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diff --git a/14476-0.txt b/14476-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4d41ce --- /dev/null +++ b/14476-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9231 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14476 *** + +"Great Writers." + +EDITED BY +ERIC ROBERTSON AND FRANK T. MARZIALS. + + + + +LIFE OF BROWNING. + + + + +FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES, SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK + + + + +LIFE + +OF + +ROBERT BROWNING + + + + +BY + +WILLIAM SHARP. + + + +LONDON +WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED +PATERNOSTER SQUARE +1897 + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. + +London, Robert Browning's birthplace; his immediate predecessors and +contemporaries in literature, art, and music; born May 7th, 1812; origin +of the Browning family; assertions as to its Semitic connection +apparently groundless; the poet a putative descendant of the Captain +Micaiah Browning mentioned by Macaulay; Robert Browning's mother of +Scottish and German origin; his father a man of exceptional powers, +artist, poet, critic, student; Mr. Browning's opinion of his son's +writings; the home in Camberwell; Robert Browning's childhood; +concerning his optimism; his fondness for Carravaggio's "Andromeda and +Perseus"; his poetic precocity; origin of "The Flight of the Duchess"; +writes Byronic verse; is sent to school at Peckham; his holiday +afternoons; sees London by night, from Herne Hill; the significance of +the spectacle to him. Page 11. + + +CHAPTER II. + +He wishes to be a poet; writes in the style of Byron and Pope; the +"Death of Harold"; his poems, written when twelve years old, shown to +Miss Flower; the Rev. W.J. Fox's criticisms on them; he comes across +Shelley's "Dæmon of the World"; Mrs. Browning procures Shelley's poems, +also those of Keats, for her son; the perusal of these volumes proves +an important event in his poetic development; he leaves school when +fourteen years old, and studies at home under a tutor; attends a few +lectures at University College, 1829-30; chooses his career, at the age +of twenty; earliest record of his utterances concerning his youthful +life printed in _Century Magazine_, 1881; he plans a series of +monodramatic epics; Browning's life-work, collectively one monodramatic +"epic"; Shakspere's and Browning's methods compared; Browning writes +"Pauline" in 1832; his own criticism on it; his parents' opinions; his +aunt's generous gift; the poem published in January 1833; description of +the poem; written under the inspiring stimulus of Shelley; its +autopsychical significance; its importance to the student of the poet's +works; quotations from "Pauline". Page 29. + + +CHAPTER III. + +The public reception of "Pauline"; criticisms thereupon; Mr. Fox's +notice in the _Monthly Repository_, and its results; Dante Gabriel +Rossetti reads "Pauline" and writes to the author; Browning's reference +to Tennyson's reading of "Maud" in 1855; Browning frequents literary +society; reads at the British Museum; makes the acquaintance of Charles +Dickens and "Ion" Talfourd; a volume of poems by Tennyson published +simultaneously with "Pauline"; in 1833 he commences his travels; goes to +Russia; the sole record of his experiences there to be found in the poem +"Ivàn Ivànovitch," published in _Dramatic Idyls_, 1879; his acquaintance +with Mazzini; Browning goes to Italy; visits Asolo, whence he drew hints +for "Sordello" and "Pippa Passes"; in 1834 he returns to Camberwell; in +autumn of 1834 and winter of 1835 commences "Sordello," writes +"Paracelsus," and one or two short poems; his love for Venice; a new +voice audible in "Johannes Agricola" and "Porphyria"; "Paracelsus," +published in 1835; his own explanation of it; his love of walking in the +dark; some of "Paracelsus" and of "Strafford" composed in a wood near +Dulwich; concerning "Paracelsus" and Browning's sympathy with the +scientific spirit; description and scope of the poem; quotations +therefrom; estimate of the work, and its four lyrics. Page 49. + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Criticisms upon "Paracelsus," important one written by John Forster; +Browning meets Macready at the house of Mr. Fox; personal description of +the poet; Macready's opinion of the poem; Browning spends New Year's +Day, 1836, at the house of the tragedian and meets John Forster; +Macready urges him to write a play; his subsequent interview with the +tragedian; he plans a drama to be entitled "Narses"; meets Wordsworth +and Walter Savage Landor at a supper party, when the young poet is +toasted, and Macready again proposes that Browning should write a play, +from which arose the idea of "Strafford"; his acquaintance with +Wordsworth and Landor; MS. of "Strafford" accepted; its performance at +Covent Garden Theatre on the 26th May 1837; runs for five nights; the +author's comments; the drama issued by Messrs. Longman & Co.; the +performance in 1886; estimate of "Strafford"; Browning's dramas; +comparison between the Elizabethan and Victorian dramatic eras; +Browning's soul-depictive faculty; his dramatic method; estimate of his +dramas; Landor's acknowledgment of the dedication to him of "Luria". +Page 73. + + +CHAPTER V. + +"Profundity" and "Simplicity"; the faculty of wonder; Browning's first +conception of "Pippa Passes"; his residence in London; his country +walks; his ways and habits, and his heart-episodes; debates whether to +become a clergyman; is "Pippa Passes" a drama? estimate of the poem; +Browning's rambles on Wimbledon Common and in Dulwich Wood, where he +composed his lines upon Shelley; asserts there is romance in Camberwell +as well as in Italy; "Sordello"; the charge of obscurity against +"Sordello"; the nature and intention of the poem; quotations therefrom; +anecdote about Douglas Jerrold; Tennyson's, Carlyle's, and M. Odysse +Barot's opinions on "Sordello"; "enigmatic" poetry; in 1863 Browning +contemplated the re-writing of "Sordello"; dedication to the French +critic, Milsand. Page 93. + + +CHAPTER VI. + +Browning's three great dramatic poems; "The Ring and the Book" his +finest work; its uniqueness; Carlyle's criticism of it; Poetry _versus_ +Tour-de-Force; "The Ring and the Book" begun in 1866; analysis of the +poem; kinship of "The Ring and the Book" and "Aurora Leigh"; explanation +of title; the idea taken from a parchment volume Browning picked up in +Florence; the poem planned at Casa Guidi; "O Lyric Love," etc.; +description and analysis of "The Ring and the Book," with quotations; +compared as a poem with "The Inn Album," "Pauline," "Asolando," "Men and +Women," etc.; imaginary volumes, to be entitled "Transcripts from Life" +and "Flowers o' the Vine"; Browning's greatest period; Browning's +primary importance. Page 113. + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Early life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; born in 1820; the chief sorrow +of her life; the Barrett family settle in London; "The Cry of the +Children" and its origin; Miss Barrett's friends; effect on her of +Browning's poetry; she makes Browning's acquaintance in 1846; her early +belief in him as a poet; her physical delicacy and her sensitiveness of +feeling; personal appearance of Robert Browning; his "electric" hand; +Elizabeth Barrett discerns his personal worth, and is susceptible to the +strong humanity of Browning's song; Mr. Barrett's jealousy; their +engagement; Miss Barrett's acquaintance with Mrs. Jameson; quiet +marriage in 1846; Mr. Barrett's resentment; the Brownings go to Paris; +thence to Italy with Mrs. Jameson; Wordsworth's comments; residence in +Pisa; "Sonnets from the Portuguese"; in the spring they go to Florence, +thence to Ancona, where "The Guardian Angel" was written; Casa Guidi; +W.W. Story's account of the rooms at Casa Guidi; perfect union. Page 135. + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +March 1849, birth of Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning; Browning writes +his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"; "Casa Guidi Windows" commenced; +1850, they go to Rome; "Two in the Campagna"; proposal to confer +poet-laureateship on Mrs. Browning; return to London; winter in Paris; +summer in London; Kenyon's friendship; return in autumn to Casa Guidi; +Browning's Essay on Shelley for the twenty-five spurious Shelley +letters; midsummer at Baths of Lucca, where "In a Balcony" was in part +written; winter of 1853-4 in Rome; record of work; "Pen's" illness; "Ben +Karshook's Wisdom"; return to Florence; (1856) "Men and Women" +published; the Brownings go to London; in summer "Aurora Leigh" issued; +1858, Mrs. Browning's waning health; 1855-64 comparatively, unproductive +period with R. Browning; record of work; July 1855, they travel to +Normandy; "Legend of Pornic"; Mrs. Browning's ardent interest in the +Italian struggle of 1859; winter in Rome; "Poems before Congress"; her +last poem, "North and South"; death of Mrs. Browning at Casa Guidi, 28th +June 1861. Page 157. + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Browning's allusions to death of his wife; Miss Browning resides with +her brother from 1866; 1868, collected works published; first part of +"The Ring and the Book" published in November 1866; "Hervé Riel" +written; Browning's growing popularity; Tauchnitz editions of his poems +in 1872; also first book of selections; dedication to Lord Tennyson; +1877, he goes to La Saisiaz, near Geneva; "La Saisiaz" and "The Two +Poets of Croisic" published 1878; Browning's later poems; Browning +Society established 1881; Browning's letter thereupon to Mr. Yates; +trips abroad; his London residences; his last letter to Tennyson; +revisits Asolo; Palazzo Rezzonico; his belief in immortality; his death, +Thursday, Dec. 12th, 1889; funeral in Westminster Abbey; Sonnet by +George Meredith; new star in Orion; R. Browning's place in literature; +Summary, etc. Page 176. + + + + +NOTE. + + +In all important respects I leave this volume to speak for itself. For +obvious reasons it does not pretend to be more than a _Mémoire pour +servir_: in the nature of things, the definitive biography cannot appear +for many years to come. None the less gratefully may I take the present +opportunity to express my indebtedness to Mr. R. Barrett Browning, and +to other relatives and intimate friends of Robert Browning, who have +given me serviceable information, and otherwise rendered kindly aid. For +some of the hitherto unpublished details my thanks are, in particular, +due to Mrs. Fraser Corkran and Miss Alice Corkran, and to other old +friends of the poet and his family, here, in Italy, and in America; +though in one or two instances, I may add, I had them from Robert +Browning himself. It is with pleasure that I further acknowledge my +indebtedness to Dr. Furnivall, for the loan of the advance-proofs of his +privately-printed pamphlet on "Browning's Ancestors"; and to the +Browning Society's Publications--particularly to Mrs. Sutherland Orr's +and Dr. Furnivall's biographical and bibliographical contributions +thereto; to Mr. Gosse's biographical article in the _Century Magazine_ +for 1881; to Mr. Ingram's _Life of E.B. Browning_; and to the _Memoirs +of Anna Jameson_, the _Italian Note-Books_ of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. +G.S. Hillard's _Six Months in Italy_ (1853), and the Lives and +Correspondence of Macready, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage +Landor. I regret that the imperative need of concision has prevented the +insertion of many of the letters, anecdotes, and reminiscences, so +generously placed at my disposal; but possibly I may have succeeded in +educing from them some essential part of that light which they +undoubtedly cast upon the personality and genius of the poet. + + + + +LIFE OF BROWNING. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +It must, to admirers of Browning's writings, appear singularly +appropriate that so cosmopolitan a poet was born in London. It would +seem as though something of that mighty complex life, so confusedly +petty to the narrow vision, so grandiose and even majestic to the larger +ken, had blent with his being from the first. What fitter birthplace for +the poet whom a comrade has called the "Subtlest Assertor of the Soul in +Song," the poet whose writings are indeed a mirror of the age? + +A man may be in all things a Londoner and yet be a provincial. The +accident of birthplace does not necessarily involve parochialism of the +soul. It is not the village which produces the Hampden, but the Hampden +who immortalises the village. It is a favourite jest of Rusticus that +his urban brother has the manner of Omniscience and the knowledge of a +parish beadle. Nevertheless, though the strongest blood insurgent in the +metropolitan heart is not that which is native to it, one might well be +proud to have had one's atom-pulse atune from the first with the large +rhythm of the national life at its turbulent, congested, but ever +ebullient centre. Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of +his being a Londoner, much less to deny his natal place. He was proud of +it: through good sense, no doubt, but possibly also through some +instinctive apprehension of the fact that the great city was indeed the +fit mother of such a son. "Ashamed of having been born in the greatest +city of the world!" he exclaimed on one occasion; "what an extraordinary +thing to say! It suggests a wavelet in a muddy shallow grimily +contorting itself because it had its birth out in the great ocean." + +On the day of the poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey, one of the most +eminent of his peers remarked to me that Browning came to us as one +coming into his own. This is profoundly true. There was in good sooth a +mansion prepared against his advent. Long ago, we should have +surrendered as to a conqueror: now, however, we know that princes of the +mind, though they must be valorous and potent as of yore, can enter upon +no heritance save that which naturally awaits them, and has been made +theirs by long and intricate processes. + +The lustrum which saw the birth of Robert Browning, that is the third in +the nineteenth century, was a remarkable one indeed. Thackeray came into +the world some months earlier than the great poet, Charles Dickens +within the same twelvemonth, and Tennyson three years sooner, when also +Elizabeth Barrett was born, and the foremost naturalist of modern times +first saw the light. It is a matter of significance that the great wave +of scientific thought which ultimately bore forward on its crest so many +famous men, from Brewster and Faraday to Charles Darwin, had just begun +to rise with irresistible impulsion. Lepsius's birth was in 1813, and +that of the great Flemish novelist, Henri Conscience, in 1812: about the +same period were the births of Freiligrath, Gutzkow, and Auerbach, +respectively one of the most lyrical poets, the most potent dramatist, +the most charming romancer of Germany: and, also, in France, of +Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset. Among representatives of the +other arts--with two of which Browning must ever be closely +associated--Mendelssohn and Chopin were born in 1809, and Schumann, +Liszt, and Wagner within the four succeeding years: within which space +also came Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet. Other high names +there are upon the front of the century. Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, John +Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, by the way, to recognise the genius of +Browning), Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Ampère, Quinet, +Prosper Merimée, Sainte-Beuve, Strauss, Montalembert, are among the +laurel-bearers who came into existence betwixt 1800 and 1812. + +When Robert Browning was born in London in 1812, Sheridan had still four +years to live; Jeremy Bentham was at the height of his contemporary +reputation, and Godwin was writing glibly of the virtues of humanity and +practising the opposite qualities, while Crabbe was looked upon as one +of the foremost of living poets. Wordsworth was then forty, Sir Walter +Scott forty-one, Coleridge forty-two, Walter Savage Landor and Charles +Lamb each in his forty-fifth year. Byron was four-and-twenty, Shelley +not yet quite of age, two radically different men, Keats and Carlyle, +both youths of seventeen. Abroad, Laplace was in his maturity, with +fifteen years more yet to live; Joubert with twelve; Goethe, with +twenty; Lamarck, the Schlegels, Cuvier, Chateaubriand, Hegel, Niebühr +(to specify some leading names only), had many years of work before +them. Schopenhauer was only four-and-twenty, while Béranger was +thirty-two. The Polish poet Mickiewicz was a boy of fourteen, and +Poushkin was but a twelvemonth older; Heine, a lad of twelve, was +already enamoured of the great Napoleonic legend. The foremost literary +critic of the century was running about the sands of Boulogne, or +perhaps wandering often along the ramparts of the old town, +introspective even then, with something of that rare and insatiable +curiosity which we all now recognise as so distinctive of Sainte-Beuve. +Again, the greatest creative literary artist of the century, in prose at +any rate, was leading an apparently somewhat indolent schoolboy life at +Tours, undreamful yet of enormous debts, colossal undertakings, gigantic +failures, and the _Comédie Humaine._ In art, Sir Henry Raeburn, William +Blake, Flaxman, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Crome, Sir Thomas Lawrence, +Constable, Sir David Wilkie, and Turner were in the exercise of their +happiest faculties: as were, in the usage of theirs, Beethoven, Weber, +Schubert, Spohr, Donizetti, and Bellini. + +It is not inadvisedly that I make this specification of great names, of +men who were born coincidentally with, or were in the broader sense +contemporaries of Robert Browning. There is no such thing as a +fortuitous birth. Creation does not occur spontaneously, as in that +drawing of David Scott's where from the footprint of the Omnipotent +spring human spirits and fiery stars. Literally indeed, as a great +French writer has indicated, a man is the child of his time. It is a +matter often commented upon by students of literature, that great men do +not appear at the beginning, but rather at the acme of a period. They +are not the flying scud of the coming wave, but the gleaming crown of +that wave itself. The epoch expends itself in preparation for these +great ones. + +If Nature's first law were not a law of excess, the economy of life +would have meagre results. I think it is Turgenïev who speaks somewhere +of her as a gigantic Titan, working in gloomy silence, with the same +savage intentness upon a subtler twist of a flea's joints as upon the +Destinies of Man. + +If there be a more foolish cry than that poetry is on the wane, it is +that the great days had passed away even before Robert Browning and +Alfred Tennyson were born. The way was prepared for Browning, as it was +for Shakspere: as it is, beyond doubt, for the next high peer of these. + +There were 'Roberts' among the sons of the Browning family for at least +four generations. It has been affirmed, on disputable authority, that +the surname is the English equivalent for Bruning, and that the family +is of Teutonic origin. Possibly: but this origin is too remote to be of +any practical concern. Browning himself, it may be added, told Mr. +Moncure Conway that the original name was De Bruni. It is not a matter +of much importance: the poet was, personally and to a great extent in +his genius, Anglo-Saxon. Though there are plausible grounds for the +assumption. I can find nothing to substantiate the common assertion +that, immediately, or remotely, his people were Jews.[1] + +[Footnote 1: Fairly conclusive evidence to the contrary, on the paternal +side, is afforded in the fact that, in 1757, the poet's +great-grandfather gave one of his sons the baptismal name of Christian. +Dr. Furnivall's latest researches prove that there is absolutely "no +ground for supposing the presence of any Jewish blood in the poet's +veins."] + +As to Browning's physiognomy and personal traits, this much may be +granted: if those who knew him were told he was a Jew they would not be +much surprised. In his exuberant vitality, in his sensuous love of music +and the other arts, in his combined imaginativeness and shrewdness of +common sense, in his superficial expansiveness and actual reticence, he +would have been typical enough of the potent and artistic race for whom +he has so often of late been claimed. + +What, however, is most to the point is that neither to curious +acquaintances nor to intimate friends, neither to Jews nor Gentiles, did +he ever admit more than that he was a good Protestant, and sprung of a +Puritan stock. He was tolerant of all religious forms, but with a +natural bias towards Anglican Evangelicalism. + +In appearance there was, perhaps, something of the Semite in Robert +Browning: yet this is observable but slightly in the portraits of him +during the last twenty years, and scarcely at all in those which +represent him as a young man. It is most marked in the drawing by Rudolf +Lehmann, representing Browning at the age of forty-seven, where he looks +out upon us with a physiognomy which is, at least, as much distinctively +Jewish as English. Possibly the large dark eyes (so unlike both in +colour and shape what they were in later life) and curved nose and full +lips, with the oval face, may have been, as it were, seen judaically by +the artist. These characteristics, again, are greatly modified in Mr. +Lehmann's subsequent portrait in oils. + +The poet's paternal great-grandfather, who was owner of the Woodyates +Inn, in the parish of Pentridge, in Dorsetshire, claimed to come of good +west-country stock. Browning believed, but always conscientiously +maintained there was no proof in support of the assumption, that he was +a descendant of the Captain Micaiah Browning who, as Macaulay relates in +his _History of England_, raised the siege of Derry in 1689 by springing +the boom across Lough Foyle, and perished in the act. The same ancestral +line is said to comprise the Captain Browning who commanded the ship +_The Holy Ghost_, which conveyed Henry V. to France before he fought the +Battle of Agincourt, and in recognition of whose services two waves, +said to represent waves of the sea, were added to his coat of arms. It +is certainly a point of some importance in the evidence, as has been +indicated, that these arms were displayed by the gallant Captain +Micaiah, and are borne by the present family. That the poet was a +pure-bred Englishman in the strictest sense, however, as has commonly +been asserted, is not the case. His mother was Scottish, through her +mother and by birth, but her father was the son of a German from +Hamburg, named Wiedemann, who, by the way, in connection with his +relationship as maternal grandfather to the poet, it is interesting to +note, was an accomplished draughtsman and musician.[2] Browning's +paternal grandmother, again, was a Creole. As Mrs. Orr remarks, this +pedigree throws a valuable light on the vigour and variety of the poet's +genius. Possibly the main current of his ancestry is as little strictly +English as German. A friend sends me the following paragraph from a +Scottish paper:--"What of the Scottish Brownings? I had it long ago from +one of the name that the Brownings came originally from Ayrshire, and +that several families of them emigrated to the North of Ireland during +the times of the Covenanters. There is, moreover, a small town or +village in the North of Ireland called Browningstown. Might not the poet +be related to these Scottish Brownings?" + +[Footnote 2: It has frequently been stated that Browning's maternal +grandfather, Mr. Wiedemann, was a Jew. Mr. Wiedemann, the son of a +Hamburg merchant, was a small shipowner in Dundee. Had he, or his +father, been Semitic, he would not have baptised one of his daughters +'Christiana.'] + +Browning's great-grandfather, as indicated above, was a small proprietor +in Dorsetshire. His son, whether perforce or from choice, removed to +London when he was a youth, and speedily obtained a clerkship in the +Bank of England, where he remained for fifty years, till he was +pensioned off in 1821 with over £400 a year. He died in 1833. His wife, +to whom he was married in or about 1780, was one Margaret Morris Tittle, +a Creole, born in the West Indies. Her portrait, by Wright of Derby, +used to hang in the poet's dining-room. They resided, Mr. R. Barrett +Browning tells me, in Battersea, where his grandfather was their +first-born. The paternal grandfather of the poet decided that his three +sons, Robert, William Shergold, and Reuben, should go into business, +the two younger in London, the elder abroad. All three became efficient +financial clerks, and attained to good positions and fair means.[3] The +eldest, Robert, was a man of exceptional powers. He was a poet, both in +sentiment and expression; and he understood, as well as enjoyed, the +excellent in art. He was a scholar, too, in a reputable fashion: not +indifferent to what he had learnt in his youth, nor heedless of the high +opinion generally entertained for the greatest writers of antiquity, but +with a particular care himself for Horace and Anacreon. As his son once +told a friend. "The old gentleman's brain was a storehouse of literary +and philosophical antiquities. He was completely versed in mediæval +legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic +personages, personally"--a significant detail, by the way. He was fond +of metrical composition, and his ease and grace in the use of the heroic +couplet were the admiration, not only of his intellectual associates, +but, in later days, of his son, who was wont to affirm, certainly in all +seriousness, that expressionally his father was a finer poetic artist +than himself. Some one has recorded of him that he was an authority on +the Letters of Junius: fortunately he had more tangible claims than this +to the esteem of his fellows. It was his boast that, notwithstanding the +exigencies of his vocation, he knew as much of the history of art as any +professional critic. His extreme modesty is deducible from this naïve +remark. He was an amateur artist, moreover, as well as poet, critic, +and student. I have seen several of his drawings which are +praise-worthy: his studies in portraiture, particularly, are ably +touched: and, as is well known, he had an active faculty of pictorial +caricature. In the intervals of leisure which beset the best regulated +clerk he was addicted to making drawings of the habitual visitors to the +Bank of England, in which he had obtained a post on his return, in 1803, +from the West Indies, and in the enjoyment of which he remained till +1853, when he retired on a small pension. His son had an independent +income, but whether from a bequest, or in the form of an allowance from +his then unmarried Uncle Reuben, is uncertain. In the first year of his +marriage Mr. Browning resided in an old house in Southampton Street, +Peckham, and there the poet was born. The house was long ago pulled +down, and another built on its site. Mr. Browning afterwards removed to +another domicile in the same Peckham district. Many years later, he and +his family left Camberwell and resided at Hatcham, near New Cross, where +his brothers and sisters (by his father's second marriage) lived. There +was a stable attached to the Hatcham house, and in it Mr. Reuben +Browning kept his horse, which he let his poet-nephew ride, while he +himself was at his desk in Rothschild's bank. No doubt this horse was +the 'York' alluded to by the poet in the letter quoted, as a footnote, +at page 189 of this book. Some years after his wife's death, which +occurred in 1849, Mr. Browning left Hatcham and came to Paddington, but +finally went to reside in Paris, and lived there, in a small street off +the Champs Élysées, till his death in 1866. The Creole strain seems to +have been distinctly noticeable in Mr. Browning, so much so that it is +possible it had something to do with his unwillingness to remain at St. +Kitts, where he was certainly on one occasion treated cavalierly enough. +The poet's complexion in youth, light and ivory-toned as it was in later +life, has been described as olive, and it is said that one of his +nephews, who met him in Paris in his early manhood, took him for an +Italian. It has been affirmed that it was the emotional Creole strain in +Browning which found expression in his passion for music. + +[Footnote 3: The three brothers were men of liberal education and +literary tastes. Mr. W.S. Browning, who died in 1874, was an author of +some repute. His _History of the Huguenots_ is a standard book on +the subject.] + +By old friends of the family I have been told that Mr. Browning had a +strong liking for children, with whom his really remarkable faculty of +impromptu fiction made him a particular favourite. Sometimes he would +supplement his tales by illustrations with pencil or brush. Miss Alice +Corkran has shown me an illustrated coloured map, depictive of the main +incidents and scenery of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, which he genially +made for "the children."[4] + +[Footnote 4: Mrs. Fraser Corkran, who saw much of the poet's father +during his residence in Paris, has spoken to me of his extraordinary +analytical faculty in the elucidation of complex criminal cases. It was +once said of him that his detective faculty amounted to genius. This is +a significant trait in the father of the author of "The Ring and the +Book."] + +He had three children himself--Robert, born May 7th, 1812, a daughter +named Sarianna, after her mother, and Clara. His wife was a woman of +singular beauty of nature, with a depth of religious feeling saved from +narrowness of scope only by a rare serenity and a fathomless charity. +Her son's loving admiration of her was almost a passion: even late in +life he rarely spoke of her without tears coming to his eyes. She was, +moreover, of an intellectual bent of mind, and with an artistic bias +having its readiest fulfilment in music, and, to some extent, in poetry. +In the latter she inclined to the Romanticists: her husband always +maintained the supremacy of Pope. He looked with much dubiety upon his +son's early writings, "Pauline" and "Paracelsus"; "Sordello," though he +found it beyond either his artistic or his mental apprehension, he +forgave, because it was written in rhymed couplets; the maturer works he +regarded with sympathy and pride, with a vague admiration which passed +into a clearer understanding only when his long life was drawing near +its close. + +Of his children's company he never tired, even when they were scarce out +of babyhood. He was fond of taking the little Robert in his arms, and +walking to and fro with him in the dusk in "the library," soothing the +child to sleep by singing to him snatches of Anacreon in the original, +to a favourite old tune of his, "A Cottage in a Wood." Readers of +"Asolando" will remember the allusions in that volume to "my father who +was a scholar and knew Greek." A week or two before his death Browning +told an American friend, Mrs. Corson, in reply to a statement of hers +that no one could accuse him of letting his talents lie idle: "It would +have been quite unpardonable in my case not to have done my best. My +dear father put me in a condition most favourable for the best work I +was capable of. When I think of the many authors who have had to fight +their way through all sorts of difficulties, I have no reason to be +proud of my achievements. My good father sacrificed a fortune to his +convictions. He could not bear with slavery, and left India and +accepted a humble bank-office in London. He secured for me all the ease +and comfort that a literary man needs to do good work. It would have +been shameful if I had not done my best to realise his expectations of +me."[5] + +[Footnote 5: 'India' is a slip on the part either of Browning or of Mrs. +Corson. The poet's father was never in India. He was quite a youth when +he went to his mother's sugar-plantation at St. Kitts, in the West +Indies.] + +The home of Mr. Browning was, as already stated, in Camberwell, a suburb +then of less easy access than now, and where there were green trees, and +groves, and enticing rural perspectives into "real" country, yet withal +not without some suggestion of the metropolitan air. + + "The old trees + Which grew by our youth's home--the waving mass + Of climbing plants, heavy with bloom and dew-- + The morning swallows with their songs like words-- + All these seem clear.... + ...most distinct amid + The fever and the stir of after years." + + (_Pauline_.) + +Another great writer of our time was born in the same parish: and those +who would know Herne Hill and the neighbourhood as it was in Browning's +youth will find an enthusiastic guide in the author of _Praeterita_. + +Browning's childhood was a happy one. Indeed, if the poet had been able +to teach in song only what he had learnt in suffering, the larger part +of his verse would be singularly barren of interest. From first to last +everything went well with him, with the exception of a single profound +grief. This must be borne in mind by those who would estimate aright the +genius of Robert Browning. It would be affectation or folly to deny that +his splendid physique--a paternal inheritance, for his father died at +the age of eighty-four, without having ever endured a day's illness--and +the exceptionally fortunate circumstances which were his throughout +life, had something to do with that superb faith of his which finds +concentrated expression in the lines in Pippa's song--"God's in His +Heaven, All's right with the world!" + +It is difficult for a happy man with an imperturbable digestion to be a +pessimist. He is always inclined to give Nature the benefit of the +doubt. His favourite term for this mental complaisance is "catholicity +of faith," or, it may be, "a divine hope." The less fortunate brethren +bewail the laws of Nature, and doubt a future readjustment, because of +stomachs chronically out of order. An eminent author with a weak +digestion wrote to me recently animadverting on what he calls Browning's +insanity of optimism: it required no personal acquaintanceship to +discern the dyspeptic well-spring of this utterance. All this may be +admitted lightly without carrying the physiological argument to +extremes. A man may have a liberal hope for himself and for humanity, +although his dinner be habitually a martyrdom. After all, we are only +dictated to by our bodies: we have not perforce to obey them. A bitter +wit once remarked that the soul, if it were ever discovered, would be +found embodied in the gastric juice. He was not altogether a fool, this +man who had learnt in suffering what he taught in epigram; yet was he +wide of the mark. + +As a very young child Browning was keenly susceptible to music. One +afternoon his mother was playing in the twilight to herself. She was +startled to hear a sound behind her. Glancing round, she beheld a little +white figure distinct against an oak bookcase, and could just discern +two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment the +child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not +what, but, as his paroxysm of emotion subsided, whispering over and +over, with shy urgency, "Play! play!" + +It is strange that among all his father's collection of drawings and +engravings nothing had such fascination for him as an engraving of a +picture of Andromeda and Perseus by Caravaggio. The story of the +innocent victim and the divine deliverer was one of which in his boyhood +he never tired of hearing: and as he grew older the charm of its +pictorial presentment had for him a deeper and more complex +significance. We have it on the authority of a friend that Browning had +this engraving always before his eyes as he wrote his earlier poems. He +has given beautiful commemoration to his feeling for it in "Pauline":-- + + "Andromeda! + And she is with me--years roll, I shall change, + But change can touch her not--so beautiful + With her dark eyes, earnest and still, and hair + Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze; + And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven, + Resting upon her eyes and face and hair, + As she awaits the snake on the wet beach, + By the dark rock, and the white wave just breaking + At her feet; quite naked and alone,--a thing + You doubt not, nor fear for, secure that God + Will come in thunder from the stars to save her." + +One of his own early recollections was that of sitting on his father's +knees in the library, and listening with enthralled attention to the +Tale of Troy, with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in +the fireplace; with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment--from +the neighbouring room where Mrs. Browning sat "in her chief happiness, +her hour of darkness and solitude and music"--of a wild Gaelic lament, +with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning his poetic +precocity has been circulated, but is not worth repeating. Most children +love jingling rhymes, and one need not be a born genius to improvise a +rhyming couplet on an occasion. + +It is quite certain that in nothing in these early poemicules, in such +at least as have been preserved without the poet's knowledge and against +his will, is there anything of genuine promise. Hundreds of youngsters +have written as good, or better, Odes to the Moon, Stanzas on a +Favourite Canary, Lines on a Butterfly. What is much more to the point +is, that at the age of eight he was able not only to read, but to take +delight in Pope's translation of Homer. He used to go about declaiming +certain couplets with an air of intense earnestness highly diverting to +those who overheard him. + +About this time also he began to translate the simpler odes of Horace. +One of these (viii. Bk. II.) long afterwards suggested to him the theme +of his "Instans Tyrannus." It has been put on record that his sister +remembers him, as a very little boy, walking round and round the +dining-room table, and spanning out the scansion of his verses with his +hand on the smooth mahogany. He was scarce more than a child when, one +Guy Fawkes' day, he heard a woman singing an unfamiliar song, whose +burden was, "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!" This refrain +haunted him often in the after years. That beautiful fantastic romance, +"The Flight of the Duchess," was born out of an insistent memory of this +woman's snatch of song, heard in childhood. He was ten when, after +several _passions malheureuses_, this precocious Lothario plunged into a +love affair whose intensity was only equalled by its hopelessness. A +trifle of fifteen years' seniority and a husband complicated matters, +but it was not till after the reckless expenditure of a Horatian ode +upon an unclassical mistress that he gave up hope. The outcome of this +was what the elder Browning regarded as a startling effusion of much +Byronic verse. The young Robert yearned for wastes of ocean and +illimitable sands, for dark eyes and burning caresses, for despair that +nothing could quench but the silent grave, and, in particular, for +hollow mocking laughter. His father looked about for a suitable school, +and decided to entrust the boy's further education to Mr. Ready, of +Peckham. + +Here he remained till he was fourteen. But already he knew the dominion +of dreams. His chief enjoyment, on holiday afternoons, was to gain an +unfrequented spot, where three huge elms re-echoed the tones of +incoherent human music borne thither-ward by the west winds across the +wastes of London. Here he loved to lie and dream. Alas, those elms, that +high remote coign, have long since passed to the "hidden way" whither +the snows of yester year have vanished. He would lie for hours looking +upon distant London--a golden city of the west literally enough, +oftentimes, when the sunlight came streaming in long shafts from behind +the towers of Westminster and flashed upon the gold cross of St. Paul's. +The coming and going of the cloud-shadows, the sweeping of sudden rains, +the dull silvern light emanating from the haze of mist shrouding the +vast city, with the added transitory gleam of troubled waters, the +drifting of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils +constantly being moved forward and then slowly withdrawn, as though some +sinister creature of the atmosphere were casting a net among all the +dross and débris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its own--all +this endless, ever-changing, always novel phantasmagoria had for him an +extraordinary fascination. One of the memorable nights of his boyhood +was an eve when he found his way, not without perturbation of spirit +because of the unfamiliar solitary dark, to his loved elms. There, for +the first time, he beheld London by night. It seemed to him then more +wonderful and appalling than all the host of stars. There was something +ominous in that heavy pulsating breath: visible, in a waning and waxing +of the tremulous, ruddy glow above the black enmassed leagues of +masonry; audible, in the low inarticulate moaning borne eastward across +the crests of Norwood. It was then and there that the tragic +significance of life first dimly awed and appealed to his questioning +spirit: that the rhythm of humanity first touched deeply in him a +corresponding chord. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +It was certainly about this time, as he admitted once in one of his rare +reminiscent moods, that Browning felt the artistic impulse stirring +within him, like the rising of the sap in a tree. He remembered his +mother's music, and hoped to be a musician: he recollected his father's +drawings, and certain seductive landscapes and seascapes by painters +whom he had heard called "the Norwich men," and he wished to be an +artist: then reminiscences of the Homeric lines he loved, of haunting +verse-melodies, moved him most of all. + + "I shall never, in the years remaining, + Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, + Make you music that should all-express me: + ... verse alone, one life allows me." + +He now gave way to the compulsive Byronic vogue, with an occasional +relapse to the polished artificialism of his father's idol among British +poets. There were several ballads written at this time: if I remember +aright, the poet specified the "Death of Harold" as the theme of one. +Long afterwards he read these boyish forerunners of "Over the sea our +galleys went," and "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," +and was amused by their derivative if delicate melodies. Mrs. Browning +was very proud of these early blooms of song, and when her +twelve-year-old son, tired of vain efforts to seduce a publisher from +the wary ways of business, surrendered in disgust his neatly copied out +and carefully stitched MSS., she lost no opportunity--when Mr. Browning +was absent--to expatiate upon their merits. Among the people to whom she +showed them was a Miss Flower. This lady took them home, perused them, +discerned dormant genius lurking behind the boyish handwriting, read +them to her sister (afterwards to become known as Sarah Flower Adams), +copied them out before returning them, and persuaded the celebrated Rev. +William Johnson Fox to read the transcripts. Mr. Fox agreed with Miss +Flower as to the promise, but not altogether as to the actual +accomplishment, nor at all as to the advisability of publication. The +originals are supposed to have been destroyed by the poet during the +eventful period when, owing to a fortunate gift, poetry became a new +thing for him: from a dream, vague, if seductive, as summer-lightning, +transformed to a dominating reality. Passing a bookstall one day, he +saw, in a box of second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as "Mr. +Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce." He had never heard of Shelley, +nor did he learn for a long time that the "Dæmon of the World," and the +miscellaneous poems appended thereto, constituted a literary piracy. +Badly printed, shamefully mutilated, these discarded blossoms touched +him to a new emotion. Pope became further removed than ever: Byron, +even, lost his magnetic supremacy. From vague remarks in reply to his +inquiries, and from one or two casual allusions, he learned that there +really was a poet called Shelley; that he had written several volumes; +that he was dead. + +Strange as it may seem, Browning declared once that the news of this +unknown singer's death affected him more poignantly than did, a year or +less earlier, the tidings of Byron's heroic end at Missolonghi. He +begged his mother to procure him Shelley's works, a request not easily +complied with, for the excellent reason that not one of the local +booksellers had even heard of the poet's name. Ultimately, however, Mrs. +Browning learned that what she sought was procurable at the Olliers' in +Vere Street, London. + +She was very pleased with the result of her visit. The books, it is +true, seemed unattractive: but they would please Robert, no doubt. If +that packet had been lost we should not have had "Pauline": we might +have had a different Browning. It contained most of Shelley's writings, +all in their first edition, with the exception of "The Cenci": in +addition, there were three volumes by an even less known poet, John +Keats, which kindly Mrs. Browning had been persuaded to include in her +purchase on Mr. Ollier's assurance that they were the poetic kindred of +Shelley's writings, and that Mr. Keats was the subject of the elegiac +poem in the purple paper cover, with the foreign-looking type and the +imprint "Pisa" at the foot of the title-page, entitled "Adonais." What +an evening for the young poet that must have been. He told a friend it +was a May night, and that in a laburnum, "heavy with its weight of +gold," and in a great copper-beech at the end of a neighbour's garden, +two nightingales strove one against the other. For a moment it is a +pleasant fancy to imagine that there the souls of Keats and Shelley +uttered their enfranchised music, not in rivalry but in welcome. We can +realise, perhaps, something of the startled delight, of the sudden +electric tremors, of the young poet when, with eager eyes, he turned +over the pages of "Epipsychidion" or "Prometheus Unbound," "Alastor" or +"Endymion," or the Odes to a Nightingale, on Melancholy, on a Grecian +Urn. + +More than once Browning alluded to this experience as his first +pervasive joy, his first free happiness in outlook. Often in after life +he was fain, like his "wise thrush," to "recapture that first fine +careless rapture." It was an eventful eve. + + "And suddenly, without heart-wreck, I awoke + As from a dream." + +Thenceforth his poetic development was rapid, and continuous. Shelley +enthralled him most. The fire and spirit of the great poet's verse, wild +and strange often, but ever with an exquisiteness of music which seemed +to his admirer, then and later, supreme, thrilled him to a very passion +of delight. Something of the more richly coloured, the more human rhythm +of Keats affected him also. Indeed, a line from the Ode to a +Nightingale, in common with one of the loveliest passages in +"Epipsychidion," haunted him above all others: and again and again in +his poems we may encounter vague echoes of those "remote isles" and +"perilous seas"--as, for example, in "the dim clustered isles of the +blue sea" of "Pauline," and the "some isle, with the sea's silence on +it--some unsuspected isle in the far seas!" of "Pippa Passes." + +But of course he had other matters for mental occupation besides poetry. +His education at Mr. Ready's private academy seems to have been +excellent so far as it went. He remained there till he was fourteen. +Perhaps because of the few boarders at the school, possibly from his own +reticence in self disclosure, he does not seem to have impressed any +school-mate deeply. We hear of no one who "knew Browning at school." His +best education, after all, was at home. His father and mother +incidentally taught him as much as Mr. Ready: his love of painting and +music was fostered, indirectly: and in the 'dovecot' bookshelf above the +fireplace in his bedroom, were the precious volumes within whose sway +and magic was his truest life. + +His father, for some reason which has not been made public, but was +doubtless excellent, and is, in the light in which we now regard it, a +matter for which to be thankful, decided to send his son neither to a +large public school, nor, later, to Oxford or Cambridge. A more +stimulative and wider training was awaiting him elsewhere. + +For a time Robert's education was superintended by a tutor, who came to +the house in Camberwell for several hours daily. The afternoons were +mainly devoted to music, to exercise, and occasionally to various +experimental studies in technical science. In the evenings, after his +preparatory tasks were over, when he was not in the entertaining company +of his father, he read and assiduously wrote. After poetry, he cared +most for history: but as a matter of fact, little came amiss to his +eager intellectual appetite. It was a period of growth, with, it may +be, a vague consciousness that his mind was expanding towards compulsive +expression. + + "So as I grew, I rudely shaped my life + To my immediate wants, yet strong beneath + Was a vague sense of powers folded up-- + A sense that though those shadowy times were past, + Their spirit dwelt in me, and I should rule." + +When Mr. Browning was satisfied that the tutor had fulfilled his duty he +sent his son to attend a few lectures at University College, in Gower +Street, then just founded. Robert Browning's name is on the registrar's +books for the opening session, 1829-30. "I attended with him the Greek +class of Professor Long" (wrote a friend, in the _Times_, Dec. 14:'89), +"and I well recollect the esteem and regard in which he was held by his +fellow-students. He was then a bright, handsome youth, with long black +hair falling over his shoulders." So short was his period of attendance, +however, and so unimportant the instruction he there derived, that to +all intents it may be said Browning had no University training. + +Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Browning but slightly appreciated his +son's poetic idols and already found himself in an opposite literary +camp, he had a profound sympathy with the boy's ideals and no little +confidence in his powers. When the test came he acted wisely as well as +with affectionate complaisance. In a word, he practically left the +decision as to his course of life to Robert himself. The latter was +helped thereto by the knowledge that his sister would be provided for, +and that, if need be, there was sufficient for himself also. There was +of course but one way open to him. He would not have been a true poet, +an artist, if he had hesitated. With a strange misconception of the +artistic spirit, some one has awarded the poet great credit for his +choice, because he had "the singular courage to decline to be rich." +Browning himself had nothing of this bourgeois spirit: he was the last +man to speak of an inevitable artistic decision as "singular courage." +There are no doubt people who estimate his resolve as Mr. Barrett, so +his daughter declared, regarded Horne when he heard of that poet having +published "Orion" at a farthing: "Perhaps he is going to shoot the +Queen, and is preparing evidence of monomania." + +With Browning there never could have been two sides to the question: it +were excusable, it were natural even, had his father wavered. The +outcome of their deliberations was that Robert's further education +should be obtained from travel, and intercourse with men and foreign +literatures. + +By this time the poet was twenty. His youth had been uneventful; in a +sense, more so than his boyhood. His mind, however, was rapidly +unfolding, and great projects were casting a glory about the coming +days. It was in his nineteenth year, I have been told on good authority, +that he became ardently in love with a girl of rare beauty, a year or +two older than himself, but otherwise, possibly, no inappropriate lover +for this wooer. Why and when this early passion came to a close, or was +rudely interrupted, is not known. What is certain is that it made a deep +impression on the poet's mind. It may be that it, of itself, or wrought +to a higher emotion by his hunger after ideal beauty, was the source of +"Pauline," that very unequal but yet beautiful first fruit of Browning's +genius. + +It was not till within the last few years that the poet spoke at all +freely of his youthful life. Perhaps the earliest record of these +utterances is that which appeared in the _Century Magazine_ in 1881. +From this source, and from what the poet himself said at various times +and in various ways, we know that just about the time Balzac, after +years of apparently waste labour, was beginning to forecast the Titanic +range of the _Comédie Humaine_, Browning planned "a series of +monodramatic epics, narratives of the life of typical souls--a gigantic +scheme at which a Victor Hugo or a Lope de Vega would start back +aghast." + +Already he had set himself to the analysis of the human soul in its +manifold aspects, already he had recognised that for him at least there +was no other study worthy of a lifelong devotion. In a sense he has +fulfilled this early dream: at any rate we have a unique series of +monodramatic poems, illustrative of typical souls. In another sense, the +major portion of Browning's life-work is, collectively, one monodramatic +"epic." He is himself a type of the subtle, restless, curious, searching +modern age of which he is the profoundest interpreter. Through a +multitude of masks he, the typical soul, speaks, and delivers himself of +a message which could not be presented emphatically enough as the +utterance of a single individual. He is a true dramatic poet, though not +in the sense in which Shakspere is. Shakspere and his kindred project +themselves into the lives of their imaginary personages: Browning pays +little heed to external life, or to the exigencies of action, and +projects himself into the minds of his characters. + +In a word, Shakspere's method is to depict a human soul in action, with +all the pertinent play of circumstance, while Browning's is to portray +the processes of its mental and spiritual development: as he said in his +dedicatory preface to "Sordello," "little else is worth study." The one +electrifies us with the outer and dominant actualities; the other +flashes upon our mental vision the inner, complex, shaping +potentialities. The one deals with life dynamically, the other with life +as Thought. Both methods are compassed by art. Browning, who is above +all modern writers the poet of dramatic situations, is surpassed by many +of inferior power in continuity of dramatic sequence. His finest work is +in his dramatic poems, rather than in his dramas. He realised intensely +the value of quintessential moments, as when the Prefect in "The Return +of the Druses" thrusts aside the arras, muttering that for the first +time he enters without a sense of imminent doom, "no draught coming as +from a sepulchre" saluting him, while that moment the dagger of the +assassin plunges to his heart: or, further in the same poem, when Anael, +coming to denounce Djabal as an impostor, is overmastered by her +tyrannic love, and falls dead with the too bitter freight of her +emotion, though not till she has proclaimed him the God by her single +worshipping cry, _Hakeem!