps,
+    And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner
+     Of horns and of humps.
+
+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:
+
+     God's own profound
+    Was above me, and round me the mountains,
+     And under, the sea,
+    And within me, my heart to bear witness
+     hat was and shall be.
+
+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:
+
+    And therefore bask the bees
+    On my flower's breast, as on a platform broad.
+
+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 _Garden Fancy_, which creeps
+and crawls with beetle and spider, worm and eft.[33] 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:
+
+    The grey sea and the long black land;
+    And the yellow half-moon large and low;
+    And the startled little waves that leap
+    In fiery ringlets from their sleep
+    As I gain the cove with pushing prow.
+
+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 _Saul_, which appeared as
+a fragment in the _Bells and Pomegranates_, and as a whole ten years
+later, with the awe and rapture of the spirit rising above the rapture
+of the senses.[34]
+
+Of these poems of 1842 and 1845 one _The Pied Piper_, was written in the
+spirit of mere play and was included in _Bells and Pomegranates_ 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, _Claret_ and _Tokay_, are no more than clever caprices of the
+fancy. One, _The Lost Lender_, 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 _Artemis
+Prologuizes_, is the sole remaining fragment of a classical drama,
+"Hippolytus and Aricia," composed in 1840, "much against my endeavour,"
+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.
+
+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 _Cavalier Tunes_, 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
+_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_; 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 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 _Porphyria's Lover_, 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.
+
+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 grotesque.
+In _Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli_ 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 _Count Gismond_ love is the
+deliverer; the motive of the poem is essentially that of the Perseus and
+Andromeda myth refined upon and mediaevalised. In _Cristine_ 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 _In a
+Gondola_ 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.
+
+The motives of two narrative poems, _The Glove_ and _The Flight of the
+Duchess_, 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 which the poet approves, to elucidate, not to
+obscure, what he represents as the truth of the situation. _The Flight
+of the Duchess_ 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 _The Glove_, 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.
+
+Another Duchess, who pined for freedom and never attained it, has her
+cold obituary notice from her bereaved Duke's lips in the _Dramatic
+Lyrics_ of 1842. _My Last Duchess_ was there made a companion poem to
+_Count Gismond_; 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 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 _Pictor
+Ignotus_ 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 _My Last
+Duchess_, is the address of the worldling Bishop, who lies dying, to the
+"nephews" who are 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+
+[Footnote 30: _In a Balcony_, published in _Men and Women_, 1855, is
+said to have been written two years previously at the Baths of Lucca.]
+
+[Footnote 31: 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?'"]
+
+[Footnote 32: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 33: See a very interesting passage on Browning's "odd liking
+for 'vermin'" in _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B._. i. 370, 371: "I always
+liked all those wild creatures God '_sets up for themselves_.'" "It
+seemed awful to watch that bee--he seemed so _instantly_ from the
+teaching of God."]
+
+[Footnote 34: Of the first part of _Saul_ Mr Kenyon said finely that "it
+reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles thrown into lyrical whirl and
+life" _(Letters R.B. and E.B.B_. i. 326).]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+Love and Marriage
+
+
+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.[35] Three years later Kenyon sent his cousin's new volumes of
+_Poems_ 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
+wrote enthusiastically.[36] 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 _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+_From a drawing in chalk by_ FIELD TALFOURD _in the National Portrait
+Gallery_.]
+
+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
+_dramatis personae_. Can she, as he alleges, really help him by her
+sympathy, by her counsel? Let him put ceremony aside and treat her _en
+bon camerade_; 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 poems are those now in his portfolio? Is
+not AEschylus 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.
+
+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?
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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; 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.
+
+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 assured knowledge of what would constitute his supreme happiness.
+
+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 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 _Prometheus_ is able to put Greek characters to their most
+delightful use in her "[Greek: o philtate]."
+
+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 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 _do_"
+One admirable trait, however, Mr Moulton Barrett did possess--he was
+nearly always away from home till six o'clock.
+
+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 authority it is none the _less_--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."
+
+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 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 "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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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."[37] 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 all my idea
+of good, and _is_" "Let me be too near to be seen.... Once I used to be
+more uneasy, and to think that I ought to _make_ you see me. But Love is
+better than sight." "I love your love too much. And _that_ is the worst
+fault, my beloved, I can ever find in my love of _you_." 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 _did_ 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.
+
+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 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 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.
+
+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 L400 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+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 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?
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: Yours very truly, Robert Browning. _From an engraving by_
+J.G. ARMYTAGE.]
+
+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 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 _that man_ 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.[38] Then husband and wife parted. 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.
+
+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."[39] 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 _only_! As if
+one said _God only_. And we shall have _Him_ 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 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 _Paracelsus_."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 35: _Letters of E.B.B._, i. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 36: See _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 37: E.B.B. to R.B., March 30, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 38: E.B.B. to R.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 39: R.B. to E.B.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+Early Years in Italy
+
+
+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 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.
+
+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." 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.
+
+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 _tete-a-tete_, 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 _hadn't_." 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 Siecle. 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
+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 _trattoria_; 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.
+
+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." _Paracelsus_ and _Pippa_ 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."
+
+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 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!"
+
+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 coupe 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
+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.
+
+"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 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:
+
+    "Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
+      All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
+      Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
+    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
+    God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
+      Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
+      These shall I bid men--each in his degree
+    Also God-guided--bear, and gladly too?
+
+    But little do or can the best of us:
+      That little is achieved through Liberty.
+    Who then dares hold--emancipated thus--
+      His fellow shall continue bound? Not I
+    Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
+      A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."[40]
+
+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
+_Strafford_, 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; _he_ is not worth thinking of."[41] 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 offending
+authoress until by and by he came to like in her an agreeable woman.
+
+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 _Piazza_. Pitti with banners and _vivas_ 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.[42] 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
+_out_, 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 _in_, 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 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.
+
+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 drove day by day through the Cascine,
+passing on the way the carven window of the _Statue and the Bust_, and
+"the stone called Dante's," whereupon
+
+    He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned
+    To Brunelleschi's church.[43]
+
+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 _Poems_, 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
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ 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 _Vanity Fair_ and _The Princess, Jane Eyre_ and
+_Modern Painters_ somehow found their way to Casa Guidi.[44]
+
+Casa Guidi proper, the Casa Guidi which held the 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 _his_ being angry with _me_ 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 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.
+
+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 _Six months in Italy_, 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 her
+writings," says Mrs Browning, "... not only exalted but _exaltee_ 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 _Fraser's Magazine_, 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.
+
+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 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.[45] 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:
+
+    We were at Fano, and three times we went
+     To sit and see him in his chapel there,
+    And drink his beauty to our soul's content
+    --My angel with me too.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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 _Madame Bovary_ without flinching and approved the morals of _La
+Dame aux Camelias_, had their roots in English Puritanism.[46] 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 40: "Why am I a Liberal?" Edited by Andrew Reid. London,
+1885.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Letters of E.B.B., i. 442.]
+
+[Footnote 42: To Miss Mitford, August 24, 1848.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Casa Guidi Windows, i.]
+
+[Footnote 44: "Jane Eyre" was lent to E.B.B. by Mrs Story.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _To Miss Mitford, Feb. 18, 1850._]
+
+[Footnote 46: In January 1859, Pen was reading an Italian translation of
+_Monte Cristo_, and announced, to his father's and mother's amusement,
+that after Dumas he would proceed to "papa's favourite book, _Madame
+Bovary_".]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+Christmas Eve and Easter Day
+
+
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ 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 _Sordello_, 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 _you_ 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 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 _Aurora
+Leigh_ 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.
+
+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
+_Easter Day_; the spiritual life corporate in _Christmas Eve._ 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 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 _Apologia pro vita sua_ of Newman, and the _Literature and
+Dogma_ 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 _Christmas Eve_.
+
+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 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?
+
+    The whole face turned upon me full,
+     And I spread myself beneath it,
+     As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it
+    In the cleansing sun, his wool,--
+     Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness
+    Some defiled, discoloured web--
+     So lay I saturate, with brightness.
+
+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.
+
+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
+commentary 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.
+
+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
+
+     the pig-of-lead-like pressure
+    Of the preaching man's immense stupidity.
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+
+    Peevish as ever to be suckled,
+    Lulled with the same old baby-prattle
+    With intermixture of the rattle.
+
+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 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:
+
+    My heart does best to receive in meekness
+    That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
+    Where earthly aids being left behind,
+    His All in All appears serene
+    With the thinnest human veil between,
+    Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
+     The many motions of his spirit,
+    Pass as they list to earth from heaven.
+
+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.
+
+From the lecture-room of Goettingen, 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 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 Goettingen 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.
+
+Having traversed the various forms of Christian faith and scepticism,
+the speaker in _Christmas Eve_ 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.
+
+Mrs Browning complained to her husband of what she terms the asceticism
+of _Easter Day_, 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 _see_ things as passionately as other people _feel_ them."
+_Easter Day_ 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 to
+his present questionings; he will try conclusions to the uttermost.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+    "Renounce the world!"--Ah, were it done
+    By merely cutting one by one
+    Your limbs off, with your wise head last,
+    How easy were it!--how soon past,
+    If once in the believing mood.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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; but at his best--as in _Rabbi ben
+Ezra_ or _Abt Vogler_--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 _Easter Day_, and we must watch the movement of the two. In a
+passage already quoted from _Christmas Eve_ 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:
+
+     He stood there. Like the smoke
+    Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke--
+    I saw Him. One magnific pall
+    Mantled in massive fold and fall
+    His head, and coiled in snaky swathes
+    About His feet; night's black, that bathes
+    All else, broke, grizzled with despair,
+    Against the soul of blackness there.
+    A gesture told the mood within--
+    That wrapped right hand which based the chin,--
+    That intense meditation fixed
+    On His procedure,--pity mixed
+    With the fulfilment of decree.
+    Motionless thus, He spoke to me,
+    Who fell before His feet, a mass,
+    No man now.
+
+The picture of the final conflagration of the Judgment Day is perhaps
+over-laboured, a descriptive _tour de force_, 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 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
+
+     grasps of guess
+    Which pull the more into the less,
+
+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:
+
+    Then did the form expand, expand--
+    knew Him through the dread disguise
+    As the whole God within his eyes
+    Embraced me.
