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diff --git a/17608.txt b/17608.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..047c2be --- /dev/null +++ b/17608.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9098 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Introduction to the Study of Browning, by +Arthur Symons + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: An Introduction to the Study of Browning + + +Author: Arthur Symons + + + +Release Date: January 25, 2006 [eBook #17608] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF +BROWNING*** + + +E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Lisa Reigel, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF BROWNING + +by + +ARTHUR SYMONS + +New Edition Revised and Enlarged + + + + + + + +First Edition, 1906. Reprinted, 1916 +London, Paris and Toronto J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. +10-13 Bedford Street, W.C. 1916 + + + + + + _" ... Browning, a great poet, a very great poet indeed, as + the world will have to agree with us in thinking."_--LANDOR. + + + + +TO + +GEORGE MEREDITH + +NOVELIST AND POET + +THIS LITTLE BOOK ON AN ILLUSTRIOUS CONTEMPORARY + +IS WITH DEEP RESPECT AND ADMIRATION + +INSCRIBED. + + + + +PREFACE + + +This _Introduction to the Study of Browning_, which is now reprinted in +a new form, revised throughout, and with everything relating to facts +carefully brought up to date, has been for many years out of print. I +wrote it as an act of homage to the poet whom I had worshipped from my +boyhood; I meant it to be, in almost his own words, used of Shelley, +some approach to "the signal service it was the dream of my boyhood to +render to his fame and memory." + +It was sufficiently rewarded by three things: first, by the generous +praise of Walter Pater, in the _Guardian_, which led to the beginning of +my friendship with him; then, by a single sentence from George Meredith, +"You have done knightly service to a brave leader"; lastly, by a letter +from Browning himself, in which he said: "How can I manage even to +thank--much more praise--what, in its generosity of appreciation, makes +the poorest recognition 'come too near the praising of myself'?" + +I repeat these things now, because they seem to justify me in dragging +back into sight a book written when I was very young, and, as I am only +too conscious, lacking in many of the qualities which I have since +acquired or developed. But, on going over it, I have found, for the most +part, what seems to me a sound foundation, though little enough may be +built on that foundation. I have revised many sentences, and a few +opinions; but, while conscious that I should approach the whole subject +now in a different way, I have found surprisingly few occasions for any +fundamental or serious change of view. I am conscious how much I owed, +at that time, to the most helpful and judicious friend whom I could +possibly have had at my elbow, Dykes Campbell. There are few pages of my +manuscript which he did not read and criticise, and not a page of my +proofs which he did not labour over as if it had been his own. He forced +me to learn accuracy, he cut out my worst extravagances, he kept me +sternly to my task. It was in writing this book under his encouragement +and correction that I began to learn the first elements of literary +criticism. + +This new edition, then, of my book is new and yet the same. I have +altered everything that seemed to require altering, and I have made the +style a little more equable; but I have not, I hope, broken anywhere +into a new key, or added any sort of decoration not in keeping with the +original plainness of the stuff. When Pater said: "His book is, +according to his intention, before all things a useful one," he +expressed my wish in the matter; and also when he said: "His aim is to +point his readers to the best, the indisputable, rather than to the +dubious portions of his author's work." In the letter from which I have +quoted, Browning said: "It does indeed strike me as wonderful that you +should have given such patient attention to all those poems, and (if I +dare say further) so thoroughly entered into--at any rate--the spirit in +which they were written and the purpose they hoped to serve." If +Browning really thought that, my purpose, certainly, had been +accomplished. + +_April 1906_. + + + + +PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION + + +I have ever held that the rod with which popular fancy invests criticism +is properly the rod of divination: a hazel-switch for the discovery of +buried treasure, not a birch-twig for the castigation of offenders. It +has therefore been my aim in the following pages to direct attention to +the best, not to forage for the worst--the small faults which acquire +prominence only by isolation--of the poet with whose writings I am +concerned. I wish also to give information, more or less detailed, about +each of Mr. Browning's works; information sufficient to the purpose I +have in view, which is to induce those who have hitherto deprived +themselves of a stimulating pleasure to deprive themselves of it no +longer. Further, my aim is in no sense controversial. In a book whose +sole purpose is to serve as an introduction to the study of a single one +of our contemporary poets, I have consciously and carefully refrained +from instituting comparisons--which I deprecate as, to say the least, +unnecessary--between the poet in question and any of the other eminent +poets in whose time we have the honour of living. + +I have to thank Mr. Browning for permission to reprint the interesting +and now almost inaccessible prefaces to some of his earlier works, which +will be found in Appendix II. I have also to thank Dr. Furnivall for +permission to make use of his _Browning Bibliography_, and for other +kind help. I wish to acknowledge my obligation to Mrs. Orr's _Handbook +to Robert Browning's Works_, and to some of the Browning Society's +papers, for helpful information and welcome light. Finally, I would +tender my especial and grateful thanks to Mr. J. Dykes Campbell, who has +given me much kindly assistance. + +_Sept. 15, 1886_. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE +GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 + +CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POEMS 33 + +APPENDIX: + + I. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT BROWNING 241 + + II. REPRINT OF DISCARDED PREFACES TO THE FIRST + EDITIONS OF SOME OF BROWNING'S WORKS 255 + +INDEX TO POEMS 261 + + + + + +ROBERT BROWNING + +BORN MAY 7, 1812. + +DIED DECEMBER 12, 1889. + + + + +GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS + + + + +AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF BROWNING + + +The first and perhaps the final impression we receive from the work of +Robert Browning is that of a great nature, an immense personality. The +poet in him is made up of many men. He is dramatist, humorist, lyrist, +painter, musician, philosopher and scholar, each in full measure, and he +includes and dominates them all. In richness of nature, in scope and +penetration of mind and vision, in energy of passion and emotion, he is +probably second among English poets to Shakespeare alone. In art, in the +power or the patience of working his native ore, he is surpassed by +many; but few have ever held so rich a mine in fee. So large, indeed, +appear to be his natural endowments, that we cannot feel as if the whole +vast extent of his work has come near to exhausting them. + +As it is, he has written more than any other English poet with the +exception of Shakespeare, and he comes very near the gigantic total of +Shakespeare. Mass of work is of course in itself worth nothing without +due quality; but there is no surer test nor any more fortunate +concomitant of greatness than the union of the two. The highest genius +is splendidly spendthrift; it is only the second order that needs to be +niggardly. Browning's works are not a mere collection of poems, they are +a literature. And his literature is the richest of modern times. If +"the best poetry is that which reproduces the most of life," his place +is among the great poets of the world. In the vast extent of his work he +has dealt with or touched on nearly every phase and feature of humanity, +and his scope is bounded only by the soul's limits and the last reaches +of life. But of all "Poetical Works," small or great, his is the most +consistent in its unity. The manner has varied not a little, the +comparative worth of individual poems is widely different, but from the +first word to the last the attitude is the same, the outlook on life the +same, the conception of God and man, of the world and nature, always the +same. This unity, though it may be deduced from, or at least +accommodated to, a system of philosophical thought, is much more the +outcome of a natural and inevitable bent. No great poet ever constructed +his poems upon a theory, but a theory may often be very legitimately +discovered in them. Browning, in his essay on Shelley, divides all poets +into two classes, subjective and objective, the Seer and the Maker. His +own genius includes a large measure of them both; for it is equally +strong on the dramatic and the metaphysical side. There are for him but +two realities; and but two subjects, Life and Thought. On these are +expended all his imagination and all his intellect, more consistently +and in a higher degree than can be said of any English poet since the +age of Elizabeth. Life and thought, the dramatic and the metaphysical, +are not considered apart, but woven into one seamless tissue; and in +regard to both he has one point of view and one manner of treatment. It +is this that causes the unity which subsists throughout his work; and it +is this, too, which distinguishes him among poets, and makes that +originality by virtue of which he has been described as the most +striking figure in our poetic literature. + +Most poets endeavour to sink the individual in the universal; it is +Browning's special distinction that when he is most universal he is most +individual. As a thinker he conceives of humanity not as an aggregate, +but as a collection of units. Most thinkers write and speak of man; +Browning of men. With man as a species, with man as a society, he does +not concern himself, but with individual man and man. Every man is for +him an epitome of the universe, a centre of creation. Life exists for +each as completely and separately as if he were the only inhabitant of +our planet. In the religious sense this is the familiar Christian view; +but Browning, while accepting, does not confine himself to, the +religious sense. He conceives of each man as placed on the earth with a +purpose of probation. Life is given him as a test of his quality; he is +exposed to the chances and changes of existence, to the opposition and +entanglement of circumstances, to evil, to doubt, to the influence of +his fellow-men, and to the conflicting powers of his own soul; and he +succeeds or fails, toward God, or as regards his real end and aim, +according as he is true or false to his better nature, his conception of +right. He is not to be judged by the vulgar standards of worldly success +or unsuccess; not even by his actions, good or bad as they may seem to +us, for action can never fully translate the thought or motive which lay +at its root; success or unsuccess, the prime and final fact in life, +lies between his soul and God. The poet, in Browning's view of him, is +God's witness, and must see and speak for God. He must therefore +conceive of each individual separately and distinctively, and he must +see how each soul conceives of itself. + +It is here that Browning parts company most decisively with all other +poets who concern themselves exclusively with life, dramatic poets, as +we call them; so that it seems almost necessary to invent some new term +to define precisely his special attitude. And hence it is that in his +drama thought plays comparatively so large, and action comparatively so +small, a part; hence, that action is valued only in so far as it reveals +thought or motive, not for its own sake, as the crown and flower of +these. + + "To the motive, the endeavour, the heart's self + His quick sense looks: he crowns and calls aright + The soul o' the purpose, ere 'tis shaped as act, + Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king."[1] + +For his endeavour is not to set men in action for the pleasure of seeing +them move; but to see and show, in their action and inaction alike, the +real impulses of their being: to see how each soul conceives of itself. + +This individuality of presentment is carried out equally in the domain +of life and of thought; as each man lives, so he thinks and perceives, +so he apprehends God and truth, for himself only. It is evident that +this special standpoint will give not only a unity but an originality to +the work of which it may be called the root; equally evident that it +will demand a special method and a special instrument. + +The dramatic poet, in the ordinary sense, in the sense in which we apply +it to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, aims at showing, by means of +action, the development of character as it manifests itself to the world +in deeds. His study is character, but it is character in action, +considered only in connection with a particular grouping of events, and +only so far as it produces or operates upon these. The processes are +concealed from us, we see the result. In the very highest realisations +of this dramatic power, and always in intention, we are presented with a +perfect picture, in which every actor lives, and every word is audible; +perfect, complete in itself, without explanation, without comment; a +dogma incarnate, which we must accept as it is given us, and explain and +illustrate for ourselves. If we wish to know what this character or that +thought or felt in his very soul, we may perhaps have data from which to +construct a more or less probable hypothesis; but that is all. We are +told nothing, we care to know nothing of what is going on in the +thought; of the infinitely subtle meshes of motive or emotion which will +perhaps find no direct outcome in speech, no direct manifestation in +action, but by which the soul's life in reality subsists. This is not +the intention: it is a spectacle of life we are beholding; and life is +action. + +But is there no other sense in which a poet may be dramatic, besides +this sense of the acting drama? no new form possible, which + + "Peradventure may outgrow, + The simulation of the painted scene, + Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, + And take for a nobler stage the soul itself, + In shifting fancies and celestial lights, + With all its grand orchestral silences, + To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds."[2] + +This new form of drama is the drama as we see it in Browning, a drama +of the interior, a tragedy or comedy of the soul. Instead of a grouping +of characters which shall act on one another to produce a certain result +in action, we have a grouping of events useful or important only as they +influence the character or the mind. This is very clearly explained in +the original Advertisement to _Paracelsus_, where Browning tells us that +his poem is an attempt + + "to reverse the method usually adopted by writers whose aim + it is to set forth any phenomenon of the mind or the + passions, by the operation of persons and events; and that, + instead of having recourse to an external machinery of + incidents to create and evolve the crisis I desire to + produce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely the + mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the + agency by which it is influenced and determined, to be + generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate + throughout, if not altogether excluded." + +In this way, by making the soul the centre of action, he is enabled +(thinking himself into it, as all dramatists must do) to bring out its +characteristics, to reveal its very nature. Suppose him to be attracted +by some particular soul or by some particular act. The problem occupies +him: the more abstruse and entangled the more attractive to him it is; +he winds his way into the heart of it, or, we might better say, he picks +to pieces the machinery. Presently he begins to reconstruct, before our +eyes, the whole series of events, the whole substance of the soul, but, +so to speak, turned inside out. We watch the workings of the mental +machinery as it is slowly disclosed before us; we note the specialties +of construction, its individual character, the interaction of parts, +every secret of it. We thus come to see that, considered from the +proper point of view, everything is clear, regular and explicable in +however entangled an action, however obscure a soul; we see that what is +external is perfectly natural when we can view its evolution from what +is internal. It must not be supposed that Browning explains this to us +in the manner of an anatomical lecturer; he makes every character +explain itself by its own speech, and very often by speech that is or +seems false and sophistical, so only that it is personal and individual, +and explains, perhaps by exposing, its speaker. + +This, then, is Browning's consistent mental attitude, and his special +method. But he has also a special instrument, the monologue. The drama +of action demands a concurrence of several distinct personalities, +influencing one another rapidly by word or deed, so as to bring about +the catastrophe; hence the propriety of the dialogue. But the +introspective drama, in which the design is to represent and reveal the +individual, requires a concentration of interest, a focussing of light +on one point, to the exclusion or subordination of surroundings; hence +the propriety of the monologue, in which a single speaker or thinker can +consciously or unconsciously exhibit his own soul. This form of +monologue, learnt perhaps from Landor, who used it with little +psychological intention, appears in almost the earliest of Browning's +poems, and he has developed it more skilfully and employed it more +consistently than any other writer. Even in works like _Sordello_ and +_Red Cotton Night-cap Country_, which are thrown into the narrative +form, many of the finest and most characteristic parts are in monologue; +and _The Inn Album_ is a series of slightly-linked dialogues which are +only monologues in disguise. Nearly all the lyrics, romances, idyls, +nearly all the miscellaneous poems, long and short, are monologues. And +even in the dramas, as will be seen later, there is visible a growing +tendency toward the monologue with its mental and individual, in place +of the dialogue with its active and outer interest. + +Browning's aim, then, being to see how each soul conceives of itself, +and to exhibit its essential qualities, yet without complication of +incident, it is his frequent practice to reveal the soul to itself by +the application of a sudden test, which shall condense the long trial of +years into a single moment, and so "flash the truth out by one blow." To +this practice we owe his most vivid and notable work. "The poetry of +Robert Browning," says Pater, "is pre-eminently the poetry of +situations." He selects a character, no matter how uninteresting in +itself, and places it in some situation where its vital essence may +become apparent, in some crisis of conflict or opportunity. The choice +of good or evil is open to it, and in perhaps a single moment its fate +will be decided. When a soul plays dice with the devil there is only a +second in which to win or lose; but the second may be worth an eternity. +These moments of intense significance, these tremendous spiritual +crises, are struck out in Browning's poetry with a clearness and +sharpness of outline that no other poet has achieved. "To realise such a +situation, to define in a chill and empty atmosphere the focus where +rays, in themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the +artist has to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine +upon thought and passion a thousand fold.... Yet, in spite of this +intricacy, the poem has the clear ring of a central motive; we receive +from it the impression of one imaginative tone, of a single creative +act."[3] + +It is as a result of this purpose, in consonance with this practice, +that we get in Browning's works so large a number of distinct human +types, and so great a variety of surroundings in which they are placed. +Only in Shakespeare can we find anything like the same variety of +distinct human characters, vital creations endowed with thoughtful life; +and not even, perhaps, in Shakespeare, such novelty and variety of +_milieu_. There is scarcely a salient epoch in the history of the modern +world which he has not touched, always with the same vital and +instinctive sympathy based on profound and accurate knowledge. Passing +by the legendary and remote ages and civilisations of East and West, he +has painted the first dawn of the modern spirit in the Athens of +Socrates and Euripides, revealed the whole temper and tendency of the +twilight age between Paganism and Christianity, and recorded the last +utterance of the last apostle of the now-conquering creed; he has +distilled the very essence of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the +very essence of the modern world. The men and women who live and move in +that new world of his creation are as varied as life itself; they are +kings and beggars, saints and lovers, great captains, poets, painters, +musicians, priests and popes, Jews, gipsies and dervishes, street-girls, +princesses, dancers with the wicked witchery of the daughter of +Herodias, wives with the devotion of the wife of Brutus, joyous girls +and malevolent greybeards, statesmen, cavaliers, soldiers of humanity, +tyrants and bigots, ancient sages and modern spiritualists, heretics, +scholars, scoundrels, devotees, rabbis, persons of quality and men of +low estate, men and women as multiform as nature or society has made +them. He has found and studied humanity, not only in English towns and +villages, in the glare of gaslight and under the open sky, but on the +Roman Campagna, in Venetian gondolas, in Florentine streets, on the +Boulevards of Paris and in the Prado of Madrid, in the snow-bound +forests of Russia, beneath the palms of Persia and upon Egyptian sands, +on the coasts of Normandy and the salt plains of Brittany, among Druses +and Arabs and Syrians, in brand-new Boston and amidst the ruins of +Thebes. But this infinite variety has little in it of mere historic or +social curiosity. I do not think Browning has ever set himself the task +of recording the legend of the ages, though to some extent he has done +it. The instinct of the poet seizes on a type of character, the eye of +the painter perceives the shades and shapes of line and colour and form +required to give it picturesque prominence, and the learning of the +scholar then sets up a fragment of the broken past, or re-fashions a +portion of the living present, as an appropriate and harmonious scene or +background. The statue is never dwarfed by the pedestal. + +The characteristic of which I have been speaking (the persistent care +for the individual and personal, as distinguished from the universal and +general) while it is the secret of his finest achievements, and rightly +his special charm, is of all things the most alien to the ordinary +conceptions of poetry, and the usual preferences for it. The popularity +of rare and delicate poetry, which condescends to no cheap bids for it, +poetry like Tennyson's, for instance, is largely due to the very quality +which Browning's finest characteristic excludes from his. Compare, +altogether apart from the worth and workmanship, one of Tennyson's with +one of Browning's best lyrics. The perfection of the former consists in +the exquisite way in which it expresses feelings common to all. The +perfection of the latter consists in the intensity of its expression of +a single moment of passion or emotion, one peculiar to a single +personality, and to that personality only at a single moment. To +appreciate it we must enter keenly and instantaneously into the +imaginary character at its imagined crisis; and, even when this is +easiest to do, it is evident that there must be more difficulty in doing +it (for it requires a certain exertion) than in merely letting the mind +lie at rest, accepting and absorbing. And the difficulty is increased +when we remember another of Browning's characteristics, closely allied +to this, and, indeed, resulting from it: his preference for the unusual +and complex rather than the simple and ordinary. People prefer to read +about characters which they can understand at first sight, with which +they can easily sympathise. A dramatist, who insists on presenting them +with complex and exceptional characters, studies of the good in evil and +the evil in good, representations of states of mind which are not +habitual to them, or which they find it difficult to realise in certain +lights, can never obtain so quick or so hearty a recognition as one who +deals with great actions, large and clear characters, familiar motives. +When the head has to be exercised before the heart, there is chilling of +sympathy. + +Allied to Browning's originality in temper, topic, treatment and form, +is his originality in style; an originality which is again due, in large +measure, to the same prevailing cause. His style is vital, his verse +moves to the throbbing of an inner organism, not to the pulsations of a +machine. He prefers, as indeed all true poets do, but more exclusively +than any other poet, sense to sound, thought to expression. In his +desire of condensation he employs as few words as are consistent with +the right expression of his thought; he rejects superfluous adjectives, +and all stop-gap words. He refuses to use words for words' sake: he +declines to interrupt conversation with a display of fireworks: and as a +result it will be found that his finest effects of versification +correspond with his highest achievements in imagination and passion. As +a dramatic poet he is obliged to modulate and moderate, sometimes almost +to vulgarise, his style and diction for the proper expression of some +particular character, in whose mouth exquisite turns of phrase and +delicate felicities of rhythm would be inappropriate. He will not _let +himself go_ in the way of easy floridity, as writers may whose themes +are more "ideal." And where many writers would attempt merely to +simplify and sweeten verse, he endeavours to give it fuller +expressiveness, to give it strength and newness. It follows that +Browning's verse is not so uniformly melodious as that of many other +poets. Where it seems to him necessary to sacrifice one of the two, +sense or sound, he has never hesitated which to sacrifice. But while he +has certainly failed in some of his works, or in some passages of them, +to preserve the due balance, while he has at times undoubtedly +sacrificed sound too liberally to the claims of sense, the extent of +this sacrifice is very much less than is generally supposed. The notion, +only too general, expressed by such a phrase as "his habitual rudeness +of versification" (used by no unfavourable _Edinburgh_ reviewer in 1869) +is one of the most singularly erroneous perversions of popular prejudice +that have ever called for correction at the hands of serious criticism. + +Browning is far indeed from paying no attention, or little, to metre and +versification. Except in some of his later blank verse, and in a few +other cases, his very errors are just as often the result of hazardous +experiments as of carelessness and inattention. In one very important +matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the greatest master in our +language; in single and double, in simple and grotesque alike, his +rhymes are as accurate as they are ingenious. His lyrical poems contain +more structural varieties of form than those of any preceding English +poet, not excepting Shelley. His blank verse at its best is more vital +in quality than that of any modern poet. And both in rhymed and in blank +verse he has written passages which for almost every technical quality +are hardly to be surpassed in the language. + +That Browning's style should have changed in the course of years is only +natural, and its development has been in the natural (if not always in +the best) direction. "The later manner of a painter or poet," says +F.W.H. Myers in his essay on Virgil, "generally differs from his earlier +manner in much the same way. We observe in him a certain impatience of +the rules which have guided him to excellence, a certain desire to use +his materials more freely, to obtain bolder and newer effects." These +tendencies and others of the kind are specially manifest in Browning, as +they must be in a writer of strongly marked originality; for originality +always strengthens with use, and often hardens to eccentricity, as we +may observe in the somewhat parallel case of Carlyle. We find as a +consequence that a great deal of his later poetry is much less +attractive and much less artistically perfect than his earlier work, +while just those failings to which his principles of poetic art rendered +him liable become more and more frequent and prominent. But, good or +bad, it has grown with his growth, and we can conceive him saying, with +Aurora Leigh, + + "So life, in deepening with me, deepened all + The course I took, the work I did. Indeed + The academic law convinced of sin; + The critics cried out on the falling off, + Regretting the first manner. But I felt + My heart's life throbbing in my verse to show + It lived, it also--certes incomplete, + Disordered with all Adam in the blood, + But even its very tumours, warts and wens, + Still organised by and implying life."[4] + +It has been, as a rule, strangely overlooked, though it is a matter of +the first moment, that Browning's poems are in the most precise sense +_works of art_, and this in a very high degree, positive and relative, +if we understand by a "work of art" a poem which attains its end and +fulfils its purpose completely, and which has a worthy end and plain +purpose to attain. + +Surely this is of far more vital importance than the mere melodiousness +of single lines, or a metre of unvarying sweetness bearing gently along +in its placid course (as a stream the leaf or twig fallen into it from +above) some tiny thought or finikin fragment of emotion. Matthew Arnold, +who was both poet and critic, has told us with emphasis of "the +necessity of accurate construction, and the subordinate character of +expression."[5] His next words, though bearing a slightly different +signification, may very legitimately be applied to Browning. Arnold +tells us "how unspeakably superior is the effect of the one moral +impression left by a great action treated as a whole, to the effect +produced by the most striking single thought or by the happiest image." +For "a great action," read "an adequate subject," and the words define +and defend Browning's principle and practice exactly. There is no +characteristic of his work more evident, none more admirable or more +rare, than the unity, the compactness and completeness, the skill and +care in construction and definiteness in impression, of each poem. I do +not know any contemporary of whom this may more truly be said. The +assertion will be startling, no doubt, to those who are accustomed to +think of Browning (as people once thought of Shakespeare) as a poet of +great gifts but little skill; as a giant, but a clumsy giant; as what +the French call a _nature_, an almost unconscious force, expending +itself at random, without rule or measure. But take, for example, the +series of _Men and Women_, as originally published, read poem after poem +(there are fifty to choose from) and scrutinise each separately; see +what was the writer's intention, and observe how far he has fulfilled +it, how far he has succeeded in conveying to your mind a distinct and +sharply-cut impression. You will find that whatever be the subject, +whatever the style, whether in your eyes the former be mistaken, the +latter perverse, the poem itself, within its recognised limits, is +designed, constructed and finished with the finest skill of the +draughtsman or the architect. You will find that the impression you have +received from the whole is single and vivid, and, while you may not +perceive it, it will generally be the case that certain details at which +your fastidiousness cries out, certain uncouthnesses, as you fancy, are +perfectly appropriate and in their place, and have contributed to the +perfection of the _ensemble_. + +A word may here be said in reference to the charge of "obscurity," +which, from the time when Browning's earliest poem was disposed of by a +complacent critic in the single phrase, "A piece of pure bewilderment," +has been hurled at each succeeding poem with re-iterate vigour of +virulence. The charge of "pure bewilderment" is about as reasonable as +the charge of "habitual rudeness of versification." It is a fashion. +People abuse their "Browning" as they abuse their "Bradshaw," though all +that is wanting, in either case, is a little patience and a little +common sense. Browning might say, as his wife said in an early preface, +"I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for +the hour of the poet;" as indeed he has himself said, to much the same +effect, in a letter printed many years ago: "I never pretended to offer +such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at +dominoes to an idle man." But he has not made anything like such a +demand on the reader's faculties as people, _not_ readers, seem to +suppose. _Sordello_ is difficult, _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is +difficult, so, perhaps, in parts, is _Fifine at the Fair_; so, too, on +account of its unfamiliar allusions, is _Aristophanes' Apology_; and a +few smaller poems, here and there, remotely argumentative or specially +complex in psychology, are difficult. But really these are about all to +which such a term as "unintelligible," so freely and recklessly flung +about, could with the faintest show of reason be applied by any +reasonable being. In the 21,116 lines which form Browning's longest work +and masterpiece, the "psychological epic" of _The Ring and the Book_, I +am inclined to think it possible that a careful scrutiny might reveal +116 which an ordinary reader would require to read twice. Anything more +clear than the work as a whole it would be difficult to find. It is much +easier to follow than _Paradise Lost_; the _Agamemnon_ is rather less +easy to follow than _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_. + +That there is some excuse for the accusation, no one would or could +deny. But it is only the excuse of a misconception. Browning is a +thinker of extraordinary depth and subtlety; his themes are seldom +superficial, often very remote, and his thought is, moreover, as swift +as it is subtle. To a dull reader there is little difference between +cloudy and fiery thought; the one is as much too bright for him as the +other is too dense. Of all thinkers in poetry, Browning is the most +swift and fiery. "If there is any great quality," says Mr. Swinburne, in +those noble pages in which he has so generously and triumphantly +vindicated his brother-poet from this very charge of obscurity-- + + "If there is any great quality more perceptible than another + in Mr. Browning's intellect, it is his decisive and incisive + faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, + his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him with + obscurity is about as accurate as to call Lynceus purblind, + or complain of the sluggish action of the telegraphic wire. + He is something too much the reverse of obscure; he is too + brilliant and subtle for the ready reader of a ready writer + to follow with any certainty the track of an intelligence + which moves with such incessant rapidity, or even to realise + with what spider-like swiftness and sagacity his building + spirit leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and + forward, as it lives along the animated line of its labour, + springs from thread to thread, and darts from centre to + circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living + thought, woven from the inexhaustible stores of his + perception, and kindled from the inexhaustible fire of his + imagination. He never thinks but at full speed; and the rate + of his thought is to that of another man's as the speed of a + railway to that of a waggon, or the speed of a telegraph to + that of a railway."[6] + +Moreover, while a writer who deals with easy themes has no excuse if he +is not pellucid at a glance, one who employs his intellect and +imagination on high and hard questions has a right to demand a +corresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say, with Bishop +Butler, in answer to a similar complaint: "It must be acknowledged that +some of the following discourses are very abstruse and difficult; or, if +you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add that those alone are +judges whether or no, and how far this is a fault, who are judges +whether or no, and how far it might have been avoided--those only who +will be at the trouble to understand what is here said, and to see how +far the things here insisted upon, and not other things, might have been +put in a plainer manner."[7] + +There is another popular misconception to which also a word in passing +may as well be devoted. This is the idea that Browning's personality is +apt to get confused with his characters', that his men and women are not +separate creations, projected from his brain into an independent +existence, but mere masks or puppets through whose mouths he speaks. +This fallacy arises from the fact that not a few of his imaginary +persons express themselves in a somewhat similar fashion; or, as people +too rashly say, "talk like Browning." The explanation of this apparent +paradox, so far as it exists, is not far to seek. All art is a +compromise, and all dramatic speech is in fact impossible. No persons in +real life would talk as Shakespeare or any other great dramatist makes +them talk. Nor do the characters of Shakespeare talk like those of any +other great dramatist, except in so far as later playwrights have +consciously imitated Shakespeare. Every dramatic writer has his own +style, and in this style, subject to modification, all his characters +speak. Just as a soul, born out of eternity into time, takes on itself +the impress of earth and the manners of human life, so a dramatic +creation, pure essence in the shaping imagination of the poet, takes on +itself, in its passage into life, something of the impress of its abode. +"The poet, in short, endows his creations with his own attributes; he +enables them to utter their feelings as if they themselves were poets, +thus giving a true voice even to that intensity of passion which in real +life often hinders expression."[8] If this fact is recognised (that +dramatic speech is not real speech, but poetical speech, and poetical +speech infused with the individual style of each individual dramatist, +modulated, indeed, but true to one keynote) then it must be granted that +Browning has as much right to his own style as other dramatists have to +theirs, and as little right as they to be accused on that account of +putting his personality into his work. But as Browning's style is very +pronounced and original, it is more easily recognisable than that of +most dramatists (so far, no doubt, a defect[9]) and for this reason it +has come to seem relatively more prominent than it really is. This +consideration, and not any confusion of identity, is the cause of +whatever similarity of speech exists between Browning and his +characters, or between individual characters. The similarity is only +skin-deep. Take a convenient instance, _The Ring and the Book_. I have +often seen it stated that the nine tellings of the story are all told in +the same style, that all the speakers, Guido and Pompilia, the Pope and +Tertium Quid alike, speak like Browning. I cannot see it. On the +contrary, I have been astonished, in reading and re-reading the poem, at +the variety, the difference, the wonderful individuality in each +speaker's way of telling the same story; at the profound art with which +the rhythm, the metaphors, the very details of language, no less than +the broad distinctions of character and the subtle indications of bias, +are adapted and converted into harmony. A certain general style, a +certain general manner of expression, are common to all, as is also the +case in, let us say, _The Tempest_. But what distinction, what variation +of tone, what delicacy and expressiveness of modulation! As a simple +matter of fact, few writers have ever had a greater flexibility of style +than Browning. + +I am doubtful whether full justice has been done to one section of +Browning's dramatic work, his portraits of women. The presence of woman +is not perhaps relatively so prominent in his work as it is in the work +of some other poets; woman is to him neither an exclusive preoccupation, +nor a continual unrest; but as faithful and vital representations, I do +not hesitate to put his portraits of women quite on a level with his +portraits of men, and far beyond those of any other English poet of the +last three centuries. In some of them, notably in Pompilia, there is a +something which always seems to me almost incredible in a man: an +instinct that one would have thought only a woman could have for women. +And his women, good or bad, are always real women, and they are +represented without bias. Browning is one of the very few men (Mr. +Meredith, whose women are, perhaps, the consummate flower of his work, +is his only other English contemporary) who can paint women without +idealisation or degradation, not from the man's side, but from their +own; as living equals, not as goddesses or as toys. His women live, act, +and suffer, even think; not assertively, mannishly (for the loveliest of +them have a very delicate charm of girlishness) but with natural +volition, on equal rights with men. Any one who has thought at all on +the matter will acknowledge that this is the highest praise that could +be given to a poet, and the rarest. Browning's women are not perhaps as +various as his men; but from Ottima to Pompilia (from the "great white +queen, magnificent in sin," to the "lily of a maiden, white with intact +leaf") what a range and gradation of character! These are the two +extremes; between them, as earth lies between heaven and hell, are +stationed all the others, from the faint and delicate dawn in Pauline, +Michal and Palma, through Pippa and Mildred and Colombe and Constance +and the Queen, to Balaustion and Elvire, Fifine and Clara and the +heroine of the _Inn Album_, and the lurid close in Cristina. I have +named only a few, and how many there are to name! Someone has written a +book on _Shakespeare's Women_: whoever writes a book on _Browning's +Women_ will have a task only less delightful, a subject only less rich, +than that. + +When Browning was a boy, it is recorded that he debated within himself +whether he should not become a painter or a musician as well as a poet. +Finally, though not, I believe, for a good many years, he decided in the +negative. But the latent qualities of painter and musician have +developed themselves in his poetry, and much of his finest and very much +of his most original verse is that which speaks the language of painter +and musician as it had never before been spoken. No English poet before +him has ever excelled his utterances on music, none has so much as +rivalled his utterances on art. _Abt Vogler_ is the richest, deepest, +fullest poem on music in the language. It is not the theories of the +poet, but the instincts of the musician, that it speaks. _Master Hugues +of Saxe-Gotha_ is unparalleled for ingenuity of technical +interpretation; _A Toccata of Galuppi's_ is as rare a rendering as can +anywhere be found of the impressions and sensations caused by a musical +piece; but _Abt Vogler_ is a very glimpse into the heaven where music is +born. In his poems on the arts of painting and sculpture (not in +themselves more perfect in sympathy, though larger in number, than those +on music) he is simply the first to write of these arts as an artist +might, if an artist could express his soul in words or rhythm. It has +always been a fashion among poets to write about music, though scarcely +anyone but Shakespeare and Milton has done so to much purpose; it is +now, owing to the influence of Rossetti (whose magic, however, was all +his own, and whose mantle went down into the grave with him) a fashion +to write about pictures. But indiscriminate sonneteering about pictures +is one thing: Browning's attitude and insight into the plastic arts +quite another. Poems like _Andrea del Sarto_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, _Pictor +Ignotus_, have a revealing quality which is unique; tragedies or +comedies of art, in a more personal and dramatic way than the musical +poems, they are like these in touching the springs of art itself. They +may be compared with _Abt Vogler_. Poems of the order of _The Guardian +Angel_ are more comparable with _A Toccata of Galuppi's_, the rendering +of the impressions and sensations caused by a particular picture. _Old +Pictures in Florence_ is not unsimilar to _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, +critical, technical, lovingly learned, sympathetically quizzical. But +Browning's artistic instinct and knowledge are manifested not only in +special poems of this sort, but everywhere throughout his works. He +writes of painters because he has a kinship with them. "Their pictures +are windows through which he sees into their souls." + +It is only natural that a poet with the instincts of a painter should be +capable of superb landscape-painting in verse; and we find in Browning +this power. It is further evident that such a poet, a man who has chosen +poetry instead of painting, must consider the latter art subordinate to +the former, and it is only natural that we should find Browning +subordinating the pictorial to the poetic capacity, and this more +carefully than most other poets. His best landscapes are as brief as +they are brilliant. They are like sabre-strokes, swift, sudden, flashing +the light from their sweep, and striking straight to the heart. And they +are never pushed into prominence for an effect of idle beauty, nor +strewn about in the way of thoughtful or passionate utterance, like +roses in a runner's path. They are subordinated always to the human +interest; blended, fused with it, so that a landscape in a poem of +Browning's is literally a part of the emotion. All poetry which +describes in detail, however magnificent, palls on us when persisted in. +"The art of the pen (we write on darkness) is to rouse the inward +vision, instead of labouring with a Drop-scene brush, as if it were to +the eye; because our flying minds cannot contain a protracted +description. That is why the poets who spring imagination with a word or +a phrase paint lasting pictures. The Shakespearian, the Dantesque, are +in a line, two at most."[10] It is to this, the finest essence of +landscape-painting, that most of Browning's landscapes belong. Yet he +can be as explicit as any one when he sees fit. Look at the poem of _The +Englishman in Italy_. The whole piece is one long description, minute, +careful and elaborated. Perhaps it is worth observing that the +description is addressed to a child. + +In the exercise of his power of placing a character or incident in a +sympathetic setting, Browning shows himself, as I have pointed out, +singularly skilful. He never avails himself of the dramatic poet's +licence of vagueness as to surroundings: he sees them himself with +instant and intense clearness, and stamps them as clearly on our brain. +The picture calls up the mood. Here is the opening of one of his very +earliest poems, _Porphyria's Lover_:-- + + "The rain set early in to-night, + The sullen wind was soon awake, + It tore the elm-tops down for spite, + And did its worst to vex the lake, + I listened with heart fit to break. + When glided in Porphyria." + +There, in five lines, is the scene and the mood, and in the sixth line +Porphyria may enter. Take a middle-period poem, _A Serenade at the +Villa_, for an instance of more deliberate description, flashed by the +same fiery art:-- + + "That was I, you heard last night + When there rose no moon at all, + Nor, to pierce the strained and tight + Tent of heaven, a planet small: + Life was dead and so was light. + + Not a twinkle from the fly, + Not a glimmer from the worm. + When the crickets stopped their cry, + When the owls forebore a term, + You heard music; that was I. + + Earth turned in her sleep with pain, + Sultrily suspired for proof: + _In at heaven and out again, + Lightning!--where it broke the roof, + Bloodlike, some few drops of rain_. + + What they could my words expressed, + O my love, my all, my one! + Singing helped the verses best, + And when singing's best was done, + To my lute I left the rest. + + So wore night; the East was gray, + White the broad-faced hemlock flowers; + There would be another day; + Ere its first of heavy hours + Found me, I had passed away." + +This tells enough to be an entire poem. It is not a description of +the night and the lover: we are made to see them. The lines I have +italicised are of the school of Dante or of Rembrandt. Their vividness +overwhelms. In the latest poems, as in _Ivan Ivanovitch_ or _Ned +Bratts_, we find the same swift sureness of touch. It is only natural +that most of Browning's finest landscapes are Italian.[11] + +As a humorist in poetry, Browning takes rank with our greatest. His +humour, like most of his qualities, is peculiar to himself, though no +doubt Carlyle had something of it. It is of wide capacity, and ranges +from the effervescence of pure fun and freak to that salt and briny +laughter whose taste is bitterer than tears. Its full extent will be +seen by comparing _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_ with _Confessions_, or in +the contrast of the two parts of _Holy-Cross Day_. We find the simplest +form of humour, the jolly laughter of an unaffected nature, the +effervescence of a sparkling and overflowing brain, in such poems as _Up +at a Villa--Down in the City_, or _Pacchiarotto_, or _Sibrandus +Schafnaburgensis_. _Fra Lippo Lippi_ leans to this category, though it +is infused with biting wit and stinging irony; for it is first and +foremost the bubbling-up of a restless and irrepressibly comic nature, +the born Bohemian compressed but not contained by the rough rope-girdle +of the monk. He is Browning's finest figure of comedy. _Ned Bratts_ is +another admirable creation of true humour, tinged with the grotesque. In +_A Lovers' Quarrel_ and _Dis aliter Visum_, humour refines into passion. +In _Bishop Blougram_ it condenses into wit. The poem has a well-bred +irony; in _A Soul's Tragedy_ irony smiles and stings; in _Mr. Sludge, +the Medium_, it stabs with a thirsty point. In _Caliban upon Setebos_ we +have the pure grotesque, an essentially noble variety of art, admitting +of the utmost refinement of workmanship. The _Soliloquy of the Spanish +Cloister_ attains a new effect of grotesque: it is the comic tragedy of +vituperative malevolence. _Holy-Cross Day_ heightens the grotesque with +pity, indignation and solemnity: _The Heretic's Tragedy_ raises it to +sublimity. Browning's satire is equally keen and kindly. It never +condescends to raise laughter at infirmity, or at mere absurdities of +manners; it respects human nature, but it convicts falsity by the +revealing intensity of its illumination. Of cynicism, of the wit that +preys upon carrion, there is less than nothing. + +Of all poets Browning is the healthiest and manliest; he is one of +the "substantial men" of whom Landor speaks. His genius is robust with +vigorous blood, and his tone has the cheeriness of intellectual health. +The most subtle of minds, his is the least sickly. The wind that blows +in his pages is no hot and languorous breeze, laden with scents and +sweets, but a fresh salt wind blowing in from the sea. His poetry is a +tonic; it braces and invigorates. "_Il fait vivre ses phrases_:" +his verse lives and throbs with life. He is incomparably plentiful of +vital heat; "so thoroughly and delightfully alive." This is an effect +of art, and a moral impression. It brings us into his own presence, and +stirs us with an answering warmth of life in the breathing pages. The +keynote of his philosophy is:-- + + "God's in his heaven, + All's right with the world!" + +He has such a hopefulness of belief in human nature that he shrinks from +no _man_, however clothed and cloaked in evil, however miry with +stumblings and fallings. I am a man, he might say with the noblest +utterance of antiquity, and I deem nothing alien that is human. His +investigations of evil are profoundly consistent with an indomitable +optimism. Any one can say "All's right with the world," when he looks at +the smiling face of things, at comfortable prosperity and a decent +morality. But the test of optimism is its sight of evil. Browning has +fathomed it, and he can still hope, for he sees the reflection of the +sun in the depths of every foul puddle. This vivid hope and trust in man +is bound up with a strong and strenuous faith in God. Browning's +Christianity is wider than our creeds, and is all the more vitally +Christian in that it never sinks into pietism. He is never didactic, but +his faith is the root of his art, and transforms and transfigures it. +Yet as a dramatic poet he is so impartial, and can express all creeds +with so easy an interpretative accent, that it is possible to prove him +(as Shakespeare has been proved) a believer in every thing and a +disbeliever in anything. + +Such, so far as I can realise my conception of him, is Robert Browning; +and such the tenour of his work as a whole. It is time to pass from +general considerations to particular ones; from characteristics of the +writer to characteristics of the poems. In the pages to follow I shall +endeavour to present a critical chronicle of Browning's works; not +neglecting to give due information about each, but not confining myself +to the mere giving of information. It is hoped that the quotations for +which I may find room will practically illustrate and convincingly +corroborate what I have to say about the poetry from which they are +taken. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: _Luria_, Act iii.] + +[Footnote 2: _Aurora Leigh_, Book Fifth.] + +[Footnote 3: Walter Pater, _The Renaissance_, p, 226.] + +[Footnote 4: _Aurora Leigh_, Book Third.] + +[Footnote 5: Preface to _Poems_, 1853.] + +[Footnote 6: _George Chapman: A Critical Essay_, 1875.] + +[Footnote 7: _Works_, 1847, Preface to Sermons, pp. viii.-ix., where +will also be found some exceedingly sensible remarks, which I commend to +those whom it concerns, on persons "who take it for granted that they +are acquainted with everything; and that no subject, if treated in the +manner it should be, can be treated in any manner but what is familiar +and easy to them."] + +[Footnote 8: "Realism in Dramatic Art," _New Quarterly Magazine_, Oct., +1879.] + +[Footnote 9: Allowing at its highest valuation all that need be allowed +on this score, we find only that Mr. Browning has the defects of his +qualities; and from these who is exempted? By virtue of this style of +his he has succeeded in rendering into words the inmost thoughts and +finest shades of feeling of the "men and women fashioned by his fancy," +and in such a task we can pardon even a fault, for such a result we can +overlook even a blemish; as Lessing, in _Laokoon_, remarking on an error +in Raphael's drapery, finely says, "Who will not rather praise him for +having had the wisdom and the courage to commit a slight fault, for the +sake of greater fulness of expression?"] + +[Footnote 10: George Meredith, _Diana of the Crossways_.] + +[Footnote 11: Italians, it is pleasant to remember, have warmly welcomed +the poet who has known and loved Italy best. "Her town and country, her +churches and her ruins, her sorrows and her hopes," said Prof. Nencioni, +as long ago as 1867, "are constantly sung by him. How he loves the land +that inspires him he has shown by his long residence among us, and by +the thrilling, almost lover-like tone with which he speaks of our dear +country. 'Open my heart and you will see, Graved inside of it Italy,' as +he exclaims in _De Gustibus_."] + + + + +CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POEMS + +(1833-1890) + + + + +CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POEMS + +(1833-1890.) + + * * * * * + + +1. PAULINE: a Fragment of a Confession. + + [Published anonymously in 1833; first reprinted (the text + unaltered) in _Poetical Works_, 6 vols., Smith, Elder and + Co., 1868 (Vol. I., pp. 1-41); revised text, _Poetical + Works_, 1889, Vol. I., pp. 1-45.] + +_PAULINE_ was written at the age of twenty. Its prefatory motto from +Cornelius Agrippa (dated "_London, January, 1833_. _V.A.XX._") serves to +convey a hint that the "confession" is dramatic, and at the same time +lays claim to the indulgence due to the author's youth. These two points +are stated plainly in the "exculpatory word" prefixed to the reprint in +1868. After mentioning the circumstances under which the revival of the +poem was forced on him, Browning says: + + "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." + +In a note to the collected edition of 1889, Browning adds: + + "Twenty years' endurance of an eyesore seems more than + sufficient; my faults remain duly recorded against me, and I + claim permission to somewhat diminish these, so far as style + is concerned, in the present and final edition." + +A revised text follows, in which, while many "faults" are indeed +"diminished," it is difficult not to feel at times as if the foot-notes +had got into the text. + +_Pauline_ is the confession of an unnamed poet to the woman whom he +loves, and whose name is given in the title. It is a sort of spiritual +autobiography; a record of sensations and ideas, rather than of deeds. +"The scenery is in the chambers of thought; the agencies are powers and +passions; the events are transitions from one state of spiritual +existence to another." There is a vagueness of outline about the speaker +which is due partly, no doubt, to the immaturity of the writer, partly +also to the too exclusive portraiture of inactive mood. The difficulty +is acknowledged in a curious "editor's" note, written in French, and +signed "Pauline," in which Browning offered a sort of explanatory +criticism of his own work. So far as we can grasp his personality, the +speaker appears to us a highly-gifted and on the whole right-natured +man, but possessed of a morbid self-consciousness and a limitless yet +indecisive ambition. Endowed with a highly poetic nature, yet without, +as it seems, adequate concentrative power; filled, at times, with a +passionate yearning after God and good, yet morally unstable; he has +spent much of his strength in ineffectual efforts, and he is conscious +of lamentable failure and mistake in the course of his past life. +Specially does he recognise and mourn his "self-idolatry," which has +isolated him from others, and confined him within the close and vitiated +circle of his own selfhood. Led by some better impulse, he now turns to +Pauline, and to the memory of a great and dearly-loved poet, spoken of +as "Sun-treader," finding in these, the memory and the love, a quietude +and a redemption. + +The poet of the poem is an imaginary character, but it is possible to +trace in this character some real traits of its creator. The passage +beginning "I am made up of an intensest life" is certainly a piece of +admirable self-portraiture; allusions here and there have a personal +significance. In this earliest poem we see the germ of almost all the +qualities (humour excepted) which mark Browning's mature work. Intensity +of religious belief, love of music, of painting, and of the Greek +classics; insight into nature, a primary interest in and intense insight +into the human soul, these are already manifest. No characteristic is +more interesting in the light of long subsequent achievement than the +familiarity with Greek literature, shown not merely by the references to +Plato and to Agamemnon, but by what is perhaps the finest passage in the +poem, the one ending:-- + + "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." + +The enthusiasm which breathes through whole pages of address to the +"Sun-treader" gives no exaggerated picture of Browning's love and +reverence for Shelley, whose _Alastor_ might perhaps in some respects be +compared with _Pauline_. The rhythm of Browning's poem has a certain +echo in it of Shelley's earlier blank verse; and the lyrically emotional +descriptions and the vivid and touching metaphors derived from nature +frequently remind us of Shelley, and sometimes of Keats. On every page +we meet with magical touches like this:-- + + "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;" + +with lines full of exquisite fancy, such as those on the woodland +tarn:-- + + "The trees bend + O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl;" + +and in one place we have a marvellously graphic description, extending +over three pages, perhaps the most elaborately painted landscape in +Browning's work. It seems like wronging the poem to speak of its +_promise_: it is, indeed, far from mature, but it has a superb precocity +marking a certain stage of ripeness. It is lacking, certainly, as +Browning himself declares, in "good draughtsmanship and right handling," +but this defect of youth is richly compensated by the wealth of +inspiration, the keen intellectual and ethical insight, and the +numberless lines of haunting charm, which have nothing of youth in them +but its vigorous freshness. + + +2. PARACELSUS. + + [Published in 1835; first acknowledged work (_Poetical + Works_, 1889, Vol. II., pp. 1-186.) The original MS. is in the + Forster Library at South Kensington.] + +The poem is divided into five scenes, each a typical episode in the life +of Paracelsus. It is in the form of dialogue between Paracelsus and +others: Festus and his wife Michal in the first scene, Aprile, an +Italian poet, in the second, and Festus only in the remainder. The poem +is followed by an appendix, containing a few notes and a brief biography +of Paracelsus, translated from the _Biographie Universelle_. + +_Paracelsus_ might be praised, and has justly been praised, for its +serious and penetrating quality as an historical study of the great +mystic and great man of science, who had realised, before most people, +that "matter is the visible body of the invisible God," and who had been +the Luther of medicine. But the historical element is less important +than the philosophical; both are far less important than the purely +poetical. The leading motive is not unlike that of _Pauline_ and of +_Sordello_: it is handled, however, far more ably than in the former, +and much more clearly than in the latter. Paracelsus is a portrait of +the seeker after knowledge, one whose ambition transcends all earthly +limits, and exhausts itself in the thirst of the impossible. His career +is traced from its noble outset at Wuerzburg to its miserable close in +the hospital at Salzburg, through all its course of struggle, conquest +and deterioration. His last effort, the superb dying speech, gives the +moral of his mistake, and, in the light of the new intuition flashed on +his soul by death, the true conception of the powers and limits of man. + +The character and mental vicissitudes of Paracelsus are brought out, as +has been stated, in dialogue with others. The three minor characters, +though probably called into being as mere foils to the protagonist, have +a distinct individuality of their own. Michal is Browning's first sketch +of a woman. She is faint in outline and very quiet in presence, but +though she scarcely speaks twenty lines, her face remains with us like a +beautiful face seen once and never to be forgotten. There is something +already, in her tentative delineation, of that "piercing and +overpowering tenderness which glorifies the poet of Pompilia." Festus, +Michal's husband, the friend and adviser of Paracelsus, is a man of +simple nature and thoughtful mind, cautious yet not cold, clear-sighted +rather than far-seeing, yet not without enthusiasm; perhaps a little +narrow and commonplace, as the prudent are apt to be. He, like Michal, +has no influence on the external action of the poem. Aprile, the Italian +poet whom Paracelsus encounters in the second scene, is an integral part +of the poem; for it is through him that a crisis is reached in the +development of the seeker after knowledge. Unlike Festus and Michal, he +is a type rather than a realisable human being, the type of the Artist +pure and simple, the lover of beauty and of beauty alone, a soul +immoderately possessed with the desire to love, as Paracelsus with the +desire to know. He flickers, an expiring flame, across the pathway of +the stronger spirit, one luminous moment and no more. + +_Paracelsus_, though written in dialogue, is not intended to be a drama. +This was clearly stated in the preface to the first edition, an +important document, never afterwards reprinted. "Instead of having +recourse," wrote Browning, "to an external machinery of incidents to +create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to +display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, and +have suffered the agency by which it is influenced to be generally +discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not +altogether excluded."[12] The proportions of the work are epical rather +than dramatic; but indeed it is difficult to class, so exuberant is the +vitality which fills and overflows all limits. What is not a drama, +though in dialogue, nor yet an epic, except in length, can scarcely be +considered, any more than its successors, and perhaps imitators, +_Festus_, _Balder_, or _A Life Drama_, properly artistic in form. But it +is distinguished from this prolific progeny not only by a finer and +firmer imagination, a truer poetic richness, but by a moderation, a +concreteness, a grip, which are certainly all its own. In few of +Browning's poems are there so many individual lines and single passages +which we are so apt to pause on, to read again and again, for the mere +enjoyment of their splendid sound and colour. And this for a reason. The +large and lofty character of Paracelsus, the avoidance of much external +detail, and the high tension at which thought and emotion are kept +throughout, permit the poet to use his full resources of style and +diction without producing an effect of unreality and extravagance. We +meet on almost every page with lines like these:-- + + "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." + +Or again, lines like these, which have become the watch-word of a +Gordon:-- + + "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!" + +At times the brooding splendour bursts forth in a kind of vast ecstasy, +and we have such magnificence as this:-- + + "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 volcanos 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-roots 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." + +The blank verse of _Paracelsus_ is varied by four lyrics, themselves +various in style, and full of rare music: the spirit song of the +unfaithful poets-- + + "The sad rhyme of the men who sadly clung + To their first fault, and withered in their pride," + +the gentle song of the Mayne river, and that strange song of old spices +which haunts the brain like a perfume:-- + + "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." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 12: See the whole Preface, Appendix II.] + + +3. STRAFFORD: an Historical Tragedy. + + [Written toward the close of 1836; acted at the Theatre + Royal, Covent Garden (_Strafford_, Mr. Macready; _Countess of + Carlisle_, Miss Helen Faucit), May 1, 1837; by the Browning + Society at the Strand Theatre, Dec. 21, 1886, and at Oxford + by the O.U.D.S. in 1890; published in 1837 (_Poetical Works_, + 1889, Vol. II., pp. 187-307).] + +_Strafford_ was written, at Macready's earnest request, in an interval +of the composition of _Sordello_. Like all Browning's plays which were +acted, it owed its partial failure to causes quite apart from its own +merits or defects as a play.[13] Browning may not have had the making of +a good playwright; but at least no one ever gave him the chance of +showing whether he was or not. The play is not without incident, +especially in the third act. But its chief merit lies in the language +and style of the dialogue. There is no aim at historical dignity or +poetical elaboration; the aim is nature, quick with personal passion. +Every word throbs with emotion; through these exclamatory, yet how +delicate and subtle lines, we seem actually to see and hear the +speakers, and with surprising vividness. The words supply their own +accents, looks and gestures. + +In his preface to the first edition (reprinted in Appendix II.) Browning +states that he believes the historical portraits to be faithful. This is +to a considerable extent confirmed by Professor Gardiner, who has given +a careful consideration of the play in its historical aspects, in his +Introduction to Miss Hickey's annotated edition (G. Bell & Sons, 1884). +As a representation of history, he tells us, it is inaccurate; "the very +roots of the situation are untrue to fact." But (as he allows) this +departure from fact, in the conduct of the action, is intentional, and, +of course, allowable: Browning was writing a drama, not a history. Of +the portraits, the really vital part of the play as an interpretation of +history, he writes:-- + + "For myself, I can only say that, every time I read the play, + I feel more convinced that Mr. Browning has seized the real + Strafford, the man of critical brain, of rapid decision, and + tender heart, who strove for the good of his nation, without + sympathy for the generation in which he lived. Charles, too, + with his faults perhaps exaggerated, is, nevertheless, a real + Charles.... There is a wonderful parallelism between the Lady + Carlisle of the play and the less noble Lady Carlisle which + history conjectures rather than describes.... On the other + hand, Pym is the most unsatisfactory, from an historical + point of view, of the leading personages." + +Yet, if it is interesting, it is by no means of primary importance to +know the historical basis and probable accuracy of Browning's play. The +whole interest is centred in the character of Strafford; it is a +personal interest, and attaches itself to the personal character or the +hero. The leading motive is Strafford's devotion to his king, and the +note of tragic discord arises from the ingratitude and faithlessness of +Charles set over against the blind fidelity of his minister. The +antagonism of law and despotism, of Pym and Strafford, is, perhaps, less +clearly and forcibly brought out: though essential to the plot, it wears +to our sight a somewhat secondary aspect. Strafford himself appears not +so much a superb and unbending figure, a political power, as a man whose +service of Charles is due wholly to an intense personal affection, and +not at all to his national sympathies, which seem, indeed, rather on the +opposite side. He loves the man, not the king, and his love is a freak +of the affections. That it is against his better reason he recognises, +but the recognition fails to influence his heart or his conduct. This is +finely expressed in the following lines, spoken by Lady Carlisle:-- + + "Could you but know what 'tis to bear, my friend, + One image stamped within you, turning blank + The else imperial brilliance of your mind,-- + A weakness, but most precious,--like a flaw + I' the diamond, which should shape forth some sweet face + Yet to create, and meanwhile treasured there + Lest nature lose her gracious thought for ever'" + +Browning has rarely drawn a more pathetic figure. Every circumstance +that could contribute to this effect is skilfully seized and emphasised: +Charles's incredibly selfish weakness, the implacable sternness of Pym, +the _triste_ prattle of Strafford's children and their interrupted +joyous song in the final scene, all serve to heighten our feeling of +affectionate pity and regret. The imaginary former friendship between +Pym and Strafford adds still more to the pathos of the delineation, and +gives rise to some of the finest speeches, notably the last great +colloquy between these two, which so effectively rounds and ends the +play. The fatal figure of Pym is impressive and admirable throughout, +and the portrait of the Countess of Carlisle, Browning's second portrait +of a woman, is a noble and singularly original one. Her unrecognised and +undeterred devotion to Strafford is finely and tenderly pathetic; it has +the sorrowful dignity of faithful service, rewarded only in serving. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 13: See _Robert Browning: Personalia_, by Edmund Gosse +(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890).] + + +4. SORDELLO. + + [Published in 1840 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. I., pp. + 47-289).] + +_Sordello_ is generally spoken of as being the most obscure and the +least attractive of Browning's poems; it has even been called "the most +illegible production of any time or country." Hard, very hard, it +undoubtedly is; but undoubtedly it is far from unattractive to the +serious student of poetry, who will find in it something of the +fascination of an Alpine peak: not to be gained without an effort, +treacherous and slippery, painfully dazzling to weak eyes, but for all +that irresistibly fascinating. _Sordello_ contains enough poetic +material for a dozen considerable poems; indeed, its very fault lies in +its plethora of ideas, the breathless crowd of hurrying thoughts and +fancies, which fill and overflow it. That this is not properly to be +called "obscurity" has been triumphantly shown by Mr. Swinburne in his +essay on George Chapman. Some of his admirable statements I have already +quoted, but we may bear to be told twice that Browning is too much the +reverse of obscure, that he is only too brilliant and subtle, that he +never thinks but at full speed. But besides this characteristic, which +is common to all his work, there are one or two special reasons which +have made this particular poem more difficult than others. The +condensation of style which had marked Browning's previous work, and +which has marked his later, was here (in consequence of an unfortunate +and most unnecessary dread of verbosity, induced by a rash and foolish +criticism) accentuated not infrequently into dislocation. The very +unfamiliar historical events of the story[14] are introduced, too, in a +parenthetic and allusive way, not a little embarrassing to the reader. + +But it is also evident that the difficulties of a gigantic conception +were not completely conquered by the writer's genius, not then fully +matured; that lack of entire mastery over the material has frequently +caused the two interests of the poem, the psychological and the +historical, to clash; the background to intrude on and confuse the +middle distance, if not even the foreground itself. Every one of these +faults is the outcome of a merit: altogether they betray a growing +nature of extraordinary power, largeness and richness, not as yet to be +bound or contained within any limits or in any bonds. + +_Sordello_ is a psychological epic. But to call it this only would be to +do it somewhat less than justice. There is in the poem a union of +breathless eagerness with brooding suspense, which has an almost +unaccountable fascination for those who once come under its charm, and +nowhere in Browning's work are there so many pictures, so vivid in +aspect, so sharp in outline, so rich in colour. At their best they are +sudden, a flash of revelation, as in this autumnal Goito:-- + + "'Twas the marsh + Gone of a sudden. Mincio, in its place, + Laughed, a broad water, in next morning's face, + And, where the mists broke up immense and white + I' the steady wind, burned like a spilth of light, + Out of the crashing of a myriad stars." + +Verona, by torchfire, seen from a window, is shown with the same quick +flare out of darkness:-- + + "Then arose the two + And leaned into Verona's air, dead-still. + A balcony lay black beneath until + Out, 'mid a gush of torchfire, grey-haired men + Came on it and harangued the people: then + Sea-like that people surging to and fro + Shouted." + +Only Carlyle, in the most vivid moments of his _French Revolution_, has +struck such flashes out of darkness. And there are other splendours and +rarities, not only in the evocation of actual scenes and things, but in +mere similes, like this, in which the quality of imagination is of a +curiously subtle and unusual kind:-- + + "As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit + Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot + Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black + Enormous watercourse which guides him back + To his own tribe again, where he is king: + And laughs because he guesses, numbering + The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch + Of the first lizard wrested from its couch + Under the slime (whose skin, the while, he strips + To cure his nostril with, and festered lips, + And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert-blast) + That he has reached its boundary, at last + May breathe;--thinks o'er enchantments of the South + Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth, + Eyes, nails, and hair; but, these enchantments tried + In fancy, puts them soberly aside + For truth, projects a cool return with friends, + The likelihood of winning mere amends + Ere long; thinks that, takes comfort silently, + Then, from the river's brink, his wrongs and he, + Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon + Off-striding for the Mountains of the Moon." + +And, while much of the finest poetry is contained in picturesque +passages such as these, we find verse of another order, thrilling as the +trumpet's "golden cry," in the passionate invocation of Dante, +enshrining the magnificently Dantesque characterization of the three +divisions of the _Divina Commedia_. + + "For he--for he, + Gate-vein of this hearts' blood of Lombardy, + (If I should falter now)--for he is thine! + Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine! + A herald-star I know thou didst absorb + Relentless into the consummate orb + That scared it from its right to roll along + A sempiternal path with dance and song + Fulfilling its allotted period, + Serenest of the progeny of God-- + Who yet resigns it not! His darling stoops + With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troops + Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent + Utterly with thee, its shy element + Like thine upburneth prosperous and clear. + Still, what if I approach the august sphere + Named now with only one name, disentwine + That under-current soft and argentine + From its fierce mate in the majestic mass + Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass + In John's transcendent vision,--launch once more + That lustre? 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, + I would do this! If I should falter now!" + +Browning has himself told us that his stress lay on the "incidents in +the development of a soul." The portrait of Sordello is one of the most +elaborate and complete which he has given us. It is painted with more +accessory detail and on a larger canvas than any other single figure. +Like _Pauline_ and _Paracelsus_, with which it has points of affinity, +the poem is a study of ambition and of egoism; of a soul "whose +ambition," as it has been rightly said, "is in extravagant disproportion +to its physical powers and means, and whose temptation is at every +crisis to seek pleasure in the picture of willing and doing rather than +in willing and doing itself." Sordello's youth is fed upon fancy: he +imagines himself Apollo, this or that hero of the time; in dreams he is +and does to the height of his aspirations. But from any actual doing he +shrinks; at the approach or the call of action, his will refuses to act. +We might sum up his character in a general sense by saying that his +imagination overpowers every other faculty; an imagination intensely +personal, a sort of intellectual egoism, which removes him equally from +action and from sympathy. He looks on men as foils to himself, or as a +background on which to shine. But the root of his failure is this, and +it is one which could never be even apprehended by a vulgar egoism: he +longs to grasp the whole of life at once, to realise his aims in their +entirety, without complying with the necessary conditions. His mind +perceives the infinite and essential so clearly that it scorns or spurns +the mere accidents. But earth being earth, and life growth, and +accidents an inevitable part of life, the rule remains that man, to +attain, must climb step by step, and not expect to fly at once to the +top of the ladder. Finding that he cannot do everything, Sordello sees +no alternative but to do nothing. Consequently his state comes to be a +virtual indolence or inactivity; though it is in reality that of the +top, spinning so fast that its motion is imperceptible. Poet and man of +action, for he contains more than the germ of both, confound and break +down one another. He meets finally with a great temptation, conquers it, +but dies of the effort. For the world his life has been a failure, for +himself not absolutely so, since, before his eyes were closed, he was +permitted to see the truth and to recognise it. But in all his aims, in +all his ambitions, he has failed; and the world has gained nothing from +them or from him but the warning of his example. + +This Sordello of Browning seems to have little identity with the brief +and splendid Sordello of Dante, the figure that fronts us in the superb +sixth canto of the _Purgatoria_, "a guisa di leon quando si posa." The +records of the real Sordello are scant, fragmentary and contradictory. +No coherent outline of his personality remains, so that the character +which Browning has made for him is a creation as absolute as if it had +been wholly invented. The name indeed of Sordello, embalmed in Dante's +verse, is still fresh to our ears after the "ravage of six long sad +hundred years," and it is Dante, too, who in his _De Vulgari +Eloquentia_, has further signalised him by honourable record. Sordello, +he says, excelled in all kinds of composition, and by his experiments in +the dialects of Cremona, Brescia and Verona, cities near Mantua, helped +to form the Tuscan tongue. But besides the brief record of Dante, there +are certain accounts of Sordello's life, very confused and conflicting, +in the early Italian Chronicles and the Provencal lives of the +Troubadours. Tiraboschi sifts these legends, leaving very little of +them. According to him, Sordello was a Mantuan of noble family, born at +Goito at the close of the twelfth century. He was a poet and warrior, +though not, as some reports profess, captain-general or governor of +Mantua. He eloped with Cunizza, the wife of Count Richard of St. +Boniface; at some period of his life he went into Provence; and he died +a violent death, about the middle of the thirteenth century. The works +attributed to him are poems in Tuscan and Provencal, a didactic poem in +Latin named _Thesaurus Thesaurorum_ (now in the Ambrosiana in Milan), an +essay in Provencal on "The Progress and Power of the Kings of Aragon in +the Comte of Provence," a treatise on "The Defence of Walled Towns," and +some historial translations from Latin into the vulgar tongue. Of all +these works only the _Thesaurus_ and some thirty-four poems in +Provencal, _sirventes_ and _tensens_, survive: some of the finest of +them are satires.[15] + +The statement that Sordello was specially famed for his philosophical +verses, though not confirmed by what remains of his poetry, is +interesting and significant in connection with Browning's conception of +his character. There is little however in the scanty tales we have of +the historic Sordello to suggest the "feverish poet" of the poem. The +fugitive personality of the half mythical fighting poet eludes the +grasp, and Browning has rather given the name of Sordello to an imagined +type of the poetic character than constructed a type of character to fit +the name. Still less are the dubious attributes with which the bare +facts of history or legend invest Cunizza (whom, none the less, Dante +spoke with in heaven) recognisable in the exquisite and all-golden +loveliness of Palma. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 14: "Mr. Browning prepared himself for writing _Sordello_," +says Mrs. Orr, "by studying all the chronicles of that period of Italian +history which the British Museum contained; and we may be sure that +every event he alludes to as historical, is so in spirit, if not in the +letter; while such details as come under the head of historical +curiosities are absolutely true. He also supplemented his reading by a +visit to the places in which the scenes of the story are +laid."--_Handbook_, p. 31.] + +[Footnote 15: Of all these matters, and of all else that is known of +Sordello, a good and sympathetic account will be found in Mr. Eugene +Benson's little book on _Sordello and Cunizza_ (Dent, 1903).] + + +5. PIPPA PASSES. + + [Published in 1841 as No. I of _Bells and Pomegranates_ + (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. III., pp. 1-79).] + +_Pippa Passes_ is Browning's most perfect work, and here, more perhaps +than in anything he ever wrote, he wrote to please himself. As a whole, +he has never written anything to equal it in artistic symmetry; while a +single scene, that between Ottima and Sebald, reaches the highest level +of tragic utterance which he has ever attained. The plan of the work, in +which there are elements of the play and elements of the masque, is a +wholly original one: a series of scenes, connected only by the passing +through them of a single person, who is outside their action, and whose +influence on that action is unconscious. "Mr Browning," says Mrs. +Sutherland Orr in the _Handbook_, "was walking alone in a wood near +Dulwich, when the image flashed upon him 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."[16] It is this motive that makes unity in +variety, linking together a sequence of otherwise independent scenes. +The poem is the story of Pippa's New Year's Day holiday, her one holiday +in the year. She resolves to fancy herself to be in turn the four +happiest people in Asolo, and, to realise her fancy as much as she can, +she spends her day in wandering about the town, passing, in the morning, +the shrub-house up the hillside, where Ottima and her lover Sebald have +met; at noon, the house of Jules, over Orcana; in the evening, the +turret on the hill above Asolo, where are Luigi and his mother; and at +night, the palace by the Duomo, now tenanted by Monsignor the Bishop. +These, whom she imagines to be the happiest people in the town, have +all, in reality, arrived at crises of tremendous and tragic importance +to themselves, and, in one instance, to her. Each stands at the +turning-point of a life: Ottima and Sebald, unrepentant, with a crime +behind them; Jules and Phene, two souls brought strangely face to face +by a fate which may prove their salvation or their perdition; Luigi, +irresolute, with a purpose to be performed; Monsignor, undecided, before +a great temptation. Pippa passes, singing, at the moment when these +souls' tragedies seem tending to a fatal end, at the moment when the +baser nature seems about to triumph over the better. Something in the +song, "like any flash that cures the blind," strikes them with a sudden +light; each decides, suddenly; each, according to the terms of his own +nature, is saved. And Pippa passes, unconscious of the influence she has +exerted, as they are but half-aware of the agency of what they take as +an immediate word from God. Each of these four scenes is in dialogue, +the first three in blank verse, the last in prose. Between each is an +interlude, in prose or verse, representing the "talk by the way," of +art-students, Austrian police, and poor girls, all bearing on some part +of the action. Pippa's prologue and epilogue, like her songs, are in +varied lyric verse. The blank verse throughout is the most vivid and +dignified, the most coloured and yet restrained, that Browning ever +wrote; and he never wrote anything better for singing than some of +Pippa's songs. + +Of the four principal scenes, by far the greatest is the first, that +between Ottima and her paramour, the German Sebald, on the morning after +the murder of old Luca Gaddi, the woman's husband. It is difficult to +convey in words any notion of its supreme excellence of tragic truth: to +match it we must revert to almost the very finest Elizabethan work. The +representation of Ottima and Sebald, the Italian and the German, is a +singularly acute study of the Italian and German races. Sebald, in a +sudden access of brutal rage, has killed the old doting husband, but his +conscience, too feeble to stay his hand before, is awake to torture him +after the deed. But Ottima is steadfast in evil, with the Italian +conscienceless resoluteness. She can no more feel either fear or remorse +than Clytaemnestra. The scene between Jules, the French sculptor, and his +bride Phene, and that between Luigi, the light-headed Italian patriot, +and his mother, are less great indeed, less tragic and intense and +overpowering, than this crowning episode; but they are scarcely less +fine and finished in a somewhat slighter style. Both are full of colour +and music, of insight into nature and into art, and of superb lines and +passages, such as this, which is spoken by Luigi:-- + + "God must be glad one loves his world so much. + I can give news of earth to all the dead + Who ask me:--last year's sunsets, and great stars + That had a right to come first and see ebb + The crimson wave that drifts the sun away-- + Those crescent moons with notched and burning rims + That strengthened into sharp fire, and there stood, + Impatient of the azure--and that day + In March, a double rainbow stopped the storm-- + May's warm slow yellow moonlit summer nights-- + Gone are they, but I have them in my soul!" + +But in neither is there any single passage of such incomparable quality +as the thunderstorm in the first scene, a storm not to be matched in +English poetry:-- + + "Buried in woods we lay, you recollect; + Swift ran the searching tempest overhead; + And ever and anon some bright white shaft + Burned through the pine-tree roof, here burned and there, + As if God's messenger through 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." + +The vivid colloquial scenes in prose have much of that pungent +semi-satirical humour of which Browning had shown the first glimpse in +_Sordello_. Besides these, there is one intermediate scene in verse, the +talk of the "poor girls" on the Duomo steps, which seems to me one of +the most pathetic things ever written by the most pathetic of +contemporary poets. It is this scene that contains the exquisite song, +"You'll love me yet." + + "You'll love me yet!--and I can tarry + Your love's protracted growing: + June reared that bunch of flowers you carry, + From seeds of April's sowing. + + I plant a heartful now: some seed + At least is sure to strike, + And yield--what you'll not pluck indeed, + Not love, but, may be, like. + + You'll look at least on love's remains, + A grave's one violet: + Your look?--that pays a thousand pains. + What's death? You'll love me yet!" + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 16: _Handbook_, p. 54.] + + +6. KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES: A Tragedy. + + [Published in 1842 as No. II. of _Bells and Pomegranates_, + although written some years earlier (_Poetical Works_, 1889, + Vol. III., pp. 81-165).] + +_King Victor and King Charles_ is an historical tragedy, dealing with +the last episode in the career of Victor II., first King of Sardinia. +Browning says in his preface: + + "So far as I know, this tragedy is the first artistic + consequence of what Voltaire termed 'a terrible event without + consequences;' and although it professes to be historical, I + have taken more pains to arrive at the history than most + readers would thank me for particularising: since acquainted, + as I will hope them to be, with the chief circumstances of + Victor's remarkable European career--nor quite ignorant of + the sad and surprising facts I am about to reproduce (a + tolerable account of which is to be found, for instance, in + Abbe Roman's _Recit_, or even the fifth of Lord Orrery's + _Letters from Italy_)--I cannot expect them to be versed, nor + desirous of becoming so, in all the details of the memoirs, + correspondence, and relations of the time.... When I say, + therefore, that I cannot but believe my statement (combining + as it does what appears correct in Voltaire and plausible in + Condorcet) more true to person and thing than any it has + hitherto been my fortune to meet with, no doubt my word will + be taken, and my evidence spared as readily." + +The episode recorded in the play is the abdication of Victor in favour +of his son Charles, and his subsequent attempt to return to the throne. +The only point in which Browning has departed from history is that the +very effective death on the stage replaces the old king's real death in +captivity a year later. As a piece of literature, this is the least +interesting and valuable of Browning's plays, the thinnest in structure, +the dryest in substance. + +The interest of the play is, even more than that of _Strafford_, +political. The intrigue turns on questions of government, complicated +with questions of relationship and duty. The conflict is one between +ruler and ruler, who are also father and son; and the true tragedy of +the situation seems to be this: shall Charles obey the instincts of a +son, and cede to his father's wish to resume the government he has +abdicated, or is there a higher duty which he is bound to follow, the +duty of a king to his people? The motive is a fine one, but it is +scarcely handled with Browning's accustomed skill and subtlety. King +Victor, of whose "fiery and audacious temper, unscrupulous selfishness, +profound dissimulation, and singular fertility in resources," Browning +speaks in his preface, is an impressive study of "the old age of crafty +men," the futile wiliness of decrepit and persevering craft, though we +are scarcely made to feel the once potent personality of the man, or to +understand the influence which his mere word or presence still has upon +his son. D'Ormea, who checkmates all the schemes of his old master, is a +curious and subtle study of one who "serves God at the devil's bidding," +as he himself confesses in the cynical frankness of his continual +ironical self-criticism. After twenty years of unsuccessful intrigue, he +has learnt by experience that honesty is the best policy. But at every +step his evil reputation clogs and impedes his honest action, and the +very men whom he is now most sincere in helping are the most mistrustful +of his sincerity. Charles, whose good intentions and vacillating will +are the precise opposites of his father's strong will and selfish +purposes, is really the central figure of the play. He is one of those +men whom we at once despise and respect. Gifted with many good +qualities, he seems to lack the one thing needful to bind them together. +Polyxena, his wife, possesses just that resolution in which he is +wanting. She is a fine, firm, clear character, herself admirable, and +admirably drawn. Her "noble and right woman's manliness" (to use +Browning's phrase) is prompt to sweep away the cobwebs that entangle her +husband's path or obscure his vision of things. From first to last she +sees through Charles, Victor and D'Ormea, who neither understand one +another nor perhaps themselves; from first to last she is the same +clear-headed, decisive, consistent woman, loyal always to love, but +always yet more loyal toward truth. + + +7. DRAMATIC LYRICS.[17] + + [Published in 1842 as No. III. of _Bells and Pomegranates_ + (_Poetical Works_, 1889, dispersedly in Vols. IV., V., and + VI.).] + +_Dramatic Lyrics_, Browning's first volume of short poems, contains some +of his finest, and many of his most popular pieces. The little volume, +it was only sixteen pages in length, has, however, an importance even +beyond its actual worth; for we can trace in it the germ at least of +most of Browning's subsequent work. We see in these poems for the first +time that extraordinary mastery of rhyme which Butler himself has not +excelled; that predilection for the grotesque which is shared by no +other English poet; and, not indeed for the first time, but for the +first time with any special prominence, the strong and thoughtful +humour, running up and down the whole compass of its gamut, gay and +hearty, satirical and incisive, in turn. We see also the first formal +beginning of the dramatic monologue, which, hinted at in _Pauline_, +disguised in _Paracelsus_, and developed, still disguised, in +_Sordello_, became, from the period of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ onward, the +staple form and special instrument of the poet, an instrument finely +touched, at times, by other performers, but of which he is the only +Liszt. The literal beginning of the monologue must be found in two +lyrical poems, here included, _Johannes Agricola_ and _Porphyria's +Lover_ (originally named _Madhouse Cells_), which were published in a +magazine as early as 1836, or about the time of the publication of +_Paracelsus_. These extraordinary little poems reveal not only an +imagination of intense fire and heat, but an almost finished art: a +power of conceiving subtle mental complexities with clearness and of +expressing them in a picturesque form and in perfect lyric language. +Each poem renders a single mood, and renders it completely. But it is +still only a mood: _My Last Duchess_ is a life. This poem (it was at +first one of two companion pieces called _Italy and France_) is the +first direct progenitor of _Andrea del Sarto_ and the other great blank +verse monologues; in it we see the form, save for the scarcely +appreciable presence of rhyme, already developed. The poem is a subtle +study in the jealousy of egoism, not a study so much as a creation; and +it places before us, as if bitten in by the etcher's acid, a typical +autocrat of the Renaissance, with his serene self-composure of +selfishness, quiet uncompromising cruelty, and genuine devotion to art. +The scene and the actors in this little Italian drama stand out before +us with the most natural clearness; there is some telling touch in every +line, an infinitude of cunningly careless details, instinct with +suggestion, and an appearance through it all of simple artless ease, +such as only the very finest art can give. But let the poem speak for +itself. + + "My LAST DUCHESS. + + "FERRARA. + + "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, + Looking as if she were alive. I call + That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands + Worked busily a day, and there she stands. + Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said + 'Fra Pandolf' by design, for never read + Strangers like you that pictured countenance, + The depth and passion of its earnest glance, + But to myself they turned (since none puts by + The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) + And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, + How such a glance came there; so, not the first + Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not + Her husband's presence only, called that spot + Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps + Fra Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps + Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint + Must never hope to reproduce the faint + Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff + Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough + For calling up that spot of joy. She had + A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad, + Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er + She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. + Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, + The dropping of the daylight in the West, + The bough of cherries some officious fool + Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule + She rode with round the terrace--all and each + Would draw from her alike the approving speech, + Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thanked + Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked + My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name + With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame + This sort of trifling? Even had you skill + In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will + Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this + Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, + Or there exceed the mark,'--and if she let + Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set + Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, + --E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose + Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, + Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without + Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; + Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands + As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet + The company below, then. I repeat + The Count your master's known munificence + Is ample warrant that no just pretence + Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; + Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed + At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go + Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, + Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, + Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!" + +A poem of quite another order of art, a life-like sketch rather than a +creation, is found in _Waring_. The original of Waring was one of +Browning's friends, Alfred Domett, the author of _Ranolf and Amohia_, +then or afterwards Prime Minister in New Zealand.[18] The poem is +written in a free and familiar style, which rises from time to time into +a kind of precipitate brilliance; it is more personal in detail than +Browning often allows himself to be; and its humour is blithe and +friendly. In another poem, now known as _Soliloquy of the Spanish +Cloister_, the humour is grotesque, bitter and pungent, the humour of +hate. The snarling monk of the Spanish cloister pours out on poor, +innocent, unsuspecting "Brother Lawrence" a wealth of really choice and +masterly vituperation, not to be matched out of Shakespeare. The poem is +a clever study of that mood of active disgust which most of us have felt +toward some possibly inoffensive enough person, whose every word, look +or action jars on the nerves. It flashes, too, a brilliant comic light +on the natural tendencies of asceticism. Side by side with this poem, +under the general name of _Camp and Cloister_, was published the +vigorous and touching little ballad now known as _Incident of the French +Camp_, a stirring lyric of war, such as Browning has always been able, +rarely as he has cared, to write. The ringing _Cavalier Tunes_ (so +graphically set to music by Sir C. Villiers Stanford) strike the same +note; so, too, does the wonderfully clever little riding poem, _Through +the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr_, a _tour de force_ strung together on a +single rhyme: "As I ride, as I ride." + +_Count Gismond_, the companion of _My Last Duchess_, is a vivid little +tale, told with genuine sympathy with the mediaeval spirit. It is almost +like an anticipation of some of the remarkable studies of the Middle +Ages contained in Morris's first and best book of poems, _The Defence of +Guenevere_, published sixteen years later. The mediaeval temper of entire +confidence in the ordeal by duel has never been better rendered than in +these two stanzas, the very kernel of the poem, spoken by the +falsely-accused girl:-- + + " ... Till out strode Gismond; then I knew + That I was saved. I never met + His face before, but, at first view, + I felt quite sure that God had set + Himself to Satan; who would spend + A minute's mistrust on the end? + + He strode to Gauthier, in his throat + Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth + With one back-handed blow that wrote + In blood men's verdict there. North, South, + East, West, I looked. The lie was dead, + And damned, and truth stood up instead."[19] + +Of the two aspects of _Queen Worship_, one, _Rudel to the Lady of +Tripoli_, has a mournfully sweet pathos in its lingering lines, and +_Cristina_, not without a touch of vivid passion, contains that personal +conviction afterwards enshrined in the lovelier casket of _Evelyn Hope_. +_Artemis Prologuizes_ is Browning's only experiment in the classic +style. The fragment was meant to form part of a longer work, which was +to take up the legend of Hippolytus at the point where Euripides dropped +it. The project was no doubt abandoned for the same wise reasons which +led Keats to leave unfinished a lovelier experiment in _Hyperion_. It +was in this poem that Browning first adopted the Greek spelling of +proper names, a practice which he has since carried out, with greater +consistency, in his transcripts from AEschylus and Euripides. + +Perhaps the finest of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ is the little lyric tragedy, +_In a Gondola_, a poem which could hardly be surpassed in its perfect +union or fusion of dramatic intensity with charm and variety of music. +It was suggested by a picture of Maclise, and tells of two Venetian +lovers, watched by a certain jealous "Three"; of their brief hour of +happiness, and of the sudden vengeance of the Three. There is a brooding +sense of peril over all the blithe and flitting fancies said or sung to +one another by the lovers in their gondola; a sense, however, of future +rather than of present peril, something of a zest and a piquant pleasure +to them. The sudden tragic ending, anticipated yet unexpected, rounds +the whole with a dramatic touch of infallible instinct. I know nothing +with which the poem may be compared: its method and its magic are alike +its own. We might hear it or fancy it perhaps in one of the Ballades of +Chopin, with its entrancing harmonies, its varied and delicate +ornamentation, its under-tone of passion and sadness, its storms and +gusts of wind-like lashing notes, and the piercing shiver that thrills +through its suave sunshine. + +It is hardly needful, I hope, to say anything in praise of the last of +the _Dramatic Lyrics_, the incomparable child's story of _The Pied +Piper of Hamelin_,[20] "a thing of joy for ever," as it has been well +said, "to all with the child's heart, young and old." This poem, +probably the most popular of Browning's poems, was written for William +Macready, the son of the actor, and was thrown into the volume at the +last moment, for the purpose of filling up the sheet. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 17: It should be stated here that the three collections of +miscellaneous poems published in 1842, 1845 and 1855, and named +respectively _Dramatic Lyrics_, _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, and _Men +and Women_, were in 1863 broken up and the poems re-distributed. I shall +take the volumes as they originally appeared; a reference to the list of +contents of the edition of 1863, given in the Bibliography at the end of +this book, will enable the reader to find any poem in its present +locality.] + +[Footnote 18: See _Robert Browning and Alfred Domett_. Edited by F.G. +Kenyon. (Smith, Elder & Co., 1906).] + +[Footnote 19: It is worth noticing, as a curious point in Browning's +technique, that in the stanza (_ababcc_) in which this and some of his +other poems are written, he almost always omits the pause customary at +the end of the fourth line, running it into the fifth, and thus +producing a novel metrical effect, such as we find used with success in +more than one poem of Carew.] + +[Footnote 20: Browning's authority for the story, which is told in many +quarters, was North Wanley's _Wonders of the Little World_, 1678, and +the books there cited.] + + +8. THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES: A Tragedy in Five Acts. + + [Published in 1843 as No. IV. of _Bells and Pomegranates_ + (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. III., pp. 167-255). Written in + 1840 (in five days), and named in MS. _Mansoor the + Hierophant_. The action takes place during one day.] + +The story of _The Return of the Druses_ is purely imaginary as to facts, +but it is founded on the Druse belief in divine incarnations, a belief +inculcated by the founder of their religion, Hakeem Biamr Allah, the +sixth Fatemite Caliph of Egypt, whose pretension to be an incarnation of +the Divinity was stamped in the popular mind by his mysterious +disappearance, and the expectation of his glorious return. Browning here +gives the rein to his fervid and passionate imagination; in event, in +character, in expression, the play is romantic, lyrical and Oriental. +The first line-- + + "The moon is carried off in purple fire,--" + +sounds the note of the new music; and to the last line the emotion is +sustained at the same height. Passionate, rapid, vivid, intense and +picturesque, no stronger contrast could be imagined than that which +exists between this drama and _King Victor and King Charles_. The cause +of the difference must be sought in the different nature of the two +subjects, for one of Browning's most eminent qualities is his care in +harmonising treatment with subject. _King Victor and King Charles_ is a +modern play, dealing with human nature under all the restrictions of a +pervading conventionality and an oppressive statecraft. It deals, +moreover, with complex and weakened emotions, with the petty and prosaic +details of a secondary Western government. _The Return of the Druses_, +on the other hand, treats of human nature in its most romantic +conditions, of the mystic East, of great and immediate issues, of the +most inspiring of crises, a revolt for liberty, and a revolt under the +leadership of a "Messiah," about whom hangs a mystery, and a reputation +of more than mortal power. The characters, like the language, are all +somewhat idealised. Djabal, the protagonist, is the first instance of a +character specially fascinating to Browning as an artistic subject: the +deceiver of others or of himself who is only partially insincere, and +not altogether ill-intentioned. Djabal is an impostor almost wholly for +the sake of others. He is a patriotic Druse, the son of the last Emir, +supposed to have perished in the massacre of the Sheikhs, but preserved +when a child and educated in Europe. His sole aim is to free his nation +from its bondage, and lead it back to Lebanon. But in order to +strengthen the people's trust in him, and to lead them back in greater +glory, he pretends that he is "Hakeem," their divine, predestined +deliverer. The delusion grows upon himself; he succeeds triumphantly, +but in the very moment of triumph he loses faith in himself, the +imposture is all but discovered, and he dies, a victim of what was wrong +in him, while the salt of his noble and successful purpose keeps alive +his memory among his people. In striking contrast with Djabal stands +Loys, the frank, bright, young Breton knight, with his quick, generous +heart, his chivalrous straightforwardness of thought and action, his +earnest pity for the oppressed Druses, and his passionate love for the +Druse maiden Anael. Anael herself is one of the most "actual yet +uncommon" of the poet's women. She is a true daughter of the East, to +the finest fibre of her being. Her tender and fiery soul burns upward +through error and crime with a leaping, quenchless flame. She loves +Djabal, believing him to be "Hakeem" and divine, with a love which seems +to her too human, too much the love evoked by a mere man's nature. Her +attempt at adoration only makes him feel more keenly the fact of his +imposture. Misunderstanding his agitation and the broken words he lets +drop, she fancies he despises her, and feels impelled to do some great +deed, and so exalt herself to be worthy of him. Fired with enthusiasm, +she anticipates his crowning act, the act of liberation, and herself +slays the tyrannical Prefect. The magnificent scene in which this occurs +is the finest in the play, and there is a singularly impressive touch of +poetry and stagecraft in a certain line of it, where Djabal and Anael +meet, at the moment when she has done the deed which he is waiting to +do. Unconscious of what she has done, he tells her to go:-- + + "I slay him here, + And here you ruin all. Why speak you not? + Anael, the Prefect comes!" [ANAEL _screams_.] + +There is drama in this stage direction. With this involuntary scream +(and the shudder and start aside one imagines, to see if the dead man +really is coming) a great actress might thrill an audience. Djabal, +horror-stricken at what she has done, confesses to her that he is no +Hakeem, but a mere man. After the first revulsion of feeling, her love, +hitherto questioned and hampered by her would-be adoration, burst forth +with a fuller flood. But she expects him to confess to the tribe. Djabal +refuses: he will carry through his scheme to the end. In the first flush +of her indignation at his unworthiness, she denounces him. In the final +scene occurs another wonderful touch of nature, a touch which reminds +one of Desdemona's "Nobody: I myself," in its divine and adorable +self-sacrifice of truth. Learning what Anael has done, Djabal is about +to confess his imposture to the people, who are still under his +fascination, when Anael, all her old love (not her old belief) returning +upon her, cries with her last breath, "HAKEEM!" and dies upon the word. +The Druses grovel before him; as he still hesitates, the trumpet of his +Venetian allies sounds. Turning to Khalil, Anael's brother, he bids him +take his place and lead the people home, accompanied and guarded by +Loys. "We follow!" cry the Druses, "now exalt thyself!" + + "_Dja._ [_bends over_ ANAEL.] And last to thee! + Ah, did I dream I was to have, this day, + Exalted thee? A vain dream--has thou not + Won greater exaltation? What remains + But press to thee, exalt myself to thee? + Thus I exalt myself, set free my soul! + +[_He stabs himself; as he falls, supported by_ KHALIL _and_ LOYS, _the +Venetians enter: the_ ADMIRAL _advances_. + +_Admiral_. God and St. Mark for Venice! Plant the Lion! + +[_At the clash of the planted standard, the Druses shout and move +tumultuously forward_, LOYS, _drawing his sword_. + +_Dja._ [_leading them a few steps between_ KHALIL _and_ LOYS.] On to the +Mountain! At the Mountain, Druses! [_Dies_.]" + +This superb last scene shows how well Browning is able, when he likes, +to render the tumultuous action of a clashing crowd of persons and +interests. The whole fourth and fifth acts are specially fine; every +word comes from the heart, every line is pregnant with emotion. + + +9. A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON: A Tragedy in Three Acts. + + [Published in 1843 as No. V. of _Bells and Pomegranates_, + written in five days (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp. + 1-70). Played originally at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, + February 11, 1843 (_Mildred_, Miss Helen Faucit; _Lord + Tresham_, Mr. Phelps). Revived by Mr. Phelps at Sadler's + Wells, November 27, 1848; played at Boston, U.S., March 16, + 1885, under the management of Mr. Lawrence Barrett, who took + the part of _Lord Tresham_; at St. George's Hall, London, May + 2, 1885, and at the Olympic Theatre, March 15, 1888, by the + Browning Society; and by the Independent Theatre at the Opera + Comique, June 15, 1893. The action takes place during two + days.] + +_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ is the simplest, and perhaps the deepest and +finest of Browning's plays. The Browning Society's performances, and Mr. +Barrett's in America, have proved its acting capacities, its power to +hold and thrill an audience.[21] The language has a rich simplicity of +the highest dramatic value, quick with passion, pregnant with thought +and masterly in imagination; the plot and characters are perhaps more +interesting and affecting than in any other of the plays; while the +effect of the whole is impressive from its unity. The scene is English; +the time, somewhere in the eighteenth century; the motive, family honour +and dishonour. The story appeals to ready popular emotions, emotions +which, though lying nearest the surface, are also the most +deeply-rooted. The whole action is passionately pathetic, and it is +infused with a twofold tragedy, the tragedy of the sin, and that of the +misunderstanding, the last and final tragedy, which hangs on a word, +spoken only when too late to save three lives. This irony of +circumstance, while it is the source of what is saddest in human +discords, is also the motive of what has come to be the only satisfying +harmony in dramatic art. It takes the place, in our modern world, of the +Necessity of the Greeks; and is not less impressive because it arises +from the impulse and unreasoning wilfulness of man rather than from the +implacable insistency of God. It is with perfect justice, both moral and +artistic, that the fatal crisis, though mediately the result of +accident, of error, is shown to be the consequence and the punishment of +wrong. A tragedy resulting from the mistakes of the wholly innocent +would jar on our sense of right, and could never produce a legitimate +work of art. Even Oedipus suffers, not merely because he is under the +curse of a higher power, but because he is wilful, and rushes upon his +own fate. Timon suffers, not because he was generous and good, but from +the defects of his qualities. So, in this play, each of the characters +calls down upon his own head the suffering which at first seems to be a +mere caprice and confusion of chance. Mildred Tresham and Henry Mertoun, +both very young, ignorant and unguarded, have loved. They attempt a late +reparation, apparently with success, but the hasty suspicion of Lord +Tresham, Mildred's brother, diverted indeed into a wrong channel, brings +down on both a terrible retribution. Tresham, who shares the ruin he +causes, feels, too, that his punishment is his due. He has acted without +pausing to consider, and he is called on to pay the penalty of "evil +wrought by want of thought." + +The character of Mildred, a woman "more sinned against than sinning," is +exquisitely and tenderly drawn. We see her, and we see and feel + + "The good and tender heart, + Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy, + How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind, + How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free + As light where friends are"-- + +as her brother, in a memorable passage, describes her. She is so +thrillingly alive, so beautiful and individual, so pathetic and pitiful +in her desolation. Every word she speaks comes straight from her heart +to ours. "I know nothing that is so affecting," wrote Dickens in a +letter to Forster, "nothing in any book I have ever read, as Mildred's +recurrence to that 'I was so young--had no mother.' I know no love like +it, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its +conception like it."[22] Not till Pompilia do we find so pathetic a +portrait of a woman. + +In Thorold, Earl Tresham, we have an admirable picture of the head of a +great house, proud above all things of the honour of the family and its +yet stainless 'scutcheon, and proud, with a deep brotherly tenderness of +his sister Mildred: a strong and fine nature, one whom men instinctively +cite as "the perfect spirit of honour." Mertoun, the apparent hero of +the play, is a much less prominent and masterly figure than Tresham, not +so much from any lack of skill in his delineation, as from the essential +ineffectualness of his nature. Guendolen Tresham, the Beatrice of the +play (her lover Austin is certainly no Benedick) is one of the most +pleasantly humorous characters in Browning. Her gay, light-hearted talk +brightens the sombre action like a gleam of sunlight. And like her +prototype, she is a true woman. As Beatrice stands by the calumniated +Hero, so Guendolen stands by Mildred, and by her quick woman's heart and +wit, her instinct of things, sees and seizes the missing clue, though +too late, as it proves, to avert the impending disaster. + +The play contains one of Browning's most delicate and musical lyrics, +the serenade beginning, "There's a woman like a dew-drop." This is the +first of the love-songs in long lines which Browning wrote so often at +the end of his life, and so seldom earlier. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 21: A contemporary account, written by Joseph Arnould to +Alfred Domett, says: "The first night was magnificent ... there could be +no mistake at all about the honest enthusiasm of the audience. The +gallery (and this, of course, was very gratifying, because not to be +expected at a play of _Browning_) took all the points quite as quickly +as the pit, and entered into the general feeling and interest of the +action far more than the boxes.... Altogether the first night was a +triumph."--_Robert Browning and Alfred Domett_, 1906, p. 65.] + +[Footnote 22: Forster's _Life of Dickens_, vol. ii., p. 24.] + + +10. COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY: A Play in Five Acts. + + [Published in 1844 as No. VI. of _Bells and Pomegranates_ + (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp. 71-169). Played at the + Haymarket Theatre, April 25, 1853, Miss Helen Faucit taking + the part of _Colombe_; also, with Miss Alma Murray as + _Colombe_, at St. George's Hall, November 19, 1885, under the + direction of the Browning Society. The action takes place + from morning to night of one day]. + +_Colombe's Birthday_, a drama founded on an imaginary episode in the +history of a German duchy of the seventeenth century, is the first play +which is mainly concerned with inward rather than outward action; in +which the characters themselves, what they are in their own souls, what +they think of themselves, and what others think of them, constitute the +chief interest, the interest of the characters as they influence one +another or external events being secondary. Colombe of Ravestein, +Duchess of Juliers and Cleves, is surprised, on the first anniversary of +her accession (the day being also her birthday), by a rival claimant to +the duchy, Prince Berthold, who proves to be in fact the true heir. +Berthold, instead of pressing his claim, offers to marry her. But he +conceives the honour and the favour to be sufficient, and makes no +pretence at offering love as well. On the other hand, Valence, a poor +advocate of Cleves, who has stood by Colombe when all her other friends +failed, offers her his love, a love to which she can only respond by +"giving up the world"; in other words, by relinquishing her duchy, and +the alliance with a Prince who is on the way to be Emperor. We have +nothing to do with the question of who has the right and who has the +might: that matter is settled, and the succession agreed on, almost +from the beginning. Nor are we made to feel that any disgrace or +reputation of weakness will rest on Colombe if she gives up her duchy; +not even that the pang at doing so will be over-acute or entirely +unrelieved. All the interest centres in the purely personal and +psychological bearings of the act. It is perhaps a consequence of this +that the style is somewhat different from that of any previous play. Any +one who notices the stage directions will see that the persons of the +drama frequently speak "after a pause." The language which they use is, +naturally enough, more deliberate and reflective, the lines are slower +and more weighty, than would be appropriate amid the breathless action +of _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ or _The Return of the Druses_. A certain +fiery quality, a thrilling, heart-stirred and heart-stirring tone, which +we find in these is wanting; but the calm sweep of the action is carried +onward by a verse whose large harmonies almost recall _Paracelsus_. + +Colombe, the true heroine of the play named after her is, if not "the +completest full-length portrait of a woman that Browning has drawn," +certainly one of the sweetest and most stable. Her character develops +during the course of the play; as she herself says, + + "This is indeed my birthday--soul and body, + Its hours have done on me the work of years--" + +and it leaves her a nobler and stronger, yet not less charming woman +than it found her. Hitherto she has been a mere "play-queen," shut in +from action, shut in from facts and the world, and caring only to be gay +and amused. But now, at the first and yet final trial, she is proved +and found to be of noble metal. The gay girlishness of the young +Duchess, her joyous and generous light heart; her womanliness, her +earnestness, her clear, deep, noble nature, attract us from her first +words, and leave us, after the hour we have spent in her presence, with +a memory like that of some woman whom we have met, for an hour or a +moment, in the world or in books. + +Berthold, the weary and unsatisfied conqueror, is a singularly +unconventional figure. He is a man of action, with some of the +sympathies of the scholar and the lover; resolute in the attainment of +ends which he sees to be, in themselves, vulgar; his ambition rather an +instinct than something to be pursued for itself, and his soul too +keenly aware of the joys and interests he foregoes, to be quite +satisfied or content with his lot and conduct. The grave courtesy of his +speech to Colombe, his somewhat condescending but not unfriendly tone +with Valence, his rough home-truths with the parasitical courtiers, and +his frank confidence with Melchior, are admirably discriminated. +Melchior himself, little as he speaks, is a fine sketch of the +contemplative, bookish man who finds no more congenial companion and +study than a successful man of action. His attitude of detachment, a +mere spectator in the background, is well in keeping with the calm and +thoughtful character of the play. Valence, the true hero of the piece, +the "pale fiery man" who can speak with so moving an eloquence, whether +he is pleading the wrongs of his townsmen or of Colombe, the rights of +Berthold or of himself, is no less masterly a portrait than the Prince, +though perhaps less wholly unconventional a character. His grave +earnestness, his honour as a man and passion as a lover, move our +instinctive sympathy, and he never forfeits it. Were it for nothing +else, he would deserve remembrance from the fact that he is one of the +speakers in that most delightful of love-duets, the incomparable scene +at the close of the fourth act. "I remember well to have seen," wrote +Moncure D. Conway in 1854, "a vast miscellaneous crowd in an American +theatre hanging with breathless attention upon every word of this +interview, down to the splendid climax when, in obedience to the +Duchess's direction to Valence how he should reveal his love to the lady +she so little suspects herself to be herself, he kneels--every heart +evidently feeling each word as an electric touch, and all giving vent at +last to their emotion in round after round of hearty applause." + +All the minor characters are good and life-like, particularly Guibert, +the shrewd, hesitating, talkative, cynical, really good-hearted old +courtier, whom not even a court had deprived of a heart, though the +dangerous influence of the conscienceless Gaucelme, his fellow, has in +its time played sad pranks with it. He is one of the best of Browning's +minor characters. + +The performance, in 1885, of _Colombe's Birthday_, under the direction +of the Browning Society, has brought to light unsuspected acting +qualities in what is certainly not the most "dramatic" of Browning's +plays. "_Colombe's Birthday_," it was said on the occasion, "is charming +on the boards, clearer, more direct in action, more full of delicate +surprises than one imagines it in print. With a very little cutting it +could be made an excellent acting play."[23] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 23: A. Mary F. Robinson, in _Boston Literary World_, December +12, 1885.] + + +11. DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS. + + [Published in 1845 as No. VII. of _Bells and Pomegranates_ + (_Poetical Works_, 1889, dispersedly, in Vols. IV., V., and + VI.).] + +_Dramatic Romances_, Browning's second volume of miscellaneous poems, is +not markedly different in style or substance from the _Lyrics_ published +three years earlier. It is somewhat more mature, no doubt, as a whole, +somewhat richer and fuller, somewhat wider in reach and firmer in grasp; +but in tone and treatment it harmonises considerably more with its +predecessor than with its successor, after so long an interval, _Men and +Women_. The book opens with the ballad, _How they brought the Good News +from Ghent to Aix_, the most popular piece, except perhaps the _Pied +Piper_, that Browning has written. Few boys, I suppose, have not read +with breathless emotion this most stirring of ballads: few men can read +it without a thrill. The "good news" is intended for that of the +Pacification of Ghent, but the incident itself is not historical. The +poem was written at sea, off the African coast. Another poem of somewhat +similar kind, appealing more directly than usual to the simpler +feelings, is _The Lost Leader_. It was written in reference to +Wordsworth's abandonment of the Liberal cause, with perhaps a thought of +Southey, but it is applicable to any popular apostasy. This is one of +those songs that do the work of swords. It shows how easily Browning, +had he so chosen, could have stirred the national feeling with his +songs. The _Home-Thoughts from Abroad_ belongs, in its simple +directness, its personal and forthright fervour of song, to this section +of the volume. With the two pieces now known as _Home-Thoughts from +Abroad_ and _Home-Thoughts from the Sea_, a third, very inferior, piece +was originally published. It is now more appropriately included with +_Claret_ and _Tokay_ (two capital little snatches) under the head of +_Nationality in Drinks_. The two "Home-Thoughts," from sea and from +land, are equally remarkable for their poetry and for their patriotism. +I hope there is no need to commend to all Englishmen so passionate and +heartfelt a record of love for England. It is in _Home-Thoughts from +Abroad_, that we find the well-known and magical lines on the thrush:-- + + "That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over, + Lest you should think he never could recapture + The first fine careless rapture!" + +The whole poem is beautiful, but _Home-Thoughts from the Sea_ is of that +order of song that moves the heart "more than with a trumpet." + + "Nobly, nobly, Cape Saint Vincent to the North-West died away; + Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; + Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; + In the dimmest North-East distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray; + 'Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?'--say, + Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, + While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa." + +Next to _The Lost Leader_ comes, in the original edition, a sort of +companion poem, in + + "THE LOST MISTRESS. + + I. + + All's over, then: does truth sound bitter + As one at first believes? + Hark! 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter + About your cottage eaves! + + II. + + And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, + I noticed that, to-day; + One day more bursts them open fully + --You know the red turns gray. + + III. + + To-morrow we meet the same, then, dearest? + May I take your hand in mine? + Mere friends are we,--well, friends the merest + Keep much that I resign: + + IV. + + For each glance of the eye so bright and black + Though I keep with heart's endeavour,-- + Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, + Though it stay in my heart for ever!-- + + V. + + Yet I will but say what mere friends say, + Or only a thought stronger; + I will hold your hand but as long as all may. + Or so very little longer!" + +This is one of those love-songs which we cannot but consider among the +noblest of such songs in all Love's language. The subject of "unrequited +love" has probably produced more effusions of sickly sentiment than any +other single subject. But Browning, who has employed the motive so +often (here, for instance, and yet more notably in _The Last Ride +Together_) deals with it in a way that is at once novel and fundamental. +There is no talk, among his lovers, of "blighted hearts," no whining and +puling, no contemptible professions of contempt for the woman who has +had the ill-taste to refuse some wondrous-conceited lover, but a noble +manly resignation, a profound and still grateful sorrow which has no +touch in it of reproach, no tone of disloyalty, and no pretence of +despair. In the first of the _Garden Fancies_ (_The Flower's Name_) a +delicate little love-story of a happier kind is hinted at. The second +_Garden Fancy_ (_Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_) is of very different tone. +It is a whimsical tale of a no less whimsical revenge taken upon a piece +of pedantic lumber, the name of which is given in the title. The varying +ring and swing communicated to the dactyls of these two pieces by the +jolly humour of the one and the refined sentiment of the other, is a +point worth noticing. The easy flow, the careless charm of their +versification, is by no means the artless matter it may seem to a +careless reader. Nor is it the easiest of metrical tasks to poise +perfectly the loose lilt of such verses as these:-- + + "What a name! Was it love or praise? + Speech half-asleep or song half-awake? + I must learn Spanish, one of these days, + Only for that slow sweet name's sake." + +The two perfect little pieces on "Fame" and "Love," _Earth's +Immortalities_, are remarkable, even in Browning's work, for their +concentrated felicity, and, the second especially, for swift +suggestiveness of haunting music. Not less exquisite in its fresh +melody and subtle simplicity is the following _Song_:-- + + I. + + "Nay but you, who do not love her, + Is she not pure gold, my mistress? + Holds earth aught--speak truth--above her? + Aught like this tress, see, and this tress, + And this last fairest tress of all, + So fair, see, ere I let it fall? + + II. + + Because, you spend your lives in praising; + To praise, you search the wide world over: + Then why not witness, calmly gazing, + If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her? + Above this tress, and this, I touch + But cannot praise, I love so much!" + +In two tiny pictures, _Night and Morning_, one of four lines, the other +of twelve, we have, besides the picture, two moments which sum up a +lifetime, and "on how fine a needle's point that little world of passion +is balanced!" + + I. + + "MEETING AT NIGHT. + + 1. + + The gray 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. + + 2. + + 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 less loud, thro' its joys and fears, + Than the two hearts beating each to each! + + + II. + + PARTING AT MORNING. + + 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." + +But the largest, if not the greatest work in the volume must be sought +for, not in the romances, properly speaking, nor in the lyrics, but in +the dramatic monologues. _Pictor Ignotus_ (Florence, 15--) is the first +of those poems about painting, into which Browning has put so much of +his finest art. It is a sort of first faint hint or foreshadowing of +_Andrea del Sarto_, perfectly individual and distinct though it is. +_Pictor Ignotus_ expresses the subdued sadness of a too timid or too +sensitive nature, an "unknown painter" who has dreamed of painting great +pictures and winning great fame, but who shrinks equally from the +attempt and the reward: an attempt which he is too self-distrustful to +make, a reward which he is too painfully discriminating to enjoy. + + "So, die my pictures! surely, gently die! + O youth, men praise so,--holds their praise its worth? + Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry? + Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?" + +The monotonous "linked sweetness long drawn out" of the verses, the +admirably arranged pause, recurrence and relapse of the lines, render +the sense and substance of the subject with singular appropriateness. +_The Tomb at St. Praxed's_ (now known as _The Bishop orders his Tomb at +St. Praxed's Church_), has been finally praised by Ruskin, and the whole +passage may be here quoted:-- + + "Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of + the Middle Ages; always vital, right, and profound; so that + in the matter of art, with which we have been specially + concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the + mediaeval temper that he has not struck upon in those + seemingly careless and too rugged lines of his. + + "'As here I lie + In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, + Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask + "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. + Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; + And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought + With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: + --Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; + Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South + He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! + Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence + One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, + And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats. + And up into the aery dome where live + The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: + And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, + And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, + With those nine columns round me, two and two, + The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: + Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe + As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. + --Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, + Put me where I may look at him! True peach, + Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! + Draw close: that conflagration of my church + --What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! + My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig + The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, + Drop water gently till the surface sink, + And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I!... + Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, + And corded up in a tight olive-frail, + Some lump, ah God, of _lapis lazuli_, + Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, + Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast.... + Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, + That brave Frascati-villa with its bath, + So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, + Like God the Father's globe on both his hands + Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, + For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! + Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: + Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? + Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-- + 'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else + Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? + The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, + Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance + Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, + The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, + Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan + Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, + And Moses with the tables ... but I know + Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, + Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope + To revel down my villas while I gasp + Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine, + Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! + Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then! + 'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve + My bath must needs be left behind, alas! + One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, + There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-- + And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray + Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, + And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? + --That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, + Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, + No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-- + Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need.' + + "I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in + which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the + Renaissance spirit,--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, + hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and + of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the + central Renaissance in thirty pages of the _Stones of + Venice_, put into as many lines, Browning's also being the + antecedent work."[24] + +This poem is the third of the iambic monologues, and, but for _Artemis +Prologizes_, the first in blank verse. I am not aware if it was written +much later than _Pictor Ignotus_, but it belongs to a later manner. +Scarcely at his very best, scarcely in the very greatest monologues of +the central series of _Men and Women_, or in these only, has Browning +written a finer or a more characteristic poem. As a study in human +nature it has all the concentrated truth, all the biting and imaginative +realism, of a scene from Balzac's _Comedie Humaine_: it is as much a +fact and a creation. It is, moreover, as Ruskin has told us, typical not +only of a single individual but of a whole epoch; while, as a piece of +metrical writing, it has all the originality of an innovation. If +Browning can scarcely be said to have created this species of blank +verse, half familiar, vivid with natural life, full of vigour and +beauty, rising and falling, with the unerring motion of the sea, he has +certainly adapted, perfected, and made it a new thing in his hands. + +Akin to _The Tomb at St. Praxed's_ on its dramatic, though dissimilar on +its lyric, side, is the picturesque and terrible little poem of _The +Laboratory_[25] in which a Brinvilliers of the _Ancien Regime_ is +represented buying poison for her rival; one of the very finest examples +of Browning's unique power of compressing and concentrating intense +emotion into a few pregnant words, each of which has its own visible +gesture and audible intonation. + +It is in such poems that Browning is at his best, nor is he perhaps +anywhere so inimitable. The second poem under the general heading of +"France and Spain," _The Confessional_, in which a girl, half-maddened +by remorse and impotent rage, tells how a false priest induced her to +betray the political secrets of her lover, is, though vivid and +effective, not nearly so powerful and penetrating as its companion +piece. _Time's Revenges_ may perhaps be classified with these utterances +of individual passion, though in form it is more closely connected with +the poems I shall touch on next. It is a bitter and affecting little +poem, not unlike some of the poems written many years afterwards by a +remarkable and unfortunate poet,[26] who knew, in his own experience, +something of what Browning happily rendered by the instinct of the +dramatist only. It is a powerful and literal rendering of a certain +sordid and tragic aspect of life, and is infused with that peculiar grim +humour, the laugh that chokes in a sob, which comes to men when mere +lamentation is a thing foregone. + +The octosyllabic couplets of _Time's Revenges_, as well as its similarly +realistic treatment and striking simplicity of verse and phrase, +connect it with the admirable little poem now know as _The Italian in +England_.[27] This is a tale of an Italian patriot, who, after an +unsuccessful rising, has taken refuge in England. It tells of his escape +and of how he was saved from the Austrian pursuers by the tact and +fidelity of a young peasant woman. Its chief charm lies in the +simplicity and sincere directness of its telling. _The Englishman in +Italy_, a poem of very different class, written in brisk and vigorous +anapaests, is a vivid and humorous picture of Italian country life. It is +delightfully gay and charming and picturesque, and is the most entirely +descriptive poem ever written by Browning. In _The Glove_ we have a new +version, from an original and characteristic standpoint, of the familiar +old story known to all in its metrical version by Leigh Hunt, and more +curtly rhymed (without any very great impressiveness) by Schiller. +Browning has shown elsewhere that he can tell a simple anecdote simply, +but he has here seized upon the tale of the glove, not for the purpose +of telling over again what Leigh Hunt had so charmingly and sufficiently +told, but in order to present the old story in a new light, to show how +the lady might have been right and the knight wrong, in spite of King +Francis's verdict and the look of things. The tale, which is very +wittily told, and contains some fine serious lines on the lion, is +supposed to be related by Peter Ronsard, in the position of on-looker +and moraliser; and the character of the narrator, after the poet's +manner, is brought out by many cunning little touches. The poem is +written almost throughout in double rhymes, in the metre and much in the +manner of the _Pacchiarotto_ of thirty years later. It is worth noticing +that in the lines spoken by the lady to Ronsard, and in these alone, the +double rhymes are replaced by single ones, thus making a distinct +severance between the earnestness of this one passage and the cynical +wit of the rest. + +The easy mastery of difficult rhyming which we notice in this piece is +still more marked in the strange and beautiful romance named _The Flight +of the Duchess_.[28] Not even in _Pacchiarotto_ has Browning so revelled +in the most outlandish and seemingly incredible combinations of sound, +double and treble rhymes of equal audacity and success. There is much +dramatic appropriateness in the unconventional diction, the story being +put into the mouth of a rough old huntsman. The device of linking +fantasy with familiarity is very curious, and the effect is original in +the extreme. The poem is a fusion of many elements, and has all the +varying colour of a romantic comedy. Contrast the intensely picturesque +opening landscape, the cleverly minute description of the gipsies and +their trades, the humorous naturalness of the Duke's mediaeval +masquerading as related by his unsympathising forester, and, in a higher +key the beautiful figure of the young Duchess, and the serene, mystical +splendour of the old gipsy's chant. + +Two poems yet remain to be named, and two of the most perfect in the +book. The little parable poem of _The Boy and the Angel_ is one of the +most simply beautiful, yet deeply earnest, of Browning's lyrical poems. +It is a parable in which "the allegorical intent seems to be shed by the +story, like a natural perfume from a flower;" and it preaches a sermon +on contentment and the doing of God's will such as no theologian could +better. _Saul_ (which I shall mention here, though only the first part, +sections one to nine, appeared in _Dramatic Romances_, sections ten to +nineteen being first published in _Men and Women_) has been by some +considered almost or quite Browning's finest poem. And indeed it seems +to unite almost the whole of his qualities as a poet in perfect fusion. +Music, song, the beauty of nature, the joy of life, the glory and +greatness of man, the might of Love, human and divine: all these are set +to an orchestral accompaniment of continuous harmony, now hushed as the +wind among the woods at evening, now strong and sonorous as the +storm-wind battling with the mountain-pine. _Saul_ is a vision of life, +of time and of eternity, told in song as sublime as the vision is +steadfast. The choral symphony of earth and all her voices with which +the poem concludes is at once the easiest passage to separate from its +context, and (if we may dare, in such a matter, to choose) one, at +least, of the very greatest of all. + + "I know not too well how I found my way home in the night. + There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, + Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware: + I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there, + As a runner beset by the populace famished for news-- + Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed + with her crews; + And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot + Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not, + For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed + All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, + Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. + Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth-- + Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth; + In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills; + In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; + In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling + still + Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill + That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe: + E'en the serpent that slid away silent,--he felt the new law. + The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; + The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine bowers: + And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, + With their obstinate, all but hushed voices--' E'en so, it is so!'" + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 24: _Modern Painters_, Vol. IV., pp. 377-79.] + +[Footnote 25: It is interesting to remember that Rossetti's first +water-colour was an illustration of this poem, and has for subject and +title the line, "Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?"] + +[Footnote 26: James Thomson, the writer of _The City of Dreadful +Night_.] + +[Footnote 27: "Mr Browning is proud to remember," we are told by Mrs +Orr, "that Mazzini informed him he had read this poem to certain of his +fellow exiles in England to show how an Englishman could sympathise with +them."--_Handbook_ 2nd ed., p. 306.] + +[Footnote 28: Some curious particulars are recorded in reference to the +composition of this poem. "_The Flight of the Duchess_ took its rise +from a line--'Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!' the burden of a +song which the poet, when a boy, heard a woman singing on a Guy Fawkes' +day. The poem was written in two parts, of which the first was published +in _Hood's Magazine_, April, 1845, and contained only nine sections. As +Mr Browning was writing it, he was interrupted by the arrival of a +friend on some important business, which drove all thoughts of the +Duchess and the scheme of her story out of the poet's head. But some +months after the publication of the first part, when he was staying at +Bettisfield Park, in Shropshire, a guest, speaking of early winter, +said, 'The deer had already to break the ice in the pond.' On this a +fancy struck the poet, and, on returning home, he worked it up into the +conclusion of _The Flight of the Duchess_ as it now stands."--_Academy_, +May 5, 1883.] + + +12. A SOUL'S TRAGEDY. + + [Published in 1846 (with _Luria_) as No. VIII. of _Bells and + Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp. + 257-302). Acted by the Stage Society at the Court Theatre, + March 13, 1904.] + +The development of Browning's genius, as shown in his plays, has been +touched on in dealing with _Colombe's Birthday_. That play, as I +intimated, shows the first token of transition from the comparatively +conventional dramatic style of the early plays to the completely +unconventional style of the later ones, which in turn lead almost +imperceptibly to the final pausing-place of the monologue. From _A Blot +in the 'Scutcheon_ to _Colombe's Birthday_ is a step; from _Colombe's +Birthday_ to _A Soul's Tragedy_ and _Luria_ another step; and in these +last we are not more than another step from _Men and Women_ and its +successors. In _A Soul's Tragedy_ the action is all internalized. +Outward action there is, and of a sufficiently picturesque nature; but +here, considerably more than even in _Colombe's Birthday_, the interest +is withdrawn from the action, as action, and concentrated on a single +character, whose "soul's tragedy," not his mere worldly fortunes, +strange and significant as these are, we are called on to contemplate. +Chiappino fills and possesses the scene. The other characters are +carefully subordinated, and the impression we receive is not unlike that +received from one of Browning's most vivid and complete monologues, with +its carefully placed apparatus of sidelights. + +The character of Chiappino is that of a Djabal degenerated; he is the +second of Browning's delineations of the half-deceived and +half-deceiving nature, the moral hybrid. Chiappino comes before us as a +much-professing yet apparently little-performing person, moody and +complaining, envious of his friend Luitolfo's better fortune, a soured +man and a discontented patriot. But he is quite sure of his own complete +probity. He declaims bitterly against his fellow-townsmen, his friend, +and the woman whom he loves; all of whom, he asseverates, treat him +unjustly, and as he never could, by any possibility, treat them. While +he is thus protesting to Eulalia, his friend's betrothed, to whom for +the first time he avows his own love, a trial is at hand, and nearer +than he or we expect. Luitolfo rushes in. He has gone to the Provost's +palace to intercede on behalf of his banished friend, and in a moment of +wrath has struck and, as he thinks, killed the Provost: the guards are +after him, and he is lost. Is this the moment of test? Apparently; and +apparently Chiappino proves his nobility. For, with truly heroic +unselfishness, he exchanges dress with his friend, induces him, in a +sort of stupefaction of terror, to escape, and remains in his place, "to +die for him." But the harder test has yet to come. Instead of the +Provost's guards, it is the enthusiastic populace that bursts in upon +him, hailing him as saviour and liberator. The people have risen in +revolt, the guards have fled, and the people call on the striker of the +blow to be their leader. Chiappino says nothing. "Chiappino?" says +Eulalia, questioning him with her eyes. "Yes, I understand," he rejoins, + + "You think I should have promptlier disowned + This deed with its strange unforeseen success, + In favour of Luitolfo. But the peril, + So far from ended, hardly seems begun. + To-morrow, rather, when a calm succeeds, + We easily shall make him full amends: + And meantime--if we save them as they pray, + And justify the deed by its effects? + _Eu._ You would, for worlds, you had denied at once. + _Ch._ I know my own intention, be assured! + All's well. Precede us, fellow-citizens!" + +Thus ends act first, "being what was called the poetry of Chiappino's +life;" and act second, "its prose," opens after a supposed interval of a +month. + +The second act exhibits, in very humorous prose, the gradual and +inevitable deterioration which the silence and the deception have +brought about. Drawn on and on, upon his own lines of thought and +conduct, by Ogniben, the Pope's legate, who has come to put down the +revolt by diplomatic measures, Chiappino denies his political +principles, finding a democratic rule not at all so necessary when the +provostship may perhaps fall to himself; denies his love, for his views +of love are, he finds, widened; and finally, denies his friend, to the +extent of arguing that the very blow which, as struck by Luitolfo, has +been the factor of his fortune, was practically, because logically, his +own. Ogniben now agrees to invest him with the Provost's office, making +at the same time the stipulation that the actual assailant of the +Provost shall suffer the proper penalty. Hereupon Luitolfo comes forward +and avows the deed. Ogniben orders him to his house; Chiappino "goes +aside for a time;" "and now," concludes the legate, addressing the +people, "give thanks to God, the keys of the Provost's palace to me, and +yourselves to profitable meditation at home." + +Besides Chiappino, there are three other characters, who serve to set +off the main figure. Eulalia is an observer, Luitolfo a foil, Ogniben a +touchstone. Eulalia and Luitolfo, though sufficiently worked out for +their several purposes, are only sketches, the latter perhaps more +distinctly outlined than the former, and serving admirably as a contrast +to Chiappino. But Ogniben, who does so much of the talking in the second +act, is a really memorable figure. His portrait is painted with more +prominent effect, for his part in the play is to draw Chiappino out, and +to confound him with his own weapons: "I help men," as he says, "to +carry out their own principles; if they please to say two and two make +five, I assent, so they will but go on and say, four and four make ten." +His shrewd Socratic prose is delightfully wise and witty. This prose, +the only dramatic prose written by Browning, with the exception of that +in _Pippa Passes_, is, in its way, almost as good as the poetry: keen, +vivacious, full-thoughted, picturesque, and singularly original. For +instance, Chiappino is expressing his longing for a woman who could +understand, as he says, the whole of him, to whom he could reveal alike +his strength and weakness. + + "Ah, my friend," rejoins Ogniben, "wish for nothing so + foolish! Worship your love, give her the best of you to see; + be to her like the western lands (they bring us such strange + news of) to the Spanish Court; send her only your lumps of + gold, fans of feathers, your spirit-like birds, and fruits + and gems. So shall you, what is unseen of you, be supposed + altogether a paradise by her,--as these western lands by + Spain: though I warrant there is filth, red baboons, ugly + reptiles and squalor enough, which they bring Spain as few + samples of as possible." + +There is in all this prose, lengthy as it is, the true dramatic note, a +recognisable tone of talk. But _A Soul's Tragedy_ is for the study, not +the stage. + + +13. LURIA: A Tragedy in Five Acts. + + [Published in 1846 (with _A Soul's Tragedy_) as No. VIII of + _Bells and Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. VI. + pp. 205-289). The action takes place from morning to night of + one day]. + +The action and interest in _Luria_ are somewhat less internalised than +in _A Soul's Tragedy_, but the drama is in form a still nearer approach +to monologue. Many of the speeches are so long as to be almost +monologues in themselves; and the whole play is manifestly written +(unlike the other plays, except its immediate predecessor, or rather its +contemporary) with no thought of the stage. The poet is retreating +farther and farther from the glare of the footlights; he is writing +after his own fancy, and not as his audience or his manager would wish +him to write. None of Browning's plays is so full of large heroic +speech, of deep philosophy, of choice illustration; seldom has he +written nobler poetry. There is not the intense and throbbing humanity +of _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_; the characters are not so simply and so +surely living men and women; but in the grave and lofty speech and +idealised characters of _Luria_ we have something new, and something +great as well. + +The central figure is Luria himself; but the other characters are not so +carefully and completely subordinated to him as are those in _A Soul's +Tragedy_ to Chiappino. Luria is one of the noblest and most heroic +figures in Browning's works. A Moor, with the instincts of the East and +the culture of the West, he presents a racial problem which is very +subtly handled; while his natural nobility and confidence are no less +subtly set off against the Italian craft of his surroundings. The +spectacle he presents is impressive and pathetic. An alien, with no bond +to Florence save that of his inalienable love, he has led her forces +against the Pisans, and saved her. Looking for no reward but the +grateful love of the people he has saved, he meets instead with the +basest ingratitude. While he is fighting and conquering for her, +Florence, at home, is trying him for his life on a charge of treachery: +a charge which has no foundation but in the base natures of his +accusers, who know that he might, and therefore suspect that he will, +turn to evil purpose his military successes and the power which they +have gained him over the army. Generals of their own blood have betrayed +them: how much more will this barbarian? Luria learns of the treachery +of his allies in time to take revenge, he is urged to take revenge, and +the means are placed in his hands, but his nobler nature conquers, and +the punishment he deals on Florence is the punishment of his own +voluntary death. The strength of love which restrains him from punishing +the ungrateful city forbids him to live when his only love has proved +false, his only link to life has gone. But before he dies he has the +satisfaction of seeing the late repentance and regret of every enemy, +whether secret schemer or open foe. + + "Luria goes not poorly forth. + If we could wait! The only fault's with time; + All men become good creatures: but so slow!" + +In the pathos of his life and death Luria may remind us of another +unrequited lover, Strafford, whose devotion to his king gains the same +reward as Luria's devotion to his adopted country. + +In Luria's faithful friend and comrade Husain we have a contrasted +picture of the Moor untouched by alien culture. The instincts of the one +are dulled or disturbed by his Western wisdom and experience; Husain +still keeps the old instincts and the unmixed nature, and still speaks +the fervid and highly-coloured Eastern speech. But while Husain is to +some extent a contrast with Luria, Luria and Husain together form an +infinitely stronger contrast with the group of Italians. Braccio, the +Florentine Commissary, is an admirable study of Italian subtlety and +craft. Only a writer with Browning's special knowledge and sympathies +could have conceived and executed so acute and true a picture of the +Italian temper of the time, a temper manifested with singular +appropriateness by the city of Machiavelli. Braccio is the chief schemer +against Luria, and he schemes, not from any real ill-will, but from the +diplomatic distrust of a too cautious and too suspicious patriot. +Domizia, the vengeful Florentine lady, plotting against Florence with +the tireless patience of an unforgetting wrong, is also a representative +sketch, though not so clearly and firmly outlined as a character. +Puccio, Luria's chief officer, once his commander, the simple fighting +soldier, discontented but honest, unswervingly loyal to Florence, but +little by little aware of and aggrieved at the wrong done to Luria, is a +really touching conception. Tiburzio, the Pisan leader, is yet finer in +his perfect chivalry of service to his foe. Nothing could be more nobly +planned than the first meeting, and indeed the whole relations, of these +magnanimous and worthy opponents, Luria and Tiburzio. There is a +certain intellectual fascination for Browning in the analysis of mean +natures and dubious motives, but of no contemporary can it be more +justly said that he rises always and easily to the height and at the +touch of an heroic action or of a noble nature. + + +14. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY: A Poem. + + [Published in 1850 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. V., pp. + 207-307). Written in Florence.] + +_Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_ is the chief work in which Browning deals +directly and primarily with the subject of Christianity and the +religious beliefs of the age. Both the poems which appear under this +title are studies of religious life and thought, the first more in the +narrative and critical way, the second rather in relation to individual +experience. Browning's position towards Christianity is perhaps unique. +He has been described as "the latest extant Defender of the Faith," but +the manner of his belief and the modes of his defence are as little +conventional as any other of his qualities. Beyond all question the most +deeply religious poet of our day, perhaps the greatest religious poet we +have ever had, Browning has never written anything in the ordinary style +of religious verse, the style of Herbert, of Keble, of the hymn-writers. +The spirit which runs through all his work is more often felt as an +influence than manifested in any concrete and separate form. +_Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_, _La Saisiaz_ and _Ferishtah's Fancies_ +are the only prominent exceptions to this rule. + +_Christmas-Eve_ is a study or vision of the religious life of the time. +It professes to be the narrative of a strange experience lived through +on a Christmas-Eve ("whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out +of the body,") in a little dissenting chapel on the outskirts of a +country town, in St. Peter's at Rome, and at an agnostic lecture-hall in +Goettingen. The vivid humorous sketch of the little chapel and its flock +is like a bit of Dickens at his best. Equally good, in another kind, is +the picture of the Professor and his audience at Goettingen, with its +searching and scathing irony of merciless logic, and the tender and +subtle discrimination of its judgment, sympathetic with the good faith +of the honest thinker. Different again in style, and higher still in +poetry, is the glowing description of the Basilica and its sensuous +fervour of ceremonial; and higher and greater yet the picture of the +double lunar rainbow merging into that of the vision: a piece of +imaginative work never perhaps exceeded in spiritual exaltation and +concordant splendour of song in the whole work of the poet, though +equalled, if not exceeded, by the more terrible vision of judgment which +will be cited later from _Easter-Day_. + + "For lo, what think you? suddenly + The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky + Received at once the full fruition + Of the moon's consummate apparition. + The black cloud-barricade was riven, + Ruined beneath her feet, and driven + Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, + North and South and East lay ready + For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, + Sprang across them and stood steady. + 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, + From heaven to heaven extending, perfect + As the mother-moon's self, full in face. + It rose, distinctly at the base + With its seven proper colours chorded, + Which still, in the rising, were compressed, + Until at last they coalesced, + And supreme the spectral creature lorded + In a triumph of purest white,-- + Above which intervened the night. + But above night too, like only the next, + The second of a wondrous sequence, + Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, + Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, + Another rainbow rose, a mightier, + Fainter, flushier, and flightier,-- + Rapture dying along its verge. + Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, + Whose, from the straining topmost dark, + On to the keystone of that arc?" + +At moments of such energy and ecstasy as this, all that there is in the +poet of mere worldly wisdom and intellectual ingenuity drops off, or +rather is consumed to a white glow in the intense flame of triumphant +and over-mastering inspiration. + +The piercing light cast in the poem on the representative creeds of the +age is well worthy of serious consideration, from an ethical as well as +from a poetical point of view. No nobler lesson of religious tolerance, +united with religious earnestness, has been preached in our day. Nothing +could be more novel and audacious than the union here attempted and +achieved of colloquial realism and grotesque humour with imaginative +vision and solemn earnestness. The style and metre vary with the mood. +Where the narrative is serious the lines are regular and careful, they +shrink to their smallest structural limit, and the rhymes are chiefly +single and simple. Where it becomes humorous, the rhythm lengthens out +its elastic syllables to the full extent, and swings and sways, jolts +and rushes; the rhymes fall double and triple and break out into audible +laughter. + +_Easter-Day_, like its predecessor, is written in lines of four beats +each, but the general effect is totally dissimilar. Here the verse is +reduced to its barest constituents; every line is, syllabically as well +as accentually, of equal length; and the lines run in pairs, without one +double rhyme throughout. The tone and contents of the two poems (though +also, in a sense, derived from the same elements) are in singular +contrast. _Easter-Day_, despite a momentary touch or glimmer, here and +there, of grave humour, is thoroughly serious in manner and continuously +solemn in subject. The burden of the poem is stated in its first two +lines:-- + + "How very hard it is to be + A Christian!" + +Up to the thirteenth section it is an argument between the speaker, who +is possessed of much faith but has a distinct tendency to pessimism, and +another, who has a sceptical but also a hopeful turn of mind, respecting +Christianity, its credibility, and how its doctrines fit human nature +and affect the conduct of life. After keen discussion the argument +returns to the lament, common to both disputants: how very hard it is to +be, practically, a Christian. The speaker then relates, on account of +its bearing on the discussion, an experience (or vision, as he leaves us +free to imagine) which once came to him. Three years before, on an +Easter-Eve, he was crossing the common where stood the chapel referred +to by their friend (the poem thus, and thus only, links on to +_Christmas-Eve_.) As he walked along, musingly, he asked himself what +the Faith really was to him; what would be his fate, for instance, if he +fell dead that moment? And he said to himself, jestingly enough, why +should not the judgment-day dawn now, on Easter-morn? + + "And as I said + This nonsense, throwing back my head + With light complacent laugh, I found + Suddenly all the midnight round + One fire. The dome of heaven had stood + As made up of a multitude + Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack + Of ripples infinite and black, + From sky to sky. Sudden there went, + Like horror and astonishment, + A fierce vindictive scribble of red + Quick flame across, as if one said + (The angry scribe of Judgment) 'There-- + Burn it!' And straight I was aware + That the whole ribwork round, minute + Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, + Was tinted, each with its own spot + Of burning at the core, till clot + Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire + Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire + As fanned to measure equable,-- + Just so great conflagrations kill + Night overhead, and rise and sink, + Reflected. Now the fire would shrink + And wither off the blasted face + Of heaven, and I distinct might trace + The sharp black ridgy outlines left + Unburned like network--then, each cleft + The fire had been sucked back into, + Regorged, and out its surging flew + Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, + Till, tolerating to be tamed + No longer, certain rays world-wide + Shot downwardly. On every side, + Caught past escape, the earth was lit; + As if a dragon's nostril split + And all his famished ire o'erflowed; + Then as he winced at his lord's goad, + Back he inhaled: whereat I found + The clouds into vast pillars bound, + Based on the corners of the earth + Propping the skies at top: a dearth + Of fire i' the violet intervals, + Leaving exposed the utmost walls + Of time, about to tumble in + And end the world." + +Judgment, according to the vision, is now over. He who has chosen earth +rather than heaven, is allowed his choice: earth is his for ever. How +the walls of the world shrink and narrow, how the glow fades off from +the beauty of nature, of art, of science; how the judged soul prays for +only a chance of love, only a hope of ultimate heaven; how the ban is +taken off him, and he wakes from the vision on the grey plain as +Easter-morn is breaking: this, with its profound and convincing moral +lessons, is told, without a didactic note, in poetry of sustained +splendour. In sheer height of imagination _Easter-Day_ could scarcely +exceed the greatest parts of _Christmas-Eve_, but it preserves a level +of more equable splendour, it is a work of art of more chastened +workmanship. In its ethical aspect it is also of special importance, +for, while the poet does not necessarily identify himself in all +respects with the seer of the vision, the poem enshrines some of +Browning's deepest convictions on life and religion. + + +15. MEN AND WOMEN. + + [Published in 1855, in 2 vols.; now dispersed in Vols. IV., + V. and VI. of _Poetical Works_, 1889.] + +The series of _Men and Women_, fifty-one poems in number, represents +Browning's genius at its ripe maturity, its highest uniform level. In +this central work of his career, every element of his genius is equally +developed, and the whole brought into a perfection of harmony never +before or since attained. There is no lack, there is no excess. I do not +say that the poet has not touched higher heights since, or perhaps +before; but that he has never since nor before maintained himself so +long on so high a height, never exhibited the rounded perfection, the +imagination, thought, passion, melody, variety, all fused in one, never +produced a single work or group at once so great and so various, admits, +I think, of little doubt. Here are fifty poems, every one of which, in +its way, is a masterpiece; and the range is such as no other English +poet has perhaps ever covered in a single book of miscellaneous poems. + +In _Men and Women_ Browning's special instrument, the monologue, is +brought to perfection. Such monologues as _Andrea del Sarto_ or the +_Epistle of Karshish_ never have been, and probably never will be +surpassed, on their own ground, after their own order. To conceive a +drama, to present every side and phase and feature of it from one point +of view, to condense all its potentialities of action, all its +significance and import, into some few hundred lines, this has been done +by but one poet, and nowhere with such absolute perfection as here. Even +when dealing with a single emotion, Browning usually crystallizes it +into a choice situation; and almost every poem in the series, down to +the smallest lyric, is essentially a dramatic monologue. But perhaps the +most striking instances of the form and method, and, with the little +drama of _In a Balcony_, the principal poems in the collection, are the +five blank verse pieces, _Andrea del Sarto_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, _Cleon_, +_Karshish_, and _Bishop Blougram_. Each is a masterpiece of poetry. Each +is in itself a drama, and contains the essence of a life, condensed into +a single episode, or indicated in a combination of discourse, +conversation, argument, soliloquy, reminiscence. Each, besides being the +presentation of a character, moves in a certain atmosphere of its own, +philosophical, ethical, or artistic. _Andrea del Sarto_ and _Fra Lippo +Lippi_ deal with art. _Cleon_ and _Karshish_, in a sense companion +poems, are concerned, each secondarily, with the arts and physical +sciences, primarily with the attitude of the Western and Eastern worlds +when confronted with the problem of the Gospel of Christ. _Bishop +Blougram_ is modern, ecclesiastical and argumentative. But however +different in form and spirit, however diverse in _milieu_, each is alike +the record of a typical soul at a typical moment. + +_Andrea del Sarto_ is a "translation into song" of the picture known as +"Andrea del Sarto and his Wife," in the Pitti Palace at Florence. The +story of Andrea del Sarto is told by Vasari, in one of the best known of +his _Lives_: how the painter, who at one time seemed as if he might have +competed with Raphael, was ruined, as artist and as man, by his +beautiful, soulless wife, the fatal Lucrezia del Fede; and how, led and +lured by her, he outraged his conscience, lowered his ideal, and, losing +all heart and hope, sank into the cold correctness, the unerring +fluency, the uniform, melancholy repetition of a single type, his +wife's, which distinguish his later works. Browning has taken his facts +from Vasari, and he has taken them quite literally. But what a change, +what a transformation and transfiguration! Instead of a piece of prose +biography and criticism, we have (in Mr. Swinburne's appropriate words) +"the whole man raised up and reclothed with flesh." No more absolutely +creative work has been done in our days; few more beautiful and pathetic +poems written. The mood of sad, wistful, hopeless mournfulness of +resignation which the poem expresses, is a somewhat rare one with +Browning's vivid and vivacious genius. It is an autumn twilight piece. + + "A common greyness silvers everything,-- + All in a twilight, you and I alike + --You, at the point of your first pride in me + (That's gone, you know),--but I, at every point; + My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down + To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. + There's the bell clinking from the chapel top; + That length of convent-wall across the way + Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; + The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, + And autumn grows, autumn in everything. + Eh, the whole seems to fall into a shape + As if I saw alike my work and self + And all that I was born to be and do, + A twilight-piece." + +The very movement of the lines, their tone and touch, contribute to the +effect. A single clear impression is made to result from an infinity of +minute, scarcely appreciable touches: how fine these touches are, how +clear the impression, can only be hinted at in words, can be realised +only by a loving and scrupulous study. + +Whether the picture which suggested the poem is an authentic work of +Andrea, or whether, as experts have now agreed, it is a work by an +unknown artist representing an imaginary man and woman is, of course, of +no possible consequence in connection with the poem. Nor is it of any +more importance that the Andrea of Vasari is in all probability not the +real Andrea. Historic fact has nothing to do with poetry: it is mere +material, the quarry of ideas; and the real truth of Browning's portrait +of Andrea would no more be impugned by the establishment of Vasari's +inaccuracy, than the real truth of Shakespeare's portrait of Macbeth by +the proof of the untrustworthiness of Holinshed. + +A greater contrast, in every respect, than that between _Andrea del +Sarto_ and _Fra Lippo Lippi_ can scarcely be conceived. The story of +Filippo Lippi[29] is taken, like that of Andrea, from Vasari's _Lives_: +it is taken as literally, it is made as authentically living, and, in +its own more difficult way, it is no less genuine a poem. The jolly, +jovial tone of the poem, its hearty humour and high spirits, and the +breathless rush and hurry of the verse, render the scapegrace painter to +the life. Not less in keeping is the situation in which the unsaintly +friar is introduced: caught by the civic guard, past midnight, in an +equivocal neighbourhood, quite able and ready, however, to fraternise +with his captors, and pour forth, rough and ready, his ideas and +adventures. A passage from the poem placed side by side with an extract +from Vasari will show how faithfully the record of Fra Lippo's life is +followed, and it will also show, in some small measure, the essential +newness, the vividness and revelation of the poet's version. + + "By the death of his father," writes Vasari,[30] "he was left + a friendless orphan at the age of two years, his mother also + having died shortly after his birth. The child was for some + time under the care of a certain Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, the + sister of his father, who brought him up with great + difficulty until he had attained his eighth year, when, being + no longer able to support the burden of his maintenance, she + placed him in the above-named convent of the Carmelites." + +Here is Browning's version:-- + + "I was a baby when my mother died + And father died and left me in the street. + I starved there, God knows how, a year or two + On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks, + Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day, + My stomach being empty as your hat, + The wind doubled me up and down I went. + Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand, + (Its fellow was a stinger as I knew) + And so along the wall, over the bridge, + By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there, + While I stood munching my first bread that month: + 'So, boy, you're minded,' quoth the good fat father, + Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refection-time,-- + 'To quit this very miserable world?'" + +But not only has Browning given a wonderfully realistic portrait of the +man; a man to whom life in its fulness was the only joy, a true type of +the Renaissance spirit, metamorphosed by ironic fate into a monk; he +has luminously indicated the true end and aim of art and the false +asceticism of so-called "religious" art, in the characteristic comments +and confessions of an innovator in the traditions of religious painting. + +_Cleon_ is prefaced by the text "As certain also of your own poets have +said" (_Acts_, xvii. 28), and is supposed to be a letter from one of the +poets to whom St. Paul refers, addressed to Protus, an imaginary +"Tyrant," whose wondering admiration of Cleon's many-sided culture has +drawn him to one who is at once poet, painter, sculptor, musician and +philosopher. Compared with such poems as _Andrea del Sarto_, there is +little realisable detail in the course of the calm argument or +statement, but I scarcely see how the temper of the time, among its +choicest spirits (the time of classic decadence, of barren culture, of +fruitless philosophy) could well have been more finely shadowed forth. +The quality of the versification, unique here as in every one of the +five great poems, is perfectly adapted to the subject. The slow sweep of +the verse, its stately melody, its large, clear, classic harmony, enable +us to receive the right impression as admirably as the other qualities, +already pointed out, enable us to feel the resigned sadness of Andrea +and the jovial gusto of Lippo. In _Cleon_ we have a historical picture, +imaginary indeed, but typical. It reveals or records the religious +feeling of the pagan world at the time of the coming of Christ; its +sadness, dissatisfaction and expectancy, and the failure of its wisdom +to fathom the truths of the new Gospel. + +In _An Epistle containing the strange Medical Experience of Karshish, +the Arab Physician_, we have perhaps a yet more subtle delineation of a +character similar by contrast. Cleon is a type of the Western and +sceptical, Karshish of the Eastern and believing, attitude of mind; the +one repellent, the other absorbent, of new things offered for belief. +Karshish, "the picker up of learning's crumbs," writes from Syria to his +master at home, "Abib, all sagacious in our art," concerning a man whose +singular case has fascinated him, one Lazarus of Bethany. There are few +more lifelike and subtly natural narratives in Browning's poetry; few +more absolutely interpenetrated by the finest imaginative sympathy. The +scientific caution and technicality of the Arab physician, his careful +attempt at a statement of the case from a purely medical point of view, +his self-reproachful uneasiness at the strange interest which the man's +story has caused in him, the strange credulity which he cannot keep from +encroaching on his mind: all this is rendered with a matchless delicacy +and accuracy of touch and interpretation. Nor can anything be finer than +the representation of Lazarus after his resurrection, a representation +which has significance beyond its literal sense, and points a moral +often enforced by the poet: that doubt and mystery, in life and in +religion alike, are necessary, and indeed alone make either life or +religion possible. The special point in the tale of Lazarus which has +impressed Karshish with so intense an interest is that + + "This man so cured regards the curer, then, + As--God forgive me! who but God himself, + Creator and sustainer of the world, + That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile! + --'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived, + Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, + Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, + And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat, + And must have so avouched himself, in fact, + In hearing of this very Lazarus + Who saith--but why all this of what he saith? + Why write of trivial matters, things of price + Calling at every moment for remark? + I noticed on the margin of a pool + Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, + Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!" + +How perfectly the attitude of the Arab sage is here given, drawn, +against himself, to a conviction which he feels ashamed to entertain. As +in _Cleon_ the very pith of the letter is contained in the postscript, +so, after the apologies and farewell greetings of Karshish, the thought +which all the time has been burning within him bursts into flame. + + "The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? + So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too-- + So, through the thunder comes a human voice + Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here! + Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! + Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine, + But love I gave thee, with myself to love, + And thou must love me who have died for thee!' + The madman saith He said so: it is strange." + +So far, the monologues are single-minded, and represent the sincere and +frank expression of the thoughts and opinions of their speakers. _Bishop +Blougram's Apology_ introduces a new element, the casuistical. The +Bishop's Apology is, literally, an _apologia_, a speech in defence of +himself, in which the aim is to confound an adversary, not to state the +truth. This form, intellectual rather than emotional, argumentative more +than dramatic, has had, from this time forward, a considerable +attraction for Browning, and it is responsible for some of his hardest +work, such as _Fifine at the Fair_ and _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_. + +_Bishop Blougram's Apology_ represents the after-dinner talk of a great +Roman Catholic dignitary. It is addressed to Mr. Gigadibs, a young and +shallow literary man, who poses as free-thinker and as critic of the +Bishop's position. Mr. Gigadibs' implied opinion is, that a man of +Blougram's intellect and broad views cannot, with honesty, hold and +teach Roman Catholic dogma; that his position is anomalous and unideal. +Blougram retorts with his voluminous and astonishingly clever "apology." +In this apology we trace three distinct elements. First, there is a +substratum of truth, truth, that is, in the abstract; then there is an +application of these true principles to his own case and conduct, an +application which is thoroughly unjustifiable-- + + "He said true things, but called them by wrong names--" + +but which serves for an ingenious, and apparently, as regards Gigadibs, +a triumphant, defence; finally, there is the real personal element, the +man as he is. We are quite at liberty to suppose, even if we were not +bound to suppose, that after all Blougram's defence is merely or partly +ironical, and that he is not the contemptible creature he would be if we +took him quite seriously. It is no secret that Blougram himself is, in +the main, modelled after and meant for Cardinal Wiseman, who, it is +said, was the writer of a good-humoured review of the poem in the +Catholic journal, _The Rambler_ (January, 1856). The supple, nervous +strength and swiftness of the blank verse is, in its way, as fine as the +qualities we have observed in the other monologues: there is a splendid +"go" in it, a vast capacity for business; the verse is literally alive +with meaning, packed with thought, instinct with wit and irony; and not +this only, but starred with passages of exquisite charm, such as that on +"how some actor played Death on the stage," or that more famous one:-- + + "Just when we're safest, there's a sunset-touch, + A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, + A chorus-ending from Euripides,-- + And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears + As old and new at once as nature's self, + To rap and knock and enter in our soul, + Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring + Round the ancient idol, on his base again,-- + The grand Perhaps!" + +At least six of the poems contained in _Men and Women_ deal with +painting and music. But while four of these seem to fall into one group, +the remaining two, _Andrea del Sarto_ and _Fra Lippo Lippi_, properly +belong, though themselves the greatest of the art-poems as art-poems, to +the group of monodramas already noticed. But _Old Pictures in Florence_, +_The Guardian Angel_, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_ and _A Toccata of +Galuppi's_, are chiefly and distinctively notable in their relation to +art, or to some special picture or piece of music. + +_The Guardian Angel_ is a "translation into song" of Guercino's picture +of that name (_L'Angelo Custode_). It is addressed to "Waring," and was +written by Browning at Ancona, after visiting with Mrs. Browning the +church of San Agostino at Fano, which contains the picture. This +touching and sympathetic little poem is Browning's only detailed +description of a picture; but it is of more interest as an expression of +personal feeling. Something in its sentiment has made it one of the most +popular of his poems. _Old Pictures in Florence_ is a humorous and +earnest moralising on the meaning and mission of art and the rights and +wrongs of artists, suggested by some of the old pictures in Florence. It +contains perhaps the most complete and particular statement of +Browning's artistic principles that we have anywhere in his work, as +well as a very noble and energetic outburst of indignant enthusiasm on +behalf of the "early masters," the lesser older men whom the world slurs +over or forgets. The principles which Browning imputes to the early +painters may be applied to poetry as well as to art. Very characteristic +and significant is the insistence on the deeper value of life, of soul, +than of mere expression or technique, or even of mere unbreathing +beauty. _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_ is the humorous soliloquy of an +imaginary organist over a fugue in F minor by an imaginary composer, +named in the title. It is a mingling of music and moralising. The famous +description of a fugue, and the personification of its five voices, is a +brilliantly ingenious _tour de force_; and the rough humour is quite in +keeping with the _dramatis persona_. In complete contrast to _Master +Hugues_ is _A Toccata of Galuppi's_,[31] one of the daintiest, most +musical, most witching and haunting of Browning's poems, certainly one +of his masterpieces as a lyric poet. It is a vision of Venice evoked +from the shadowy Toccata, a vision of that delicious, brilliant, +evanescent, worldly life, when + + "Balls and masks began at midnight, burning ever to midday," + +and the lover and his lady would break off their talk to listen while +Galuppi + + "Sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord." + +But "the eternal note of sadness" soon creeps in. + + "Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: + 'Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned. + + * * * * * + + Dust and ashes!' So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. + Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold + Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old." + +In this poem Browning has called up before us the whole aspect of +Venetian life in the eighteenth century. In three other poems, among the +most remarkable that he has ever written, _A Grammarian's Funeral_, _The +Heretic's Tragedy_ and _Holy-Cross Day_, he has realised and represented +the life and temper of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. _A +Grammarian's Funeral_, "shortly after the Revival of Learning in +Europe," gives the nobler spirit of the earlier pioneers of the +Renaissance, men like Cyriac of Ancona and Filelfo, devoted pedants who +broke ground in the restoration to the modern world of the civilisation +and learning of ancient Greece and Rome. It gives this, the nobler and +earlier spirit, as finely as _The Tomb at St. Praxed's_ gives the later +and grosser. In Browning's hands the figure of the old grammarian +becomes heroic. "He settled _Hoti's_ business," true; but he did +something more than that. It is the spirit in which the work is done, +rather than the special work itself, here only relatively important, +which is glorified. Is it too much to say that this is the noblest of +all requiems ever chanted over the grave of the scholar? + + "Here's the top peak; the multitude below + Live, for they can, there: + This man decided not to Live but Know-- + Bury this man there. + Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, + Lightnings are loosened, + Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, + Peace let the dew send! + Lofty designs must close in like effects: + Loftily lying, + Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects, + Living or dying." + +The union of humour with intense seriousness, of the grotesque with the +stately, is one that only Browning could have compassed, and the effect +is singularly appropriate. As the disciples of the old humanist bear +their dead master up to his grave on the mountain-top, chanting their +dirge and eulogy, the lines of the poem seem actually to move to the +steady climbing rhythm of their feet. + +_The Heretic's Tragedy: a Middle-Age Interlude_, is described by the +author as "a glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay [last +Grand-Master of the Templars], A.D. 1314, as distorted by the refraction +from Flemish brain to brain during the course of a couple of centuries." +Of all Browning's mediaeval poems this is perhaps the greatest, as it is +certainly the most original, the most astonishing. Its special "note" is +indescribable, for there is nothing with which we can compare it. If I +say that it is perhaps the finest example in English poetry of the pure +grotesque, I shall fail to interpret it aright to those who think of the +grotesque as a synonym for the ugly and debased. If I call it fantastic, +I shall do it less than justice in suggesting a certain lightness and +flimsiness which are quite alien to its profound seriousness, a +seriousness which touches on sublimity. Browning's power of sculpturing +single situations is seldom shown in finer relief than in those poems in +which he has seized upon some "occult eccentricity of history" or of +legend, like this of _The Heretic's Tragedy_, or that in _Holy-Cross +Day_, fashioning it into some quaint, curt, tragi-comic form. +_Holy-Cross Day_ expresses the feelings of the Jews, who were forced on +this day (the 14th September) to attend an annual Christian sermon in +Rome. A deliciously naive extract from an imaginary _Diary by the +Bishop's Secretary_, 1600, first sets forth the orthodox view of the +case; then the poem tells us "what the Jews really said." Nothing more +audaciously or more sardonically mirthful was ever written than the +first part of this poem, with its + + "Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak! + Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week;" + +while the sudden transition to the sublime and steadfast Song of Death +of Rabbi ben Ezra is an effect worthy of Heine: more than worthy. Heine +would inevitably have put his tongue in his cheek again at the end. + +With the three great mediaeval poems should be named the slighter sketch +of _Protus_. The first and last lines, describing two imaginary busts, +are a fine instance of Browning's power of translating sense into sound. +Compare the smooth and sweet melody of the opening lines-- + + "Among these latter busts we count by scores + Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, + + * * * * * + + One loves a baby-face, with violets there-- + Violets instead of laurels in the hair,-- + As they were all the little locks could bear"-- + +with the rasping vigour and strength of sound which point the contrast +of the conclusion:-- + + "Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye, + Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can + To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!" + +One poem of absolutely unique order is the romance of "_Childe Roland to +the Dark Tower came_." If it were not for certain lines, certain +metaphors and images, here and there in his earlier works, we should +find in this poem an exception to the rule of Browning's work so +singular and startling as to be almost phenomenal. But in passages of +_Pauline_, of _Paracelsus_, of the lyric written in 1836, and +incorporated, more than twenty years later, with _James Lee's Wife_, we +have distinct evidence of a certain reserve, as it were, of romantic +sensibility, a certain tendency, which we may consider to have been +consciously checked rather than early exhausted, towards the weird and +fanciful. In _Childe Roland_ all this latent sensibility receives full +and final expression. The poem is very generally supposed to be an +allegory, and a number of ingenious interpretations have been suggested, +and the "Dark Tower" has been defined as Love, Life, Death and Truth. +But, as a matter of fact, Browning, in writing it, had no allegorical +intention whatever. It was meant to be, and is, a pure romance. It was +suggested by the line from Shakespeare which heads it, and was "built +up," in Mrs. Orr's words "of picturesque impressions, which have +separately or collectively produced themselves in the author's mind, ... +including a tower which Mr. Browning once saw in the Carrara Mountains, +a painting which caught his eye years later in Paris; and the figure of +a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room."[32] The poem depicts +the last adventure of a knight vowed to the quest of a certain "Dark +Tower." The description of his journey across a strange and dreadful +country is one of the ghastliest and most vivid in all poetry; ghastly +without hope, without alleviation, without a momentary touch of +contrast; vivid and ghastly as the lines following:-- + + "A sudden little river crossed my path + As unexpected as a serpent comes. + No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; + This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath + For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath + Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. + + So petty yet so spiteful! All along, + Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; + Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit + Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: + The river which had done them all the wrong, + Whate'er that was rolled by, deterred no whit. + + Which while I forded,--good saints, how I feared + To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, + Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek + For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! + --It may have been a water-rat I speared + But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek." + +The manner of the poem, wholly unlike that of any other poem, may be +described by varying Flaubert's phrase of "epic realism": it is romantic +realism. The weird, fantastic and profoundly imaginative picture brought +before us with such startling and almost oppressive vividness, is not +painted in a style of vague suggestiveness, but in a hard, distinct, +definite, realistic way, the realism which results from a faithful +record of distorted impressions. The poet's imagination is like a flash +of lightning which strikes through the darkness, flickering above the +earth, and lighting up, point by point, with a momentary and fearful +distinctness, the horrors of the landscape. + +A large and important group of _Men and Women_ consists of love-poems, +or poems dealing, generally in some concrete and dramatic way, sometimes +in a purely lyrical manner, with the emotion of love. _Love among the +Ruins_, a masterpiece of an absolutely original kind, is the idyl of a +lover's meeting, in which the emotion is emphasised and developed by the +contrast of its surroundings. The lovers meet in a turret among the +ruins of an ancient city, and the moment chosen is immediately before +their meeting, when the lover gazes around him, struck into sudden +meditation by the vision of the mighty city fallen and of the living +might of Love. + + "And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve + Smiles to leave + To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece + In such peace, + And the slopes and rills and undistinguished grey + Melt away-- + That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair + Waits me there + In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul + For the goal, + When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb + Till I come. + + For he looked upon the city, every side, + Far and wide, + All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' + Colonnades, + All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then, + All the men! + When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, + Either hand + On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace + Of my face, + Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech + Each on each. + + In one year they sent a million fighters forth + South and North, + And they built their gods a brazen pillar high + As the sky, + Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force-- + Gold, of course. + Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! + Earth's returns + For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! + Shut them in, + With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! + Love is best." + +The quaint chime or tinkle of a metre made out of the cadence of +sheep-bells renders with curious felicity the quietness and fervent +meditation of the subject. _A Lovers' Quarrel_ is in every respect a +contrast. It is a whimsical and delicious lyric, with a flowing and +leaping melody, a light and piquant music deepened into pathos by a +mournful undertone of retrospect and regret, not without a hope for the +future. All Browning is seen in this pathetic gaiety, this eagerness +and unrest and passionate make-believe of a lover's mood. _Evelyn Hope_ +strikes a tenderer note; it is one of Browning's sweetest, simplest and +most pathetic pieces, and embodies, in a concrete form, one of his +deepest convictions. It is the lament of a man, no longer young, by the +death-bed of a young girl whom he has loved, unknown to her. She has +died scarcely knowing him, not even suspecting his love. But what +matter? God creates love to reward love, and there is another life to +come. + + "So hush,--I will give you this leaf to keep + See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! + There, that is our secret: go to sleep! + You will wake, and remember, and understand." + +_A Woman's Last Word_ is an exquisite little lyric which sings itself to +its own music of delicate gravity and gentle pathos; but it too holds, +in its few small lines, a complete situation, that most pathetic one in +which a woman resolves to merge her individuality in the wish and will +of her husband, to bind, for his sake, her intellect in the chains of +her heart. + + "A WOMAN'S LAST WORD. + + I. + + Let's contend no more, Love, + Strive nor weep: + All be as before, Love, + --Only sleep! + + II. + + What so wild as words are? + I and thou + In debate, as birds are, + Hawk on bough! + + III. + + See the creature stalking + While we speak! + Hush and hide the talking, + Cheek on cheek! + + IV. + + What so false as truth is, + False to thee? + Where the serpent's tooth is, + Shun the tree-- + + V. + + Where the apple reddens + Never pry-- + Lest we lose our Edens, + Eve and I. + + VI. + + Be a god and hold me + With a charm! + Be a man and fold me + With thine arm! + + VII. + + Teach me, only teach, Love! + As I ought + I will speak thy speech, Love, + Think thy thought-- + + VIII. + + Meet, if thou require it, + Both demands, + Laying flesh and spirit + In thy hands. + + IX. + + That shall be to-morrow + Not to-night: + I must bury sorrow + Out of sight: + + X. + + --Must a little weep, Love, + (Foolish me!) + And so fall asleep, Love, + Loved by thee." + +_Any Wife to any Husband_ is the grave and mournful lament of a dying +woman, addressed to the husband whose love has never wavered throughout +her life, but whose faithlessness to her memory she foresees. The +situation is novel in poetry, and it is realised with an intense +sympathy and depth of feeling. The tone of dignified sadness in the +woman's words, never passionate or pleading, only confirmed and +hopeless, is admirably rendered in the slow and solemn metre, whose firm +smoothness and regularity translate into sound the sentiment of the +speech. _A Serenade at the Villa_, which expresses a hopeless love from +the man's side, has a special picturesqueness, and something more than +picturesqueness: nature and life are seen in throbbing sympathy. The +little touches of description give one the very sense of the hot +thundrous summer night as it "sultrily suspires" in sympathy with the +disconsolate lover at his fruitless serenading. I can scarcely doubt +that this poem (some of which has been quoted on p. 25 above), was +suggested by one of the songs in Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_, a poem +on the same subject in the same rare metre:-- + + "Who is it that this dark night + Underneath my window plaineth? + It is one who from thy sight + Being, ah! exiled, disdaineth + Every other vulgar light." + +If Browning's love-poems have any model or anticipation in English +poetry, it is certainly in the love-songs of Sidney, in what Browning +himself has called, + + "The silver speech, + Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin." + +No lover in English poetry has been so much a man as Sidney and +Browning. + +_Two in the Campagna_ presents a more intricate situation than most of +the love-poems. It is the lament of a man, addressed to the woman at his +side, whom he loves and by whom he is loved, over the imperfection and +innocent inconstancy of his love. The two can never quite grow to one, +and he, oppressed by the terrible burden of imperfect sympathies, is for +ever seeking, realising, losing, then again seeking the spiritual union +still for ever denied. The vague sense of the Roman Campagna is +distilled into exquisite words, and through all there sounds the sad and +weary undertone of baffled endeavour:-- + + "Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn." + +_The Last Ride Together_ is one of those love-poems which I have spoken +of as specially noble and unique, and it is, I think, the noblest and +most truly unique of them all. Thought, emotion and melody are mingled +in perfect measure: it has the lyrical "cry," and the objectiveness of +the drama. The situation, sufficiently indicated in the title, is +selected with a choice and happy instinct: the very motion of riding is +given in the rhythm. Every line throbs with passion, or with a fervid +meditation which is almost passion, and in the last verse, and, still +more, in the single line-- + + "Who knows but the world may end to-night?" + +the dramatic intensity strikes as with an electric shock. + +_By the Fireside_ though in all its circumstances purely dramatic and +imaginary, rises again and again to the fervour of personal feeling, and +we can hardly be wrong in classing it, in soul though not in +circumstance, with _One Word More_ and the other sacred poems which +enshrine the memory of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But, apart from this +suggestion, the poem is a masterpiece of subtle simplicity and +picturesqueness. Nothing could be more admirable in themselves than the +natural descriptions throughout; but these are never mere isolated +descriptions, nor even a mere stationary background: they are fused with +the emotion which they both help to form and assist in revealing. + +_One Word More_ (_To E. B. B._) is one of those sacred poems in which, +once and again, a great poet has embalmed in immortal words the holiest +and deepest emotion of his existence. Here, and here only in the songs +consecrated by the husband to the wife, the living love that too soon +became a memory is still "a hope, to sing by gladly." _One Word More_ is +Browning's answer to the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_. And, just as +Mrs. Browning never wrote anything more perfect than the _Sonnets_, so +Browning has never written anything more perfect than the answering +lyric. + +Yet another section of this most richly varied volume consists of poems, +narrative and lyrical, dealing in a brief and pregnant way with some +special episode or emotion: love, in some instances, but in a less +exclusive way than in the love-poems proper. _The Statue and the Bust_ +(one of Browning's best narratives) is a romantic and mainly true tale, +written in _terza rima_, but in short lines. The story on which it is +founded is a Florentine tradition. + + "In the piazza of the SS. Annunziata at Florence is an + equestrian statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand the First, + representing him as riding away from the church, with his + head turned in the direction of the Riccardi [now Antinori] + Palace, which occupies one corner of the square. Tradition + asserts that he loved a lady whom her husband's jealousy kept + a prisoner there; and that he avenged his love by placing + himself in effigy where his glance could always dwell upon + her."