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diff --git a/12817-0.txt b/12817-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5cdd013 --- /dev/null +++ b/12817-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11641 @@ +*** 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 *** |