+
+The Doomsman has in a moment become the Saviour. In all this, if
+Browning has the burden 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _a la carte_, 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 _Casa Guidi Windows_ 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."
+
+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 _Hamlet_ 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.
+
+It was at Devonshire Street that Bayard Taylor, the distinguished
+American poet and critic, made the 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.
+
+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
+Teufelsdroeckh, the Eternal No: "Why, sir," exclaimed Carlyle, "you have
+as many aspirations as Napoleon!"[47] 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-Elysees, "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.
+
+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 _coup d'etat_ was an accomplished fact. Later in the day
+Louis Napoleon rode under the windows of the apartment in the Avenue des
+Champs-Elysees, from the Carrousel to the Arc de l'Etoile. 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-Elysees its promenaders.
+For the dishonoured "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," as Mrs. Browning
+heard it suggested, might now be inscribed "Infanterie, Cavallerie,
+Artillerie."
+
+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 _emeutes_, because 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 47: "Mrs Orr's Life and Letters of R.B.," 173.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+1851 to 1855
+
+
+It was during the month of the _coup d'etat_ 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
+_dramatis persona_, 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, _Ideas_, to use the
+word of Plato, "seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine
+Hand"--which Ideas he discovers not so often in the 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 _The Cenci_
+and _Julian and Maddalo_ 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."
+
+For Browning the poet of _Prometheus Unbound_ 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 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 _Men and
+Women_ in _The Rambler_) 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 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 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.[48]
+
+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 _Sordello_ in the edition
+of Browning's "Poetical Works" of the year 1863. Under the title "La
+Poesie 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 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, _Parleyings with certain People of Importance_. "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 _Red Cotton
+Nightcap Country_ it is Milsand who is characterised in the lines:
+
+    He knows more and loves better than the world
+    That never heard his name and never may, ...
+    What hinders that my heart relieve itself,
+    O friend! who makest warm my wintry world,
+    And wise my heaven, if there we consort too.
+
+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 correspondent, to stand before Maison Milsand, and muse, and
+bless the threshold.[49]
+
+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 regime 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 Beranger 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 Camelias," 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.
+
+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 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 _shan't_ be proud, and I _won't_ be proud, and we _will_ 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; 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 _touch_ 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.
+
+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.[50] Florence
+Nightingale was also a welcome visitor, and her visit was followed by a
+gift of flowers. Invitations 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-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.
+
+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.[51] 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 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."[52]
+
+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 _Men and Women_. Mrs Browning was
+already engaged upon _Aurora Leigh_. "We neither of us show our work to
+one another," she wrote, "till it is finished. An artist must, I fancy,
+either find or _make_ 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 _Colombe's Birthday_ was given on the stage, with Helen Faucit
+in the leading part. 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
+_proprium_, 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."[53] Another intimate who charmed them
+much was one of the attaches 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.[54]
+
+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 prejudice 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.
+
+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 seance 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 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 _The Times_ by Mr
+Merrifield (_Literary Supplement_, 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 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."[55] 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 _Dramatis Personae_ 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 wrote _The Alchemist_, 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.
+
+"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
+_apologia_ 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
+which life itself were impossible even for the meanest organism in the
+shape of man.
+
+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?
+
+     It's too bad, I say,
+    Ruining a soul so!
+
+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 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
+
+     Throwing thus
+    His sense out, like an ant-eater's long tongue,
+    Soft, innocent, warm, moist, impassible,
+    And when 'twas crusted o'er with creatures--slick,
+    Their juice enriched his palate. "Could not Sludge!"
+
+Haunters of the seance 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?
+
+     Gratitude to these?
+    The gratitude, forsooth, of a prostitute
+    To the greenhorn and the bully.
+
+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 described him in his outbreaks against the spiritualists,
+"with occasional foamings at the mouth."[56]
+
+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:
+
+    I guess what's going on outside the veil,
+    Just as the prisoned crane feels pairing-time
+    In the islands where his kind are, so must fall
+    To capering by himself some shiny night
+    As if your back yard were a plot of spice.
+
+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 this a power
+which cheats its possessor, or cheats those for whose advantage he gives
+it play?
+
+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 _The Ring and the Book_. 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS
+STAYED.
+
+_From a photograph._]
+
+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 mountains like wild eagles," renewed
+their former delights.
+
+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 _Men and Women_, of which his wife was able to
+report in the autumn that it was in an advanced state. _In a Balcony_
+was the most important achievement of the summer. "The scene of the
+declaration in _By the Fireside_" Mrs Orr informs us, "was laid in a
+little adjacent mountain-gorge to which Browning walked or rode."
+
+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 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.[57] 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 _The Letters of Mrs Browning_. 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 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.[58]
+
+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 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."
+
+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
+_Men and Women_ and _Aurora Leigh_ maintained in the writers a deep
+inward excitement of the kind that leaves an enduring result. A little
+joint publication; _Two Poems by E.B.B. and R.B_., containing _A Plea
+for the Ragged Schools of London_ and _The Twins_, 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
+_Date_ and _Dabitur_, the twins of Browning's poem, when we bear in mind
+the occasion with which it was originally connected.
+
+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 _he_ 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."[59] 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.
+
+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
+_Men and Women_[60] 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.
+
+The year 1855 was a fortunate year for English poetry. _Men and Women_
+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 _Maud_ had preceded Browning's volumes by some
+months. It bewildered the critics, but his brother poet did justice to
+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 _Maud_ 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 _Maud_," she
+goes on, "every now and then--'There's a wonderful touch! That's very
+tender! How beautiful that is!' Yes and it _was_ wonderful, tender,
+beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather
+music than speech."
+
+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 _Maud_ 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
+Caine, spoke of the incident in these terms: 'I once heard Tennyson
+read _Maud_; 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 _Maud_ came Browning and _Fra Lippo Lippi_--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."[61] 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."[62] 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 48: Browning's Essay on Shelley was reprinted by Dr Furnivall
+in "The Browning Society's Papers," 1881-84, Part I.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Letters of E.B.B. ii. 284. On Milsand, the article "A
+French friend of Browning," by Th. Bentzon, is valuable and
+interesting.]
+
+[Footnote 50: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 51: See Letters of E.B.B. ii. 127.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Letters of E.B.B. ii. 99.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Letter of F. Tennyson, in Memoir of Alfred Tennyson, by
+his son, chapter xviii.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Mr Kenyon's note, vol. ii. 142 of Letters of E.B.B.]
+
+[Footnote 55: _Times Lit. Supplement_, Dec. 5, 1902.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Miss Cobbe's testimony is similar, and Lehmann says that
+at Home's name Browning would grow pale with passion.]
+
+[Footnote 57: See "Story and his Friends," by Henry James, 1903, vol. i.
+pp. 284, 285.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Letters of E.B.B., ii. 345.]
+
+[Footnote 59: E.B.B. to Ruskin, _Letters_, ii. 199.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Which, however, did not prevent certain errors noted in a
+letter of Browning to Dante Rossetti.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His "Family Letters," i. 190,
+191.]
+
+[Footnote 62: 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.]
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI.
+
+_By himself. A detail from the fresco in the Cathedral at Praia from a
+photograph by_ ALINARI.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+Men and Women
+
+
+Rossetti expresses his first enthusiasm about _Men and Women_ 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 _Dramatis
+Personae_ 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?
+
+There is no need now to "lay siege" to the poems of _Men and Women_;
+they have expounded themselves, 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 _Fifine at the Fair_ 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 _Men and Women_ 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:
+
+    He with a 'look you!' vents a brace of rhymes,
+    And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
+    Over us, under, round us every side,
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Buries us with a glory, young once more,
+    Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.
+
+Browning in _Men and Women_ 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 _Bishop Blougram_ is rather a
+presentation of character than a train of argument or a chain of ideas.
+
+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,
+_Memorabilia_, addressed to one who had seen Shelley, and _Old Pictures
+in Florence_, 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
+_dramatis personae_ 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 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.
+
+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 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 ... _as_ different as a willow tree from a
+church tower."[63]
+
+The fifty poems of _Men and Women_, 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, _A
+Grammarian's Funeral_; 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, _Up at a Villa--Down
+in the City_, is made up of humorous observations of Italian city and
+country life, expressing the mundane tastes and prudent economies of an
+Italian person of quality; the other, "_De Gustibus_--," 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. _The Patriot_ 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, _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
+came_. 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 _King Lear_ 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.[64] 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 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.
+
+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 _Pretty
+Woman_ 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 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 _In a Year_, as swift and broken with pauses as the beating
+of a heart:
+
+    Dear, the pang is brief,
+     Do thy part,
+    Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
+     Grows belief!
+    Well, this cold clay clod
+     Was man's heart:
+    Crumble it and what comes next?
+     Is it God?
+
+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, _Any Wife to any Husband_; 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 _Men and Women_ two contrasted poems assure us that, while the
+passion of a man may be no more than _Love in a Life_, it may also be
+an unweariable _Life in a Love_.
+
+Of the poems of attainment one--_Respectability_--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:
+
+    The world's good word!--the Institute!
+     Guizot receives Montalembert!
+     Eh? Down the court three lampions flare:
+    Set forward your best foot!
+
+But, after all, this love may be no more than an adventure of the
+boulevard and the attic in the manner of Beranger's gay Bohemianism. The
+distance is wide between such elan of youthful passion and the fidelity
+which is inevitable, and on which age has set its seal, in that poem of
+perfect attainment, _By the Fireside_. 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.
+
+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 _Evelyn Hope_ 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 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, _Two in the Campagna_.
+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
+
+     Infinite passion, and the pain
+    Of finite hearts that yearn.[65]
+
+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 _One Way of Love_; 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:
+
+    She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
+    Lose who may--I still can say
+    Those who win heaven, blest are they!
+
+So, too, in _The Last Ride together_, 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 _A Serenade at the Villa_,
+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.
+
+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 _The Statue
+and the Bust_ 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
+
+    Duke grew straightway brave and wise.
+
+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:
+
+    So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
+    The glory dropped from their youth and love,
+    And both perceived they had dreamed a dream.
+
+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:
+
+    And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+    Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
+    Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
+
+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.
+
+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 _A Lovers'
+Quarrel_ 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, _A
+Womans Last Word_: In a quarrel 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, _Love among the
+Ruins_, 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 _By the Fireside, A Serenade at the Villa_, and _Two in the
+Campagna_, 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.