_--or, once more, in "The Ring and the Book," +where, with the superbest close of any dramatic poem in our literature, +the wretched Guido, at the point of death, cries out in the last +extremity not upon God or the Virgin, but upon his innocent and +murdered wife--"Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God, ... Pompilia, +will you let them murder me?" Thus we can imagine Browning, with his +characteristic perception of the profound significance of a circumstance +or a single word even, having written of the knocking at the door in +"Macbeth," or having used, with all its marvellous cumulative effect, +the word 'wrought' towards the close of "Othello," when the Moor cries +in his bitterness of soul, "But being wrought, perplext in the extreme": +we can imagine this, and yet could not credit the suggestion that even +the author of "The Ring and the Book" could by any possibility have +composed the two most moving tragedies writ in our tongue. + +In the late autumn of 1832 Browning wrote a poem of singular promise and +beauty, though immature in thought and crude in expression.[6] +Thirty-four years later he included "Pauline" in his "Poetical Works" +with reluctance, and in a note explained the reason of his +decision--namely, to forestall piratical reprints abroad. "The thing was +my earliest attempt at 'poetry always dramatic in principle, and so many +utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine,' which I have since +written according to a scheme less extravagant, and scale less +impracticable, than were ventured upon in this crude preliminary +sketch--a sketch that, on reviewal, appears not altogether wide of some +hint of the characteristic features of that particular _dramatis +persona_ it would fain have reproduced: good draughtsmanship, however, +and right handling were far beyond the artist at that time." These be +hard words. No critic will ever adventure upon so severe a censure of +"Pauline": most capable judges agree that, with all its shortcomings, it +is a work of genius, and therefore ever to be held treasurable for its +own sake as well as for its significance. + +[Footnote 6: Probably from the fact of "Richmond" having been added to +the date at the end of the preface to "Pauline," have arisen the +frequent misstatements as to the Browning family having moved west from +Camberwell in or shortly before 1832. Mr. R. Barrett Browning tells me +that his father "never lived at Richmond, and that that place was +connected with 'Pauline,' when first printed, as a mystification."] + +On the fly-leaf of a copy of this initial work, the poet, six years +after its publication, wrote: "Written in pursuance of a foolish plan I +forget, or have no wish to remember; the world was never to guess that +such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech proceeded from the same +notable person.... Only this crab remains of the shapely Tree of Life in +my fool's Paradise." It was in conformity with this plan that he not +only issued "Pauline" anonymously, but enjoined secrecy upon those to +whom he communicated the fact of his authorship. + +When he read the poem to his parents, upon its conclusion, both were +much impressed by it, though his father made severe strictures upon its +lack of polish, its terminal inconcision, and its vagueness of thought. +That he was not more severe was accepted by his son as high praise. The +author had, however, little hope of seeing it in print. Mr. Browning was +not anxious to provide a publisher with a present. So one day the poet +was gratified when his aunt, handing him the requisite sum, remarked +that she had heard he had written a fine poem, and that she wished to +have the pleasure of seeing it in print. + +To this kindly act much was due. Browning, of course, could not now have +been dissuaded from the career he had forecast for himself, but his +progress might have been retarded or thwarted to less fortunate grooves, +had it not been for the circumstances resultant from his aunt's timely +gift. + +The MS. was forthwith taken to Saunders & Otley, of Conduit Street, and +the little volume of seventy pages of blank verse, comprising only a +thousand and thirty lines, was issued by them in January 1833. It seems +to us, who read it now, so manifestly a work of exceptional promise, +and, to a certain extent, of high accomplishment, that were it not for +the fact that the public auditory for a new poet is ever extraordinarily +limited, it would be difficult to understand how it could have been +overlooked. + +"Pauline" has a unique significance because of its autopsychical hints. +The Browning whom we all know, as well as the youthful dreamer, is here +revealed; here too, as well as the disciple of Shelley, we have the +author of "The Ring and the Book." In it the long series culminating in +"Asolando" is foreshadowed, as the oak is observable in the sapling. The +poem is prefaced by a Latin motto from the _Occult Philosophy_ of +Cornelius Agrippa, and has also a note in French, set forth as being by +Pauline, and appended to her lover's manuscript after his death. +Probably Browning placed it in the mouth of Pauline from his rooted +determination to speak dramatically and impersonally: and in French, so +as to heighten the effect of verisimilitude.[7] + +[Footnote 7: "I much fear that my poor friend will not be always +perfectly understood in what remains to be read of this strange +fragment, but it is less calculated than any other part to explain what +of its nature can never be anything but dream and confusion. I do not +know, moreover, whether in striving at a better connection of certain +parts, one would not run the risk of detracting from the only merit to +which so singular a production can pretend--that of giving a tolerably +precise idea of the manner (_genre_) which it can merely indicate. This +unpretending opening, this stir of passion, which first increases, and +then gradually subsides, these transports of the soul, this sudden +return upon himself, and above all, my friend's quite peculiar turn of +mind, have made alterations almost impossible. The reasons which he +elsewhere asserts, and others still more cogent, have secured my +indulgence for this paper, which otherwise I should have advised him to +throw into the fire. I believe none the less in the great principle of +all composition--in that principle of Shakespeare, of Raphael, and of +Beethoven, according to which concentration of ideas is due much more to +their conception than to their execution; I have every reason to fear +that the first of these qualities is still foreign to my friend, and I +much doubt whether redoubled labour would enable him to acquire the +second. It would be best to burn this, but what can I do?"--(_Mrs. +Orr_.)] + +"Pauline" is a confession, fragmentary in detail but synthetic in range, +of a young man of high impulses but weak determination. In its +over-emphasis upon errors of judgment, as well as upon real if +exaggerated misdeeds, it has all the crudeness of youth. An almost +fantastic self-consciousness is the central motive: it is a matter of +question if this be absolutely vicarious. To me it seems that the author +himself was at the time confused by the complicated flashing of the +lights of life. + +The autobiographical and autopsychical lines and passages scattered +through the poem are of immediate interest. Generously the poet repays +his debt to Shelley, whom he apostrophises as "Sun-treader," and invokes +in strains of lofty emotion--"Sun-treader--life and light be thine for +ever." The music of "Alastor," indeed, is audible ever and again +throughout "Pauline." None the less is there a new music, a new poetic +voice, in + + "Thou wilt remember one warm morn, when Winter + Crept aged from the earth, and Spring's first breath + Blew soft from the moist hills--the black-thorn boughs, + So dark in the bare wood, when glistening + In the sunshine were white with coming buds, + Like the bright side of a sorrow--and the banks + Had violets opening from sleep like eyes." + +If we have an imaginary Browning, a Shelleyan phantasm, in + + "I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt + A strange delight in causing my decay; + I was a fiend, in darkness chained for ever + Within some ocean-wave:" + +we have the real Browning in + + "So I will sing on--fast as fancies come + Rudely--the verse being as the mood it paints. + * * * * * + I am made up of an intensest life," + +and all the succeeding lines down to "Their spirit dwelt in me, and I +should rule." + +Even then the poet's inner life was animated by his love of the +beautiful Greek literature. Telling how in "the first dawn of life," +"which passed alone with wisest ancient books," Pauline's lover +incorporated himself in whatsoever he read--was the god wandering after +beauty, the giant standing vast against the sunset-light, the +high-crested chief sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos--his +second-self cries, "I tell you, nought has ever been so clear as the +place, the time, the fashion of those lives." Never for him, then, had +there been that alchemy of the soul which turns the inchoate drift of +the world into golden ore, not then had come to him the electric +awakening flash from "work of lofty art, nor woman's beauty, nor sweet +nature's face"-- + + "Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those + On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea: + The deep groves, and white temples, and wet caves-- + And nothing ever will surprise me now-- + Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, + Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair." + +Further, the allusion to Plato, and the more remote one to Agamemnon, the + + "old lore + Loved for itself, and all it shows--the King + Treading the purple calmly to his death," + +and the beautiful Andromeda passage, afford ample indication of how +deeply Browning had drunk of that vital stream whose waters are the +surest conserver of the ideal loveliness which we all of us, in some +degree, cherish in various guises. + +Yet, as in every long poem that he has written (and, it must be +admitted, in too many of the shorter pieces of his later period) there +is an alloy of prose, of something that is not poetry, so in "Pauline," +written though it was in the first flush of his genius and under the +inspiring stimulus of Shelley, the reader encounters prosaic passages, +decasyllabically arranged. "Twas in my plan to look on real life, which +was all new to me; my theories were firm, so I left them, to look upon +men, and their cares, and hopes, and fears, and joys; and, as I +pondered on them all, I sought how best life's end might be attained, an +end comprising every joy." Again: "Then came a pause, and long restraint +chained down my soul, till it was changed. I lost myself, and were it +not that I so loathe that time, I could recall how first I learned to +turn my mind against itself ... at length I was restored, yet long the +influence remained; and nought but the still life I led, apart from all, +which left my soul to seek its old delights, could e'er have brought me +thus far back to peace." No reader, alert to the subtle and haunting +music of rarefied blank verse (and unless it be rarefied it should not +be put forward as poetry), could possibly accept these lines as +expressionally poetical. It would seem as though, from the first, +Browning's ear was keener for the apprehension than for the sustained +evocation of the music of verse. Some flaw there was, somewhere. His +heart, so to say, beat too fast, and the singing in his ears from the +o'er-fevered blood confused the serene rhythm haunting the far +perspectives of the brain, "as Arab birds float sleeping in the wind." + +I have dwelt at this length upon "Pauline" partly because of its +inherent beauty and autopsychical significance, and partly because it is +the least familiar of Browning's poems, long overshadowed as it has been +by his own too severe strictures: mainly, however, because of its +radical importance to the student who would arrive at a broad and true +estimate of the power and scope and shaping constituents of its author's +genius. Almost every quality of his after-verse may be found here, in +germ or outline. It is, in a word, more physiognomic than any other +single poem by Browning, and so must ever possess a peculiar interest +quite apart from its many passages of haunting beauty. + +To these the lover of poetry will always turn with delight. Some will +even regard them retrospectively with alien emotion to that wherewith +they strive to possess their souls in patience over some one or other of +the barbarisms, the Titanic excesses, the poetic banalities recurrent in +the later volumes. + +How many and how haunting these delicate oases are! Those who know and +love "Pauline" will remember the passage where the poet, with that +pantheistic ecstasy which was possibly inspired by the singer he most +loved, tells how he can live the life of plants, content to watch the +wild bees flitting to and fro, or to lie absorbent of the ardours of the +sun, or, like the night-flowering columbine, to trail up the tree-trunk +and through its rustling foliage "look for the dim stars;" or, again, +can live the life of the bird, "leaping airily his pyramid of leaves and +twisted boughs of some tall mountain-tree;" or be a fish, breathing the +morning air in the misty sun-warm water. Close following this is another +memorable passage, that beginning "Night, and one single ridge of narrow +path;" which has a particular interest for two notes of a deeper and +broader music to be evolved long afterwards. For, as it seems to me, in + + "Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell + Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting + Of thy soft breasts -----" + +(where, by the way, should be noticed the subtle correspondence between +the conceptive and the expressional rhythm) we have a hint of that +superb scene in "Pippa Passes," where, on a sinister night of July, a +night of spiritual storm as well as of aerial tempest, Ottima and Sebald +lie amid the lightning-searcht forest, with "the thunder like a whole +sea overhead." Again, in the lovely Turneresque, or rather Shelleyan +picture of morning, over "the rocks, and valleys, and old woods," with +the high boughs swinging in the wind above the sun-brightened mists, and +the golden-coloured spray of the cataract amid the broken rocks, +whereover the wild hawks fly to and fro, there is at least a suggestion, +an outline, of the truly magnificent burst of morning music in the +poet's penultimate volume, beginning-- + + "But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight + Above the baffled tempest: tree and tree + Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, + And every strangled branch resumes its right + To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free + In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, + While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, + Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, + Each grass-blade's glory-glitter," etc. + +Who that has ever read "Pauline" will forget the masterful poetry +descriptive of the lover's wild-wood retreat, the exquisite lines +beginning "Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, tangled, old +and green"? There is indeed a new, an unmistakable voice here. + + "And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters, + Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head, + And old grey stones lie making eddies there; + The wild mice cross them dry-shod".... + +What lovelier image in modern poetry than that depictive of the +forest-pool in depths of savage woodlands, unvisited but by the shadows +of passing clouds,-- + + "the trees bend + O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl." + +How the passionate sexual emotion, always deep and true in Browning, +finds lovely utterance in the lines where Pauline's lover speaks of the +blood in her lips pulsing like a living thing, while her neck is as +"marble misted o'er with love-breath," and + + "... her delicious eyes as clear as heaven, + When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist, + And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans." + +In the quotations I have made, and in others that might be selected +(_e.g._, "Her fresh eyes, and soft hair, and _lips which bleed like a +mountain berry_"), it is easy to note how intimate an observer of nature +the youthful poet was, and with what conscious but not obtrusive art he +brings forward his new and striking imagery. Browning, indeed, is the +poet of new symbols. + +"Pauline" concludes with lines which must have been in the minds of many +on that sad day when the tidings from Venice sent a thrill of startled, +half-incredulous, bewildered pain throughout the English nations-- + + "Sun-treader, I believe in God, and truth, + And love; ... + ... but chiefly when I die ... + All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me, + Know my last state is happy--free from doubt, + Or touch of fear." + +Never again was Browning to write a poem with such conceptive crudeness, +never again to tread the byways of thought so falteringly or so +negligently: but never again, perhaps, was he to show so much +over-rapturing joy in the world's loveliness, such Bacchic abandon to +the ideal beauty which the true poet sees glowing upon the forlornest +height and brooding in the shadow-haunted hollows of the hills. The +Browning who might have been is here: henceforth the Browning we know +and love stands unique among all the lords of song. But sometimes do we +not turn longingly, wonderingly at least, to the young Dionysos upon +whose forehead was the light of another destiny than that which +descended upon him? The Icelanders say there is a land where all the +rainbows that have ever been, or are yet to be, forever drift to and +fro, evanishing and reappearing, like immortal flowers of vapour. In +that far country, it may be, are also the unfulfilled dreams, the +visions too perfect to be fashioned into song, of the young poets who +have gained the laurel. + +We close the little book lovingly: + + "And I had dimly shaped my first attempt, + And many a thought did I build up on thought, + As the wild bee hangs cell to cell--in vain; + For I must still go on: my mind rests not." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +It has been commonly asserted that "Pauline" was almost wholly +disregarded, and swiftly lapsed into oblivion. + +This must be accepted with qualification. It is like the other general +assertion, that Browning had to live fifty years before he gained +recognition--a statement as ludicrous when examined as it is unjust to +the many discreet judges who awarded, publicly and privately, that +intelligent sympathy which is the best sunshine for the flower of a +poet's genius. If by "before he gained recognition" is meant a general +and indiscriminate acclaim, no doubt Browning had, still has indeed, +longer to wait than many other eminent writers have had to do: but it is +absurd to assert that from the very outset of his poetic career he was +met by nothing but neglect, if not scornful derision. None who knows the +true artistic temperament will fall into any such mistake. + +It is quite certain that neither Shakspere nor Milton ever met with such +enthusiastic praise and welcome as Browning encountered on the +publication of "Pauline" and "Paracelsus." Shelley, as far above +Browning in poetic music as the author of so many parleyings with other +people's souls is the superior in psychic insight and intellectual +strength, had throughout his too brief life not one such review of +praiseful welcome as the Rev. W.J. Fox wrote on the publication of +"Pauline" (or, it may be added, as Allan Cunningham's equally kindly but +less able review in the _Athenæum_), or as John Forster wrote in _The +Examiner_ concerning "Paracelsus," and later in the _New Monthly +Magazine_, where he had the courage to say of the young and quite +unknown poet, "without the slightest hesitation we name Mr. Robert +Browning at once with Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth." His plays even +(which are commonly said to have "fallen flat") were certainly not +failures. There is something effeminate, undignified, and certainly +uncritical, in this confusion as to what is and what is not failure in +literature. So enthusiastic was the applause he encountered, indeed, +that had his not been too strong a nature to be thwarted by adulation +any more than by contemptuous neglect, he might well have become +spoilt--so enthusiastic, that were it not for the heavy and prolonged +counterbalancing dead weight of public indifference, a huge amorphous +mass only of late years moulded into harmony with the keenest minds of +the century, we might well be suspicious of so much and long-continued +eulogium, and fear the same reversal of judgment towards him on the part +of those who come after us as we ourselves have meted to many an one +among the high gods of our fathers. + +Fortunately the deep humanity of his work in the mass conserves it +against the mere veerings of taste. A reaction against it will +inevitably come; but this will pass: what, in the future, when the +unborn readers of Browning will look back with clear eyes untroubled by +the dust of our footsteps, not to subside till long after we too are +dust, will be the place given to this poet, we know not, nor can more +than speculatively estimate. That it will, however, be a high one, so +far as his weightiest (in bulk, it may possibly be but a relatively +slender) accomplishment is concerned, we may rest well assured: for +indeed "It lives, If precious be the soul of man to man." + +So far as has been ascertained there were only three reviews or notices +of "Pauline": the very favourable article by Mr. Fox in the _Monthly +Repository_, the kindly paper by Allan Cunningham in the _Athenæum_, +and, in _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, the succinctly expressed impression +of either an indolent or an incapable reviewer: "Pauline; a Fragment of +a Confession; a piece of pure bewilderment"--a "criticism" which +anticipated and thus prevented the insertion of a highly favourable +review which John Stuart Mill voluntarily wrote. + +Browning must have regarded his first book with mingled feelings. It was +a bid for literary fortune, in one sense, but a bid so handicapped by +the circumstances of its publication as to be almost certainly of no +avail. Probably, however, he was well content that it should have mere +existence. Already the fever of an abnormal intellectual curiosity was +upon him: already he had schemed more potent and more vital poems: +already, even, he had developed towards a more individualistic method. +So indifferent was he to an easily gained reputation that he seems to +have been really urgent upon his relatives and intimate acquaintances +not to betray his authorship. The Miss Flower, how ever, to whom +allusion has already been made, could not repress her admiration to the +extent of depriving her friend, Mr. Fox, of a pleasure similar to that +she had herself enjoyed. The result was the generous notice in the +_Monthly Repository_. The poet never forgot his indebtedness to Mr. Fox, +to whose sympathy and kindness much direct and indirect good is +traceable. The friendship then begun was lifelong, and was continued +with the distinguished Unitarian's family when Mr. Fox himself ended his +active and beneficent career. + +But after a time the few admirers of "Pauline" forgot to speak about it: +the poet himself never alluded to it: and in a year or two it was almost +as though it had never been written. Many years after, when articles +upon Robert Browning were as numerous as they once had been scarce, +never a word betrayed that their authors knew of the existence of +"Pauline." There was, however, yet another friendship to come out of +this book, though not until long after it was practically forgotten by +its author. + +One day a young poet-painter came upon a copy of the book in the British +Museum Library, and was at once captivated by its beauty. One of the +earliest admirers of Browning's poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti--for it +was he--felt certain that "Pauline" could be by none other than the +author of "Paracelsus." He himself informed me that he had never heard +this authorship suggested, though some one had spoken to him of a poem +of remarkable promise, called "Pauline," which he ought to read. If I +remember aright, Rossetti told me that it was on the forenoon of the day +when the "Burden of Nineveh" was begun, conceived rather, that he read +this story of a soul by the soul's ablest historian. So delighted was he +with it, and so strong his opinion it was by Browning, that he wrote to +the poet, then in Florence, for confirmation, stating at the same time +that his admiration for "Pauline" had led him to transcribe the whole of +it. + +Concerning this episode, Robert Browning wrote to me, some seven years +ago, as follows:-- + + "St. Pierre de Chartreuse, Isère, France. + + * * * * * + + "Rossetti's 'Pauline' letter was addressed to me at Florence more + than thirty years ago. I have preserved it, but, even were I at + home, should be unable to find it without troublesome searching. It + was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether unknown + to me, had come upon a poem in the British Museum, which he copied + the whole of, from its being not otherwise procurable--that he + judged it to be mine, but could not be sure, and wished me to + pronounce in the matter--which I did. A year or two after, I had a + visit in London from Mr. (William) Allingham and a friend--who + proved to be Rossetti. When I heard he was a painter I insisted on + calling on him, though he declared he had nothing to show me--which + was far enough from the case. Subsequently, on another of my returns + to London, he painted my portrait, not, I fancy, in oils, but + water-colours, and finished it in Paris shortly after. This must + have been in the year when Tennyson published 'Maud,' for I remember + Tennyson reading the poem one evening while Rossetti made a rapid + pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, from one obscure corner of + vantage, which I still possess, and duly value. This was before + Rossetti's marriage."[8] + + +[Footnote 8: The highly interesting and excellent portrait of Browning +here alluded to has never been exhibited.] + +As a matter of fact, as recorded on the back of the original drawing, +the eventful reading took place at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square, on +the 27th of September 1855, and those present, besides the +Poet-Laureate, Browning, and Rossetti, were Mrs. E. Barrett Browning and +Miss Arabella Barrett. + +When, a year or two ago, the poet learned that a copy of his first work, +which in 1833 could not find a dozen purchasers at a few shillings, went +at a public sale for twenty-five guineas, he remarked that had his dear +old aunt been living he could have returned to her, much to her +incredulous astonishment, no doubt, he smilingly averred, the cost of +the book's publication, less £3 15s. It was about the time of the +publication of "Pauline" that Browning began to see something of the +literary and artistic life for which he had such an inborn taste. For a +brief period he went often to the British Museum, particularly the +Library, and to the National Gallery. At the British Museum Reading Room +he perused with great industry and research those works in philosophy +and medical history which are the bases of "Paracelsus," and those +Italian Records bearing upon the story of Sordello. Residence in +Camberwell, in 1833, rendered night engagements often impracticable: but +nevertheless he managed to mix a good deal in congenial society. It is +not commonly known that he was familiar to these early associates as a +musician and artist rather than as a poet. Among them, and they +comprised many well-known workers in the several arts, were Charles +Dickens and "Ion" Talfourd. Mr. Fox, whom Browning had met once or twice +in his early youth, after the former had been shown the Byronic verses +which had in one way gratified and in another way perturbed the poet's +father, saw something more of his young friend after the publication of +"Pauline." He very kindly offered to print in his magazine any short +poems the author of that book should see fit to send--an offer, however, +which was not put to the test for some time. + +Practically simultaneously with the publication of "Pauline" appeared +another small volume, containing the "Palace of Art," "Oenone," +"Mariana," etc. Those early books of Tennyson and Browning have +frequently, and somewhat uncritically, been contrasted. Unquestionably, +however, the elder poet showed a consummate and continuous mastery of +his art altogether beyond the intermittent expressional power of +Browning in his most rhythmic emotion at any time of his life. To affirm +that there is more intellectual fibre, what Rossetti called fundamental +brain-work, in the product of the younger poet, would be beside the +mark. The insistence on the supremacy of Browning over all poets since +Shakspere because he has the highest "message" to deliver, because his +intellect is the most subtle and comprehensive, because his poems have +this or that dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other active +minds, is to be seriously and energetically deprecated. It is with +presentment that the artist has, fundamentally, to concern himself. If +he cannot _present_ poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet, though +he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. Browning's eminence is +not because of his detachment from what some one has foolishly called +"the mere handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet." It is the +delight of the true artist that the product of his talent should be +wrought to a high technique equally by the shaping brain and the +dexterous hand. Browning is great because of his formative energy: +because, despite the excess of burning and compulsive thought-- + + "Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain + Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells, + Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight--" + +he strikes from the _furor_ of words an electric flash so transcendently +illuminative that what is commonplace becomes radiant with that light +which dwells not in nature, but only in the visionary eye of man. Form +for the mere beauty of form, is a playing with the wind, the acceptance +of a shadow for the substance. If nothing animate it, it may possibly be +fair of aspect, but only as the frozen smile upon a dead face. + +We know little of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834. It +was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one certain pinnacles +of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away. He began to +realise the first disenchantment of the artist: the sense of dreams +never to be accomplished. That land of the great unwritten poems, the +great unpainted pictures: what a heritance there for the enfranchised +spirits of great dreamers! + +In the autumn of 1833 he went forth to his University, that of the world +of men and women. It was ever a favourite answer of his, when asked if +he had been at either Oxford or Cambridge,--"Italy was my University." + +But first he went to Russia, and spent some time in St. Petersburg, +attracted thither by the invitation of a friend. The country interested +him, but does not seem to have deeply or permanently engaged his +attention. That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless is +manifest from the remarkably picturesque and technically very +interesting poem, "Ivàn Ivànovitch" (the fourth of the _Dramatic Idyls_, +1879). Of a truth, after his own race and country--readers will at once +think of "Home Thoughts from the Sea," or the thrilling lines in "Home +Thoughts from Abroad," beginning-- + + "Oh, to be in England, + Now that April's there!"-- + +or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work-- + + "I cherish most + My love of England--how, her name, a word + Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!" + +--it was of the mystic Orient or of the glowing South that he oftenest +thought and dreamed. With Heine he might have cried: "O Firdusi! O +Ischami! O Saadi! How do I long after the roses of Schiraz!" As for +Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her: but who has +worshipped her with so manly a passion, so loyal a love, as Browning? +One alone indeed may be mated with him here, she who had his heart of +hearts, and who lies at rest in the old Florentine cemetery within sound +of the loved waters of Arno. Who can forget his lines in "De Gustibus," +"Open my heart and you will see, graved inside of it, Italy." + +It would be no difficult task to devote a volume larger than the present +one to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy, +Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture, +Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia and +all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty above +conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled gallery of +portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, what a movement of intensest +life! + +It is pleasant to know of one of them, "The Italian in England," that +Browning was proud, because Mazzini told him he had read this poem to +certain of his fellow-exiles in England to show how an Englishman could +sympathise with them. + +After leaving Russia the young poet spent the rest of his _Wanderjahr_ +in Italy. Among other places he visited was Asolo, that white little +hill-town of the Veneto, whence he drew hints for "Sordello," and "Pippa +Passes," and whither he returned in the last year of his life, as with +unconscious significance he himself said, "on his way homeward." + +In the summer of 1834, that is, when he was in his twenty-second year, +he returned to Camberwell. "Sordello" he had in some fashion begun, but +had set aside for a poem which occupied him throughout the autumn of +1834 and winter of 1835, "Paracelsus." In this period, also, he wrote +some short poems, two of them of particular significance. The first of +the series was a sonnet, which appeared above the signature 'Z' in the +August number of the _Monthly Repository_ for 1834. It was never +reprinted by the author, whose judgment it is impossible not to approve +as well as to respect. Browning never wrote a good sonnet, and this +earliest effort is not the most fortunate. It was in the _Repository_ +also, in 1835 and 1836, that the other poems appeared, four in all. + +The song in "Pippa Passes," beginning "A King lived long ago," was one +of these; and the lyric, "Still ailing, wind? Wilt be appeased or no?" +afterwards revised and incorporated in "James Lee," was another. But the +two which are much the most noteworthy are "Johannes Agricola" and +"Porphyria." Even more distinctively than in "Pauline," in their novel +sentiment, new method, and generally unique quality, is a new voice +audible in these two poems. They are very remarkable as the work of so +young a poet, and are interesting as showing how rapidly he had outgrown +the influence of any other of his poetic kindred. "Johannes Agricola" is +significant as being the first of those dramatic studies of warped +religiosity, of strange self-sophistication, which have afforded so much +matter for thought. In its dramatic concision, its complex psychological +significance, and its unique, if to unaccustomed ears somewhat barbaric, +poetic beauty, "Porphyria" is still more remarkable. + +It may be of this time, though possibly some years later, that Mrs. +Bridell-Fox writes:--"I remember him as looking in often in the +evenings, having just returned from his first visit to Venice. I cannot +tell the date for certain. He was full of enthusiasm for 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. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from +those delightful, well-remembered evenings of my childhood." + +"Paracelsus," begun about the close of October or early in November +1834, was published in the summer of the following year. It is a poem in +blank verse, about four times the length of "Pauline," with interspersed +songs. The author divided it into five sections of unequal length, of +which the third is the most extensive: "Paracelsus Aspires"; "Paracelsus +Attains"; "Paracelsus"; "Paracelsus Aspires"; "Paracelsus Attains." In +an interesting note, which was not reprinted in later editions of his +first acknowledged poem, the author dissuades the reader from mistaking +his performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in common, +from judging it by principles on which it was not moulded, and from +subjecting it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. He +then explains that he has composed a dramatic poem, and not a drama in +the accepted sense; that he has not set forth the phenomena of the mind +or the passions by the operation of persons and events, or by recourse +to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis +sought to be produced. Instead of this, he remarks, "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: and this for a reason. I have +endeavoured to write a poem, not a drama." A little further, he states +that a work like "Paracelsus" depends, for its success, immediately upon +the intelligence and sympathy of the reader: "Indeed, were my scenes +stars, it must be his co-operating fancy which, supplying all chasms, +shall connect the scattered lights into one constellation--a Lyre or a +Crown." + +In the concluding paragraph of this note there is a point of +interest--the statement of the author's hope that the readers of +"Paracelsus" will not "be prejudiced against other productions which may +follow in a more popular, and perhaps less difficult form." From this it +might fairly be inferred that Browning had not definitively adopted his +characteristic method: that he was far from unwilling to gain the +general ear: and that he was alert to the difficulties of popularisation +of poetry written on lines similar to those of "Paracelsus." Nor would +this inference be wrong: for, as a matter of fact, the poet, immediately +upon the publication of "Paracelsus," determined to devote himself to +poetic work which should have so direct a contact with actual life that +its appeal should reach even to the most uninitiate in the mysteries and +delights of verse. + +In his early years Browning had always a great liking for walking in the +dark. At Camberwell he was wont to carry this love to the point of +losing many a night's rest. There was, in particular, a wood near +Dulwich, whither he was wont to go. There he would walk swiftly and +eagerly along the solitary and lightless byways, finding a potent +stimulus to imaginative thought in the happy isolation thus enjoyed, +with all the concurrent delights of natural things, the wind moving like +a spirit through the tree-branches, the drifting of poignant fragrances, +even in winter-tide, from herb and sappy bark, imperceptible almost by +the alertest sense in the day's manifold detachments. At this time, too, +he composed much in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in later +life. Not only many portions of "Paracelsus," but several scenes in +"Strafford," were enacted first in these midnight silences of the +Dulwich woodland. Here, too, as the poet once declared, he came to know +the serene beauty of dawn: for every now and again, after having read +late, or written long, he would steal quietly from the house, and walk +till the morning twilight graded to the pearl and amber of the new day. + +As in childhood the glow of distant London had affected him to a +pleasure that was not without pain, perhaps to a pain rather that was a +fine delirium, so in his early manhood the neighbourhood of the huge +city, felt in those midnight walks of his, and apprehended more by the +transmutive shudder of reflected glare thrown fadingly upward against +the stars, than by any more direct vision or even far-borne +indeterminate hum, dominated his imagination. At that distance, in those +circumstances, humanity became more human. And with the thought, the +consciousness of this imperative kinship, arose the vague desire, the +high resolve to be no curious dilettante in novel literary experiments, +but to compel an interpretative understanding of this complex human +environment. + +Those who knew the poet intimately are aware of the loving regard he +always had for those nocturnal experiences: but perhaps few recognise +how much we owe to the subtle influences of that congenial isolation he +was wont to enjoy on fortunate occasions. + +It is not my intention--it would, obviously, be a futile one, if +entertained--to attempt an analysis or elaborate criticism of the many +poems, long and short, produced by Robert Browning. Not one volume, but +several, of this size, would have to be allotted to the adequate +performance of that end. Moreover, if readers are unable or unwilling to +be their own expositors, there are several trustworthy hand-books which +are easily procurable. Some one, I believe, has even, with unselfish +consideration for the weaker brethren, turned "Sordello" into prose--a +superfluous task, some scoffers may exclaim. Personally, I cannot but +think this craze for the exposition of poetry, this passion for +"dissecting a rainbow," is harmful to the individual as well as +humiliating to the high office of Poetry itself, and not infrequently it +is ludicrous. + +I must be content with a few words anent the more important or +significant poems, and in due course attempt an estimate by a broad +synthesis, and not by cumulative critical analyses. + +In the selection of Paracelsus as the hero of his first mature poem, +Browning was guided first of all by his keen sympathy with the +scientific spirit--the spirit of dauntless inquiry, of quenchless +curiosity, of a searching enthusiasm. Pietro of Abano, Giordano Bruno, +Galileo, were heroes whom he regarded with an admiration which would +have been boundless but for the wise sympathy which enabled him to +apprehend and understand their weaknesses as well as their lofty +qualities. Once having come to the conclusion that Paracelsus was a +great and much maligned man, it was natural for him to wish to portray +aright the features he saw looming through the mists of legend and +history. But over and above this, he half unwittingly, half consciously, +felt the fascination of that mysticism associated with the name of the +celebrated German scientist--a mysticism, in all its various phases, of +which he is now acknowledged to be the subtlest poetic interpreter in +our language, though, profound as its attraction always was for him, +never was poet with a more exquisite balance of intellectual sanity. + +Latest research has proved that whatsoever of a pretender Paracelsus may +have been in certain respects, he was unquestionably a man of +extraordinary powers: and, as a pioneer in a science of the first +magnitude of importance, deserving of high honour. If ever the famous +German attain a high place in the history of the modern intellectual +movement in Europe, it will be primarily due to Browning's championship. + +But of course the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim is a matter +of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's +presentment of the man--of that strange soul whom he conceived of as +having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant +speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently +pure, now lurid with gross constituents.[9] + +[Footnote 9: Paracelsus has two particular claims upon our regard. He +gave us laudanum, a discovery of incalculable blessing to mankind. And +from his fourth baptismal name, which he inherited from his father, we +have our familiar term, 'bombast.' Readers interested in the known facts +concerning the "master-mind, the thinker, the explorer, the creator," +the forerunner of Mesmer and even of Darwin and Wallace, who began life +with the sounding appellation "Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus +ab Hohenheim," should consult Browning's own learned appendical note, +and Mr. Berdoe's interesting essay in the Browning Society Papers, +No. xlix.] + +Paracelsus, his friends Festus and his wife Michal, and Aprile, an +Italian poet, are the characters who are the personal media through +which Browning's already powerful genius found expression. The poem is, +of a kind, an epic: the epic of a brave soul striving against baffling +circumstance. It is full of passages of rare technical excellence, as +well as of conceptive beauty: so full, indeed, that the sympathetic +reader of it as a drama will be too apt to overlook its radical +shortcomings, cast as it is in the dramatic mould. But it must not be +forgotten that Browning himself distinctly stated he had attempted to +write "a poem, not a drama": and in the light of this simple statement +half the objections that have been made fall to the ground. + +Paracelsus is the protagonist: the others are merely incidental. The +poem is the soul-history of the great medical student who began life so +brave of aspect and died so miserably at Salzburg: but it is also the +history of a typical human soul, which can be read without any knowledge +of actual particulars. + +Aprile is a projection of the poet's own poetical ideal. He speaks, but +he does not live as Festus lives, or even as Michal, who, by the way, is +interesting as being the first in the long gallery of Browning's +women--a gallery of superbly-drawn portraits, of noble and striking and +always intensely human women, unparalleled except in Shakspere. Pauline, +of course, exists only as an abstraction, and Porphyria is in no exact +sense a portrait from the life. Yet Michal can be revealed only to the +sympathetic eye, for she is not drawn, but again and again suddenly +silhouetted. We see her in profile always: but when she exclaims at the +last, "I ever did believe," we feel that she has withdrawn the veil +partially hiding her fair and generous spirit. + +To the lover of poetry "Paracelsus" will always be a Golconda. It has +lines and passages of extraordinary power, of a haunting beauty, and of +a unique and exquisite charm. It may be noted, in exemplification of +Browning's artistic range, that in the descriptive passages he paints as +well in the elaborate Pre-Raphaelite method as with a broad synthetic +touch: as in + + "One old populous green wall + Tenanted by the ever-busy flies, + Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders, + Each family of the silver-threaded moss-- + Which, look through near, this way, and it appears + A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh + Of bulrush whitening in the sun...." + +But oftener he prefers the more succinct method of landscape-painting, +the broadest impressionism: as in + + "Past the high rocks the haunts of doves, the mounds + Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out, + Past tracks of milk-white minute blinding sand." + +And where in modern poetry is there a superber union of the scientific +and the poetic vision than in this magnificent passage--the +quintessence of the poet's conception of the rapture of life:-- + + "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, + And the earth changes like a human face; + The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, + Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright + In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, + Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask-- + God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged + With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, + When in the solitary waste, strange groups + Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, + Staring together with their eyes on flame-- + God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. + Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: + But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes + Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure + Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between + The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost, + Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; + The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms + Like chrysalids impatient for the air, + The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run + Along the furrows, ants make their ado; + Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark + Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; + Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls + Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe + Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek + Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews + His ancient rapture." + +In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest the influence +of the noble Hebraic poetry. It must have been at this period that +Browning conned over and over with an exultant delight the simple but +lordly diction of Isaiah and the other prophets, preferring this +Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks. There is an anecdote +of his walking across a public park (I am told Richmond, but more +probably it was Wimbledon Common) with his hat in his left hand and his +right waving to and fro declamatorily, while the wind blew his hair +around his head like a nimbus: so rapt in his ecstasy over the solemn +sweep of the Biblical music that he did not observe a small following +consisting of several eager children, expectant of thrilling +stump-oratory. He was just the man, however, to accept an anti-climax +genially, and to dismiss his disappointed auditory with something more +tangible than an address. + +The poet-precursor of scientific knowledge is again and again manifest: +as, for example, in + + "Hints and previsions of which faculties + Are strewn confusedly everywhere about + The inferior natures, and all lead up higher, + All shape out dimly the superior race, + The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, + And man appears at last."