[33] + +In the poem the lovers agree to fly together, but the flight, postponed +for ever, never comes to pass. Browning characteristically blames them +for their sin of "the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin," for their +vacillating purpose, their failure in attaining "their life's set end," +whatever that end might be. Despite the difficulty of the metre, the +verse is singularly fresh and musical. In this poem, the first in which +Browning has used the _terza rima_, he observes, with only occasional +licence, the proper pause at the end of each stanza of three lines. This +law, though rarely neglected by Dante, has seldom been observed by the +few English poets who have attempted the measure. Neither Byron in the +_Prophecy of Dante_, nor Shelley in _The Triumph of Life_, nor Mrs. +Browning in _Casa Guidi Windows_, has done so. In Browning's later poems +in this metre, the pause, as if of set purpose, is wholly disregarded. + +_How it strikes a Contemporary_ is at once a dramatic monologue and a +piece of poetic criticism. Under the Spanish dress, and beneath the +humorous treatment, it is easy to see a very distinct, suggestive and +individual theory of poetry, and in the poet who "took such cognizance +of men and things, ... + + "Of all thought, said and acted, then went home + And wrote it fully to our Lord the King--" + +we have, making full allowance for the imaginary dramatic circumstances, +a very good likeness of a poet of Browning's order. Another poem, +"_Transcendentalism_," is a slighter piece of humorous criticism, +possibly self-criticism, addressed to one who "speaks" his thoughts +instead of "singing" them. Both have a penetrating quality of beauty in +familiarity. + +_Before_ and _After_, which mean before and after the duel, realise +between them a single and striking situation. _Before_ is spoken by a +friend of the wronged man; _After_ by the wronged man himself. The +latter is not excelled by any poem of Browning's in its terrible +conciseness, the intensity of its utterance of stifled passion. + + "AFTER. + + "Take the cloak from his face, and at first + Let the corpse do its worst! + + "How he lies in his rights of a man! + Death has done all death can. + And, absorbed in the new life he leads, + He recks not, he heeds + Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike + On his senses alike, + And are lost in the solemn and strange + Surprise of the change. + + Ha, what avails death to erase + His offence, my disgrace? + I would we were boys as of old + In the field, by the fold: + His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn, + Were so easily borne! + I stand here now, he lies in his place: + Cover the face!" + +I know of no piece of verse in the language which has more of the +quality and hush of awe in it than this little fragment of eighteen +lines. + +_Instans Tyrannus_[34] (the Threatening Tyrant) recalls by its motive, +however unlike it may be as a poem, the _Soliloquy of the Spanish +Cloister_. The situations are widely different, but the root of each is +identical. In both is developed the mood of passive or active hate, +arising from mere instinctive dislike. But while in the earlier poem the +theme is treated with boisterous sardonic humour, it is here embodied in +the grave figure of a stern, single-minded, relentless hater, a tyrant +in both senses of the term. Another poem, representing an act of will, +though here it is love, not hate, that impels, is _Mesmerism_. The +intense absorption, the breathless eagerness of the mesmerist, are +rendered in a really marvellous way by the breathless and yet measured +race of the verses: fifteen stanzas succeed one another without a single +full-stop, or a real pause in sense or sound. The beautiful and +significant little poem called _The Patriot: an old Story_, is a +narrative and parable at once, and only too credible and convincing as +each. _Respectability_ holds in its three stanzas all that is vital and +enviable in the real "Bohemia," and is the first of several poems of +escape, which culminate in _Fifine at the Fair_. Both here and in +another short suggestive poem, _A Light Woman_ (which might be called +the fourth act of a tragedy), the situation is outlined like a +silhouette. Equally graphic, in the more ordinary sense of the term, is +the picturesque and whimsical view of town and country life taken by a +frivolous Italian person of quality in the poem named _Up at a +Villa--Down in the City_, "a masterpiece of irony and of description," +as an Italian critic has defined it. + +Of the wealth of lyrics and short poems no adequate count can here be +made. Yet, I cannot pass without a word, if only in a word may I +indicate, the admirable craftsmanship and playful dexterity of the lines +on _A Pretty Woman_; the pathetic feeling and the exquisite and novel +music of _Love in a Life and Life in a Love_; the tense emotion, the +suppressed and hopeful passion, of _In Three Days_, and the sad and +haunting song of _In a Year_, with its winding and liquid melody, its +mournful and wondering lament over love forgotten; the rich and +marvellously modulated music, the glowing colour, the vivid and +passionate fancy, of _Women and Roses_; the fresh felicity of "_De +Gustibus_," with its enthusiasm for Italy scarcely less fervid than the +English enthusiasm of the _Home-Thoughts_; the quaint humour and +pregnant simplicity of the admirable little parable of _The Twins_; the +sympathetic charm and light touch of _Misconceptions_, and the pretty +figurative fancy of _My Star_; the strong, sad, suggestive little poem +named _One Way of Love_, with its delicately-wrought companion _Another +Way of Love_, the former a love-lyric to be classed with _The Lost +Mistress_ and _The Last Ride Together_; and, finally, the epilogue to +the first volume and a late poem in the second: _Memorabilia_, a tribute +to Shelley, full of grateful remembrance and admiring love, significant +among the few personal utterances of the poet, and the not less lovely +poem and only less fervent tribute to Keats, the sumptuous, gorgeous, +and sardonic lines on _Popularity_. A careful study or even, one would +think, a careless perusal, of but a few of the poems named above, should +be enough to show, once and for all, the infinite richness and variety +of Browning's melody, and his complete mastery over the most simple and +the most intricate lyric measures. As an example of the finest artistic +simplicity, rich with restrained pathos and quiet with keen tension of +feeling, we may choose the following. + + "ONE WAY OF LOVE + + I. + + All June I bound the rose in sheaves. + Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves + And strew them where Pauline may pass. + She will not turn aside? Alas! + Let them lie. Suppose they die? + The chance was they might take her eye. + + II. + + How many a month I strove to suit + These stubborn fingers to the lute! + To-day I venture all I know. + She will not hear my music? So! + Break the string; fold music's wing: + Suppose Pauline had bade me sing? + + III. + + My whole life long I learned to love. + This hour my utmost art I prove + And speak my passion--heaven or hell? + She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well! + Love who may--I still can say, + Those who win heaven, blest are they!" + + +IN A BALCONY.[35] + + [Written at Bagni di Lucca, 1853; published in _Men and + Women_, above; reprinted in _Poetical Works_, 1863, under a + separate heading; _id_., 1889 (Vol. VII. pp. 1-41). Performed + at the Browning Society's Third Annual Entertainment, + Prince's Hall, Piccadilly, Nov. 28, 1884, and by the English + Drama Society at the Victoria Hall, June 8, 1905.] + +The dramatic scene of _In a Balcony_ is the last of the works written in +dialogue. We have seen, in tracing the course of the plays from +_Strafford_ to _A Soul's Tragedy_, how the playwright gave place to the +poet; how the stage construction, the brisk and interchanged dialogue of +the earlier dramas, gradually and inevitably developed into the more +subtle, the more lengthy dialogue, which itself approached more and more +nearly to monologue, of the later ones. _In a Balcony_, written eight +years later than _A Soul's Tragedy_, has more affinity with it, in form +at least, than with any other of the plays. But while the situation +there was purely intellectual and moral, it is here passionate and +highly-wrought, to a degree never before reached, except in the crowning +scene of _Pippa Passes_. We must go to the greatest among the +Elizabethans to exceed that; we must turn to _Le Roi s'amuse_ to equal +this. + +The situation is, in one sense, extremely subtle; in another, +remarkably simple. The action takes place within a few hours, on a +balcony at night. Norbert and Constance are two lovers. Norbert is in +the service of a certain Queen, to whom he has, by his diplomatic skill +and labour, rendered great services. His aim, all the while, though +unknown, as he thinks, to her, has been the hope of winning Constance, +the Queen's cousin and dependant. He is now about to claim her as his +recompense; but Constance, fearing for the result, persuades him, +reluctant though he is, to ask in a roundabout way, so as to flatter or +touch the Queen. He over-acts his part. The Queen, a heart-starved and +now ageing woman, believes that he loves her, and responds to him with +the passion of a long-thwarted nature. She announces the wonderful news, +with more than the ecstasy of a girl, to Constance. Constance resolves +to resign her lover, for his good and the Queen's, and, when he appears, +she endeavours to make him understand and enter into her plot. But he +cannot and will not see it. In the presence of the Queen he declares his +love for Constance, and for her alone. The Queen goes out, in white +silence. The lovers embrace in new knowledge and fervour of love. +Measured steps are heard within, and we know that the guard is +approaching. + +Each of the three characters is admirably delineated. Norbert is a fine, +strong, solid, noble character, without subtlety or mixture of motives. +He loves Constance: he knows that his love is returned: he is resolved +to win her hand. From first to last he is himself, honest, +straightforward, single-minded, passionate; presenting the strongest +contrast to Constance's feminine over-subtlety. Constance is more, very +much more, of a problem: "a character," as Mr. Wedmore has admirably +said, "peculiarly wily for goodness, curiously rich in resource for +unalloyed and inexperienced virtue." Does her proposal to relinquish +Norbert in favour of the Queen show her to have been lacking in love for +him? It has been said, on the one hand, that her act was "noble and +magnanimous," on the other hand, that the act proved her nature to be +"radically insincere and inconstant." Probably the truth lies between +these two extremes. Her love, we cannot doubt, was true and intense up +to the measure of her capacity; but her nature was, instinctively, less +outspoken and truthful than Norbert's, more subtle, more reasoning. At +the critical moment she is seized by a whirl of emotions, and, with very +feminine but singularly unloverlike instinct, she resolves, as she would +phrase it, to sacrifice _herself_, not seeing that she is insulting her +lover by the very notion of his accepting such a sacrifice. Her +character has not the pure and steadfast nobility of Norbert's, but it +has the capacity of devotion, and it is genuinely human. The Queen, +unlike Constance, but like Norbert, is simple and single in nature. She +is a tragic and intense figure, at once pathetic and terrible. I am not +aware that the peculiarly pregnant motive: the hidden longing for love +in a starved and stunted nature, clogged with restrictions of state and +ceremony, harassed and hampered by circumstances and by the weight of +advancing years; the passionate longing suddenly met, as it seems, with +reward, and breaking out into a great flame of love and ardour, only to +be rudely and finally quenched: I am not aware that this motive has +ever elsewhere been worked out in dramatic poetry. As here developed, it +is among the great situations in literature. + +The verse in which this little tragedy is written has, perhaps, more +flexibility than that of any of the formal dramas. It has a strong and +fine harmony, a weight and measure, and above all that pungent +naturalness which belongs to the period of _Andrea del Sarto_ and the +other great monologues. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 29: The picture which Lippo promises to paint (ll. 347-389) is +an exact description of his _Coronation of the Virgin_, in the Accademia +delle Belle Arti at Florence.] + +[Footnote 30: Mrs Foster's translation (Bohn).] + +[Footnote 31: Baldassarre Galuppi, surnamed Buranello (1706-1785), was a +Venetian composer of some distinction. "He was an immensely prolific +composer," says Vernon Lee, "and abounded in melody, tender, pathetic, +brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally +rose to the highest beauty."--_Studies of the Eighteenth Century in +Italy_, p. 101.] + +[Footnote 32: _Handbook_, p. 266. The poem was written at Paris, January +3, 1852.] + +[Footnote 33: Mrs Orr, _Handbook_, p. 201.] + +[Footnote 34: The poem was suggested by the opening of the third ode of +the third Book of Horace: "Justum et tenacem propositi virum."] + +[Footnote 35: It will be more convenient to treat _In a Balcony_ in a +separate section than under the general heading of _Men and Women_, for +it is, to all intents and purposes, an independent work of another +order.] + + +16. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. + + [Published in 1864 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. VII., pp. + 43-255).] + +_Dramatis Personae_, like _Men and Women_ (which it followed after an +interval of nine years) is a collection of dramatic monologues, in each +of which it is attempted to delineate a single character or a single +mood by setting the "imaginary person" in some revealing situation. Of +the two possible methods, speech and soliloquy, Browning for the most +part prefers the former. In _Dramatis Personae_, however, he recurs, +rather more frequently than usual, to the latter; and the situations +imaged are usually suggestive rather than explicit, more incomplete and +indirect than those in the _Men and Women_. As an ingenious critic said, +shortly after the volume was published, "Mr Browning lets us overhear a +part of the drama, generally a soliloquy, and we must infer the rest. +Had he to give the story of _Hamlet_, he would probably embody it in +three stanzas, the first beginning, 'O that this too too solid flesh +would melt!' the second 'To be or not to be, that is the question;' and +the third, 'Look here upon this picture, and on that!' From these +disjointed utterances the reader would have to construct the story." +Here our critic's clever ingenuity carries him a little too far; but +there is some truth in his definition or description of the special +manner which characterises such poems as _Too Late_, or _The Worst of +It_. But not merely the manner of presentment, the substance, and also +the style and versification, have undergone a change during the +long-silent years which lie between _Men and Women_ and _Dramatis +Personae_. The first note of change, of the change which makes us speak +of earlier and later work, is here sounded. From 1833 up to 1855 forms a +single period of steady development, of gradual and unswerving ascent. +_Dramatis Personae_ stands on the border line between this period and +another, the "later period," which more decisively begins with _The Ring +and the Book_. Still, the first note of divergence is certainly sounded +here. I might point to the profound intellectual depth of certain pieces +as its characteristic, or, equally, to the traces here and there of an +apparent carelessness of workmanship; or, yet again, to the new and very +marked partiality for scenes and situations of English and modern rather +than of mediaeval and foreign life. + +The larger part of the volume consists of dramatic monologues. Three +only are in blank verse; the greater number in varied lyric measures. +The first of these, and the longest, _James Lee_, as it was first +called, _James Lee's Wife_[36] as it is now more appropriately named, is +a _Lieder Kreis_, or cycle of songs, nine in number, which reveal, in +"tragic hints," not by means of a connected narrative, the history of an +unhappy marriage. There is nothing in it of heroic action or suffering; +it is one of those old stories always new which are always tragic to one +at least of the actors in them, and which may be tragic or trivial in +record, according as the artist is able to mould his material. Each of +the sections shows us a mood, signalized by some slight link of +circumstance which may the better enable us to grasp it. The development +of disillusion, the melancholy progress of change, is finely indicated +in the successive stages of this lyric sequence, from the first clear +strain of believing love (shaken already by a faint tremor of fear), +through gradual alienation and inevitable severance, to the final +resolved parting. This poem is worthy of notice as the only one in which +Browning has employed the sequence form; almost the only instance, +indeed, in which he has structurally varied his metre in the course of a +poem. + +_James Lee's Wife_ is written in the form of soliloquy, or reflection. +In two other poems, closely allied to it in sentiment, _The Worst of it_ +and _Too Late_, intense feeling expresses itself, though in solitude, as +if the object of emotion were present; each is, in great part, a mental +appeal to some one loved and lost. In _James Lee's Wife_ a woman was the +speaker, and the burden of her lament was mere estrangement. _The Worst +of it_ and _Too Late_ are both spoken by men. The former is the +utterance of a man whose wife has been false to him; the latter of a man +whose loved one is dead. But in each case the situation is further +complicated. The woman over whose loss of virtue her forsaken husband +mourns with passionate anguish and unavailing bitterness of regret, has +been to him, whom she now leaves for another, an image of purity: her +love and influence have lifted him from the mire, and "the Worst of it," +the last pang which he cannot nerve himself to endure, is the knowledge +that she had saved him, and, partly at least through him, ruined +herself. The poem is one of the most passionate and direct of Browning's +dramatic lyrics: it is thrillingly intense and alive; and the swift +force and tremulous eagerness of its very original rhythm and metre +translate its sense into sound with perfect fitness. Similar in cadence, +though different in arrangement, is the measure of _Too Late_, with its +singularly constructed stanza of two quatrains, followed respectively by +two couplets, which together made another quatrain. It is worth noticing +how admirably and uniformly Browning contrives to connect, in sound, the +two halves of the broken quatrains, placing them so as to complete each +other, and relieve our ear of the sense of distance. The poem is spoken +by a lover who was neither rejected nor accepted: like the lover of +Evelyn Hope, he never told his love. His Edith married another, a +heartless and soulless lay-figure of a poet (or so at least his rival +regards him), and now she is dead. His vague but vivid hopes of some +future chance to love her and be loved; the dull rebellion of rashly +reasoning sorrow; the remembrance, the repentance, the regret; are all +poured out with pathetic naturalness. + +These three poems are soliloquies; _Dis aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de +nos Jours_, a poem closely akin in sentiment and style, recurs to the +more frequent and perhaps preferable manner of speech to an imagined +listener. It is written in that favourite stanza of five lines, on which +Browning has played so many variations: here, perhaps, in the internal +rhyme so oddly placed, the newest and most ingenious of all. The +sentiment and situation are the exact complement or contrast of those +expressed in _By the Fireside_. There, fate and nature have brought to a +crisis the latent love of two persons: the opportunity is seized, and +the crown of life obtained. Here, in circumstances singularly similar, +the vital moment is let slip, the tide is _not_ taken at the turn. And +ten years afterwards, when the famous poet and the girl whom he all but +let himself love, meet in a Paris drawing-room, and one of them tells +the old tale over for the instruction of both, she can point out, with +bitter earnestness and irony (and a perfect little touch of feminine +nature) his fatal mistake. + +_Youth and Art_ is a slighter and more humorous sketch, with a somewhat +similar moral. It has wise humour, sharp characterisation, and +ballad-like simplicity. Still more perfect a poem, still more subtle, +still more Heinesque, if it were not better than Heine, is the little +piece called _Confessions_. The pathetic, humorous, rambling snatch of +final memory in the dying man, addressed, by a delightful irony, to the +attendant clergyman, has a sort of grim ecstasy, and the end is one of +the most triumphant things in this kind of poetry. + + "CONFESSIONS. + + I. + + What is he buzzing in my ears? + 'Now that I come to die. + Do I view the world as a vale of tears?' + Ah, reverend sir, not I! + + II. + + What I viewed there once, what I view again + Where the physic bottles stand + On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane, + With a wall to my bedside hand. + + III. + + That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, + From a house you could descry + O'er the garden wall; is the curtain blue + Or green to a healthy eye? + + IV. + + To mine, it serves for the old June weather + Blue above lane and wall; + And that farthest bottle labelled 'Ether' + Is the house o'er-topping all. + + V. + + At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper, + There watched for me, one June, + A girl: I know, sir, it's improper, + My poor mind's out of tune. + + VI. + + Only, there was a way ... you crept + Close by the side, to dodge + Eyes in the house, two eyes except: + They styled their house 'The Lodge.' + + VII. + + What right had a lounger up their lane? + But, by creeping very close, + With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain + And stretch themselves to Oes, + + VIII. + + Yet never catch her and me together, + As she left the attic, there, + By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,' + And stole from stair to stair, + + IX. + + And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, + We loved, sir,--used to meet: + How sad and bad and mad it was-- + But then, how it was sweet!" + +_A Likeness_ forms a third, and a good third, to these two fine and +subtle studies of modern English life. It is one of those poems which, +because they seem simple and superficial, and can be galloped off the +tongue in a racing jingle, we are apt to underrate or overlook. Yet it +would be difficult to find a more vivid bit of _genre_ painting than the +three-panelled picture in this single frame. + +The three blank verse poems which complete the series of purely dramatic +pieces, _A Death in the Desert, Caliban upon Setebos_ and _Mr. Sludge, +"The Medium"_ are more elaborate than any yet named. They follow, to a +considerable extent, the form of the blank verse monologues which are +the glory of _Men and Women_. Alike in their qualities and defects they +represent a further step in development. The next step will lead to the +elaborate and extended monologues which comprise the greater part of +Browning's later works. + +A _Death in the Desert_ is an argument in a dramatic frame-work. The +situation imaged is that of the mysterious death of St. John in extreme +old age. The background to the last utterance of the apostle is painted +with marvellous brilliance and tenderness: every circumstance is +conceived and represented in that pictorial style, in which a word is +equal to a touch of the brush of a great painter. But, delicately as the +circumstances and surroundings are indicated, it is as an argument that +the poem is mainly left to exist. The bearing of this argument on +contemporary theories may to some appear a merit, to others a blemish. +To make the dying John refute Strauss or Renan, handling their +propositions with admirable dialectical skill, is certainly, on the face +of it, somewhat hazardous. But I can see no real incongruity in imputing +to the seer of Patmos a prophetic insight into the future, no real +inconsequence in imagining the opponent of Cerinthus spending his last +breath in the defence of Christian truth against a foreseen scepticism. +In style, the poem a little recalls _Cleon_; with less of harmonious +grace and clear classic outline, it possesses a certain stilled +sweetness, a meditative tenderness, all its own, and certainly +appropriate to the utterance of the "beloved disciple." + +_Caliban upon Setebos_; or, _Natural Theology In the Island_,[37] is +more of a creation, and a much greater poem, than _A Death in the +Desert_. It is sometimes forgotten that the grotesque has its own region +in art. The region of the grotesque has been well defined, in connection +with this poem, in a paper read by Mr. Cotter Morison before the +Browning Society. "Its proper province," he writes, "would seem to be +the exhibition of fanciful power by the artist; not beauty or truth in +the literal sense at all, but inventive affluence of unreal yet absurdly +comic forms, with just a flavour of the terrible added, to give a grim +dignity, and save from the triviality of caricature."[38] With the +exception of _The Heretic's Tragedy_, _Caliban upon Setebos_ is probably +the finest piece of grotesque art in the language. Browning's Caliban, +unlike Shakespeare's, has no active part to play: if he has ever seen +Stephano and Trinculo, he has forgotten it. He simply sprawls on the +ground "now that the heat of day is best," and expounds for himself, for +his own edification, his system of Natural Theology. I think Huxley has +said that the poem is a truly scientific representation of the +development of religious ideas in primitive man. It needed the subtlest +of poets to apprehend and interpret the undeveloped ideas and sensations +of a rudimentary and transitionally human creature like Caliban, to turn +his dumb stirrings of quaint fancies into words, and to do all this +without a discord. The finest poetical effect is in the close: it is +indeed one of the finest effects, climaxes, _surprises_, in literature. +Caliban has been venturing to talk rather disrespectfully of his God; +believing himself overlooked, he has allowed himself to speak out his +mind on religious questions. He chuckles to himself in safe +self-complacency. All at once-- + + "What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once! + Crickets stop hissing; not a bird--or, yes, + There scuds His raven that hath told Him all! + It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind + Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move, + And fast invading fires begin! White blaze-- + A tree's head snaps--and there, there, there, there, there, + His thunder follows! Fool to jibe at Him! + Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos! + 'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip, + Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month + One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!" + +_Mr. Sludge, "The Medium"_ is equally remote from both the other poems +in blank verse. It is a humorous and realistic tale of modern +spiritualism, suggested, it is said, by the life and adventures of the +American medium, Home. Like _Bishop Blougram_, it is at once an exposure +and an apologia. As a piece of analytic portraiture it would be +difficult to surpass; and it is certainly a fault on the right side if +the poet has endowed his precious blackguard with a dialectical head +hardly to be expected on such shoulders; if, in short, he has made him +nearly as clever as himself. When the critics complain that the +characters of a novelist are too witty, the characters of a poet too +profound, one cannot but feel thankful that it is once in a while +possible for such strictures to be made. The style of _Mr. Sludge_ is +the very acme of colloquialism. It is not "what is commonly understood +by poetry," certainly: but is it not poetry, all the same? If such a +character as Sludge should be introduced into poetry at all, it is +certain that no more characteristic expression could have been found for +him. But should he be dealt with? We limit our poetry nowadays, to the +length of our own tether; if we are unable to bring beauty out of every +living thing, merely because it is alive, and because nature is +beautiful in every movement, is it our own fault or nature's? +Shakespeare and his age trusted nature, and were justified; in our own +age only Browning has wholly trusted nature. + +Scarcely second in importance to the dramatic group, comes the group of +lyrical poems, some of which are indeed, formally dramatic, that is, +the "utterance of so many imaginary persons," but still in general tone +and effect lyrical and even personal. _Abt Vogler_ for instance, and +_Rabbi ben Ezra_, might no doubt be considered instances of "vicarious +thinking" on behalf of the modern German composer and the mediaeval +Jewish philosopher. But in neither case is there any distinct dramatic +intention. The one is a deep personal utterance on music, the other a +philosophy of life. But before I touch on these, which, with _Prospice_, +are the most important and impressive of the remaining poems, I should +name the two or three lesser pieces, the exquisite and pregnant little +elegy of love and mourning, _May and Death; A Face_, with its perfect +clearness and fineness of suggestive portraiture, as lovely as the +vignettes of Palma in _Sordello_, or as a real picture of the "Tuscan's +early art"; the two octaves (not in the first edition) on Woolner's +group of Constance and Arthur (_Deaf and Dumb_) and Sir Frederick +Leighton's picture of _Eurydice and Orpheus_; and the two semi-narrative +poems, _Gold Hair: a Story of Pornic_, and _Apparent Failure_, the +former a vivid rendering of the strange story told in Brittany of a +beautiful girl-miser, the latter a record and its stinging and consoling +moral ("Poor men, God made, and all for that!") of a visit that Browning +paid in 1850 to the Morgue. + +_Abt Vogler_[39] ("after he has been extemporizing upon the musical +instrument of his invention") is an utterance on music which perhaps +goes further than any attempt which has ever been made in verse to set +forth the secret of the most sacred and illusive of the arts. Only the +wonderful lines in the _Merchant of Venice_ come anywhere near it. The +wonder and beauty of it grow on one, as the wonder and beauty of a sky, +of a sea, of a landscape, beautiful indeed and wonderful from the first, +become momentarily more evident, intense and absorbing. Life, religion +and music, the _Ganzen, Guten, Schoenen_ of existence, are combined in +threefold unity, apprehended and interpreted in their essential spirit. + + "Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? + Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! + What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same! + Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands? + There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; + The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; + What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; + On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round. + + All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; + Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power + Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist + When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. + The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, + The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, + Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; + Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-by. + + And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence + For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? + Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? + Why rushed the discord in, but that harmony should be prized? + Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, + Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: + But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; + The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know." + +In _Rabbi ben Ezra_ Browning has crystallized his religious philosophy +into a shape of abiding beauty. It has been called, not rashly, the +noblest of modern religious poems. Alike in substance and in form it +belongs to the highest order of meditative poetry; and it has, in +Browning's work, an almost unique quality of grave beauty, of severe +restraint, of earnest and measured enthusiasm. What the _Psalm of Life_ +is to the people who do not think, _Rabbi ben Ezra_ might and should be +to those who do: a light through the darkness, a lantern of guidance and +a beacon of hope, to the wanderers lost and weary in the _selva +selvaggia_. It is one of those poems that mould character. I can give +only one or two of its most characteristic verses. + + "Not on the vulgar mass + Called 'work' must sentence pass, + Things done, that took the eye and had the price; + O'er which, from level stand, + The low world laid its hand, + Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: + + But all, the world's coarse thumb + And finger failed to plumb, + So passed in making up the main account; + All instincts immature, + All purposes unsure, + That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: + + Thoughts hardly to be packed + Into a narrow act, + Fancies that broke through language and escaped; + All I could never be, + All, men ignored in me. + This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. + + * * * * * + + So, take and use Thy work: + Amend what flaws may lurk, + What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! + My times be in Thy hand! + Perfect the cup as planned! + Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!" + +The emotion and the measure of _Rabbi ben Ezra_ have the chastened, +sweet gravity of wise old age. _Prospice_ has all the impetuous blood +and fierce lyric fire of militant manhood. It is a cry of passionate +exultation and exaltation in the very face of death: a war-cry of +triumph over the last of foes. I would like to connect it with the +quotation from Dante which Browning, in a published letter, tells us +that he wrote in his wife's Testament after her death: "Thus I believe, +thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall +pass to another better, there, where that lady lives, of whom my soul +was enamoured." If _Rabbi ben Ezra_ has been excelled as a Song of Life, +then _Prospice_ may have been excelled as a Hymn of Death. + + "PROSPICE. + + Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, + The mist in my face, + When the snows begin, and the blasts denote + I am nearing the place, + The power of the night, the press of the storm, + The post of the foe; + Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, + Yet the strong man must go; + For the journey is done and the summit attained, + And the barriers fall, + Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, + The reward of it all. + I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more, + The best and the last! + I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, + And bade me creep past. + No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers + The heroes of old, + Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears + Of pain, darkness and cold. + For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, + The black minute's at end, + And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, + Shall dwindle, shall blend, + 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!" + +Last of all comes the final word, the summary or conclusion of the whole +matter, in the threefold speech of the _Epilogue_, a comprehensive and +suggestive vision of the religious life of humanity. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 36: The first six stanzas of the sixth section of this poem, +the splendid song of the wind, were published in a magazine, as _Lines_, +in 1836. Parts II. & III., of Section VIII. (except the last two lines) +were added to the poem in 1868.] + +[Footnote 37: The poem was originally preceded by the text, "Thou +thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (_Ps._ 1. 21).] + +[Footnote 38: _Browning Society's Papers_, Part V., p. 493.] + +[Footnote 39: The Abt or Abbe George Joseph Vogler (born at Wuerzburg, +Bavaria, in 1749, died at Darmstadt, 1824) was a composer, professor, +kapelmeister and writer on music. Among his pupils were Weber and +Meyerbeer. The "musical instrument of his invention" was called an +orchestrion. "It was," says Sir G. Grove, "a very compact organ, in +which four keyboards of five octaves each, and a pedal board of +thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a cube of nine +feet."--(See Miss Marx's "Account of Abbe Vogler," in the _Browning +Society's Papers_, Part III., p. 339).] + + +17. THE RING AND THE BOOK. + + [Published, in 4 vols., in 1868-9: Vol. I., November, 1868; + Vol. II., December, 1868; Vol. III., January, 1869; Vol. IV., + February, 1869. In 12 Books: 1., The Ring and the Book; II., + Half-Rome; III., The Other Half-Rome; IV., Tertium Quid; V., + Count Guido Franceschini; VI., Giuseppe Caponsacchi; VII., + Pompilia; VIII., Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum + Procurator; IX., Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, + Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus; X., The Pope; XI., + Guido; XII., The Book and the Ring. (_Poetical Works_, 1889; + Vols. VIII.-X.)] + +_The Ring and the Book_ is at once the largest and the greatest of +Browning's works, the culmination of his dramatic method, and the +turning-point, more decisively than _Dramatis Personae_, of his style. It +consists of twelve books, the first and last being of the nature of +Preface and Appendix. It embodies a single story, told ten times, each +time from an individual standpoint, by nine different persons (one of +them speaking twice), besides a summary of the story by the poet in the +first book, and some additional particulars in the last. The method thus +adopted is at once absolutely original and supremely difficult. To tell +the same story, without mere repetition, no less than ten times over, to +make each telling at once the same and new, a record of the same facts +but of independent impressions, to convey by means of each monologue a +sense of the speaker not less vivid and life-like than by the ordinary +dramatic method, with a yet more profound measure of analytic and +psychological truth, and finally to group all these figures with +unerring effect of prominence and subordination, to fuse and mould all +these parts into one living whole is, as a _tour de force_, unique, and +it is not only a _tour de force_. _The Ring and the Book_, besides being +the longest poetical work of the century, must be ranked among the +greatest poems in our literature: it has a spiritual insight, human +science, dramatic and intellectual and moral force, a strength and grip, +a subtlety, a range and variety of genius and of knowledge, hardly to be +paralleled outside Shakespeare. + +It has sometimes been said that the style of Browning is essentially +undramatic, that Pompilia, Guido, and the lawyers all talk in the same +way, that is, like Browning. As a matter of fact nothing is more +remarkable than the variety of style, the cunning adjustment of language +and of rhythm to the requirements of every speaker. From the general +construction of the rhythm to the mere similies and figures of speech +employed in passing, each monologue is absolutely individual, and, +though each monologue contains a highly finished portrait of the +character whose name it bears, these portraits, so far from being +disconnected or independent, are linked together in as close an +interdependence as the personages of a regularly constructed drama. The +effect of the reiterated story, told in some new fashion by each new +teller of it, has been compared with that of a great fugue, blending, +with the threads of its crossing and recrossing voices, a single web of +harmony. The "theme" is Pompilia; around her the whole action circles. +As, in _Pippa Passes_, the mere passing of an innocent child, her +unconscious influence on those on whom her song breaks in at a moment +of crisis, draws together the threads of many stories, so Pompilia, with +hardly more consciousness of herself, makes and unmakes the lives and +characters of those about her. The same sweet rectitude and purity of +nature serve to call out the latent malignity of Guido and the +slumbering chivalry of Caponsacchi. Without her, the one might have +remained a "_petit maitre_ priestling;" the other merely a soured, +cross-grained, impecunious country squire: Rome would have had no +tragedy to talk about, nor we this book to read. It is in Pompilia that +all the threads of action meet: she is the heroine, as neither Guido nor +Caponsacchi can be called the hero. + +The story of _The Ring and the Book_, like those of so many of the +greatest works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, comes to us from +Italy. Unlike Shakespeare's, however, but like one at least of Webster's +two masterpieces, it is no legend, but the true story of a Roman +murder-case, found (in all its main facts and outlines) in a square old +yellow book, small-quarto size, part print, part manuscript, which +Browning picked up for eightpence on a second-hand stall in the Piazza +San Lorenzo at Florence, one day in June, 1865. The book was entitled +(in Latin which Browning thus translates):-- + + "A Roman murder-case: + Position of the entire criminal cause + Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman, + With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay, + Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death + By heading or hanging as befitted ranks, + At Rome on February Twenty Two, + Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight: + Wherein it is disputed if, and when, + Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape + The customary forfeit." + +The book proved to be one of those contemporary records of famous trials +which were not uncommon in Italy, and which are said to be still +preserved in many Italian libraries. It contained the printed pleadings +for and against the accused, the judicial sentence, and certain +manuscript letters describing the efforts made on Guido's behalf and his +final execution. This book (with a contemporary pamphlet which Browning +afterwards met with in London) supplied the outlines of the poem to +which it helped to give a name. + +The story itself is a tragic one, rich in material for artistic +handling, though not for the handling of every artist. But its +importance is relatively inconsiderable. "I fused my live soul and that +inert stuff," says the poet, and + + "Thence bit by bit I dug + The ingot truth, that memorable day, + Assayed and knew my piecemeal gain was gold,-- + Yes; but from something else surpassing that, + Something of mine which, mixed up with the mass, + Makes it bear hammer and be firm to file. + Fancy with fact is just one fact the more; + To-wit, that fancy has informed, transpierced, + Thridded and so thrown fast the facts else free, + As right through ring and ring runs the djereed + And binds the loose, one bar without a break." + +The story, in brief, is this. Pompilia, the supposed daughter of Pietro +and Violante Comparini, an aged burgher couple of Rome, has been +married, at the age of thirteen, to Count Guido Franceschini, an +impoverished middle-aged nobleman of Arezzo. The arrangement, in which +Pompilia is, of course, quite passive, has been made with the +expectation, on the part of Guido, of a large dowry; on the part of the +Comparini of an aristocratic alliance, and a princely board at Guido's +palace. No sooner has the marriage taken place than both parties find +that they have been tricked. Guido, disappointed of his money, and +unable to reach the pair who have deceived him, vents his spite on the +innocent victim, Pompilia. At length Pompilia, knowing that she is about +to become a mother, escapes from her husband, aided by a good young +priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, a canon of Arezzo; and a few months +afterwards, at the house of her supposed parents, she gives birth to a +son. A fortnight after the birth of his heir, Guido, who has been +waiting till his hold on the dowry is thus secured, takes with him four +cut-throats, steals by night to Rome, and kills his wife and the aged +Comparini, leaving the child alive. He is captured the same night, and +brought to judgment at Rome. When the poem opens, the case is being +tried before the civil courts. No attempt is made to dispute the fact of +Guido's actual committal of the deed; he has been caught red-handed, and +Pompilia, preserved almost by miracle, has survived her wounds long +enough to tell the whole story. The sole question is, whether the act +had any justification; it being pretended by Guido that his wife had +been guilty of adultery with the priest Caponsacchi, and that his deed +was a simple act of justice. He was found guilty by the legal tribunal, +and condemned to death; Pompilia's innocence being confirmed beyond a +doubt. Guido then appealed to the Pope, who confirmed the judicial +sentence. The whole of the poem takes place between the arrest and +trial of Guido, and the final sentence of the Pope; at the time, that +is, when the hopes and fears of the actors, and the curiosity of the +spectators, would be at their highest pitch. + +The first book, entitled _The Ring and the Book_, gives the facts of the +story, some hint of the author's interpretation of them, and the +outlines of his plan. We are not permitted any of the interest of +suspense. Browning shows us clearly from the first the whole bearing and +consequence of events, as well as the right and wrong of them. He has +written few finer passages than the swift and fiery narrative of the +story, lived through in vision on the night of his purchase of the +original documents. But complete and elaborate as this is, it is merely +introductory, a prologue before the curtain rises on the drama. First we +have three representative specimens of public opinion: _Half-Rome_, _The +Other Half-Rome_, and _Tertium Quid_; each speaker presenting the +complete case from his own point of view. "Half-Rome" takes the side of +Guido. We are allowed to see that the speaker is a jealous husband, and +that his judgment is biased by an instinctive sympathy with the +presumably jealous husband, Guido. "The Other Half-Rome" takes the side +of the wife, "Little Pompilia with the patient eyes," now lying in the +hospital, mortally wounded, and waiting for death. This speaker is a +bachelor, probably a young man, and his judgment is swayed by the beauty +and the piteousness of the dying girl. The speech of "Half-Rome," being +as it is an attempt to make light of the murder, and the utterance of a +somewhat ridiculous personage, is exceedingly humorous and colloquial; +that of the "Other Half-Rome" is serious, earnest, sometimes eloquent. +No contrast could be more complete than that presented by these two +"sample-speeches." The objects remain the same, but we see them through +different ends of the telescope. Either account taken by itself is so +plausible as to seem almost morally conclusive. But in both instances we +have down-right apology and condemnation, partiality bred of prejudice. +_Tertium Quid_ presents us with a reasoned and judicial judgment, +impartiality bred of contempt or indifference; this being-- + + "What the superior social section thinks, + In person of some man of quality + Who,--breathing musk from lace-work and brocade, + His solitaire amid the flow of frill, + Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back, + And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist-- + Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase, + 'Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon + Where mirrors multiply the girandole: + Courting the approbation of no mob, + But Eminence This and All-Illustrious That, + Who take snuff softly, range in well-bred ring, + Card-table-quitters for observance' sake, + Around the argument, the rational word ... + How quality dissertated on the case." + +"Tertium Quid" deals with the case very gently, mindful of his audience, +to whom, at each point of the argument calling for judgment, he politely +refers the matter, and passes on. He speaks in a tone of light and +well-bred irony, with the aristocratic contempt for the _plebs_, the +burgesses, Society's assumption of Exclusive Information. He gives the +general view of things, clearly, neutrally, with no vulgar emphasis of +black and white. "I simply take the facts, ask what they mean." + +So far we have had rumour alone, the opinions of outsiders; next come +the three great monologues in which the persons of the drama, Count +Guido, Caponsacchi, and Pompilia, bear witness of themselves. + + "The imaginary occasion," says Mrs. Orr, "is that of Count + Guido's trial, and all the depositions which were made on the + previous one are transferred to this. The author has been + obliged in every case to build up the character from the + evidence, and to re-mould and expand the evidence in + conformity with the character. The motive, feeling, and + circumstance set forth by each separate speaker, are thus in + some degree fictitious; but they are always founded upon + fact, and the literal fact of a vast number of details is + self-evident."[40] + +These three monologues (with the second of Guido) are by far the most +important in the book. + +First comes _Count Guido Franceschini_. The two monologues spoken by him +are, for sheer depth of human science, the most marvellous of all: +"every nerve of the mind is touched by the patient scalpel, every vein +and joint of the subtle and intricate spirit divided and laid bare."[41] +Under torture, he has confessed to the murder of his wife. He is now +permitted to defend himself before the judges. + + "Soft-cushioned sits he; yet shifts seat, shirks touch, + As, with a twitchy brow and wincing lip, + And cheek that changes to all kinds of white, + He proffers his defence, in tones subdued + Near to mock-mildness now, so mournful seems + The obtuser sense truth fails to satisfy; + Now, moved, from pathos at the wrong endured, + To passion.... + Also his tongue at times is hard to curb; + Incisive, nigh satiric bites the phrase. + + * * * * * + + And never once does he detach his eye + From those ranged there to slay him or to save, + But does his best man's-service for himself." + +His speech is a tissue of falsehoods and prevarications: if he uses a +fact, it is only to twist it into a form of self-justification. He knows +it is useless to deny the murder; his aim, then, is to explain and +excuse it. Every device attainable by the instinct and the brain of +hunted humanity he finds and uses. Now he slurs rapidly over an +inconvenient fact; now, with the frank audacity of innocence, proclaims +and blazons it abroad; now he is rhetorically eloquent, now ironically +pathetic; always contriving to shift the blame upon others, and to make +his own course appear the only one plausible or possible, the only one +possible, at least, to a high-born, law-abiding son of the Church. Every +shift and twist is subtly adapted to his audience of Churchmen, and the +gradation of his pleading no less subtly contrived. No keener and +subtler special pleading has ever been written, in verse certainly, and +possibly in lawyers' prose; and it is poetry of the highest order of +dramatic art. + +Covering a narrower range, but still more significant within its own +limits, the speech of _Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, the priest who assisted +Pompilia in her flight to Rome (given now in her defence before the +judges who have heard the defence of Guido) is perhaps the most +passionate and thrilling piece of blank verse ever written by Browning. +Indeed, I doubt if it be an exaggeration to say that such fire, such +pathos, such splendour of human speech, has never been heard or seen in +English verse since Webster. In tone and colour the monologue is quite +new, exquisitely modulated to a surprising music. The lighter passages +are brilliant: the eloquent passages full of a fine austerity; but it is +in those passages directly relating to Pompilia that the chief greatness +of the work lies. There is in these appeals a quivering, +thrilling, searching quality of fervid pathetic directness: I can give no +notion of it in words; but here are a few lines, torn roughly out of +their context, which may serve in some degree to illustrate my +meaning:-- + + "Pompilia's face, then and thus, looked on me + The last time in this life: not one sight since, + Never another sight to be! And yet + I thought I had saved her. I appealed to Rome: + It seems I simply sent her to her death. + You tell me she is dying now, or dead; + I cannot bring myself to quite believe + This is a place you torture people in: + What if this your intelligence were just + A subtlety, an honest wile to work + On a man at unawares? 'Twere worthy you. + 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! + Though she were dying a priest might be of use, + The more when he's a friend too,--she called me + Far beyond 'friend.'" + +Severed from its connection, much of the charm of the passage vanishes +away: always the test of the finest dramatic work; but enough remains to +give some faint shadow of the real beauty of the work. Observe how the +rhythm trembles in accord with the emotion of the speaker: now slow, +solemn, sad, with something of the quiet of despair; now strenuously +self-deluding and feverishly eager: "Let me see for myself if it be so!" +a line which has all the flush and gasp in it of broken sudden +utterance. And the monologue ends in a kind of desperate resignation:-- + + "Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are + So very pitiable, she and I, + Who had conceivably been otherwise. + Forget distemperature and idle heat; + Apart from truth's sake, what's to move so much? + Pompilia will be presently with God; + I am, on earth, as good as out of it, + A relegated priest; when exile ends, + I mean to do my duty and live long. + She and I are mere strangers now: but priests + Should study passion; how else cure mankind, + Who come for help in passionate extremes? + I do but play with an imagined life. + + * * * * * + + Mere delectation, fit for a minute's dream!