+
+Of the pieces relating to art those connected with the art of poetry are
+the least valuable. _Transcendentalism_ sets forth the old doctrine that
+poetry must be sensuous and passionate, leaving it to philosophy to
+deal with the naked abstractions of the intellect. _How it strikes a
+Contemporary_ shows by a humorous example how a poet's character and
+private life may be misconceived and misrepresented by those among whom
+he moves. _Popularity_ 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, _Master Hugues of
+Saxe-Gotha_, is a singularly successful _tour de force_, 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, _A Toccata of
+Galuppi's_, 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 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.
+
+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.[66]
+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
+_Protus_, 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 _Sordello_. 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
+strong objective touches, never protruding itself sentimentally in
+quest of tenderness or pity.
+
+"I spent some most delightful time," Rossetti wrote to Allingham shortly
+after the publication of _Men and Women_, "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--_encyclopedically_ beyond that of Ruskin himself." The poem _Old
+Pictures at Florence_, 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
+
+    Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
+     New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
+    To bring the invisible full into play!
+     Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?
+
+[Illustration: ANDREA DEL SARTO.
+
+_From a print after the portrait by himself in the Uffizi Gallery,
+Florence_.]
+
+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
+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:
+
+    Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+    Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
+    Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
+
+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.[67]
+
+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:
+
+    The beauty and the wonder and the power,
+    The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
+    Changes, surprises--and God made it all!
+
+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 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.[68]
+
+The same doctrine which is applied to art in _Old Pictures in Florence_,
+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 _A Grammarian's Funeral_. The time is "shortly
+after the Revival of Learning in Europe"; the place--
+
+     a tall mountain, citied to the top,
+    Crowded with culture!--
+
+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 _Hudibras_, 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 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:
+
+    That low man seeks a little thing to do,
+     Sees it and does it:
+    This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
+     Dies ere he knows it.
+
+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.
+
+Two of the poems of _Men and Women_ are pages tragic-grotesque and
+pathetic-grotesque from the history of religion. In _The Heretic s
+Tragedy_ 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 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. _Holy Cross Day_, 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.
+
+The historical distortions of the religion of Christ do not, however,
+disturb the faith of Browning in the Christian revelation of Divine
+love. In _Cleon_ 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; 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:
+
+     It is so horrible
+    I dare at times imagine to my need
+    Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
+    Unlimited in capability
+    For joy, as this is in desire for joy.
+
+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
+
+    Hath access to a secret shut from us?
+
+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 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.
+
+Immortality and Divine love--these were the great words pronounced by
+Paul and by Christ. _Cleon_ 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. _Saul_, in
+the completed form of 1855, and _An Epistle of Karshish_ 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:
+
+     O Saul, it shall be
+    A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me
+    Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
+    Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!
+
+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 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!
+
+    The very God! think, Abib: dost thou think?
+    So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too--
+    So through the thunder comes a human voice
+    Saying "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+    Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+    Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
+    But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+    And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
+
+Science has at least something to consider in a thought so strangely
+potent.
+
+A nineteenth-century sceptic's exposition of his Christian faith is the
+paradoxical subject of _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, 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 _mise en
+scene_; 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?[69] 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 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
+_Bishop Blougram's Apology_ 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?
+
+Browning's moral sympathies, we may rest assured, 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 _credenda_, 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?
+
+    With me faith means perpetual unbelief
+    Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,
+    Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
+
+When the time arrives for a beatific vision Blougram will be ready to
+adapt himself to the new state of 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--
+
+     Fool or knave?
+    Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
+    When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
+
+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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 63: Letters of R.B. and E.B.B., i. 388.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Mrs Orr's Handbook to Browning's Works, 266, note. For the
+horse, see stanzas xiii. xiv. of the poem.]
+
+[Footnote 65: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Browning's delight a few years later in modelling in clay
+was great.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Mrs Andrew Crosse, in her article, "John Kenyon and his
+Friends" (_Temple Bar Magazine_, 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!"]
+
+[Footnote 68: 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
+_Transcendentalism_, where Browning spoke of "Swedish Boehme," was
+indicated. He acknowledged the error and altered the text to "German
+Boehme."]
+
+[Footnote 69: Browning maintained to Gavan Duffy that his treatment of
+the Cardinal was generous.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+Close of Mrs Browning's Life
+
+
+When _Men and Women_ 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 Colisee 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."[70] Happily the winter was of a miraculous mildness. Mrs
+Browning worked _Aurora Leigh_ in "a sort of _furia_," and Browning set
+himself to the task--a fruitless one as it proved--of rehandling and
+revising _Sordello_: "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 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.
+
+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,'_Papa, I'll
+be dood_.'" 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 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."
+
+The great event of the autumn for the Brownings and for the lovers of
+English poetry was the publication of _Aurora Leigh_. 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 _l_., to
+Mrs Browning 4,500 _l_. "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 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.
+
+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 _Aurora Leigh_, 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.[71] At first Mrs
+Browning was crushed and could shed no tear; she remained for many days
+in a state of miserable prostration; it was two months before she could
+write a letter to anyone outside the circle of her nearest kinsfolk.
+
+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 _me_" 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 _mirage_"; 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.
+
+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."
+
+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 _Galignanis_. 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.
+
+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, 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 Chambery "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.
+
+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. But January froze the fountains,
+and the north wind blew with force. Mrs Browning had just completed a
+careful revision _of Aurora Leigh_, 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.
+
+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 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."[72] 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 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.
+
+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 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.[73] 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.[74] 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.[75] To his incredulous wife Browning spoke of
+Landor's sweetness 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.[76]
+
+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 vineyards" 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.[77]
+
+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 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 _tete-a-tetes_
+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 _osteria_, witnessed the dignified blindness of the
+Papal gendarmes to the offence, while Gigi liberally plied them with
+drink; 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.[78]
+
+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, _Poems
+before Congress._ 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 _furious_" 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. 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 _Mr Sludge the Medium_, for Home's
+performances, as he says, were at this time rampant.[79] 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.
+
+On June 4th 1860 they left Rome, travelling by vettura through Orvieto
+and Chiusi to their home in Florence.[80] 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 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.
+
+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 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."
+
+Apart from his anxieties for his wife's health and the unfailing
+pleasure in his boy, whom a French or Italian abbe 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. 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 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.[81]
+
+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."[82] A little later she was cast
+down by the 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.
+
+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.[83]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 70: Letters of E.B.B. (To Mrs Jameson), ii. 221.]
+
+[Footnote 71: F.G. Kenyon. _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 263.]
+
+[Footnote 72: "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.)]
+
+[Footnote 73: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Letters of E.B.B., ii. 354.]
+
+[Footnote 75: 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. _Letters of E.B.B_., ii. 309, 310.]
+
+[Footnote 76: On Browning's action in the affairs of Landor see
+Forster's _Life of Landor_, and the letters of Browning in vol. ii. of
+Henry James's _Life of Story_ (pp. 6-11).]
+
+[Footnote 77: See, for this residence at Siena, an interesting letter of
+Story to C. Eliot Norton in Henry James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 14,
+15.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Condensed from information given by Prinsep to Mrs Orr,
+_Life and Letters of R.B._, pp. 234-37.]
+
+[Footnote 79: _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 388, note. Mr Kenyon suggests _A
+Death in the Desert_ as at least possibly meant. _The Ring and the Book_
+"certainly had not yet been begun."]
+
+[Footnote 80: Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the
+journey to Story: Henry James's _W.W. Story_, ii. pp. 50-52.]
+
+[Footnote 81: H. James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.]
+
+[Footnote 82: 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." _W.W. Story_, vol. i.p. 286.]
+
+[Footnote 83: 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 _W.W.
+Story_, 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+London: Dramatis Personae
+
+
+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."[84] Yet something remained to sustain
+him.
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+platform. Browning pulled his hat over his face and was
+unrecognised.[85] 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.
+
+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 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.[86] 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.
+
+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 _Cornhill
+Magazine_, 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 _Last Poems_; in
+1863, her _Greek Christian Poets_; in 1865 he prepared a volume 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-work was carried on by plying other faculties than those which
+give its highest value to poetry.[87]
+
+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.[88] 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 _Dramatis Personae_. The story of _Gold Hair_ and the
+landscape details of _James Lee's Wife_ 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 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.[89]
+
+"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 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,
+
+     Trembled on the verge
+    Of monkhood: trick of cowl and taste of scourge
+    He tried: then, kicked not at the pricks perverse,
+    But took again, for better or for worse,
+    The old way of the world, and, much the same
+    Man o' the outside, fairly played life's game.
+
+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:
+
+    Strength may conclude in Archelaos' court,
+    And yet esteem the silken company
+    So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown,
+    For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve.
+    Strength amid crowds as late in solitude
+    May lead the still life, ply the wordless task.[90]
+
+One cannot prescribe a hygiene to poets; the poet of passionate
+contemplation, such as was Wordsworth, could hardly quicken or develop
+his peculiar faculty 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.
+
+In 1864 _Dramatis Personae_ was published. It might be described as
+virtually a third volume of _Men and Women_. 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 _A
+Death in the Desert_, which had hardly been reached before. Yet
+substantially the volume is a continuation of the poems of 1855; except
+in one instance, where Tennyson's method in _Maud_, that of a sequence
+of lyrics, is adopted, the methods are the same; the predominating
+themes of _Men and Women_, love, art, religion, are the predominating
+themes of _Dramatis Personae._ A slight metrical complication--the
+internal rhyme in the second line of each stanza of _Dis aliter visum_
+and in the third line of the quatrains of _May and Death_--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.
+
+_Mr Sludge, "the Medium_" 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:
+
+    Hair such a wonder of flix and floss,
+    Freshness and fragrance--floods of it too!
+    Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross.
+
+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 _manque_, 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 psychological
+contrasts of the ambiguous creature, saint-sinner, and the visual
+contrast of
+
+     that face, like a silver wedge
+    'Mid the yellow wealth,
+
+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.
+
+No poem in the volume of _Dramatis Personae_ is connected with pictorial
+art, unless it be the few lines entitled _A Face_, 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 _Master Hugues_ 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
+_Abt Vogler_ 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
+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 _Toccata of Galuppi_ left behind as its
+relics the melancholy of mundane pleasure and a sense of its transitory
+existence. The extemporising of _Abt Vogler_ fills the void which it has
+opened with the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
+unseen.