[10] + +[Footnote 10: Readers interested in Browning's inspiration from, and +treatment of, Science, should consult the excellent essay on him as "A +Scientific Poet" by Mr. Edward Berdoe, F.R.C.S., and, in particular, +compare with the originals the references given by Mr. Berdoe to the +numerous passages bearing upon Evolution and the several sciences, from +Astronomy to Physiology.] + +There are lines, again, which have a magic that cannot be defined. If it +be not felt, no sense of it can be conveyed through another's words. + + "Whose memories were a solace to me oft, + As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight." + + "Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once + Into the vast and unexplored abyss, + What full-grown power informs her from the first, + Why she not marvels, strenuously beating + The silent boundless regions of the sky." + +There is one passage, beautiful in itself, which has a pathetic +significance henceforth. Gordon, our most revered hero, was wont to +declare that nothing in all nonscriptural literature was so dear to him, +nothing had so often inspired him in moments of gloom:-- + + "I go to prove my soul! + I see my way as birds their trackless way. + I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, + I ask not: but unless God send His hail + Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, + In some time, His good time, I shall arrive: + He guides me and the bird. In his good time." + +As for the much misused 'Shaksperian' comparison, so often mistakenly +applied to Browning, there is nothing in "Paracelsus" in the least way +derivative. Because Shakspere is the greatest genius evolved from our +race, it does not follow that every lofty intellect, every great +objective poet, should be labelled "Shaksperian." But there is a certain +quality in poetic expression which we so specify, because the intense +humanity throbbing in it finds highest utterance in the greatest of our +poets: and there is at least one instance of such poignant speech in +"Paracelsus," worthy almost to be ranked with the last despairing cry of +Guido calling upon murdered Pompilia:-- + + "Festus, strange secrets are let out by death + Who blabs so oft the follies of this world: + And I am death's familiar, as you know. + I helped a man to die, some few weeks since, + Warped even from his go-cart to one end-- + The living on princes' smiles, reflected from + A mighty herd of favourites. No mean trick + He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed + All traces of God's finger out of him: + Then died, grown old. And just an hour before, + Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes, + He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice + Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors + God told him it was June; and he knew well + Without such telling, harebells grew in June; + And all that kings could ever give or take + Would not be precious as those blooms to him." + +Technically, I doubt if Browning ever produced any finer long poem, +except "Pippa Passes," which is a lyrical drama, and neither exactly a +'play' nor exactly a 'poem' in the conventional usage of the terms. +Artistically, "Paracelsus" is disproportionate, and has faults, +obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear: but in the main it has a beauty +without harshness, a swiftness of thought and speech without tumultuous +pressure of ideas or stammering. It has not, in like degree, the intense +human insight of, say, "The Inn Album," but it has that charm of sequent +excellence too rarely to be found in many of Browning's later writings. +It glides onward like a steadfast stream, the thought moving with the +current it animates and controls, and throbbing eagerly beneath. When we +read certain portions of "Paracelsus," and the lovely lyrics +interspersed in it, it is difficult not to think of the poet as +sometimes, in later life, stooping like the mariner in Roscoe's +beautiful sonnet, striving to reclaim "some loved lost echo from the +fleeting strand." But it is the fleeting shore of exquisite art, not of +the far-reaching shadowy capes and promontories of "the poetic land." + +Of the four interlusive lyrics the freer music is in the unique chant, +"Over the sea our galleys went:" a song full of melody and blithe lilt. +It is marvellously pictorial, and yet has a freedom that places it among +the most delightful of spontaneous lyrics:-- + + "We shouted, every man of us, + And steered right into the harbour thus, + With pomp and pæan glorious." + +It is, however, too long for present quotation, and as an example of +Browning's early lyrics I select rather the rich and delicate second of +these "Paracelsus" songs, one wherein the influence of Keats is so +marked, and yet where all is the poet's own:-- + + "Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes + Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, + Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes + From out her hair: such balsam falls + Down sea-side mountain pedestals, + From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, + Spent with the vast and howling main, + To treasure half their island-gain. + + "And strew faint sweetness from some old + Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud + Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; + Or shredded perfume, like a cloud + From closet long to quiet vowed, + With mothed and dropping arras hung, + Mouldering her lute and books among, + As when a queen, long dead, was young." + +With this music in our ears we can well forgive some of the prosaic +commonplaces which deface "Paracelsus"--some of those lapses from +rhythmic energy to which the poet became less and less sensitive, till +he could be so deaf to the vanishing "echo of the fleeting strand" as to +sink to the level of doggerel such as that which closes the poem called +"Popularity." + +"Paracelsus" is not a great, but it is a memorable poem: a notable +achievement, indeed, for an author of Browning's years. Well may we +exclaim with Festus, when we regard the poet in all the greatness of his +maturity-- + + "The sunrise + Well warranted our faith in this full noon!" + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +The _Athenæum_ dismissed "Paracelsus" with a half contemptuous line or +two. On the other hand, the _Examiner_ acknowledged it to be a work of +unequivocal power, and predicted for its author a brilliant career. The +same critic who wrote this review contributed an article of about twenty +pages upon "Paracelsus" to the _New Monthly Magazine_, under the +heading, "Evidences of a New Dramatic Poetry." This article is ably +written, and remarkable for its sympathetic insight. "Mr. Browning," the +critic writes, "is a man of genius, he has in himself all the elements +of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic." + +The author of this enthusiastic and important critique was John Forster. +When the _Examiner_ review appeared the two young men had not met: but +the encounter, which was to be the seed of so fine a flower of +friendship, occurred before the publication of the _New Monthly_ +article. Before this, however, Browning had already made one of the most +momentous acquaintanceships of his life. + +His good friend and early critic, Mr. Fox, asked him to his house one +evening in November, a few months after the publication of "Paracelsus." +The chief guest of the occasion was Macready, then at the height of his +great reputation. Mr. Fox had paved the way for the young poet, but the +moment he entered he carried with him his best recommendation. Every one +who met Browning in those early years of his buoyant manhood seems to +have been struck by his comeliness and simple grace of manner. Macready +stated that he looked more like a poet than any man he had ever met. As +a young man he appears to have had a certain ivory delicacy of +colouring, what an old friend perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly described +to me as an almost flower-like beauty, which passed ere long into a less +girlish and more robust complexion. He appeared taller than he was, for +he was not above medium height, partly because of his rare grace of +movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when +listening intently to music or conversation. Even then he had that +expressive wave o' the hand, which in later years was as full of various +meanings as the _Ecco_ of an Italian. A swift alertness pervaded him, +noticeable as much in the rapid change of expression, in the deepening +and illuming colours of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his +sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift to curve or droop in +response to the most fluctuant emotion, as in his greyhound-like +apprehension, which so often grasped the subject in its entirety before +its propounder himself realised its significance. A lady, who remembers +Browning at that time, has told me that his hair--then of a brown so +dark as to appear black--was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque +waves as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle, personal +charm was his voice, then with a rare flute-like tone, clear, sweet, +and resonant. Afterwards, though always with precise clarity, it became +merely strong and hearty, a little too loud sometimes, and not +infrequently as that of one simulating keen immediate interest while the +attention was almost wholly detached. + +Macready, in his Journal,[11] about a week later than the date of his +first meeting with the poet, wrote--"Read 'Paracelsus,' a work of great +daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but +occasionally obscure: the writer can scarcely fail to be a leading +spirit of his time." The tragedian's house, whither he went at week-ends +and on holidays, was at Elstree, a short distance to the northward of +Hampstead: and there he invited Browning, among other friends, to come +on the last day of December and spend New Year's Day (1836).[12] When +alluding, in after years, to this visit, Browning always spoke of it as +one of the red-letter days of his life. It was here he first met +Forster, with whom he at once formed what proved to be an enduring +friendship; and on this occasion, also, that he was urged by his host to +write a poetic play. + +[Footnote 11: For many interesting particulars concerning Macready and +Browning, and the production of "Strafford," etc., _vide_ the +_Reminiscences_, vol. i.] + +[Footnote 12: It was for Macready's eldest boy, William Charles, that +Browning wrote one of the most widely popular of his poems, "The Pied +Piper of Hamelin." It is said to have been an impromptu performance, and +to have been so little valued by the author that he hesitated about its +inclusion in "Bells and Pomegranates." It was inserted at the last +moment, in the third number, which was short of "copy." Some one +(anonymous, but whom I take to be Mr. Nettleship) has publicly alluded +to his possession of a rival poem (entitled, simply, "Hamelin") by +Robert Browning the elder, and of a letter which he had sent to a friend +along with the verses, in which he writes: "Before I knew that Robert +had begun the story of the 'Rats' I had contemplated a tale on the same +subject, and proceeded with it as far as you see, but, on hearing that +Robert had a similar one on hand, I desisted." This must have been in +1842, for it was in that year that the third part of _Bells and +Pomegranates_ was published. In 1843, however, he finished it. +Browning's "Pied Piper" has been translated into French, Russian, +Italian, and German. The latter (or one German) version is in prose. It +was made in 1880, for a special purpose, and occupied the whole of one +number of the local paper of Hameln, which is a quaint townlet in +Hanover.] + +Browning promised to consider the suggestion. Six weeks later, in +company with Forster, with whom he had become intimate, he called upon +Macready, to discuss the plot of a tragedy which he had pondered. He +told the tragedian how deeply he had been impressed by his performance +of "Othello," and how this had deflected his intention from a modern and +European to an Oriental and ancient theme. "Browning said that I had +_bit_ him by my performance of 'Othello,' and I told him I hoped I +should make the blood come." The "blood" had come in the guise of a +drama-motive based on the crucial period in the career of Narses, the +eunuch-general of Justinian. Macready liked the suggestion, though he +demurred to one or two points in the outline: and before Browning left +he eagerly pressed him to "go on with 'Narses.'" But whether Browning +mistrusted his own interest in the theme, or was dubious as to the +success with which Macready would realise his conception, or as to the +reception a play of such a nature would win from an auditory no longer +reverent of high dramatic ideals, he gave up the idea. Some three +months later (May 26th) he enjoyed another eventful evening. It was the +night of the first performance of Talfourd's "Ion," and he was among the +personal friends of Macready who were invited to the supper at +Talfourd's rooms. After the fall of the curtain, Browning, Forster, and +other friends sought the tragedian and congratulated him upon the +success both of the play and of his impersonation of the chief +character. They then adjourned to the house of the author of "Ion." To +his surprise and gratification Browning found himself placed next but +one to his host, and immediately opposite Macready, who sat between two +gentlemen, one calm as a summer evening, and the other with a +tempestuous youth dominating his sixty years, whom the young poet at +once recognised as Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. Every one was in +good spirits: the host perhaps most of all, who was celebrating his +birthday as well as the success of "Ion." Possibly Macready was the only +person who felt at all bored--unless it was Landor--for Wordsworth was +not, at such a function, an entertaining conversationalist. There is +much significance in the succinct entry in Macready's journal concerning +the Lake-poet--"Wordsworth, who pinned me." ... When Talfourd rose to +propose the toast of "The Poets of England" every one probably expected +that Wordsworth would be named to respond. But with a kindly grace the +host, after flattering remarks upon the two great men then honouring him +by sitting at his table, coupled his toast with the name of the youngest +of the poets of England--"Mr. Robert Browning, the author of +'Paracelsus.'" It was a very proud moment for Browning, singled out +among that brilliant company: and it is pleasant to know, on the +authority of Miss Mitford, who was present, that "he performed his task +with grace and modesty," looking, the amiable lady adds, even younger +than he was. Perhaps, however, he was prouder still when Wordsworth +leaned across the table, and with stately affability said, "I am proud +to drink your health, Mr. Browning:" when Landor, also, with a superbly +indifferent and yet kindly smile, also raised his glass to his lips in +courteous greeting. + +Of Wordsworth Browning saw not a little in the ensuing few years, for on +the rare visits the elderly poet paid to London, Talfourd never failed +to ask the author of "Paracelsus," for whom he had a sincere admiration, +to meet the great man. It was not in the nature of things that the two +poets could become friends, but though the younger was sometimes annoyed +by the elder's pooh-poohing his republican sympathies, and +contemptuously waiving aside as a mere nobody no less an individual than +Shelley, he never failed of respect and even reverence. With what +tenderness and dignity he has commemorated the great poet's falling away +from his early ideals, may be seen in "The Lost Leader," one of the most +popular of Browning's short poems, and likely to remain so. For several +reasons, however, it is best as well as right that Wordsworth should not +be more than merely nominally identified with the Lost Leader. Browning +was always imperative upon this point. + +Towards Landor, on the other hand, he entertained a sentiment of genuine +affection, coupled with a profound sympathy and admiration: a sentiment +duly reciprocated. The care of the younger for the elder, in the old +age of the latter, is one of the most beautiful incidents in a +beautiful life. + +But the evening was not to pass without another memorable incident, one +to which we owe "Strafford," and probably "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon." +Just as the young poet, flushed with the triumphant pleasure of the +evening, was about to leave, Macready arrested him by a friendly grip of +the arm. In unmistakable earnestness he asked Browning to write him a +play. With a simplicity equal to the occasion, the poet contented +himself with replying, "Shall it be historical and English? What do you +say to a drama on Strafford?" + +Macready was pleased with the idea, and hopeful that his friend would be +more successful with the English statesman than with the eunuch Narses. + +A few months elapsed before the poet, who had set aside the long work +upon which he was engaged ("Sordello"), called upon Macready with the +manuscript of "Strafford." The latter hoped much from it. In March the +MS. was ready. About the end of the month Macready took it to Covent +Garden Theatre, and read it to Mr. Osbaldiston, "who caught at it with +avidity, and agreed to produce it without delay." + +It was an eventful first of May--an eventful twelvemonth, indeed, for it +was the initial year of the Victorian era, notable, too, as that wherein +the Electric Telegraph was established, and, in letters, wherein a new +dramatic literature had its origin. For "Strafford," already significant +of a novel movement, and destined, it seems to me, to be still more +significant in that great dramatic period towards which we are fast +converging, was not less important to the Drama in England, as a new +departure in method and radically indicative of a fresh standpoint, than +"Hernani" was in France. But in literary history the day itself is +doubly memorable, for in the forenoon Carlyle gave the first of his +lectures in London. The play was a success, despite the shamefully +inadequate acting of some of those entrusted with important parts. There +was once, perhaps there were more occasions than one, where success +poised like the soul of a Mohammedan on the invisible thread leading to +Paradise, but on either side of which lies perdition. There was none to +cry _Timbul_ save Macready, except Miss Helen Faucit, who gained a +brilliant triumph as Lady Carlisle. The part of Charles I. was enacted +so execrably that damnation for all was again and again within +measurable distance. "The Younger Vane" ranted so that a hiss, like an +embodied scorn, vibrated on vagrant wings throughout the house. There +was not even any extraneous aid to a fortunate impression. The house was +in ill repair: the seats dusty, the "scenery" commonplace and sometimes +noticeably inappropriate, the costumes and accessories almost sordid. +But in the face of all this, a triumph was secured. For a brief while +Macready believed that the star of regeneration had arisen. +Unfortunately 'twas, in the words of a contemporary dramatic poet, "a +rising sorrow splendidly forlorn." The financial condition of Covent +Garden Theatre was so ruinous that not even the most successful play +could have restored its doomed fortunes. + +After the fifth night one of the leading actors, having received a +better offer elsewhere, suddenly withdrew. + +This was the last straw. A collapse forthwith occurred. In the scramble +for shares in the few remaining funds every one gained something, except +the author, who was to have received £12 for each performance for the +first twenty-five nights, and, £10 each for ten nights further. This +disaster was a deep disappointment to Browning, and a by no means +transitory one, for three or four years later he wrote (_Advt._ of +"Bells and Pomegranates"): "Two or three years ago I wrote a play, about +which the chief matter I much care to recollect at present is, that a +pitful of good-natured people applauded it. Ever since, I have been +desirous of doing something in the same way that should better reward +their attention." But, except in so far as its abrupt declension from +the stage hurt its author in the eyes of the critics, and possibly in +those of theatrical managers, "Strafford" was certainly no failure. It +has the elements of a great acting play. Everything, even the language +(and here was a stumbling-block with most of the critics and +criticasters), was subordinated to dramatic exigencies: though the +subordination was in conformity with a novel shaping method. "Strafford" +was not, however, allowed to remain unknown to those who had been unable +to visit Covent Garden Theatre.[13] Browning's name had quite sufficient +literary repute to justify a publisher in risking the issue of a drama +by him; one, at any rate, that had the advantage of association with +Macready's name. The Longmans issued it, and the author had the pleasure +of knowing that his third poetic work was not produced at the expense of +a relative, but at that of the publishers. It had but an indifferent +reception, however. + +[Footnote 13: "It is time to deny a statement that has been repeated _ad +nauseam_ in every notice that professes to give an account of Mr. +Browning's career. Whatever is said or not said, it is always that his +plays have 'failed' on the stage. In point of fact, the three plays +which he has brought out have all succeeded, and have owed it to +fortuitous circumstances that their tenure on the boards has been +comparatively short."--E.W. GOSSE, in article in _The Century +Magazine._] + +Most people who saw the performance of "Strafford" given in 1886, under +the auspices of the Browning Society, were surprised as well as +impressed: for few, apparently, had realised from perusal the power of +the play as made manifest when acted. The secret of this is that the +drama, when privily read, seems hard if not heavy in its diction, and to +be so inornate, though by no means correspondingly simple, as to render +any comparison between it and the dramatic work of Shakspere out of the +question. But when acted, the artistry of the play is revealed. Its +intense naturalness is due in great part to the stern concision of the +lines, where no word is wasted, where every sentence is fraught with the +utmost it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by their vagueness +become more clear: in a word, we all see in enactment what only a few of +us can discern in perusal. The play has its faults, but scarcely those +of language, where the diction is noble and rhythmic, because it is, so +to speak, the genuine rind of the fruit it envelops. But there are +dramatic faults--primarily, in the extreme economy of the author in the +presentment of his _dramatis personæ_, who are embodied +abstractions--monomaniacs of ideas, as some one has said of Hugo's +personages--rather than men as we are, with manifold complexities in +endless friction or fusion. One cardinal fault is the lack of humour, +which to my mind is the paramount objection to its popular acceptance. +Another, is the misproportionate length of some of the speeches. Once +again, there is, as in the greater portion of Browning's longer poems +and dramas, a baneful equality of emphasis. The conception of Charles I. +is not only obviously weak, but strangely prejudiced adversely for so +keen an analyst of the soul as Browning. For what a fellow-dramatist +calls this "Sunset Shadow of a King," no man or woman could abase every +hope and energy. Shakspere would never have committed the crucial +mistake of making Charles the despicable deformity he is in Browning's +drama. Strafford himself disappears too soon: in the fourth act there is +the vacuum abhorred of dramatic propriety. + +When he again comes on the scene, the charm is partly broken. But withal +the play is one of remarkable vigour and beauty. It seems to me that too +much has been written against it on the score of its metrical rudeness. +The lines are beat out by a hammer, but in the process they are wrought +clear of all needless alloy. To urge, as has been lately urged, that it +lacks all human touch and is a mere intellectual fanfaronade, and that +there is not once a line of poignant insight, is altogether uncritical. +Readers of this mind must have forgotten or be indifferent to those +lines, for example, where the wretched Charles stammeringly excuses +himself to his loyal minister for his death-warrant, crying out that it +was wrung from him, and begging Strafford not to curse him: or, again, +that wonderfully significant line, so full of a too tardy knowledge and +of concentrated scorn, where Strafford first begs the king to "be good +to his children," and then, with a contempt that is almost sublime, +implores, "Stay, sir, do not promise, do not swear!" The whole of the +second scene in the fifth act is pure genius. The reader, or spectator, +knows by this time that all hope is over: that Strafford, though all +unaware, is betrayed and undone. It is a subtle dramatic ruse, that of +Browning's representing him sitting in his apartment in the Tower with +his young children, William and Anne, blithely singing. + +Can one read and ever forget the lines giving the gay Italian rhyme, +with the boy's picturesquely childish prose-accompaniment? Strafford is +seated, weary and distraught:-- + + "_O bell'andare + Per barca in mare, + Verso la sera + Di Primavera!_ + +_William_. The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while-- + + _Verso la sera + Di Primavera!_ + + And the boat shoots from underneath the moon + Into the shadowy distance; only still + You hear the dipping oar-- + + _Verso la sera,_ + + And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone, + Music and light and all, like a lost star. + +_Anne_. But you should sleep, father: you were to sleep. + +_Strafford_. I do sleep, Anne; or if not--you must know + There's such a thing as ... + +_William_. You're too tired to sleep. + +_Strafford_. It will come by-and-by and all day long, + In that old quiet house I told you of: + We sleep safe there. + +_Anne_. Why not in Ireland? + +_Strafford_. No! + Too many dreams!--" + +To me this children's-song and the fleeting and now plaintive echo of +it, as "Voices from Within"--"_Verso la sera, Di Primavera_"--in the +terrible scene where Strafford learns his doom, is only to be paralleled +by the song of Mariana in "Measure for Measure," wherein, likewise, is +abduced in one thrilling poignant strain the quintessential part of the +tense life of the whole play. + +So much has been written concerning the dramas of Robert +Browning--though indeed there is still room for a volume of careful +criticism, dealing solely with this theme--that I have the less regret +in having so inadequately to pass in review works of such poetic +magnitude as those enumerated above. + +But it would be impossible, in so small a book as this, to examine them +in detail without incurring a just charge of misproportion. The +greatness and the shortcomings of the dramas and dramatic poems must be +noted as succinctly as practicable; and I have dwelt more liberally upon +"Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Strafford," partly because (certainly +without more than one exception, "Sordello") these are the three least +read of Browning's poems, partly because they indicate the sweep and +reach of his first orient eagle-flight through new morning-skies, and +mainly because in them we already find Browning at his best and at his +weakest, because in them we hear not only the rush of his sunlit +pinions, but also the low earthward surge of dullard wings. + +Browning is foreshadowed in his earliest writings, as perhaps no other +poet has been to like extent. In the "Venus and Adonis," and the "Rape +of Lucrece," we have but the dimmest foreview of the author of "Hamlet," +"Othello," and "Macbeth"; had Shakspere died prematurely none could +have predicted, from the exquisite blossoms of his adolescence, the +immortal fruit of his maturity. But, in Browning's three earliest works, +we clearly discern him, as the sculptor of Melos provisioned his Venus +in the rough-hewn block. + +Thenceforth, to change the imagery, he developed rapidly upon the same +lines, or doubled upon himself in intricate revolutions; but already his +line of life, his poetic parallel, was definitely established. + +In the consideration of Browning's dramas it is needful to be sure of +one's vantage for judgment. The first step towards this assurance is the +ablation of the chronic Shaksperian comparison. Primarily, the shaping +spirit of the time wrought Shakspere and Browning to radically divergent +methods of expression, but each to a method in profound harmony with the +dominant sentiment of the age in which he lived. Above all others, the +Elizabethan era was rich in romantic adventure, of the mind as well as +of the body, and above all others, save that of the Renaissance in +Italy, animated by a passionate curiosity. So, too, supremely, the +Victorian era has been prolific of novel and vast Titanic struggles of +the human spirit to reach those Gates of Truth whose lowest steps are +the scarce discernible stars and furthest suns we scan, by piling Ossas +of searching speculation upon Pelions of hardly-won positive knowledge. +The highest exemplar of the former is Shakspere, Browning the +profoundest interpreter of the latter. To achieve supremacy the one had +to create a throbbing actuality, a world of keenest living, of acts and +intervolved situations and episodes: the other to fashion a mentality so +passionately alive that its manifold phases should have all the reality +of concrete individualities. The one reveals individual life to us by +the play of circumstance, the interaction of events, the correlative +eduction of personal characteristics: the other by his apprehension of +that quintessential movement or mood or phase wherein the soul is +transitorily visible on its lonely pinnacle of light. The elder poet +reveals life to us by the sheer vividness of his own vision: the +younger, by a newer, a less picturesque but more scientific abduction, +compels the complex rayings of each soul-star to a singular simplicity, +as by the spectrum analysis. The one, again, fulfils his aim by a broad +synthesis based upon the vivid observance and selection of vital +details: the other by an extraordinary acute psychic analysis. In a +word, Shakspere works as with the clay of human action: Browning as with +the clay of human thought. + +As for the difference in value of the two methods it is useless to +dogmatise. The psychic portraiture produced by either is valuable only +so far as it is convincingly true. + +The profoundest insight cannot reach deeper than its own possibilities +of depth. The physiognomy of the soul is never visible in its entirety, +barely ever even its profile. The utmost we can expect to reproduce, +perhaps even to perceive in the most quintessential moment, is a +partially faithful, partially deceptive silhouette. As no human being +has ever seen his or her own soul, in all its rounded completeness of +good and evil, of strength and weakness, of what is temporal and +perishable and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect even +the subtlest analyst to adequately depict other souls than his own. It +is Browning's high distinction that he has this soul-depictive +faculty--restricted as even in his instance it perforce is--to an extent +unsurpassed by any other poet, ancient or modern. As a sympathetic +critic has remarked, "His stage is not the visible phenomenal England +(or elsewhere) of history; it is a point in the spiritual universe, +where naked souls meet and wrestle, as they play the great game of life, +for counters, the true value of which can only be realised in the +bullion of a higher life than this." No doubt there is "a certain +crudeness in the manner in which these naked souls are presented," not +only in "Strafford" but elsewhere in the plays. Browning markedly has +the defects of his qualities. + +As part of his method, it should be noted that his real trust is upon +monologue rather than upon dialogue. To one who works from within +outward--in contradistinction to the Shaksperian method of striving to +win from outward forms "the passion and the life whose fountains are +within"--the propriety of this dramatic means can scarce be gainsaid. +The swift complicated mental machinery can thus be exhibited infinitely +more coherently and comprehensibly than by the most electric succinct +dialogue. Again and again Browning has nigh foundered in the morass of +monologue, but, broadly speaking, he transcends in this dramatic method. + +At the same time, none must take it for granted that the author of the +"Blot on the 'Scutchcon," "Luria," "In a Balcony," is not dramatic in +even the most conventional sense. Above all, indeed--as Mr. Walter Pater +has said--his is the poetry of situations. In each of the _dramatis +personæ_, one of the leading characteristics is loyalty to a dominant +ideal. In Strafford's case it is that of unswerving devotion to the +King: in Mildred's and in Thorold's, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," it +is that of subservience respectively to conventional morality and family +pride (Lord Tresham, it may be added, is the most hopelessly +monomaniacal of all Browning's "monomaniacs"): in Valence's, in +"Colombe's Birthday," to chivalric love: in Charles, in "King Victor and +King Charles," to kingly and filial duty: in Anael's and Djabal's, in +"The Return of the Druses," respectively to religion and unscrupulous +ambition modified by patriotism: in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy," +to purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to noble steadfastness: and in +Constance's, in "In a Balcony," to self-denial. Of these plays, "The +Return of the Druses" seems to me the most picturesque, "Luria" the most +noble and dignified, and "In a Balcony" the most potentially a great +dramatic success. The last is in a sense a fragment, but, though the +integer of a great unaccomplished drama, is as complete in itself as the +Funeral March in Beethoven's _Eroica_ Symphony. The "Blot on the +'Scutcheon" has the radical fault characteristic of writers of +sensational fiction, a too promiscuous "clearing the ground" by syncope +and suicide. Another is the juvenility of Mildred:--a serious infraction +of dramatic law, where the mere tampering with history, as in the +circumstances of King Victor's death in the earlier play, is at least +excusable by high precedent. More disastrous, poetically, is the ruinous +banality of Mildred's anticlimax when, after her brother reveals himself +as her lover's murderer, she, like the typical young _Miss Anglaise_ +of certain French novelists, betrays her incapacity for true passion by +exclaiming, in effect, "What, you've murdered my lover! Well, tell me +all. Pardon? Oh, well, I pardon you: at least I _think_ I do. Thorold, +my dear brother, how very wretched you must be!" + +I am unaware if this anticlimax has been pointed out by any one, but +surely it is one of the most appalling lapses of genius which could be +indicated. Even the beautiful song in the third scene of the first act, +"There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest," is, +in the circumstances, nearly over the verge which divides the sublime +from the ridiculous. No wonder that, on the night the play was first +acted, Mertoun's song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, caused +a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant auditory. It is +with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint from that of +Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, +no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its +conception, like it; who, further, at a later date, affirmed that he +would rather have written this play than any work of modern times: nor +with less reluctance, that I find myself at variance with Mr. Skelton, +who speaks of the drama as "one of the most perfectly conceived and +perfectly executed tragedies in the language." In the instance of Luria, +that second Othello, suicide has all the impressiveness of a plenary act +of absolution: the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of +lightning after the concussion of thunder-clouds. But Thorold's suicide +is mere weakness, scarce a perverted courage; and Mildred's broken heart +was an ill not beyond the healing of a morally robust physician. +"Colombe's Birthday" has a certain remoteness of interest, really due to +the reader's more or less acute perception of the radical divergence, +for all Valence's greatness of mind and spirit, between the fair young +Duchess and her chosen lover: a circumstance which must surely stand in +the way of its popularity. Though "A Soul's Tragedy" has the saving +quality of humour, it is of too grim a kind to be provocative of +laughter. + +In each of these plays[14] the lover of Browning will recall passage +after passage of superbly dramatic effect. But supreme in his +remembrance will be the wonderful scene in "The Return of the Druses," +where the Prefect, drawing a breath of relief, is almost simultaneously +assassinated; and that where Anael, with every nerve at tension in her +fierce religious resolve, with a poignant, life-surrendering cry, hails +Djabal as _Hakeem_--as Divine--and therewith falls dead at his feet. +Nor will he forget that where, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," Mildred, +with a dry sob in her throat, stammeringly utters-- + + "I--I--was so young! + Besides I loved him, Thorold--and I had + No mother; God forgot me: so I fell----" + +or that where, "at end of the disastrous day," Luria takes the phial of +poison from his breast, muttering-- + + "Strange! This is all I brought from my own land + To help me." + +[Footnote 14: "Strafford," 1837; "King Victor and King Charles," 1842; +"The Return of the Druses," and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," 1843; +"Colombe's Birthday," 1844; "Luria," and "A Soul's Tragedy," 1845.] + +Before passing on from these eight plays to Browning's most imperishable +because most nearly immaculate dramatic poem, "Pippa Passes," and to +"Sordello," that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry, I should +like--out of an embarrassing quantity of alluring details--to remind the +reader of two secondary matters of interest pertinent to the present +theme. One is that the song in "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," "There's a +woman like a dew-drop," written several years before the author's +meeting with Elizabeth Barrett, is so closely in the style of "Lady +Geraldine's Courtship," and other ballads by the sweet singer who +afterwards became a partner in the loveliest marriage of which we have +record in literary history, that, even were there nothing to +substantiate the fact, it were fair to infer that Mertoun's song to +Mildred was the electric touch which compelled to its metric shape one +of Mrs. Browning's best-known poems. + +The further interest lies in the lordly acknowledgment of the dedication +to him of "Luria," which Landor sent to Browning--lines pregnant with +the stateliest music of his old age:-- + + "Shakespeare is not our poet but the world's, + Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, + Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale + No man has walked along our roads with step + So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue + So varied in discourse. But warmer climes + Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze + Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on + Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where + The Siren waits thee, singing song for song." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +In my allusion to "Pippa Passes," towards the close of the preceding +chapter, as the most imperishable because the most nearly immaculate of +Browning's dramatic poems, I would not have it understood that its +pre-eminence is considered from the standpoint of technical achievement, +of art, merely. It seems to me, like all simple and beautiful things, +profound enough for the searching plummet of the most curious explorer +of the depths of life. It can be read, re-read, learned by heart, and +the more it is known the wider and more alluring are the avenues of +imaginative thought which it discloses. It has, more than any other long +composition by its author, that quality of symmetry, that _symmetria +prisca_ recorded of Leonardo da Vinci in the Latin epitaph of Platino +Piatto; and, as might be expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti +called fundamental brain-work, is as luminous, depth within depth, as +the morning air. By its side, the more obviously "profound" poems, +Bishop Blougram and the rest, are mere skilled dialectics. + +The art that is most profound and most touching must ever be the +simplest. Whenever Æschylus, Dante, Shakspere, Milton, are at white heat +they require no exposition, but meditation only--the meditation akin to +the sentiment of little children who listen, intent upon every syllable, +and passionately eager of soul, to hearth-side tragedies. The play of +genius is like the movement of the sea. It has its solemn rhythm: its +joy, irradiate of the sun; its melancholy, in the patient moonlight: its +surge and turbulence under passing tempests: below all, the deep oceanic +music. There are, of course, many to whom the sea is but a waste of +water, at best useful as a highway and as the nursery of the winds and +rains. For them there is no hint "of the incommunicable dream" in the +curve of the rising wave, no murmur of the oceanic undertone in the +short leaping sounds, invisible things that laugh and clap their hands +for joy and are no more. To them it is but a desert: obscure, +imponderable, a weariness. The "profundity" of Browning, so dear a claim +in the eyes of the poet's fanatical admirers, exists, in their sense, +only in his inferior work. There is more profound insight in Blake's +Song of Innocence, "Piping down the valleys wild," or in Wordsworth's +line, "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," or in Keats' +single verse, "There is a budding morrow in midnight," or in this +quatrain on Poetry, by a young living poet-- + + "She comes like the husht beauty of the night, + But sees too deep for laughter; + Her touch is a vibration and a light + From worlds before and after--" + +there is more "profundity" in any of these than in libraries of "Sludge +the Medium" literature. Mere hard thinking does not involve profundity, +any more than neurotic excitation involves spiritual ecstasy. _De +profundis,_ indeed, must the poet come: there must the deep rhythm of +life have electrified his "volatile essence" to a living rhythmic joy. +In this deep sense, and this only, the poet is born, not made. He may +learn to fashion anew that which he hath seen: the depth of his insight +depends upon the depth of his spiritual heritage. If wonder dwell not in +his eyes and soul there can be no "far ken" for him. Here it seems apt +to point out that Browning was the first writer of our day to indicate +this transmutive, this inspired and inspiring wonder-spirit, which is +the deepest motor in the evolution of our modern poetry. +Characteristically, he puts his utterance into the mouth of a dreamy +German student, the shadowy Schramm who is but metaphysics embodied, +metaphysics finding apt expression in tobacco-smoke: "Keep but ever +looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon +find something to look on! Has a man done wondering at women?--there +follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at +men?--there's God to wonder at: and the faculty of wonder may be, at the +same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, and +yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one." + +This wonder is akin to that 'insanity' of the poet which is but +impassioned sanity. Plato sums the matter when he says, "He who, having +no touch of the Muse's madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks +he will get into the temple by the help of Art--he, I say, and his +poetry, are not admitted." + +In that same wood beyond Dulwich to which allusion has already been +made, the germinal motive of "Pippa Passes" flashed upon the poet. No +wonder this resort was for long one of his sacred places, and that he +lamented its disappearance as fervently as Ruskin bewailed the +encroachment of the ocean of bricks and mortar upon the wooded privacies +of Denmark Hill. + +Save for a couple of brief visits abroad, Browning spent the years, +between his first appearance as a dramatic writer and his marriage, in +London and the neighbourhood. Occasionally he took long walks into the +country. One particular pleasure was to lie beside a hedge, or deep in +meadow-grasses, or under a tree, as circumstances and the mood +concurred, and there to give himself up so absolutely to the life of the +moment that even the shy birds would alight close by, and sometimes +venturesomely poise themselves on suspicious wings for a brief space +upon his recumbent body. I have heard him say that his faculty of +observation at that time would not have appeared despicable to a +Seminole or an Iroquois: he saw and watched everything, the bird on the +wing, the snail dragging its shell up the pendulous woodbine, the bee +adding to his golden treasure as he swung in the bells of the campanula, +the green fly darting hither and thither like an animated seedling, the +spider weaving her gossamer from twig to twig, the woodpecker heedfully +scrutinising the lichen on the gnarled oak-hole, the passage of the wind +through leaves or across grass, the motions and shadows of the clouds, +and so forth. These were his golden holidays. Much of the rest of his +time, when not passed in his room in his father's house, where he wrote +his dramas and early poems, and studied for hours daily, was spent in +the Library of the British Museum, in an endless curiosity into the more +or less unbeaten tracks of literature. These London experiences were +varied by whole days spent at the National Gallery, and in communion +with kindred spirits. At one time he had rooms, or rather a room, in the +immediate neighbourhood of the Strand, whither he could go when he +wished to be in town continuously for a time, or when he had any social +or theatrical engagement. + +Browning's life at this period was distraught by more than one episode +of the heart. It would be strange were it otherwise. He had in no +ordinary degree a rich and sensuous nature, and his responsiveness was +so quick that the barriers of prudence were apt to be as shadowy to him +as to the author of "The Witch of Atlas." But he was the earnest student +for the most part, and, above all, the poet. His other pleasure, in his +happy vagrant days, was to join company with any tramps, gipsies, or +other wayfarers, and in good fellowship gain much knowledge of life that +was useful at a later time. Rustic entertainments, particularly +peripatetic "Theatres Royal," had a singular fascination for him, as for +that matter had rustic oratory, whether of the alehouse or the pulpit. +At one period he took the keenest interest in sectaries of all kinds: +and often he incurred a gentle reproof from his mother because of his +nomad propensities in search of "_pastors_ new." There was even a time +when he seriously deliberated whether he should not combine literature +and religious ministry, as Faraday combined evangelical fervour with +scientific enthusiasm. "'Twas a girl with eyes like two dreams of night" +that saved him from himself, and defrauded the Church Independent of a +stalwart orator. + +It was, as already stated, while he strolled through Dulwich Wood one +day that the thought occurred to him which was to find development and +expression in "Pippa Passes." "The image flashed upon him," writes his +intimate friend, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some 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; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of +Asolo, Felippa or Pippa." + +It has always seemed to me a radical mistake to include "Pippa Passes" +among Browning's dramas. Not only is it absolutely unactable, but +essentially undramatic in the conventional sense. True dramatic writing +concerns itself fundamentally with the apt conjunction of events, and +the more nearly it approximates to the verity of life the more likely is +it to be of immediate appeal. There is a _vraie vérité_ which only the +poet, evolving from dramatic concepts rather than attempting to +concentrate these in a quick, moving verisimilitude, can attempt. The +passing hither and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate, a wandering +chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a lower world, +changing the circumstances and even the natures of certain more or less +heedless listeners by the wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence, +is of this _vraie vérité_. It is so obviously true, spiritually, that +it is unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life. Its very effectiveness is +too apt for the dramatist, who can ill afford to tamper further with the +indifferent banalities of actual existence. The poet, unhampered by the +exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely, and artistically, achieve an +equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude, by means which are, or +should be, beyond adoption by the dramatist proper. + +But over and above any 'nice discrimination,' "Pippa Passes" is simply a +poem, a lyrical masque with interspersed dramatic episodes, and +subsidiary interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that it +should be acted is a wholly errant one. The finest part of it is +unrepresentable. The rest would consist merely of a series of tableaux, +with conversational accompaniment. + +The opening scene, "the large mean airy chamber," where Pippa, the +little silk-winder from the mills at Asolo, springs from bed, on her New +Year's Day _festa_, and soliloquises as she dresses, is as true as it +is lovely when viewed through the rainbow glow of the poetic atmosphere: +but how could it succeed on the stage? It is not merely that the +monologue is too long: it is too inapt, in its poetic richness, for its +purpose. It is the poet, not Pippa, who evokes this sweet sunrise-music, +this strain of the "long blue solemn hours serenely flowing." The +dramatic poet may occupy himself with that deeper insight, and the wider +expression of it, which is properly altogether beyond the scope of the +playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme with the light that +never was on sea or land, nor will he thereby sacrifice aught of +essential truth: but his comrade must see to it that he is content with +the wide liberal air of the common day. The poetic alchemist may turn a +sword into pure gold: the playwright will concern himself with the due +usage of the weapon as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent +value, no miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake, painting +Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies, while the sun, moon, and +stars simultaneously shine, is impermissible to the portrait-painter or +the landscapist, who has to idealise actuality to the point only of +artistic realism, and not to transmute it at the outset from +happily-perceived concrete facts to a glorified abstract concept. + +In this opening monologue the much-admired song, "All service ranks the +same with God," is no song at all, properly, but simply a beautiful +short poem. From the dramatist's point of view, could anything be more +shaped for disaster than the second of the two stanzas?-- + + "Say not 'a small event!' Why 'small'? + Costs it more pain than this, ye call + A 'great event,' should come to pass, + Than that? Untwine me from the mass + Of deeds which make up life, one deed + Power shall fall short in or exceed!" + +The whole of this lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet, +not of a poet writing a drama. On the other hand, I cannot agree with +what I read somewhere recently--that Sebald's song, at the opening of +the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian +literature, is, in the circumstances, wholly inappropriate. It seems to +me entirely consistent with the character of Ottima's reckless lover. He +is akin to the gallant in one of Dumas' romances, who lingered atop of +the wall of the prison whence he was escaping in order to whistle the +concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom. What is, dramatically, +disastrous in the instance of Mertoun singing "There's a woman like a +dewdrop," when he ought to be seeking Mildred's presence in profound +stealth and silence, is, dramatically, electrically startling in the +mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums of the shuttered shrub-house, where +he has passed the night with Ottima, while her murdered husband lies +stark in the adjoining room. + +It must, however, be borne in mind that this thrilling dramatic effect +is fully experienced only in retrospection, or when there is knowledge +of what is to follow. + +A conclusive objection to the drama as an actable play is that three of +the four main episodes are fragmentary. We know nothing of the fate of +Luigi: we can but surmise the future of Jules and Phené: we know not how +or when Monsignor will see Pippa righted. Ottima and Sebald reach a +higher level in voluntary death than they ever could have done in life. + +It is quite unnecessary, here, to dwell upon this exquisite flower of +genius in detail. Every one who knows Browning at all knows "Pippa +Passes." Its lyrics have been unsurpassed, for birdlike spontaneity and +a rare high music, by any other Victorian poet: its poetic insight is +such as no other poet than the author of "The Ring and the Book" and +"The Inn Album" can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb. From the +outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima and Sebald, there is a note +of tragic power which is almost overwhelming. Who has not known what +Jakob Boehme calls "the shudder of a divine excitement" when Luca's +murderer replies to his paramour, + + "morning? + It seems to me a night with a sun added." + +How deep a note, again, is touched when Sebald exclaims, in allusion to +his murder of Luca, that he was so "wrought upon," though here, it may +be, there is an unconscious reminiscence of the tenser and more +culminative cry of Othello, "but being wrought, perplext in the +extreme." Still more profound a touch is that where Ottima, daring her +lover to the "one thing that must be done; you know what thing: Come in +and help to carry," says, with affected lightsomeness, "This dusty pane +might serve for looking-glass," and simultaneously exclaims, as she +throws them rejectingly from her nervous fingers, "Three, four--four +grey hairs!" then with an almost sublime coquetry of horror turns +abruptly to Sebald, saying with a voice striving vainly to be blithe-- + + "Is it so you said + A plait of hair should wave across my neck? + No--this way." + +Who has not been moved by the tragic grandeur of the verse, as well as +by the dramatic intensity of the episode of the lovers' "crowning +night"? + + "_Ottima_. The day of it too, Sebald! + When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat, + Its black-blue canopy suffered descend + Close on us both, to weigh down each to each, + And smother up all life except our life. + So lay we till the storm came. + + _Sebald_. How it came! + + _Ottima_. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect; + Swift ran the searching tempest overhead; + And ever and anon some bright white shaft + Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there, + As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen + Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture, + Feeling for guilty thee and me: then broke + The thunder like a whole sea overhead ----" + +Surely there is nothing in all our literature more poignantly dramatic +than this first part of "Pippa Passes." The strains which Pippa sings +here and throughout are as pathetically fresh and free as a thrush's +song in the heart of a beleaguered city, and as with the same +unconsidered magic. There is something of the mavis-note, liquid falling +tones, caught up in a moment in joyous caprice, in + + "_Give her but a least excuse to love me! + When--where----_" + +No one of these songs, all acutely apt to the time and the occasion, has +a more overwhelming effect than that which interrupts Ottima and Sebald +at the perilous summit of their sin, beyond which lies utter darkness, +behind which is the narrow twilit backward way. + + "_Ottima_. Bind it thrice about my brow; + Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, + Magnificent in sin. Say that! + + _Sebald_. I crown you + My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, + Magnificent.. + + [_From without is heard the voice of_ PIPPA _singing_--] + + The year's at the spring, + And day's at the morn; + Morning's at seven; + The hill-side's dew-pearled; + The lark's on the wing; + The snail's on the thorn: + God's in his heaven-- + All's right with the world! [PIPPA _passes_, + + _Sebald_. God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? + Who spoke?" + +This sweet voice of Pippa reaches the guilty lovers, reaches Luigi in +his tower, hesitating between love and patriotic duty, reaches Jules and +Phené when all the happiness of their unborn years trembles in the +balance, reaches the Prince of the Church just when his conscience is +sore beset by a seductive temptation, reaches one and all at a crucial +moment in the life of each. The ethical lesson of the whole poem is +summed up in + + "All service ranks the same with God-- + With God, whose puppets, best and worst, + Are we: there is no last nor first," + +and in + + "God's in his heaven-- + All's right with the world!" + +"With God there is no lust of Godhood," says Rossetti in "Hand and +Soul": _Und so ist der blaue Himmel grosser als jedes Gewölk darin, und +dauerhafter dazu_, meditates Jean Paul: "There can be nothing good, as +we know it, nor anything evil, as we know it, in the eye of the +Omnipresent and the Omniscient," utters the Oriental mystic. + +It is interesting to know that many of the nature touches were +indirectly due to the poet's solitary rambles, by dawn, sundown, and +"dewy eve," in the wooded districts south of Dulwich, at Hatcham, and +upon Wimbledon Common, whither he was often wont to wander and to +ramble for hours, and where he composed one day the well-known lines +upon Shelley, with many another unrecorded impulse of song. Here, too, +it was, that Carlyle, riding for exercise, was stopped by 'a beautiful +youth,' who introduced himself as one of the philosopher's profoundest +admirers. + +It was from the Dulwich wood that, one afternoon in March, he saw a +storm glorified by a double rainbow of extraordinary beauty; a memorable +vision, recorded in an utterance of Luigi to his mother: here too that, +in autumnal dusks, he saw many a crescent moon with "notched and burning +rim." He never forgot the bygone "sunsets and great stars" he saw in +those days of his fervid youth. Browning remarked once that the romance +of his life was in his own soul; and on another occasion I heard him +smilingly add, to some one's vague assertion that in Italy only was +there any romance left, "Ah, well, I should like to include poor old +Camberwell!" Perhaps he was thinking of his lines in "Pippa Passes," of +the days when that masterpiece came ebullient from the fount of his +genius-- + + "May's warm slow yellow moonlit summer nights-- + Gone are they, but I have them in my soul!" + +There is all the distinction between "Pippa Passes" and "Sordello" that +there is between the Venus of Milos and a gigantic Theban Sphinx. The +latter is, it is true, proportionate in its vastness; but the symmetry +of mere bulk is not the _symmetria prisca_ of ideal sculpture. I have +already alluded to "Sordello" as a derelict upon the ocean of poetry. +This, indeed, it still seems to me, notwithstanding the well-meaning +suasion of certain admirers of the poem who have hoped "I should do it +justice," thereby meaning that I should eulogise it as a masterpiece. It +is a gigantic effort, of a kind; so is the sustained throe of a +wrestling Titan. That the poem contains much which is beautiful is +undeniable, also that it is surcharged with winsome and profound +thoughts and a multitude of will-o'-the-wisp-like fancies which all +shape towards high thinking. + +But it is monotonous as one of the enormous American inland seas to a +lover of the ocean, to whom the salt brine is as the breath of delight. +The fatal facility of the heroic couplet to lapse into diffuseness, has, +coupled with a warped anxiety for irreducible concision, been Browning's +ruin here. + +There is one charge even yet too frequently made against "Sordello," +that of "obscurity." Its interest may be found remote, its treatment +verbose, its intricacies puzzling to those unaccustomed to excursions +from the familiar highways of old usage, but its motive thought is not +obscure. It is a moonlit plain compared with the "_silva oscura_" of the +"Divina Commedia." + +Surely this question of Browning's obscurity was expelled to the Limbo +of Dead Stupidities when Mr. Swinburne, in periods as resplendent as the +whirling wheels of Phoebus Apollo's chariot, wrote his famous incidental +passage in his "Essay on Chapman." + +Too probably, in the dim disintegrating future which will reduce all our +o'ertoppling extremes, "Sordello" will be as little read as "The Faerie +Queene," and, similarly, only for the gleam of the quenchless lamps amid +its long deserted alleys and stately avenues. Sadly enough, for to poets +it will always be an unforgotten land--a continent with +amaranth-haunted Vales of Tempe, where, as Spenser says in one of the +Aeclogues of "The Shepherd's Calendar," they will there oftentimes +"sitten as drouned in dreme." + +It has, for those who are not repelled, a charm all its own. I know of +no other poem in the language which is at once so wearisome and so +seductive. How can one explain paradoxes? There is a charm, or there is +none: that is what it amounts to, for each individual. _Tutti ga, i so +gusti, e mi go i mii_--"everybody follows his taste, and I follow mine," +as the Venetian saying, quoted by Browning at the head of his Rawdon +Brown sonnet, has it. + +All that need be known concerning the framework of "Sordello," and of +the real Sordello himself, will be found in the various Browning +hand-books, in Mr. Nettleship's and other dissertations, and, +particularly, in Mrs. Ball's most circumspect and able historical essay. +It is sufficient here to say that while the Sordello and Palma of the +poet are traceable in the Cunizza and the strange comet-like Sordello of +the Italian and Provençal Chronicles (who has his secure immortality, by +Dante set forth in leonine guise--_a guisa di leon quando si posa_--in +the "Purgatorio"), both these are the most shadowy of prototypes. The +Sordello of Browning is a typical poetic soul: the narrative of the +incidents in the development of this soul is adapted to the historical +setting furnished by the aforesaid Chronicles. Sordello is a far more +profound study than Aprile in "Paracelsus," in whom, however, he is +obviously foreshadowed. The radical flaw in his nature is that indicated +by Goethe of Heine, that "he had no heart." The poem is the narrative +of his transcendent aspirations, and more or less futile accomplishment. + +It would be vain to attempt here any adequate excerption of lines of +singular beauty. Readers familiar with the poem will recall passage +after passage--among which there is probably none more widely known than +the grandiose sunset lines:-- + + "That autumn eve was stilled: + A last remains of sunset dimly burned + O'er the far forests,--like a torch-flame turned + By the wind back upon its bearer's hand + In one long flare of crimson; as a brand, + The woods beneath lay black." ... + +What haunting lines there are, every here and there--such as those of +Palma, with her golden hair like spilt sunbeams, or those on Elys, with +her + + "Few fine locks + Coloured like honey oozed from topmost rocks + Sun-blanched the livelong summer," ... + +or these, + + "Day by day + New pollen on the lily-petal grows, + And still more labyrinthine buds the rose----" + +or, once more, + + "A touch divine-- + And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod; + Visibly through his garden walketh God----" + +But, though sorely tempted, I must not quote further, save only the +concluding lines of the unparalleled and impassioned address to Dante:-- + + "Dante, pacer of the shore + Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, + Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume, + Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope + Into a darkness quieted by hope; + Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye + In gracious twilights where his chosen lie----" + * * * * * + +It is a fair land, for those who have lingered in its byways: but, alas, +a troubled tide of strange metres, of desperate rhythms, of wild +conjunctions, of panic-stricken collocations, oftentimes overwhelms it. +"Sordello" grew under the poet's fashioning till, like the magic vapour +of the Arabian wizard, it passed beyond his control, "voluminously +vast." + +It is not the truest admirers of what is good in it who will refuse to +smile at the miseries of conscientious but baffled readers. Who can fail +to sympathise with Douglas Jerrold when, slowly convalescent from a +serious illness, he found among some new books sent him by a friend a +copy of "Sordello." Thomas Powell, writing in 1849, has chronicled the +episode. A few lines, he says, put Jerrold in a state of alarm. Sentence +after sentence brought no consecutive thought to his brain. At last the +idea occurred to him that in his illness his mental faculties had been +wrecked. The perspiration rolled from his forehead, and smiting his head +he sank back on the sofa, crying, "O God, I _am_ an idiot!" A little +later, adds Powell, when Jerrold's wife and sister entered, he thrust +"Sordello" into their hands, demanding what they thought of it. He +watched them intently while they read. When at last Mrs. Jerrold +remarked, "I don't understand what this man means; it is gibberish," +her delighted husband gave a sigh of relief and exclaimed, "Thank God, I +am _not_ an idiot!" + +Many friends of Browning will remember his recounting this incident +almost in these very words, and his enjoyment therein: though he would +never admit justification for such puzzlement. + +But more illustrious personages than Douglas Jerrold were puzzled by the +poem. Lord Tennyson manfully tackled it, but he is reported to have +admitted in bitterness of spirit: "There were only two lines in it that +I understood, and they were both lies; they were the opening and closing +lines, '_Who will may hear Sordello's story told_,' and '_Who would +has heard Sordello's story told!_'" Carlyle was equally candid: "My +wife," he writes, "has read through 'Sordello' without being able to make +out whether 'Sordello' was a man, or a city, or a book." + +In an article on this poem, in a French magazine, M. Odysse Barot quotes +a passage where the poet says "God gave man two faculties"--and adds, "I +wish while He was about it (_pendant qu'il était en train_) God had +supplied another--viz., the power of understanding Mr. Browning." + +And who does not remember the sad experience of generous and delightful +Gilead P. Beck, in "The Golden Butterfly": how, after "Fifine at the +Fair," frightful symptoms set in, till in despair he took up "Red Cotton +Nightcap Country," and fell for hours into a dull comatose misery. "His +eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in disorder about his head, his +cheeks were flushed, his hands were trembling, the nerves in his face +were twitching. Then he arose, and solemnly cursed Robert Browning. And +then he took all his volumes, and, disposing them carefully in the +fireplace, set light to them. 'I wish,' he said, 'that I could put the +poet there too.'" One other anecdote of the kind was often, with evident +humorous appreciation, recounted by the poet. On his introduction to the +Chinese Ambassador, as a "brother-poet," he asked that dignitary what +kind of poetic expression he particularly affected. The great man +deliberated, and then replied that his poetry might be defined as +"enigmatic." Browning at once admitted his fraternal kinship. + +That he was himself aware of the shortcomings of "Sordello" as a work of +art is not disputable. In 1863, Mrs. Orr says, he considered the +advisability of "rewriting it in a more transparent manner, but +concluded that the labour would be disproportionate to the result, and +contented himself with summarising the contents of each 'book' in a +continuous heading, which represents the main thread of the story." + +The essential manliness of Browning is evident in the famous dedication +to the French critic Milsand, who was among his early admirers. "My own +faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book such +would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of +either? I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and +since." + +Whatever be the fate of "Sordello," one thing pertinent to it shall +survive: the memorable sentence in the dedicatory preface--"My stress +lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth +study." + +The poem has disastrous faults, but is a magnificent failure. "Vast as +night," to borrow a simile from Victor Hugo, but, like night, +innumerously starred. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +"Pippa Passes," "The Ring and the Book," "The Inn Album," these are +Browning's three great dramatic poems, as distinct from his poetic +plays. All are dramas in the exact sense, though the three I have named +are dramas for mental and not for positive presentation. Each reader +must embody for himself the images projected on his brain by the +electric quality of the poet's genius: within the ken of his imagination +he may perceive scenes not less moving, incidents not less thrilling, +complexities of motive and action not less intricately involved, than +upon the conventional stage. + +The first is a drama of an idea, the second of the immediate and remote +consequences of a single act, the third of the tyranny of the passions. + +I understand the general opinion among lovers and earnest students of +Browning's poetry to be that the highest peaks of his genius tower from +the vast tableland of "The Ring and the Book"; that thenceforth there +was declension. But Browning is not to be measured by common estimates. +It is easy to indicate, in the instances of many poets, just where the +music reaches its sweetest, its noblest, just where the extreme glow +wanes, just where the first shadows come leaping like greyhounds, or +steal almost imperceptibly from slow-closing horizons. + +But with Browning, as with Shakspere, as with Victor Hugo, it is +difficult for our vision to penetrate the glow irradiating the supreme +heights of accomplishment. Like Balzac, like Shakspere again, he has +revealed to us a territory so vast, that while we bow down before the +sun westering athwart distant Andes, the gold of sunrise is already +flashing behind us, upon the shoulder of Atlas. + +It is certain that "The Ring and the Book" is unique. Even Goethe's +masterpiece had its forerunners, as in Marlowe's "Faustus," and its +ambitious offspring, as in Bailey's "Festus." But is it a work of art? +Here is the only vital question which at present concerns us. + +It is altogether useless to urge, as so many admirers of Browning do, +that "The Ring and the Book" is as full of beauties as the sea is of +waves. Undeniably it is, having been written in the poet's maturity. +But, to keep to the simile, has this epical poem the unity of ocean? +Does it consist of separate seas, or is it really one, as the wastes +which wash from Arctic to Antarctic, through zones temperate and +equatorial, are yet one and indivisible? If it have not this unity it is +still a stupendous accomplishment, but it is not a work of art. And +though art is but the handmaiden of genius, what student of Comparative +Literature will deny that nothing has survived the ruining breath of +Time--not any intellectual greatness nor any spiritual beauty, that is +not clad in perfection, be it absolute or relative--for relative +perfection there is, despite the apparent paradox. + +The mere bulk of "The Ring and the Book" is, in point of art, nothing. +One day, after the publication of this poem, Carlyle hailed the author +with enthusiastic praise in which lurked damning irony: "What a +wonderful fellow you are, Browning: you have written a whole series of +'books' about what could be summed up in a newspaper paragraph!" Here, +Carlyle was at once right and wrong. The theme, looked at +dispassionately, is unworthy of the monument in which it is entombed for +eternity. But the poet looked upon the central incident as the inventive +mechanician regards the tiny pivot remote amid the intricate maze of his +machinery. Here, as elsewhere, Browning's real subject is too often +confounded with the accidents of the subject. His triumph is not that he +has created so huge a literary monument, but rather that, +notwithstanding its bulk, he has made it shapely and impressive. Stress +has frequently been laid on the greatness of the achievement in the +writing of twelve long poems in the exposition of one theme. Again, in +point of art, what significance has this? None. There is no reason why +it should not have been in nine or eleven parts; no reason why, having +been demonstrated in twelve, it should not have been expanded through +fifteen or twenty. Poetry ever looks askance at that gipsy-cousin of +hers, "Tour-de-force." + +Of the twelve parts--occupying in all about twenty-one thousand +lines--the most notable as poetry are those which deal with the plea of +the implicated priest, Caponsacchi, with the meditation of the Pope, and +with the pathetic utterance of Pompilia. It is not a dramatic poem in +the sense that "Pippa Passes" is, for its ten Books (the first and +twelfth are respectively introductory and appendical) are monologues. +"The Ring and the Book," in a word, consists, besides the two +extraneous parts, of ten monodramas, which are as ten huge facets to a +poetic Koh-i-Noor. + +The square little Italian volume, in its yellow parchment and with its +heavy type, which has now found a haven in Oxford, was picked up by +Browning for a _lira_ (about eightpence), on a second-hand bookstall +in the Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence, one June day, 1865. Therein is set +forth, in full detail, all the particulars of the murder of his wife +Pompilia, for her supposed adultery, by a certain Count Guido +Franceschini; and of that noble's trial, sentence, and doom. It is much +the same subject matter as underlies the dramas of Webster, Ford, and +other Elizabethan poets, but subtlety of insight rather than intensity +of emotion and situation distinguishes the Victorian dramatist from his +predecessors. The story fascinated Browning, who, having in this book +and elsewhere mastered all the details, conceived the idea of writing +the history of the crime in a series of monodramatic revelations on the +part of the individuals more or less directly concerned. The more he +considered the plan the more it shaped itself to a great accomplishment, +and early in 1866 he began the most ambitious work of his life. + +An enthusiastic admirer has spoken of the poem as "one of the most +extraordinary feats of which we have any record in literature." But +poetry is not mental gymnastics. All this insistence upon "extraordinary +feats" is to be deprecated: it presents the poet as Hercules, not as +Apollo: in a word, it is not criticism. The story is one of vulgar fraud +and crime, romantic to us only because the incidents occurred in Italy, +in the picturesque Rome and Arezzo of two centuries ago. The old +bourgeois couple, Pietro and Violante Comparini, manage to wed their +thirteen-year-old putative daughter to a middle-aged noble of Arezzo. +They expect the exquisite repute of an aristocratic connection, and +other tangible advantages. He, impoverished as he is, looks for a +splendid dowry. No one thinks of the child-wife, Pompilia. She becomes +the scapegoat, when the gross selfishness of the contracting parties +stands revealed. Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia +suffers. When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave +her husband, whom she now dreads as well as dislikes. Since the child is +to be the inheritor of her parents' wealth, she will not leave it to the +tender mercies of Count Guido. A young priest, a canon of Arezzo, +Giuseppe Caponsacchi, helps her to escape. In due course she gives birth +to a son. She has scarce time to learn the full sweetness of her +maternity ere she is done to death like a trampled flower. Guido, who +has held himself thrall to an imperative patience, till his hold upon +the child's dowry should be secure, hires four assassins, and in the +darkness of night betakes himself to Rome. He and his accomplices enter +the house of Pietro Comparini and his wife, and, not content with +slaying them, also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, and Guido +is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence alone is damnatory, for she +was not slain outright, and lingers long enough to tell her story. +Franceschini is not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply +avenged the wrong done to him by his wife's adulterous connection with +the priest Caponsacchi. But even in the Rome of that evil day justice +was not extinct. Guido's motive is proved to be false; he himself is +condemned to death. An appeal to the Pope is futile. Finally, the +wretched man pays the too merciful penalty of his villainy. + +There is nothing grand, nothing noble here: at most only a tragic pathos +in the fate of the innocent child-wife Pompilia. It is clear, therefore, +that the greatness of "The Ring and the Book" must depend even less upon +its subject, its motive, than upon its being "an extraordinary feat" in +the gymnastics of verse. + +In a sense, Browning's longest work is akin to that of his wife. Both +"The Ring and the Book" and "Aurora Leigh" are metrical novels. The one +is discursive in episodes and spiritual experiences: the other in +intricacies of evidence. But there the parallel ends. If "The Ring and +the Book" were deflowered of its blooms of poetry and rendered into a +prose narrative, it might interest a barrister "getting up" a criminal +case, but it would be much inferior to, say, "The Moonstone"; its author +would be insignificant beside the ingenious M. Gaboriau. The +extraordinariness of the feat would then be but indifferently commented +upon. + +As neither its subject, nor its extraordinariness as a feat, nor its +method, will withstand a searching examination, we must endeavour to +discern if transcendent poetic merit be discoverable in the treatment. +To arrive at a just estimate it is needful to free the mind not merely +from preconceptions, but from that niggardliness of insight which can +perceive only the minor flaws and shortcomings almost inevitable to any +vast literary achievement, and be blind to the superb merits. One must +prepare oneself to listen to a new musician, with mind and body alert +to the novel harmonies, and oblivious of what other musicians have done +or refrained from doing. + +"The Ring and the Book," as I have said, was not begun in the year of +its imagining.[15] It is necessary to anticipate the biographical +narrative, and state that the finding of the parchment-booklet happened +in the fourth year of the poet's widowerhood, for his happy married +period of less than fifteen years came to a close in 1861. + +[Footnote 15: The title is explained as follows:--"The story of the +Franceschini case, as Mr. Browning relates it, forms a circle of +evidence to its one central truth; and this circle was constructed in +the manner in which the worker in Etruscan gold prepares the ornamental +circlet which will be worn as a ring. The pure metal is too soft to bear +hammer or file; it must be mixed with alloy to gain the necessary power +of resistance. The ring once formed and embossed, the alloy is +disengaged, and a pure gold ornament remains. Mr. Browning's material +was also inadequate to his purpose, though from a different cause. It +was too _hard_. It was 'pure crude fact,' secreted from the fluid +being of the men and women whose experience it had formed. In its existing +state it would have broken up under the artistic attempt to weld and +round it. He supplied an alloy, the alloy of fancy, or--as he also calls +it--of one fact more: this fact being the echo of those past existences +awakened within his own. He breathed into the dead record the breath of +his own life; and when his ring of evidence had re-formed, first in +elastic then in solid strength, here delicately incised, there broadly +stamped with human thought and passion, he could cast fancy aside, and +bid his readers recognise in what he set before them unadulterated human +truth."--_Mrs. Orr_.] + +On the afternoon of the day on which he made his purchase he read the +book from end to end. "A Spirit laughed and leapt through every limb." +The midsummer heats had caused thunder-clouds to congregate above +Vallombrosa and the whole valley of Arno: and the air in Florence was +painfully sultry. The poet stood by himself on his terrace at Casa +Guidi, and as he watched the fireflies wandering from the enclosed +gardens, and the sheet-lightnings quivering through the heated +atmosphere, his mind was busy in refashioning the old tale of loveless +marriage and crime. + + "Beneath + I' the street, quick shown by openings of the sky + When flame fell silently from cloud to cloud, + Richer than that gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes, + The townsmen walked by twos and threes, and talked, + Drinking the blackness in default of air-- + A busy human sense beneath my feet: + While in and out the terrace-plants, and round + One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned + The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower." + +Scene by scene was re-enacted, though of course only in certain +essential details. The final food for the imagination was found in a +pamphlet of which he came into possession of in London, where several +important matters were given which had no place in the volume he had +picked up in Florence. + +Much, far the greater part, of the first "book" is--interesting! It is +mere verse. As verse, even, it is often so involved, so musicless +occasionally, so banal now and again, so inartistic in colour as well as +in form, that one would, having apprehended its explanatory interest, +pass on without regret, were it not for the noble close--the passionate, +out-welling lines to "the truest poet I have ever known," the beautiful +soul who had given her all to him, whom, but four years before he wrote +these words, he had laid to rest among the cypresses and ilexes of the +old Florentine garden of the dead. + + "O lyric Love, half angel and half bird + And all a wonder and a wild desire,-- + Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, + Took sanctuary within the holier blue, + And sang a kindred soul out to his face,-- + Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart-- + When the first summons from the darkling earth + Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, + And bared them of the glory--to drop down, + To toil for man, to suffer or to die,-- + This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? + Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help! + Never may I commence my song, my due + To God who best taught song by gift of thee, + Except, with bent head and beseeching hand-- + That still, despite the distance and the dark, + What was, again may be; some interchange + Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought, + Some benediction anciently thy smile: + --Never conclude, but raising hand and head + Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn + For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, + Their utmost up and on,--so blessing back + In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, + Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud, + Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!" + * * * * * + +Thereafter, for close upon five thousand words, the poem descends again +to the level of a versified tale. It is saved from ruin by subtlety of +intellect, striking dramatic verisimilitude, an extraordinary vigour, +and occasional lines of real poetry. Retrospectively, apart from the +interest, often strained to the utmost, most readers, I fancy, will +recall with lingering pleasure only the opening of "The Other Half +Rome," the description of Pompilia, "with the patient brow and +lamentable smile," with flower-like body, in white hospital array--a +child with eyes of infinite pathos, "whether a flower or weed, ruined: +who did it shall account to Christ." + +In these three introductory books we have the view of the matter taken +by those who side with Count Guido, of those who are all for Pompilia, +and of the "superior person," impartial because superciliously +indifferent, though sufficiently interested to "opine." + +In the ensuing three books a much higher poetic level is reached. In the +first, Guido speaks; in the second, Caponsacchi; the third, that +lustrous opal set midway in the "Ring," is Pompilia's narrative. Here +the three protagonists live and move before our eyes. The sixth book may +be said to be the heart of the whole poem. The extreme intellectual +subtlety of Guido's plea stands quite unrivalled in poetic literature. +In comparing it, for its poetic beauty, with other sections, the reader +must bear in mind that in a poem of a dramatic nature the dramatic +proprieties must be dominant. It would be obviously inappropriate to +make Count Guido Franceschini speak with the dignity of the Pope, with +the exquisite pathos of Pompilia, with the ardour, like suppressed +molten lava, of Caponsacchi. The self-defence of the latter is a superb +piece of dramatic writing. Once or twice the flaming volcano of his +heart bursts upward uncontrollably, as when he cries-- + + "No, sirs, I cannot have the lady dead! + That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye, + That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!)-- + That vision of the pale electric sword + Angels go armed with--that was not the last + O' the lady. Come, I see through it, you find, + Know the manoeuvre! Also herself said + I had saved her: do you dare say she spoke false? + Let me see for myself if it be so!" + +Than the poignant pathos and beauty of "Pompilia," there is nothing more +exquisite in our literature. It stands alone. Here at last we have the +poet who is the Lancelot to Shakspere's Arthur. It takes a supreme +effort of genius to be as simple as a child. How marvellously, after the +almost sublime hypocrisy of the end of Guido's defence, after the +beautiful dignity of Caponsacchi's closing words, culminating abruptly +in the heart-wrung cry, "O great, just, good God! miserable me!"--how +marvellously comes upon the reader the delicate, tearful tenderness of +the innocent child-wife-- + + "I am just seventeen years and five months old, + And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks; + 'Tis writ so in the church's register, + Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names + At length, so many names for one poor child, + --Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela + Pompilia Comparini--laughable!" + +Only two writers of our age have depicted women with that imaginative +insight which is at once more comprehensive and more illuminative than +women's own invision of themselves--Robert Browning and George Meredith, +but not even the latter, most subtle and delicate of all analysts of the +tragi-comedy of human life, has surpassed "Pompilia." The meeting and +the swift uprising of love between Lucy and Richard, in "The Ordeal of +Richard Feveral," is, it is true, within the highest reach of prose +romance: but between even the loftiest height of prose romance and the +altitudes of poetry, there is an impassable gulf. + +And as it is with simplicity so it is with tenderness. Only the sternly +strong can be supremely tender. And infinitely tender is the poetry of +"Pompilia"-- + + "Oh, how good God is that my babe was born, + --Better than born, baptised and hid away + Before this happened, safe from being hurt! + That had been sin God could not well forgive: + _He was too young to smile and save himself_----" + +or the lines which tell how as a little girl she gave her roses not to +the spick and span Madonna of the Church, but to the poor, dilapidated +Virgin, "at our street-corner in a lonely niche," with the babe that had +sat upon her knees broken off: or that passage, with its exquisite +naïveté, where Pompilia relates why she called her boy Gaetano, because +she wished "no old name for sorrow's sake," so chose the latest addition +to the saints, elected only twenty-five years before-- + + "So, carefuller, perhaps, + To guard a namesake than those old saints grow, + Tired out by this time,--see my own five saints!" + +or these-- + + "Thus, all my life, + I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades. + --Even to my babe! I thought, when he was born, + Something began for once that would not end, + Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay + For evermore, eternally quite mine----" + +once more-- + + "One cannot judge + Of what has been the ill or well of life + The day that one is dying.... + Now it is over, and no danger more ... + To me at least was never evening yet + But seemed far beautifuller than its day, + For past is past----" + +Lovely, again, are the lines in which she speaks of the first "thrill of +dawn's suffusion through her dark," the "light of the unborn face sent +long before:" or those unique lines of the starved soul's Spring (ll. +1512-27): or those, of the birth of her little one-- + + "A whole long fortnight; in a life like mine + A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much. + All women are not mothers of a boy.... + I never realised God's birth before-- + How he grew likest God in being born. + This time I felt like Mary, had my babe + Lying a little on my breast like hers." + +When she has weariedly, yet with surpassing triumph, sighed out her last +words-- + + "God stooping shows sufficient of His light + For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise----" + +who does not realise that to life's end he shall not forget that +plaintive voice, so poignantly sweet, that ineffable dying smile, those +wistful eyes with so much less of earth than heaven? + +But the two succeeding "books" are more tiresome and more unnecessary +than the most inferior of the three opening sections--the first of the +two, indeed, is intolerably wearisome, a desolate boulder-strewn gorge +after the sweet air and sunlit summits of "Caponsacchi" and "Pompilia." +In the next "book" Innocent XII. is revealed. All this section has a +lofty serenity, unsurpassed in its kind. It must be read from first to +last for its full effect, but I may excerpt one passage, the high-water +mark of modern blank-verse:-- + + "For the main criminal I have no hope + Except in such a suddenness of fate. + I stood at Naples once, a night so dark + I could have scarce conjectured there was earth + Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: + But the night's black was burst through by a blaze-- + Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, + Through her whole length of mountain visible: + There lay the city thick and plain with spires, + And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. + So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, + And Guido see, one instant, and be saved." + +Finally comes that throbbing, terrible last "book" where the murderer +finds himself brought to bay and knows that all is lost. Who can forget +its unparalleled close, when the wolf-like Guido suddenly, in his +supreme agony, transcends his lost manhood in one despairing cry-- + + "Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God, ... + Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" + +Lastly, the Epilogue rounds off the tale. But is this Epilogue +necessary? Surely the close should have come with the words just quoted? + +It will not be after a first perusal that the reader will be able to +arrive at a definite conviction. No individual or collective estimate of +to-day can be accepted as final. Those who come after us, perhaps not +the next generation, nor the next again, will see "The Ring and the +Book" free of all the manifold and complex considerations which confuse +our judgment. Meanwhile, each can only speak for himself. To me it seems +that "The Ring and the Book" is, regarded as an artistic whole, the most +magnificent failure in our literature. It enshrines poetry which no +other than our greatest could have written; it has depths to which many +of far inferior power have not descended. Surely the poem must be judged +by the balance of its success and failure? It is in no presumptuous +spirit, but out of my profound admiration of this long-loved and +often-read, this superb poem, that I, for one, wish it comprised but the +Prologue, the Plea of Guido, "Caponsacchi," "Pompilia," "The Pope," and +Guido's last Defence. I cannot help thinking that this is the form in +which it will be read in the years to come. Thus circumscribed, it seems +to me to be rounded and complete, a great work of art void of the dross, +the mere _débris_ which the true artist discards. But as it is, in all +its lordly poetic strength and flagging impulse, is it not, after all, +the true climacteric of Browning's genius? + +"The Inn Album," a dramatic poem of extraordinary power, has so much +more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, at the +utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence. This analogy of the +tidal ebb and flow may be observed with singular aptness in Browning's +life-work--the tide that first moved shoreward in the loveliness of +"Pauline," and, with "long withdrawing roar," ebbed in slow, just +perceptible lapse to the poet's penultimate volume. As for "Asolando," I +would rather regard it as the gathering of a new wave--nay, again +rather, as the deep sound of ocean which the outward surge has reached. + +But for myself I do not accept "The Inn Album" as the first hesitant +swing of the tide. I seem to hear the resilient undertone all through +the long slow poise of "The Ring and the Book." Where then is the full +splendour and rush of the tide, where its culminating reach and power? + +I should say in "Men and Women"; and by "Men and Women" I mean not +merely the poems comprised in the collection so entitled, but all in the +"Dramatic Romances," "Lyrics," and the "Dramatis Personæ," all the short +pieces of a certain intensity of note and quality of power, to be found +in the later volumes, from "Pacchiarotto" to "Asolando." + +And this because, in the words of the poet himself when speaking of +Shelley, I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply the +high--and, seeing it, to hold by it. Yet I am not oblivious of the mass +of Browning's lofty achievement, "to be known enduringly among men,"--an +achievement, even on its secondary level, so high, that around its +imperfect proportions, "the most elaborated productions of ordinary art +must arrange themselves as inferior illustrations." + +How am I to convey concisely that which it would take a volume to do +adequately--an idea of the richest efflorescence of Browning's genius in +these unfading blooms which we will agree to include in "Men and +Women"? How better--certainly it would be impossible to be more +succinct--than by the enumeration of the contents of an imagined volume, +to be called, say "Transcripts from Life"? + +It would be to some extent, but not rigidly, arranged chronologically. +It would begin with that masterpiece of poetic concision, where a whole +tragedy is burned in upon the brain in fifty-six lines, "My Last +Duchess." Then would follow "In a Gondola," that haunting lyrical drama +_in petto_, where the lover is stabbed to death as his heart is +beating against that of his mistress; "Cristina," with its keen +introspection; those delightfully stirring pieces, the "Cavalier-Tunes," +"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr," and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"; +"The Flower's Name"; "The Flight of the Duchess"; "The Tomb at St. +Praxed's," the poem which educed Ruskin's enthusiastic praise for its +marvellous apprehension of the spirit of the Middle Ages; "Pictor Ignotus," +and "The Lost Leader." But as there is not space for individual detail, and +as many of the more important are spoken of elsewhere in this volume, I +must take the reader's acquaintance with the poems for granted. So, +following those first mentioned, there would come "Home Thoughts from +Abroad"; "Home Thoughts from the Sea"; "The Confessional"; "The +Heretic's Tragedy"; "Earth's Immortalities"; "Meeting at Night: Parting +at Morning"; "Saul"; "Karshish"; "A Death in the Desert"; "Rabbi Ben +Ezra"; "A Grammarian's Funeral"; "Love Among the Ruins"; _Song_, "Nay +but you"; "A Lover's Quarrel"; "Evelyn Hope"; "A Woman's Last Word"; +"Fra Lippo Lippi"; "By the Fireside"; "Any Wife to Any Husband"; "A +Serenade at the Villa"; "My Star"; "A Pretty Woman"; "A Light Woman"; +"Love in a Life"; "Life in a Love"; "The Last Ride Together"; "A Toccata +of Galuppi's"; "Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha"; "Abt Vogler"; +"Memorabilia"; "Andrea Del Sarto"; "Before"; "After"; "In Three Days"; +"In a Year"; "Old Pictures in Florence"; "De Gustibus"; "Women and +Roses"; "The Guardian Angel"; "Cleon"; "Two in the Campagna"; "One Way +of Love"; "Another Way of Love"; "Misconceptions"; "May and Death"; +"James Lee's Wife"; "Dîs Aliter Visum"; "Too Late"; "Confessions"; +"Prospice"; "Youth and Art"; "A Face"; "A Likeness"; "Apparent Failure." +Epilogue to Part I.--"O Lyric Voice," etc., from end of First Part of +"The Ring and the Book." Part II.--"Hervé Riel"; "Amphibian"; "Epilogue +to Fifine"; "Pisgah Sights"; "Natural Magic"; "Magical Nature"; +"Bifurcation"; "Numpholeptos"; "Appearances"; "St. Martin's Summer"; "A +Forgiveness"; Epilogue to Pacchiarotto volume; Prologue to "La Saisiaz"; +Prologue to "Two Poets of Croisic"; "Epilogue"; "Pheidippides"; +"Halbert and Hob"; "Ivàn Ivànovitch"; "Echetlos"; "Muléykeh"; "Pan and +Luna"; "Touch him ne'er so lightly"; Prologue to "Jocoseria"; "Cristina +and Monaldeschi"; "Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli"; "Ixion"; "Never the +Time and the Place"; _Song_, "Round us the wild creatures "; +_Song_, "Wish no word unspoken "; _Song_, "You groped your way"; +_Song_:, "Man I am"; _Song_, "Once I saw"; "Verse-making"; +"Not with my Soul Love"; "Ask not one least word of praise"; "Why from +the world"; "The Round of Day" (Pts. 9, 10, 11, 12 of Gérard de Lairesse); +Prologue to "Asolando"; "Rosny"; "Now"; "Poetics"; "Summum Bonum"; +"A Pearl"; "Speculative"; "Inapprehensiveness"; "The Lady and the Painter;" +"Beatrice Signorini"; "Imperante Augusto"; "Rephan"; "Reverie"; +Epilogue to "Asolando" (in all, 122). + +But having drawn up this imaginary anthology, possibly with faults of +commission and probably with worse errors of omission, I should like to +take the reader into my confidence concerning a certain volume, +originally compiled for my own pleasure, though not without thought of +one or two dear kinsmen of a scattered Brotherhood--a volume half the +size of the projected Transcripts, and rare as that star in the tip of +the moon's horn of which Coleridge speaks. + +_Flower o' the Vine_, so it is called, has for double-motto these two +lines from the Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto volume-- + + "Man's thoughts and loves and hates! + Earth is my vineyard, these grew there--" + +and these words, already quoted, from the Shelley Essay, "I prefer to +look for the highest attainment, not simply the high." + +1. From "Pauline"[16]--i. "Sun-treader, life and light be thine for +ever!" 2. The Dawn of Beauty; 3. Andromeda; 4. Morning. II. "Heap +Cassia, Sandal-buds," etc. (song from "Paracelsus"). III. "Over the Sea +our Galleys went" (song from "Paracelsus"). IV. The Joy of the World +("Paracelsus").[17] V. From "Sordello"--1. Sunset;[18] 2. The Fugitive +Ethiop;[19] 3. Dante.[20] VI. Ottima and Sebald (Pt. i., "Pippa +Passes"). VII. Jules and Phene (Pt. ii., "Pippa Passes"). VIII. My Last +Duchess. IX. In a Gondola. X. Home Thoughts from Abroad (i. and ii.). +XI. Meeting at Night: Parting at Morning. XII. A Grammarian's Funeral. +XIII. Saul. XIV. Rabbi Ben Ezra. XV. Love among the Ruins. XVI. Evelyn +Hope. XVII. My Star. XVIII. A Toccata of Galuppi's. XIX. Abt Vogler. XX. +Memorabilia. XXI. Andrea del Sarto. XXI. Two in the Campagna. XXII. +James Lee's Wife. XXIII. Prospice. XXIV. From "The Ring and the +Book"--1. O Lyric Love (The Invocation: 26 lines); 2. Caponsacchi (ll. +2069 to 2103); 3. Pompilia (ll. 181 to 205); 4. Pompilia (ll. 1771 to +1845); 5. The Pope (ll. 2017 to 2228); 6. Count Guido (Book XI., ll. +2407 to 2427). XXV. Prologue to "La Saisiaz." XXVI. Prologue to "Two +Poets of Croisic." XXVII. Epilogue to "Two Poets of Croisic." XXVIII. +Never the Time and Place. XXIX. "Round us the Wild Creatures," etc. +(song from "Ferishtah's Fancies"). XXX. "The Walk" (Pts. ix., x., xi., +xii., of "Gérard de Lairesse.") XXXI. "One word more" (To E.B.B.).[21] + +[Footnote 16: The first, from the line quoted, extends through 55 +lines--"To see thee for a moment as thou art." No. 2 consists of the +xviii ll. beginning, "They came to me in my first dawn of life." No. 3, +the xi ll. of the Andromeda picture. No. 4, the lix ll. beginning, +"Night, and one single ridge of narrow path" (to "delight").] + +[Footnote 17: No. IV. comprises the xxix ll. beginning, "The centre fire +heaves underneath the earth," down to "ancient rapture."] + +[Footnote 18: No. V. The vi. ll. beginning, "That autumn ere has stilled."] + +[Footnote 19: The xxii ll. beginning, "As, shall I say, some Ethiop."] + +[Footnote 20: The xxix ll. beginning, "For he,--for he."] + +[Footnote 21: To these XXXI selections there must now be added "Now," +"Summum Bonum," "Reverie" and the "Epilogue," from "Asolando."] + +It is here--I will not say in _Flower o' the Vine_, nor even venture +to restrictively affirm it of that larger and fuller compilation we have +agreed, for the moment, to call "Transcripts from Life"--it is here, in +the worthiest poems of Browning's most poetic period, that, it seems to +me, his highest greatness is to be sought. In these "Men and Women" he +is, in modern times, an unparalleled dramatic poet. The influence he +exercises through these, and the incalculably cumulative influence which +will leaven many generations to come, is not to be looked for in +individuals only, but in the whole thought of the age, which he has +moulded to new form, animated anew, and to which he has imparted a fresh +stimulus. For this a deep debt is due to Robert Browning. But over and +above this shaping force, this manipulative power upon character and +thought, he has enriched our language, our literature, with a new wealth +of poetic diction, has added to it new symbols, has enabled us to inhale +a more liberal if an unfamiliar air, has, above all, raised us to a +fresh standpoint, a standpoint involving our construction of a new +definition. + +Here, at least, we are on assured ground: here, at any rate, we realise +the scope and quality of his genius. But, let me hasten to add, he, at +his highest, not being of those who would make Imagination the handmaid +of the Understanding, has given us also a Dorado of pure poetry, of +priceless worth. Tried by the severest tests, not merely of substance, +but of form, not merely of the melody of high thinking, but of rare and +potent verbal music, the larger number of his "Men and Women" poems are +as treasurable acquisitions, in kind, to our literature, as the shorter +poems of Milton, of Shelley, of Keats, and of Tennyson. But once again, +and finally, let me repeat that his primary importance--not greatness, +but importance--is in having forced us to take up a novel standpoint, +involving our construction of a new definition. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +There are, in literary history, few _scènes de la vie privée_ more +affecting than that of the greatest of English poetesses, in the +maturity of her first poetic period, lying, like a fading flower, for +hours, for days continuously, in a darkened room in a London house. So +ill was Miss Elizabeth Barrett, early in the second half of the forties, +that few friends, herself even, could venture to hope for a single one +of those Springs which she previsioned so longingly. To us, looking back +at this period, in the light of what we know of a story of singular +beauty, there is an added pathos in the circumstance that, as the singer +of so many exquisite songs lay on her invalid's sofa, dreaming of things +which, as she thought, might never be, all that was loveliest in her +life was fast approaching--though, like all joy, not without an equally +unlooked-for sorrow. "I lived with visions for my company, instead of +men and women ... nor thought to know a sweeter music than they played +to me." + +This is not the occasion, and if it were, there would still be +imperative need for extreme concision, whereon to dwell upon the early +life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The particulars of it are familiar +to all who love English literature: for there is, in truth, not much to +tell--not much, at least, that can well be told. It must suffice, here, +that Miss Barrett was born on the 4th of March 1809, and so was the +senior, by three years, of Robert Browning. + +By 1820, in remote Herefordshire, the not yet eleven-year-old poetess +had already "cried aloud on obsolete Muses from childish lips" in +various "nascent odes, epics, and didactics." At this time, she tells +us, the Greeks were her demi-gods, and she dreamt much of Agamemnon. In +the same year, in suburban Camberwell, a little boy was often wont to +listen eagerly to his father's narrative of the same hero, and to all +the moving tale of Troy. It is significant that these two children, so +far apart, both with the light of the future upon their brows, grew up +in familiarity with something of the antique beauty. It was a lifelong +joy to both, that "serene air of Greece." Many an hour of gloom was +charmed away by it for the poetess who translated the "Prometheus Bound" +of Æschylus, and wrote "The Dead Pan": many a happy day and memorable +night were spent in that "beloved environment" by the poet who wrote +"Balaustion's Adventure" and translated the "Agamemnon." + +The chief sorrow of her life, however, occurred in her thirty-first +year. She never quite recovered from the shock of her well-loved brother +Edward's tragic death, a mysterious disaster, for the foundering of the +little yacht _La Belle Sauvage_ is almost as inexplicable as that of +the _Ariel_ in the Spezzian waters beyond Lerici. Not only through the +ensuing winter, but often in the dreams of after years, "the sound of +the waves rang in my ears like the moans of one dying." + +The removal of the Barrett household to Gloucester Place, in Western +London, was a great event. Here, invalid though she was, she could see +friends occasionally and get new books constantly. Her name was well +known and became widely familiar when her "Cry of the Children" rang +like a clarion throughout the country. The poem was founded upon an +official report by Richard Hengist Horne, the friend whom some years +previously she had won in correspondence, and with whom she had become +so intimate, though without personal acquaintance, that she had agreed +to write a drama in collaboration with him, to be called "Psyche +Apocalypté," and to be modelled on "Greek instead of modern tragedy." + +Horne--a poet of genius, and a dramatist of remarkable power--was one of +the truest friends she ever had, and, so far as her literary life is +concerned, came next in influence only to her poet-husband. Among the +friends she saw much of in the early forties was a distant "cousin," +John Kenyon--a jovial, genial, gracious, and altogether delightful man, +who acted the part of Providence to many troubled souls, and, in +particular, was "a fairy godfather" to Elizabeth Barrett and to "the +other poet," as he used to call Browning. It was to Mr. Kenyon--"Kenyon, +with the face of a Bendectine monk, but the most jovial of good +fellows," as a friend has recorded of him; "Kenyon the Magnificent," as +he was called by Browning--that Miss Barrett owed her first introduction +to the poetry of her future husband. + +Browning's poetry had for her an immediate appeal. With sure insight she +discerned the special quality of the poetic wealth of the "Bells and +Pomegranates," among which she then and always cared most for the +penultimate volume, the "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." Two years before +she met the author she had written, in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship"-- + + "Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate' which, if cut deep down + the middle, + Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." + +A little earlier she had even, unwittingly on either side, been a +collaborateur with "the author of 'Paracelsus.'" She gave Horne much aid +in the preparation of his "New Spirit of the Age," and he has himself +told us "that the mottoes, which are singularly happy and appropriate, +were for the most part supplied by Miss Barrett and Robert Browning, +then unknown to each other." One thing and another drew them nearer and +nearer. Now it was a poem, now a novel expression, now a rare sympathy. + +An intermittent correspondence ensued, and both poets became anxious to +know each other. "We artists--how well praise agrees with us," as Balzac +says. + +A few months later, in 1846, they came to know one another personally. +The story of their first meeting, which has received a wide acceptance, +is apocryphal. The meeting was brought about by Kenyon. This common +friend had been a schoolfellow of Browning's father, and so it was +natural that he took a more than ordinary interest in the brilliant +young poet, perhaps all the more so that the reluctant tide of +popularity which had promised to set in with such unparalleled sweep and +weight had since experienced a steady ebb. + +And so the fates brought these two together. The younger was already far +the stronger, but he had an unbounded admiration for Miss Barrett. To +her, he was even then the chief living poet. She perceived his ultimate +greatness; as early as 1845 had "a full faith in him as poet and +prophet." + +As Browning admitted to a friend, the love between them was almost +instantaneous, a thing of the eyes, mind, and heart--each striving for +supremacy, till all were gratified equally in a common joy. They had one +bond of sterling union: passion for the art to which both had devoted +their lives. + +To those who love love for love's sake, who _se passionnent pour la +passion_, as Prosper Merimée says, there could scarce be a more sacred +spot in London than that fiftieth house in unattractive Wimpole Street, +where these two poets first met each other; and where, in the darkened +room, "Love quivered, an invisible flame." Elizabeth Barrett was indeed, +in her own words, "as sweet as Spring, as Ocean deep." She, too, was +always, as she wrote of Harriet Martineau, in a hopeless anguish of body +and serene triumph of spirit. As George Sand says, of one of her +fictitious personages, she was an "artist to the backbone; that is, one +who feels life with frightful intensity." To this too keen intensity of +feeling must be attributed something of that longing for repose, that +deep craving for rest from what is too exciting from within, which made +her affirm the exquisite appeal to her of such Biblical passages as "The +Lord of peace Himself give you peace," and "He giveth His Beloved +Sleep," which, as she says in one of her numerous letters to Miss +Mitford, "strike upon the disquieted earth with such a _foreignness_ +of heavenly music." + +Nor was he whom she loved as a man, as well as revered as a poet, +unworthy of her. His was the robustest poetic intellect of the century; +his the serenest outlook; his, almost the sole unfaltering footsteps +along the perilous ways of speculative thought. A fair life, irradiate +with fairer ideals, conserved his native integrity from that incongruity +between practice and precept so commonly exemplified. Comely in all +respects, with his black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features, ready and +winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous, expressive +gestures--an inclination of the head, a lift of the eyebrows, a +modulation of the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand, +conveying so much--and a voice at that time of a singular penetrating +sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future upon his +forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate any woman +of kindred nature and sympathies. Over and above these advantages, he +possessed a rare quality of physical magnetism. By virtue of this he +could either attract irresistibly or strongly repel. + +I have several times heard people state that a hand-shake from Browning +was like an electric shock. Truly enough, it did seem as though his +sterling nature rang in his genially dominant voice, and, again, as +though his voice transmitted instantaneous waves of an electric current +through every nerve of what, for want of a better phrase, I must +perforce call his intensely alive hand. I remember once how a lady, +afflicted with nerves, in the dubious enjoyment of her first experience +of a "literary afternoon," rose hurriedly and, in reply to her hostess' +inquiry as to her motive, explained that she could not sit any longer +beside the elderly gentleman who was talking to Mrs. So-and-so, as his +near presence made her quiver all over, "like a mild attack of +pins-and-needles," as she phrased it. She was chagrined to learn that +she had been discomposed not by 'a too exuberant financier,' as she had +surmised, but by, as "Waring" called Browning, the "subtlest assertor of +the Soul in song." + +With the same quick insight as she had perceived Robert Browning's +poetic greatness, Elizabeth Barrett discerned his personal worth. He was +essentially manly in all respects: so manly, that many frail souls of +either sex philandered about his over-robustness. From the twilight +gloom of an æesthetic clique came a small voice belittling the great man +as "quite too 'loud,' painfully excessive." Browning was manly enough to +laugh at all ghoulish cries of any kind whatsoever. Once in a way the +lion would look round and by a raised breath make the jackals wriggle; +as when the poet wrote to a correspondent, who had drawn his attention +to certain abusive personalities in some review or newspaper: "Dear +Sir--I am sure you mean very kindly, but I have had too long an +experience of the inability of the human goose to do other than cackle +when benevolent and hiss when malicious, and no amount of goose +criticism shall make me lift a heel against what waddles behind it." + +Herself one whose happiest experiences were in dreamland, Miss Barrett +was keenly susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song, nor +less keenly attracted by his strenuous and fearless outlook, his poetic +practicality, and even by his bluntness of insight in certain matters. +It was no slight thing to her that she could, in Mr. Lowell's words, say +of herself and of him-- + + "We, who believe life's bases rest + Beyond the probe of chemic test." + +She rejoiced, despite her own love for remote imaginings, to know that +he was of those who (to quote again from the same fine poet) + + "... wasted not their breath in schemes + Of what man might be in some bubble-sphere, + As if he must be other than he seems + Because he was not what he should be here, + Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams;" + +that, in a word, while 'he could believe the promise of to-morrow,' he +was at the same time supremely conscious of 'the wondrous meaning of +to-day.' + +Both, from their youth onward, had travelled 'on trails divine of +unimagined laws.' It was sufficient for her that he kept his eyes fixed +on the goal beyond the way he followed: it did not matter that he was +blind to the dim adumbrations of novel byways, of strange Calvarys by +the wayside, so often visible to her. + +Their first meeting was speedily followed by a second--by a third--and +then? When we know not, but ere long, each found that happiness was in +the bestowal of the other. + +The secret was for some time kept absolutely private. From the first Mr. +Barrett had been jealous of his beloved daughter's new friend. He did +not care much for the man, he with all the prejudices and baneful +conservatism of the slave-owning planter, the other with ardent +democratic sentiments and a detestation of all forms of iniquity. Nor +did he understand the poet. He could read his daughter's flowing verse +with pleasure, but there was to his ear a mere jumble of sound and sense +in much of the work of the author of "The Tomb at St. Praxed's" and +"Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis." Of a selfishly genial but also of a +violent and often sullen nature, he resented more and more any +friendship which threatened to loosen the chain of affection and +association binding his daughter to himself. + +Both the lovers believed that an immediate marriage would, from every +point of view, be best. It was not advisable that it should be long +delayed, if to happen at all, for the health of Miss Barrett was so poor +that another winter in London might, probably would, mean irretrievable +harm. + +Some time before this she had become acquainted with Mrs. Jameson, the +eminent art-writer. The regard, which quickly developed to an +affectionate esteem, was mutual. One September morning Mrs. Jameson +called, and after having dwelt on the gloom and peril of another winter +in London, dwelt on the magic of Italy, and concluded by inviting Miss +Barrett to accompany her in her own imminent departure for abroad. The +poet was touched and grateful, but, pointing to her invalid sofa, and +gently emphasising her enfeebled health and other difficult +circumstances, excused herself from acceptance of Mrs. Jameson's +generous offer. + +In the "Memoirs of Mrs. Jameson" that lady's niece, Mrs. Macpherson, +relates how on the eve of her and her aunt's departure, a little note of +farewell arrived from Miss Barrett, "deploring the writer's inability +to come in person and bid her friend good-bye, as she was 'forced to be +satisfied with the sofa and silence.'" + +It is easy to understand, therefore, with what amazement Mrs. Jameson, +shortly after her arrival in Paris, received a letter from Robert +Browning to the effect that he _and his wife_ had just come from +London, on their way to Italy. "My aunt's surprise was something almost +comical," writes Mrs. Macpherson, "so startling and entirely unexpected +was the news." And duly married indeed the two poets had been! + +From the moment the matter was mooted to Mr. Barrett, he evinced his +repugnance to the idea. To him even the most foolish assertion of his +own was a sacred pledge. He called it "pride in his word": others +recognised it as the very arrogance of obstinacy. He refused to +countenance the marriage in any way, refused to have Browning's name +mentioned in his presence, and even when his daughter told him that she +had definitely made up her mind, he flatly declined to acknowledge as +even possible what was indeed very imminent. + +Nor did he ever step down from his ridiculous pinnacle of wounded +self-love. Favourite daughter though she had been, Mr. Barrett never +forgave her, held no communication with her even when she became a +mother, and did not mention her in his will. It is needless to say +anything more upon this subject. What Mr. and Mrs. Browning were +invariably reticent upon can well be passed over with mere mention of +the facts. + +At the last moment there had been great hurry and confusion. But +nevertheless, on the forenoon of the 12th of September 1846, Robert +Browning and Elizabeth Barrett had unceremoniously stepped into St. +Maryle-bone Church and there been married. So secret had the matter been +kept that even such old friends as Richard Hengist Horne and Mr. Kenyon +were in ignorance of the event for some time after it had actually +occurred. + +Mrs. Jameson made all haste to the hotel where the Brownings were, and +ultimately persuaded them to leave the hotel for the quieter _pension_ +in the Rue Ville d'Evêque, where she and Mrs. Macpherson were staying. +Thereafter it was agreed that, as soon as a fortnight had gone by, they +should journey to Italy together. + +Truly enough, as Mrs. Macpherson says, the journey must have been +"enchanting, made in such companionship." Before departing from Paris, +Mrs. Jameson, in writing to a friend, alluded to her unexpected +companions, and added, "Both excellent: but God help them! for I know +not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this +prosaic world." This kindly friend was not the only person who +experienced similar doubts. One acquaintance, no other than the +Poet-Laureate, Wordsworth, added: "So, Robert Browning and Elizabeth +Barrett have gone off together! Well, I hope they may understand each +other--nobody else could!" + +As a matter of fact they did, and to such good intent that they seem +never to have had one hour of dissatisfaction, never one jar in the +music of their lives. + +What a happy wayfaring through France that must have been! The +travelling had to be slow, and with frequent interruptions, on account +of Mrs. Browning's health: yet she steadily improved, and was almost +from the start able to take more exercise, and to be longer in the open +air than had for long been her wont. They passed southward, and after +some novel experiences in _diligences_, reached Avignon, where they +rested for a couple of days. Thence a little expedition, a poetical +pilgrimage, was made to Vaucluse, sacred to the memory of Petrarch and +Laura. There, as Mrs. Macpherson has told us, at the very source of the +"chiare, fresche e dolce acque," Browning took his wife up in his arms, +and, carrying her across through the shallow curling waters, seated her +on a rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus, +indeed, did love and poetry take a new possession of the spot +immortalised by Petrarch's loving fancy. + +Three weeks passed happily before Pisa, the Brownings' destination, was +reached. But even then the friends were unwilling to part, and Mrs. +Jameson and her niece remained in the deserted old city for a score of +days longer. So wonderful was the change wrought in Mrs. Browning by +happiness, and by all the enfranchisement her marriage meant for her, +that, as her friend wrote to Miss Mitford, "she is not merely improved +but transformed." In the new sunshine which had come into her life, she +blossomed like a flower-bud long delayed by gloom and chill. Her heart, +in truth, was like a lark when wafted skyward by the first spring-wind. + +At last to her there had come something of that peace she had longed +for, and though, in the joy of her new life, her genius "like an Arab +bird slept floating in the wind," it was with that restful hush which +precedes the creative storm. There is something deeply pathetic in her +conscious joy. So little actual experience of life had been hers that in +many respects she was as a child: and she had all the child's yearning +for those unsullied hours that never come when once they are missed. But +it was not till love unfastened the inner chambers of her heart and +brain that she realised to the full, what she had often doubted, how +supreme a thing mere life is. It was in some such mood that she wrote +the lovely forty-second of the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," closing +thus-- + + "Let us stay + Rather on earth, Belovèd,--where the unfit + Contrarious moods of men recoil away + And isolate pure spirits, and permit + A place to stand and love in for a day, + With darkness and the death-hour rounding it." + +As for Browning's love towards his wife, nothing more tender and +chivalrous has ever been told of ideal lovers in an ideal romance. It is +so beautiful a story that one often prefers it to the sweetest or +loftiest poem that came from the lips of either. That love knew no +soilure in the passage of the years. Like the flame of oriental legend, +it was perennially incandescent though fed not otherwise than by +sunlight and moonshine. If it alone survive, it may resolve the poetic +fame of either into one imperishable, luminous ray of white light: as +the uttered song fused in the deathless passion of Sappho gleams +star-like down the centuries from the high steep of Leucadoe. + +It was here, in Pisa, I have been told on indubitable authority, that +Browning first saw in manuscript those "Sonnets from the Portuguese" +which no poet of Portugal had ever written, which no man could have +written, which no other woman than his wife could have composed. From +the time when it had first dawned upon her that love was to be hers, and +that the laurel of poetry was not to be her sole coronal, she had found +expression for her exquisite trouble in these short poems, which she +thinly disguised from 'inner publicity' when she issued them as "from +the Portuguese." + +It is pleasant to think of the shy delight with which the delicate, +flower-like, almost ethereal poet-wife, in those memorable Pisan +evenings--with the wind blowing soundingly from the hills of Carrara, or +quiescent in a deep autumnal calm broken only by the slow wash of Arno +along the sea-mossed long-deserted quays--showed her love-poems to her +husband. With what love and pride he must have read those outpourings of +the most sensitive and beautiful nature he had ever met, vials of lovely +thought and lovelier emotion, all stored against the coming of a golden +day. + + "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. + I love thee to the depth and breadth and height + My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight + For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. + I love thee to the level of every day's + Most quiet need, by sun and candle light. + I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; + I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. + I love thee with the passion put to use + In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. + I love thee with a love I seemed to lose + With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath, + Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose, + I shall but love thee better after Death!" + +Even such heart-music as this cannot have thrilled him more than these +two exquisite lines, with their truth almost too poignant to permit of +serene joy-- + + "I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange + My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee!" + +Their Pisan home was amid sacred associations. It was situate in an old +palazzo built by Vasari, within sight of the Leaning Tower and the +Duomo. There, in absolute seclusion, they wrote and planned. Once and +again they made a pilgrimage to the Lanfranchi Palace "to walk in the +footsteps of Byron and Shelley": occasionally they went to Vespers in +the Duomo, and listened, rapt, to the music wandering spirally through +the vast solitary building: once they were fortunate in hearing the +impressive musical mass for the dead, in the Campo Santo. They were even +reminded often of their distant friend Horne, for every time they +crossed one of the chief piazzas they saw the statue of Cosimo de Medici +looking down upon them. + +In this beautiful old city, so full of repose as it lies "asleep in the +sun," Mrs. Browning's health almost leapt, so swift was her advance +towards vigour. "She is getting better every day," wrote her husband, +"stronger, better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes." + +That happy first winter they passed "in the most secluded manner, +reading Vasari, and dreaming dreams of seeing Venice in the summer." But +early in April, when the swallows had flown inland above the pines of +Viareggio, and Shelley's favourite little Aziola was hooting silverly +among the hollow vales of Carrara, the two poets prepared to leave what +the frailer of them called "this perch of Pisa." + +But with all its charm and happy associations, the little city was dull. +"Even human faces divine are quite _rococo_ with me," Mrs. Browning +wrote to a friend. The change to Florence was a welcome one to both. +Browning had already been there, but to his wife it was as the +fulfilment of a dream. They did not at first go to that romantic old +palace which will be for ever sociate with the author of "Casa Guidi +Windows," but found accommodation in a more central locality. + +When the June heats came, husband and wife both declared for Ancona, the +picturesque little town which dreams out upon the Adriatic. But though +so close to the sea, Ancona is in summer time almost insufferably hot. +Instead of finding it cooler than Florence, it was as though they had +leapt right into a cauldron. Alluding to it months later, Mrs. Browning +wrote to Horne, "The heat was just the fiercest fire of your +imagination, and I _seethe_ to think of it at this distance." + +It was a memorable journey all the same. They went to Ravenna, and at +four o'clock one morning stood by Dante's tomb, moved deeply by the +pathetic inscription and by all the associations it evoked. All along +the coast from Ravenna to Loretto was new ground to both, and endlessly +fascinating; in the passing and repassing of the Apennines they had +'wonderful visions of beauty and glory.' At Ancona itself, +notwithstanding the heat, they spent a happy season. Here Browning wrote +one of the loveliest of his short poems, "The Guardian Angel," which had +its origin in Guercino's picture in the chapel at Fano. By the allusions +in the sixth and eighth stanzas it is clear that the poem was inscribed +to Alfred Domett, the poet's well-loved friend immortalised as "Waring." +Doubtless it was written for no other reason than the urgency of song, +for in it are the loving allusions to his wife, "_my_ angel with me +too," and "my love is here." Three times they went to the chapel, he +tells us in the seventh stanza, to drink in to their souls' content the +beauty of "dear Guercino's" picture. Browning has rarely uttered the +purely personal note of his inner life. It is this that affords a +peculiar value to "The Guardian Angel," over and above its technical +beauty. In the concluding lines of the stanzas I am about to quote he +gives the supreme expression to what was his deepest faith, his +profoundest song-motive. + + "I would not look up thither past thy head + Because the door opes, like that child, I know, + For I should have thy gracious face instead, + Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low + Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, + And lift them up to pray, and gently tether + Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread? + + * * * * * + + "How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired! + I think how I should view the earth and skies + And sea, when once again my brow was bared + After thy healing, with such different eyes. + O world, as God has made it! All is beauty: + And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. + What further may be sought for or declared?" + +After the Adriatic coast was left, they hesitated as to returning to +Florence, the doctors having laid such stress on the climatic +suitability of Pisa for Mrs. Browning. But she felt so sure of herself +in her new strength that it was decided to adventure upon at least one +winter in the queen-city. They were fortunate in obtaining a residence +in the old palace called Casa Guidi, in the Via Maggiore, over against +the church of San Felice, and here, with a few brief intervals, they +lived till death separated them. + +On the little terrace outside there was more noble verse fashioned in +the artist's creative silence than we can ever be aware of: but what a +sacred place it must ever be for the lover of poetry! There, one ominous +sultry eve, Browning, brooding over the story of a bygone Roman crime, +foreshadowed "The Ring and the Book," and there, in the many years he +dwelt in Casa Guidi, he wrote some of his finer shorter poems. There, +also, "Aurora Leigh" was born, and many a lyric fresh with the dew of +genius. Who has not looked at the old sunworn house and failed to think +of that night when each square window of San Felice was aglow with +festival lights, and when the summer lightnings fell silently in broad +flame from cloud to cloud: or has failed to hear, down the narrow +street, a little child go singing, 'neath Casa Guidi windows by the +church, _O bella libertà, O bella!_ + +Better even than these, for happy dwelling upon, is the poem the two +poets lived. Morning and day were full of work, study, or that +pleasurable idleness which for the artist is so often his best +inspiration. Here, on the little terrace, they used to sit together, or +walk slowly to and fro, in conversation that was only less eloquent than +silence. Here one day they received a letter from Horne. There is +nothing of particular note in Mrs. Browning's reply, and yet there are +not a few of her poems we would miss rather than these chance +words--delicate outlines left for the reader to fill in: "We were +reading your letter, together, on our little terrace--walking up and +down reading it--I mean the letter to Robert--and then, at the end, +suddenly turning, lo, just at the edge of the stones, just between the +balustrades, and already fluttering in a breath of wind and about to fly +away over San Felice's church, we caught a glimpse of the feather of a +note to E.B.B. How near we were to the loss of it, to be sure!" + +Happier still must have been the quiet evenings in late spring and +summer, when, the one shrouded against possible chills, the other +bare-headed and with loosened coat, walked slowly to and fro in the +dark, conscious of "a busy human sense" below, but solitary on their +balcony beyond the lamplit room. + + "While in and out the terrace-plants, and round + One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned + The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower." + +An American friend has put on record his impressions of the two poets, +and their home at this time. He had been called upon by Browning, and by +him invited to take tea at Casa Guidi the same evening. There the +visitor saw, "seated at the tea-table of the great room of the palace in +which they were living, a very small, very slight woman, with very long +curls drooping forward, almost across the eyes, hanging to the bosom, +and quite concealing the pale, small face, from which the piercing +inquiring eyes looked out sensitively at the stranger. Rising from her +chair, she put out cordially the thin white hand of an invalid, and in +a few moments they were pleasantly chatting, while the husband strode up +and down the room, joining in the conversation with a vigour, humour, +eagerness, and affluence of curious lore which, with his trenchant +thought and subtle sympathy, make him one of the most charming and +inspiring of companions." + +In the autumn the same friend, joined by one or two other acquaintances, +went with the Brownings to Vallombrosa for a couple of days, greatly to +Mrs. Browning's delight, for whom the name had had a peculiar +fascination ever since she had first encountered it in Milton. + +She was conveyed up the steep way towards the monastery in a great +basket, without wheels, drawn by two oxen: though, as she tells Miss +Mitford, she did not get into the monastery after all, she and her maid +being turned away by the monks "for the sin of womanhood." She was too +much of an invalid to climb the steeper heights, but loved to lie under +the great chestnuts upon the hill-slopes near the convent. At twilight +they went to the little convent-chapel, and there Browning sat down at +the organ and played some of those older melodies he loved so well. + +It is, strangely enough, from Americans that we have the best account of +the Brownings in their life at Casa Guidi: from R.H. Stoddart, Bayard +Taylor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Stillman Hillard, and W.W. Story. I +can find room, however, for but one excerpt:-- + + "Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, could hardly enter the + loved rooms now, and speak above a whisper. They who have been so + favoured, can never forget the square anteroom, with its great + picture and pianoforte, at which the boy Browning passed many an + hour--the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung + medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning--the long + room filled with plaster-casts and studies, which was Mrs. + Browning's retreat--and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room + where _she_ always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with + plants, and looks out upon the iron-grey church of Santa Felice. + There was something about this room that seemed to make it a + proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued + light gave it a dreary look, which was enhanced by the + tapestry-covered walls, and the old pictures of saints that looked + out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large bookcases + constructed of specimens of Florentine carving selected by Mr. + Browning were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were + covered with more gaily-bound volumes, the gifts of brother + authors. Dante's grave profile, a cast of Keats's face and brow + taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial + face of John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning's good friend and relative, + little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in + turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, + easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an + indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory + of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low + arm-chair near the door. A small table, strewn with + writing-materials, books, and newspapers, was always by her + side.... After her death, her husband had a careful water-colour + drawing made of this room, which has been engraved more than once. + It still hangs in his drawing-room, where the mirror and one of + the quaint chairs above named still are. The low arm-chair and + small table are in Browning's study--with his father's desk, on + which he has written all his poems."--(_W.W. Story_.) + + +To Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, Mr. Hillard, and Mr. Story, in particular, we +are indebted for several delightful glimpses into the home-life of the +two poets. We can see Mrs. Browning in her "ideal chamber," neither a +library nor a sitting-room, but a happy blending of both, with the +numerous old paintings in antique Florentine frames, easy-chairs and +lounges, carved bookcases crammed with books in many languages, +bric-a-brac in any quantity, but always artistic, flowers everywhere, +and herself the frailest flower of all. + +Mr. Hillard speaks of the happiness of the Brownings' home and their +union as perfect: he, full of manly power, she, the type of the most +sensitive and delicate womanhood. This much-esteemed friend was +fascinated by Mrs. Browning. Again and again he alludes to her exceeding +spirituality: "She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl:" her +frame "the transparent veil for a celestial and mortal spirit:" and +those fine words which prove that he too was of the brotherhood of the +poets, "Her tremulous voice often flutters over her words like the flame +of a dying candle over the wick." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +With the flower-tide of spring in 1849 came a new happiness to the two +poets: the son who was born on the 9th of March. The boy was called +Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the second name, in remembrance of Browning's +much-loved mother, having been substituted for the "Sarianna" wherewith +the child, if a girl, was to have been christened. Thereafter their "own +young Florentine" was an endless joy and pride to both: and he was +doubly loved by his father for his having brought a renewal of life to +her who bore him. + +That autumn they went to the country, to the neighbourhood of +Vallombrosa, and then to the Bagni di Lucca. There they wandered content +in chestnut-forests, and gathered grapes at the vintage. + +Early in the year Browning's "Poetical Works" were published in two +volumes. Some of the most beautiful of his shorter poems are to be found +therein. What a new note is struck throughout, what range of subject +there is! Among them all, are there any more treasurable than two of the +simplest, "Home Thoughts from Abroad" and "Night and Morning"? + + "Oh, to be in England + Now that April's there, + And whoever wakes in England + Sees, some morning, unaware, + That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf + Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, + While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough + In England--now! + + And after April, when May follows, + And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! + Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge + Leans to the field and scatters on the clover + Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- + That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, + Lest you should think he never could recapture + The first fine careless rapture!" + +A more significant note is struck in "Meeting at Night" and "Parting at +Morning." + + MEETING. + + I. + + 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, + And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. + + II. + + Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; + Three fields to cross till a farm appears; + A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch + And blue spurt of a lighted match, + And a voice lass loud, through its joys and fears, + Than the two hearts beating each to each! + + PARTING. + + Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, + And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: + And straight was a path of gold for him, + And the need of a world of men for me. + +The following winter, when they were again at their Florentine home, +Browning wrote his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," that remarkable +_apologia_ for Christianity, and close-reasoned presentation of the +religious thought of the time. It is, however, for this reason that it +is so widely known and admired: for it is ever easier to attract readers +by dogma than by beauty, by intellectual argument than by the seduction +of art. Coincidently, Mrs. Browning wrote the first portion of "Casa +Guidi Windows." + +In the spring of 1850 husband and wife spent a short stay in Rome. I +have been told that the poem entitled 'Two in the Campagna' was as +actually personal as the already quoted "Guardian Angel." But I do not +think stress should be laid on this and kindred localisations. Exact or +not, they have no literary value. To the poet, the dramatic poet above +all, locality and actuality of experience are, so to say, merely +fortunate coigns of outlook, for the winged genius to temporally +inhabit. To the imaginative mind, truth is not simply actuality. As for +'Two in the Campagna': it is too universally true to be merely personal. +There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not +the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It +is those who have loved most deeply who recognise most acutely this +always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save +the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits. If this were +demonstratable, immortality would be a palpable fiction. The moment +individuality can lapse to fusion, that moment the tide has ebbed, the +wind has fallen, the dream has been dreamed. So long as the soul +remains inviolate amid all shock of time and change, so long is it +immortal. No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and +fail to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of +this insuperable isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in +the touch of a kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some one or other +exquisite moment. The poem tells us how the lovers, straying hand in +hand one May day across the Campagna, sat down among the seeding +grasses, content at first in the idle watching of a spider spinning her +gossamer threads from yellowing fennel to other vagrant weeds. All +around them + + "The champaign with its endless fleece + Of feathery grasses everywhere! + Silence and passion, joy and peace, + An everlasting wash of air-- ... + + "Such life here, through such length of hours, + Such miracles performed in play, + Such primal naked forms of flowers, + Such letting nature have her way." ... + +Let us too be unashamed of soul, the poet-lover says, even as earth lies +bare to heaven. Nothing is to be overlooked. But all in vain: in vain "I +drink my fill at your soul's springs." + + "Just when I seemed about to learn! + Where is the thread now? off again! + The old trick! Only I discern-- + Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn." + +It was during this visit to Rome that both were gratified by the +proposal in the leading English literary weekly, that the +Poet-Laureateship, vacant by the death of Wordsworth, should be +conferred upon Mrs. Browning: though both rejoiced when they learned +that the honour had devolved upon one whom each so ardently admired as +Alfred Tennyson. In 1851 a visit was paid to England, not one very much +looked forward to by Mrs. Browning, who had never had cause to yearn for +her old home in Wimpole Street, and who could anticipate no +reconciliation with her father, who had persistently refused even to +open her letters to him, and had forbidden the mention of her name in +his home circle. + +Bayard Taylor, in his travel-sketches published under the title "At Home +and Abroad," has put on record how he called upon the Brownings one +afternoon in September, at their rooms in Devonshire Street, and found +them on the eve of their return to Italy. + +In his cheerful alertness, self-possession, and genial suavity Browning +impressed him as an American rather than as an Englishman, though there +can be no question but that no more thorough Englishman than the poet +ever lived. It is a mistake, of course, to speak of him as a typical +Englishman: for typical he was not, except in a very exclusive sense. +Bayard Taylor describes him in reportorial fashion as being apparently +about seven-and-thirty (a fairly close guess), with his dark hair +already streaked with grey about the temples: with a fair complexion, +just tinged with faintest olive: eyes large, clear, and grey, and nose +strong and well-cut, mouth full and rather broad, and chin pointed, +though not prominent: about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, +but slender at the waist, with movements expressive of a combination of +vigour and elasticity. With due allowance for the passage of +five-and-thirty years, this description would not be inaccurate of +Browning the septuagenarian. + +They did not return direct to Italy after all, but wintered in Paris +with Robert Browning the elder, who had retired to a small house in a +street leading off the Champs Élysées. The pension he drew from the Bank +of England was a small one, but, with what he otherwise had, was +sufficient for him to live in comfort. The old gentleman's health was +superb to the last, for he died in 1866 without ever having known a +day's illness. + +Spring came out and found them still in Paris, Mrs. Browning +enthusiastic about Napoleon III. and interested in spiritualism: her +husband serenely sceptical concerning both. In the summer they again +went to London: but they appear to have seen more of Kenyon and other +intimate friends than to have led a busy social life. Kenyon's +friendship and good company never ceased to have a charm for both poets. +Mrs. Browning loved him almost as a brother: her husband told Bayard +Taylor, on the day when that good poet and charming man called upon +them, and after another visitor had departed--a man with a large rosy +face and rotund body, as Taylor describes him--"there goes one of the +most splendid men living--a man so noble in his friendship, so lavish in +his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be +known all over the world as Kenyon the Magnificent." + +In the early autumn a sudden move towards Italy was again made, and +after a few weeks in Paris and on the way the Brownings found +themselves at home once more in Casa Guidi. + +But before this, probably indeed before they had left Paris for London, +Mr. Moxon had published the now notorious Shelley forgeries. These were +twenty-five spurious letters, but so cleverly manufactured that they at +first deceived many people. In the preceding November Browning had been +asked to write an introduction to them. This he had gladly agreed to do, +eager as he was for a suitable opportunity of expressing his admiration +for Shelley. When the letters reached him, he found that, genuine or +not, though he never suspected they were forgeries, they contained +nothing of particular import, nothing that afforded a just basis for +what he had intended to say. Pledged as he was, however, to write +something for Mr. Moxon's edition of the Letters, he set about the +composition of an Essay, of a general as much as of an individual +nature. This he wrote in Paris, and finished by the beginning of +December. It dealt with the objective and subjective poet; on the +relation of the latter's life to his work; and upon Shelley in the light +of his nature, art, and character. Apart from the circumstance that it +is the only independent prose writing of any length from Browning's pen, +this is an exceptionally able and interesting production. + +Dr. Furnivall deserves general gratitude for his obtaining the author's +leave to re-issue it, and for having published it as one of the papers +of the Browning Society. As that enthusiastic student and good friend of +the poet says in his "foretalk" to the reprint, the essay is noteworthy, +not merely as a signal service to Shelley's fame and memory, but for +Browning's statement of his own aim in his own work, both as objective +and subjective poet. The same clear-sightedness and impartial sympathy, +which are such distinguishing characteristics of his dramatic studies of +human thought and emotion, are obvious in Browning's Shelley essay. "It +would be idle to enquire," he writes, "of these two kinds of poetic +faculty in operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. If +the subjective might seem to be the ultimate requirement of every age, +the objective in the strictest state must still retain its original +value. For it is with this world, as starting-point and basis alike, +that we shall always have to concern ourselves; the world is not to be +learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and reclaimed." + +Of its critical subtlety--the more remarkable as by a poet-critic who +revered Shelley the poet and loved and believed in Shelley the man--the +best example, perhaps, is in those passages where he alludes to the +charge against the poet's moral nature--"charges which, if substantiated +to their wide breadth, would materially disturb, I do not deny, our +reception and enjoyment of his works, however wonderful the artistic +qualities of these. For we are not sufficiently supplied with instances +of genius of his order to be able to pronounce certainly how many of its +constituent parts have been tasked and strained to the production of a +given lie, and how high and pure a mood of the creative mind may be +dramatically simulated as the poet's habitual and exclusive one." + +The large charity, the liberal human sympathy, the keen critical acumen +of this essay, make one wish that the author had spared us a "Sludge +the Medium" or a "Pacchiarotto," or even a "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," +and given us more of such honourable work in "the other harmony." + +Glad as the Brownings were to be home again at Casa Guidi, they could +not enjoy the midsummer heats of Florence, and so went to the Baths of +Lucca. It was a delight for them to ramble among the chestnut-woods of +the high Tuscan forests, and to go among the grape-vines where the +sunburnt vintagers were busy. Once Browning paid a visit to that remote +hill-stream and waterfall, high up in a precipitous glen, where, more +than three-score years earlier, Shelley had been wont to amuse himself +by sitting naked on a rock in the sunlight, reading _Herodotus_ while +he cooled, and then plunging into the deep pool beneath him--to emerge, +further up stream, and then climb through the spray of the waterfall +till he was like a glittering human wraith in the middle of a dissolving +rainbow. + +Those Tuscan forests, that high crown of Lucca, must always have special +associations for lovers of poetry. Here Shelley lived, rapt in his +beautiful dreams, and translated the _Symposium_ so that his wife +might share something of his delight in Plato. Here, ten years later, Heine +sneered, and laughed and wept, and sneered again--drank tea with "la +belle Irlandaise," flirted with Francesca "la ballerina," and wrote +alternately with a feathered quill from the breast of a nightingale and +with a lancet steeped in aquafortis: and here, a quarter of a century +afterward, Robert and Elizabeth Browning also laughed and wept and +"joyed i' the sun," dreamed many dreams, and touched chords of beauty +whose vibration has become incorporated with the larger rhythm of all +that is high and enduring in our literature. + +On returning to Florence (Browning with the MS. of the greater part of +his splendid fragmentary tragedy, "In a Balcony," composed mainly while +walking alone through the forest glades), Mrs. Browning found that the +chill breath of the _tramontana_ was affecting her lungs, so a move +was made to Rome, for the passing of the winter (1853-4). In the spring +their little boy, their beloved "Pen,"[22] became ill with malaria. This +delayed their return to Florence till well on in the summer. During this +stay in Rome Mrs. Browning rapidly proceeded with "Aurora Leigh," and +Browning wrote several of his "Men and Women," including the exquisite +'Love among the Ruins,' with its novel metrical music; 'Fra Lippo +Lippi,' where the painter, already immortalised by Landor, has his third +warrant of perpetuity; the 'Epistle of Karshish' (in part); +'Memorabilia' (composed on the Campagna); 'Saul,' a portion of which had +been written and published ten years previously, that noble and lofty +utterance, with its trumpet-like note of the regnant spirit; the +concluding part of "In a Balcony;" and 'Holy Cross Day'--besides, +probably, one or two others. In the late spring (April 27th) also, he +wrote the short dactylic lyric, 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom.' This little +poem was given to a friend for appearance in one of the then popular +_Keepsakes_--literally given, for Browning never contributed to +magazines. The very few exceptions to this rule were the result of a +kindliness stronger than scruple: as when (1844), at request of Lord +Houghton (then Mr. Monckton Milnes), he sent 'Tokay,' the 'Flower's +Name,' and 'Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis,' to "help in making up some +magazine numbers for poor Hood, then at the point of death from +hemorrhage of the lungs, occasioned by the enlargement of the heart, +which had been brought on by the wearing excitement of ceaseless and +excessive literary toil." As 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom,' though it has been +reprinted in several quarters, will not be found in any volume of +Browning's works, and was omitted from "Men and Women" by accident, and +from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here. +Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for a thistle. + +[Footnote 22: So-called, it is asserted, from his childish effort to +pronounce a difficult name (Wiedemann). But despite the good authority +for this statement, it is impossible not to credit rather the +explanation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, affords the +practically definite proof that the boy was at first, as a term of +endearment, called "Pennini," which was later abbreviated to "Pen." The +cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of "Apennino," which was +bestowed upon the boy in babyhood because he was very small, there being +a statue in Florence of colossal size called "Apennino."] + + I. + + "'Would a man 'scape the rod'?-- + Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, + 'See that he turns to God + The day before his death.' + + 'Ay, could a man inquire + When it shall come!' I say. + The Rabbi's eye shoots fire-- + 'Then let him turn to-day!' + + II. + + Quoth a young Sadducee,-- + 'Reader of many rolls, + Is it so certain we + Have, as they tell us, souls?'