+
+Faith, victor over loss, in _Abt Vogler_, is victor over temporal decay
+in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. 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 _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ 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 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
+_Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is death as a friend. In the lines entitled _Prospice_
+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 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 _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ may be set the
+uncompromising realism of _Apparent Failure_, 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--
+
+    Poor men, God made, and all for that!--
+
+is not quenched, nor is the hope quenched that
+
+     After Last returns the First,
+    Though a wide compass round be fetched,
+    That what began best, can't end worst.
+
+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.
+
+In 1864 under somewhat altered conditions, and from a ground somewhat
+shifted, Browning in _A Death in the Desert_ and the _Epilogue_ to
+"Dramatis Personae" continued his apology for the Christian 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:
+
+    Outside was all noon and the burning blue.
+
+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,--
+
+     We would not lose
+    The last of what might happen on his face;
+
+and this:--
+
+    When there was mid sea and the mighty things;
+
+and this:--
+
+    Lie bare to the universal prick of light;
+
+and these:--
+
+    The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,
+    And could not write nor speak, but only loved.
+
+Such lines, however, are made to be read _in situ_.
+
+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 within them a larger
+and more enduring belief. The acorn has not perished because it has
+expanded into an oak.
+
+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 _Epilogue_ 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:
+
+    Oh, dread succession to a dizzy post,
+    Sad sway of sceptre whose mere touch appals.
+
+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:
+
+    Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
+    O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
+    From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet calls?
+
+    That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
+    Or decomposes but to recompose,
+    Become my universe that feels and knows.[91]
+
+In the great poem of 1868-69, _The Ring and the Book_, one speaker, the
+venerable Pope, like St John of _A Death in the Desert_, 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:
+
+    Lies bare to the universal prick of light.
+
+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
+
+    All questions in the earth and out of it.
+
+But whether the truth of the early centuries be an absolute historic
+fact,
+
+    Or only truth reverberate, changed, made pass
+    A spectrum into mind, the narrow eye--
+    The same and not the same, else unconceived--
+
+the Pope dare not affirm. Nor does he regard the question as of urgent
+importance at the present day; the effect of the Christian
+tale--historic fact, or higher fact expressed in myth--remains:
+
+     So my heart be struck,
+    What care I,--by God's gloved hand or the bare?
+
+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.[92]
+
+If the grotesque occupies a comparatively small place in _Dramatis
+Personae_, 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,
+
+    With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
+
+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
+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,
+
+    Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
+
+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.
+
+Except the short piece named _May and Death_, 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 _Dramatis Personae_, as originally
+published, are all poems of love. _A Likeness_, 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 _Confessions_. 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. _Youth and Art_ may be placed beside the earlier
+_Respectability_ 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 _Dis Aliter Visum_, a variation on the same or a kindred theme, where
+our young Bohemian sculptor is replaced by the elderly poet, 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 _Too Late_ 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. _The Worst of it_--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 _James Lee's Wife_ (named in the first edition
+by a stroke of perversity _James Lee_), 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 84: Letter to Story in Henry James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p.
+91 and p. 97.]
+
+[Footnote 85: H. James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p. 100.]
+
+[Footnote 86: "Rossetti Papers," p. 302.]
+
+[Footnote 87: In 1863 Browning gave time and pains to revising his
+friend Story's _Roba di Roma_.]
+
+[Footnote 88: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 89: Was the poem _Gold Hair_? If three stanzas were added to
+the first draft before the poem appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_ the
+number of lines would have been 120. Stanzas 21, 22 and 23 were added in
+the _Dramatis Personae_ version.]
+
+[Footnote 90: _Aristophanes' Apology_ (spoken of Euripides).]
+
+[Footnote 91: Compare with _Epilogue: Third Speaker_ the lines from _A
+Death in the Desert_:
+
+    Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,
+    Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,
+    As though a star should open out, all sides,
+    Grow the world on you, as it is my world.
+
+[Footnote 92: 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
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ in chapter xvi.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+The Ring and the Book
+
+
+The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ 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 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 _home_!' I think I should fairly end it
+all on the spot."[93]
+
+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, 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 _Two Poets of
+Croisic_--
+
+    Croisic, the spit of sandy rock which juts
+     Spitefully north,
+
+they returned in the following summer. During this second visit
+(September 1867) that most spirited ballad of French heroism, _Herve
+Riel_, was written, though its publication belongs to four years
+later.[94]
+
+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 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 son."[95] 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.[96] 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 _The Ring and the
+Book_. The two remaining volumes followed in January and February 1869.
+
+[Illustration: PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS
+FOUND BY BROWNING.
+
+_From a photograph by_ ALINARI.]
+
+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 threshold of Casa Guidi[97].
+That night his brain was a-work; pacing the terrace of Casa Guidi, while
+from Felice church opposite came
+
+     the clear voice of the cloistered ones,
+    Chanting a chant made for mid-summer nights,
+
+he gave himself up to the excitement of re-creating the actors and
+re-enacting their deeds in his imagination:
+
+    I fused my live soul and that inert stuff,
+    Before attempting smithcraft.
+
+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.'"[98] 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 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
+_The Ring and the Book_, he refers to having been in close converse with
+his old quarto of the Piazza San Lorenzo during four years:
+
+    How will it be, my four-years' intimate,
+    When thou and I part company anon?
+
+The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ 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."[99]
+
+When Carlyle met Browning after the appearance of _The Ring and the
+Book_, he desired to be complimentary, but was hardly more felicitous
+than Browning 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."[100] 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 _Clarissa_ 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 sentence of the critical
+Polonius--"This is too long." But neither _Clarissa_ nor _The Ring and
+the Book_ 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.
+
+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 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; a voice terrible in
+its sincerity, absolute in 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 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.
+
+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
+
+     That our human speech is naught,
+    Our human testimony false, our fame
+    And human estimation words and wind.
+
+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 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 _salon_ 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.
+
+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 _dramatis
+personae_ 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, 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
+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:--
+
+"Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
+
+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,"
+
+    While--see how this mere chance sown, cleft-nursed seed
+    That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot
+    Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,
+    Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire
+    To incorporate the whole great sun it loves
+    From the inch-height whence it looks and longs. My flower,
+    My rose, I gather for the breast of God.
+
+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--
+
+    Looks old, fantastic and impossible:
+    I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades.
+
+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.
+
+If any point in the whole long poem, _The Ring and the Book_, 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 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?[101] 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,
+
+    A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad,
+
+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
+
+     An eternity
+    Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth
+    O' the soul that then broke silence.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+    Till old experience do attain
+    To something of Prophetic strain.
+
+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--
+
+    Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute,
+    With prudence, probity and--what beside
+    From the other world he feels impress at times;
+
+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 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.
+
+_The Ring and the Book_ 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 how it was a gift hammered and filed
+during the years of smithcraft "in memoriam"; in memory and also with a
+hope.
+
+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. _The Ring and the Book_ 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--_Pacchiarotto and how he worked in distemper; with other Poems_.
+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. _The Inn Album_ 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 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. _The Ring and the Book_ 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.
+
+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 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 _The Ring and the Book_, 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 _The Inn Album_,
+and others are often revealers of sudden truth, which 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.[102]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 93: Letter to Miss Blagden, Feb. 24, 1870, given by Mrs Orr,
+p. 287.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Vivid descriptions of Le Croisic at an earlier date may be
+found in one of Balzac's short stories.]
+
+[Footnote 95: _Life of Jowett_ by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, i.
+400, 401.]
+
+[Footnote 96: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Such a book would naturally attract Browning, who, like
+his father, had an interest in celebrated criminal cases. In his
+_Memories_ (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 _cause celebre_ of that kind within
+living memory.]
+
+[Footnote 98: _An Artist's Reminiscences_, by R. Lehmann (1894), p.
+224.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Rossetti Papers, p. 302.]
+
+[Footnote 100: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 101: The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi's
+monologue, II. 936-973, beginning with "Thought? nay, sirs, what shall
+follow was not thought."]
+
+[Footnote 102: I have used here some passages already printed in my
+_Studies in Literature_.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Poems on Classical Subjects
+
+
+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.[103] 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.[104] "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 accompanied 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.[105] 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.
+
+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 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."[106] Perhaps Browning's "only
+book" of 1872 contained the dramas of AEschylus, 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,
+
+    Symbolic of the place and people too,
+
+_White Cotton Night-Cap Country_, the suggestion of Browning's title
+_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ is due. To her the poem is dedicated.
+
+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 he had gratified his American
+admirers by allowing _Gold Hair_ and _Prospice_ to appear in the
+_Atlantic Monthly_ previous to their inclusion in _Dramatis Persona._ 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 _Pall Mall Gazette_, 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 _Herve Riel_ for use in the _Cornhill
+Magazine_ 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 "conge 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,
+"Truth above all things; so treat the matter as you please."[107]
+
+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, _The Founder of the Feast_, a poem not included in
+any edition of his works, he recalls these evenings of delight:
+
+      Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,
+    My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,
+      When, night by night--ah, memory, how it haunts!--
+      Music was poured by perfect ministrants,
+    By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim.
+
+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 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 _La Saisiaz_:
+
+    You supposed that few or none had known and loved you in the world:
+    May be! flower that's full-blown tempts the butterfly, not flower that's furled.
+    But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand
+    Bud to bell and out-spread flower-shape at the least warm touch of hand
+    --Maybe throb of heart, beneath which,--quickening farther than it knew,--
+    Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and unguessed hue.
+    Disembosomed, re-embosomed,--must one memory suffice,
+    Prove I knew an Alpine rose which all beside named Edelweiss?
+
+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 Treport. Browning at this time was much
+absorbed by his _Aristophanes' Apology_. "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 wall." The following
+summers were spent at Villers in Normandy (1875), at the Isle of Arran
+(1876), and in the upland country of the Saleve, near Geneva. During the
+visit to the Saleve 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 _La Saisiaz_, 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.
+
+The grouping of the works produced by Browning from the date of the
+publication of _The Ring and the Book_ (1868) to the publication of _La
+Saisias_ (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 which these gave rise extend at
+intervals over the whole decade. _Balaustion's Adventure_ was published
+in 1871, _Aristophanes' Apology_ in 1875, the translation of _The
+Agamemnon of AEschylus_ in 1877. Two of the volumes of this period,
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ (1871) and _Fifine at the Fair_ (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.[108] Two of the volumes are narrative poems, each tending to a
+tragic crisis; _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ (1873) is a story
+entangled with questions relating to religion; _The Inn Album_ (1875) is
+a tragedy of the passion of love. The volume of 1876, _Pacchiarotto with
+other Poems_, is the miscellaneous gathering of lyrical and narrative
+pieces which had come into being during a period of many years. Finally
+in _La Saisiaz_ 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, _The two Poets of
+Croisic_, which has in it much matter of honest mirth, and closes with
+the declaration that the test of greatness in an artist lies in his
+power of converting his more than common sufferings into a more than
+common joy.
+
+_Balaustion's Adventure_, 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."[109] 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 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 _Balaustions
+Adventure_:
+
+    Our Euripides the human,
+    With his droppings of warm tears.
+
+"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."[110]
+
+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,
+
+    Outsmoothing galingale and watermint,
+    Its mat-floor,
+
+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 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:
+
+     'Tis the poet speaks:
+    But if I, too, should try and speak at times,
+    Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
+    Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew--
+    Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake!
+
+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.
+
+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 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 with gladness the
+spirit of Alkestis just escaped from the shades.[111] 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.
+
+Browning, who delights to show how good is brought out of evil, or what
+appears such to mortal 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 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:
+
+    He was beginning to be like his wife.
+
+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,
+
+    When I betray her, though she is no more,
+    May I die.
+
+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.
+
+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
+_Sursum corda!_--a challenge and a summons to whatever manliness is in
+us. And the best of it is that sauntering the pavement or crossing the
+ferry we may happen to encounter this face of Herakles:
+
+    Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is coming;
+    I see the high pioneer-caps--I see the slaves of runners clearing the way,
+    I hear victorious drums.
+
+    This face is a life-boat.
+
+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:
+
+    Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world!
+    I think this is the authentic sign and sea!
+    Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
+    And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
+    Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
+    And recommence at sorrow.
+
+Something of the Herakles ideal appears again and again in other poems
+of Browning. His Breton sailor, Herve Riel, has more than a touch of the
+Heraclean frankness of gaiety in arduous effort. His Ivan Ivanovitch
+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.
+
+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:
+
+    Therewith her whole soul entered into his,
+    He looked the look back, and Alkestis died--
+
+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.
+
+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. _Aristophanes' Apology_ is written from first to last with
+unflagging energy; the translation of the "Herakles" which it includes
+is a masculine and 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:
+
+     Such domineering deity
+    Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine
+    For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path
+    Which, purpling, recognised the conqueror.
+
+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 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):
+
+     All at once, large-looming from his wave,
+    Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge,
+    A sea-worn face, sad as mortality,
+    Divine with yearning after fellowship.
+    He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw;
+    So much she sees now, and does reverence.
+
+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.
+
+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 _in situ_ is a sufficient reward
+for reading many laborious pages that might almost as well have been
+thrown into an imaginary conversation in prose:
+
+    Then the grey brow sank low, and Sophokles
+    Re-swathed him, sweeping doorward: mutely passed
+    'Twixt rows as mute.
+
+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
+
+     Makes wise, not grave,--and glad,
+    Not grinning: whereby laughter joins with tears.
+
+Instead of making this advance he had retrograded; and it remained for a
+poet of a far-off future in the 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.
+
+The translation of _Agamemnon_, 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 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 _Agamemnon_ 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 _Agamemnon_ 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.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 103: 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?]
+
+[Footnote 104: Letter quoted by Mrs Orr, p. 288.]
+
+[Footnote 105: The attitude is reproduced in a photograph from which a
+woodcut is given in Mme. Blanc's article "A French Friend of Browning."]
+
+[Footnote 106: "Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning," by Annie
+Ritchie, pp. 291, 292.]
+
+[Footnote 107: "A Bibliography of the Writings of Robert Browning," by
+T.J. Wise, pp. 157, 158.]
+
+[Footnote 108: _Aristophanes' Apology_ is connected with these poems by
+its character as a casuistical self-defence of the chief speaker.]
+
+[Footnote 109: North's "Plutarch," 1579, p. 599.]
+
+[Footnote 110: "Les Deux Masques," ii. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 111: A comment of Paul de Saint-Victor on the silence of the
+recovered Alkestis deserves to be quoted: "Hercule apprend a Admete
+qu'il lui est interdit d'entendre sa voix avant qu'elle soit purifiee de
+sa consecration aux Divinites infernales. J'aime mieux voir dans cette
+reserve un scrupule religieux du poete laissant a la morte sa dignite
+d'Ombre. Alceste a ete nitiee aux profonds mysteres de la mort; elle a
+vu l'invisible, elle a entendu l'ineffable; toute parole sortie de ses
+levres serait une divulgation sacrilege. Ce silence mysterieux la
+spiritualise et la rattache par un dernier lien au monde eternel."]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+Problem and Narrative Poems
+
+
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, which appeared in December 1871, four
+months after the publication of _Balaustions Adventure_, 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[112] and whose talents he admired. Yet for a certain kind of
+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 _Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.
+
+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 _civitas hominum_, however remote from the
+ideal, to a sham _civitas Dei_ 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 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, _et pour cause_; 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 _apologia_ was admissible in the interests of truth
+and justice, and by placing this _apologia_ 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.
+
+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. _Prince
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is an interesting intellectual exercise, and if
+this constitutes a poem, a poem it is; but the theme is fitter for a
+prose discussion. Browning'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:
+
+    So your fugue broadens and thickens,
+    Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
+    Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens!"
+
+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 _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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, 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.
+
+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 of Edmund Burke.[113] The record of the Prince's
+early and irresponsible aspirations for a free Italy--
+
+    Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught,
+    Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine
+    For ever!--
+
+with what immediately follows, would have satisfied the ardent spirit of
+Mrs Browning.[114] 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:--
+
+     The people here,
+    Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride
+    Above her pride i' the race all flame and air
+    And aspiration to the boundless Great,
+    The incommensurably Beautiful--
+    Whose very faulterings groundward come of flight
+    Urged by a pinion all too passionate
+    For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow:
+    Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave
+    Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous
+    In Art, the--more than all--magnetic race
+    To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind.
+
+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 _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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 succession of men of genius in the priesthood
+of the world--"The new power slays the old, but handsomely."
+
+In _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ 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 _Fifine at the Fair_ (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
+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 _Fifine at the Fair_ as the virtue of
+tar-water is the subject of Berkeley's _Siris_. The poem is in fact
+Browning's _Siris_--a chain of thoughts and feelings, reaching with no
+break in the chain, from a humble basis to the heights of speculation.
+
+But before all else _Fifine at the Fair_ is a poem. Of all the longer
+poems which followed _The Ring and the Book_ 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 are essentially parts of the texture of the poem,
+yet each has a lustre or a shimmer or grave splendour of its own.
+
+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 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.
+
+The speaker in _Fifine at the Fair_ 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
+expresses an idea which Browning has repeatedly expressed in
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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 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:
+
+     His problem posed aright
+    Was--"From a given point evolve the infinite!"
+    Not--"Spend thyself in space, endeavouring to joint
+    Together, and so make infinite, point and point:
+    Fix into one Elvire a Fair-ful of Fifines!"
+
+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.[115]
+
+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 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 _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_:
+
+    Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and embrace
+    Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself.
+
+And he would have pleaded that art, which he styles
+
+     The love of loving, rage
+    Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
+    For truth's sake, whole and sole,
+
+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 _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ 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 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 Leonce 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 Leonce Miranda's bloody night-cap.
+
+The moral is just, and the story bears it well. Yet Browning's own
+conviction that man's highest and 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 Leonce 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:
+
+     Quick conclude
+    Removal, time effects so tardily,
+    Of what is plain obstruction; rubbish cleared,
+    Let partial-ruin stand while ruin may,
+    And serve world's use, since use is manifold.
+
+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,
+
+    To damage him aloft, brain us below,
+    When new vibrations bury both in brick.
+
+For which sane word, if not for all the pages of his poem, we may feel
+gratefully towards the writer. It 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 _mamestra brassicae_ 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.
+
+The second narrative poem of this period, _The Inn Album_ (1875), is in
+truth a short series of dramatic scenes, placed in a narrative
+frame-work. It is as concentrated as _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ is
+diffuse; and the unities of time and place assist the tragic
+concentration. A recast of _The Inn Album_ 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.[116] 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 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 _dramatis personae_, 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:
+
+    The wooded watered country, hill and dale
+    And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,
+    A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift
+    O' the sun-touched dew.
+
+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.
+
+In this poem Browning reverts to his earlier method of clearly and
+simply dividing the evil from the good. We are not embarrassed by the
+mingling of truth with sophistry; our instinctive sympathies are not
+held in check, but are on the contrary reinforced by the undisguised
+sympathies of the writer. We are no more in doubt where wrong and where
+justice lie than if Count Gismond were confronting Count Gauthier. The
+avenger, indeed, is no champion of romance; he is only a young English
+snob, a little slow of brain, a little unrefined in manner, a "clumsy
+giant handsome creature," who for a year has tried to acquire under an
+accomplished tutor the lore of cynical worldliness, and has not
+succeeded, for he is manly and honest, and has the gentleness of
+strength; "for ability, all's in the rough yet." Of his education the
+best part is that he has once loved and been thwarted in his love. And
+now in a careless-earnest regard for his cousin his need is that of
+occupation for his big, idle boy's heart; he wants something to do,
+someone also to serve. Browning wishes to show the passion of
+righteousness, which suddenly flames forth and abolishes an evil thing
+as springing from no peculiar knightly virtue but from mere honest human
+nature. The huge boy, somewhat crude, somewhat awkward, with a moral
+temper still unclarified, has enough of our good, common humanity in him
+to hold no parley with utter wickedness, when once he fully apprehends
+its nature; therefore he springs upon it in one swift transport of rage
+and there and then makes an end of it. His big red hands are as much the
+instruments of divine justice as is the axe of Ivan Ivanovitch.
+
+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 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 _naivete_, 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--
+
+    Into that sad obscure sequestered state
+    Where God unmakes but to remake the soul
+    He else made first in vain,
+
+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.
+
+The lady, again, with her superb statue-like beauty, her low wide brow
+
+     Oppressed by sweeps of hair
+    Darker and darker as they coil and swathe
+    The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black,
+
+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:
+
+     Did you love me once?