-- + + 'Son, there is no reply!' + The Rabbi bit his beard: + 'Certain, a soul have _I_-- + _We_ may have none,' he sneer'd. + + Thus Karshook, the Hiram's Hammer, + The Right-Hand Temple column, + Taught babes their grace in grammar, + And struck the simple, solemn." + +It was in this year (1855) that "Men and Women" was published. It is +difficult to understand how a collection comprising poems such as "Love +among the Ruins," "Evelyn Hope," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "A Toccata of +Galuppi's," "Any Wife to any Husband," "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," +"Andrea del Sarto," "In a Balcony," "Saul," "A Grammarian's Funeral," to +mention only ten now almost universally known, did not at once obtain a +national popularity for the author. But lovers of literature were simply +enthralled: and the two volumes had a welcome from them which was +perhaps all the more ardent because of their disproportionate numbers. +Ears alert to novel poetic music must have thrilled to the new strain +which sounded first--"Love among the Ruins," with its Millet-like +opening-- + + "Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, + Miles and miles + On the solitary pastures where our sheep + Half asleep + Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop + As they crop-- + Was the site once of a city great and gay ..." + +Soon after the return to Florence, which, hot as it was, was preferable +in July to Rome, Mrs. Browning wrote to her frequent correspondent Miss +Mitford, and mentioned that about four thousand lines of "Aurora Leigh" +had been written. She added a significant passage: that her husband had +not seen a single line of it up to that time--significant, as one of the +several indications that the union of Browning and his wife was indeed a +marriage of true minds, wherein nothing of the common bane of +matrimonial life found existence. Moreover, both were artists, and, +therefore, too full of respect for themselves and their art to bring in +any way the undue influence of each other into play. + +By the spring of 1856, however, the first six "books" were concluded: +and these, at once with humility and pride, Mrs. Browning placed in her +husband's hands. The remaining three books were written, in the summer, +in John Kenyon's London house. + +It was her best, her fullest answer to the beautiful dedicatory poem, +"One Word More," wherewith her husband, a few months earlier, sent forth +his "Men and Women," to be for ever associated with "E.B.B." + + I. + + "There they are, my fifty men and women + Naming me the fifty poems finished! + Take them, Love, the book and me together: + Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. + + XVIII. + + This I say of me, but think of you, Love! + This to you--yourself my moon of poets! + Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder, + Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you! + There, in turn I stand with them and praise you-- + Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. + But the best is when I glide from out them, + Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, + Come out on the other side, the novel + Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, + Where I hush and bless myself with silence." + +The transference from Florence to London was made in May. In the summer +"Aurora Leigh" was published, and met with an almost unparalleled +success: even Landor, most exigent of critics, declared that he was +"half drunk with it," that it had an imagination germane to that of +Shakspere, and so forth. + +The poem was dedicated to Kenyon, and on their homeward way the +Brownings were startled and shocked to hear of his sudden death. By the +time they had arrived at Casa Guidi again they learned that their good +friend had not forgotten them in the disposition of his large fortune. +To Browning he bequeathed six thousand, to Mrs. Browning four thousand +guineas. This loss was followed early in the ensuing year (1857) by the +death of Mr. Barrett, steadfast to the last in his refusal of +reconciliation with his daughter. + +Winters and summers passed happily in Italy--with one period of feverish +anxiety, when the little boy lay for six weeks dangerously ill, nursed +day and night by his father and mother alternately--with pleasant +occasionings, as the companionship for a season of Nathaniel Hawthorne +and his family, or of weeks spent at Siena with valued and lifelong +friends, W.W. Story, the poet-sculptor, and his wife. + +So early as 1858 Mrs. Hawthorne believed she saw the heralds of death in +Mrs. Browning's excessive pallor and the hectic flush upon the cheeks, +in her extreme fragility and weakness, and in her catching, fluttering +breath. Even the motion of a visitor's fan perturbed her. But "her soul +was mighty, and a great love kept her on earth a season longer. She was +a seraph in her flaming worship of heart." "She lives so ardently," adds +Mrs. Hawthorne, "that her delicate earthly vesture must soon be burnt up +and destroyed by her soul of pure fire." + +Yet, notwithstanding, she still sailed the seas of life, like one of +those fragile argonauts in their shells of foam and rainbow-mist which +will withstand the rude surge of winds and waves. But slowly, gradually, +the spirit was o'erfretting its tenement. With the waning of her +strength came back the old passionate longing for rest, for quiescence +from that "excitement from within," which had been almost over vehement +for her in the calm days of her unmarried life. + +It is significant that at this time Browning's genius was relatively +dormant. Its wings were resting for the long-sustained flight of "The +Ring and the Book," and for earlier and shorter though not less royal +aerial journeyings. But also, no doubt, the prolonged comparatively +unproductive period of eight or nine years (1855-1864), between the +publication of "Men and Women" and "Dramatis Personæ," was due in some +measure to the poet's incessant and anxious care for his wife, to the +deep sorrow of witnessing her slow but visible passing away, and to the +profound grief occasioned by her death. However, barrenness of +imaginative creative activity can be only very relatively affirmed, even +of so long a period, of years wherein were written such memorable and +treasurable poems as 'James Lee's Wife,' among Browning's writings what +'Maud' is among Lord Tennyson's; 'Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic;' 'Dis +Aliter Visum;' 'Abt Vogler,' the most notable production of its kind in +the language; 'A Death in the Desert,' that singular and impressive +study; 'Caliban upon Setebos,' in its strange potency of interest and +stranger poetic note, absolutely unique; 'Youth and Art;' 'Apparent +Failure;' 'Prospice,' that noble lyrical defiance of death; and the +supremely lofty and significant series of weighty stanzas, 'Rabbi Ben +Ezra,' the most quintessential of all the distinctively psychical +monologues which Browning has written. It seems to me that if these two +poems only, "Prospice" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," were to survive to the day +of Macaulay's New Zealander, the contemporaries of that meditative +traveller would have sufficient to enable them to understand the great +fame of the poet of "dim ancestral days," as the more acute among them +could discern something of the real Shelley, though time had preserved +but the three lines-- + + "Yet now despair itself is mild, + Even as the winds and waters are; + I could lie down like a tired child" ... + +something of the real Catullus, through the mists of remote antiquity, +if there had not perished the single passionate cry-- + + "Lesbia illa, + Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam + Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes!" + +At the beginning of July (1858), the Brownings left Florence for the +summer and autumn, and by easy stages travelled to Normandy. Here the +invalid benefited considerably at first: and here, I may add, Browning +wrote his 'Legend of Pornic,' 'Gold-Hair.' This poem of twenty-seven +five-line stanzas (which differs only from that in more recent +"Collected Works," and "Selections," in its lack of the three stanzas +now numbered xxi., xxii., and xxiii.) was printed for limited private +circulation, though primarily for the purpose of securing American +copyright. Browning several times printed single poems thus, and for the +same reasons--that is, either for transatlantic copyright, or when the +verses were not likely to be included in any volume for a prolonged +period. These leaflets or half-sheetlets of 'Gold Hair' and 'Prospice,' +of 'Cleon' and 'The Statue and the Bust'--together with the "Two Poems +by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning," published, for benefit of a +charity, in 1854--are among the rarest "finds" for the collector, and +are literally worth a good deal more than their weight in gold. + +In the tumultuous year of 1859 all Italy was in a ferment. No patriot +among the Nationalists was more ardent in her hopes than the delicate, +too fragile, dying poetess, whose flame of life burned anew with the +great hopes that animated her for her adopted country. Well indeed did +she deserve, among the lines which the poet Tommaseo wrote and the +Florence municipality caused to be engraved in gold upon a white marble +slab, to be placed upon Casa Guidi, the words _fece del suo verso aureo +anello fra Italia e Inghilterra_--"who of her Verse made a golden link +connecting England and Italy." + +The victories of Solferino and San Martino made the bitterness of the +disgraceful Treaty of Villafranca the more hard to bear. Even had we not +Mr. Story's evidence, it would be a natural conclusion that this +disastrous ending to the high hopes of the Italian patriots accelerated +Mrs. Browning's death. The withdrawal of hope is often worse in its +physical effects than any direct bodily ill. + +It was a miserable summer for both husband and wife, for more private +sorrows also pressed upon them. Not even the sweet autumnal winds +blowing upon Siena wafted away the shadow that had settled upon the +invalid: nor was there medicine for her in the air of Rome, where the +winter was spent. A temporary relief, however, was afforded by the more +genial climate, and in the spring of 1860 she was able, with Browning's +help, to see her Italian patriotic poems through the press. It goes +without saying that these "Poems before Congress" had a grudging +reception from the critics, because they dared to hint that all was not +roseate-hued in England. The true patriots are those who love despite +blemishes, not those who cherish the blemishes along with the virtues. +To hint at a flaw is "not to be an Englishman." + +The autumn brought a new sadness in the death of Miss Arabella +Barrett--a dearly loved sister, the "Arabel" of so many affectionate +letters. Once more a winter in Rome proved temporally restorative. But +at last the day came when she wrote her last poem--"North and South," a +gracious welcome to Hans Christian Andersen on the occasion of his +first visit to the Eternal City. + +Early in June of 1861 the Brownings were once more at Casa Guidi. But +soon after their return the invalid caught a chill. For a few days she +hovered like a tired bird--though her friends saw only the seemingly +unquenchable light in the starry eyes, and did not anticipate the +silence that was soon to be. + +By the evening of the 28th day of the month she was in sore peril of +failing breath. All night her husband sat by her, holding her hand. Two +hours before dawn she realised that her last breath would ere long fall +upon his tear-wet face. Then, as a friend has told us, she passed into a +state of ecstasy: yet not so rapt therein but that she could whisper +many words of hope, even of joy. With the first light of the new day, +she leaned against her lover. Awhile she lay thus in silence, and then, +softly sighing "_It is beautiful!_" passed like the windy fragrance of +a flower. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +It is needless to dwell upon what followed. The world has all that need +be known. To Browning himself it was the abrupt, the too deeply +pathetic, yet not wholly unhappy ending of a lovelier poem than any he +or another should ever write, the poem of their married life. + +There is a rare serenity in the thought of death when it is known to be +the gate of life. This conviction Browning had, and so his grief was +rather that of one whose joy has westered earlier. The sweetest music of +his life had withdrawn: but there was still music for one to whom life +in itself was a happiness. He had his son, and was not void of other +solace: but even had it been otherwise he was of the strenuous natures +who never succumb, nor wish to die--whatever accident of mortality +overcome the will and the power. + +It was in the autumn following his wife's death that he wrote the noble +poem to which allusion has already been made: "Prospice." Who does not +thrill to its close, when all of gloom or terror + + "Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, + Then a light, then thy breast, + O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, + And with God be the rest." + +There are few direct allusions to his wife in Browning's poems. Of those +prior to her death the most beautiful is "One Word More," which has been +already quoted in part: of the two or three subsequent to that event +none surpasses the magic close of the first part of "The Ring and the +Book." + +Thereafter the details of his life are public property. He all along +lived in the light, partly from his possession of that serenity which +made Goethe glad to be alive and to be able to make others share in that +gladness. No poet has been more revered and more loved. His personality +will long be a stirring tradition. In the presence of his simple +manliness and wealth of all generous qualities one is inclined to pass +by as valueless, as the mere flying spray of the welcome shower, the +many honours and gratifications that befell him. Even if these things +mattered, concerning one by whose genius we are fascinated, while +undazzled by the mere accidents pertinent thereto, their recital would +be wearisome--of how he was asked to be Lord Rector of this University, +or made a doctor of laws at that: of how letters and tributes of all +kinds came to him from every district in our Empire, from every country +in the world: and so forth. All these things are implied in the +circumstance that his life was throughout "a noble music with a golden +ending." + +In 1866 his father died in Paris, strenuous in life until the very end. +After this event Miss Sarianna Browning went to reside with her brother, +and from that time onward was his inseparable companion, and ever one of +the dearest and most helpful of friends. In latter years brother and +sister were constantly seen together, and so regular attendants were +they at such functions as the "Private Views" at the Royal Academy and +Grosvenor Gallery, that these never seemed complete without them. A +Private View, a first appearance of Joachim or Sarasate, a first concert +of Richter or Henschel or Hallé, at each of these, almost to a +certainty, the poet was sure to appear. The chief personal happiness of +his later life was in his son. Mr. R. Barrett Browning is so well known +as a painter and sculptor that it would be superfluous for me to add +anything further here, except to state that his successes were his +father's keenest pleasures. + +Two years after his father's death, that is in 1868, the "Poetical Works +of Robert Browning, M.A., Honorary Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford," +were issued in six volumes. Here the equator of Browning's genius may be +drawn. On the further side lie the "Men and Women" of the period +anterior to "The Ring and the Book": midway is the transitional zone +itself: on the hither side are the "Men and Women" of a more temperate +if not colder clime. + +The first part of "The Ring and the Book" was not published till +November. In September the poet was staying with his sister and son at +Le Croisic, a picturesque village at the mouth of the Loire, at the end +of the great salt plains which stretch down from Guérande to the Bay of +Biscay. No doubt, in lying on the sand-dunes in the golden September +glow, in looking upon the there somewhat turbid current of the Loire, +the poet brooded on those days when he saw its inland waters with her +who was with him no longer save in dreams and memories. Here he wrote +that stirring poem, "Hervé Riel," founded upon the valorous action of a +French sailor who frustrated the naval might of England, and claimed +nothing as a reward save permission to have a holiday on land to spend a +few hours with his wife, "la belle Aurore." "Hervé Riel" (which has been +translated into French, and is often recited, particularly in the +maritime towns, and is always evocative of enthusiastic applause) is one +of Browning's finest action-lyrics, and is assured of the same +immortality as "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," or +the "Pied Piper" himself. + +In 1872 there was practical proof of the poet's growing popularity. +Baron Tauchnitz issued two volumes of excellently selected poems, +comprising some of the best of "Men and Women," "Dramatis Personæ," and +"Dramatic Romances," besides the longer "Soul's Tragedy," "Luria," "In a +Balcony," and "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"--the most Christian poem of +the century, according to one eminent cleric, the heterodox +self-sophistication of a free-thinker, according to another: really, the +reflex of a great crisis, that of the first movement of the tide of +religious thought to a practically limitless freedom. This edition also +contained "Bishop Blougram," then much discussed, apart from its poetic +and intellectual worth, on account of its supposed verisimilitude in +portraiture of Cardinal Wiseman. This composition, one of Browning's +most characteristic, is so clever that it is scarcely a poem. Poetry and +Cleverness do not well agree, the muse being already united in perfect +marriage to Imagination. In his Essay on Truth, Bacon says that one of +the Fathers called poetry _Vinum Dæmonum_, because it filleth the +imagination. Certainly if it be not _vinum dæmonum_ it is not Poetry. + +In this year also appeared the first series of "Selections" by the +poet's latest publishers: "Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson. In +Poetry--illustrious and consummate: In Friendship--noble and sincere." +It was in his preface to this selection that he wrote the often-quoted +words: "Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, +unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh." At or about the date +of these "Selections" the poet wrote to a friend, on this very point of +obscurity, "I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main +too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I +never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have +supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature +as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle +man. So perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and something over--not +a crowd, but a few I value more." + +In 1877 Browning, ever restless for pastures new, went with his sister +to spend the autumn at La Saisiaz (Savoyard for "the sun"), a villa +among the mountains near Geneva; this time with the additional company +of Miss Anne Egerton Smith, an intimate and valued friend. But there was +an unhappy close to the holiday. Miss Smith died on the night of the +fourteenth of September, from heart complaint. "La Saisiaz" is the +direct outcome of this incident, and is one of the most beautiful of +Browning's later poems. Its trochaics move with a tide-like sound. + +At the close, there is a line which might stand as epitaph for the +poet-- + + "He, at least, believed in Soul, was very sure of God." + +In the following year "La Saisiaz" was published along with "The Two +Poets of Croisic," which was begun and partly written at the little +French village ten years previously. There is nothing of the eight-score +stanzas of the "Two Poets" to equal its delightful epilogue, or the +exquisite prefatory lyric, beginning + + "Such a starved bank of moss + Till that May-morn + Blue ran the flash across: + Violets were born." + +Extremely interesting--and for myself I cannot find "The Two Poets of +Croisic" to be anything more than "interesting"--it is as a poem +distinctly inferior to "La Saisiaz." Although detached lines are often +far from truly indicative of the real poetic status of a long poem, +where proportion and harmony are of more importance than casual +exfoliations of beauty, yet to a certain extent they do serve as musical +keys that give the fundamental tone. One certainly would have to search +in vain to find in the Croisic poem such lines as + + "Five short days, scarce enough to + Bronze the clustered wilding apple, redden ripe the mountain ash." + +Or these of Mont Blanc, seen at sunset, towering over icy pinnacles and +teeth-like peaks, + + "Blanc, supreme above his earth-brood, needles red and white and green, + Horns of silver, fangs of crystal set on edge in his demesne." + +Or, again, this of the sun swinging himself above the dark shoulder of +Jura-- + + "Gay he hails her, and magnific, thrilled her black length burns to + gold." + +Or, finally, this sounding verse-- + + "Past the city's congregated peace of homes and pomp of spires." + +The other poems later than "The Ring and the Book" are, broadly +speaking, of two kinds. On the one side may be ranged the groups which +really cohere with "Men and Women." These are "The Inn Album," the +miscellaneous poems of the "Pacchiarotto" volume, the "Dramatic Idyls," +some of "Jocoseria," and some of "Asolando." "Ferishtah's Fancies" and +"Parleyings" are not, collectively, dramatic poems, but poems of +illuminative insight guided by a dramatic imagination.[23] They, and the +classical poems and translations (renderings, rather, by one whose own +individuality dominates them to the exclusion of that _nearness_ of the +original author, which it should be the primary aim of the translator to +evoke), the beautiful "Balaustion's Adventure," "Aristophanes' Apology," +and "The Agamemnon of Aeschylus," and the third group, which comprises +"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," and +"Fifine at the Fair"--these three groups are of the second kind. + +[Footnote 23: In a letter to a friend, Browning wrote:--"I hope and +believe that one or two careful readings of the Poem [Ferishtah's +Fancies] will make its sense clear enough. Above all, pray allow for the +Poet's inventiveness in any case, and do not suppose there is more than +a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions. There was no such +person as Ferishtah--the stories are all inventions. ... The Hebrew +quotations are put in for a purpose, as a direct acknowledgment that +certain doctrines may be found in the Old Book, which the Concocters of +Novel Schemes of Morality put forth as discoveries of their own."] + +Remarkable as are the three last-named productions, it is extremely +doubtful if the first and second will be read for pleasure by readers +born after the close of this century. As it is impossible, in my narrow +limits, to go into any detail about poems which personally I do not +regard as essential to the truest understanding of Browning, the truest +because on the highest level, that of poetry--as distinct from dogma, or +intellectual suasion of any kind that might, for all its æsthetic charm, +be in prose--it would be presumptuous to assert anything derogatory of +them without attempting adequate substantiation. I can, therefore, +merely state my own opinion. To reiterate, it is that, for different +reasons, these three long poems are foredoomed to oblivion--not, of +course, to be lost to the student of our literature and of our age, a +more wonderful one even than that of the Renaissance, but to lapse from +the general regard. That each will for a long time find appreciative +readers is certain. They have a fascination for alert minds, and they +have not infrequent ramifications which are worth pursuing for the +glimpses afforded into an always evanishing Promised Land. "Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau" (the name, by the way, is not purely fanciful, +being formed from Hohen Schwangau, one of the castles of the late King +of Bavaria) is Browning's complement to his wife's "Ode to Napoleon +III." "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" is a true story, the narrative of +the circumstances pertinent to the tragic death of one Antonio Mellerio, +a Paris jeweller, which occurred in 1870 at St. Aubin in Normandy, +where, indeed, the poet first heard of it in all its details. It is a +story which, if the method of poetry and the method of prose could for a +moment be accepted as equivalent, might be said to be of the school of a +light and humorously grotesque Zola. It has the fundamental weakness of +"The Ring and the Book"--the weakness of an inadequate ethical basis. It +is, indeed, to that great work what a second-rate novelette is to a +masterpiece of fiction. + +"Fifine at the Fair," on the other hand, is so powerful and often so +beautiful a poem that one would be rash indeed were he, with the blithe +critical assurance which is so generally snuffed out like a useless +candle by a later generation, to prognosticate its inevitable seclusion +from the high place it at present occupies in the estimate of the poet's +most uncompromising admirers. But surely equally rash is the assertion +that it will be the "poem of the future." However, our concern is not +with problematical estimates, but with the poem as it appears to _us_. +It is one of the most characteristic of Browning's productions. It would +be impossible for the most indolent reader or critic to attribute it, +even if anonymous, to another parentage. Coleridge alludes somewhere to +certain verses of Wordsworth's, with the declaration that if he had met +them howling in the desert he would have recognised their authorship. +"Fifine" would not even have to howl. + +Browning was visiting Pornic one autumn, when he saw the gipsy who was +the original of "Fifine." In the words of Mrs. Orr, "his fancy was +evidently set roaming by the gipsy's audacity, her strength--the +contrast which she presented to the more spiritual types of womanhood; +and this contrast eventually found expression in a pathetic theory of +life, in which these opposite types and their corresponding modes of +attraction became the necessary complement of each other. As he laid +down the theory, Mr. Browning would be speaking in his own person. But +he would turn into some one else in the act of working it out--for it +insensibly carried with it a plea for yielding to those opposite +attractions, not only successively, but at the same time; and a modified +Don Juan would grow up under his pen." + +One drawback to an unconditional enjoyment of Balzac is that every now +and again the student of the _Comédie Humaine_ resents the too obvious +display of the forces that propel the effect--a lesser phase of the +weariness which ensues upon much reading of the mere "human documents" +of the Goncourt school of novelists. In the same way, we too often see +Browning working up the electrical qualities, so that, when the +fulmination comes, we understand "just how it was produced," and, as +illogically as children before a too elaborate conjurer, conclude that +there is not so much in this particular poetic feat as in others which, +like Herrick's maids, continually do deceive. To me this is affirmable +of "Fifine at the Fair." The poet seems to know so very well what he is +doing. If he did not take the reader so much into his confidence, if he +would rely more upon the liberal grace of his earlier verse and less +upon the trained subtlety of his athletic intellect, the charm would be +the greater. The poem would have a surer duration as one of the author's +greater achievements, if there were more frequent and more prolonged +insistence on the note struck in the lines (§ lxxiii.) about the +hill-stream, infant of mist and dew, falling over the ledge of the +fissured cliff to find its fate in smoke below, as it disappears into +the deep, "embittered evermore, to make the sea one drop more big +thereby:" or in the cloudy splendour of the description of nightfall (§ +cvi.): or in the windy spring freshness of + + "Hence, when the earth began afresh its life in May, + And fruit-trees bloomed, and waves would wanton, and the bay + Ruffle its wealth of weed, and stranger-birds arrive, + And beasts take each a mate." ... + +But its chief fault seems to me to be its lack of that transmutive glow +of rhythmic emotion without which no poem can endure. This rhythmic +energy is, inherently, a distinct thing from intellectual emotion. +Metric music may be alien to the adequate expression of the latter, +whereas rhythmic emotion can have no other appropriate issue. Of course, +in a sense, all creative art is rhythmic in kind: but here I am speaking +only of that creative energy which evolves the germinal idea through the +medium of language. The energy of the intellect under creative stimulus +may produce lordly issues in prose: but poetry of a high intellectual +order can be the outcome only of an intellect fused to white heat, of +intellectual emotion on fire--as, in the fine saying of George Meredith, +passion is noble strength on fire. Innumerable examples could be taken +from any part of the poem, but as it would not be just to select the +most obviously defective passages, here are two which are certainly +fairly representative of the general level-- + + "And I became aware, scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift + ensued in silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude, a + formidable change of the amphitheatre which held the Carnival; + _although the human stir continued just the same amid that shift + of scene_." (No. CV.) + + "And where i' the world is all this wonder, you detail so + trippingly, espied? My mirror would reflect a tall, thin, pale, + deep-eyed personage, pretty once, it may be, doubtless still + loving--certain grace yet lingers if you will--but all this + wonder, where?" (No. XL.) + + +Here, and in a hundred other such passages, we have the rhythm, if not +of the best prose, at least not that of poetry. Will "Fifine" and poems +of its kind stand re-reading, re-perusal over and over? That is one of +the most definite tests. In the pressure of life can we afford much time +to anything but the very best--nay, to the vast mass even of that which +closely impinges thereupon? + +For myself, in the instance of "Fifine," I admit that if re-perusal be +controlled by pleasure I am content (always excepting a few scattered +noble passages) with the Prologue and Epilogue. A little volume of those +Summaries of Browning's--how stimulating a companion it would be in +those hours when the mind would fain breathe a more liberal air! + +As for "Jocoseria,"[24] it seems to me the poorest of Browning's works, +and I cannot help thinking that ultimately the only gold grain +discoverable therein will be "Ixion," the beautiful penultimate poem +beginning-- + + "Never the time and the place + And the loved one altogether;" + +and the thrush-like overture, closing-- + + "What of the leafage, what of the flower? + Roses embowering with nought they embower! + Come then! complete incompletion, O comer, + Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer! + Breathe but one breath + Rose-beauty above, + And all that was death + Grows life, grows love, + Grows love!" + +[Footnote 24: In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of this +book, Browning stated that "the title is taken from the work of Melander +(_Schwartzmann_), reviewed, by a curious coincidence, in the +_Blackwood_ of this month. I referred to it in a note to 'Paracelsus.' +The two Hebrew quotations (put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun +and invention) being translated amount to (1) 'A Collection of Many Lies': +and (2), an old saying, 'From Moses to Moses arose none like Moses'......"] + +In 1881 the "Browning Society" was established. It is easy to ridicule +any institution of the kind--much easier than to be considerate of other +people's earnest convictions and aims, or to be helpful to their object. +There is always a ridiculous side to excessive enthusiasm, particularly +obvious to persons incapable of enthusiasm of any kind. With some +mistakes, and not a few more or less grotesque absurdities, the members +of the various English and American Browning Societies are yet to be +congratulated on the good work they have, collectively, accomplished. +Their publications are most interesting and suggestive: ultimately they +will be invaluable. The members have also done a good work in causing +some of Browning's plays to be produced again on the stage, and in Miss +Alma Murray and others have found sympathetic and able exponents of some +of the poet's most attractive _dramatis personæ_. There can be no +question as to the powerful impetus given by the Society to Browning's +steadily-increasing popularity. Nothing shows his judicious good sense +more than the letter he wrote, privately, to Mr. Edmund Yates, at the +time of the Society's foundation. + + "The Browning Society, I need not say, as well as Browning + himself, are fair game for criticism. I had no more to do with the + founding it than the babe unborn; and, as Wilkes was no Wilkeite, + I am quite other than a Browningite. But I cannot wish harm to a + society of, with a few exceptions, names unknown to me, who are + busied about my books so disinterestedly. The exaggerations + probably come of the fifty-years'-long charge of unintelligibility + against my books; such reactions are possible, though I never + looked for the beginning of one so soon. That there is a grotesque + side to the thing is certain; but I have been surprised and + touched by what cannot but have been well intentioned, I think. + Anyhow, as I never felt inconvenienced by hard words, you will not + expect me to wax bumptious because of undue compliment: so enough + of 'Browning,'--except that he is yours very truly, 'while this + machine is to him.'" + + +The latter years of the poet were full of varied interest for himself, +but present little of particular significance for specification in a +monograph so concise as this must perforce be. Every year he went +abroad, to France or to Italy, and once or twice on a yachting trip in +the Mediterranean.[25] At home--for many years, at 19 Warwick Crescent, +in what some one has called the dreary Mesopotamia of Paddington, and +for the last three or four years of his life at 29 De Vere Gardens, +Kensington Gore--his avocations were so manifold that it is difficult to +understand where he had leisure for his vocation. Everybody wished him +to come to dine; and he did his utmost to gratify Everybody. He saw +everything; read all the notable books; kept himself acquainted with the +leading contents of the journals and magazines; conducted a large +correspondence; read new French, German, and Italian books of mark; read +and translated Euripides and Æschylus; knew all the gossip of the +literary clubs, salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of +afternoon-tea parties; and then, over and above it, he was Browning: the +most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry since +Shakspere. His personal grace and charm of manner never failed. Whether +he was dedicating "Balaustion's Adventure" in terms of gracious +courtesy, or handing a flower from some jar of roses, or lilies, or his +favourite daffodils, with a bright smile or merry glance, to the lady of +his regard, or when sending a copy of a new book of poetry with an +accompanying letter expressed with rare felicity, or when generously +prophesying for a young poet the only true success if he will but listen +and act upon "the inner voice,"--he was in all these, and in all things, +the ideal gentleman. There is so charming and characteristic a touch in +the following note to a girl-friend, that I must find room for it:-- + + 29 De Vere Gardens, W., + _6th July_ 1889. + + MY BELOVED ALMA,--I had the honour yesterday of dining with the + Shah, whereupon the following dialogue:-- + + "Vous êtes poëte?" + + "On s'est permis de me le dire quelquefois." + + "Et vous avez fait des livres?" + + "Trop de livres." + + "Voulez-vous m'en donner un, afin que je puisse me ressouvenir de + vous?" + + "Avec plaisir." + + I have been accordingly this morning to town, where the thing is + procurable, and as I chose a volume of which I judged the binding + might take the imperial eye, 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 + no, was always, my Alma, your affectionate friend, + + ROBERT BROWNING. + + +[Footnote 25: It was on his first experience of this kind, more than a +quarter of a century earlier, that he wrote the nobly patriotic lines of +"Home Thoughts from the Sea," and that flawless strain of bird-music, +"Home Thoughts from Abroad:" then, also, that he composed "How they +brought the Good News." Concerning the last, he wrote, in 1881 (_vide +The Academy_, April 2nd), "There is no sort of historical foundation +about [this poem]. I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the +African coast, after I had been at it long enough to appreciate even the +fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse, 'York,' then in +my stable at home. It was written in pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's +_Simboli_, I remember."] + +His look was a continual and serene gleam. Lamartine, who remarks this +of Bossuet in his youth, adds a phrase which, as observant acquaintances +of the poet will agree, might be written of Browning--"His lips quivered +often without utterance, as if with the wind of an internal speech." + +Except for the touching and beautiful letter which he wrote from Asolo +about two months before his death, to Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, about a young +writer to whom the latter wished to draw the poet's kindly attention--a +letter which has a peculiar pathos in the words, "I shall soon depart +for Venice, on my way homeward"--except for this letter there is none so +well worth repetition here as his last word to the Poet-Laureate. The +friendship between these two great poets has in itself the fragrance of +genius. The letter was written just before Browning left London. + + 29 De Vere Gardens, W., + _August 5th_, 1889. + + MY DEAR TENNYSON,--To-morrow is your birthday--indeed, a memorable + one. Let me say I associate myself with the universal pride of our + country in your glory, and in its hope that for many and many a + year we may have your very self among us--secure that your poetry + will be a wonder and delight to all those appointed to come after. + And for my own part, let me further say, I have loved you dearly. + May God bless you and yours. + + At no moment from first to last of my acquaintance with your + works, or friendship with yourself, have I had any other feeling, + expressed or kept silent, than this which an opportunity allows me + to utter--that I am and ever shall be, my dear Tennyson, + admiringly and affectionately yours, + + ROBERT BROWNING. + + +Shortly after this he was at Asolo once more, the little hill-town in +the Veneto, which he had visited in his youth, and where he heard again +the echo of Pippa's song-- + + "God's in His heaven, + All's right with the world!" + +Mr. W.W. Story writes to me that he spent three days with the poet at +this time, and that the latter seemed, except for a slight asthma, to be +as vigorous in mind and body as ever. Thence, later in the autumn, he +went to Venice, to join his son and daughter-in-law at the home where he +was "to have a corner for his old age," the beautiful Palazzo Rezzonico, +on the Grand Canal. He was never happier, more sanguine, more joyous, +than here. He worked for three or four hours each morning, walked daily +for about two hours, crossed occasionally to the Lido with his sister, +and in the evenings visited friends or went to the opera. But for some +time past, his heart--always phenomenally slow in its action, and of +late ominously intermittent--had been noticeably weaker. As he suffered +no pain and little inconvenience, he paid no particular attention to the +matter. Browning had as little fear of death as doubt in God. In a +controlling Providence he did indeed profoundly believe. He felt, with +Joubert, that "it is not difficult to believe in God, if one does not +worry oneself to define Him."[26] + +[Footnote 26: "Browning's 'orthodoxy' brought him into many a combat +with his rationalistic friends, some of whom could hardly believe that +he took his doctrine seriously. Such was the fact, however; indeed, I +have heard that he once stopped near an open-air assembly which an +atheist was haranguing, and, in the freedom of his _incognito_, gave +strenuous battle to the opinions uttered. To one who had spoken of an +expected 'Judgment Day' as a superstition, I heard him say: 'I don't see +that. Why should there not be a settling day in the universe, as when a +master settles with his workmen at the end of the week?' There was +something in his tone and manner which suggested his dramatic conception +of religious ideas and ideals."--MONCURE D. CONWAY.] + +"How should externals satisfy my soul?" was his cry in "Sordello," and +it was the fundamental strain of all his poetry, as the fundamental +motive is expressible in + + "--a loving worm within its sod + Were diviner than a loveless god + Amid his worlds"-- + +love being with him the golden key wherewith to unlock the world of the +universe, of the soul, of all nature. He is as convinced of the two +absolute facts of God and Soul as Cardinal Newman in writing of "Two and +two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my +Creator." Most fervently he believes that + + "Haply for us the ideal dawn shall break ... + And set our pulse in tune with moods divine"-- + +though, co-equally, in the necessity of "making man sole sponsor of +himself." Ever and again, of course, he was betrayed by the bewildering +and defiant puzzle of life: seeing in the face of the child the seed of +sorrow, "in the green tree an ambushed flame, in Phosphor a vaunt-guard +of Night." Yet never of him could be written that thrilling saying which +Sainte-Beuve uttered of Pascal, "That lost traveller who yearns for +home, who, strayed without a guide in a dark forest, takes many times +the wrong road, goes, returns upon his steps, is discouraged, sits down +at a crossing of the roads, utters cries to which no one responds, +resumes his march with frenzy and pain, throws himself upon the ground +and wants to die, and reaches home at last only after all sorts of +anxieties and after sweating blood." No darkness, no tempest, no gloom, +long confused his vision of 'the ideal dawn.' As the carrier-dove is +often baffled, yet ere long surely finds her way through smoke and fog +and din to her far country home, so he too, however distraught, soon or +late soared to untroubled ether. He had that profound inquietude, which +the great French critic says 'attests a moral nature of a high rank, and +a mental nature stamped with the seal of the archangel.' But, unlike +Pascal--who in Sainte-Beuve's words exposes in the human mind itself +two abysses, "on one side an elevation toward God, toward the morally +beautiful, a return movement toward an illustrious origin, and on the +other side an abasement in the direction of evil"--Browning sees, +believes in, holds to nothing short of the return movement, for one and +all, toward an illustrious origin. + +The crowning happiness of a happy life was his death in the city he +loved so well, in the arms of his dear ones, in the light of a +world-wide fame. The silence to which the most eloquent of us must all +one day lapse came upon him like the sudden seductive twilight of the +Tropics, and just when he had bequeathed to us one of his finest +utterances. + +It seems but a day or two ago that the present writer heard from the +lips of the dead poet a mockery of death's vanity--a brave assertion of +the glory of life. "Death, death! It is this harping on death I despise +so much," he remarked with emphasis of gesture as well as of speech--the +inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the +listener's knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all +so characteristic of him---"this idle and often cowardly as well as +ignorant harping! Why should we not change like everything else? In +fiction, in poetry, in so much of both, French as well as English, and, +I am told, in American art and literature, the shadow of death--call it +what you will, despair, negation, indifference--is upon us. But what +fools who talk thus! Why, _amico mio_, you know as well as I that +death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is none the +less alive and ever recruiting new forces of existence. Without death, +which is our crapelike churchyardy word for change, for growth, there could +be no prolongation of that which we call life. Pshaw! it is foolish to +argue upon such a thing even. For myself, I deny death as an end of +everything. Never say of me that I am dead!" + +On the evening of Thursday, the 12th of December (1889), he was in bed, +with exceeding weakness. In the centre of the lofty ceiling of the room +in which he lay, and where it had been his wont to work, there is a +painting by his son. It depicts an eagle struggling with a serpent, and +is illustrative of a superb passage in Shelley's "Revolt of Islam." What +memories, what deep thoughts, it must have suggested; how significant, +to us, the circumstance! But weak as the poet was, he yet did not see +the shadow which had begun to chill the hearts of the watchers. Shortly +before the great bell of San Marco struck ten, he turned and asked if +any news had come concerning "Asolando," published that day. His son +read him a telegram from the publishers, telling how great the demand +was and how favourable were the advance-articles in the leading papers. +The dying poet smiled and muttered, "How gratifying!" When the last toll +of St. Mark's had left a deeper stillness than before, those by the +bedside saw a yet profounder silence on the face of him whom they loved. + + * * * * * + +It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt and expressed for +the irreparable loss. The magnificent closing lines of Shelley's +"Alastor" must have occurred to many a mourner; for gone, indeed, was "a +surpassing Spirit." The superb pomp of the Venetian funeral, the solemn +grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey, do not seem worth +recording: so insignificant are all these accidents of death made by the +supreme fact itself. Yet it is fitting to know that Venice has never in +modern times afforded a more impressive sight, than those craped +processional gondolas following the high flower-strewn funeral-barge +through the thronged water-ways and out across the lagoon to the +desolate Isle of the Dead: that London has rarely seen aught more solemn +than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces, echoing at first with the slow +tramp of the pall-bearers, and then with the sweet aerial music swaying +upward the loved familiar words of the 'Lyric Voice' hushed so long +before. Yet the poet was as much honoured by those humble friends, +Lambeth artizans and a few poor working-women, who threw sprays of +laurel before the hearse--by that desolate, starving, woe-weary +gentleman, shivering in his threadbare clothes, who seemed transfixed +with a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere he hurriedly drew from his +sleeve a large white chrysanthemum, and throwing it beneath the coffin +as it was lifted inward, disappeared in the crowd, which closed again +like the sea upon this lost wandering wave. + +Who would not honour this mighty dead? All who could be present were +there, somewhere in the ancient Abbey. One of the greatest, loved and +admired by the dead poet, had already put the mourning of many into the +lofty dignity of his verse:-- + + "Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak, + And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier, + Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear: + We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. + We see a spirit on Earth's loftiest peak + Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: + See a great Tree of Life that never sere + Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak: + Such ending is not Death: such living shows + What wide illumination brightness sheds + From one big heart--to conquer man's old foes: + The coward, and the tyrant, and the force + Of all those weedy monsters raising heads + When Song is murk from springs of turbid source."[27] + +[Footnote 27: George Meredith.] + +One word more of "light and fleeting shadow." In the greatness of his +nature he must be ranked with Milton, Defoe, and Scott. His very +shortcomings, such as they were, were never baneful growths, but mere +weeds, with a certain pleasant though pungent savour moreover, growing +upon a rich, an exuberant soil. Pluck one of the least lovely--rather +call it the unworthy arrow shot at the body of a dead comrade, so +innocent of ill intent: yet it too has a beauty of its own, for the +shaft was aflame from the fulness of a heart whose love had withstood +the chill passage of the years. + + * * * * * + +On the night of Browning's death a new star suddenly appeared in Orion. +The coincidence is suggestive if we like to indulge in the fancy that in +that constellation-- + + "No more subjected to the change or chance + Of the unsteady planets----" + +gleam those other "abodes where the Immortals are." Certainly, a +wandering fire has passed away from us. Whither has it gone? To that +new star in Orion: or whirled to remote silences in the trail of lost +meteors? Whence, and for how long, will its rays reach our storm and +gloom-beleaguered earth? + +Such questions cannot meanwhile be solved. Our eyes are still confused +with the light, with that ardent flame, as we knew it here. But this we +know, it was indeed "a central fire descending upon many altars." These, +though touched with but a spark of the immortal principle, bear enduring +testimony. And what testimony! How heartfelt: happily also how +widespread, how electrically stimulative! + +But the time must come when the poet's personality will have the +remoteness of tradition: when our perplexed judgments will be as a tale +of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is impossible for any student +of literature, for any interested reader, not to indulge in some +forecast as to what rank in the poetic hierarchy Robert Browning will +ultimately occupy. The commonplace as to the impossibility of +prognosticating the ultimate slow decadence, or slower rise, or, it may +be, sustained suspension, of a poet's fame, is often insincere, and but +an excuse of indolence. To dogmatise were the height of presumption as +well as of folly: but to forego speculation, based upon complete present +knowledge, for an idle contentment with narrow horizons, were perhaps +foolisher still. But assuredly each must perforce be content with his +own prevision. None can answer yet for the generality, whose decisive +franchise will elect a fit arbiter in due time. + +So, for myself, let me summarise what I have already written in several +sections of this book, and particularly in the closing pages of Chapter +VI. There, it will be remembered--after having found that Browning's +highest achievement is in his second period--emphasis was laid on the +primary importance of his life-work in its having compelled us to the +assumption of a fresh critical standpoint involving the construction of +a new definition. In the light of this new definition I think Browning +will ultimately be judged. As the sculptor in "Pippa Passes" was the +predestinated novel thinker in marble, so Browning himself appears as +the predestinated novel thinker in verse; the novel thinker, however, in +degree, not in kind. But I do not for a moment believe that his +greatness is in his status as a thinker: even less, that the poet and +the thinker are indissociable. Many years ago Sainte-Beuve destroyed +this shallow artifice of pseudo-criticism: "Venir nous dire que tout +poëte de talent est, par essence, un grand _penseur_, et que tout vrai +_penseur_ est nécessairement artiste et poëte, c'est une prétention +insoutenable et que dément à chaque instant la réalité." + +When Browning's enormous influence upon the spiritual and mental life of +our day--an influence ever shaping itself to wise and beautiful +issues--shall have lost much of its immediate import, there will still +surely be discerned in his work a formative energy whose resultant is +pure poetic gain. It is as the poet he will live: not merely as the +"novel thinker in verse." Logically, his attitude as 'thinker' is +unimpressive. It is the attitude, as I think some one has pointed out, +of acquiescence with codified morality. In one of his _Causeries_, the +keen French critic quoted above has a remark upon the great Bossuet, +which may with singular aptness be repeated of Browning:--"His is the +Hebrew genius extended, fecundated by Christianity, and open to all the +acquisitions of the understanding, but retaining some degree of +sovereign interdiction, and closing its vast horizon precisely where its +light ceases." Browning cannot, or will not, face the problem of the +future except from the basis of assured continuity of individual +existence. He is so much in love with life, for life's sake, that he +cannot even credit the possibility of incontinuity; his assurance of +eternity in another world is at least in part due to his despair at not +being eternal in this. He is so sure, that the intellectually scrupulous +detect the odours of hypotheses amid the sweet savour of indestructible +assurance. Schopenhauer says, in one of those recently-found Annotations +of his which are so characteristic and so acute, "that which is called +'mathematical certainty' is the cane of a blind man without a dog, or +equilibrium in darkness." Browning would sometimes have us accept the +evidence of his 'cane' as all-sufficient. He does not entrench himself +among conventions: for he already finds himself within the fortified +lines of convention, and remains there. Thus is true what Mr. Mortimer +says in a recent admirable critique--"His position in regard to the +thought of the age is paradoxical, if not inconsistent. He is in advance +of it in every respect but one, the most important of all, the matter of +fundamental principles; in these he is behind it. His processes of +thought are often scientific in their precision of analysis; the sudden +conclusion which he imposes upon them is transcendental and inept." +Browning's conclusions, which harmonise so well with our haphazard +previsionings, are sometimes so disastrously facile that they exercise +an insurrectionary influence. They occasionally suggest that wisdom of +Gotham which is ever ready to postulate the certainty of a fulfilment +because of the existence of a desire. It is this that vitiates so much +of his poetic reasoning. Truth may ring regnant in the lines of Abt +Vogler-- + + "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence + For the fulness of the days?"