+    Then take love's last and best return! I think
+    Womanliness means only motherhood;
+    All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
+    But, having run the circle, rests at home.
+
+Her husband, good man, will not suffer acutely for her loss; he will be
+true to duty, and continue to dose his flock with the comfortable dogma
+of hell-fire, in which not one of them believes.
+
+The _Pacchiarotto_ volume of 1876 was the first collection of
+miscellaneous poetry put forth by Browning since the appearance, twelve
+years previously, of _Dramatis Personae_[117] 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
+_Pacchiarotto_, 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 _Epilogue_ 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 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.
+
+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--_laissez-faire_, 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 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.
+
+The Browning who masks as Shakespeare in _At the Mermaid_ disclaims the
+ambition of heading a poetical faction, condemns the Byronic
+_Welt-schmerz_, 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 _House_; 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 _Shop_ 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 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.
+
+But the volume of 1876 contains better work than these pieces of
+self-assertion. The two love-lyrics _Natural Magic_ and _Magical Nature_
+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.
+_Bifurcation_ 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 _St
+Martin's Summer_ 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. _Fears and Scruples_ 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:
+
+    All my days I'll go the softlier, sadlier
+     For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill
+    Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier
+     Lives my friend because I love him still?"
+
+And the friend will value love all the more which persists through the
+obstacles of partial ignorance.[118] The blank verse monologue _A
+Forgiveness_, 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--
+
+    Horror coquetting with voluptuousness--
+
+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 _Filippo Baldinucci_ recalls the comedy and the pathos
+of _Holy Cross Day_, 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. _Cenciaja_, a
+note in verse connected with Shelley's _Cenci_, 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 _Numpholeptos_ 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 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 _La belle Dame sans merci_, and her
+worshipper is as desperately lost as the knight-at-arms of Keats's poem.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 112: See Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. p. 417.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Pages 46, 47 of the first edition.]
+
+[Footnote 114: Pages 58-60.]
+
+[Footnote 115: It may here be noted that Dante Rossetti in a morbid mood
+supposed that certain passages of _Fifine_ were directed against
+himself; and so ceased his friendship with Browning.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Fanny Kemble also derived from the story of Lord De Ros
+the subject of her "English Tragedy."]
+
+[Footnote 117: Some sentences in what follows are taken from a notice of
+the volume which I wrote on its appearance for _The Academy_.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See Browning's letter to Mr Kingsland in "Robert
+Browning" by W. G. Kingsland (1890), pp. 32, 33.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Solitude and Society
+
+
+The volume which consists of _La Saisiaz_ and _The Two Poets of Croisic_
+(1878) brings the work of this decade to a close.[119] _La Saisiaz_, the
+record of thoughts that were awakened during that solitary clamber to
+the summit of Saleve 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 individual 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.
+
+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, Saleve in its evening
+rose-bloom, Mont-Blanc which strikes greatness small; or at night he is
+beneath the luminous worlds which
+
+    One by one came lamping--chiefly that prepotency of Mars.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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:--
+
+    I must say--or choke in silence----"Howsoever came my fate,
+    Sorrow did and joy did nowise--life well weighed--preponderate."
+
+If this failure be ordained by necessity, I shall bear it as best I can;
+but, if this life be all, nothing shall 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.
+
+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:
+
+    I have lived then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
+    This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
+    Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
+    If (to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)
+    If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
+    And life, time,--with all their chances, changes,--just probation--space,
+    Mine for me.
+
+Grant this hypothesis, and all changes from irrational to rational, from
+evil to good, from pain to a strenuous joy:--
+
+     Only grant a second life, I acquiesce
+    In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst assaults
+    Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more exalts
+    Gain about to be.
+
+Thus out of defeat springs victory; never are we so near to knowledge as
+when we are checked at the bounds of ignorance; beauty is felt through
+its opposite; good is known through evil; truth shows its potency when
+it is confronted by falsehood;
+
+    While for love--Oh how but, losing love, does whoso loves succeed
+    By the death-pang to the birth-throe--learning what is love indeed?
+
+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:
+
+    Hope the arrowy, just as constant, comes to pierce its gloom, compelled
+    By a power and by a purpose which, if no one else beheld,
+    I behold in life, so--hope!
+
+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 _more_ 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 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."[120]
+
+Browning's confession in _La Saisias_ 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 _The Two Poets of Croisic_, which was written in London
+immediately after _La Saisiaz_, 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:
+
+     Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse,
+    Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear,
+    Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face
+    Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race.
+
+This is good counsel for art; but not wholly wise counsel for life.
+Sorrow, indeed, is not wronged by 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.
+
+When _La Saisiaz_ 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 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 _Times_ and
+_Daily News_ 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 servants he was a considerate friend rather than a master.
+
+So far Mr Grove as reported in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (Dec 16, 1889).
+
+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.[121] 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 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.
+
+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."[122] A writer in the
+first volume of _The New Review_, 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, 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 _Lothair_ 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 _bonhomie_, softened but did not by any
+means disguise the sense of his power."[123] 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 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."[124]
+
+Mr Henry James in his "Life of Story"[125] 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 _that_ 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 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[126]. 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 things which commend themselves, without a preacher,
+to our love.
+
+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 Spluegen, enjoyed
+the mountain air, walked vigorously, and wrote, with great rapidity,
+says Mrs Orr, his poem of Russia, _Ivan Ivanovitch_. 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, _Ned Bratts_. 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."[127] 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 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.[128] 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 _popolo_ 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.'"
+
+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 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
+_The Century Magazine_. 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."[129] 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 doctoring."[130] 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.[131] 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."
+
+[Illustration: THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss N. ERICHSEN.]
+
+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 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 _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 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.[132] 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."[133] 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, _nearly_, and I breathe in the pleasant
+idleness at every 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."[134] 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.[135] 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.
+
+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 _Palazzo_ 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, 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--
+
+     Clothed with murder of His best
+    Of harmless beings.
+
+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
+
+     Fed with murder of His best
+    Of harmless beings,
+
+and laughed, innocently enough, with his good sister over the delicious
+"mouthfuls for cardinals."[136] 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."[137] 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, if only to stand and be blown about by the sea
+wind."[138] 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
+_Pippa Passes_ 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.
+
+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 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 Niccolo for
+the tomb of the chieftain Salinguerra of Browning's own _Sordello_. 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.[139] Returning from his walks
+on the Lido or wanderings through the little _calli_, 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. 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 _Toccata of
+Galuppi_ 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:
+
+    There throng the People: how they come and go,
+     Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb--see--
+    On Piazza, Calle, under Portico
+     And over Bridge! Dear King of Comedy,
+    Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so,
+     Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!
+
+The brightness and lightness of southern life soothed Browning's
+northern strenuousness of mood. He would 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![140] 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.
+
+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 facade 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 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."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 119: Some parts of what follows on _La Saisiaz_ have already
+appeared in print in a forgotten article of mine on that poem.]
+
+[Footnote 120: "An Artist's Reminiscences," by R. Lehmann (1894), p.
+231.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Thus he declaimed to Robert Buchanan against Walt
+Whitman's writings, with which, according to Buchanan, he had little
+acquaintance.]
+
+[Footnote 122: "Autobiography of a Journalist," ii. 210.]
+
+[Footnote 123: From the first of three valuable articles by Mr Rossetti
+in _The Magazine of Art_ (1890) on "Portraits of Robert Browning."]
+
+[Footnote 124: Robert Browning, "Personalia," by Edmund Gosse, pp. 81,
+82.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Anna Swanwick, "A Memoir by Mary L. Bruce," pp. 130, 131.
+To Dr Furnivall he often spoke of Mrs Browning.]
+
+[Footnote 127: From Mrs Bronson's article in _The Century Magazine_,
+"Browning in Venice."]
+
+[Footnote 128: Related more fully in Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in
+Asolo" in _The Century Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote 129: Mrs Bronson's "Browning in Venice" in _The Century
+Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote 130: To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 28, 1884.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Some notices of Browning in Wales occur in Sir T.
+Martin's "Life of Lady Martin."]
+
+[Footnote 132: Letter to Dr Furnivall, August 29, 1881.]
+
+[Footnote 133: To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 7, 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 134: To Dr Furnivall, August 21, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 135: See for fuller details the letter in Mrs Orr's _Life of
+Browning_, pp. 407, 408.]
+
+[Footnote 136: So described by Mrs Bronson.]
+
+[Footnote 137: To Dr Furnivall, Oct. 11, 1881.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Quoted by Mrs Bronson.]
+
+[Footnote 139: Mrs Orr, "Life of Browning," p. 400.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Mrs Bronson records this.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Poet and Teacher in Old Age
+
+
+During the last decade of his life Browning's influence as a literary
+power was assured. The publication indeed of _The Ring and the Book_ 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
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ were sold in five days, and says of
+_Balaustion's Adventure_ "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 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.[141] 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 as an obscure heretic--not even an
+heresiarch--of literature.
+
+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 _The Names_, 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 _Titus Andronicus_.
+
+In 1879 appeared _Dramatic Idyls_ and in the following year _Dramatic
+Idyls, Second Series_. They differed in two respects from the volumes of
+miscellaneous 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 _Ned Bratts_ as a poem of
+religious experience, we may say that these themes are wholly absent
+from the _Dramatic Idyls_. 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
+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 _Doctor_----, 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 _Doctor_ ---- 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 _Pietro of Abano_
+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 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.
+
+The two series of _Dramatic Idyls_ included some conspicuous successes.
+The classical poems _Pheidippides_, _Echetlos_, _Pan and Luna_, 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:
+
+     He flung down his shield,
+    Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field
+    And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
+    Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through clay,
+    Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died--the bliss!
+
+The companion poem of Marathon, the story of the nameless clown, the
+mysterious holder of the ploughshare, is not less inspiring. The unknown
+champion, 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.
+
+In contrast with these classical pieces, _Halbert and Hob_ 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,
+
+    With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting face,
+
+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 swift, and what the poem
+represents as a just, abolishment from earth the mother who in _Ivan
+Ivanovitch_ 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. Ivan 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.[142]
+
+[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING.
+
+_From a letter to D.S. CURTIS, Esq._]
+
+_Martin Relph_ 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. _Ned Bratts_ 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 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
+
+    In solemn troops and sweet societies;
+
+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.
+
+Browning's method as a story-teller may be studied with special
+advantage in _Clive_. 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 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 _Muleykeh_, 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 Hoseyn 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 Hoseyn's loss is Hoseyn'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.
+
+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 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 _Pisgah Sights_ of the
+_Pacchiarotto_ 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
+_Jocoseria_, some of an old man's imaginative passion in _Asolando_, and
+in both volumes, and still more clearly in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ may be
+seen an old man's spirit 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 _Paracelsus_, 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.
+
+In _Jocoseria_, which appeared in Browning's seventy-first year (1883),
+he shows nothing of his boisterous 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
+_La Saisiaz_ and the graceful epilogue to _The Two Poets of Croisic_,
+and continued in the songs of _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and _Asolando_--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
+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 _Jochanan
+Hakkadosh_, 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 the soul and fits it for further wayfaring. The ultimate faith
+of Jochanan the Saint had been already expressed by Browning:
+
+    Over the ball of it,
+    Peering and prying,
+    How I see all of it,
+    Life there, outlying!
+    Roughness and smoothness,
+    Shine and defilement,
+    Grace and uncouthness:
+    One reconcilement.
+
+But even to his favourite disciple the sage is unable so to impart the
+secret that Tsaddik's mind shall really embrace it.
+
+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 _Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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 itself into a corresponding truth respecting the love of man
+and woman.
+
+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:
+
+     I starve in soul:
+    So may mankind: and since men congregate
+    In towns, not woods--to Ispahan forthwith!
+
+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?"[143] 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 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. _The Family_ 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:
+
+      Be man and nothing more--
+    Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears,
+    And craves and deprecates, and loves and loathes,
+    And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes
+    And show God granted most, denying all.
+
+The same spirit of acceptance of our intellectual and moral limitations
+is applied in _The Sun_ 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 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."
+
+The presence of evil in a world created and governed by One all-wise,
+all-powerful, all-loving, is justified in _Mirhab Shah_ 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 _A Camel-driver_; 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 afterwards,
+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--
+
+    Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it!
+
+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 _Te Deum_, let it be when we have enjoyed our plate of
+cherries. The glorious lamp in the Shah's pavilion lightens other 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--"
+
+    Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy,--
+    Some smatch thereof,--in best and purest love
+    Preferred thy earthly father? Dust thou art,
+    Dust shall be to the end.
+
+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?
+
+In _A Pillar at Sebzevah_, 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:--
+
+    "Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know
+    Is--I know nothing save that love I can
+    Boundlessly, endlessly."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If there be knowledge it shall vanish away; but charity never faileth.
+As for knowledge, the prize is in the process; as gain we must
+mistrust it, not as a road to gain:--
+
+     Knowledge means
+    Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+    That victory is somehow still to reach,
+    But love is victory, the prize itself.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+It has been necessary to transcribe in a reduced 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
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_ 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:
+
+    Only, at heart's utmost joy and triumph, terror
+      Sudden turns the blood to ice: a chill wind disencharms
+    All the late enchantment! What if all be error--
+      If the halo irised round my head were, Love, thine arms?
+
+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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 141: Mr Gosse: "Dictionary of National Biography," Supplement,
+i. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 142: 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."]
+
+[Footnote 143: The story of the melon-seller was related by a
+correspondent of _The Times_ 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+Closing Works and Days
+
+
+_Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_, 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 _Fra Lippo Lippi_, 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 _With Daniel Bartoli_ is a story of love and loss,
+admirable in its presentation of the 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 _Bernard de
+Mandeville_, the description of the Chapel in _Christopher Smart_, the
+praise of a woman's beauty in _Francis Furini_, the amazing succession
+of mythological _tours de force_ in _Gerard de Lairesse_, 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 _Charles
+Avison_--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 _Gerard
+de Lairesse_. 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:
+
+    Daisies and grass be my heart's bed-fellows
+    On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:
+    Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!
+
+Of failure in intellectual or imaginative force the _Parleyings_ 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.
+
+Philosophy, Love, Poetry, Politics, Painting (the nude, with a discourse
+concerning evolution), Painting again (the modern _versus_ the
+mythological in art), Music, and, if we add the epilogue, the Invention
+of Printing--these are the successive themes of Browning's _Parleyings_,
+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 _danse Macabre_. The spirit of
+acquiescence--strenuous not indolent acquiescence--with our intellectual
+limitations is constantly present. 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?
+
+    Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--
+    Which, in the large, who sees to bless?
+
+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:
+
+    Only by looking low, ere looking high,
+    Comes penetration of the mystery.
+
+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 needful illusion in our
+educational process, since through evil we become aware of good. Thus at
+every point Browning accepts here, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 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 or incompetent heads are
+often conjoined with hearts that in a high degree deserve respect.
+
+_Asolando_, 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. _Asolando_
+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
+
+    Terror with beauty, like the Bush
+    Burning yet unconsumed
+
+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 _Epilogue_ has in it a
+certain energy, but the thews are those of an old 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
+_Reverie_, 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 _Reverie_, 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:
+
+    Life is--to wake not sleep,
+     Rise and not rest, but press
+    From earth's level where blindly creep
+     Things perfected, more or less,
+    To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+    Where amid what strifes and storms
+     May wait the adventurous quest,
+    Power is love.
+
+The voice of the poet of _Paracelsus_ and of _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is still
+audible in this latest of his prophesyings. And therefore he welcomes
+earth in his _Rephan_, earth, 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 _Development_, 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.
+
+The general impression left by _Asolando_ is that of intellectual and
+imaginative vigour. The series of _Bad Dreams_ is very striking and
+original in both pictorial and passionate power. _Dubiety_ 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
+_Speculative_, which is frankly a poem of old age, has in it the genuine
+passion of memory. _White Witchcraft_ does in truth revive the manner of
+earlier volumes. The
+
+    Infinite passion and the pain
+    Of finite hearts that yearn
+
+told of in a poem of 1855 is present, with a touch of humour to guard it
+from its own excess in the admirable _Inapprehensiveness_. The speaker
+who may not liberate his soul can perhaps identify a quotation, and he
+gallantly accepts his humble role in the tragi-comedy of foiled
+passion:--
+
+     "No, the book
+    Which noticed how the wall-growths wave," said she,
+    "Was not by Ruskin."
+     I said "Vernon Lee."
+
+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 _Ponte dell' Angelo_, 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 _Beatrice Signorini_ 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 _The Pope and the Net_. In
+_Muckle-Mouth Meg_, laughter and kisses, audible from the page, and a
+woman's art in love-craft, turn tragedy in a hearty piece of comedy.
+_The Bean-Feast_ 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 mendicant's "sparkling
+eyes beneath their eyebrows' ridge":
+
+    "He's God!" shouts Lucius Varus Rufus: "Man
+    And worms'-meat any moment!" mutters low
+    Some Power, admonishing the mortal-born.
+
+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.[144]
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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 _The Athenaeum_,
+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.
+
+In Asolo, beside "the gate," Mrs Bronson had found and partly made what
+Mr Henry James describes as "one of the quaintest possible little
+places of _villegiatura_"--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 _gli
+Asolani_, 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?"
+
+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 unvarying 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."[145] 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."
+
+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, Browning was contentedly weak; and _vice versa_."[146]
+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 _Herakles_, he, like Pope in reading a passage of his
+_Iliad_, was moved to tears. Dr Furnivall tells of the mounting
+excitement with which he once delivered in the writer's hearing his
+_Ixion_. 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."
+
+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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE.
+
+_From a drawing by_ Miss KATHERINE KIMBALL.]
+
+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 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.[147] 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 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.[148]
+
+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.[149] A private service took place in the
+_Palazzo Rezzonico_; 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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. 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.
+
+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 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 _Paracelsus_ 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 them existence.[150] 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 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.
+
+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
+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.
+
+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 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 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.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 144: Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the
+_Asolando_ poems. _Rosny_, _Beatrice Signorini_ and _Flute-Music_ were
+written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the _Bad Dreams_
+are, with less confidence, assigned to the same date. The _Ponte dell'
+Angelo_ "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs
+Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "_White Witchcraft_ 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."
+_The Cardinal and the Dog_, written with the _Pied Piper_ for Macready's
+son, is a poem of early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in
+Asolo" (_Century Magazine_, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889
+of _The Lady and the Painter_.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Mrs Orr, _Life_, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 146: W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., _Magazine of
+Art_, 1890, p. 182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.]
+
+[Footnote 147: "The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure
+Conway may also be found.]
+
+[Footnote 148: "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.)]
+
+[Footnote 149: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 150: E.D. West in the first of two papers, "Browning as a
+Preacher," in _The Dark Blue Magazine_. 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.]
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+[_The names of Robert Browning, the subject of this volume, and of
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning are not included in the Index_.]
+
+_Abt Vogler_
+Adams, Sarah Flower
+Aeschylus (see _Agamemnon_)
+_Agamemnon_
+Alford, Lady M.
+Ancona
+Andersen, Hans
+_Andrea del Sarto_
+_Any Wife to any Husband_
+_Apparent Failure_
+_Aristophanes' Apology_
+Arnold, Matthew
+Arnould, Joseph
+Arran, Isle of
+_Artemis Prologuizes_
+Asceticism
+Ashburton, Lady
+_Asolando_
+Asolo
+_At the Mermaid_
+Audierne
+_Aurora Leigh_
+
+
+B
+
+Bach
+Bacon, Francis
+_Bad Dreams_
+_Balaustion's Adventure_
+Balzac, H. de
+Barrett, Arabella
+Barrett, Edward M.
+Barrett, Henrietta (Mrs Surtees Cook)
+Bayley, Miss
+_Bean Feast_
+_Beatrice Signorini_
+_Bells and Pomegranates_
+Benckhausen, Mr
+_Bernard de Mandeville_
+Biarritz
+_Bifurcation_
+Bird, Dr
+_Bishop Blougram_
+_Bishop orders his Tomb_
+Blagden, Isa
+Blanc, Mme.
+_Blot in the 'Scutcheon_
+Bottinius
+Bowring, Sir J.
+Boyd, H.S.
+Boyle, Miss
+Bradley, Dean
+Bridell-Fox, Mrs
+Bronson, Mrs A.