-- + +but, unfortunately, the conclusion is, in itself, illogical. + +We are all familiar with, and in this book I have dwelt more than once +upon, Browning's habitual attitude towards Death. It is not a novel one. +The frontage is not so much that of the daring pioneer, as the sedate +assurance of 'the oldest inhabitant.' It is of good hap, of welcome +significance: none the less there is an aspect of our mortality of which +the poet's evasion is uncompromising and absolute. I cannot do better +than quote Mr. Mortimer's noteworthy words hereupon, in connection, +moreover, with Browning's artistic relation to Sex, that other great +Protagonist in the relentless duel of Humanity with Circumstance. "The +final inductive hazard he declines for himself; his readers may take it +if they will. It is part of the insistent and perverse ingenuity which +we display in masking with illusion the more disturbing elements of +life. Veil after veil is torn down, but seldom before another has been +slipped behind it, until we acquiesce without a murmur in the +concealment that we ourselves have made. Two facts thus carefully +shrouded from full vision by elaborate illusion conspicuously round in +our lives--the life-giving and life-destroying elements, Sex and Death. +We are compelled to occasional physiologic and economic discussion of +the one, but we shrink from recognising the full extent to which it +bases the whole social fabric carefully concealing its insurrections, +and ignoring or misreading their lessons. The other, in certain aspects, +we are compelled to face, but to do it we tipple on illusions, from our +cradle upwards, in dread of the coming grave, purchasing a drug for our +poltroonery at the expense of our sanity. We uphold our wayward steps +with the promises and the commandments for crutches, but on either side +of us trudge the shadow Death and the bacchanal Sex, and we mumble +prayers against the one, while we scourge ourselves for leering at the +other. On one only of these can Browning be said to have spoken with +novel force--the relations of sex, which he has treated with a subtlety +and freedom, and often with a beauty, unapproached since Goethe. On the +problem of Death, except in masquerade of robes and wings, his eupeptic +temperament never allowed him to dwell. He sentimentalised where +Shakspere thought." Browning's whole attitude to the Hereafter is +different from that of Tennyson only in that the latter 'faintly,' while +he strenuously, "trusts the larger hope." To him all credit, that, +standing upon the frontiers of the Past, he can implicitly trust the +Future. + + "High-hearted surely he; + But bolder they who first off-cast + Their moorings from the habitable Past." + +The teacher may be forgotten, the prophet may be hearkened to no more, +but a great poet's utterance is never temporal, having that in it which +conserves it against the antagonism of time, and the ebb and flow of +literary ideals. What range, what extent of genius! As Mr. Frederick +Wedmore has well said, 'Browning is not a book--he is a literature.' + +But that he will "stand out gigantic" in _mass_ of imperishable work, +in that far-off day, I for one cannot credit. His poetic shortcomings seem +too essential to permit of this. That fatal excess of cold over emotive +thought, of thought that, however profound, incisive, or scrupulously +clear, is not yet impassioned, is a fundamental defect of his. It is the +very impetuosity of this mental energy to which is due the miscalled +obscurity of much of Browning's work--miscalled, because, however remote +in his allusions, however pedantic even, he is never obscure in his +thought. His is that "palace infinite which darkens with excess of +light." But mere excess in itself is nothing more than symptomatic. +Browning has suffered more from intellectual exploitation than any +writer. It is a ruinous process--for the poet. "He so well repays +intelligent study." That is it, unfortunately. There are many, like the +old Scotch lady who attempted to read Carlyle's _French Revolution_, +who think they have become "daft" when they encounter a passage such as, +for example, + + "Rivals, who ... + Tuned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms, + To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with, + 'As knops that stud some almug to the pith + 'Prickèd for gum, wry thence, and crinkled worse + 'Than pursèd eyelids of a river-horse + 'Sunning himself o' the slime when whirrs the breeze-- + _Gad-fly,_ that is." + +The old lady persevered with Carlyle, and, after a few days, found "she +was nae sae daft, but that she had tackled a varra dee-fee-cult author." +What would even that indomitable student have said to the above +quotation, and to the poem whence it comes? To many it is not the +poetry, but the difficulties, that are the attraction. They rejoice, +after long and frequent dippings, to find their plummet, almost lost in +remote depths, touch bottom. Enough 'meaning' has been educed from +'Childe Roland,' to cite but one instance, to start a School of +Philosophy with: though it so happens that the poem is an imaginative +fantasy, written in one day. Worse still, it was not inspired by the +mystery of existence, but by 'a red horse with a glaring eye standing +behind a dun one on a piece of tapestry that used to hang in the poet's +drawing-room.'[28] Of all his faults, however, the worst is that +jugglery, that inferior legerdemain, with the elements of the beautiful +in verse: most obvious in "Sordello," in portions of "The Ring and the +Book," and in so many of the later poems. These inexcusable violations +are like the larvæ within certain vegetable growths: soon or late they +will destroy their environment before they perish themselves. Though +possessive above all others of that science of the percipient in the +allied arts of painting and music, wherein he found the unconventional +Shelley so missuaded by convention, he seemed ever more alert to the +substance than to the manner of poetry. In a letter of Mrs. Browning's +she alludes to a friend's "melodious feeling" for poetry. Possibly the +phrase was accidental, but it is significant. To inhale the vital air of +poetry we must love it, not merely find it "interesting," "suggestive," +"soothing," "stimulative": in a word, we must have a "melodious feeling" +for poetry before we can deeply enjoy it. Browning, who has so often +educed from his lyre melodies and harmonies of transcendent, though +novel, beauty, was too frequently, during composition, without this +melodious feeling of which his wife speaks. The distinction between +literary types such as Browning or Balzac on the one hand, and Keats or +Gustave Flaubert on the other, is that with the former there exists a +reverence for the vocation and a relative indifference to the means, in +themselves--and, with the latter, a scrupulous respect for the mere +means as well as for that to which they conduce. The poet who does not +love words for themselves, as an artist loves any chance colour upon his +palette, or as the musician any vagrant tone evoked by a sudden touch in +idleness or reverie, has not entered into the full inheritance of the +sons of Apollo. The writer cannot aim at beauty, that which makes +literature and art, without this heed--without, rather, this creative +anxiety: for it is certainly not enough, as some one has said, that +language should be used merely for the transportation of intelligence, +as a wheelbarrow carries brick. Of course, Browning is not persistently +neglectful of this fundamental necessity for the literary artist. He is +often as masterly in this as in other respects. But he is not always, +not often enough, alive to the paramount need. He writes with "the verse +being as the mood it paints:" but, unfortunately, the mood is often +poetically unformative. He had no passion for the quest for seductive +forms. Too much of his poetry has been born prematurely. Too much of it, +indeed, has not died and been born again--for all immortal verse is a +poetic resurrection. Perfect poetry is the deathless part of mortal +beauty. The great artists never perpetuate gross actualities, though +they are the supreme realists. It is Schiller, I think, who says in +effect, that to live again in the serene beauty of art, it is needful +that things should first die in reality. Thus Browning's dramatic +method, even, is sometimes disastrous in its untruth, as in Caliban's +analytical reasoning--an initial absurdity, as Mr. Berdoe has pointed +out, adding epigrammatically, 'Caliban is a savage, with the +introspective powers of a Hamlet, and the theology of an evangelical +Churchman.' Not only Caliban, but several other of Browning's personages +(Aprile, Eglamour, etc.) are what Goethe calls _schwankende +Gestalten_, mere "wavering images." + +[Footnote 28: One account says 'Childe Roland' was written in three +days; another, that it was composed in one. Browning's rapidity in +composition was extraordinary. "The Return of the Druses" was written in +five days, an act a day; so, also, was the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon."] + +Montaigne, in one of his essays, says that to stop gracefully is sure +proof of high race in a horse: certainly to stop in time is imperative +upon the poet. Of Browning may be said what Poe wrote of another, that +his genius was too impetuous for the minuter technicalities of that +elaborate _art_ so needful in the building up of monuments for +immortality. But has not a greater than Poe declared that "what +distinguishes the artist from the amateur is _architectoniké_ in the +highest sense; that power of execution which creates, forms, and +constitutes: not the profoundness of single thoughts, not the richness +of imagery, not the abundance of illustration." Assuredly, no "new +definition" can be an effective one which conflicts with Goethe's +incontrovertible dictum. + +But this much having been admitted, I am only too willing to protest +against the uncritical outcry against Browning's musical incapacity. + +A deficiency is not incapacity, otherwise Coleridge, at his highest the +most perfect of our poets, would be lowly estimated. + + "Bid shine what would, dismiss into the shade + What should not be--and there triumphs the paramount + Surprise o' the master." ... + +Browning's music is oftener harmonic than melodic: and musicians know +how the general ear, charmed with immediately appellant melodies, +resents, wearies of, or is deaf to the harmonies of a more remote, a +more complex, and above all a more novel creative method. He is, among +poets, what Wagner is among musicians; as Shakspere may be likened to +Beethoven, or Shelley to Chopin. The common assertion as to his +incapacity for metric music is on the level of those affirmations as to +his not being widely accepted of the people, when the people have the +chance; or as to the indifference of the public to poetry generally--and +this in an age when poetry has never been so widely understood, loved, +and valued, and wherein it is yearly growing more acceptable and more +potent! + +A great writer is to be adjudged by his triumphs, not by his failures: +as, to take up Montaigne's simile again, a famous race-horse is +remembered for its successes and not for the races which it lost. The +tendency with certain critics is to reverse the process. Instead of +saying with the archbishop in Horne's "Gregory VII.," "He owes it all +to his Memnonian voice! He has no genius:" or of declaring, as Prospero +says of Caliban in "The Tempest," "He is as disproportioned in his +manners as in his shape:" how much better to affirm of him what Ben +Jonson wrote of Shakspere, "Hee redeemed his vices with his vertues: +there was ever more in him to bee praysed than to bee pardoned." In the +balance of triumphs and failures, however, is to be sought the relative +measure of genius--whose equipoise should be the first matter of +ascertainment in comparative criticism. + +For those who would discriminate between what Mr. Traill succinctly +terms his _generic_ greatness as thinker and man of letters, and his +_specific_ power as poet, it is necessary to disabuse the mind of +Browning's "message." The question is not one of weighty message, but of +artistic presentation. To praise a poem because of its optimism is like +commending a peach because it loves the sunshine, rather than because of +its distinguishing bloom and savour. The primary concern of the artist +must be with his vehicle of expression. In the instance of a poet, this +vehicle is language emotioned to the white-heat of rhythmic music by +impassioned thought or sensation. Schopenhauer declares it is all a +question of style now with poetry; that everything has been sung, that +everything has been duly cursed, that there is nothing left for poetry +but to be the glowing forge of words. He forgets that in quintessential +art there is nothing of the past, nothing old: even the future has part +therein only in that the present is always encroaching upon, becoming, +the future. The famous pessimistic philosopher has, in common with other +critics, made, in effect, the same remark--that Style exhales the odour +of the soul: yet he himself has indicated that the strength of Shakspere +lay in the fact that 'he had no taste,' that 'he was not a man of +letters.' Whenever genius has displayed epic force it has established a +new order. In the general disintegration and reconstruction of literary +ideals thus involved, it is easier to be confused by the novel flashing +of strange lights than to discern the central vivifying altar-flame. It +may prove that what seem to us the regrettable accidents of Browning's +genius are no malfortunate flaws, but as germane thereto as his +Herculean ruggednesses are to Shakspere, as the laboured inversions of +his blank verse are to Milton, as his austere concision is to Dante. +Meanwhile, to the more exigent among us at any rate, the flaws seem +flaws, and in nowise essential. + +But when we find weighty message and noble utterance in union, as we do +in the magnificent remainder after even the severest ablation of the +poor and mediocre portion of Browning's life-work, how beneficent seem +the generous gods! Of this remainder most aptly may be quoted these +lines from "The Ring and the Book," + + "Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore; + Prime nature with an added artistry." + +How gladly, in this dubious hour--when, as an eminent writer has phrased +it, a colossal Hand, which some call the hand of Destiny and others that +of Humanity, is putting out the lights of Heaven one by one, like +candles after a feast--how gladly we listen to this poet with his serene +faith in God, and immortal life, and the soul's unending development! +"Hope hard in the subtle thing that's Spirit," he cries in the Prologue +to "Pacchiarotto": and this, in manifold phrasing, is his +_leit-motif_, his fundamental idea, in unbroken line from the +"Pauline" of his twenty-first to the "Asolando" of his seventy-sixth year. +This superb phalanx of faith--what shall prevail against it? + +How winsome it is, moreover: this, and the humanity of his song. +Profoundly he realised that there is no more significant study than the +human heart. "The development of a soul: little else is worth study," he +wrote in his preface to "Sordello": so in his old age, in his last +"Reverie"-- + + "As the record from youth to age + Of my own, the single soul-- + So the world's wide book: one page + Deciphered explains the whole + Of our common heritage." + +He had faith also that "the record from youth to age" of his own soul +would outlast any present indifference or neglect--that whatever tide +might bear him away from our regard for a time would ere long flow +again. The reaction must come: it is, indeed, already at hand. But one +almost fancies one can hear the gathering of the remote waters once +more. We may, with Strafford, + + "feel sure + That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend + All the fantastic day's caprice, consign + To the low ground once more the ignoble Term, + And raise the Genius on his orb again,-- + That Time will do me right." ... + +Indeed, Browning has the grand manner, for all it is more that of the +Scandinavian Jarl than of the Italian count or Spanish grandee. + +And ever, below all the stress and failure, below all the triumph of his +toil, is the beauty of his dream. It was "a surpassing Spirit" that went +from out our midst. + + "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, + Never doubted clouds would break, + Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, + Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, + Sleep to wake." + +"Speed, fight on, fare ever There as here!" are the last words of this +brave soul. In truth, "the air seems bright with his past presence yet." + + "Sun-treader--life and light be thine for ever; + Thou art gone from us--years go by--and spring + Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful, + Yet thy songs come not--other bards arise, + But none like thee--they stand--thy majesties, + Like mighty works which tell some Spirit there + Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn, + Till, its long task completed, it hath risen + And left us, never to return." + + * * * * * + + + + +INDEX. + + +A. + +"Abt Vogler," 130, 172, 202 +"A Face," 130 +"A Forgiveness," 130 +"After," 130 +"Agamemnon of Æschylus," 182 +"A Grammarian's Funeral," 129, 168 +"A Likeness," 130 +Alma ----, Letter to, 191 +"Amphibian," 130 +Ancona, 150 +"Andrea del Sarto," 130, 168 +"Andromeda," 25 +"Another way of Love," 130 +"Any Wife to any Husband," 129, 168 +"A Pearl," 130 +"Apparent Failure," 130, 172 +"Appearances," 130 +Appearance, Browning's personal, 74, 161 +Aprile, 107, 204, 207 +"Aristophanes' Apology," 182 +"Ask not one least word of praise," 130 +"Asolando," 22, 39, 128, 131, 182, 196, 207, 210 +Asolo, 58, 192 +"A Soul's Tragedy," 89, 91, 179 +"Athenæum, The," 73 +"A Toccata of Galuppi's," 130, 168 +"Aurora Leigh," 118, 152, 166, 169, 170 + + +B. + +Bagni di Lucca, 157, 165 +Bailey's "Festus," 114 +"Balaustion's Adventure," 182, 190 +Balzac, 36, 114, 138, 185, 203, 206 +Barrett, Arabella, 54, 174 +Barrett, Edward, 136 +Barrett, Mr., 144, 161, 170 +"Beatrice Signorini," 131 +Beautiful in Verse, the, 206-7 +Beethoven, 209 +"Before," 130 +"Bells and Pomegranates," 76, 81, 138 +"Ben Karshook's Wisdom," 167 +Berdoe, E., 68, 204, 207 +"Bifurcations," 130 +"Bishop Blougram," 93, 179 +Blake, William, 94 +"Blot on the 'Scutcheon, A," 79, 88, 89, 90, 91, 206 +Bossuet and Browning, 191 +Browning, Clara, 21 +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: + Browning's early influence on, 92; + born March 4, 1809, 136; + her girlhood and early work, 136; + death of brother, 136; + residence in London, 137; + "The Cry of the Children," 137; + friendships with Horne and Kenyon, 137; + her appreciation of Browning's poems, 138; + correspondence with him, 138; + engagement, 139; + acquaintance with Mrs. Jameson, 143; + marriage, 145; + Mr. Barrett's resentment, 144; + journey to Paris, 145; + thence to Pisa, 146; + Browning's love for his wife, 146; + "Sonnets from the Portuguese," 147; + in spring to Florence, 150; + to Ancona, _via_ Ravenna, in June, 150; + winter at Casa Guidi, 152; + "Aurora Leigh," 152; + description of poetess, 153, 154; + birth of son in 1849, 157; + "Casa Guidi Windows," 159; + 1850, spring in Rome; proposal to confer poet-laureateship on + Mrs. Browning, 159, 161; + 1851, visits England, 161; + winter in Paris, 162; + she is enthusiastic about Napoleon III. and interested in Spiritualism; + summer in London, 162; + autumn at Casa Guidi, 162; + winter 1853-4 in Rome, 1856 "Aurora Leigh," death of Kenyon, + legacies, 170; + 1857, death of Mr. Barrett, 170; + 1858, delicacy of Mrs. Browning, 171; + July 1858, Brownings travel to Normandy; "Two Poems by Elizabeth + Barrett and Robert Browning," 1854, 173; + 1860, "Poems before Congress," and death of Arabella Barrett, 160; + "North and South," 174; + return to Casa Guidi, and death on 28th June 1861, 175, 206 +Browning, Reuben, 18, 19, 20 +Browning, Robert: + born in London in 1812, 11, 13, 19; + his literary and artistic antecedents and contemporaries, 12-14; + his parentage and ancestry, 15, 17-19; + concerning traces of Semitic origin, 15-19; + his sisters, 20; + his father, 18; + his mother, 20, 23; + his uncle, Reuben Browning, 20; + the Camberwell home, 23; + his childhood, 22; + early poems, 25; + translation of the odes of Horace, 26; + goes to school at Peckham, 27; + his holiday afternoons, 27; + "Death of Harold," 29; + criticisms of Miss Flower and Mr. Fox, 30; + he reads Shelley's and Keats's poems, 30, 31; + he has a tutor, 33; + attends Gower Street University College, 34; + he decides to be a poet, 35; + writes "Pauline," 1832, 36; + it is published in 1833, 39; + "Pauline," 39-49; + criticisms thereon, 49; + Rossetti and "Pauline," studies at British Museum, 52, 53; + travels in 1833 to Russia, 57; + to Italy, 58; + return to Camberwell, 1834, 58, and begins "Paracelsus," sonnet + signed "Z," 1834, 60; + love for Venice, 62; + "Paracelsus," 59, 62; + criticisms thereon, 71, 73; + he meets Macready, 73; + "Narses," 76; + he meets Talfourd, Wordsworth, Landor, 77; + "Strafford," 79; + his dramas, 85; + his love of the country, 95; + "Pippa Passes," 96, 98; + "Sordello," 105; + origin of "The Ring and the Book," 1865; + "The Ring and the Book," 113-119; + "The Inn Album," 127; + "Men and Women," 128; + proposed "Transcripts from Life," 129; + "Flower o' the Vine," 131; + correspondence between him and Miss Barrett, 136; + meeting in 1846, 138; + engagement, 140; + marriage, 12th September 1846, 145; + sojourn in Pisa, 146; + they go to Florence, 148; + to Ancona, _via_ Ravenna, 150; + "The Guardian Angel," 150; + Casa Guidi, 152; + birth of son, March 9th, 1849, 157; + they go to Vallombrosa and Bagni di Lucca for the autumn, and winter + at Casa Guidi, 156; + spring of 1850 in Rome, 159; + "Two in the Campagna," 156; + 1851, they visit England; + description of Browning, 161; + winter 1851-2 in Paris with Robert Browning, senior, 162; + Browning writes Prefatory Essay to Moxon's edition of Shelley's + Letters, 163; + midsummer, Baths of Lucca, 165; + in Florence, 166; + "In a Balcony," 166; + winter in Rome, 1853-4, 166; + the work written there, 167; + "Ben Karshook's Wisdom," 167; + "Men and Women" published, 168; + Kenyon's death, and legacies to the Brownings, 170; + poems written between 1855-64, 169; + July 1858, Brownings go to Normandy, 173; + "Legend of Pornic," "Gold Hair," 173; + autumn of 1859 in Sienna; winter 1860-61 in Rome, 173; + death of Mrs. Browning, June 1861, 175; + "Prospice," 176; + 1866, Browning loses his father; + Miss Sarianna resides with Browning, 177; + his ways of life, 177; + first collected edition of his works, 1868, 178; + first part of "The Ring and the Book" published, 178; + "Hervé Riel," 179; + Tauchnitz edition, 1872, 179; + "Bishop Blougram," 179; + "Selections," 180; + "La Saisiaz," 1877, 180; + "The Two Poets of Croisic," 181; + later works, 182; + "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," 182, 183; + "Fifine at the Fair," 183, 184, 185-7; + "Jocoseria," 187; + 1881, Browning Society established, 188; + his latter years, 189; + revisits Asolo, 191; + Palazzo Rezzonico, 192; + religious belief, 193; + death, December 12th, 1889, 195, 196; + funeral, 197; + to be estimated by a new definition, 200; + as poet, rather than as thinker, 200; + his love of life, 201; + his, like Bossuet's, a Hebrew genius fecundated by Christianity, 201; + his artistic relations to Death and Sex, 201-3; + where, in standpoint, he differs from Tennyson, 203; + as to quality of his _mass_ of work, 204; + intellectually exploited, 204; + his difficulties, and their attraction to many, 205; + his attitude to the future, influence, and significance, 205-211; + summary of his life-work, 200-212. +Browning, Robert Wiedemann Barrett, 18, 37, 157, 163, 174 +Browning, Robert (senior), 18, 20, 32, 33, 37, 38, 159, 173 +Browning, Sarianna (Mrs.), 21, 25, 29, 32 +Browning, Sarianna (Miss), 20, 177, 188 +Browning Society, the, 160, 188 +Browning, William Shergold, 18 +Byron, 149 +"By the Fireside," 130 + + +C. + +"Caliban upon Setebos," 172, 207, 209 +Camberwell, 20, 27, 33, 38, 54, 58, 61 +Carlyle, Thomas, 80, 105, 110, 115, 202, 204 +Casa Guidi, 120, 152, 154, 163, 166, 174 +"Cavalier-Tunes," 129 +"Childe Roland," 203, 205 +Chopin, 209 +"Christmas Eve and Easter-Day," 159, 179 +"Cleon," 130 +Coleridge, 208 +"Colombe's Birthday," 89-91 +"Confessional, The," 129 +"Confessions," 130 +Contemporaries, literary and artistic, of Browning, 12-14 +Conway, Moncure, 15, 193 +Cristina, 129 +"Cristina and Manaldeschi," 130 +Cunningham, Allan, 50, 51 + + +D. + +Dante, 93, 106, 107, 150 +Death, Browning on, 195, 202, 211 +"Death of Harold," 29 +"Death in the Desert, A," 129, 172 +Defoe, 198 +"De Gustibus," 57, 59, 130 +Dickens, Charles, 54, 90 +"Dîs Aliter Visum," 130, 172 +Domett, A. (Waring), 151 +Dramas, Browning's, 82-92 +"Dramatic Idyls," 57, 182 +"Dramatic Romances," 128, 179 +"Dramatis Personæ," 127, 171, 179 +Dulwich Wood, 62, 95, 98, 104-5 + + +E. + +"Earth's Immortalities," 129 +"Echetlos," 130 +Epics, series of monodramatic, 36 +Equator of Browning's genius, the, 178 +"Evelyn Hope," 129, 168 + + +F. + +Faucit, Miss Helen, 80 +"Ferishtah's Fancies," 182 +"Fifine at the Fair," 110, 130, 182, 184-7 +Flaubert, Gustave, 206 +"Flight of the Duchess," 27, 129 +"Flower's Name, The," 129, 167 +_Flower o' the Vine_, 131 +Flower, Miss Sarah (afterwards Adams), 30, 52 +Form, Artistic, 206-9 +Forster, John, 50, 73, 76 +Fox, Mrs. Bridell, 59 +Fox, Rev. William Johnson, 30, 50, 51, 52, 54, 73 +"Fra Lippo Lippi," 129, 166, 168 +Furnivall, Dr., 16, 163 +Future, Browning and the, 201-10 + + +G. + +Goethe, 114, 203, 207, 208 +"Gold Hair," 172, 173 +Gordon, General, 69 +Gosse, E.W., 81 +"Grammarian's Funeral, A," 129, 168 +"Guardian Angel, The," 130, 150 + + +H. + +"Halburt and Hob," 130 +Hawthorne, N., 154-5, 171 +"Heap Cassia," etc., 71 +Heine, 57, 165 +"Heretic's Tragedy, The," 129 +"Hervé Riel," 130, 179 +Hillard, G.S., 154-6 +"Holy Cross Day," 167 +"Home Thoughts from Abroad," 57, 129, 157, 189 +"Home Thoughts from the Sea," 57, 129, 189 +Hood, Thomas, 167 +Horne, R.H., 137, 138, 150, 152, 206, 209 +Houghton, Lord, 167 +"How they brought the Good News," etc., 29, 179, 189 +Hugo, Victor, 112, 114 + + +I. + +"Imperante Augusto," 131 +"In a Balcony," 88, 166, 167, 168, 179 +"In a Gondola," 129 +"Inapprehensiveness," 131 +"In a Year," 130 +"Inn Album, The," 70, 101, 113, 127, 182 +"Instans Tyrannus," 26 +"Italian in England, The," 58 +Italian Art, Music, etc.--Influence of, on Browning, 58 +Italy, first visit to, 56-7 +"Ivàn Ivànovitch," 57, 130 +"Ixion," 188 + + +J. + +Jameson, Mrs., 143 +"James Lee's Wife," 59, 130, 172 +Jerrold, Douglas, 109 +"Jocoseria," 130, 182, 187 +"Johannes Agricola," 59 +Joubert, 193 + + +K. + +Karshish, Epistle to, 129, 166 +Keats, 32, 71, 94, 134, 198, 206 +Kenyon, John, 137, 163, 170 +"King Victor and King Charles," 89, 91 + + +L. + +"Lady and the Painter, The," 131 +Lamartine on Bossuet, 191 +Landor, W.S., 77-9, 92 +"La Saisiaz," 130, 180 +"Last Ride Together, The," 130 +Le Croisie, 178 +Lehmann's, Rudolf, portrait of Browning, 16, 17 +_Leit-Motif_, Browning's, 210 +Letter to a Girl Friend, 191 +"Life in a Love," 130 +"Light Woman, A," 130 +"Lost Leader, The," 78, 129 +"Love among the Ruins," 129, 166, 168 +"Love in a Life," 130 +"Lover's Quarrel, A," 129 +Lowell, J.R., 142 +"Luria," 88, 89-92, 179 + + +M. + +Macpherson, Mrs., 143-6 +Macready, 74-81 +"Magical Nature," 130 +Manner, Browning's, 211 +Marlowe, 114 +"Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli," 130 +"Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," 130, 168 +"May and Death," 130 +Mazzini, 58 +"Meeting at Night," 129, 158 +"Memorabilia," 130, 166 +"Men and Women," 127-136, 166, 168, 169, 171, 178, 179, 182 +Meredith, George, 123, 124, 186, 198 +Meynell, Wilfrid, 191 +Montaigne, 207 +Mortimer, 201-2 +Motive, Browning's fundamental poetic, 210 +Mill, John Stuart, 51 +Milsand, J., 111 +Milton, 49, 92, 133, 198 +"Misconceptions," 130 +Mitford, Mary, 78 +"Muléykeh," 130 +Murray, Alma, 188 +Music of Browning's verse, 205-10 +"My Last Duchess," 129 +"My Star," 130 + + +N. + +"Narses," 76 +"Natural Magic," 120 +Nature, Browning's observation of, 96 +Nettleship, J., 75, 107 +"Never the Time and the Place," 130, 188 +Newman, Cardinal, 194 +_New Spirit of the Age_, 138 +Normandy, the Brownings in, 173 +"Now," 131 +"Numpholeptos," 130 + + +O. + +Obscurity, Browning's, 106, 180 +"Old Pictures in Florence," 130 +"O Lyric Love," 121, 130, 177 +"One Way of Love," 130 +"One Word More," 169, 177 +Optimism, Browning's, 24 (and _vide_ Summary) +Orion, new star in, 198 +Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, 18, 98, 111, 184 +Orthodoxy, Browning's, 193 +"Over the seas our galleys went," 29 + + +P. + +"Pacchiarotto," 128-30, 165, 182, 207, 210 +Palazzo Rezzonico, 192 +"Pan and Luna," 130 +"Paracelsus," 50, 58, 60-72, 85, 106, 107 +Paris, the Brownings in, 162 +"Parleyings," 182 +"Parting at Morning," 158 +Pater, Walter, 88 +"Pauline," 25, 32, 36, 38-48, 51-54, 85, 128, 208, 210 +"Pheidippides," 130 +"Pictor Ignotus," 129 +"Pied Piper of Hamelin," 75, 129, 179 +"Pippa Passes," 24, 32, 45, 58, 59, 70, 92, 95-104, 113 +Pisa, 146 +"Pisgah Sights," 130 +Plato, 95 +Poe, E.A., 207 +Poems, Early, 25, 26, 27, 28, 71 +"Poetical Works," 178 +"Poetics," 131 +Pompilia, 58, 122-125 +"Pope, The," 126 +"Popularity," 72 +"Porphyria," 59, 66 +Portraits of Browning, 16, 17, 53 +"Pretty Woman, A," 130 +Primary importance, Browning's, 134 +"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," 165, 182, 183 +Profundity, Browning's, 94 +"Prospice," 130, 172, 176 + + +R. + +Rabbi Ben Ezra, 129, 172 +Rawdon Brown, Sonnet to, 107 +"Red Cotton Nightcap Country," 110, 182-3 +Religious Opinions, 193, etc. +"Rephan," 131 +"Return of the Druses, The," 37, 89-91, 206 +"Reverie," 131, 207, 210 +Richmond, 38 +"Ring and the Book, The," 39, 101, 113-128, 177, 182, 203, 205, 210 +Romance, Browning and, 105 +Rome, the Brownings in, 159, 166 +Roscoe, W.C., 70 +"Rosny," 131 +Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 52-3, 55, 104 +"Round of Day, The," 131 +Ruskin, J., 23, 129 +Russia, Visit to, 58 + + +S. + +Sainte-Beuve, 194, 200 +"Saul," 129, 167, 168 +Schiller, 207 +School, Peckham, 27, 33 +Schopenhauer, 209, 210 +Shortcomings, Browning's artistic, 205 +Science, Browning and, 68 +Scott, David, 14 +Scott, Sir W., 198 +"Serenade at the Villa," 130 +Sex, Browning's artistic relation to, 202 +Shakspere, 36, 85-8, 93, 114, 206, 208, 209, 210 +Shelley, 30, 43, 136, 146, 149, 164-5, 172, 196, 203, 205, 209 +Shelley Letters, the, 163 +"Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis," 143, 167 +Skelton, John, 90 +"Sludge the Medium," 94, 165 +_Songs_--"Nay but you," 129; + "Round us the wild creatures," 130; + "Once I saw," 130; + "Man I am," 130; + "You groped your way," 130; + "Wish me no wish unspoken," 130 +Sonnets, Browning's, 58 +"Sonnets from the Portuguese," 147, 148 +"Sordello," 37, 58, 63, 79, 85, 89, 91, 92, 105-12, 203, 205, 210 +Soul, Browning and the, 210-11 +"Soul's Tragedy, A," 89, 91, 179 +"Speculative," 131 +Spiritual influence, Browning's, 200 +"St. Martin's Summer," 130 +Story, W.W., 154, 171, 192 +"Strafford," 62, 75, 79-86, 89, 211 +Summary of Criticism, 198-212 +Swinburne, A.C., 106 + + +T. + +Talfourd, 54, 78 +Tauchnitz edition, 179 +Taylor, Bayard, 161 +Tennyson, Lord, 54, 55, 134, 161, 180, 192 +"The Statue and the Bust," 173 +"The Tomb at St. Praxed's," 129, 143 +"There's a woman like a Dew-drop," 192 +Thinker, Browning as, 200 +"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr," 129 +"Tokay," 167 +"Too Late," 130 +"Touch him ne'er so lightly," 130 +Tour-de-force, Poetry and, 115 +_Transcripts from Life_, 129-131 +Traill, H.D., 209 +"Two in the Campagna," 130, 159, 160 +"Two Poets of Croisic," 130, 181 + + +U. + +University College, 33 + + +V. + +Venice, 59, 192, 197 +"Verse-making," 130 + + +W. + +Wagner, 209 +Wedmore, F., 204 +Westminster Abbey, 196 +"What of the Leafage," etc., 188 +"Why from the World," 130 +Wiedemann, Mr., 18 +"Woman's Last Word, A," 129 +Women, Browning's, 66 +"Women and Roses," 130 +Wonder Spirit, Browning and the, 95 +Wordsworth, 78, 94, 145, 161 +Work, Browning's mass of, 201 + + +Y. + +Yates, E., Letter from Browning to, 189 +York, the horse, 20, 190 +"Youth and Art," 130, 172 + + +Z. + +"Z" signed Sonnet, 58 + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY. + +BY + +JOHN P. ANDERSON + +(_British Museum_). + + + I. WORKS. + II. SINGLE WORKS. +III. CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAGAZINES. + IV. PRINTED LETTERS. + V. SELECTIONS. + VI. APPENDIX-- + Biography, Criticism, etc. + Magazine Articles. +VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS + + * * * * * + + + + +I. WORKS. + +Poems. 2 vols. A new edition. London, 1849, 16mo. + Vol. i., + Paracelsus; + Pippa Passes, a Drama; + King Victor and King Charles, a Tragedy; + Colombe's Birthday, a Play. + Vol. ii., + A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, a Tragedy; + The Return of the Druses, a Tragedy; + Luria, a Tragedy; + A Soul's Tragedy; + Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Third edition. 3 vols. +London, 1863, 8vo. + Vol. i., + Lyrics; + Romances; + Men and Women. + Vol. ii., + Tragedies and other Plays. + Vol. iii., + Paracelsus; + Christmas Eve and Easter-Day; + Sordello. + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. 6 vols. London, 1868, 8vo. + Vol. i., + Pauline; + Paracelsus; + Strafford. + Vol. ii., + Sordello; + Pippa Passes. + Vol. iii., + King Victor and King Charles; + Dramatic Lyrics; + The Return of the Druses. + Vol. iv., + A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; + Colombe's Birthday; + Dramatic Romances. + Vol. v., + A Soul's Tragedy; + Luria; + Christmas Eve and Easter-Day; + Men and Women. + Vol. vi., + In a Balcony; + Dramatis Personæ. + +Complete works of Robert Browning. A reprint from the latest English +edition. Chicago, 1872-74, 8vo. + Nos. 1-19 of the "Official Guide of the Chicago and Alton R.R. and + Monthly Reprint and Advertiser." + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1872, 8vo. + Vols. 1197, 1198 of the "Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors." + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. 16 vols. London, 1888-9, 8vo. + Vol. i. contains _Pauline_ and _Sordello_. + Vol. ii., _Paracelsus_ and _Strafford_. + Vol. iii., _Pippa Passes; King Victor and King Charles; The Return of + the Druses; A Soul's Tragedy._ + Vol. iv., _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; Colombe's Birthday; Men and + Women_. + Vol. v., _Dramatic Romances; Christmas Eve and Easter-Day._ + Vol. vi., _Dramatic Lyrics; Luria._ + Vol. vii., _In a Balcony; Dramatis Personæ._ + Vols. viii.-x., _The Ring and the Book_, 3 vols. + Vol. xi., _Balaustion's Adventure; Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau; + Fifine at the Fair_. + Vol. xii., _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; The Inn Album._ + Vol. xiii., _Aristophanes' Apology; The Agamemnon of Æschylus._ + Vol. xiv., _Pacchiarotto and how he worked in Distemper, with + other Poems._ + Vol. xv., _Dramatic Idyls; Jocoseria_. + Vol. xvi., _Ferishtah's Fancies; Parleyings with Certain People._ + + + + +II. SINGLE WORKS. + +The Agamemnon of Æschylus, transcribed by Robert Browning. + London, 1877, 8vo. + +Aristophanes' Apology, including a transcript from Euripides, + being the Last Adventure of Balaustion. London, 1875, 8vo. + +Asolando: Fancies and Facts. London, 1890 [1889], 8vo. + Now in seventh edition. + +Balaustion's Adventure; including a transcript from Euripides + [i.e., a translation of the "Alcestis"]. London, 1871, 8vo. + Now in third edition. + +Bells and Pomegranates. 8 Nos. London, 1841-1846, 8vo. + No. i., _Pippa Passes_, 1841. + No. ii., _King Victor and King Charles_, 1842. + No. iii., _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1842. + No. iv., _The Return of the Druses_, 1843. + No. v., _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, 1843. + No. vi., _Colombe's Birthday_, 1844. + No. vii., _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, 1845. + No. viii., _Luria_; and _A Soul's Tragedy_, 1846. + +Christmas Eve and Easter-Day. A poem. London, 1850, 16mo. + +Cleon. _Moxon_: London, 1855, 8vo. + Reprinted in _Men and Women_. + +Dramatic Idyls, 2 series. London, 1879-80, 8vo. + The First Series now in 2nd edition. + +Dramatis Personæ. London, 1864, 8vo. + Three poems in this book were reprinted from advance copies in the + Atlantic Monthly in vol. 13, 1864, viz., _Gold Hair_, pp. 596-599; + Prospice, p. 694; _Under the Cliff_, pp. 737, 738. + Second edition. London, 1864, 8vo. + +Ferishtah's Fancies. London, 1884, 8vo. + Now in third edition. + +Fifine at the Fair. London, 1872, 8vo. + +Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic. [London], 1864, 8vo. + Reprinted in _Dramatis Personæ_. Gold Hair appeared in the + Atlantic Monthly, May 1864, and _Dramatis Personæ_ was published + on May 28, 1864. + +The Inn Album. London, 1875, 8vo. + +Jocoseria. London, 1883, 8vo. + Now in third edition. + +La Saisiaz. The Two Poets of Croisie. London, 1878, 8vo. + +Men and Women. 2 vols. London, 1855, 8vo. + +Pacchiarotto and how he worked in distemper: with other poems. + London, 1876, 8vo. + +Paracelsus. London, 1835, 8vo. + +Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day. Introduced by + a Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates, etc. London, 1887, 8vo. + +Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession. London, 1833, 8vo. + There are only five known copies extant, two of which are in the + British Museum. + A reprint of the original edition of 1833. Edited by T.J. Wise. + London, 1886, 12mo. Four copies were printed on vellum. + +The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with 35 illustrations by Kate Greenaway. + London [1889], 4to. + Appeared originally in _Dramatic Lyrics_ (Bells and Pomegranates, + No. III.), 1842. + +Prince Hohenstiel--Schwangau: Saviour of Society. London, 1871, 8vo. + +Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or Turf and Towers. London, 1873, 8vo. + +The Ring and the Book. 4 vols. London, 1868-69, 8vo. + Now in second edition. + +Sordello. London, 1840, 8vo. + +The Statue and the Bust. _Moxon_: London, 1855, 8vo. + Reprinted in _Men and Women_. + +Strafford: an historical tragedy. London, 1837, 8vo. + [Acting edition for the use of the North London Collegiate School + for Girls.] [London, 1882.] 8vo. + Another edition. With notes and preface by E.H. Hickey, and an + introduction by S.R. Gardiner. London, 1884, 8vo. + +Two Poems. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. + London, 1854, 8vo. + These two poems, "A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London," by + Elizabeth B. Browning, and "The Twins," by Robert Browning, were + printed by Miss Arabella Barrett, for a bazaar in aid of a "Refuge + for Young Destitute Girls." "The Twins" was reprinted in "Men and + Women," in 1850. + + + + +III. CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAGAZINES, ETC. + +Sonnet.--"Eyes, calm beside thee, (Lady couldst thou know!") + Dated August 17, 1834; signed "Z." + (_Monthly Repository_, vol. 8 N.S., 1834, p. 712.) + +The King.--"A King lived long ago." Signed "Z." + (_Monthly Repository_, vol. 9 N.S., 1835, pp. 707, 708.) + Reprinted with six fresh lines and revised throughout, + in Pippa Passes (1841). + +Porphyria.--"The rain set early in to-night." Signed "Z." + (_Monthly Repository_, vol. 10 N.S., 1836, pp. 43, 44.) + +Johannes Agricola.--"There's Heaven above; and night by night." Signed "Z." + (_Monthly Repository_, vol. 10 N.S., 1836, pp. 45, 46.) + _Porphyria_ and _Johannes Agricola_ were reprinted in + "Bells and Pomegranates," No. iii., with the title _Madhouse Cells_. + +Lines.--"Still ailing, wind? Wilt be appeased or no?" Signed "Z." + (_Monthly Repository_, vol. 10 N.S., 1836, pp. 270, 271.) + Reprinted revised, in _Dramatis Personae_, 1884, as the first + six stanzas of VI. of "James Lee." + +The Laboratory (Ancient Régime). + (_Hood's Magazine_, vol. 1, 1844, pp. 513, 514.) + Reprinted in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845), as the first + of two poems called "France and England." + +Claret and Tokay. + (_Hoofs Magazine_, vol. 1, 1844, p. 525.) + Reprinted in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1846). + +Garden Fancies. I. The Flower's Name; II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. + (_Hood's Magazine_, vol. 2, 1844, pp. 45-48.) + Reprinted in _Dramatis Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). + +The Boy and the Angel. + (_Hood's Magazine_, vol. 2, 1844, pp. 140-142.) + Reprinted revised, and with five fresh couplets, in _Dramatic + Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). + +The Tomb at St. Praxed's (Rome 15--). + (_Hood's Magazine_, vol. 3, 1845, pp. 237-239.) + Reprinted in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). + +The Flight of the Duchess. + (_Hood's Magazine_, vol. 3, 1845, pp. 313-318.) + Reprinted in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). + +Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. [A fabrication.] + With an introductory essay, by Robert Browning. London, 1852, 8vo. +---- On the poet, objective and subjective; on the latter's aim; + on Shelley as man and poet. [Being a reprint of the Introductory + Essay to "Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley."] London, 1881, 8vo. + Published for the Browning Society. +---- A reprint of the Introductory Essay prefixed to the volume of + Letters of Shelley. Edited by W. Tyas Harden. London, 1838, 8vo. + +Ben Karshook's Wisdom. + (_The Keepsake_, 1856, p. 16.) + +May and Death. + (_The Keepsake_, 1857, p. 164.) + Reprinted in _Dramatis Personæ_ (1845). + +Orpheus and Eurydice. + F. Leighton. 8 lines. (_Royal Academy Exhibition Catalogue_ + 1864, p. 13.) + Reprinted in _Poetical Works_, 1868, where it is included in + _Dramatis Personæ_. + +Gold Hair. + _See_ note to _Dramatis Personæ_. + +Prospice. + _See_ note to _Dramatis Personæ_. + +Under the Cliff. + _See_ note to _Dramatis Personæ_. + +A selection from the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. + [First series edited by Robert Browning.] 2 series. London, 1866-80, 8vo. + +Hervé Riel. (_Cornhill Magazine_, vol 23, 1871, pp. 257-260.) + Reprinted in _Pacchiarotto and other Poems_, 1876. + +"Oh Love, Love:" the Lyric of Euripides in his Hippolytus. + (_Euripides. By J.P. Mahaffy_, p. 16.) London, 1879, 12mo. + +"The Blind Man to the Maiden said." + (_The Hour will Come_, by _Wilhelmine von Hillern. + From the German by Clara Bell_, vol. ii., p. 174.) + London [1879], 8vo. + Printed anonymously; quoted with statement of authorship in the + _Whitehall Review_, March 1, 1883. + Reprinted in _Browning Society's Papers_, Pt. iv., p. 410. + +Ten new lines to "Touch him ne'er so lightly." + (_Dramatic Idyls_, 2nd ser., 1880, p. 149.) + Lines written in an autograph album, Oct. 14, 1880. + (_Century Magazine_, vol. 25, 1882, pp. 159, 160.) + Printed without Mr. Browning's consent. Reprinted in the + _Browning Society's Papers_, Pt. in., p. 43. + +Sonnet on Goldoni (dated "Venice, Nov. 27, 1883"). + Written for the Album of the Committee of the Goldoni Monument + at Venice, and inserted on the first page. + (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Dec. 8, 1883.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., p. 98. + +Sonnet on Rawdon Brown (dated Nov. 28, 1883). + (_Century Magazine_, vol. 27, 1884, p. 640.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., p. 132. + +Paraphrase from Horace. + Four lines, written impromptu for Mr. Felix Moscheles. + (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Dec. 13, 1883, p. 6.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., p. 99. + +Helen's Tower: Sonnet, dated "April 26, 1870." + Written for the Earl of Dufferin, who built a tower in memory of his + mother, Helen, Countess of Gifford, on his estate at Clandeboye. + (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Dec. 28, 1883, p. 2.) + Reprinted in _Sonnets of this Century_, edited by William Sharp, + 1886, and in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., p. 97. + +The Founder of the Feast: Sonnet. (Dated "April 5, 1884.") + Inscribed by Mr. Browning in the Album presented to Mr. Arthur Chappell, + director of the St. James's Hall Concerts, etc. (_The World_, + April 16, 1884.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. vii., p. 18. + +"The Names." Sonnet on Shakespeare. + Contributed to the "Shaksperian Show-Book" of the Shaksperian Show, + held at the Albert Hall, on May 29-31, 1884. + Reprinted in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, May 29, and in the Browning + Society's Papers, Pt. v., p. 105. + +The Divine Order and other Sermons and Addresses, + by the late Thomas Jones. Edited by Brynmor Jones. + With a short introduction by Robert Browning. London, 1884, 8vo. + +Why I am a Liberal: Sonnet. + (_Why I am a Liberal_, edited by Andrew Reid. London, 1885, p. 11.) + Reprinted in _Sonnets of this Century_, edited by William Sharp, + 1886, and in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii., p. 92. + +Prefatory Note to the _Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning_, + 1889, dated "Dec. 10, 1887." + +To Edward Fitzgerald. "I chanced upon a new book yesterday." + 12 lines, dated "July 8, 1889" (_Athenæum_, July 13, 1889, p. 64). + + + + +IV. PRINTED LETTERS. + +Letter to Laman Blanchard [? April, 1841], dated "Craven Cottage, + Saturday." (_Poetical Works of Laman Blanchard_, pp. 6-8.) + London, 1876, 8vo. + +Letters to Henry Fothergill Chorley on his novels Pomfret (1845) and + Roccabella (1860). (_Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters of Henry + Fothergill Chorley_, vol. ii., pp. 25, 26, 169-174.) + +Letter to R.H. Horne, dated Pisa, Dec. 4 [1846]. Another dated London, + Sept. 24 [1851], signed Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. + (_Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to R.H. Horne_, 1877, + vol. ii., pp. 182-3, 194-5.) Londen, 1877, 8vo. + +Letter to William Etty, R.A., dated "Bagni di Lucea, Sept. 21, 1849." + (_Life of William Etty, R.A. By Alexander_ _Gilchrist_, + vol. ii., pp. 280-81.) London, 1855, 8vo. + +Letter to Leigh Hunt (dated "Bagni di Lucca, 6th Oct., 1857"). + (_Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, edited by his eldest son_, + vol. ii., pp. 264-267.) London, 1862, 8vo. + +Letter to the Editor of _The Daily News_, dated "19 Warwick + Crescent, W., Feb. 9," stating that his contribution to the French + Relief Fund was his publishers' payment for a lyrical poem (Hervé Riel). + (_Daily News_, Feb. 10, 1871.) + +Letter to the Editor of _The Daily News_, dated "Nov. 20." + On line 131, "Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De" of the poem, + _A Grammarian's Funeral_. (_Daily News_, Nov. 21, 1874.) + +Letter to the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, on the Poem of _The Lost + Leader_ and _Wordsworth_, dated "19 Warwick Crescent, + Feb. 24, 1875." (_The Prose Works of William Wordsworth. + Edited by the Rev. A.B. Grosart_, vol. i., p. xxxvii.) + London, 1876, 8vo. + +The Lord Rectorship of St. Andrew's. Letter to the Editor of + _The Times_, dated "19 Warwick Crescent, Nov. 19." + (_Times_, Nov. 20, 1877.) + +Letter to F.J. Furnivall. (_Academy_, Dec. 20, 1878.) + +Letter to Mr. J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps, and printed by the latter in 1881. + +Letter to Mr. Charles Kent, dated "29 De Vere Gardens, W., + 28 August, 1889." Accompanied by a presentation copy of the + 3rd vol. of the new collective edition of "Poems." (_Athenaeum._. + Dec. 21, 1889, p. 860). + +In Berdoe's "Browning's Message to his Time," etc., London, 1890, there +are a number of letters from Browning. + +In the new edition of Kingsland's "Robert Browning," London, 1890, there +are several letters from Browning. + + + + +V. SELECTIONS. + +Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning. + [Edited by J. Forster and B.W. Procter.] London, 1863 [1862], 16mo. + +Moxon's Miniature Poets. A Selection from the Works of Robert Browning. + London, 1865, 8vo. + +Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning. + 2 series. London, 1872-80, 8vo. + +Favourite Poems. Illustrated. + Boston, 1877, 16mo. + +A Selection from the Works of Robert Browning. + With a memoir of the author, and explanatory notes. Edited by F.H. Ahn. + Berlin, 1882, 8vo. Vol. viii. of Ahn's "Collection of British and + American Standard Authors." + +Stories from Robert Browning. + By F.M. Holland. With an introduction by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. + London, 1882, 8vo. + +Lyrical and Dramatic Poems selected from the works of Robert Browning. + With an extract from Stedman's "Victorian Poets." Edited by E.T. Mason. + New York, 1883, 8vo. + +Selections from the Poetry of Robert Browning. + With an introduction by R.G. White. New York [1883], 8vo. + +Pomegranates from an English Garden: a selection from the poems +of Robert Browning. + With introduction and notes by J.M. Gibson. New York, 1885, 8vo. + +Select Poems of Robert Browning. + Edited, with notes, by William J. Rolfe and Heloise E. Hersey. + New York, 1886, 8vo. + +Lyrics, Idyls, and Romances from the poetic and dramatic works +of Robert Browning. + Boston, 1887, 8vo. + +Good and true Thoughts from Robert Browning. + Selected by Amy Cross. New York, 1888, 4to. + Printed in blue ink, and on one side of the leaf. + +The Browning Reciter: Poems for Recitation, by Robert Browning +and other writers. + Edited by A.H. Miles. London, 1889, 8vo. + Part of the "Platform Series." + + + + +VI. APPENDIX. + +BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. + + +Alexander, William John. + An Introduction to the poetry of Robert Browning. + Boston, 1889, 8vo. + +Austin, Alfred. + The Poetry of the Period. + London, 1870, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 38-76. Appeared originally + in _Temple Bar_, vol. 28, 1869, pp. 316-333. + +Bagehot, Walter. + Literary Studies. + 2 vols. London, 1879, 8vo. Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or, + Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in English Poetry, vol. ii., + pp. 338-390. Appeared originally in the _National Review_, + vol. 19, 1864, pp. 27-67. + +Barnett, Professor. + Browning's Jews and Shakespeare's Jew. + Read at the 54th meeting of the Browning Society, Nov. 25th, 1887. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. x., pp. 207-220. + +Beale, Dorothea. + The Religious Teaching of Browning. + (Read at the 10th meeting of the Browning Society, Oct. 27th, 1882.) + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iii., + pp. 323-338. + +Berdoe, Edward. + Browning as a Scientific Poet. + (Read at the meeting of the Browning Society, April 24th, 1885.) + London, 1885, 8vo. The Browning Society's Paper, Pt. vii., pp. 33-54. + Browning's Estimate of Life. + (Read at the meeting of the Society, Oct. 28, 1887.) London, 1888, + 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. x., pp. 200-206. + Browning's Message to his Time: His Religion, Philosophy, and Science. + [With facsimile letters of Browning and portrait.] London, 1890, 8vo. + +Birrell, Augustine. + Obiter Dicta. + London, 1884, 8vo. On the alleged obscurity of Mr. Browning's poetry, + pp. 55-95. + +Browning, Robert. + Robert Browning's Poetry. + Outline Studies published for the Chicago Browning Society. + Chicago, 1886, 8vo. + +Browning Society. + The Browning Society's Papers. + In progress. London, 1881, etc., 8vo. + +Buchanan, Robert. + Master-Spirits. + London, 1873, 8vo. Browning's Masterpiece, pp. 89-109. A revised + reprint of the Athenæum reviews of the "Ring and the Book" in + December and March 1870. + +Bulkeley, Rev. J.H. + James Lee's Wife. + (Read at the 16th meeting of the Browning Society, May 25, 1883.) + London, 1883, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iv., pp. 455-468. + The Reasonable Rhythm of some of Browning's poems. + Read at the 42nd meeting of the Browning Society, May 28, 1886. + London, 1886, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii., + pp. 119-131. + +Burt, Mary K. + Browning's Women, etc. + Chicago, 1887, 8vo. + +Bury, John B. + Browning's Philosophy. + (Read at the 6th meeting of the Browning Society, April 28, 1882.) + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iii, pp. 259-277. + On "Aristophanes' Apology." + Read at the 38th meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 29, 1886. + London, 1886, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii., pp. 79-86. + +C.C.S., _i.e._, C.S. Calverley. + Fly Leaves. + Cambridge, 1872, 8vo. "The Cock and the Bull," a Parody on _The Ring + and the Book,_ pp. 113-120. + +Cooke, Bancroft. + An Introduction to Robert Browning. + A criticism of the purpose and method of his earlier works. + London [1883], 8vo. + +Cooke, George Willis. + Poets and Problems. + London [1886], 8vo. Browning, pp. 269-388. + +Cooper, Thompson. + Men of Mark, etc. + London, 1881, 4to. Robert Browning, with photograph. Fifth Series, + No. 17. + +Corson, Hiram. + The Idea of Personality, as embodied in Robert Browning's Poetry. + (Read at the 8th meeting of the Browning Society, June 23, 1882.) + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iii. pp. 293-321. + An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. + Boston, 1886, 8vo. + +Courtney, W.L. + Studies New and Old. + London, 1888, 8vo. Robert Browning, Writer of Plays, pp. 100-123. + +Devey, J. + A Comparative Estimate of Modern English Poets. + London, 1873, 8vo. Browning, pp. 376-421. + +Dowden, Edward. + Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning. + (_The Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art delivered + in ... Dublin,_ 1867 _and_ 1868, pp. 141-179.) Dublin, 1869, + 8vo. Reprinted in B. Dowden's "Studies in Literature," 1878, + pp. 191-239. + Studies in Literature, 1789-1877. + London, 1878, 8vo. Mr. Browning's place in recent literature, + pp. 80-84; Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning, pp. 191-239. + Transcripts and Studies. + London, 1888, 8vo. Mr. Browning's "Sordello," pp. 474-525. + +Eyles, F.A.H. + Popular Poets of the Period, etc. + London, 1888, etc., 8vo. Robert Browning, by Alexander H. Japp, + No. 7, pp. 193-199. + +Fleming, Albert. + Andrea del Sarto. + Read at the 39th meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 26, 1886. + London, 1886, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii., + pp. 95-102. + +Forman, H. Buxton. + Our Living Poets. + London, 1871, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 103-152. + +Fotheringham, James. + Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. + London, 1887, 8vo. + Second edition, revised and enlarged. + London, 1888, 8vo. + +Friswell, J. Hain. + Modern Men of Letters honestly criticised. + London, 1870, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 119-131. + +Fuller, S. Margaret. + Papers on Literature and Art. + 2 parts. London, 1846, 8vo. Browning's Poems, Pt. ii., pp. 31-45 + +Furnivall, Frederick J. + A Bibliography of Robert Browning, from 1833-81. + London, 1881-82, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, 1881-4, + Pts. i. and ii. + How the Browning Society came into being. + With some words on the characteristics and contrasts of Browning's + early and late work. London, 1884, 8vo. + A grammatical analysis of "O Lyric Love." + Read at the 48th meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 25, 1886. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. ix., pp. 105-108. + +Galton, Arthur. + Urbana Scripta. + Studies of five living poets, etc. London, 1885, 8vo. Mr. Browning, + pp. 59-76. + +Gannon, Nicholas J. + An Essay on the characteristic errors of our most distinguished + living poets. + Dublin, 1853, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 25-32. + +Glazebrook, Mrs. M.G. + "A Death in the Desert." + Read at the 48th meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 25, 1857. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, vol. ix., + pp. 153-164. + +Halliwell-Phillipps, James O. + Copy of Correspondence + [between J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps and Robert Browning, concerning + expressions respecting Halliwell-Phillipps, used by F.J. Furnivall + in the preface to a fac-simile of the second edition of Hamlet, + published in 1880]. [Brighton ? 1881] fol. + +Hamilton, Walter. + Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors. + London, 1889, 8vo. Robert Browning, vol. vi., pp. 46-65. + +Haweis, Rev. H R. + Poets in the Pulpit. + London, 1880, 8vo. Robert Browning. New Year's Eve, pp. 117-143. + +Herford, C.H. + Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. + London, 1886, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii., + pp. 133-145. + +Hodgkins, Louise Manning. + Nineteenth Century Authors. + Robert Browning. Boston [1889], 8vo. + +Holland, F. May. + Sordello. + A Story from Robert Browning. New York, 1881, 8vo. Very scarce. + +Horne, R.H. + A New Spirit of the Age. + 2 vols. London, 1844, 8vo. Robert Browning (with a portrait engraved + by J.C. Armytage) and J.W. Marston, vol. ii., pp. 153-186. + +Hutton, Richard Holt. + Essays, Theological and Literary. + 2 vols. London, 1871, 8vo. Mr. Browning, vol. ii., pp. 190-247. + +Johnson, Rev. Prof. Edwin. + On "Bishop Blougram's Apology." + (Read at the 7th meeting of the Browning Society, May 26, 1882.) + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iii., + pp. 279-292. + Conscience and Art in Browning. + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iii., + pp. 345-379. + On "Mr. Sludge the Medium." + Read at the 31st meeting of the Browning Society, March 27, 1885. + London, 1885, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. vii., pp. 13-32. + +Kingsland, William G. + Robert Browning: chief poet of the age. + An essay addressed primarily to beginners in the study of Browning's + poems. London, 1887, 8vo. + New edition, with biographical and other additions. + London, 1890, 8vo. + +Landor, Walter Savage. + The Works of Walter Savage Landor. + 2 vols. London, 1846, 8vo. Poem "To Robert Browning," vol. ii., p. 673. + +M'Cormick, William S. + Three Lectures on English Literature. + Paisley, 1889, 8vo. The poetry of Robert Browning, pp. 125-184. + +Macdonald, George + Orts. + London, 1882, 8vo. Browning's "Christmas Eve," pp. 195-217. + The Imagination and other Essays. + Boston [1883], 8vo. Browning's "Christmas Eve," pp. 195-217. + +McNicoll, Thomas. + Essays on English Literature. + London, 1861, 8vo. New Poems of Browning and Landor (1858), + pp. 208-314. + +McCrie, George. + The Religion of our Literature. + Essays upon Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, etc. + London, 1875, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 69-109. + +Macready, William Charles. + Macready's Reminiscences and Selections from his diaries and letters. + 2 vols. London, 1875, 8vo. Numerous references to Browning. + +Mayor, Joseph B. + Chapters on English Metre. + London, 1886, 8vo. Tennyson and Browning, Chap. xii., pp. 184-196. + +Morison, J. Cotter. + "Caliban upon Setebos," with some notes on Browning's Subtlety and + Humour. + (Read at the 24th Meeting of the Browning Society, April 25, 1884.) + London, 1884, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., pp. 489-498. + +Morrison, Jeanie. + Sordello. + An outline analysis of Mr. Browning's Poem. London, 1889, 8vo. + +Nettleship, John T. + Essays on Robert Browning's Poetry. + London, 1868, 8vo. + New edition. + New York, 1890, 8vo. + On Browning's "Fifine at the Fair." + To be read at the 4th Meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 24, 1882. + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. ii., p. 199-230. + Classification of Browning's Works. + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. ii., pp. 231-234. + Browning's Intuition, specially in regard of music and the Plastic Arts. + (Read at the 13th Meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 23, 1883.) + London, 1883, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iv., pp. 331-396. + On the development of Browning's Genius in his capacity as poet or maker. + Read at the 35th Meeting of the Browning Society, Oct. 30, 1885. + London, 1886, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii, pp. 55-77. + +Noel, Hon. Roden. + Essays on Poetry and Poets. + London, 1886, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 256-282; Robert Browning's + Poetry, pp. 283-303. + +Notes and Queries. + Notes and Queries. + 7 Series. London, 1849-1889, 4to. Numerous references to Browning. + +O'Byrne, George. + Robert Browning. + In Memoriam. An Epicedium. Nottingham [1890], 8vo. + +O'Conor, William Anderson. + Essays in Literature and Ethics. + Manchester, 1889, 8vo. Browning's "Childe Roland," pp. 1-24. + +Ormerod, Helen J. + Some Notes on Browning's Poems referring to Music. + Read at the 51st Meeting of the Browning Society, May 27, 1887. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. ix., pp. 180-195. + Abt Vogler, the Man. + Read at the 55th Meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 27th, 1888. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. x., pp 221-236. + +Orr, Mrs. Sutherland. + A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning. + London, 1885, 8vo. + Second edition, revised. + London, 1886, 8vo. + Classification of Browning's Poems. + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. ii., pp. 235-238. + +Outram, Leonard S. + Love's Value. Colombe's Birthday. Act IV. (The Avowal of Valence.) + Read at the 38th Meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 29, 1886. + London, 1886, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii., pp. 87-94. + +Pearson, Howard S. + On Browning as a Landscape Painter. + Read at the 41st Meeting of the Browning Society, April 30, 1886. + London, 1886, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. viii., + pp. 103-118. + +Pollock, Frederick. + Leading cases done into English. + By an Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn [Frederick Pollock]. Second edition. + London, 1876, 8vo. IV. "Scott _v_. Shepherd (1 _Sm. L.C._ 477), + Any Pleader to any Student," pp. 15-19. A Parody on Browning. + +Portrait. + The Portrait. + Vol. I. London, 1877, 4to. Robert Browning, by G. Barnett Smith, + 4 pages. The portrait is from a photograph by Elliott & Fry. + +Portrait Gallery. + National Portrait Gallery. + London [1877], 4to. Robert Browning (with portrait), 4th Series, + pp. 73-80. + +Powell, Thomas. + The Living Authors of England. + New York, 1849, 8 vo. Robert Browning, pp. 71-85. + Pictures of the Living Authors of Britain. + London, 1851, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 61-75. + +Radford, Ernest. + Illustrations to Browning's Poems; + with a notice of the artists and the pictures, by E, Radford. 2 pts. + London, 1882-3, fol. Published for the _Browning Society._ + +Raleigh, W.A. + On some prominent points in Browning's Teaching. + (Read at the 22nd Meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 22, 1884.) + London, 1884, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., pp. 477-488. + +Reeve, Lovell. + Portraits of Men of Eminence in Literature, Science, and Art, + with biographical memoirs, etc. 6 vols. London, 1863-67, 8vo. + Robert Browning, vol. i., pp. 109-112. + +Revell, William F. + Browning's Poems on God and Immortality as bearing on life here. + (Read at the 14th Meeting of the Browning Society, March 30, 1883.) + London, 1883, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iv., pp. 435-454. + Browning's Views of Life. + Address on Oct. 28, 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's + Papers, Pt. x., pp. 197-199. + +Sharp, William. + Browning and the Arts. + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iii., pp. 34-40. + +Sharpe, Rev. John. + On "Pietro of Abano" and the leading ideas of "Dramatic Idyls." + Second series, 1880. (Read at the 2nd Meeting of the Browning Society, + Nov. 25, 1881.) London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, + Pt. ii., pp. 191-197. + Jocoseria. + (Read at the 20th Meeting of the Browning Society, Nov. 23, 1883.) + London, 1884, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., pp. 93-97. + +Shirley, _pseud._ [_i.e._, John Skelton]. + A Campaigner at Home. + London, 1865, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 247-283. Appeared originally + in Fraser's Magazine, vol. 67, 1863, pp. 240-256. + +Stedman, Edmund Clarence. + Victorian Poets. + Boston, 1875, 8vo. Robert Browning, pp. 293-341. + Another edition. + Boston, 1887, 8vo. + +Stoddart, Anna M. + "Saul." + Read at the 59th Meeting of the Browning Society, May 25, 1888. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. x., pp. 264-274. + +Swinburne, Algernon C. + The Works of George Chapman: Poems and Minor Translations. + London, 1875, 8vo. On Browning, pp. xiv.-xix. of the "Essay on George + Chapman's poetical and dramatic works." + Specimens of Modern Poets. + The Heptalogia, or the Seven against Sense, etc. London, 1880, 8vo. + John Jones, pp. 9-39. A parody on James Lee. + +Symons, Arthur. + Is Browning Dramatic? + (Read at the 29th Meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 30, 1885.) + London, 1885, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. vii., pp. 1-12. + An Introduction to the Study of Browning. + London, 1886, 8vo. + Some Notes on Mr. Browning's last volume. + (On Parleyings with Certain People.) Read at the 50th Meeting of the + Browning Society, April 29, 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning + Society's Papers, Pt. ix., pp. 169-179. + +Thomson, James. + Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning. + (Read at the 3rd Meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 27, 1882.) + London, 1882, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. ii., pp. 239-250. + +Todhunter, Dr. John. + "The Ring and the Book." + (Read at the 19th Meeting of the Browning Society, Oct. 26, 1883.) + London, 1884, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., pp. 85-92. + "Strafford" at the Strand Theatre, Dec. 21, 1886. + Read at the 47th Meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 28, 1887. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. ix., pp. 147-152. + +Turnbull, Mrs. + Abt Vogler. + (Read at the 17th Meeting of the Browning Society, June 22, 1883.) + London, 1883, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iv., pp. 469-476. + In a Balcony. + (Read at the Annual Meeting of the Browning Society, July 4, 1884.) + London, 1884, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. v., pp. 499-502. + +Wall, Annie. + Sordello's Story retold in prose. + Boston, 1886, 8vo. + +West, E.D. + One aspect of Browning's Villains. + (Read at the 15th Meeting of the Browning Society, April 27, 1883.) + London, 1883, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. iv., pp. 411-434. + +Westcott, B.F. + On some points in Browning's View of Life. + A paper read before the Cambridge Browning Society, November, 1882. + Cambridge, 1883, 8vo. Printed also in the Browning Society's Papers, + Pt. iv., pp. 397-410. + +Whitehead, Miss C.M. + Browning as a Teacher of the Nineteenth Century. + Read at the 58th Meeting of the Browning Society, April 27, 1888. + London, 1888, 8vo. The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. x., pp. 237-263. + + +MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC. + +Browning, Robert. + Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, pp. 60-62, 122-127. + Revue des Deux Mondes, by J. Milsand, 15 Aug. 1851, pp. 661-689. + London Quarterly Review, vol. 6, 1856, pp. 493-501, vol. 22, p. 30, etc. + Revue Contemporaine, by J. Milsand, vol. 27, 1856, pp. 511-546. + Fraser's Magazine, by J. Skelton, vol. 67, 1863, pp. 240-256; + reprinted in "A Campaigner at Home," 1865. + Victoria Magazine, by M.D. Conway, vol. 2, 1854, pp. 298-316. + Contemporary Review, vol. 4, 1867, pp. 1-15, 133-148; same article, + Eclectic Magazine, vol. 5 N.S., pp. 314-323, 501-513. + Revue des Deux Mondes, by Louis Etienne, tom. 85, 1870, pp. 704-735. + Appleton's Journal (with portrait), by R.H. Stoddard, vol. 6, 1871, + pp. 533-536. + Once a Week, vol. 9 N.S., 1872, pp. 164-167. + Scribner's Monthly, by E.C. Stedman, vol. 9, 1874, pp. 167-183. + Galaxy, by J. H. Browne, vol. 19, 1875, pp. 764-774. + St. James's Magazine, by T. Bayne, vol. 32, 1877, pp. 153-164. + Dublin University Magazine (with portrait), vol. 3 N.S., 1878, + pp. 322-335, 416-443. + Gentleman's Magazine, by A.N. McNicoll, vol. 244, 1879, pp. 54-67. + Congregationalist, vol. 8, 1879, pp. 915-922. + International Review, by G. Barnett Smith, vol. 6, 1879, pp. 176-194. + Literary World (Boston), by F. J. Furnivall, H.E. Scudder, etc., + vol. 13, 1882, pp. 76-81. + Critic, by J.H. Morse, vol. 3,1883, pp. 263, 264. + Contemporary Review, by Hon. Roden Noel, vol. 44, 1883, pp. 701-718; + same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 159, pp. 771-781. + British Quarterly Review, vol. 80, 1884, pp. 1-28. + Family Friend, by J. Fuller Higgs, vol. 18, 1887, pp. 10-13. + Graphic, with portrait, Jan, 15, 1887. + Athenæum, Dec. 21, 1889, pp. 858-860. + Atalanta, by Edmund Gosse, Feb. 1889, pp. 361-364. + Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1890, pp. 243-248. + Contemporary Review, by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Jan. 1890, + pp. 141-152. + Universal Review, by Gabriel Sarrazin, Feb. 1890, pp. 230-246. + Art and Literature, with portrait, Feb. 1890, pp. 17-19. + Congregational Review, by Ruth J. Pitt, Jan. 1890, pp. 57-66. + Expository Times, by the Rev. Professor Salmond, Feb. 1890, pp. 110, 111. + The Speaker, by Augustine Birrell, Jan. 4, 1890, pp. 16, 17. + National Review, by H. D. Traill, Jan. 1890, pp. 592-597. + Scots Magazine, Jan. 1890, pp. 131-136. + Argosy, by E.F. Bridell-Fox, Feb. 1890, pp. 108-114 + New Church Magazine, by C. E. Rowe, Feb. 1890, pp. 49-58. + + ---- Agamemnon. + Edinburgh Review, vol. 147, 1878, pp. 409-436. + Athenæum, Oct. 27,1877, pp. 525-527. + Academy, by J.A. Symonds, Nov. 3, 1877, pp. 419, 420. + Literary World (Boston), vol. 13, 1882, p. 419. + + ---- and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. + Leisure Hour (with portraits), 1883, pp. 396-404. + Manhattan, by K.M. Rowland, June 1884, pp. 553-562. + + ---- and the Edinburgh Review. + Reader, by Gerald Massey, Nov. 26, 1864, pp. 674, 675. + + ---- and the Epic of Psychology. + London Quarterly Review, vol. 32, 1869, pp. 325-357. + + ---- and the Greek Drama. + Manchester Quarterly, by A.S. Wilkins, vol. 2, 1883, pp. 377-390. + + ---- and James Hussell Lowell. + New Englander, vol. 29, 1870, pp. 125-136. + + ---- and Tennyson. + Eclectic Review, vol. 7 N.S., 1864, pp. 361-389. + Leisure Hour, Feb. 1890, pp. 231-234. + + ---- Another Way of Love. + Critic (New York), by F.L. Turnbull, Sept. 26, 1885, pp. 151, 152. + + ---- Aristophanes' Apology. + London Quarterly Review, vol. 44, 1875, pp. 354-376. + Academy, by J. A. Symonds, April 17, 1875, pp. 389,390. + Athenæum, April 17, 1875, pp. 513, 514. + + ---- as a Preacher. + Dark Blue, by E.D. West, vol. 2, 1872, pp. 171-184, 305-319; + same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 3, pp. 707-723. + + ---- as a Religious Teacher. + Month, by the Rev. John Rickaby, Feb. 1890, pp. 173-190 + Good Words, by R.H. Hutton, Feb. 1890, pp. 87-93. + + ---- as a Teacher. In Memoriam. + Gentlemen's Magazine, by Mrs. Alexander Ireland, Feb. 1890, + pp. 177-184. + + ---- as Theologian. + Time, by H.W. Massingham, Jan. 1890, pp. 90-96. + + ---- as a Writer of Plays. + Fortnightly Review, by W.L. Courtney, vol. 33 N.S., 1883, + pp. 888-900; + same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 38 N.S., pp. 358-366. + + ---- Balaustion's Adventure. + Contemporary Review, by Matthew Browne, vol.18, 1871, pp. 284-296. + Nation, by J.R. Dennett, vol. 13, 1871, pp. 173, 179. + Fortnightly Review, by Sidney Colvin, vol. 10 N.S., 1871, + pp. 478-490. + Edinburgh Review, vol. 135, 1872, pp. 221-249. + London Quarterly Review, vol. 37, 1871, pp. 346-368. + Athenaeum, Aug. 12, 1871, pp. 199, 200. + Penn Monthly, by R.E. Thompson, vol. 6, 1875, pp. 928-940. + St. Paul's Magazine, by E.J. Hasell, vol. 12, 1873, pp. 680-699; + vol. 13, pp. 49-66. + Pioneer, Oct. 1887, pp. 159-162. + + ---- Bells and Pomegranates. + Christian Remembrancer, vol. 11 N.S., 1846, pp. 316-330. + People's Journal, by H.F. Chorley, vol. 2, 1847, pp. 38-40, + 104-106. + + ---- Browning Society. + Saturday Review, vol. 53, 1882, pp. 12, 13; vol. 58, 1884, + pp. 721, 722. + + ---- Childe Roland. + Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, by the Rev. W.A. O'Conor, + vol. 3, 1877, pp. 12-25. + Critic (New York), by J.E. Cooke, vol. 8, 1886, pp. 201, 202, + and by A. Bates, pp. 231, 232. + + ---- ---- Childe Roland, Childe Harold, and the Sangrail. + Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, by John Mortimer, + vol. 3, 1877, pp. 26-31. + + ---- Christmas Eve and Easter-Day. + Prospective Review, vol. 6, 1850, pp. 267-279. + Littell's Living Age (from the Examiner), vol. 25, pp. 403-409. + The Germ, No. 4, by W.M. Rossetti, pp. 187-192. + Day of Rest, by George MacDonald, vol. 1, 1873, pp. 34-36, 55, 56. + + ---- Clubs in the United States. + Literary World (Boston), by H. Corson, vol. 14, 1883, p. 127. + + ---- Day with the Brownings at Pratolino. + Scribner's Monthly, by E.C. Kinney, vol. 1, 1870, pp. 185-188. + + ---- Dead in Venice. + (Verses.) Athenaeum, Dec. 21, 1889, p. 860. + + ---- The "Detachment" of. + Athenaeum, Jan. 4, 1890, pp. 18, 19. + + ---- Dramatic Idyls. + Fortnightly Review, by Grant Allen, vol.26 N.S., 1879, pp.149-154. + Contemporary Review, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, vol. 35, 1879, + pp. 289-302. + Saturday Review, June 21, 1879, pp. 774, 775. + Fraser's Magazine, vol. 20 N.S., 1879, pp. 103-124. + St. James's Magazine, by T. Bayne, vol. 8, fourth series, 1880, + pp. 108-118. + Athenaeum, May 10, 1879, pp. 593-595. + Academy, by Frank Wedmore, May 10, 1879, pp. 403, 404. + Athenaeum, July 10, 1880, pp. 39-41. + Literary World, July 23, 1880, pp. 49-51. + + ---- Dramatis Personae. + St. James's Magazine, by R. Bell, vol. 10, 1864, pp. 477-491. + New Monthly Magazine, by T.F. Wedmore, vol. 133, 1865, pp.186-194. + Dublin University Magazine, vol. 64, 1864, pp. 573-579. + Eclectic Review, by E. Paxton Hood, vol. 7 N.S., 1864, pp. 62-72. + + ---- Early Writings of. + Century, by E.W. Gosse, vol. 23, 1881, pp. 189-200. + + ---- Ferishtah's Fancies. + Athenaeum, Dec. 6, 1884, pp. 725-727. + Saturday Review, vol. 58, 1884, pp. 727, 728. + Spectator, Dec. 6, 1884, pp. 1614-1616. + Academy, by H.C. Beeching, Dec. 13, 1884, pp. 385, 386. + Critic (New York), Dec. 1884, p. 279. + Oxford Magazine, vol. 3, 1885, pp. 161, 162. + + ---- Fifine at the Fair. + Old and New, by C. C. Everett, vol. 6, 1872, pp. 609-615. + Canadian Monthly, by Goldwin Smith, vol. 2, 1872, pp. 285-287. + Temple Bar, vol. 37, 1873, pp. 315-328. + Literary World, July 12, 1872, pp. 17, 18, and July 19, pp.42, 43. + Fortnightly Review, by Sidney Colvin, vol. 12 N.S., 1872, + pp. 118-120. + Saturday Review, vol. 34, 1872, pp. 220, 221. + + ---- First Poem of + St. James's Magazine, vol. 7 N.S., 1871, pp. 485-496. + + ---- Funeral of. + Scots Magazine, by Elizabeth R. Chapman, Feb. 1890, pp. 216-223. + + ---- Handbook to the Works of, Orr's. + Academy, by J.T. Nettleship, vol. 27, 1885, pp. 429-431. + Athenaeum, Sept. 26, 1885, pp. 396, 397. + + ---- in 1869. + Cornhill Magazine, vol. 19, 1869, pp. 249-256. + + ---- In a Balcony. + Theatre, by H.L. Mosely, May 1, 1885, pp. 225-230. + + ---- In Memoriam. + New Review, by Edmund W. Gosse, Jan. 1890, pp. 91-96. + + ---- Inn Album. + Macmillan's Magazine, by A.C. Bradley, vol. 33, 1876, pp. 347-354. + Nation, by Henry James, junr., vol. 22, 1876, pp. 49,50. + International Review, by Bayard Taylor, vol. 3, 1876, pp. 402-404. + Athenaeum, Nov. 27, 1875, pp. 701, 702. + Academy, by J.A. Symonds, Nov. 27, 1875, pp. 543, 544. + Spectator, December 11, 1875, pp. 1555-1557, + Examiner, Dec. 11, 1875, pp. 1389-1390. + + ---- in Westminster Abbey. + Speaker, by Henry James, Jan. 4, 1890, pp. 10-12. + + ---- Jocoseria. + National Review, by W.J. Courtliope, vol. 1, 1883, pp. 548-561. + Atlantic Monthly, vol. 51, 1883, pp. 840-845. + Cambridge Review, vol. 4, 1883, pp. 352, 353. + Gentleman's Magazine, by R.H. Shepherd, vol. 254, 1883, + pp. 624 630. + Academy, by J.A. Symonds, vol. 23, 1883, pp. 213, 214. + Athenaeum, March 24, 1883, pp. 367, 358. + Saturday Review, vol. 55, 1883, pp. 376, 377. + Spectator, March 17, 1883, pp. 351-353. + + ---- Kingsland's. + Literary Opinion, May 1, 1887. + + ---- La Saisiaz. The Two Poets of Croisic. + Academy, by G.A. Simcox, vol. 13, 1878, pp. 478-480. + Athenaeum, May 25, 1878, pp. 661-664. + Saturday Review, June 15, 1878, pp. 759, 760. + + ---- Love Poems of. + Journal of Education, by Arthur Sidgwick, May 1, 1882, pp.139-143. + + ---- Lyrical and Dramatic Poems. + Literary World (Boston), Feb. 24, 1883, p. 58. + + ---- Men and Women. + Bentley's Miscellany, vol. 39, 1856, pp. 64-70. + British Quarterly Review, vol. 23, 1856, pp. 151-180. + Rambler, vol. 5 N.S., 1856, pp. 55-71. + Christian Remembrancer, vol. 31 N.S., 1856, pp. 281-294; + vol. 34 N.S., 1857, pp. 361-890. + Dublin University Magazine, vol. 47, 1856, pp. 673-675. + Fraser's Magazine, by G. + Brimley, vol. 53, 1856, pp. 105-116. + Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 6, 1856, pp. 21-28. + Westminster Review, vol. 9 N.S., 1856, pp. 290-296. + + ---- Note on. + Art Review, by W. Mortimer, Jan. 1890, pp. 28-32. + + ---- One Way of Love. + Literary World (Boston), by C.R. Corson, July 26, 1884, + pp. 250, 251. + + ---- Pacchiarolto. + Academy, by Edward Dowden, July 29, 1876, pp. 99, 100. + Athenæum, July 22, 1876, pp. 101, 102. + + ---- Paracelsus. + New Monthly Magazine, by John Forster, vol. 46, 1836, pp.289-308. + Examiner, by John Forster, Sept. 6, 1835, pp. 563-565. + Theologian, vol. 2, 1845, pp. 276-282. + Monthly Repository, by W.J. Fox, vol. 9 N.S., 1835, pp. 716-727. + Fraser's Magazine, by J. Heraud, vol. 13, 1836, pp. 363-374. + Leigh Hunt's Journal, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 405-408. + Revue des Deux Mondes, by Philarète Chasles, tom, xxii., 1840, + pp. 127-133. + + ---- Parleyings with Certain People. + Literary Opinion, March 1, 1887. + + ---- Pauline. + Monthly Repository, by W. J. Fox, vol. 7 N.S., 1833, pp. 252-262. + Athenæum, April 6, 1833, p. 216. + + ---- Place of, in Literature. + Contemporary Review, by Mrs. Sutherland-Orr, vol. 23, 1874, + pp. 934-965; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 122, + pp. 67-85. + + ---- Plays and Poems. + North American Review, by J. R. Lowell, vol. 66, 1848, pp.357-400. + + ---- Poems. + British Quarterly Review, vol. 6, 1847, pp. 490-509. + Eclectic Review, vol. 26 N.S., 1849, pp. 203-214. + Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18, 1849, pp. 453-469. + Christian Examiner, by C. C. Everett, vol. 48, 1850, pp. 361-372. + Massachusetts Quarterly Review, vol. 3, 1850, pp. 347-385. + Fraser's Magazine, vol. 43, 1851, pp. 170-182. + Putnam's Monthly Magazine, vol. 7, 1856, pp. 372-381. + North British Review, vol. 34, 1861, pp. 350-374. + Chambers's Journal, vol. 19, 1863, pp. 91-95; vol. 20, pp. 39-41. + National Review, vol. 17, 1863, pp. 417-446. + Eclectic Review, by E. P. Hood, vol. 4 N.S., 1863, pp. 436-454; + vol. 7 N.S., 1864, pp. 62-72. + Edinburgh Review, vol. 120, 1864, pp. 537-565. + Christian Examiner, by C. C. Everett, vol. 77, 1864, pp. 51-64. + Quarterly Review, vol. 118, 1865, pp. 77-105. + Nuova Antologia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, by Enrico Nencioni, + July 1867, pp. 468-481. + North British Review, by J. Hutchinson Stirling, vol. 49, 1868, + pp. 353-408. + Temple Bar, by Alfred Austin, vol. 26, 1869, pp. 316-333; + vol. 27, pp. 170-186; vol. 28, pp. 33-48. + British Quarterly Review, vol. 49, 1869, pp. 435-459. + Saint Paul's Magazine, by S.J. H[asell], vol. 7, 1871, pp.257-276; + same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 13 N.S., pp. 267-279, + and in Littell's Living Age, vol. 108, pp. 155-166. + Church Quarterly Review, by the Hon. and Rev. Arthur Lyttleton, + vol. 7, 1878, pp. 65-92. + Cambridge Review, vol. 3, 1881, pp. 126, 127. + Scottish Review, vol. 2, 1883, pp. 349-358. + London Quarterly Review, vol. 65, 1886, pp. 238-250. + + ---- Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. + New Englander, by J. S. Sewall, vol. 33, 1874, pp. 493-505. + Examiner, Dec. 23, 1871, pp. 1267, 1268. + Academy, by G. A. Simcox, Jan. 15, 1872, pp. 24-26. + Literary World, Jan. 5, 1872, pp. 8, 9. + + ---- Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. + Nation, by J.K. Dennett, vol. 17, 1873, pp. 116-118. + Contemporary Review, by Mrs. Sutherland-Orr, vol. 22, 1873, + pp. 87-106. + Penn Monthly Magazine, vol. 4, 1873, pp. 657-661. + Athenaeum, May 10, 1873, pp. 593, 594. + + ---- Ring and the Book. + Athenaeum, Dec. 26, 1868, pp. 875, 876; March 20, 1869, + pp. 399, 400. + Edinburgh Review, vol. 130, 1869, pp. 164-186. + Dublin Review, vol. 13 N.S., 1869, pp. 48-62. + Chambers's Journal, July 24, 1869, pp. 473-476. + Fortnightly Review, by John Morley, vol. 5 N.S., 1869, pp.331-343. + Macmillan's Magazine, by J.A. Symonds, vol. 19, 1869, pp. 258-262, + and by J.R. Mozley, pp. 544-552. + North American Review, by E.J. Cutler, vol. 109, 1869, pp.279-283. + Nation, by J.R. Dennett, vol. 8, 1869, pp. 135, 136. + Tinsley's Magazine, vol. 3, 1869, pp. 665-674. + Christian Examiner, by J.W. Chadwick, vol. 86, 1869, pp. 295-315. + Gentleman's Magazine, by James Thomson, vol.251, 1881, pp.682-695. + St. James's Magazine, vol. 2 N.S., 1869, pp. 460-464. + Saint Paul's, vol. 7, 1871, pp. 377-397; + same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 13 N.S., pp. 400-412, + and in Littell's Living Age, vol. 108, pp. 771-783. + North British Review, vol. 51, 1870, pp. 97-126. + Quarterly Review, vol. 126, 1869, pp. 328-359. + + ---- ---- Some of the Teaching of "The Ring and the Book." + Poet-Lore, by F.B. Hornbrooke, July 1889, pp. 314-320. + + ---- Science of. + Poet-Lore, by Edward Berdoe, Aug. 15, 1889, pp. 353-362. + + ---- Selections from. + London Quarterly Review, by Frank T. Marzials, vol. 20, 1863, + pp. 527-532. + Literary World, May 19, 1883, p. 157. + + ---- Sequence of Sonnets on death of. + Fortnightly Review, by Algernon C. Swinburne, Jan. 1890, pp. 1-4. + + ---- Some Thoughts on. + Macmillan's Magazine, by M.A. Lewis, vol. 46, 1882, pp. 205-219; + same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 154, pp. 238-246. + + ---- Sonnets to. + Macmillan's Magazine, by Aubrey de Vere, Feb. 1890, p. 258. + Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, by Sir Theodore Martin, + Jan. 1890, p. 112. + Household Words, vol. 4, 1852, p. 213. + + ---- Sonnets of. + Manchester Quarterly, by Benjamin Sagar, vol. 6, 1887, pp.148-159. + + ---- Sordello. + Fraser's Magazine, by E. Dowden, vol. 76, pp. 518-530. + Macmillan's Magazine, by R.W. Church, vol. 55, 1887, pp. 241-253. + + ---- ---- Sordello at the East End. + Journal of Education, July 1, 1885, pp. 281-283. + + ---- Stories from, Holland's. + Academy, by J. A. Blaikie, vol. 22, 1882, pp. 287, 288. + + ---- Strafford: a Tragedy. + Edinburgh Review, vol. 65, 1837, pp. 132-151. + + ---- Study of. + Overland Monthly, by Caroline Le Conte, vol. 3, 2nd series, 1884, + pp. 645-651. + Literary World (Boston), vol. 17, 1886, p. 44. + + ---- Two Sonnets to. + New Monthly Magazine, vol. 48, 1835, p. 48. + + ---- Types of Womanhood. + Woman's World, by Annie E. Ireland, Nov. 1889, pp. 47-50. + + ---- Verses on. + Art Review (with portrait), by William Sharp, Feb. 1890, pp.33-36. + Murray's Magazine, by Rev. H.D. Rawnsley, Feb. 1890, pp. 145-150. + Belford's Magazine (poem of 20 six-line stanzas), by William + Sharp, March 1890. + + ---- Wordsworth and Tennyson. + National Review, by Walter Bagehot, vol. 19, 1864, pp. 27-67; + reprinted in "Literary Studies", 1879; + same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 1 N.S., pp.273-284, 415-427, + and in Littell's Living Age, vol. 84, pp. 3-24. + + +VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS, + +Pauline 1833 + +Paracelsus 1835 + +Strafford 1837 + +Sordello 1840 + +Pippa Passes (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. I.). 1841 + +King Victor and King Charles (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. II.) 1842 + +Dramatic Lyrics (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. III). 1842 + Cavalier Times. + I. Marching Along. + II. Give a Rouse. + III. My Wife Gertrude. + Italy and France. + I. Italy. + II. France. + Camp and Cloister. + I. Camp (French). + II. Cloister (Spanish). + In a Gondola. + Artemis Prologuizes. + Waring. + Queen Worship. + I. Eudel and the Lady of Tripoli. + II. Christina. + Madhouse Cells. + I. Johannes Agricola. + II. Porphyria. + Through the Metidja. + The Pied Piper of Hamelin. + +The Return of the Druses (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. IV.) 1843 + +A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. V.) 1843 + +Colombo's Birthday (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. VI.) 1844 + +Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. VII.) 1845 + How they brought the Good News. + Pictor Ignotus. + Italy in England. + England in Italy. + The Lost Leader. + The Lost Mistress. + Home Thoughts from Abroad. + The Tomb at St. Praxeil's. + Garden Fancies. + I. The Flower's Name. + II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. + France and Spain. + I. The Laboratory. + II. The Confessional. + The Flight of the Duchess. + Earth's Immortalities. + Song. + The Boy and the Angel. + Night and Morning. + Claret and Tokay. + Saul. + Time's Revenges. + The Glove. + +Luria. } +A Soul's Tragedy. } (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. VIII.) 1846 + +Christmas Eve and Easter-Day 1850 + +Introductory Essay to Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley 1852 + +Men and Women 1855 + Vol. I. + Love among the ruins. + A Lover's Quarrel. + Evelyn Hope. + Up at a Villa--Down In the City. + A Woman's Last Word. + Fra Lippo Lippi. + A Toccata of Galuppi's. + By the Fireside. + Any Wife to any Husband. + An Epistle of Karshish, + Mesmerism. + A Serenade at the Villa. + My Star. + Instans Tyrannus. + A Pretty Woman. + "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." + Respectability. + A Light Woman. + The Statue and the Bust. + Love in a Life. + Life in a Love. + How it strikes a Contemporary. + The Last Ride Together. + The Patriot. + Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. + Bishop Blougram's Apology. + Memorabilia. + Vol. II. + Andrea del Sarto. + Before. + After. + In Three Days. + In a Year. + Old Pictures in Florence. + In a Balcony. + Saul. + "De Gustibus ----" + Women and Roses. + Protus. + Holy-Cross Day. + The Guardian-Angel. + Cleon. + The Twins. + Popularity. + The Heretic's Tragedy. + Two in the Campagna. + A Grammarian's Funeral. + One Way of Love. + Another Way of Love. + "Transcendentalism." + Misconceptions. + One Word More. + +Dramatis Personæ 1864 + James Lee. + Gold Hair. + The Worst of It. + Dis Aliter Visum. + Too Late. + Abt Vogler. + Rabbi Ben Ezra. + A Death in the Desert. + Caliban upon Setebos. + Confessions. + May and Death. + Prospice. + Youth and Art. + A Face. + A Likeness. + Mr. Sludge. + Apparent Failure. + Epilogue. + +The Ring and the Book 1868-69 + +Balaustion's Adventure 1871 + +Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau 1871 + +Fifine at the Fair 1872 + +Red Cotton Night-Cap Country 1873 + +Aristophanes' Apology 1875 + +The Inn Album 1875 + +Pacchiarotto, and other Poems 1876 + Prologue. + Of Pacchiarotto. + At the "Mermaid." + House. + Shop. + Pisgah Sights, I. and II. + Fears and Scruples. + Natural Magic. + Magical Nature. + Bifurcation. + Numpholeptos. + Appearances. + St. Martin's Summer. + Hervé Riel. (Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine, March 1871.) + A Forgiveness. + Cenciaja. + Filippo Baldinucci. + Epilogue. + +The Agamemnon of Æschylus 1877 + +La Saisiaz 1878 + +The Two Poets of Croisie 1878 + +Dramatic Idyls 1879-80 + Series I. + Martin Relph. + Pheidippides. + Halbert and Hob. + Ivàn Ivànovitch. + Tray. + Ned Bratts. + Series II. + Proem. + Echetlos. + Clive. + Muléykeh. + Pietro of Abano. + Doctor ---- + Pan and Luna. + Epilogue. + +Jocoseria 1883 + Wanting is--What? + Donald. + Solomon and Balkis. + Cristina and Monaldeschi. + Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli. + Adam, Lilith, and Eve. + Ixion. + Jochanan Hakkadosh. + Never the Time and the Place. + Pambo. + +Ferishtah's Fancies 1884 + Prologue. + Ferishtah's Fancies + 1. The Eagle. + 2. Melon-Seller. + 3. Shah Abbas. + 4. The Family. + 5. The Sun. + 6. Mihrab Shah. + 7. A Camel-Driver. + 8. Two Camels. + 9. Cherries. + 10. Plot-Culture. + 11. A Pillar at Sebzevah. + 12. A Bean-stripe; also Apple-Eating. + Epilogue. + +Parleyings with Certain People 1887 + Apollo and the Fates--a Prologue. + I. With Bernard de Mandeville. + II. With Daniel Bartoli. + III. With Christopher Smart. + IV. With George Babb Dodington. + V. With Francis Furini + VI. With Gerard de Lairesse. + VII. With Charles Avison. + Fust and his Friends--an Epilogue. + +Asolando 1890 + Prologue. + Rosny. + Dubiety. + Now. + Humility. + Poetics. + Summum Bonum. + A Pearl, a Girl. + Speculative. + White Witchcraft. + Bad Dreams + Inapprehensiveness. + Which? + The Cardinal and the Dog. + The Pope and the Net. + The Bean-Feast. + Muckle-mouth Meg. + Arcades Ambo. + The Lady and the Painter. + Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. + Beatrice Signorini. + Flute-music, with an Accompaniment. + "Imperante Augusto natus est ----" + Development. + Rephan. + Reverie. + Epilogue. + + + + +The Canterbury Poets. + + +IMPORTANT ADDITIONS. + + +WORKS BY ROBERT BROWNING. + + +VOL. I. + +Pippa Passes, and other Poetic Dramas, by Robert Browning. + With an Introductory Note by Frank Rinder. + +VOL. II. + +A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, and other Poetic Dramas, by Robert Browning. + With an Introductory Note by Frank Rinder. + +VOL. III. + +Dramatic Romances and Lyrics; and Sordello, by Robert Browning. + To which is prefixed an Appreciation of Browning by Miss E. Dixon. + + * * * * * + +BINDINGS. + +The above volumes are supplied in the following Bindings:-- +IN GREEN ROAN, Boxed, with Frontispiece in Photogravure, 2s. 6d. net. +IN ART LINEN, with Frontispiece in Photogravure, 2s. +IN WHITE LINEN, with Frontispiece in Photogravure, 2s. +IN BROCADE, 2 Vols., in Shell Case to match (each vol. with Frontispiece), + price 4s. per Set, or 3 vols. 6s. per Set. +And in the ordinary SHILLING BINDINGS, Green Cloth, Cut Edges, and + Blue Cloth, Uncut Edges (without Photogravure). + + * * * * * + +The Three Volumes form an admirable and representative "Set," including +a great part of Browning's best-known and most admired work, and (being +each of about 400 pages) are among the largest yet issued in the +CANTERBURY POETS. The Frontispiece of Vol. I. consists of a reproduction +of one of Browning's last portraits; Mr. RUDOLF LEHMANN has kindly given +permission for his portrait of Browning to be reproduced as a +Frontispiece of Vol. II.; while a reproduction of a drawing of a View of +Asolo forms the Frontispiece of the third Volume. + + + + +New and Enlarged Edition, Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. + +MODERN PAINTING, +By GEORGE MOORE. + + * * * * * + +SOME PRESS NOTICES. + +"Of the very few hooks on art that painters and critics should on no +account leave unread this is surely one."--_The Studio_. + +"His book is one of the best books about pictures that have come +into our hands for some years."--_St. James's Gazette_. + +"If there is an art critic who knows exactly what he means and says +it with exemplary lucidity, it is 'G.M.'"--_The Sketch_. + +"A more original, a better informed, a more suggestive, and let us +add, a more amusing work on the art of to-day, we have never read +than this volume."--_Glasgow Herald_. + +"Impressionism, to use that word, in the absence of any fitter +one,--the impressionism which makes his own writing on art in this +volume so effective, is, in short, the secret both of his likes and +dislikes, his hatred of what he thinks conventional and mechanic, +together with his very alert and careful evaluation of what comes home +to him as straightforward, whether in Reynolds, or Rubens, or Ruysdael, +in Japan, in Paris, or in modern England."--Mr. Pater in _The Chronicle_. + +"As an art critic Mr. George Moore certainly has some signal +advantages. He is never dull, he is frankly personal, he is untroubled +by tradition."--_Westminster Gazette_. + +"Mr. Moore, in spite of the impediments that he puts in the way of +his own effectiveness, is one of the most competent writers on painting +that we have."--_Manchester Guardian_. + +"His [Mr. Moore's] book is one that cannot fail to be much talked +about; and everyone who is interested in modern painting will do well +to make acquaintance with its views."--_Scottish Leader_. + +"As everybody knows by this time, Mr. Moore is a person of strong +opinions and strong dislikes, and has the gift of expressing both in +pungent language."--_The Times_. + +"Of his [Mr. Moore's] sincerity, of his courage, and of his candour +there can be no doubt.... One of the most interesting writers on art +that we have."--_Pall Mall Gazette_. + + + + +THE SCOTT LIBRARY. + +Cloth, Uncut Edges, Gilt Top. Price 1s. 6d. per Volume. + + +VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED + + + 1 Malory's Romance of King Arthur and the Quest of the Holy Grail. + Edited by Ernest Rhys. + + 2 Thoreau's Walden. + With Introductory Note by Will H. Dircks. + + 3 Thoreau's "Week." + With Prefatory Note by Will H. Dircks. + + 4 Thoreau's Essays. + Edited, with an Introduction, by Will H. Dircks. + + 5 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, etc. + By Thomas De Quincey. With Introductory Note by William Sharp. + + 6 Landor's Imaginary Conversations. + Selected, with Introduction, by Havelock Ellis. + + 7 Plutarch's Lives (Langhorne). + With Introductory Note by B. J. Snell, M.A. + + 8 Browne's Religio Medici, etc. + With Introduction by J. Addington Symonds. + + 9 Shelley's Essays and Letters. + Edited, with Introductory Note, by Ernest Rhys. + + 10 Swift's Prose Writings. + Chosen and Arranged, with Introduction, by Walter Lewin. + + 11 My Study Windows. + By James Russell Lowell. 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Edited, with Preface, by Ernest Rhys. + + 43 Political Orations, from Wentworth to Macaulay. + Edited, with Introduction, by William Clarke. + + 44 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. + By Oliver Wendell Holmes. + + 45 The Poet at the Breakfast-Table. + By Oliver Wendell Holmes. + + 46 The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. + By Oliver Wendell Holmes. + + 47 Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. + Selected, with Introduction, by Charles Sayle. + + 48 Stories from Carleton. + Selected, with Introduction, by W. Yeats. + + 49 Jane Eyre. + By Charlotte Bronté. Edited by Clement K. Shorter. + + 50 Elizabethan England. + Edited by Lothrop Withington, with a Preface by Dr. Furnivall. + + 51 The Prose Writings of Thomas Davis. + Edited by T.W. Rolleston. + + 52 Spence's Anecdotes. 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Sharper Knowlson. + +106 The Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, + Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. + By Izaac Walton. Edited, with an Introduction, by Charles Hill Dick. + +107 What is Art? by Leo Tolstoy. + Translated from the Original Russian MS., with an Introduction, + by Aylmer Maude. + +108 Renan's Antichrist. + Translated, with an Introduction, by W.G. Hutchison. + +109 Orations of Cicero. + Selected and Edited, with an Introduction, by Fred. W. Norris. + +110 Reflections on the Revolution in France. + By Edmund Burke. With an Introduction by George Sampson. + +111 The Letters of the Younger Pliny. Series I. + Translated, with an Introductory Essay, by John B. Firth, B.A., + Late Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford. + +112 The Letters of the Younger Pliny. Series II. + Translated by John B. 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Holme. + +118 Newman's University Sketches. + Edited, with Introduction, by George Sampson. + +119 Newman's Select Essays. + Edited, with an Introduction, by George Sampson. + + + + +MANUALS OF EMPLOYMENT FOR EDUCATED WOMEN. + + +The object of this series of manuals will be to give to girls, more +particularly to those belonging to the educated classes, who from +inclination or necessity are looking forward to earning their own +living, some assistance with reference to the choice of a profession, +and to the best method of preparing for it when chosen. + +Foolscap 8vo, Stiff Paper Cover, Price 1s.; or in Limp Cloth, 1s. 6d. + + +I.--SECONDARY TEACHING. + +This manual contains particulars of the qualifications necessary for a +secondary teacher, with a list of the colleges and universities where +training may be had, the cost of training, and the prospect of employment +when trained. + + +II.--ELEMENTARY TEACHING. + +This manual sums up clearly the chief facts which need to be known +respecting the work to be done in elementary schools, and the conditions +under which women may take a share in such work. + + +III.--SICK NURSING. + +This manual contains useful information with regard to every branch +of Nursing--Hospital, District, Private, and Mental Nursing, and +Nursing in the Army and Navy and in Poor Law Institutions, with +particulars of the best method of training, the usual salaries given, and +the prospect of employment, with some account of the general advantages +and drawbacks of the work. + + +IV.--MEDICINE. + +This manual gives particulars of all the medical qualifications recognised +by the General Medical Council which are open to women, and +of the methods by which they can be obtained, with full details of the +different universities and colleges at which women can pursue their +medical studies. + + + + +IBSEN'S PROSE DRAMAS. + +EDITED BY WILLIAM ARCHER. + + +Complete in Five Vols. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Price 3s. 6d. each. +Set of Five Vols., in Case, 17s. 6d.; in Half Morocco, in Case, 32s. 6d. + + +VOL. I. + "A DOLL'S HOUSE," "THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH," and "THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY." + With Portrait of the Author, and Biographical Introduction by WILLIAM + ARCHER. + +VOL. II. + "GHOSTS," "AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE," and "THE WILD DUCK." + With an Introductory Note. + +VOL. III. + "LADY INGER OF OSTRAT," "THE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND," "THE PRETENDERS." + With an Introductory Note and Portrait of Ibsen. + +VOL. IV. + "EMPEROR AND GALILEAN." + With an Introductory Note by WILLIAM ARCHER. + +VOL. V. + "ROSMERSHOLM," "THE LADY FROM THE SEA," "HEDDA GABLER." + Translated by WILLIAM ARCHER. With an Introductory Note. + + * * * * * + +AN INTERESTING AND INSTRUCTIVE GIFT BOOK FOR EVERY ONE MUSICALLY INCLINED. + +In One Volume. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Richly Gilt. Price 3/6. + + +MUSICIANS' WIT, HUMOUR, AND ANECDOTE. + +Being _On Dits_ of Composers, Singers, and Instrumentalists of +all Times. + +BY FREDERICK J. CROWEST, + +Author of "The Great Tone Poets," "Verdi: Man and Musician"; +Editor of "The Master Musicians Series," etc., etc. + +Profusely Illustrated with Quaint Drawings by J. P. DONNE. + + + + +COMPACT AND PRACTICAL. + +In Limp Cloth; for the Pocket. Price One Shilling. + +THE EUROPEAN CONVERSATION BOOKS. + +FRENCH. +ITALIAN. +SPANISH. +GERMAN. +NORWEGIAN. + + * * * * * + + +THE MAKERS OF BRITISH ART. + +Square Crown 8vo, Cloth, 3s. 6d. net. + +With a Photogravure Portrait and 20 Half-tone Reproductions of Pictures, + and valuable Appendices. + +GEORGE ROMNEY. BY SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, M.P. + +JOHN CONSTABLE. BY THE RIGHT HON. LORD WINDSOR. + +SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS. BY J. EADIE REID, Author of "The Schools and +Methods of English Art." + +SIR DAVID WILKIE. BY PROFESSOR BAYNE. + +SIR EDWIN LANDSEER. 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In Box, +Price 2s. each. + +Volume I. contains-- + WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO. + THE GODSON. + +Volume II. contains-- + WHAT MEN LIVE BY. + WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN? + +Volume III. contains-- + THE TWO PILGRIMS. + IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE, YOU DON'T PUT IT OUT. + +Volume IV. contains-- + MASTER AND MAN. + +Volume V. contains-- + TOLSTOY'S PARABLES. + + + + +NEW ENGLAND LIBRARY. + +CONTAINING THE WORKS OF + +NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, AND HENRY THOREAU. + +GRAVURE EDITION. 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Songs } With Portrait of Burns, and View of "The +BURNS. Poems } Auld Brig o' Doon." +KEATS. With Portrait of Keats. +EMERSON. With Portrait of Emerson. +SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY. Portrait of P. B. Marston. +WHITMAN. With Portrait of Whitman. +LOVE LETTERS OF A VIOLINIST. Portrait of Eric Mackay. +SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc. } With Portrait of Sir Walter Scott, and +SCOTT. Marmion, etc. } View of "The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine." +CHILDREN OF THE POETS. With an Engraving of "The Orphans," by Gainsborough. +SONNETS OF EUROPE. With Portrait of J. A. Symonds. +SYDNEY DOBELL. With Portrait of Sydney Dobell. +HERRICK. With Portrait of Herrick. +BALLADS AND RONDEAUS. Portrait of W. E. Henley. +IRISH MINSTRELSY. With Portrait of Thomas Davis. +PARADISE LOST. With Portrait of Milton. +FAIRY MUSIC. Engraving from Drawing by C. E. Brock. +GOLDEN TREASURY. With Engraving of Virgin Mother. +AMERICAN SONNETS. With Portrait of J. R. Lowell. +IMITATION OF CHRIST. With Engraving, "Ecce Homo." +PAINTER POETS. With Portrait of Walter Crane. +WOMEN POETS. With Portrait of Mrs. Browning. +POEMS OF HON. RODEN NOEL. Portrait of Hon. R. Noel. +AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE. Portrait of Mark Twain. +SONGS OF FREEDOM. With Portrait of William Morris. +SCOTTISH MINOR POETS. With Portrait of R. Tannahill. +CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH VERSE. With Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson. +PARADISE REGAINED. With Portrait of Milton. +CAVALIER POETS. With Portrait of Suckling. +HUMOROUS POEMS. With Portrait of Hood. +HERBERT. With Portrait of Herbert. +POE. With Portrait of Poe. +OWEN MEREDITH. With Portrait of late Lord Lytton. +LOVE LYRICS. With Portrait of Raleigh. +GERMAN BALLADS. With Portrait of Schiller. +CAMPBELL. With Portrait of Campbell. +CANADIAN POEMS. With View of Mount Stephen. +EARLY ENGLISH POETRY. With Portrait of Earl of Surrey. +ALLAN RAMSAY. With Portrait of Ramsay. +SPENSER. With Portrait of Spenser. +CHATTERTON. With Engraving, "The Death of Chatterton." +COWPER. With Portrait of Cowper. +CHAUCER. With Portrait of Chaucer. +COLERIDGE. With Portrait of Coleridge. +POPE. With Portrait of Pope. +BYRON. Miscellaneous } +BYRON. Don Juan } With Portraits of Byron. +JACOBITE SONGS. With Portrait of Prince Charlie. +BORDER BALLADS. With View of Neidpath Castle. +AUSTRALIAN BALLADS. With Portrait of A.L. Gordon. +HOGG. With Portrait of Hogg. +GOLDSMITH. With Portrait of Goldsmith. +MOORE. With Portrait of Moore. +DORA GREENWELL. With Portrait of Dora Greenwell. +BLAKE. With Portrait of Blake. +POEMS OF NATURE. With Portrait of Andrew Lang. +PRAED. With Portrait. +SOUTHEY. With Portrait. +HUGO. With Portrait. +GOETHE. With Portrait. +BERANGER. With Portrait. +HEINE. With Portrait. +SEA MUSIC. With View of Corbière Rocks, Jersey. +SONG-TIDE. With Portrait of Philip Bourke Marston. +LADY OF LYONS. With Portrait of Bulwer Lytton. +SHAKESPEARE: Songs and Sonnets. With Portrait. +BEN JONSON. With Portrait. +HORACE. With Portrait. +CRABBE. With Portrait. +CRADLE SONGS. With Engraving from Drawing by T.E. Macklin. +BALLADS OF SPORT. Do. do. +MATTHEW ARNOLD. With Portrait. +AUSTIN'S DAYS OF THE YEAR. With Portrait. +CLOUGH'S BOTHIE, and other Poems. With View. +BROWNING'S Pippa Passes, etc. } +BROWNING'S Blot in the 'Scutcheon, etc. } With Portrait. +BROWNING'S Dramatic Lyrics. } +MACKAY'S LOVER'S MISSAL. With Portrait. +KIRKE WHITE'S POEMS. With Portrait. +LYRA NICOTIANA. With Portrait. +AURORA LEIGH. With Portrait of E.B. Browning. +NAVAL SONGS. With Portrait of Lord Nelson. +TENNYSON: In Memoriam, Maud, etc. With Portrait. +TENNYSON: English Idyls, The Princess, etc. With View of Farringford House. +WAR SONGS. With Portrait of Lord Roberts. +JAMES THOMSON. With Portrait. +ALEXANDER SMITH. With Portrait. + + + + +COMPANION SERIES TO "THE MAKERS OF BRITISH ART." + +An entirely fresh and novel series of literary-musical illustrated +monographs, planned and edited by Mr. Frederick J. Crowest, Author of +"The Great Tone Poets," etc., etc. + + +THE MUSIC STORY SERIES. + +The great aim with "The Music Story Series" of books will be to make +them indispensable volumes upon the subjects of which they treat. They +will be authoritative, interesting, and educational books--furnished +with appendices which will give them permanent value as works of +reference, data, etc. Each volume will tell all that the reader may want +to know upon any of the aspects of musical art which the various works +of the series will cover. + +The following volumes are ready or in course of production, and will be +published at short intervals:-- + +THE STORY OF ORATORIO. BY ANNIE W. PATTERSON, B.A., MUS. DOC. +THE STORY OF NOTATION. BY C.F. ABDY WILLIAMS, M.A., MUS. BAC. +THE STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE. BY ALGERNON S. ROSE, Author of + "Talks with Bandsmen." +THE STORY OF HARMONY. BY EUSTACE J. BREAKSPEARE, Author of + "Mozart," "Musical Æsthetics," etc. +THE STORY OF THE ORGAN. BY C.F. ABDY WILLIAMS, Author of + "Bach" and "Handel" ("Master Musicians Series"). +THE STORY OF THE ORCHESTRA. BY STEWART MACPHERSON, Fellow + and Professor, Royal Academy of Music; Conductor of the Westminster + Orchestral Society. +THE STORY OF CHAMBER MUSIC. BY N. KILBURN, MUS. BAC. + (Cantab.), Conductor of the Middlesbrough, Sunderland, and Bishop + Auckland Musical Societies. +THE STORY OF BIBLE MUSIC. BY ELEONORE D'ESTERRE-KEELING, + Author of "The Musicians' Birthday Book." +THE STORY OF THE VIOLIN. BY A PRACTICAL VIOLINIST. +THE STORY OF CHURCH MUSIC. BY THE EDITOR. +ETC., ETC., ETC. + +Each volume will be produced in the highest style of typographical +excellence, with choice illustrations in photogravure, collotype, line, +and half-tone reproductions. The paper for the series will be specially +made, deckle edge, with wide margins for readers' and students' +notes. The size of the volumes will be square crown 8vo, richly gilt, +and bound in extra cloth; price 3s. 6d. net. + + * * * * * + +NOW READY: + +THE STORY OF ORATORIO, + +300 pp., with a Collotype Portrait of Handel, Four Half-tone Portraits +of the great Composers of Oratorios, numerous Line Reproductions in +facsimile, and a splendid Photogravure Frontispiece of Raphael's +masterpiece--"St. Cecilia"--after the painting in the Academy of +Bologna. + + * * * * * + +THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD., LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Life of Robert Browning, by William Sharp + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14476 *** |