+Browning, Robert (grandfather)
+Browning, Robert (father)
+Browning, Robert, W.B. (son)
+Browning, Sarah Anna (mother)
+Browning, Sarah Anna, or Sarianna (sister)
+Buchanan, Robert
+Burne-Jones, E.
+_By the Fireside_
+
+
+C
+
+_Caliban upon Setebos_
+Cambo
+Cambridge
+Caponsacchi
+Carlyle, Mrs
+Carlyle, Thomas
+Casa Guidi
+_Cavalier Tunes_
+Cavour
+_Cenciaja_
+Chapman & Hall
+Chappell, Arthur
+_Charles Avison_
+_Childe Roland_
+_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_
+_Christopher Smart_
+"Clarissa"
+Clayton, Rev. Mr
+_Cleon_
+_Clive_
+Cobbe, Miss F.P.
+_Colombe's Birthday_
+Conway, Dr M.
+Cook, Captain Surtees
+Cook, Mrs Surtees, _see_ Barrett, Henrietta
+Cornhill Magazine
+_Count Gismond_
+Coup d'etat
+_Cristine_
+Croisic
+Crosse, Mrs Andrew
+Curtis, Mr and Mrs
+
+
+D
+
+_Daniel Bartoli_
+Dante
+Davidson, Captain
+_Death in the Desert_
+_De Gustibus_
+_Development_
+De Vere Gardens
+Dickens, Charles
+_Dis Aliter Visum_
+_Doctor_ ----
+Domett, Alfred
+Dominus Hyacinthus
+_Donald_
+_Dramatic Idyls_ (First and Second Series)
+_Dramatic Lyrics_
+_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_
+_Dramatis Personae_
+_Dubiety_
+Dufferin, Lord
+Duffy, C. Gavan_
+
+
+E
+
+_Easter Day_, see _Christmas Eve and Easter Day
+Echetlos_
+Eckley, Mr
+Egerton-Smith, Miss
+Elgin, Lady
+Eliot, George
+_Englishman in Italy_
+_Epilogue_ (to "Asolando")
+_Epilogue_ (to "Dramatis Personae")
+_Epilogue_ (to "Pacchiarotto" volume)
+_Epilogue_ (to "Two Poets of Croisic")
+_Epistle to Karshish_
+Etretat
+_Evelyn Hope_
+
+F
+
+_Face, A_
+Fano
+Faraday
+Faucit, Helen
+_Fears and Scruples_
+_Ferishtah's Fancies_
+_Fifine at the Fair_
+_Filippo Baldinucci_
+Fisher, W.
+Fitzgerald, Edward
+Flaubert, G.
+_Flight of the Duchess_
+Flower, Eliza
+Flower, Sarah
+Flush
+_Forgiveness_
+Forster, John
+_Founder of the Feast_
+Fox, Caroline
+Fox, W.J.
+_Fra Lippo Lippi_
+_Francis Farini_
+Fuller, Margaret (see Ossoli, Countess d')
+Furnivall, F.J.
+
+
+G
+
+Gagarin, Prince
+_Garden Fancy_
+_Gerard de Lairesse_
+Gibson, J.
+Gladstone, W.E.
+_Glove_
+_Gold Hair_
+Goldoni
+Gosse, E.
+_Grammarian's Funeral_
+_Greek Christian Poets_
+Gresonowsky, Dr
+Gressoney
+Grove, Mr
+_Guardian Angel_
+Guido Franceschini
+
+
+H
+
+_Halbert and Hob_
+Hatcham
+Havre
+Hawthorne, N.
+"Helen's Tower"
+Herakles
+_Heretic's Tragedy_
+_Herve Riel_
+Hickey, Miss E.H.
+Hillard, G.S.
+_Hippolytus and Aricia_
+_Holy Cross Day_
+Home, D.D.
+Hosmer, Harriet
+_House_
+_How it strikes a Contemporary_
+_How they brought the Good News_
+Hugo, Victor
+Hunt, Leigh
+
+
+I
+
+_Imperante Augusta natus est_
+_In a Balcony_
+_In a Gondola_
+_Inapprehensiveness_
+_In a Year_
+_Inn Album_
+_Ion_
+_Italian in England_
+_Ivan Ivanovitch_
+_Ixion_
+
+
+J
+
+James, Henry
+_James Lee's Wife_
+Jameson, Anna
+_Jochanan Hakkadosh_,
+_Jocoseria_
+_Johannes Agricola_
+Jones, Thomas
+Jowett, Benjamin
+
+
+K
+
+Kean, Charles
+Kemble, Fanny
+Kenyon, F.G.
+Kenyon, John
+Kingsley, Charles
+_King Victor and King Charles_
+Kirkup, Seymour
+
+
+L
+
+"La Dame aux Camelias"
+Lamartine
+La Mura
+Landor, W.S.
+_La Saisiaz_
+_Last Poems_
+_Last Ride_
+Lehmann, R.
+Leighton, F.
+Lever, Charles
+Lido
+_Life in a Love_
+_Likeness_
+Llangollen, Vale of
+Lockhart, J.G.
+Long, Professor
+_Lost Leader_
+Lounsbury, Professor
+_Love among the Ruins_
+_Love in a Life_
+_Lover s Quarrel_
+Lucca, Baths of
+_Luria_
+Lytton, Robert
+
+
+M
+
+Maclise, Daniel
+Macready, W.C.
+"Madame Bovary"
+_Magical Nature_
+_Mansoor the Hierophant_
+Marston, Westland
+Martin, Lady (_see_ also Faucit, Helen)
+Martin, Sir T.
+_Martin Relph_
+_Master Hugues_
+"Maud" (Tennyson's)
+_May and Death_
+Mazzini
+Mellerio, A.
+_Memorabilia_
+_Men and Women_
+Merrifield, Mr and Mrs
+Mers
+Mignet
+Milsand, Joseph
+Mill, J.S.
+Milnes, Monckton
+Milton
+Mitford, Miss
+Monclar, A. de Ripert
+Monodrama
+Montecuccoli, Marchese
+Moore, Mrs Bloomfield
+Moxon, E.
+_Mr Sludge the Medium_
+_Muleykeh_
+Musset, A. de
+_My Last Duchess_
+
+
+N
+
+_Names_
+Napoleon, Louis
+_Narses_
+_Natural Magic_
+_Ned Bratts_
+Nightingale, Florence
+"Nobly, nobly Cape St Vincent"
+_Numpholeptos_
+
+
+O
+
+Ogle, Miss
+_Old Pictures in Florence_
+_One Way of Love_
+_Only a Player-Girl_
+Orr, Mrs
+Ossian, Macpherson's
+Ossoli, Countess d'
+
+
+P
+
+_Pacchiarotto_
+Page, Mr
+Paget, Sir James
+Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati
+Palazzo Manzoni
+Palazzo Rezzonico
+Palgrave, F.T.
+_Paracelsus_
+Paris
+Parker, Theodore
+_Parleyings with Certain People_
+Patmore, Emily
+_Patriot_
+_Pauline_
+_Pheidippides_
+Phelps
+_Pictor Ignotus_
+_Pied Piper_
+_Pietro of Abano_
+Pio Nono
+_Pippa Passes_
+Pippa's Tower
+_Pisgah Sights_
+Pisa
+Plutarch
+_Poems before Congress_
+Pompilia
+Pope (in "Ring and Book")
+_Pope and the Net_
+_Popularity_
+Pornic
+_Porphyria's Lover_
+Portraits
+Powers, H.
+_Pretty Woman_
+Primiero
+_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_
+Prinsep, V.
+Procter ("Barry Cornwall")
+_Prologue_ (to "La Saisiaz")
+_Prospice_
+_Protus_
+Prout, Father
+"Puseyism"
+
+
+R
+
+_Rabbi ben Ezra_
+Ready, Rev. T.
+_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_
+_Rephan_
+_Respectability_
+_Return of the Druses_
+_Reverie_
+Rhyming
+_Ring and the Book_
+Ristori
+Ritchie, Mrs A. Thackeray
+Rome
+Rossetti, D.G.
+Rossetti, W.M.
+_Rudel_
+Ruskin, John
+
+
+S
+
+Saint-Aubin
+Saint-Enogat
+_St Martin's Summer_
+St Moritz
+St Pierre de Chartreuse
+Sainte-Marie
+Saint-Victor, Paul de
+Saleve
+Salvini
+Sand, George
+Sartoris, Adelaide
+_Saul_
+_Selections_ (from Browning)
+_Serenade at the Villa_
+Shah, the
+Shakespeare
+Sharp, William
+Shelley, P.B.
+_Shop_
+Siena
+Silverthorne, James
+Smith, Mr
+Society, The Browning
+_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_
+_Solomon and Balkis_
+_Sonnets from the Portuguese_
+_Sordello_
+_Soul's Tragedy_
+_Speculative_
+Spiritualism
+Stanhope, Lord
+_Statue and the Bust_
+Stead, Mr F.H.
+Stephen, Sir L.
+Sterling, John
+Stillmann, W.J.
+Story, W.W.
+Stowe, Harriet B.
+_Strafford_
+Swanwick
+Swedenborg
+
+
+T
+
+Talfourd
+Taylor, Bayard
+Tennyson, Alfred
+Tennyson, Frederick
+Tennyson, Hallam
+Thackeray, Miss, _see_ Ritchie, Mrs
+Thackeray, W.M.
+_The Worst of It_
+_Toccata of Galuppi's_
+_Too Late_
+_Transcendentalism_
+Trelawny, E.J.
+Trollope, Mrs
+Trollope, T.A.
+_Twins_
+_Two in the Campagna_
+_Two Poems by E.B.B. and R. B_.
+_Two Poets of Croisic_
+
+
+U
+
+_Up at a Villa_
+
+
+V
+
+Vallombrosa
+Venice, 47, 137, 334, 335, 339, 386-388
+Villers
+
+
+W
+
+_Waring_
+Warwick Crescent
+White, Rev. E.
+_White Witchcraft_
+Whitman, Walt
+_Why am I a Liberal_?
+Wiedemann, William
+Wilson (Mrs Browning's maid)
+Wise, T.J.
+Wiseman, Cardinal
+_Woman's Last Word_
+Wordsworth, W.
+
+
+Y
+
+Yates, Edmund
+"York" (a horse)
+York Street Chapels
+_Youth and Art_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING ***
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