-- + Just as a drudging student trims his lamp, + Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place + Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close, + Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'-- + Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes + To the old solitary nothingness. + So I, from such communion, pass content ... + + O great, just, good God! Miserable me!" + +From the passionate defence of Caponsacchi, we pass to the death-bed of +_Pompilia_. Like Shakespeare, Browning makes all his heroines young; and +this child of seventeen, who has so much of the wisdom of youth, tells +on her death-bed, to the kind people about her, the story of her life, +in a simple, child-like, dreamy, wondering way, which can be compared, +so far as I know, with nothing else ever written. + + "Then a soul sighs its lowest and its last + After the loud ones;" + +and we have here the whole heart of a woman, the whole heart and the +very speech and accent of the most womanly of women. No woman has ever +written anything so close to the nature of women, and I do not know what +other man has come near to this strange and profoundly manly intuition, +this "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies," as Mr. +Swinburne has said, "the poet of Pompilia." All _The Ring and the Book_ +is a leading up to this monologue, and a commentary round it. It is a +song of serene and quiet beauty, beautiful as evening-twilight. To +analyse it is to analyse a rose's perfume: to quote from it is to tear +off the petal of a rose. Here, however, for their mere colour and scent, +are a few lines. Pompilia is speaking of the birth of her child. + + "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, + Though they live twice the length of my whole life, + And, as they fancy, happily all the same. + There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long, + As if it would continue, broaden out + Happily more and more, and lead to heaven: + Christmas before me,--was not that a chance? + I never realized 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." + +With a beautiful and holy confidence she now "lays away her babe with +God," secure for him in the future. She forgives the husband who has +slain her: "I could not love him, but his mother did." And with her last +breath she blesses the friend who has saved her:-- + + "O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, + No work begun shall ever pause for death. + + * * * * * + + So, let him wait God's instant men call years; + Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, + Do out the duty! Through such souls alone + God stooping shows sufficient of His light + For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." + +After _Pompilia_, we have the pleadings and counterpleadings of the +lawyers on either side: _Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum +Procurator_ (the counsel for the defendant), and _Juris Doctor +Johannes-Baptista Bottinius_, _Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus_ +(public prosecutor). Arcangeli,-- + + "The jolly learned man of middle age, + Cheek and jowl all in laps with fat and law, + Mirthful as mighty, yet, as great hearts use, + Despite the name and fame that tempt our flesh, + Constant to the devotion of the hearth, + Still captive in those dear domestic ties!"-- + +is represented, with fine grotesque humour, in the very act of making +his speech, pre-occupied, all the while he "wheezes out law and +whiffles Latin forth," with a birthday-feast in preparation for his +eight-year-old son, little Giacinto, the pride of his heart. The effect +is very comic, though the alternation or intermixture of lawyer's-Latin +and domestic arrangements produces something which is certainly, and +perhaps happily, without parallel in poetry. His defence is, and is +intended to be, mere quibbling. _Causa honoris_ is the whole pith and +point of his plea: Pompilia's guilt he simply takes for granted. +Bottini, the exact opposite in every way of his adversary,-- + + "A man of ready smile and facile tear, + Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck, + And language--ah, the gift of eloquence! + Language that goes as easy as a glove + O'er good and evil, smoothens both to one"-- + +Bottini presents us with a full-blown speech, intended to prove +Pompilia's innocence, though really in every word a confession of her +utter depravity. His sole purpose is to show off his cleverness, and he +brings forward objections on purpose to prove how well he can turn them +off; assumes guilt for the purpose of arguing it into comparative +innocence. + + "Yet for the sacredness of argument, ... + Anything, anything to let the wheels + Of argument run glibly to their goal!" + +He pretends to "paint a saint," whom he can still speak of, in tones of +earnest admiration, as "wily as an eel." His implied concessions and +merely parenthetic denials, his abominable insinuations and suggestions, +come, evidently enough, from the instincts of a grovelling mind, +literally incapable of appreciating goodness, as well as from +professional irritation at one who will + + "Leave a lawyer nothing to excuse, + Reason away and show his skill about." + +The whole speech is a capital bit of satire and irony; it is comically +clever and delightfully exasperating. + +After the lawyers have spoken, we have the final judgment, the +summing-up and laying bare of the whole matter, fact and motive, in the +soliloquy of _The Pope_. Guido has been tried and found guilty, but, on +appeal, the case had been referred to the Pope, Innocent XII. His +decision is made; he has been studying the case from early morning, and +now, at the + + "Dim + Droop of a sombre February day, + In the plain closet where he does such work, + With, from all Peter's treasury, one stool, + One table and one lathen crucifix," + +he passes the actors of the tragedy in one last review, nerving himself +to pronounce the condemnation which he feels, as judge, to be due, but +which he shrinks from with the natural shrinking of an aged man about to +send a strong man to death before him. Pompilia he pronounces faultless +and more,-- + + "My rose, I gather for the breast of God;" + +Caponsacchi, not all without fault, yet a true soldier of God, prompt, +for all his former seeming frivolousness, to spring forward and redress +the wrong, victorious, too, over temptation:-- + + "Was the trial sore? + Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time! + Why comes temptation but for man to meet + And master and make crouch beneath his foot, + And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray + 'Lead us into no such temptation, Lord!' + Yea, but, O Thou, whose servants are the bold, + Lead such temptations by the head and hair, + Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, + That so he may do battle and have praise!" + +For Guido he can see no excuse, can find no loophole for mercy, and but +little hope of penitence or salvation, and he signs the death-warrant. + + "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." + +The whole monologue is of different order from all the others. Every one +but this expresses a more or less partial and fragmentary view. _Tertium +Quid_ alone makes any pretence at impartiality, and his is the result of +indifference, not of justice. The Pope's speech is long, slow, +discoursive, full of aged wisdom, dignity and nobility. The latter part +of it, containing some of Browning's most characteristic philosophy, is +by no means out of place, but perfectly coherent and appropriate to the +character of the speaker. + +Last of all comes the second and final speech of _Guido_, "the same +man, another voice," as he "speaks and despairs, the last night of his +life," before the Cardinal Acciaiuoli and Abate Panciatichi, two old +friends, who have come to obtain his confession, absolve him, and +accompany him to the scaffold:-- + + "The tiger-cat screams now, that whined before, + That pried and tried and trod so gingerly, + Till in its silkiness the trap-teeth join; + Then you know how the bristling fury foams. + They listen, this wrapped in his folds of red, + While his feet fumble for the filth below; + The other, as beseems a stouter heart, + Working his best with beads and cross to ban + The enemy that come in like a flood + Spite of the standard set up, verily + And in no trope at all, against him there: + For at the prison-gate, just a few steps + Outside, already, in the doubtful dawn, + Thither, from this side and from that, slow sweep + And settle down in silence solidly, + Crow-wise, the frightful Brotherhood of Death." + +We have here the completed portrait of Guido, a portrait perhaps +unsurpassed as a whole by any of Browning's studies in the complexities +of character. In his first speech he fought warily, and with delicate +skill of fence, for life. Here, says Mr. Swinburne, "a close and dumb +soul compelled into speech by mere struggle and stress of things, +labours in literal translation and accurate agony at the lips of Guido." +Hopeless, but impelled by the biting frenzy of despair, he pours out on +his awe-stricken listeners a wild flood of entreaty, defiance, ghastly +and anguished humour, flattery, satire, raving blasphemy and foaming +impenitence. His desperate venom and blasphemous raillery is part +despair, part calculated horror. In his last revolt against death and +all his foes, he snatches at any weapon, even truth, that may serve his +purpose and gain a reprieve:-- + + "I thought you would not slay impenitence, + But teazed, from men you slew, contrition first,-- + I thought you had a conscience ... + Would you send + A soul straight to perdition, dying frank + An atheist?" + +How much of truth there is in it all we need not attempt to decide. It +is not likely that Guido could pretend to be much worse than he really +was, though he unquestionably heightens the key of his crime, working up +to a pitch of splendid ferocity almost sublime, from a malevolence +rather mean than manly. At the last, struck suddenly, as he sees death +upon him, from his pretence of defiant courage, he hurls down at a blow +the whole structure of lies, and lays bare at once his own malignant +cowardice and the innocence of his murdered wife:--is it with a touch of +remorse, of saving penitence? + + "Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,-- + I use up my last strength to strike once more + Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face, + To trample underfoot the whine and wile + Of beast Violante,--and I grow one gorge + To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale + Poison my hasty hunger took for food. + A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk, + No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent, + But sustenance at root, a bucketful. + How else lived that Athenian who died so, + Drinking hot bull's blood, fit for men like me? + I lived and died a man, and take man's chance, + Honest and bold: right will be done to such. + Who are these you have let descend my stair? + Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill! + Is it 'Open' they dare bid you? Treachery! + Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while + Out of the world of words I had to say? + Not one word! All was folly--I laughed and mocked! + Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie, + Is--save me notwithstanding! Life is all! + I was just stark mad,--let the madman live + Pressed by as many chains as you please pile! + Don't open! Hold me from them! I am yours, + I am the Granduke's,--no, I am the Pope's! + Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God, ... + Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" + +The coward's agony of the fear of death has never been rendered in words +so truthful or so terrible. + +Last of all comes the Epilogue, entitled _The Book and the Ring_, giving +an account of Count Guido's execution, in the form of contemporary +letters, real and imaginary; with an extract from the Augustinian's +sermon on Pompilia, and other documents needed to wind off the threads +of the story. + +_The Ring and the Book_ was the first important work which Browning +wrote after the death of his wife, and her memory holds in it a double +shrine: at the opening an invocation, at the close a dedication. I quote +the invocation: the words are sacred, and nothing remains to be said of +them except that they are worthy of the dead and of the living. + + "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!" + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 40: _Handbook_, p. 93.] + +[Footnote 41: Swinburne, _Essays and Studies_, p. 220.] + + +18. BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE: including a Transcript from Euripides. + + [Published in August, 1871. Dedication: "To the Countess + Cowper.--If I mention the simple truth: that this poem + absolutely owes its existence to you,--who not only + suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has proved the + most delightful of May-month amusements--I shall seem honest, + indeed, but hardly prudent; for, how good and beautiful ought + such a poem to be!--Euripides might fear little; but I, also, + have an interest in the performance: and what wonder if I beg + you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense, + its nearest possible approach to those Greek qualities of + goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at your + feet?--R. B., London, July 23, 1871." (_Poetical Works_, + 1889, Vol. XI. pp. 1-122).] + +The episode which supplies the title of _Balaustion's Adventure_ was +suggested by the familiar story told by Plutarch in his life of Nicias: +that after the ruin of the Sicilian expedition, those of the Athenian +captives who could repeat any poetry of Euripides were set at liberty, +or treated with consideration, by the Syracusans. In Browning's poem, +Balaustion tells her four girl-friends the story of her "adventure" at +Syracuse, where, shortly before, she had saved her own life and the +lives of a ship's-company of her friends by reciting the play of +_Alkestis_ to the Euripides-loving townsfolk. After a brief reminiscence +of the adventure, which has gained her (besides life, and much fame, and +the regard of Euripides) a lover whom she is shortly to marry, she +repeats, for her friends, the whole play, adding, as she speaks the +words of Euripides, such other words of her own as may serve to explain +or help to realise the conception of the poet. In other words, we have a +transcript or re-telling in monologue of the whole play, interspersed +with illustrative comments; and after this is completed Balaustion again +takes up the tale, presents us with a new version of the story of +Alkestis, refers by anticipation to a poem of Mrs. Browning and a +picture of Sir Frederick Leighton, and ends exultantly:-- + + "And all came--glory of the golden verse, + And passion of the picture, and that fine + Frank outgush of the human gratitude + Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,-- + Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps + Away from you, friends, while I told my tale, + --It all came of the play which gained no prize! + Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?" + +It will thus be seen that the "Transcript from Euripides" is the real +occasion of the poem, Balaustion's adventure, though graphically +described, and even Balaustion herself, though beautifully and vividly +brought before us, being of secondary importance. The "adventure," as it +has been said, is the amber in which Browning has embalmed the +_Alkestis_. The play itself is rendered in what is rather an +interpretation than a translation; an interpretation conceived in the +spirit of the motto taken from Mrs. Browning's _Wine of Cyprus_:-- + + "Our Euripides, the human, + With his droppings of warm tears, + And his touches of things common + Till they rose to touch the spheres." + +Browning has no sympathy with those who impute to Euripides a sophistic +rather than a pathetic intention; and it is conceivable that the "task" +which Lady Cowper imposed upon him was to show, by some such method of +translation and interpretation, the warm humanity, deep pathos, right +construction and genuine truth to nature of the drama. With this end in +view, Browning has woven the thread of the play into a sort of connected +narrative, translating, with almost uniform literalness of language, the +whole of the play as it was written by Euripides, but connecting it by +comments, explanations, hints and suggestions; analyzing whatever may +seem not easily to be apprehended, or not unlikely to be misapprehended; +bringing out by a touch or a word some delicate shade of meaning, some +subtle fineness of idea or intention.[42] A more creative piece of +criticism can hardly be found, not merely in poetry, but even in prose. +Perhaps it shares in some degree the splendid fault of creative +criticism by occasionally lending, not finding, the noble qualities +which we are certainly made to see in the work itself. + +The translation, though not literal in form, is literal in substance, +and it is rendered into careful and expressive blank verse. Owing to the +scheme on which it is constructed, the choruses could not be rendered +into lyrical verse; while, for the same reason, a few passages here and +there are omitted, or only indicated by a word or so in passing. The +omitted passages are very few in number; but it is not always easy to +see why they should have been omitted.[43] Browning's canon of +translation is "to be literal at every cost save that of absolute +violence to our language," and here, certainly, he has observed his +rule. Notwithstanding the greater difficulty of the metrical form, and +the far greater temptation to "brighten up" a version by the use of +paraphrastic but sonorous effects, it is improbable that any prose +translation could be more faithful. And not merely is Browning literal +in the sense of following the original word for word, he gives the exact +root-meaning of words which a literal translator would consider himself +justified in taking in their general sense. Occasionally a literality +of this sort is less easily intelligible to the general reader than the +more obvious word would have been; but, except in a very few instances, +the whole translation is not less clear and forcible than it is exact. +Whether or not the _Alkestis_ of Browning is quite the _Alkestis_ of +Euripides, there is no doubt that this literal, yet glorified and +vivified translation of a Greek play has added a new poem to English +literature. + +The blank verse of _Balaustion's Adventure_ is somewhat different from +that of its predecessor, _The Ring and the Book_: to my own ear, at +least, it is by no means so original or so fine. It is indeed more +restrained, but Browning seems to be himself working under a sort of +restraint, or perhaps upon a theory of the sort of versification +appropriate to classical themes. Something of frank vigour, something of +flexibility and natural expressiveness, is lost, but, on the other hand, +there is often a rich colour in the verse, a lingering perfume and +sweetness in the melody, which has a new and delicate charm of its own. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 42: Note, for instance, the admirable exposition and defence +of the famous and ill-famed altercation between Pheres and Admetos: one +of the keenest bits of explanatory analysis in Mr. Browning's works. Or +observe how beautifully human the dying Alkestis becomes as he +interprets for her, and how splendid a humanity the jovial Herakles puts +on.] + +[Footnote 43: The two speeches of Eumelos, not without a note of pathos, +are scarcely represented by-- + + "The children's tears ran fast + Bidding their father note the eye-lids' stare, + Hands'-droop, each dreadful circumstance of death."] + + +19. PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. + + [Published in December, 1871. (_Poetical Works_, Vol. XI. pp. + 123-210).] + +_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_[44] is a blank verse monologue, supposed +to be spoken, in a musing day-dream, by Louis Napoleon, while Emperor of +the French, and calling himself, to the delight of ironical echoes, the +"Saviour of Society." The work is equally distant in spirit from the +branding satire and righteous wrath of Victor Hugo's _Chatiments_ and +_Napoleon le Petit_, and from Lord Beaconsfield's _couleur de rose_ +portrait, in _Endymion_, of the nominally pseudonymous Prince Florestan. +It is neither a denunciation nor a eulogy, nor yet altogether an +impartial delineation. It is an "apology," with much the same object as +those of Bishop Blougram or Mr. Sludge, the Medium: "by no means to +prove black white or white black, or to make the worse appear the better +reason, but to bring a seeming monster and perplexing anomaly under the +common laws of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and +how it can with more or less of self-illusion reconcile itself to +itself."[45] + +The poem is very hard reading, perhaps as a whole the hardest +intellectual exercise in Browning's work, but this arises not so much +from the obscurity of its ideas and phrases as from the peculiar +complexity of its structure. To apprehend it we must put ourselves at a +certain standpoint, which is not easy to reach. The monologue as a whole +represents, as we only learn at the end, not a direct speech to a real +person in England, but a mere musing over a cigar in the palace in +France. It is divided into two distinct sections, which need to be kept +clearly apart in the mind. The first section, up to the line, more than +half-way through, "Something like this the unwritten chapter reads," is +a direct self-apology. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau puts forward what he +represents as his theory of practice. It is founded on the principle of +_laisser-faire_, and resolves itself into conformity: concurrence with +things as they are, with society as it is. He finds existing +institutions, not indeed perfect, but sufficiently good for practical +purposes; and he conceives his mission to be that of a builder on +existing foundations, that of a social conservator, not of a social +reformer: "to do the best with the least change possible." On his own +showing, he has had this single aim in view from first to last, and on +this ground, that of expediency, he explains and defends every act of +his tortuous and vacillating policy. He has had his ambitions and ideals +of giving freedom to Italy, for example, but he has set them aside in +the interests of his own people and for what he holds to be their more +immediate needs. So far the direct apology. He next proceeds to show +what he might have done, but did not, the ideal course as it is held; +commenting the while, as "Sagacity," upon the imaginary new version of +his career. His comments represent his real conduct, and they are such +as he assumes would naturally be made on the "ideal" course by the very +critics who have censured his actual temporising policy. The final pages +contain an involuntary confession that, even in his own eyes, Prince +Hohenstiel is not quite satisfied with either his conduct or his defence +of it. + +To separate the truth from the falsehood in this dramatic monologue has +not been Browning's intention, and it need not be ours. It may be +repeated that Browning is no apologist for Louis Napoleon: he simply +calls him to the front, and, standing aside, allows him to speak for +himself.[46] In his speech under these circumstances we find just as +much truth entangled with just as much sophistry as we might reasonably +expect. Here, we get what seems the genuine truth; there, in what +appears to the speaker a satisfactory defence, we see that he is simply +exposing his own moral defect; again, like Bishop Blougram, he "says +true things, but calls them by wrong names." Passages of the last kind +are very frequent; are, indeed, to be found everywhere throughout the +poem; and it is in these that Browning unites most cleverly the +vicarious thinking due to his dramatic subject, and the good honest +thought which we never fail to find dominant in his most exceptional +work. The Prince gives utterance to a great deal of very true and very +admirable good sense; we are at liberty to think him insincere in his +application of it, but an axiom remains true, even if it be wrongly +applied. + +The versification of the poem is everywhere vigorous, and often fine; +perhaps the finest passage it contains is that referring to Louis +Napoleon's abortive dreams on behalf of Italy. + + "Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught, + Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine + For ever! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct, + Alive with tremors in the shaggy growth + Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there + Imparting exultation to the hills! + Sweep of the swathe when only the winds walk + And waft my words above the grassy sea + Under the blinding blue that basks o'er Rome-- + Hear ye not still--'Be Italy again?' + And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart? + Decrepit council-chambers,--where some lamp + Drives the unbroken black three paces off + From where the greybeards huddle in debate, + Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one + Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt, + And what they think is fear, and what suspends + The breath in them is not the plaster-patch + Time disengages from the painted wall + Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu, + Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry + To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old; + But some word, resonant, redoubtable, + Of who once felt upon his head a hand + Whereof the head now apprehends his foot." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 44: The name _Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is formed from Hohen +Schwangau, one of the castles of the late king of Bavaria.] + +[Footnote 45: James Thomson on _The Ring and the Book_.] + +[Footnote 46: I find in a letter of Browning, which Mrs Orr has printed +in her _Life and Letters of Browning_ (1891), a reference to "what the +editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire--which +it is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be--'a +scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England'--it is just +what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."] + + +20. FIFINE AT THE FAIR. + + [Published in 1872 (_Poetical Works_, Vol. XI. pp. 211-343).] + +_Fifine at the Fair_ is a monologue at once dramatic and philosophical. +Its arguments, like those of _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, are part +truth, part sophistry. The poem is prefaced by a motto from Moliere's +_Don Juan_, in which Donna Elvira suggests to her husband, with a bitter +irony, the defence he ought to make for himself. Don Juan did not take +the hint. Browning has done so. The genesis of the poem and the special +form it has assumed are further explained by the following passage from +Mrs. Orr:-- + + "Mr. Browning was, with his family, at Pornic, many years + ago, and there saw the gypsy who is the original of Fifine. + His fancy was evidently set roaming by her audacity, her + strength--the contrast which she presented to the more + spiritual types of womanhood; and this contrast eventually + found expression in a poetic 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 someone 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."[47] + +This modified Don Juan is the spokesman of the poem: not the "splendid +devil" of Tirso de Molina, but a modern gentleman, living at Pornic, a +refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophical person, "of high +attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will." +Strolling through the fair with his wife, he expatiates on the charm of +a Bohemian existence, and, more particularly, on the charms of one +Fifine, a rope-dancer, whose performance he has witnessed. Urged by the +troubled look of his wife, he launches forth into an elaborate defence +of inconstancy in love, and consequently of the character of his +admiration for Fifine. + +He starts by arguing:-- + + "That bodies show me minds, + That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures, + And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures,-- + All by demonstrating the value of Fifine!" + +He then applies his method to the whole of earthly life, finally +resolving it into the principle:-- + + "All's change, but permanence as well. + + * * * * * + + Truth inside, and outside, truth also; and between + Each, falsehood that is change, as truth is permanence. + The individual soul works through the shows of sense, + (Which, ever proving false, still promise to be true) + Up to an outer soul as individual too; + And, through the fleeting, lives to die into the fixed, + And reach at length 'God, man, or both together mixed.'" + +Last of all, just as his speculations have come to an end in an earnest +profession of entire love to his wife, and they pause for a moment on +the threshold of the villa, he receives a note from Fifine. + + "Oh, threaten no farewell! five minutes shall suffice + To clear the matter up. I go, and in a trice + Return; five minutes past, expect me! If in vain-- + Why, slip from flesh and blood, and play the ghost again!" + +He exceeds the allotted five minutes. Elvire takes him at his word; and, +as we seem to be told in the epilogue, husband and wife are reconciled +only in death. + +Such is the barest outline of the structure and purport of the poem. But +no outline can convey much notion of the wide range, profound +significance and infinite ingenuity of the arguments; of the splendour +and vigour of the poetry; or of the subtle consistency and exquisite +truth of the character-painting. Small in amount as is this last in +proportion to the philosophy, it is of very notable kind and quality. +Not only the speaker, but Fifine, and still more Elvire, are quickened +into life by graphic and delicate touches. If we except Lucrezia in +_Andrea del Sarto_, in no other monologue is the presence and +personality of the silent or seldom-speaking listener so vividly felt. +We see the wronged wife Elvire, we know her, and we trace the very +progress of her moods, the very changes in her face, as she listens to +the fluent talk of her husband. Don Juan (if we may so call him) is a +distinct addition to Browning's portrait-gallery. Let no one suppose him +to be a mere mouthpiece for dialectical disquisitions. He is this +certainly, but his utterances are tinged with individual colour. This +fact which, from the artistic point of view, is an inestimable +advantage, is apt to prove, as in the case of Prince Hohenstiel, +somewhat of a practical difficulty. "The clearest way of showing where +he uses (1) Truth, (2) Sophism, (3) a mixture of both--is to say that +wherever he speaks of Fifine (whether as type or not) in relation to +himself and his own desire for truth, or right living with his wife, he +is sophistical: wherever he speaks directly of his wife's value to him +he speaks truth with an alloy of sophism; and wherever he speaks +impersonally he speaks the truth.[48]" Keeping this in mind, we can +easily separate the grain from the chaff; and the grain is emphatically +worth storing. Perhaps no poem of Browning's contains so much deep and +acute comment on life and conduct: few, such superabounding wealth of +thought and imagery. Browning is famed for his elaborate and original +similes; but I doubt if he has conceived any with more originality, or +worked them out with richer elaboration, than those of the Swimmer, of +the Carnival, of the Druid Monument, of Fifine herself. Nor has he often +written more original poetry than some of the more passionate or +imaginative passages of the poem. The following lines, describing an +imaginary face representing Horror, have all the vivid sharpness of an +actual vision or revelation:-- + + "Observe how brow recedes, + Head shudders back on spine, as if one haled the hair, + Would have the full-face front what pin-point eye's sharp stare + Announces; mouth agape to drink the flowing fate, + While chin protrudes to meet the burst o' the wave; elate + Almost, spurred on to brave necessity, expend + All life left, in one flash, as fire does at its end." + +Just as good in a different style, is this quaint and quiet landscape:-- + + "For, arm in arm, we two have reached, nay, passed, you see, + The village-precinct; sun sets mild on Saint-Marie-- + We only catch the spire, and yet I seem to know + What's hid i' the turn o' the hill: how all the graves must glow + Soberly, as each warms its little iron cross, + Flourished about with gold, and graced (if private loss + Be fresh) with stiff rope-wreath of yellow, crisp bead-blooms + Which tempt down birds to pay their supper, mid the tombs, + With prattle good as song, amuse the dead awhile, + If couched they hear beneath the matted camomile." + +The poem is written in Alexandrine couplets, and is, I believe, the only +English poem of any length written in this metre since Drayton's +_Polyolbion_. Browning's metre has scarcely the flexibility of the best +French verse, but he allows himself occasionally two licenses not used +in French since the time of Marot: (1) the addition of an unaccented +syllable at the end of the first half of the verse, as:-- + + "'Twas not for every Gawain to gaze upon the Grail!"-- + +(2) the addition of two syllables, making seven instead of six beats. + + "What good were else i' the drum and fife? O pleasant + land of France!" + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 47: _Handbook_, p. 148.] + +[Footnote 48: J.T. Nettleship on "Fifine at the Fair" (_Browning +Society's Papers_, Part II. p. 223). Mr. Nettleship's elaborate analysis +of the poem is a most helpful and admirable piece of work.] + + +21. RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY; OR, TURF AND TOWERS. + + [Published in 1873 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol XII. pp. + 1-177).] + +_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ is a story of real life, true in all its +facts, and studied at the place where it had occurred a few years +before: St. Aubin, in Normandy (the St. Rambert of the poem). It is the +story of the life of Antoine Mellerio, the Paris jeweller, whose tragic +death occurred at St. Aubin on the 13th April 1870. A suit concerning +his will, decided only in the summer of 1872, supplied Browning with the +materials of his tragedy. In the first proof of the poem the real names +of persons and places were given; but they were changed before +publication, and are now in every case fictitious. The second edition of +Mrs. Orr's _Handbook_ contains a list of the real names, which I +subjoin.[49] + +The book is dedicated to Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie), and the +whole story is supposed to be told to her (as in substance it was) by +Browning, who has thus given to the poem a tone of pleasant +colloquialism. Told as it is, it becomes in part a dramatic monologue of +which the _dramatis persona_ is Robert Browning. It is full of quiet, +sometimes grim, humour; of picturesque and witty touches; of pungency +and irony. Its manner, the humorous telling of a tragic tale, is a +little after the pattern of Carlyle. In such a setting the tragic +episodes, sometimes all but heroic, sometimes almost grotesque, have all +the impressiveness of contrast. + +The story itself, in the main, is a sordid enough tragedy: like several +of Browning's later books, it is a study in evil. The two characters who +fill the stage of this little history are tragic comedians; they, too, +are "real creatures, exquisitely fantastical, strangely exposed to the +world by a lurid catastrophe, who teach us that fiction, if it can +imagine events and persons more agreeable to the taste it has educated, +can read us no such furrowing lesson in life." The character of Miranda, +the sinner who would reconcile sin with salvation, is drawn with special +subtlety; analysed, dissected rather, with the unerring scalpel of the +experienced operator. Miranda is swayed through life by two opposing +tendencies, for he is of mixed Castilian and French blood. He is +mastered at once by two passions, earthly and religious, illicit love +and Catholic devotion: he cannot let go the one and he will not let go +the other; he would enjoy himself on the "Turf" without abandoning the +shelter of the "Towers." His life is spent in trying to effect a +compromise between the two antagonistic powers which finally pull down +his house of life. Clara, his mistress-wife, is a mirror of himself; she +humours him, manages him, perhaps on his own lines of inclination. + + "'But--loved him?' Friend, I do not praise her love! + True love works never for the loved one so, + Nor spares skin-surface, smoothening truth away, + Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and embrace + Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself. + 'Worship not me, but God!' the angels urge!" + +This man and woman are analysed with exquisite skill; but they are not +in the strict sense inventions, creations: we understand rather than see +them. Only towards the end, where the facts leave freer play for the +poetic impulse, do they rise into sharp vividness of dramatic life and +speech. Nothing in the poem equals in intensity the great soliloquy of +Miranda before his strange and suicidal leap, and the speech of Clara to +the "Cousinry." Here we pass at a bound from chronicling to creation. As +a narrative, _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ has all the interest of a +novel, with the concentration and higher pitch of poetry. Less ingenious +and philosophical than _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ and _Fifine at the +Fair_, it is far more intimately human, more closely concerned with +"man's thoughts and loves and hates," with the manifestations of his +eager and uneasy spirit, in strange shapes, on miry roads, in dubious +twilights. Of all Browning's works it is perhaps the easiest to read; no +tale could be more straightforward, no language more lucid, no verse +more free from harshness or irregularity, The versification, indeed, is +exceptionally smooth and measured, seldom rising into strong passion, +but never running into volubility. Here and there are short passages, +which I can scarcely detach for quotation, with a singular charm of +vague remote music. The final summary of Clara and Miranda, excellent +and convenient alike, may be severed without much damage from the +context. + + "Clara, I hold the happier specimen,-- + It may be, through that artist-preference + For work complete, inferiorly proposed, + To incompletion, though it aim aright. + Morally, no! Aspire, break bounds! I say, + Endeavour to be good, and better still, + And best! Success is nought, endeavour's all. + But intellect adjusts the means to ends, + Tries the low thing, and leaves it done, at least; + No prejudice to high thing, intellect + Would do and will do, only give the means. + Miranda, in my picture-gallery, + Presents a Blake; be Clara--Meissonnier! + Merely considered so, by artist, mind! + For, break through Art and rise to poetry, + Bring Art to tremble nearer, touch enough + The verge of vastness to inform our soul + What orb makes transit through the dark above, + And there's the triumph!--there the incomplete, + More than completion, matches the immense,-- + Then, Michelagnolo against the world!" + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 49: Page 2. _The Firm Miranda_--Mellerio Brothers. Page 4. +_St. Rambert_--St Aubin; _Joyeux, Joyous Gard_--Lion, Lionesse. Page 6. +_Vire_--Caen. Page 25. _St. Rambertese_--St. Aubinese. Page 29. +_Londres_--Douvres; _London_--Dover; _La Roche_--Courcelle; +_Monlieu_--Bernieres; _Villeneuve_--Langrune; _Pons_--Luc; _La +Ravissante_--La Delivrande. Page 33. _Raimbaux_--Bayeux. Page 34. +_Morillon_--Hugonin; _Mirecourt_--Bonnechose; _Miranda_--Mellerio. Page +35. _New York_--Madrid. Page 41. _Clairvaux_--Tailleville. Page 42. +_Madrilene_--Turinese. Page 43. _Gonthier_--Beny; _Rousseau_--Voltaire; +_Leonce_--Antoine. Page 52. _Of "Firm Miranda, London and New +York"_--"Mellerio Brothers"--Meller, people say. Page 79. _Rare +Vissante_--Del Yvrande; _Aldabert_--Regnobert. Page 80. +_Eldobert_--Ragnebert; _Mailleville_--Beaudoin. Page 81. +_Chaumont_--Quelen; _Vertgalant_--Talleyrand. Page 89. +_Ravissantish_--Delivrandish. Page 101. _Clara de Millefleurs_--Anna de +Beaupre; _Coliseum Street_--Miromesnil Street. Page 110. +_Steiner_--Mayer; _Commercy_--Larocy; _Sierck_--Metz. Page 111. +_Muhlhausen_--Debacker. Page 112, _Carlino Centofanti_--Miranda di +Mongino. Page 121. _Portugal_--Italy. Page 125. "_Gustave_"--"Alfred." +Page 135. _Vaillant_--Meriel. Page 149. _Thirty-three_--Twenty-five. +152. _Beaumont_--Pasquier. Page 167. _Sceaux_--Garges. Page 203. _Luc de +la Maison Rouge_--Jean de la Becquetiere; _Claise_--Vire; _Maude_--Anne. +Page 204. _Dionysius_--Eliezer; _Scolastica_--Elizabeth. Page 214. +_Twentieth_--Thirteenth. Page 241. _Fricquot_--"Picot."--Mrs. Orr's +_Handbook_, Second Edition, pp. 261-2.] + + +22. ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY: including a Transcript from Euripides; being +the Last Adventure of Balaustion. + + [Published in April, 1875. (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. + XIII. pp. 1-258).] + +_Aristophanes' Apology_, as its sub-title indicates, is a kind of sequel +to _Balaustion's Adventure_. It is the record, in Balaustion's words, of +an adventure which happened to her after her marriage with Euthukles. On +the day when the news of Euripides' death reached Athens, as Balaustion +and her husband were sitting at home, toward nightfall, Aristophanes, +coming home with his revellers from the banquet which followed his +triumph in the play of _Thesmophoriazousai_, burst in upon them. + + "There stood in person Aristophanes. + And no ignoble presence! On the bulge + Of the clear baldness,--all his head one brow,-- + True, the veins swelled, blue net-work, and there surged + A red from cheek to temple, then retired + As if the dark-leaved chaplet damped a flame,-- + Was never nursed by temperance or health. + But huge the eyeballs rolled black native fire, + Imperiously triumphant: nostrils wide + Waited their incense; while the pursed mouth's pout + Aggressive, while the beak supreme above, + While the head, face, nay, pillared throat thrown back, + Beard whitening under like a vinous foam, + These made a glory, of such insolence-- + I thought,--such domineering deity + Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine + For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path + Which, purpling, recognized the conqueror. + Impudent and majestic: drunk, perhaps, + But that's religion; sense too plainly snuffed: + Still, sensuality was grown a rite." + +He, too, has just heard of Euripides' death, and an impulse, part +sympathy, part mockery, has brought him to the "house friendly to +Euripides." The revellers retire abashed before Balaustion; he alone +remains. From the extraordinary and only too natural gabble and garbage +of his opening words, he quickly passes to a more or less serious +explanation and defence of his conduct toward the dead poet; to an +exposition, in fact, of his aims and doings as a writer of comedy. When +his "apology" is ended, Balaustion replies, censuring him pretty +severely, making adroit use of the licence of a "stranger" and a woman, +and defending Euripides against him. For a further (and the best) +defence, she reads the whole of the _Herakles_, which Browning here +translates. Aristophanes, naturally, is not convinced; impressed he must +have been, to have borne so long a reading without demur: he flings them +a snatch of song, finding in his impromptu a hint for a new play, the +_Frogs_, and is gone. And now, a year after, as the couple return to +Rhodes from a disgraced and dismantled Athens, Balaustion dictates to +Euthukles her recollection of the "adventure," for the double purpose of +putting the past events on record, and of eluding the urgency of the +present sorrow. + +It will thus be seen that the book consists of two distinct parts. There +is, first, the apology of Aristophanes, second, the translation of the +play of Euripides. _Herakles_, or, as it is more generally known, +_Hercules Furens_, is rendered completely and consecutively, in blank +verse and varied choric measures. It is not, as was the case with +_Alkestis_ worked into the body of the poem; not welded, but inserted. +We have thus, while losing the commentary, the advantage of a detached +transcript, with a lyrical rendering of the lyrical parts of the play. +These are given with a constant vigour and closeness, often with a rare +beauty (as in the famous "Ode bewailing Age," and that other on the +labours of Herakles). Precisely the same characteristics that we have +found in the translation of the _Alkestis_ are here again to be found, +and all that I said on the former, considered apart from its setting, +may be applied to the latter. We have the same literalness (again with a +few apparent exceptions), the same insistence on the root-meaning of +words, the same graphic force and vivifying touch, the same general +clearness and charm. + +The original part of the book is of far closer texture and more +remarkable order than "the amber which embalms _Alkestis_" the first +adventure of Balaustion; but it has less human emotion, less general +appeal. It is nothing less than a resuscitation of the old controversy +between Aristophanes and Euripides; a resuscitation, not only of the +controversy, but of the combatants. "Local colour" is laid on with an +unsparing hand, though it cannot be said that the atmosphere is really +Greek. There is hardly a line, there is never a page, without an +allusion to some recondite thing: Athenian customs, Greek names, the +plays of Euripides, above all, the plays of Aristophanes. "Every line of +the poem," it has been truly said, "shows Mr. Browning as soaked and +steeped in the comedies as was Bunyan in his Bible." The result is a +vast, shapeless thing, splendidly and grotesquely alive, but alive with +the obscure and tangled life of the jungle. + +Browning's attitude towards the controversy, the side he takes as +champion of Euripides, is distinctly shown, not merely in Balaustion's +statement and defence, but in the whole conduct of the piece. +Aristophanes, though on his own defence, is set in a decidedly +unfavourable light; and no one, judging from Browning's work, can doubt +as to his opinion of the relative qualities of the two great poets. It +is possible even to say there is a partiality in the presentment. But it +must be remembered on the other hand that Browning is not concerned +simply with the question of art, but with the whole bearings, artistic +and ethical, of the contest; and it must be remembered that the aim of +Comedy is intrinsically lower and more limited than that of Tragedy, +that it is destructive, disintegrating, negative, concerned with smaller +issues and more temporary questions; and that Euripides may reasonably +be held a better teacher, a keener, above all a more helpful, reader of +the riddle of life, than his mighty assailant. This is how Aristophanes +has been described, by one who should know:-- + + "He is an aggregate of many men, all of a certain greatness. + We may build up a conception of his powers if we mount + Rabelais upon Hudibras, lift him with the songfulness of + Shelley, give him a vein of Heinrich Heine, and cover him + with the mantle of the Anti-Jacobin, adding (that there may + be some Irish in him) a dash of Grattan, before he is in + motion."[50] + +Now the "Titanic pamphleteer" is more recognisable in Browning's most +vivid portrait than the "lyric poet of aerial delicacy" who in some +strange fashion, beyond his own wildest metamorphoses, distracted and +idealised the otherwise congruous figure. Not that this is overlooked +or forgotten: it is brought out admirably in several places, notably in +the fine song put into the mouth of Aristophanes at the close; but it is +scarcely so prominent as lovers of him could desire. It is possible, +too, that Browning somewhat over-accentuates his earnestness; not his +fundamental earnestness, but the extent to which he remembered and +exhibited it. "My soul bade fight": yes, but "laugh," too, and laugh for +laughter's as well as fight for principle's sake. This, again, is merely +a matter of detail, of shading. There can be little doubt that the whole +general outline of the man is right, none whatever that it is a living +and breathing outline. His apology is presented in Browning's familiar +manner of genuine feeling tempered with sophistry. As a piece of +dramatic art it is worthy to stand beside his famous earlier apologies; +and it has value too as a contribution to criticism, to a vital +knowledge of the Attic drama and the work and personality of +Aristophanes and Euripides, and to a better understanding of the drama +as a criticism of life. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 50: George Meredith, _On the Idea of Comedy_.] + + +23. THE INN ALBUM. + + [Published in November, 1875. (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol + XII. pp. 179-311.) Translated into German in 1877: "_Das + Fremdenbuch_ von Robert Browning. Aus dem Englischen von E. + Leo. Hamburg: W. Mauke Soehne."] + +The story of _The Inn Album_ is founded on fact, though it is not, like +_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_, an almost literal transcript from life. +The characters of the poem are four, all unnamed: a young "polished +snob," an impoverished middle-aged nobleman, a woman, whom he had +seduced, and who is now married to a clergyman; and a young girl, her +friend, who is betrothed to the younger of the two men. Of these +characters, the only one whom Browning has invented is the girl, through +whom, in his telling of the story, the tragedy is brought about. But he +has softened the repulsiveness of the original tale, and has also +brought it to a ringing close, not supplied by the bare facts. The +career of the elder man, which came to an end in 1839, did not by any +means terminate with the events recorded in the poem. + +_The Inn Album_ is a story of wrecked lives, lost hopes, of sordid and +gloomy villainies; with only light enough in its darkness to make that +darkness visible. It is profoundly sad; yet + + "These things are life: + And life, they say, is worthy of the Muse." + +It would also be profoundly depressing but for the art which has wrung a +grandeur out of grime, which has uplifted a story of mere vulgar evil to +the height of tragedy. Out of materials that might be melodramatic, +Browning has created a drama of humanity of which the impression is +single, intense and overpowering. Notwithstanding the clash of physical +catastrophe at the close, it is really a spiritual tragedy; and in it +Browning has achieved that highest of achievements: the right, vivid and +convincing presentment of human nature at its highest and lowest, at its +extremes of possible action and emotion. It is not perfect: the +colloquialism which truth and art alike demand sinks sometimes, though +not in the great scenes, to the confines of a bastard realism. But in +the main the poem is an excellent example of the higher imaginative +realism, of the close, yet poetic or creative, treatment of life. + +The four characters who play out the brief and fateful action of this +drama in narrative (the poem is more nearly related in form to the pure +drama than any other of Browning's poems not cast in the dramatic form) +are creations, three of them at least, in a deeper sense than the +characters in _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_, or than the character in +_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_. The "good gay girl," serving her +unconscious purpose in the tragic action, is properly enough a mere +sketch; but the two men and the elder woman are profoundly studied +characters, struck into life and revealed to themselves, to one another +and to us, at the supreme moment of a complex crisis. The elder man is +one of Browning's most finished studies, and, morally, one of the worst +characters even he has ever investigated. He is at once bad, clever and +cynical, the combination, of all others, most noxious and most hopeless. +He prides himself above all things on his intellect; and it is evident +that he has had the power to shape his course and to sway others. But +now, at fifty, he knows himself to be a failure. The cause of it he +traces mainly to a certain crisis of his life, when he won, only to +abuse, the affections of a splendidly beautiful woman, whose equal +splendour of soul he saw only when too late. It is significant of him +that he never views his conduct as a crime, a wrong to the woman, but as +a mistake on his part; and his attitude is not that of remorse, but of +one who has missed a chance. When, after four years, he meets +unexpectedly the woman whom he has wronged and lost, the good and evil +in him blaze out in a sudden and single flame of earnest appeal. In the +fact that this passionate appeal should be only half-sincere, or, if +sincere, then only for the moment, that to her who hears it, it should +seem wholly insincere, lies the intensity of the situation. + +The character of the woman is less complex but not less consistent and +convincing. Like the man, her development has been arrested and +distorted by the cause which has made him too a wreck. Her love was +single-hearted and over-mastering; its very force, in recoil, turned it +into hate. Yoked to a soulless husband, whom she has married half in +pity, half in despair, her whole nature has frozen; so that when we see +her she is, while physically the same, spiritually the ghost of her +former self. The subtlety of the picture is to show what she is now +while making equally plain what she was in the past. She is a figure not +so much pathetic as terrible. + +Pathetic, despite its outer comedy, is the figure of the young man, the +great rough, foolish, rich youth, tutored in evil by his Mephistopheles, +but only, we fancy, skin-deep in it, slow of thought but quick of +feeling, with his one and only love, never forgotten, and now found +again in the very woman whom his "friend" has wronged. His last speech, +with its clumsy yet genuine chivalry, its touching, broken words, its +fine feeling and faltering expression, is one of the most pathetic +things I know. Such a character, in its very absence of subtlety, is a +triumph of Browning's, to whom intellectual simplicity must be the +hardest of all dramatic assumptions. + + +24. PACCHIAROTTO, and how he worked in Distemper: with other poems. + + [Published in July, 1876 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XIV. + pp. 1-152).] + +_Pacchiarotto and other Poems_ is the first collection of miscellaneous +pieces since the _Dramatis Personae_ of 1864. It is somewhat of an +exception to the general rule of Browning's work. A large proportion of +it is critical rather than creative, a criticism of critics; perhaps it +would be at once more correct and concise to call it "Robert Browning's +Apology." _Pacchiarotto_, _At the "Mermaid"_, _House_, _Shop_ and +_Epilogue_, are all more or less personal utterances on art and the +artist, sometimes in a concrete and impersonal way, more often in a +somewhat combative and contemptuous spirit. The most important part of +the volume, however, is that which contains the two or three +monodramatic poems and the splendid ballad of the fleet, _Herve Riel_. + +The first and longest poem, _Of Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in +Distemper_, divides itself into two parts, the first being the humorous +rendering of a true anecdote told in Vasari, of Giacomo Pacchiarotto, a +Sienese painter of the sixteenth century; and the second, a still more +mirthful onslaught of the poet upon his critics. The story-- + + "Begun with a chuckle, + And throughout timed by raps of the knuckle,"-- + +is funny enough in itself, and it points an excellent moral; but it is +chiefly interesting as a whimsical freak of verse, an extravaganza in +staccato. The rhyming is of its kind almost incomparable as a sustained +effort in double and triple grotesque rhymes. Not even in _Hudibras_, +not even in _Don Juan_, is there anything like them. I think all other +experiments of the kind, however successful as a whole, let you see now +and then that the author has had a hard piece of work to keep up his +appearance of ease. In _Pacchiarotto_ there is no evidence of the +strain. The masque of critics, under the cunning disguise of May-day +chimney-sweepers:-- + + "'We critics as sweeps out your chimbly! + Much soot to remove from your flue, sir! + Who spares coal in kitchen an't you, sir! + And neighbours complain it's no joke, sir! + You ought to consume your own smoke, sir!'"-- + +this after-part, overflowing with jolly humour and comic scorn, a besom +wielded by a laughing giant, is calculated to put the victims in better +humour with their executioner than with themselves. Browning has had to +endure more than most men at the hands of the critics, and he takes in +this volume, not in this poem only, a full and a characteristically +good-humoured revenge. The _Epilogue_ follows up the pendant to +_Pacchiarotto_. There is the same jolly humour, the same combative +self-assertiveness, the same retort _Tu quoque_, with a yet more earnest +and pungent enforcement. + + "Wine, pulse in might from me! + It may never emerge in must from vat, + Never fill cask nor furnish can, + Never end sweet, which strong began-- + God's gift to gladden the heart of man; + But spirit's at proof, I promise that! + No sparing of juice spoils what should be + Fit brewage--wine for me. + + Man's thoughts and loves and hates! + Earth is my vineyard, these grow there: + From grape of the ground, I made or marred + My vintage; easy the task or hard, + Who set it--his praise be my reward! + Earth's yield! Who yearn for the Dark Blue Sea's + Let them 'lay, pray, bray'[51]--the addle-pates! + Mine be Man's thoughts, loves, hates!" + +Despite its humorous expression, the view of poetic art contained in +these verses is both serious and significant. It is a frank (if defiant) +confession of faith. + +_At the "Mermaid"_, a poem of characteristic energy and directness, is a +protest against the supposition or assumption that the personality and +personal views and opinions of a poet are necessarily reflected in his +dramatic work. It protests, at the same time, against the sham +melancholy and pseudo-despair which Byron made fashionable in poetry:-- + + "Have you found your life distasteful? + My life did and does smack sweet. + Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? + Mine I saved and hold complete. + + Do your joys with age diminish? + When mine fail me, I'll complain. + Must in death your daylight finish? + My sun sets to rise again. + + * * * * * + + I find earth not gray but rosy, + Heaven not grim but fair of hue. + Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. + Do I stand and stare? All's blue." + +_House_ confirms or continues the primary contention in _At the +"Mermaid"_: this time by the image of a House of Life, which some poets +may choose to set on view: "for a ticket apply to the Publisher." +Browning not merely denounces but denies the so-called self-revelations +of poets. He answers Wordsworth's + + "With this same key + Shakespeare unlocked his heart," + +by the characteristic retort:-- + + "Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!" + +In _Shop_ we have another keen piece of criticism: a protest against +poets who make their shop their home, and their song mere ware for sale. + +After the personal and critical section we pass to half-a-dozen lyrics: +_Fears and Scruples_, a covert and startling poem, a doctrine embodied +in a character; then two beautiful little _Pisgah-Sights_, a dainty +experiment in metre, and in substance the expression of Browning's +favourite lesson, the worth of earth and the need of the mystery of +life; _Appearances_, a couple of stanzas whose telling simplicity +recalls the lovely earlier lilt, _Misconceptions; Natural Magic_ and +_Magical Nature_, two magical snatches, as perfect as the "first fine +careless rapture" of the earlier lyrics. I quote the latter:-- + + "MAGICAL NATURE. + + 1. + + Flower--I never fancied, jewel--I profess you! + Bright I see and soft I feel the outside of a flower. + Save but glow inside and--jewel, I should guess you, + Dim to sight and rough to touch: the glory is the dower. + + 2. + + You, forsooth, a flower? Nay, my love, a jewel-- + Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your prime! + Time may fray the flower-face: kind be time or cruel, + Jewel, from each facet, flash your laugh at time!" + +But the finest lyric in the volume is _St. Martin's Summer_, a poem +fantastically tragic, hauntingly melodious, mysterious and chilling as +the ghostly visitants at late love's pleasure-bower of whom it sings. I +do not think Browning has written many lyrical poems of more brilliant +and original quality. _Bifurcation_, as its name denotes, is a study of +divided paths in life, the paths of Love and Duty chosen severally by +two lovers whose epitaphs Browning gives. The moral problem, which is +sinner, which is saint, is stated and left open. The poem is an etching, +sharp, concise and suggestive. _Numpholeptos_ (nymph-entranced) has all +the mystery, the vague charm, the lovely sadness, of a picture of Burne +Jones. Its delicately fantastic colouring, its dreamy passion, and the +sad and quiet sweetness of its verse, have some affinity with _St. +Martin's Summer_, but are unlike anything else in Browning. It is the +utterance of a hopeless-hoping and pathetically resigned love: the love +of a merely human man for an angelically pure and unhumanly cold woman, +who requires in him an unattainable union of immaculate purity and +complete experience of life. + + "Still you stand, still you listen, still you smile! + Still melts your moonbeam through me, white awhile, + Softening, sweetening, till sweet and soft + Increase so round this heart of mine, that oft + I could believe your moonbeam smile has past + The pallid limit and, transformed at last, + Lies, sunlight and salvation--warms the soul + It sweetens, softens! + + * * * * * + + What means the sad slow silver smile above + My clay but pity, pardon?--at the best, + But acquiescence that I take my rest, + Contented to be clay, while in your heaven + The sun reserves love for the Spirit-Seven + Companioning God's throne they lamp before, + --Leaves earth a mute waste only wandered o'er + By that pale soft sweet disempassioned moon + Which smiles me slow forgiveness! Such the boon + I beg? Nay, dear ... + Love, the love whole and sole without alloy!" + +The action of this soul's tragedy takes place under "the light that +never was on sea or land": it is the tragedy of a soul, but of a +disembodied soul. + +_A Forgiveness_ is a drama of this world. It is the legitimate successor +of the monologues of _Men and Women_; it may, indeed, be most precisely +compared with an earlier monologue, _My Last Duchess_; and it is, like +these, the concentrated essence of a complete tragedy. Like all the best +of Browning's poems, it is thrown into a striking situation, and +developed from this central point. It is the story of a love merged in +contempt, quenched in hate, and rekindled in a fatal forgiveness, told +in confession to a monk by the man whom the monk has wronged. The +personage who speaks is one of the most sharply-outlined characters in +Browning: a clear, cold, strong-willed man, implacable in love or hate. +He tells his story in a quiet, measured, utterly unemotional manner, +with reflective interruptions and explanations, the acute analysis of a +merciless intellect; leading gradually up to a crisis only to be matched +by the very finest crises in Browning:-- + + "Immersed + In thought so deeply, Father? Sad, perhaps? + For whose sake, hers or mine or his who wraps + --Still plain I seem to see!--about his head + The idle cloak,--about his heart (instead + Of cuirass) some fond hope he may elude + My vengeance in the cloister's solitude? + Hardly, I think! As little helped his brow + The cloak then, Father--as your grate helps now!" + +The poem is by far the greatest thing in the volume; it is, indeed, one +of the very finest examples of Browning's psychological subtlety and +concentrated dramatic power.[52] + +The ballad of _Herve Riel_ which has no rival but Tennyson's _Revenge_ +among modern sea-ballads, was written at Croisic, 30th September 1867, +and was published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for March, 1871 in, order +that the L100 which had been offered for it might be sent to the Paris +Relief Fund. It may be named, with the "Ride from Ghent to Aix," as a +proof of how simply and graphically Browning can write if he likes; how +promptly he can stir the blood and thrill the heart. The facts of the +story, telling how, after the battle of the Hogue, a simple Croisic +sailor saved all that was left of the French fleet by guiding the +vessels into the harbour, are given in the Croisic guide-books; and +Browning has followed them in everything but the very effective end:-- + + "'Since 'tis ask and have, I may-- + Since the others go ashore-- + Come! A good whole holiday! + Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!' + That he asked and that he got,--nothing more." + +"Ce brave homme," says the account, "ne demanda pour recompense d'un +service aussi signale, qu'un _conge absolu_ pour rejoindre sa femme, +qu'il nomma la Belle Aurore." + +_Cenciaja_, the only blank verse piece in the volume, is of the nature +of a note or appendix to Shelley's "superb achievement" _The Cenci_. It +serves to explain the allusion to the case of Paolo Santa Croce +(_Cenci_, Act V. sc. iv.). Browning obtained the facts from a MS. volume +of memorials of Italian crime, in the possession of Sir John Simeon, who +published it in the series of the Philobiblon Society.[53] + +_Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial_, a grotesque and +humorously-told "reminiscence of A.D. 1670," is, up to stanza 35, the +versification of an anecdote recorded by Baldinucci, the artist and art +critic (1624-1696), in his History of Painters. The incident with which +it concludes is imaginary. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 51: The jocose vindictiveness with which Browning returns +again and again to the assault of the bad grammar and worse rhetoric of +Byron's once so much belauded address to the ocean is very amusing. The +above is only one out of four or five instances.] + +[Footnote 52: It is worth comparing _A Forgiveness_ with a poem of very +similar motive by Leconte de Lisle: _Le Jugement de Komor_ (_Poemes +Barbares_). Each is a fine example of its author, in just those +qualities for which both poets are eminent: originality and subtlety of +subject, pregnant picturesqueness of phrase and situation, and grimly +tragic power. The contrast no less than the likeness which exists +between them will be evident on a comparison of the two poems.] + +[Footnote 53: In reference to the title _Cenciaja_, and the Italian +proverb which follows it, _Ogni cencio vuol entrare in bucato_, Browning +stated, in a letter to Mr. H.B. Forman (printed in his _Shelley_, 1880, +ii. 419), that "'aia' is generally an accumulative yet depreciative +termination: 'Cenciaja'--a bundle of rags--a trifle. The proverb means, +'Every poor creature will be pressing into the company of his betters,' +and I used it to deprecate the notion that I intended anything of the +kind."] + + +25. THE AGAMEMNON OF AESCHYLUS. + + [Published in October, 1877 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. + XIII. pp. 259-357).] + +Browning prefaces his transcript of the _Agamemnon_ with a brief +introduction, in which he thus sets forth his theory of translation:-- + + "If, because of the immense fame of the following Tragedy, I + wished to acquaint myself with it, and could only do so by + the help of a translator, I should require him to be literal + at every cost save that of absolute violence to our language. + The use of certain allowable constructions which, happening + to be out of daily favour, are all the more appropriate to + archaic workmanship, is no violence: but I would be tolerant + for once,--in the case of so immensely famous an + original,--of even a clumsy attempt to furnish me with the + very turn of each phrase in as Greek a fashion as English + will bear: while, with respect to amplifications and + embellishments, anything rather than, with the good farmer, + experience that most signal of mortifications, 'to gape for + AEschylus and get Theognis.' I should especially + decline,--what may appear to brighten up a passage,--the + employment of a new word for some old one--[Greek: phonos], + or [Greek: megas], or [Greek: telos], with its congeners, + recurring four times in three lines.... Further,--if I + obtained a mere strict bald version of thing by thing, or at + least word pregnant with thing, I should hardly look for an + impossible transmission of the reputed magniloquence and + sonority of the Greek; and this with the less regret, + inasmuch as there is abundant musicality elsewhere, but + nowhere else than in his poem the ideas of the poet. And + lastly, when presented with these ideas I should expect the + result to prove very hard reading indeed if it were meant to + resemble AEschylus." + +Every condition here laid down has been carried out with unflinching +courage. Browning has rendered word by word and line by line; with, +indeed, some slight inevitable expansion in the rhymed choruses, very +slight, infinitely slighter than every other translator has found +needful. Throughout, there are numberless instances of minute and happy +accuracy of phrase, re-creations of the very thoughts of AEschylus. An +incomparable dexterity is shown in fitting phrase upon phrase, forcing +line to bear the exact weight of line, rendering detail by detail. But +for this very reason, as a consequence of this very virtue, there is no +denying that Browning's version is certainly "very hard reading," so +hard reading that it is sometimes necessary to turn to the Greek in +order to fully understand the English. Browning has anticipated, but not +altogether answered, this objection. For, besides those passages which +in their fidelity to every "minute particular," simply reproduce the +obscurity of the original, there is much that seems either obscure or +harsh, and is so simply because it gives "the turn of each phrase," not +merely "in as Greek a fashion as English will bear," but beyond it: +phrases which are native to Greek, foreign to English. The choruses, +which are attempted in metre as close as English can come to Greek +metre, suggest the force, but not the dignity of the original; and seem +often to be content to drop much of the poem by the way in getting at +"the ideas of the poet." It is a Titan's version of an Olympian, and it +is thus no doubt the scholar rather than the general reader who will +find most to please him in "this attempt to give our language the +similitude of Greek by close and sustained grappling, word to word, with +so sublime and difficult a masterpiece."[54] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 54: J.A. Symonds, _Academy_, Nov. 10, 1877.] + + +26. LA SAISIAZ: THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC. + + [Published in May, 1878. _La Saisiaz_ (written November, + 1877), pp. 1-82; _The Two Poets of Croisic_, pp. 83-201. + (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XIV. pp. 153-204, 205-279).] + +In _La Saisiaz_ Browning reasons of God and the soul, of life here and +of life to come. The poem is addressed to a friend of old date, who died +suddenly while she was staying with Browning and his sister, in the +summer of 1877, at a villa called La Saisiaz (The Sun) in the mountains +near Geneva. The first twenty pages tell the touching story; the rest of +the poem records the argument which it called forth. "Was ending ending +once and always, when you died?" Browning asks himself, and he attempts +to answer the question, not on traditional grounds, or on the authority +of a creed, but by honest reasoning. He assumes two postulates, and two +only, that God exists and that the soul exists; and he proceeds to show, +very forcibly, the unsatisfactory nature of life if consciousness ends +with death, and its completely satisfactory nature if the soul's +existence continues. + + "Without the want, + Life, now human, would be brutish: just that hope, however scant, + Makes the actual life worth leading; take the hope therein away, + All we have to do is surely not endure another day. + This life has its hopes for this life, hopes that promise joy: + life done-- + Out of all the hopes, how many had complete fulfilment? none. + 'But the soul is not the body': and the breath is not the flute; + Both together make the music: either marred and all is mute." + +This hypothesis is purely personal, and as such he holds it. But, to his +own mind at least, he finds that + + "Sorrow did and joy did nowise,--life well weighed--preponderate. + By necessity ordained thus? I shall bear as best I can; + By a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent? No, as I am man!" + +Yet, if only the assumption of a future life may be made, he will +thankfully acquiesce in an earthly failure, which will then be only +relative, and the earnest of a heavenly gain. Having arrived at this +point, Browning proceeds to argue out the question yet further, under +the form of a dialogue between "Fancy" (or the soul's instinct) and +"Reason." He here shows that not merely is life explicable only as a +probation, but that probation is only possible under our present +conditions, in our present uncertainty. If it were made certain that +there is a future life in which we shall be punished or rewarded, +according as we do evil or good, we should have no choice of action, +hence no virtue in doing what were so manifestly to our own advantage. +Again, if we were made certain of this future life of higher faculties +and greater happiness, should we hesitate to rush to it at the first +touch of sorrow, before our time? He ends, therefore, with a "hope--no +more than hope, but hope--no less than hope," which amounts practically +to the assurance that, as he puts it in the last line-- + + "He at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God!" + +_The Two Poets of Croisic_ is a comedy in narrative, dealing mainly with +the true tale of Paul Desforges-Maillard, whose story furnished Piron +with the matter of his _Metromanie_. The first of the "two poets" is one +Rene Gentilhomme, born 1610, once page to the Prince of Conde, +afterwards court-poet to Louis XIII. His story, by an easy transition, +leads into the richer record of Desforges, which Browning gives with not +a few variations, evidently intentional, from the facts of the case. +Paul-Briand Maillard, self-surnamed Desforges, was born at Croisic, +April 24, 1699: he died at the age of seventy-three. His memory has +survived that of better poets on account of the famous hoax which he +played on the Paris of his day, including no less a person than +Voltaire. The first part of the story is told pretty literally in +Browning's pages:--how Desforges, unsuccessful as a poet in his own +person, assumed the title of a woman, and as Mlle. Malcrais de la Vigne +(his verses being copied by an obliging cousin, Mme. Mondoret) obtained +an immediate and astonishing reputation. The sequel is somewhat altered. +Voltaire's revenge when the cheat was discovered, so far from being +prompt and immediate, was treacherously dissimulated, and its +accomplishment deferred for more than one long-subsequent occasion. +Desforges lived to have the last word, in assisting at the first +representation of Piron's _Metromanie_, in which Voltaire's humiliation +and the Croisic poet's clever trick are perpetuated for as long as that +sprightly and popular comedy shall be remembered. + +In his graphic and condensed version of the tale, Browning has used a +poet's licence to heighten the effect and increase the piquancy of the +narrative. The poem is written in _ottava rima_, but, very singularly, +there is not one double rhyme from beginning to end. It is difficult to +see why Browning, a finer master of grotesque compound rhymes than +Byron, should have so carefully avoided them in a metre which, as in +Byron's hands, owes no little of its effect to a clever introduction of +such rhymes. The lines (again of set purpose, it is evident) overlap one +another without an end-pause where in Italian it is almost universal, +namely, after the sixth line. The result of the innovation is far from +successful: it destroys the flow of the verse and gives it an air of +abruptness. Of the liveliness, vivacity and pungency of the tale, no +idea can be given by quotation: two of the stanzas in which the moral is +enforced, the two finest, perhaps, in the poem, are, however, severable +from their context:-- + + "Who knows most, doubts most; entertaining hope, + Means recognizing fear; the keener sense + Of all comprised within our actual scope + Recoils from aught beyond earth's dim and dense. + Who, grown familiar with the sky, will grope + Henceforward among groundlings? That's offence + Just as indubitably: stars abound + O'erhead, but then--what flowers made glad the ground! + + So, force is sorrow, and each sorrow, force: + What then? since Swiftness gives the charioteer + The palm, his hope be in the vivid horse + Whose neck God clothed with thunder, not the steer + Sluggish and safe! Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse, + Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear, + Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face + Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race!" + +The poem is followed by an exquisite Epilogue, one of the most +delicately graceful and witty and tender of Browning's lyrics. The +briefer Prologue is not less beautiful:-- + + "Such a starved bank of moss + Till, that May-morn, + Blue ran the flash across: + Violets were born! + + Sky--what a scowl of cloud + Till, near and far, + Ray on ray split the shroud: + Splendid, a star! + + World--how it walled about + Life with disgrace + Till God's own smile came out: + That was thy face!" + + +27. DRAMATIC IDYLS. + + [Published in May 1879 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XV. pp. + 1-80).] + +In the _Dramatic Idyls_ Browning may almost be said to have broken new +ground. His idyls are short poems of passionate action, presenting in a +graphic and concentrated way a single episode or tragic crisis. Not only +by their concreteness and popular effectiveness, their extraordinary +vigour of conception and expression, are they distinguished from much of +Browning's later writing: they have in addition this significant novelty +of interest, that here for the first time Browning has found subjects +for his poetry among the poor, that here for the first time he has +painted, with all his close and imaginative realism, the human comedy of +the lower classes. That he has never done so before, though rather +surprising, comes, I suppose, from his preponderating interest in +intellectual problems, and from the difficulty of finding such among +what Leon Cladel has called _tragiques histoires plebeiennes_. But the +happy instinct has at last come to him, and we are permitted to watch +the humours of that delicious pair of sinners saved, "Publican Black Ned +Bratts and Tabby his big wife too," as a relief to the less pleasant and +profitable spectacle of His Majesty Napoleon III., or of even the two +poets of Croisic. All the poems in the volume (with the exception of a +notable and noble protest against vivisection, in the form of a touching +little true tale of a dog) are connected together by a single motive, on +which every poem plays a new variation. The motto of the book might +be:-- + + "There is a tide in the affairs of men, + Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; + Omitted, all the voyage of his life + Is bound in shallows and in miseries." + +This idea of a turning-point or testing-time in the lives of men is more +or less expressed or implied in very much of Browning's poetry, but +nowhere is it expressed so completely, so concisely, or so +consecutively, as here. In _Martin Relph_ (which "embodies," says Mrs. +Orr, "a vague remembrance of something read by Mr. Browning when he was +himself a boy") we have an instance of the tide "omitted," and a +terrible picture of the remorse which follows. Martin Relph has the +chance presented to him of saving two lives, that of the girl he loves +and of his rival whom she loves. The chance is but of an instant's +duration. He hesitates, and the moment is for ever lost. In that one +moment his true soul, with its instinctive selfishness, has leapt to +light, and the knowledge of it torments him with an inextinguishable +agony. In _Ivan Ivanovitch_ (founded on a popular Russian story of a +woman throwing her children to the wolves to save her own life) we have +a twofold illustration of the theme. The testing-moment comes to the +mother, Louscha, and again to Ivan Ivanovitch. While the woman fails +terribly in her duty, and meets a terrible reward, the man rises to a +strange and awful nobility of action, and "acts for God." _Halbert and +Hob_, a grim little tragedy (suggested by a passage in the Nicomachean +Ethics of Aristotle), presents us with the same idea in a singularly +concrete form. The crisis has a saving effect, but it is an incomplete, +an unwilling or irresistible, act of grace, and it bears but sorry +fruit. In _Ned Bratts_ (suggested by the story of "Old Tod," in Bunyan's +_Life and Death of Mr. Badman_[55]) we have a prompt and quite hurried +taking of the tide: the sudden conversion, repentance, and expiation of +the "worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged." _Pheidippides_ (the +legend of the runner who brought the news of Marathon to Athens, and +died in the utterance) illustrates the idea in a more obvious but less +individual way. + +Perhaps for sheer perfection of art, for fundamental tragedy, for a +quality of compassionate and unflinching imaginative vision, nothing in +the book quite comes up to _Halbert and Hob_. There is hardly in +Browning a more elemental touch than that of: "A boy threw stones: he +picked them up and stored them in his breast." _Martin Relph_, besides +being a fine tale splendidly told, is among the most masterly of all +renderings of remorse, of the terrors and torments of conscience. Every +word is like a drop of agony wrung out of a tortured soul. _Ivan +Ivanovitch_ is, as a narrative, still finer: as a piece of story-telling +Browning has perhaps never excelled it. Nothing could be more graphic +and exciting than the description of the approach of the wolves: the +effective change from iambs to anapaests gives their very motion. + + "Was that--wind? + Anyhow, Droug starts, stops, back go his ears, he snuffs, + Snorts,--never such a snort! then plunges, knows the sough's + Only the wind: yet, no--our breath goes up too straight! + Still the low sound,--less low, loud, louder, at a rate + There's no mistaking more! Shall I lean out--look--learn + The truth whatever it be? Pad, pad! At last, I turn-- + 'Tis the regular pad of the wolves in pursuit of the life in + the sledge! + An army they are: close-packed they press like the thrust of a wedge: + They increase as they hunt: for I see, through the pine-trunks + ranged each side, + Slip forth new fiend and fiend, make wider and still more wide + The four-footed steady advance. The foremost--none may pass: + They are elders and lead the line, eye and eye--green-glowing brass! + But a long way distant still. Droug, save us! He does his best: + Yet they gain on us, gain, till they reach,--one reaches.... + How utter the rest?" + +The setting of the story, the vast motionless Russian landscape, the +village life, the men and women, has a singular expressiveness; and the +revelation of the woman's character, the exposure of her culpable +weakness, seen in the very excuses by which she endeavours to justify +herself, is brought about with singularly masterly art. There are +moments of essential drama, not least significantly in the last lines, +above all in those two pregnant words: "_How otherwise_? asked he." + +_Ned Bratts_ takes almost the same position among Browning's humorous +poems that _Ivan Ivanovitch_ does among his narratives. It is a whole +comedy in itself. Surroundings and atmosphere are called up with perfect +art and the subtlest sympathy. What opening could be a better +preparation for the heated and grotesque utterances of Ned Bratts than +the wonderful description of the hot day? It serves to put us into +precisely the right mood for seeing and feeling the comic tragedy that +follows. Dickens himself never painted a more riotously realistic scene, +nor delineated a better ruffian than the murderous rascal precariously +converted by Bunyan and his book. + +In the midst of these realistic tragedies and comedies, _Pheidippides_, +with its clear Greek outline and charm and heroical grace, stands finely +contrasted. The measure is of Browning's invention, and is finely +appropriate to the character of the poem. + + "So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of salute + Is still 'Rejoice!'--his word which brought rejoicing indeed. + So is Pheidippides happy for ever,--the noble strong man + Who could race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a God + loved so well + He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell + Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began, + So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter be mute: + 'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 55: At a summer Assizes holden at _Hartfort_, while the Judge +was sitting upon the Bench, comes this old _Tod_ into the Court, +cloathed in a green Suit with his Leathern Girdle in his hand, his bosom +open, and all on a dung sweat, as if he had run for his Life; and, being +come in, he spake aloud as follows: _My Lord_, said he, _Here is the +veryest Rogue that breaths upon the face of the earth, ... My Lord, +there has not been a Robbery committed this many years, within so many +miles of this place but I have either been at it or privy to it._ + +"The Judge thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference with +some of the Justices, they agreed to Indict him; and so they did, of +several felonious Actions; to all of which he heartily confessed Guilty, +and so was hanged with his wife at the same time.... + +"As for the truth of this Story, the Relator told me that he was at the +same time himself in the Court, and stood within less than two yards of +old _Tod_, when he heard him aloud to utter the words."--Bunyan's _Life +and Death of Mr. Badman_, 1680.] + + +28. DRAMATIC IDYLS. Second Series. + + [Published in July, 1880. _Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XV. + pp. 81-163.] + +The second series of _Dramatic Idyls_ is bound together, like the first, +though somewhat less closely, by a leading idea, which, whether +consciously or not, is hinted at in a pointed little prologue: the idea +of the paradox of human action, and the apparent antagonism between +motive and result. The volume differs considerably from its precursor, +and it contains nothing quite equal to the best of the earlier poems. +There is more variety, perhaps, but the human interest is less intense, +the stories less moving and absorbing. With less humour, there is a much +more pronounced element of the grotesque. And most prominent of all is +that characteristic of Browning which a great critic has called agility +of intellect. + +The first poem, _Echetlos_, is full of heroical ardour and firm, manly +vigour of movement. Like _Pheidippides_, it is a legend of Marathon. It +sings of the mysterious helper who appeared to the Greeks, in rustic +garb and armed with a plough. + + "But one man kept no rank and his sole arm plied no spear, + As a flashing came and went, and a form i' the van, the rear, + Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here. + + * * * * * + + Did the steady phalanx falter? To the rescue, at the need, + The clown was ploughing Persia, clearing Greek earth of weed, + As he routed through the Sakian and rooted up the Mede." + +After the battle, the man was nowhere to be seen, and inquiry was made +of the oracle. + + "How spake the Oracle? 'Care for no name at all! + Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call + The Holder of the Ploughshare. The great deed ne'er grows small.'" + +With _Echetlos_ may be mentioned the Virgilian legend of _Pan and Luna_, +a piece of graceful fancy, with its exquisite burden, that + + "Verse of five words, each a boon: + Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon." + +_Clive_, the most popular in style, and certainly one of the finest +poems in the volume, is a dramatic monologue very much akin, in subject, +treatment and form, to the narratives in the first series. The story +deals with an episode in the life of Clive, when, as a young man, he +first proved his courage in the face of a bully whom he had caught +cheating at cards. The poem is full of fire and brilliance, and is a +subtle analysis and presentation of the character of Clive. Its +structure is quite in Browning's best manner: a central situation, +illumined by "what double and treble reflection and refraction!" Like +Balzac (whose _Honorine_, for instance, is constructed on precisely +similar lines) Browning often increases the effect of his picture by +setting it in a framework, more or less elaborate, by placing the +central narrative in the midst of another slighter and secondary one, +related to it in some subtle way. The story of _Clive_ obtains emphasis, +and is rendered more impressive, by the lightly but strongly sketched-in +figure of the old veteran who tells the tale. Scarcely anything in the +poem seems to me so fine as this pathetic portrait of the lonely old +man, sitting, like Colonel Newcome, solitary in his house among his +memories, with his boy away: "I and Clive were friends." + +The Arabian tale of _Muleykeh_ is the most perfect and pathetic piece in +the volume. It is told in singularly fine verse, and in remarkably +clear, simple, yet elevated style. The end is among the great heroic +things in poetry. Hoseyn, though he has neither herds nor flocks, is the +richest and happiest of men, for he possesses the peerless mare, +Muleykeh the Pearl, whose speed has never been outstripped. Duhl, the +son of Sheyban, who envies Hoseyn and has endeavoured by every means, +but without success, to obtain the mare, determines at last to steal +her. He enters Hoseyn's tent noiselessly by night, saddles Muleykeh, and +gallops away. In an instant Hoseyn is on the back of Buheyseh, the +Pearl's sister, only less fleet than herself, and in pursuit. + + "And Hoseyn--his blood turns flame, he has learned long since + to ride, + And Buheyseh does her part,--they gain--they are gaining fast + On the fugitive pair, and Duhl has Ed-Darraj to cross and quit, + And to reach the ridge El-Saban,--no safety till that be spied! + And Buheyseh is, bound by bound, but a horse-length off at last, + For the Pearl has missed the tap of the heel, the touch of the bit. + + She shortens her stride, she chafes at her rider the strange + and queer: + Buheyseh is mad with hope--beat sister she shall and must, + Though Duhl, of the hand and heel so clumsy, she has to thank. + She is near now, nose by tail--they are neck by croup--joy! fear! + What folly makes Hoseyn shout 'Dog Duhl, Damned son of the Dust, + Touch the right ear and press with your foot my Pearl's left flank!' + + And Duhl was wise at the word, and Muleykeh as prompt perceived + Who was urging redoubled pace, and to hear him was to obey, + And a leap indeed gave she, and evanished for evermore. + And Hoseyn looked one long last look as who, all bereaved, + Looks, fain to follow the dead so far as the living may: + Then he turned Buheyseh's neck slow homeward, weeping sore. + + And, lo, in the sunrise, still sat Hoseyn upon the ground + Weeping: and neighbours came, the tribesmen of Benu-Asad + In the vale of green Er-Rass, and they questioned him of his grief; + And he told them from first to last how, serpent-like, Duhl had wound + His way to the nest, and how Duhl rode like an ape, so bad! + And how Buheyseh did wonders, yet Pearl remained with the thief. + + And they jeered him, one and all: 'Poor Hoseyn is crazed past hope! + How else had he wrought himself his ruin, in fortune's spite! + To have simply held the tongue were a task for a boy or girl, + And here were Muleykeh again, the eyed like an antelope, + The child of his heart by day, the wife of his breast by night!' + 'And the beaten in speed!' wept Hoseyn: 'You never have loved + my Pearl!'" + +There remain _Pietro of Abano_[56] and _Doctor_ ----. The latter, a +Talmudic legend, is probably the poorest of Browning's poems: it is +rather farce than humour. The former is a fine piece of genuine +grotesque art, full of pungent humour, acuteness, worldly wisdom, and +clever phrasing and rhyming. It is written in an elaborate comic metre +of Browning's invention, indicated at the end by eight bars of music. +The poem is one of the most characteristic examples of that "Teutonic +grotesque, which lies in the expression of deep ideas through fantastic +forms," a grotesque of noble and cultivated art, of which Browning is as +great a master in poetry as Carlyle in prose. + +The volume ends with a charming lyrical epilogue, not without its +personal bearing, though it has sometimes, very unfairly, been +represented as a piece of mere self-gratulation. + + "Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters," + +Browning tells us in some album-verses which have found their way into +print, and he naturally complains that what he wrote of Dante should be +foisted upon himself. Indeed, he has quite as much the characteristics +of the "spontaneous" as of the "brooding" poet of his parable. + + "'Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: + Soil so quick-receptive,--not one feather-seed, + Not one flower-dust fell, but straight its fall awoke + Vitalising virtue: song would song succeed + Sudden as spontaneous--prove a poet soul!' + Indeed? + Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: + Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage + Vainly both expend,--few flowers awaken there: + Quiet in its cleft broods--what the after age + Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 56: Pietro of Abano was an Italian physician, alchemist and +philosopher, born at Abano, near Padua, in 1246, died about 1320. He had +the reputation of a wizard, and was imprisoned by the Inquisition. He +was condemned to be burnt; he died in prison, and his dead body was +ordered to be burnt; but as that had been taken away by his friends, the +Inquisition burnt his portrait. His reputed antipathy to milk and +cheese, with its natural analogy, suggested the motive of the poem. The +book referred to in it is his principal work, _Conciliator +differentiarum quae inter philosophos et medicos versantur_. Mantua, +1472.] + + +29. JOCOSERIA. + + [Published in March, 1883 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, pp. + 165-266).] + +The name _Jocoseria_ (mentioned by Browning in its original connection, +Melander's "Jocoseria," in the notes to _Paracelsus_) expresses very +cleverly the particular nature of the volume, in its close union and +fusion of grave and gay. The book is not, as a whole, so intense or so +brilliant as the first and second series of _Dramatic Idyls_, but one +or two of the shorter poems are, in their way, hardly excelled by +anything in either volume. + +The longest poem, though by no means the best is the imaginary +Rabbinical legend of _Jochanan Hakkadosh_ (John the Saint), which +Browning, with a touch of learned quizzicalness, states in his note[57] +"to have no better authority than that of the treatise, existing +dispersedly, in fragments of Rabbinical writing, [the name, 'Collection +of many Lies,' follows in Hebrew,] from which I might have helped myself +more liberally." It is written in _terza rima_, like _Doctor_ ---- in +the second series of _Dramatic Idyls_, and is supposed to be told by +"the Jew aforesaid" in order to "make amends and justify our Mishna." +That it may to some extent do, but it seems to me that its effectiveness +as an example of the serio-grotesque style would have been heightened by +some metre less sober and placid than the _terza rima_; by rhythm and +rhyme as audacious and characteristic as the rhythm and the rhymes of +_Pietro of Abano_, for instance. + +_Ixion_, a far finer poem than _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, is, no doubt, an +equally sincere utterance of personal belief. The poem is a monologue, +in unrhymed hexameters and pentameters. It presents the old myth in a +new light. Ixion is represented as the Prometheus of man's righteous +revolt against the tyranny of an unjust God. The poem is conceived in a +spirit of intense earnestness, and worked out with great vigour and +splendour of diction. For passion and eloquence nothing in it surpasses +the finely culminating last lines, of which I can but tear a few, only +too barbarously, from their context:-- + + "What is the influence, high o'er Hell, that turns to a rapture + Pain--and despair's murk mists blends in a rainbow of hope? + What is beyond the obstruction, stage by stage tho' it baffle? + Back must I fall, confess 'Ever the weakness I fled'? + No, for beyond, far, far is a Purity all-unobstructed! + Zeus was Zeus--not Man: wrecked by his weakness I whirl. + Out of the wreck I rise--past Zeus to the Potency o'er him! + I--to have hailed him my friend! I--to have clasped her--my love! + Pallid birth of my pain,--where light, where light is, aspiring + Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the godship and sink!" + +While _Ixion_ is the noblest and most heroically passionate of these +poems, _Adam, Lilith, and Eve_, is the most pregnant and suggestive. +Browning has rarely excelled it in certain qualities, hardly found in +any other poet, of pungency, novelty, and penetrating bitter-sweetness. + + "ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE. + + One day it thundered and lightened. + Two women, fairly frightened, + Sank to their knees, transformed, transfixed, + At the feet of the man who sat betwixt; + And 'Mercy!' cried each, 'If I tell the truth + Of a passage in my youth!' + + Said This: 'Do you mind the morning + I met your love with scorning? + As the worst of the venom left my lips, + I thought, "If, despite this lie, he strips + The mask from my soul with a kiss--I crawl, + His slave,--soul, body and all!"' + + Said That: 'We stood to be married; + The priest, or someone, tarried; + "If Paradise-door prove locked?" smiled you. + I thought, as I nodded, smiling too, + "Did one, that's away, arrive--nor late + Nor soon should unlock Hell's gate!"' + + It ceased to lighten and thunder. + Up started both in wonder, + Looked round, and saw that the sky was clear, + Then laughed, 'Confess you believed us, Dear!' + 'I saw through the joke!' the man replied + They seated themselves beside." + +Much of the same power is shown in _Cristina and Monaldeschi_,[58] a +dramatic monologue with all the old vigour of Browning's early work of +that kind; not only keen and subtle, but charged with a sharp electrical +quality, which from time to time darts out with a sudden and unexpected +shock. The style and tone are infused with a peculiar fierce irony. The +metre is rapid and stinging, like the words of the vindictive queen as +she hurries her treacherous victim into the hands of the assassins. +There is dramatic invention in the very cadence: + + "Ah, but how each loved each, Marquis! + Here's the gallery they trod + Both together, he her god, + She his idol,--lend your rod, + Chamberlain!--ay, there they are--'_Quis + Separabit_?'--plain those two + Touching words come into view, + Apposite for me and you!" + +_Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli_, a dramatic lyric of three verses, the +pathetic utterance of an unloved loving woman's heart, is not dissimilar +in style to _Cristina and Monaldeschi_. It would be unjust to Fuseli to +name him Bottom, but only fair to Mary Wollstonecraft to call her +Titania. + +Of the remaining poems, _Donald_ ("a true story, repeated to Mr. +Browning by one who had heard it from its hero, the so-called Donald, +himself,"[59]) is a ballad, not at all in Browning's best style, but +certainly vigorous and striking, directed against the brutalising +influences of sport, as _Tray_ was directed against the infinitely worse +brutalities of ignorant and indiscriminate vivisection. Its noble human +sympathies and popular style appeal to a ready audience. _Solomon and +Balkis_, though by no means among the best of Browning's comic poems, is +a witty enough little tale from that inexhaustible repository, the +Talmud. It is a dialogue between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, not +"solely" nor at all "of things sublime." _Pambo_ is a bit of pointed +fun, a mock-modest apology to critics. Finally, besides a musical little +love-song named _Wanting is--What?_ we have in _Never the Time and the +Place_ one of the great love-songs, not easily to be excelled, even in +the work of Browning, for strength of spiritual passion and intensity of +exultant and certain hope. + + + "NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE. + + Never the time and the place + And the loved one all together! + This path--how soft to pace! + This May--what magic weather! + Where is the loved one's face? + In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, + But the house is narrow, the place is bleak + Where, outside, rain and wind combine + With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, + With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, + With a malice that marks each word, each sign! + O enemy sly and serpentine, + Uncoil thee from the waking man! + Do I hold the Past + Thus firm and fast + Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? + This path so soft to pace shall lead + Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed! + Or narrow if needs the house must be, + Outside are the storms and strangers: we-- + Oh, close, safe, warm, sleep I and she, + --I and she!" + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 57: This note contains three burlesque sonnets whose chief +interest is, that they are, with the exception of the unclaimed sonnet +printed in the _Monthly Repository_ in 1834, the first sonnets ever +published by Browning.] + +[Footnote 58: One can scarcely read this poem without recalling the +superb and not unsimilar episode in prose of another "great dramatic +poet," Landor's Imaginary Conversation between the Empress Catherine and +Princess Dashkof.] + +[Footnote 59: Mrs. Orr, _Handbook_, p. 313.] + + +30. FERISHTAH'S FANCIES. + + [Published in November, 1884 (_Poetical Works_, 1898, Vol. + XVI. pp. 1-92).] + +_Ferishtah's Fancies_ consists of twelve sections, each an argument in +an allegory, Persian by presentment, modern or universal in +intention.[60] Lightly laid in between the sections, like flowers +between the leaves, are twelve lyrics, mostly love songs addressed to a +beloved memory, each lyric having a close affinity with the preceding +"Fancy." A humorous lyrical prologue, and a passionate lyrical epilogue, +complete the work. We learn from Mrs. Orr, that + + "The idea of _Ferishtah's Fancies_ grew out of a fable by + Pilpay, which Mr. Browning read when a boy. He ... put this + into verse; and it then occurred to him to make the poem the + beginning of a series, in which the Dervish who is first + introduced as a learner should reappear in the character of a + teacher. Ferishtah's 'fancies' are the familiar illustrations + by which his teachings are enforced."[61] + +The book is Browning's _West-Eastern Divan_, and it is written at nearly +the same age as Goethe's. But, though there is a good deal of local +colour in the setting, no attempt, as the motto warns us, is made to +reproduce Eastern thought. The "Persian garments" are used for a +disguise, not as a habit; perhaps for the very reason that the thoughts +they drape are of such intense personal sincerity. The drapery, however, +is perfectly transparent, and one may read "Robert Browning" for +"Dervish Ferishtah" _passim_. + +The first two fancies (_The Eagle_ and _The Melon-Seller_) give the +lessons which Ferishtah learnt, and which determined him to become a +Dervish: all the rest are his own lessons to others. These deal +severally with faith (_Shah Abbas_), prayer (_The Family_), the +Incarnation (_The Sun_), the meaning of evil and of pain (_Mihrab +Shah_), punishment present and future (_A Camel-Driver_), asceticism +(_Two Camels_), gratefulness to God for small benefits (_Cherries_), the +direct personal relation existing between man and God (_Plot-Culture_), +the uncertain value of knowledge contrasted with the sure gain of love +(_A Pillar at Sebzevah_), and, finally, in _A Bean-Stripe: also Apple +Eating_, the problem of life: is it more good than evil, or more evil +than good? The work is a serious attempt to grapple with these great +questions, and is as important on its ethical as on its artistic side. +Each argument is conveyed by means of a parable, often brilliant, often +quaint, always striking and serviceable, and always expressed in +scrupulously clear and simple language. The teaching, put more plainly +and definitely, perhaps, with less intellectual disguise than usual, is +the old unconquered optimism which, in Browning, is so unmistakably a +matter of temperament. + +The most purely delightful poetry in the volume will be found in the +delicate and musical love-songs which brighten its pages. They are +snatches of spontaneous and exquisite song, bird-notes seldom heard +except from the lips of youth. Perhaps the most perfect is the first. + + "Round us the wild creatures, overhead the trees, + Underfoot the moss-tracks,--life and love with these! + I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers: + All the long lone Summer-day, that greenwood life of ours! + + Rich-pavilioned, rather,--still the world without,-- + Inside--gold-roofed silk-walled silence round about! + Queen it thou in purple,--I, at watch and ward + Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave, love's guard! + + So, for us no world? Let throngs press thee to me! + Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we! + Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face! + God is soul, souls I and thou: with souls should souls have place." + +"With souls should souls have place," is, with Browning, the condensed +expression of an experience, a philosophy, and an art. Like the lovers +of his lyric, he has renounced the selfish serenities of wild-wood and +dream-palace; he has gone up and down among men, listening to that human +music, and observing that human or divine comedy. He has sung what he +has heard, and he has painted what he has seen. If it should be asked +whether such work will live, there can be only one answer, and he has +already given it: + + "It lives, + If precious be the soul of man to man." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 60: This is emphasized by the ingenious motto from _King +Lear_: "You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred; only, I do not +like the fashion of your garments: you will say, they are Persian; but +let them be changed."] + +[Footnote 61: _Handbook_, p. 321.] + + +31. PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY. + + [Published in January 1887. _Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. + XVI., pp. 93-275.] + +The method of the _Parleying_ is something of a new departure, and at +the same time something of a reversion. It is a reversion towards the +dramatic form of the monologue; but it is a new departure owing to the +precise form assumed, that of a "parleying" or colloquy of the author +with his characters. The persons with whom Browning parleys are +representative men selected from the England, Holland, and Italy of the +late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The parleying with +_Bernard de Mandeville_ (born at Dort, in Holland, 1670; died in London, +1733; author of _The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public +Benefits_) takes up the optimistic arguments already developed in +_Ferishtah's Fancies_ and elsewhere, and preaches, through the dubious +medium of the enigmatic fabulist, trust in the ordering of the world, +confidence in discerning a "soul of goodness in things evil." _Daniel +Bartoli_ ("a learned and ingenius writer," born at Florence, 1608; died +at Rome, 1685; the historian of the Order of Jesuits) serves to point a +moral against himself, in the contrast between the pale ineffectual +saints of his legendary record and the practically saint-like heroine of +a true tale recounted by Browning, the graphic and brilliant story of +the duke and the druggist's daughter. The parleying with _Christopher +Smart_ (the author of the _Song to David_, born at Shipborne, in Kent, +1722; died in the King's Bench, 1770) is a penetrating and +characteristic study in one of the great poetic problems of the +eighteenth century, the problem of a "void and null" verse-writer who, +at one moment only of his life, sang, as Browning reminds him, + + "A song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang, + And stations you for once on either hand + With Milton and with Keats." + +_George Bubb Dodington_ (Lord Melcombe, born 1691; died 1762) stands as +type of the dishonest politician, and in the course of a colloquy, which +is really a piece of sardonic irony long drawn out, a mock serious essay +in the way of a Superior Rogues' Guide or Instructions for Knaves, +receives at once castigation and instruction. The parleying with +_Francis Furini_ (born at Florence, 1600; died 1649) deals with its hero +as a man, as artist and as priest; it contains some of Browning's +noblest writing on art; and it touches on current and, indeed, continual +controversies in its splendidly vigorous onslaught on the decriers of +that supreme art which aims at painting men and women as God made them. +_Gerard de Lairesse_ (born at Liege, in Flanders, 1640; died at +Amsterdam 1711; famed not only for his pictures, but for his _Treatise +on the Art of Painting_, composed after he had become blind) gives his +name to a discussion on the artistic interpretation of nature, its +change and advancement, and the deeper and truer vision which has +displaced the mythological fancies of earlier painters and poets. The +parleying with _Charles Avison_ (born at Newcastle, 1710; died there, +1770), the more than half forgotten organist-composer, embodies an +inquiry, critical or speculative, into the position and function of +music. All these poems are written in decasyllabic rhymed verse, with +varied arrangement of the rhymes. They are introduced by a dialogue +between Apollo and the Fates, and concluded by another between John Fust +and his friends, both written in lyrical measures, both uniting deep +seriousness of intention with capricious humour of form; the one wild +and stormy as the great "Dance of Furies" in Gluck's _Orfeo_; the other +quaint and grimly and sublimely grotesque as an old German print. +_Gerard de Lairesse_ contains a charming little "Spring Song" of three +stanzas; and _Charles Avison_ a sounding train-bands' chorus, written to +the air of one of Avison's marches. + +The volume as a whole is full of weight, brilliance, and energy; and it +is not less notable for its fineness of versification, its splendour of +sound and colour, than for its depth and acuteness of thought and keen +grasp of intricate argument. Indeed, the quality which more than any +other distinguishes it from Browning's later work is the careful +writing of the verse, and the elaborate beauty of certain passages. Much +of Browning's later work would be ill represented by a selection of the +"purple patches." His strength has always lain, but of late has lain +much more exclusively, in the _ensemble_. Here, however, there is not +merely one passage of more than a hundred and fifty lines, the like of +which (I do not say in every sense the equal, but certainly the like of +which) we must go back to _Sordello_ or to _Paracelsus_ to find; but, +again and again, wherever we turn, we meet with more than usually fine +and impressive passages, single lines of more than usually exquisite +quality. The glory of the whole collection is certainly the "Walk," or +description, in rivalry with Gerard de Lairesse, of a whole day's +changes, from sunrise to sunset. To equal it in its own way, we must +look a long way back in our Browning, and nowhere out of Browning. Where +all is good, any preference must seem partial; but perhaps nothing in it +is finer than this picture of morning. + + "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. Had I known + The torrent now turned river?--masterful + Making its rush o'er tumbled ravage--stone + And stub which barred the froths and foams: no bull + Ever broke bounds in formidable sport + More overwhelmingly, till lo, the spasm + Sets him to dare that last mad leap: report + Who may--his fortunes in the deathly chasm + That swallows him in silence! Rather turn + Whither, upon the upland, pedestalled + Into the broad day-splendour, whom discern + These eyes but thee, supreme one, rightly called + Moon-maid in heaven above and, here below, + Earth's huntress-queen? I note the garb succinct + Saving from smirch that purity of snow + From breast to knee--snow's self with just the tint + Of the apple-blossom's heart-blush. Ah, the bow + Slack-strung her fingers grasp, where, ivory-linked + Horn curving blends with horn, a moonlike pair + Which mimic the brow's crescent sparkling so-- + As if a star's live restless fragment winked + Proud yet repugnant, captive in such hair! + What hope along the hillside, what far bliss + Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss + Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe + Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss + Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe + Its victim, thou unerring Artemis? + Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark, + Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed + Was bred of liquid marble in the dark + Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed + With novel births of wonder? Not one spark + Of pity in that steel-grey glance which gleamed + At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped + Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen + From thy proud presence: well may'st thou be queen + Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped + So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit + For happy marriage till the maidens paled + And perished on the temple-step, assailed + By--what except to envy must man's wit + Impute that sure implacable release + Of life from warmth and joy? But death means peace." + + +32. ASOLANDO: FANCIES AND FACTS. + + [Dated 1890, but published December 12, 1889. _Poetical + Works_, 1889, Vol. XVII., pp. iv., 131.] + +_Asolando_ (a name taken from the invented verb _Asolare_, "to disport +in the open air") was published on the day of Browning's death. He died +in Venice, and his body was brought to England, and buried in +Westminster Abbey on the last day of the year. The Abbey was invisible +in the fog, and, inside, dim yellow fog filled all the roof, above the +gas and the candles. The coffin, carried high, came into the church to +the sound of processional music, and as one waited near the grave one +saw the coffin and the wreaths on it, over the heads of the people, and +heard, in Dr. Bridge's setting, the words: "He giveth his beloved +sleep." + +Reading _Asolando_ once more, and remembering that coffin one had looked +down upon in the Abbey, only then quite feeling that all was indeed +over, it is perhaps natural that the book should come to seem almost +consciously testamentary, as if certain things in it had been really +meant for a final leave-taking. The Epilogue is a clear, brave +looking-forward to death, as to an event now close at hand, and imagined +as actually accomplished. It breaks through for once, as if at last the +occasion demanded it, a reticence never thus broken through before, +claiming, with a supreme self-confidence, calmly, as an acknowledged +right, the "Well done" of the faithful servant at the end of the long +day's labour. In _Reverie_, in _Rephan_, and in other poems, the +teachings of a lifetime are enforced with a final emphasis, there is +the same joyous readiness to "aspire yet never attain;" the same delight +in the beauty and strangeness of life, in the "wild joy of living," in +woman, in art, in scholarship; and in _Rosny_ we have the vision of a +hero dead on the field of victory, with the comment, "That is best." + +To those who value Browning, not as the poet of metaphysics, but as the +poet of life, his last book will be singularly welcome. Something like +metaphysics we find, indeed, but humanised, made poetry, in the blank +verse of _Development_, the lyrical verse of the _Prologue_, and the +third of the _Bad Dreams_, with their subtle comments and surmises on +the relations of art with nature, of nature with truth. But it is life +itself, a final flame, perhaps mortally bright, that burns and shines in +the youngest of Browning's books. The book will be not less welcome to +those who feel that the finest poetic work is usually to be found in +short pieces, and that even _The Ring and the Book_ would scarcely be an +equivalent for the fifty _Men and Women_ of those two incomparable +volumes of 1855. Nor is _Asolando_ without a further attractiveness to +those who demand in poetry a certain fleeting and evanescent grace. + + "Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, + Pas la Couleur, rien que la Nuance," + +as Paul Verlaine says, somewhat exclusively, in his poetical confession +of faith. It is, indeed, _la Nuance_, the last fine shade, that Browning +has captured and fixed for us in those lovely love-poems, _Summum +Bonum_, _Poetics_, _a Pearl, a Girl_, and the others, so young-hearted, +so joyous and buoyant; and in the woody piping of _Flute Music, with an +Accompaniment_. Simple and eager in _Dubiety_, daintily, prettily +pathetic in _Humility_, more intense in _Speculative_, in the fourteen +lines called _Now_, the passion of the situation leaps like a cry from +the heart, and one may say that the poem is, rather than renders, the +very fever of the supreme moment, "the moment eternal." + + "Now. + + Out of your whole life give but a moment: + All of your life that has gone before, + All to come after it,--so you ignore, + So you make perfect the present,--condense, + In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment, + Thought and feeling and soul and sense-- + Merged in a moment which gives me at last + You around me for once, you beneath me, above me-- + Me--sure that despite of time future, time past,-- + This tick of our life-time's one moment you love me! + How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet-- + The moment eternal--just that and no more-- + When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core, + While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!" + +Here the whole situation is merged in the single cry, the joy, +"unbodied" and "embodied," of any, of every lover; in several of the +poems a more developed story is told or indicated. One of the finest +pieces in the volume is the brief dramatic monologue called +_Inapprehensiveness_, which condenses a whole tragedy into its +thirty-two lines, in the succinct, suggestive manner of such poems as +_My Last Duchess_. Only Heine, Browning, and George Meredith in _Modern +Love_, each in his entirely individual way, have succeeded in dealing, +in a tone of what I may call sympathetic irony, with the unheroic +complications of modern life; so full of poetic matter really, but of +matter so difficult to handle. The poem is a mere incident, such as +happens every day: we are permitted to overhear a scrap of trivial +conversation; but this very triviality does but deepen the effect of +what we surmise, a dark obstruction, underneath the "babbling runnel" of +light talk. A study not entirely dissimilar, though, as its name warns +us, more difficult to grasp, is the fourth of the _Bad Dreams_: how +fine, how impressive, in its dream-distorted picture of a man's remorse +for the love he has despised or neglected till death, coming in, makes +love and repentance alike too late! With these may be named that other +electric little poem, _Which?_ a study in love's casuistries, reminding +one slightly of the finest of all Browning's studies in that kind, +_Adam, Lilith, and Eve_. + +It is in these small poems, dealing varyingly with various phases of +love, that the finest, the rarest, work in the volume is to be found. +Such a poem as _Imperante Augusto natus est_ (strong, impressive, +effective as it is) cannot but challenge comparison with what is +incomparable, the dramatic monologues of _Men and Women_, and in +particular with the _Epistle of Karshish_. In _Beatrice Signorini_ we +have one of the old studies in lovers' casuistries; and it is told with +gusto, but is after all scarcely more than its last line claims for it: +"The pretty incident I put in rhyme." In the _Ponte dell' Angela, +Venice_, we find one of the old grotesques, but more loosely "hitched +into rhyme" (it is his own word) than the better among those poems which +it most resembles. But there is something not precisely similar to +anything that had gone before in the dainty simplicity, the frank, +beautiful fervour, of such lyrics as _Summum Bonum_, in which exquisite +expression is given to the merely normal moods of ordinary affection. In +most of Browning's love poems the emotion is complex, the situation more +or less exceptional. It is to this that they owe their singular, +penetrating quality of charm. But there is a charm of another kind, and +a more generally appreciated one, + + "that commonplace + Perfection of honest grace," + +which lies in the expression of feelings common to everyone, feelings +which everyone can without difficulty make or imagine his own. In the +lyrics to which I am referring, Browning has spoken straight out, in +just this simple, direct way, and with a delicate grace and smoothness +of rhythm not always to be met with in his later work. Here is a poem +called _Speculative_: + + "Others may need new life in Heaven-- + Man, Nature, Art--made new, assume! + Man with new mind old sense to leaven, + Nature--new light to clear old gloom, + Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room. + + I shall pray: 'Fugitive as precious-- + Minutes which passed--return, remain! + Let earth's old life once more enmesh us, + You with old pleasure, me--old pain, + So we but meet nor part again.'" + +How hauntingly does that give voice to the instinctive, the universal +feeling! the lover's intensity of desire for the loved and lost one, for +herself, the "little human woman full of sin," for herself, unchanged, +unglorified, as she was on earth, not as she may be in a vague heaven. +To the lover in _Summum Bonum_ all the delight of life has been +granted; it lies in "the kiss of one girl," and that has been his. In +the delicious little poem called _Humility_, the lover is content in +being "proudly less," a thankful pensioner on the crumbs of love's +feast, laid for another. In _White Witchcraft_ love has outlived injury; +in the first of the _Bad Dreams_ it has survived even heart-break. + + "Last night I saw you in my sleep: + And how your charm of face was changed! + I asked 'Some love, some faith you keep?' + You answered, 'Faith gone, love estranged.' + + Whereat I woke--a twofold bliss: + Waking was one, but next there came + This other: 'Though I felt, for this, + My heart break, I loved on the same.'" + +Not subtlety, but simplicity, a simplicity pungent as only Browning +could make it, is the characteristic of most of the best work in this +last volume of a poet preeminently subtle. This characteristic of +simplicity is seen equally in the love-poems and in the poems of satire, +in the ballads and in the narrative pieces, and notably in the story of +_The Pope and the Net_, an anecdote in verse, told with the frank relish +of the thing, and without the least attempt to tease a moral out of it. + +There are other light ballads, as different in merit as _Muckle-mouth +Meg_ on the one hand and _The Cardinal and the Dog_ and _The Bean-Feast_ +on the other, with snatches of moralising story, as cutting as _Arcades +Ambo_, which is a last word written for love of beasts, and as stinging +as _The Lady and the Painter_, which is a last word written for love of +birds and of the beauty of nakedness. One among these poems, _The +Cardinal and the Dog_, indistinguishable in style from the others, was +written fifty years earlier. It is as if the poet, taking leave of that +"British public" which had "loved him not," and to whose caprices he had +never condescended, was, after all, anxious to "part friends." The +result may be said, in a measure, to have been attained. + +So far I wrote in 1889, when Browning was only just dead, and I went on, +in words which I keep for their significance to-day, because time has +already brought in its revenges, and Browning has conquered. That +Browning, I said then, could ever become a popular poet, in the sense in +which Tennyson is popular, must be seen by everyone to be an +impossibility. His poetry is obviously written for his own pleasure, +without reference to the tastes of the bulk of readers. The very titles +of his poems, the barest outline of their prevailing subjects, can but +terrify or bewilder an easy-going public, which prefers to take its +verse somnolently, at the season of the day when the newspaper is too +substantial, too exciting. To appreciate Browning you must read with +your eyes wide open. His poetry is rarely obscure, but it is often hard. +It deals by preference with hard matter, with "men and the ideas of +men," with life and thought. Other poets before him have written with +equally independent aims; but had Milton, had Wordsworth, a larger and +more admiring audience in his own day? If the audience of Milton and of +Wordsworth has widened, it would be the merest paradox to speak of +either Milton or Wordsworth as a popular poet. By this time, every one +at least knows them by name, though it would be a little unkind to +consider too curiously how large a proportion of the people who know +them by name have read many consecutive lines of _Paradise Lost_ or _The +Excursion_. But to be so generally known by name is something, and it +has not yet fallen to the lot of Browning. "Browning is dead," said a +friend of mine, a hunting man, to another hunting man, a friend of his. +"Dear me, is he?" said the other doubtfully; "did he 'come out' your +way?" By the time Browning has been dead as long as Wordsworth, I do not +think anyone will be found to make these remarks. Death, not only from +the Christian standpoint, is the necessary pathway to immortality. As it +is, Browning's fame has been steadily increasing, at first slowly +enough, latterly with even a certain rapidity. From the first he has had +the exceptional admiration of those whose admiration is alone really +significant, whose applause can alone be really grateful to a +self-respecting writer. No poet of our day, no poet, perhaps, of any +day, has been more secure in the admiring fellowship of his comrades in +letters. And of all the poets of our day, it is he whose influence seems +to be most vital at the moment, most pregnant for the future. For the +time, he has also an actual sort of church of his own. The churches +pass, with the passing away of the worshippers; but the spirit remains, +and must remain if it has once been so vivid to men, if it has once been +a refuge, a promise of strength, a gift of consolation. And there has +been all this, over and above its supreme poetic quality, in the vast +and various work, Shakesperean in breadth, Shakesperean in penetration, +of the poet whose last words, the appropriate epilogue of a lifetime, +were these: + + "At the midnight, in the silence of the sleep-time, + When you set your fancies free, + Will they pass to where--by death, fools think, imprisoned-- + Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, + --Pity me? + + Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! + What had I on earth to do + With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? + Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel + --Being--who? + + 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. + + No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time + Greet the unseen with a cheer! + Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, + 'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed,--fight on, fare ever + There as here!'" + + + + +APPENDIX + +I + +A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT BROWNING + + +The following list of the published writings of Robert Browning, in the +order of their publication, has been compiled mainly from Dr. +Furnivall's very complete and serviceable Browning Bibliography, +contained in the first part of the Browning Society's Papers (pp. +21-71). Volumes of "Selections" are not noticed in this list: there have +been many in England, some in Germany, and in the Tauchnitz Collection, +and a large number in America, where an edition of the complete works +was first published, in seven volumes, by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & +Co., Boston. + +1. PAULINE: a Fragment of a Confession. London: Saunders and Otley, +Conduit Street. 1833, pp. 71. + +2. PARACELSUS. By Robert Browning. London. Published by Effingham +Wilson, Royal Exchange. MDCCCXXXV., pp. xi., 216. + +3. Five Poems contributed to _The Monthly Repository_ (edited by W.J. +Fox), 1834-6; all signed "Z."--I. Sonnet ("Eyes, calm beside thee, Lady, +couldst thou know!"), Vol. VIII., New Series, 1834, p. 712. Not +reprinted. II. The King--(Vol. IX., New Series, pp. 707-8). Reprinted, +with six fresh lines, and revised throughout, in _Pippa Passes_ (1841), +where it is Pippa's song in Part III.-III., IV. Porphyria and Johannes +Agricola. (Vol. X., pp. 43-6.) Reprinted in _Dramatic Lyrics_ (1842) +under the title of _Madhouse Cells_.--V. Lines. (Vol. X., pp. 270-1.) +Reprinted, revised, in _Dramatis Personae_ (1864) as the first six +stanzas of sec. VI. of _James Lee_. + +4. STRAFFORD: an Historical Tragedy. By Robert Browning, Author of +"Paracelsus." London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and +Longman, Paternoster Row. 1837, pp. vi., 131. + +5. SORDELLO. By Robert Browning. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. +MDCCCXL., pp. iv., 253. + +6. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. I.--PIPPA PASSES. By Robert Browning, +Author of "Paracelsus." London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLI., +pp. 16. (Price 6_d_., sewed.) + +7. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. II.--KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES. By +Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: Edward Moxon, Dover +Street. MDCCCXLII., pp. 20. (Price 1_s_., sewed). + +8. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. III.--DRAMATIC LYRICS. By Robert +Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. +MDCCCXLII., pp. 16, (Price 1_s_., sewed.) + + Contents:--1. Cavalier Tunes: I. Marching Along; II. Give a + Rouse; III. My Wife Gertrude [Boot and Saddle, 1863]. 2. + Italy and France: I. Italy [My Last Duchess.--Ferrara, 1863]; + II. France [Count Gismond.--Aix in Provence, 1863]. 3. Camp + and Cloister: I. Camp (French) [Incident of the French Camp, + 1863]; II. Cloister (Spanish) [Soliloquy of the Spanish + Cloister, 1863]. 4. In a Gondola. 5. Artemis Prologuizes. 6. + Waring. 7. Queen Worship: I. Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli; + II. Cristina. 8. Madhouse Cells: I. [Johannes Agricola, + 1863]; II. [Porphyria's Lover, 1863]. 9. Through the Metidja + to Abd-el-Kadr. 10. The Pied Piper of Hamelin. + +9. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. IV--THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES. A Tragedy +in Five Acts. By Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: Edward +Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLIII., pp. 19. (Price 1_s_., sewed.) + +10. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. V.--A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON. A Tragedy +in Three Acts. By Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: +Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLIII., pp. 16. (Price 1_s_., sewed.) + +11. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. VI.--COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY. A Play in Five +Acts. By Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: Edward Moxon, +Dover Street. MDCCCXLIV., pp. 20. (Price 1_s_., sewed.) + +12. Eight Poems contributed to _Hood's Magazine_, June 1844 to April +1845:--I. The Laboratory (Ancien Regime). (June 1844, Vol. I., No. vi., +pp. 513-14). Reprinted in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845), as the +first of two poems called "France and Spain."--II., III. Claret and +Tokay (_id._ p. 525). Reprinted in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ +(1845).--IV., V. Garden Fancies: 1. The Flower's Name; 2. Sibrandus +Schafnaburgensis. (July 1844, Vol. II., No. vii., pp. 45-48.) Reprinted +in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845).--VI. The Boy and the Angel. +(August 1844, Vol. II., No. viii., pp. 140-2.) Reprinted, revised, and +with five fresh couplets, in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ +(1845).--VII. The Tomb at St. Praxed's (Rome, 15--) (March 1845, Vol. +III., No. iii., pp. 237-39). Reprinted in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ +(1845)--VIII. The Flight of the Duchess. (April 1845, Vol. III., No. +iv., pp. 313-18.) Part first only, sec. 1-9; reprinted, with the remainder +added, in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845). + +13. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. VII.--DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS. By +Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: Edward Moxon, Dover +Street. MDCCCXLV., pp. 24. (Price 2_s_., sewed.) + + Contents:--1. How they brought the Good News from Ghent to + Aix. 2. Pictor Ignotus [Florence, 15--]. 3. Italy in England + [The Italian in England, 1849]. 4. England in Italy, _Piano + di Sorrento_ [The Englishman in Italy, 1849]. 5. The Lost + Leader. 6. The Lost Mistress. 7. Home Thoughts from Abroad. + 8. The Tomb at St. Praxed's [The Bishop orders his Tomb in + St. Praxed's Church, 1863]. 9. Garden Fancies: I. The + Flower's Name; II Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. 10. France and + Spain: I. The Laboratory (_Ancien Regime_); II. The + Confessional, 11. The Flight of the Duchess. 12. Earth's + Immortalities. 13. Song. 14. The Boy and the Angel. 15. Night + and Morning: I. Night [Meeting at Night, 1863], II. Morning + [Parting at Morning, 1863], 16. Claret and Tokay [Nationality + in Drinks, 1863]. 17. Saul. 18. Time's Revenges. 19. The + Glove (Peter Ronsard _loquitur_). + +14. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. VIII. and last.--LURIA; and A SOUL'S +TRAGEDY. By Robert Browning, Author of "Paracelsus." London: Edward +Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLVI., pp. 32. (Price 2_s_. 6_d_., sewed.) + +15. POEMS. By Robert Browning. In two volumes. A new edition. London: +Chapman and Hall, 186 Strand. 1849, pp. vii., 386; viii., 416. These two +volumes contain _Paracelsus_ and _Bells and Pomegranates_. + +16. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. A Poem. By Robert Browning. London: +Chapman and Hall, 186 Strand. 1850, pp. iv., 142. + +17. Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. With an INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, by +Robert Browning. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1852, pp. vi., 165. +(Introductory Essay, pp., 1-44.) + +These so-called Letters of Shelley proved to be forgeries, and the +volume was suppressed. Browning's essay has been reprinted by the +Browning Society, and, later, by the Shelley Society. See No. 58 below. +Its value to students of Shelley is in no way impaired by its chance +connection with the forged letters, to which it barely alludes. + +18. TWO POEMS. By Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. London: Chapman +and Hall. 1854, pp. 16. + +This pamphlet contains "A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London," by +E. B. B., and "The Twins," by R. B. The two poems were printed by Miss +Arabella Barrett, Mrs. Browning's sister, for a bazaar in aid of a +"Refuge for Young Destitute Girls," one of the earliest of its kind, +founded by her in 1854. + +19. CLEON. By Robert Browning. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. +1855, pp. 23. + +20. THE STATUE AND THE BUST. By Robert Browning. London: Edward Moxon, +Dover Street. 1855, pp. 22. + +21. MEN AND WOMEN. By Robert Browning. In two volumes. London: Chapman +and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1855. Vol. I., pp. iv., 260; Vol. II., pp. +iv., 241. + + Vol. I. Contents:--1. Love among the Ruins. 2. A Lovers' + Quarrel. 3. Evelyn Hope. 4. Up at a Villa--Down in the City + (as distinguished by an Italian person of Quality). 5. A + Woman's Last Word. 6. Fra Lippo Lippi. 7. A Toccata of + Galuppi's. 8. By the Fire-side. 9. Any Wife to Any Husband. + 10. An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of + Karshish, the Arab Physician. 11. Mesmerism. 12. A Serenade + at the Villa. 13. My Star. 14. Instans Tyrannus. 15. A Pretty + Woman. 16. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." 17. + Respectability. 18. A Light Woman. 19. The Statue and the + Bust. 20. Love in a Life. 21. Life in a Love. 22. How it + Strikes a Contemporary. 23. The Last Ride Together. 24. The + Patriot--_An Old Story_. 25. Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. 26. + Bishop Blougram's Apology. 27. Memorabilia. + + Vol. II. Contents:--1. Andrea del Sarto (Called the Faultless + Painter). 2. Before. 3. After. 4. In Three Days. 5. In a Year. + 6. Old Pictures in Florence. 7. In a Balcony. 8. Saul. 9. "De + Gustibus." 10. Women and Roses. 11. Protus. 12. Holy-Cross + Day. 13. The Guardian Angel: a Picture at Fano. 14. Cleon. 15. + The Twins. 16. Popularity. 17. The Heretic's Tragedy: A Middle + Age Interlude. 18. Two in the Campagna. 19. A Grammarian's + Funeral. 20. One Way of Love. 21. Another Way of Love. 22. + "Transcendentalism": a Poem in Twelve Books. 23. + Misconceptions. 24. One Word More: To E. B. B. + +22. Ben Karshook's Wisdom. (Five stanzas of four lines each, signed +"Robert Browning," and dated "Rome, April 27, 1854")--_The Keepsake_. +1856. (Edited by Miss Power, and published by David Bogue, London.) P. +16. + +This poem has never been reprinted by the author in any of his collected +volumes, but is to be found in Furnivall's _Browning Bibliography_. + +23. May and Death.--_The Keepsake_, 1857, p. 164. Reprinted, with some +new readings, in _Dramatis Personae_ (1864). + +24. THE POETICAL WORKS of Robert Browning. Third edition. Vol. I., pp. +x., 432. Lyrics, Romances, Men and Women. Vol. II., pp. 605. Tragedies +and other Plays. Vol. III., pp. 465. Paracelsus, Christmas Eve and +Easter Day, Sordello. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1863. + +There are no new poems in this edition, but the pieces originally +published under the titles of _Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Lyrics and +Romances_, and _Men and Women_, are redistributed. This arrangement has +been preserved in all subsequent editions. The table of contents below +will thus show the present position of the poems. + + Vol. I, Contents--LYRICS:--1. Cavalier Tunes. 2. The Lost + Leader. 3. "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to + Aix." 4. Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 5. Nationality + in Drinks. 6. Garden Fancies.[62] 7. The Laboratory. 8. The + Confessional. 9. Cristina. 10. The Lost Mistress. 11. Earth's + Immortalities. 12. Meeting at Night. 13. Parting at Morning. + 14. Song. 15. A Woman's Last Word. 16. Evelyn Hope. 17, Love + among the Ruins. 18. A Lovers' Quarrel. 19. Up at a + Villa--Down in the City. 20. A Toccata of Galuppi's. 21. Old + Pictures in Florence, 22. "De Gustibus ----." 23. + Home-Thoughts from Abroad. 24. Home-Thoughts from the Sea. + 25. Saul. 26. My Star. 27. By the Fire-side. 28. Any Wife to + Any Husband. 29. Two in the Campagna. 30. Misconceptions. 31. + A Serenade at the Villa. 32. One Way of Love. 33. Another Way + of Love. 34. A Pretty Woman. 35. Respectability. 36. Love in + a Life. 37. Life in a Love. 38. In Three Days. 39. In a Year. + 40. Women and Roses. 41. Before. 42. After. 43. The Guardian + Angel. 44. Memorabilia. 45. Popularity. 46. Master Hugues of + Saxe-Gotha. + + ROMANCES:--1. Incident of the French Camp. 2. The Patriot. 3. + My Last Duchess. 4. Count Gismond. 5. The Boy and the Angel. + 6. Instans Tyrannus. 7. Mesmerism. 8. The Glove. 9. Time's + Revenges. 10. The Italian in England. 11. The Englishman in + Italy. 12. In a Gondola. 13. Waring. 14. The Twins. 15. A + Light Woman. 16. The Last Ride Together. 17. The Pied Piper of + Hamelin. 18. The Flight of the Duchess. 19. A Grammarian's + Funeral. 20. Johannes Agricola in Meditation. 21. The + Heretic's Tragedy. 22. Holy-Cross Day. 23. Protus. 24. The + Statue and the Bust. 25. Porphyria's Lover. 26. "Childe Roland + to the Dark Tower Came." + + MEN AND WOMEN:--1. "Transcendentalism." 2. How it strikes a + Contemporary. 3. Artemis Prologuizes. 4. An Epistle containing + the strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab + Physician. 5. Pictor Ignotus. 6. Fra Lippo Lippi. 7. Andrea + del Sarto. 8. The Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxed's + Church. 9. Bishop Blougram's Apology. 10. Cleon. 11. Rudel to + the Lady of Tripoli. 12. One Word More. + + Vol. II. Contents--TRAGEDIES AND OTHER PLAYS:--1. Pippa + Passes. 2. King Victor and King Charles. 3. The Return of the + Druses. 4. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. 5. Colombe's Birthday. 6. + Luria. 7. A Soul's Tragedy. 8. In a Balcony. 9. Strafford. + + Vol. III. Contents:--1. Paracelsus, 2. Christmas Eve and + Easter Day. 3. Sordello. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 62: The _Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister_ is here included +as No. III. In the edition of 1868 it follows under a separate heading. +This is the only point of difference between the two editions.] + +25. GOLD HAIR: A Legend of Pornic. By Robert Browning. (With +imprint--London: Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street and +Charing Cross) 1864, pp. 15. + +26. Prospice.--_Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. XIII., June 1864, p. 694. + +27. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. By Robert Browning. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 +Piccadilly. 1864, pp. vi., 250. + + Contents:--1. James Lee [James Lee's Wife, 1868]. 2. Gold + Hair: a Legend of Pornic. 3. The Worst of it. 4. Dis aliter + visum; or, Le Byron de nos jours. 5. Too Late. 6. Abt Vogler. + 7. Rabbi ben Ezra. 8. A Death in the Desert. 9. Caliban upon + Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island. 10. Confessions. + 11. May and Death. 12. Prospice. 13. Youth and Art. 14. A + Face. 15. A Likeness. 16. Mr Sludge "The Medium." 17. + Apparent Failure. 18. Epilogue. + +28. Orpheus and Eurydice.--_Catalogue of the Royal Academy_, 1864, p. +13. No. 217. A picture by F. Leighton. + +Printed as prose. It is reprinted in _Poetical Works_, 1868, where it +is included in _Dramatis Personae_. The same volume contains a new stanza +of eight lines, entitled "Deaf and Dumb: a Group by Woolner." This was +written in 1862 for Woolner's partly-draped group of Constance and +Arthur, the deaf and dumb children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn, which was +exhibited in the International Exhibition of 1862. + +29. THE POETICAL WORKS of Robert Browning, M.A., Honorary Fellow of +Balliol College, Oxford. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 15 Waterloo +Place. 1868. Vol. I., pp. viii., 310. Pauline--Paracelsus--Strafford. +Vol. II., pp. iv., 287. Sordello--Pippa Passes. Vol. III., pp. iv., 305. +King Victor and King Charles--Dramatic Lyrics--The Return of the Druses. +Vol. IV., pp. iv., 321. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon--Colombe's +Birthday--Dramatic Romances. Vol. V., pp. iv., 321. A Soul's +Tragedy--Luria--Christmas Eve and Easter Day--Men and Women. Vol. VI., +pp. iv., 233. In a Balcony--Dramatis Personae. This edition retains the +redistribution of the minor poems in the edition of 1863, already +mentioned. + +30. THE RING AND THE BOOK. By Robert Browning, M.A., Honorary Fellow of +Balliol College, Oxford. In four volumes. London: Smith, Elder and Co. +1868-9. Vol. I., pp. iv., 245; Vol. II., pp. iv., 251; Vol. III., pp. +iv., 250; Vol. IV., pp. iv., 235. + +31. Herve Riel--_Cornhill Magazine_, March 1871, pp. 257-60. Reprinted +in _Pacchiarotto, and other Poems_ (1876). + +32. BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE: Including a Transcript from Euripides. By +Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1871, pp. iv., 170. + +33. PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU: SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. By Robert Browning. +London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1871, pp. iv., 148. + +34. FIFINE AT THE FAIR. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder and Co. +1872, pp. xii., 171. + +35. RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY: OR, TURF AND TOWERS. By Robert +Browning. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1873, pp. iv., 282. + +36. ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY: Including a Transcript from Euripides: Being +the LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, +Elder and Co. 1875, pp. viii., 366. + +37. THE INN ALBUM. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder and Co. +1875, pp. iv., 211. + +38. PACCHIAROTTO, and how he worked in Distemper: with other Poems. By +Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1876, pp. viii., 241. + + Contents:--1. Prologue. 2. Of Pacchiarotto, and how he worked + in Distemper. 3. At the "Mermaid." 4. House. 5. Shop. 6. + Pisgah-Sights (1, 2). 7. Fears and Scruples. 8. Natural + Magic. 9. Magical Nature. 10. Bifurcation. 11. Numpholeptos. + 12. Appearances. 13. St. Martin's Summer. 14. Herve Riel. 15. + A Forgiveness. 16. Cenciaja. 17. Filippo Baldinucci on the + Privilege of Burial (a Reminiscence of A.D. 1676). 18. + Epilogue. + +39. THE AGAMEMNON OF AESCHYLUS. Transcribed by Robert Browning. London: +Smith, Elder and Co. 1877, pp. xi. (Preface, v.-xi.), 148. + +40. LA SAISIAZ: THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC. By Robert Browning. London: +Smith, Elder and Co. 1878, pp. viii., 201. + + Contents:--1. Prologue, 2. La Saisiaz (pp. 5-82). The Two + Poets of Croisic (pp. 87-191). Epilogue. + +41. Song. ("The Blind Man to the Maiden said")--_The Hour will come_. By +Wilhelmine von Hillern. Translated from the German by Clara Bell. +London, 1879, Vol. II., p. 174. Not reprinted. + +42. "Oh, Love, Love": Translation from the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides. +(Eighteen lines, dated "Dec. 18, 1878"). Contributed to Prof. J.P. +Mahaffy's _Euripides_ ("Classical Writers." Macmillan, 1879). P. 116. + +43. DRAMATIC IDYLS. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder and Co. +1879, pp. vi., 143. + + Contents:--1. Martin Relph. 2. Pheidippides. 3. Halbert and + Hob. 4. Ivan Ivanovitch. 5. Tray. 6. Ned Bratts. + +44. DRAMATIC IDYLS. Second Series. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, +Elder and Co. 1880, pp. viii., 149. + + Contents:--Prologue. 1. Echetlos. 2. Clive. 3. Muleykeh. 4. + Pietro of Abano. 5. Doctor ----. 6. Pan and Luna. Epilogue. + +45. Ten New Lines to "Epilogue."--_Scribner's Century Magazine_, +November 1882, pp. 159-60. Lines written in an autograph album, October +14, 1880. Printed in the _Century_ without Browning's consent. Reprinted +in the first issue of the Browning Society's Papers, Part III., p. 48, +but withdrawn from the second issue. + +46. JOCOSERIA. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1883, +pp. viii., 143. + + Contents:--1. Wanting is--What? 2. Donald. 3. Solomon and + Balkis. 4. Cristina and Monaldeschi. 5. Mary Wollstonecraft + and Fuseli. 6. Adam, Lilith, and Eve. 7. Ixion. 8. Jochanan + Hakkadosh. 9. Never the Time and the Place. 10. Pambo. + +47. Sonnet on Goldoni (dated "Venice, Nov. 27, 1883").--_Pall Mall +Gazette_, December 8, 1883, p. 2. Written for the Album of the Committee +of the Goldoni Monument at Venice, and inserted on the first page. +Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Part V. p. 98.* + +48. Paraphrase from Horace.--_Pall Mall Gazette_, December 13, 1883, p. +6. Four lines, written impromptu for Mr. Felix Moscheles. Reprinted in +the Browning Society's Papers, Part V., p. 99.* + +49. Helen's Tower: Sonnet (Dated "April 26, 1870").--_Pall Mall +Gazette_, December 28, 1883, p. 2. Reprinted in Browning Society's +Papers, Part V., p. 97.* Written for the Earl of Dufferin, who built a +tower in memory of his mother, Helen, Countess of Gifford, on a rock on +his estate, at Clandeboye, Ireland, and originally printed in the later +copies of a privately printed pamphlet called _Helen's Tower_. Lord +Tennyson's lines, written on the same occasion, appeared a little +previously in _The Leisure Hour_. + +50. The Divine Order, and other Sermons and Addresses. By the late +Thomas Jones. Edited by Brynmor Jones, LL.B. With INTRODUCTION by Robert +Browning. London: W. Isbister. 1884. The introduction is on pp. +xi.-xiii. + +51. Sonnet on Rawdon Brown. (Dated "November 28, 1883").--_Century +Magazine_, "Bric-a-brac" column, February 1884. Reprinted in the +Browning Society's Papers, Part V., p. 132.* Written at Venice, on an +apocryphal story relating to the late Mr Rawdon Brown, who "went to +Venice for a short visit, with a definite object in view, and ended by +staying forty years." + +52. The Founder of the Feast: Sonnet. (Dated "April 5, 1884").--_The +World_, April 16, 1884. Inscribed by Browning in the Album presented to +Mr Arthur Chappell, director of the St. James's Hall Saturday and Monday +Popular Concerts. Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Part VII., +p. 18.* + +53. The Names: Sonnet on Shakespeare. (Dated "March 12, +1884").--_Shakespere Show Book_, May 29, 1884, p. 1. Reprinted in the +Browning Society's Papers, Part V., p. 105.* + +54. FERISHTAH'S FANCIES. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder and +Co. 1884, pp. viii., 143. Each blank verse "Fancy" is followed by a +short lyric. + + Contents:--Prologue. Ferishtah's Fancies: 1. The Eagle. 2. + The 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. + +55. Why I am a Liberal: Sonnet.--_Why I am a Liberal_, edited by Andrew +Reid. London: Cassell and Co. 1885. Reprinted in the Browning Society's +Papers, Part VII., p. 92.* + +54. Spring Song.--_The New Amphion_; being the book of the Edinburgh +University Union Fancy Fair. Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, University +Press. 1886. The poem is on p. 1. Reprinted in _Parleyings_, p. 189. + +55. Prefatory Note to _Poems_ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: +Smith, Elder and Co. 1887. Three pages, unnumbered. + +56. Memorial Lines, for Memorial of the Queen's Jubilee, in St. +Margaret's Church, Westminster. 1887. Reprinted in the Browning +Society's Papers, Part X., p. 234.* + +57. PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY: to wit, +Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb +Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison. +Introduced by a Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates, concluded by +another between John Fust and his Friends. By Robert Browning. London: +Smith, Elder and Co., 15 Waterloo Place. 1887, pp. viii., 268. +(_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XVI., pp. 93-275.) + + Contents:--Apollo and the Fates--a Prologue. Parleyings: 1. + With Bernard de Mandeville. 2. With Daniel Bartoli. 3. With + Christopher Avison. 4. With George Bubb Dodington. 5. With + Francis Furini. 6. With Gerard de Lairesse. 7. With Charles + Avison. Fust and his Friends--an Epilogue. + +58. An Essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Robert Browning. Being a +Reprint of the Introductory Essay prefixed to the volume of [25 +spurious] Letters of Shelley, published by Edward Moxon in 1852. Edited +by W. Tyas Harden. London: Published for the Shelley Society by Reeves +and Turner, 196 Strand, 1888, pp. 27. See No. 17 above. + +59. To Edward Fitzgerald. (Dated July 8, 1889).--_The Athenaeum_, No. +3,220, July 13, 1889, p. 64. Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, +Part XI., p. 347.* + +60. Lines addressed to Levi Lincoln Thaxter. (Written in 1885).--_Poet +Lore_, Vol. I., August 1889, p. 398. + +61. THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING. London: Smith, Elder & Co., +15 Waterloo Place. 17 volumes. Vol. I.-XVI., 1889; Vol. XVII., 1894. + + Vol. I. pp. viii., 289. Pauline--Sordello. Vol. II., pp. vi., + 307. Paracelsus--Strafford. Vol. III., pp. vi., 255. Pippa + Passes, King Victor and King Charles, The Return of the + Druses, A Soul's Tragedy. Vol. IV., pp. vi., 305. A Blot in + the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday, Men and Women. Vol. V., + pp. vi., 307. Dramatic Romances, Christmas-Eve and + Easter-Day. Vol. VI., pp. vii., 289. Dramatic Lyrics, Luria. + Vol. VII., pp. vi., 255. In a Balcony, Dramatis Personae. Vol. + VIII., pp. 253. The Ring and the Book, Vol. I. Vol. IX., pp. + 313. The Ring and the Book, Vol. II. Vol. X., pp. 279. The + Ring and the Book, Vol. III. Vol. XI., pp. 343. Balaustion's + Adventure, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Fifine at the Fair. + Vol. XII., pp. 311. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, The Inn + Album, Vol. XIII., pp. 357. Aristophanes' Apology, The + Agamemnon of AEschylus. Vol. XIV., pp. vi., 279. Pacchiarotto + and how he worked in Distemper, with other Poems. [La + Saisiaz, the Two Poets of Croisic.] Vol. XV., pp. vi., 260. + Dramatic Idyls, Jocoseria. Vol. XVI., pp. vi., 275. + Ferishtah's Fancies. Parleyings with Certain People. General + Index, pp. 277-85; Index to First Lines of Shorter Poems, pp. + 287-92. Vol. XVII., pp. viii., 288. Asolando, Biographical + and Historical Notes to the Poems. General Index, pp. 289-99; + Index to First Lines of Shorter Poems, pp. 301-307. This + edition contains Browning's final text of his poems. + +62. ASOLANDO: FANCIES AND FACTS. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, +Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place. 1890, pp. viii., 157. (_Poetical Works_, +1894, Vol. XVII., pp. 1-131.) + + Contents:--Prologue. 1. Rosny. 2. Dubiety. 3. Now. 4. + Humility. 5. Poetics. 6. Summum Bonum. 7. A Pearl, a Girl. 8. + Speculative. 9. White Witchcraft. 10. Bad Dreams (i.-iv.). + 11. Inapprehensiveness. 12. Which? 13. The Cardinal and the + Dog. 14. The Pope and the Net. 15. The Bean-Feast. 16. + Muckle-mouth Meg. 17. Arcades Ambo. 18. The Lady and the + Painter. 19. Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. 20. Beatrice + Signorini. 21. Flute-Music, with an Accompaniment. 22. + "Imperante Augusto natus est--." 23. Development. 24. Rephan. + 25. Reverie. Prologue. + +63. THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING. With Portraits. In two +volumes. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place, 1896. Vol. I., +pp. viii., 784; Vol. II., pp. vii., 786. + +The Editor's note, after p. viii., signed "Augustine Birrell," says: +"All that has been done is to prefix (within square brackets) to some of +the plays and poems a few lines explanatory of the characters and events +depicted and described, and to explain in the margin of the volumes the +meaning of such words as might, if left unexplained, momentarily arrest +the understanding of the reader ... Mr. F.G. Kenyon has been kind enough +to make the notes for 'The Ring and the Book,' but for the rest the +editor alone is responsible." The text is that of the edition of 1889, +1894, but the arrangement is more strictly chronological. The notes are +throughout unnecessary and to be regretted. + + + + +II. + +REPRINT OF DISCARDED PREFACES TO THE FIRST EDITIONS OF SOME OF +BROWNING'S WORKS + + +1. Preface to _Paracelsus_ (1835). + +"I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very outset,--mistaking +my performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in +common,--judge it by principles on which it has never been moulded, and +subject it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. I +therefore anticipate his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably more +novel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted by writers, +whose aim it is to set forth any phenomenon of the mind or the passions, +by the operation of persons or events; and that, instead of having +recourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the +crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely +the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency +by which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discernible in +its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether +excluded; and this for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, not +a drama: the canons of the drama are well known, and I cannot but think +that, inasmuch as they have immediate regard to stage representation, +the peculiar advantages they hold out are really such, only so long as +the purpose for which they were at first instituted is kept in view. I +do not very well understand what is called a Dramatic Poem, wherein all +those restrictions only submitted to on account of compensating good in +the original scheme are scrupulously retained, as though for some +special fitness in themselves,--and all new facilities placed at an +author's disposal by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously +rejected. It is certain, however, that a work like mine depends more +immediately on the intelligence and sympathy of the reader for its +success;--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. I trust for his indulgence +towards a poem which had not been imagined six months ago, and that even +should he think slightingly of the present (an experiment I am in no +case likely to repeat) he will not be prejudiced against other +productions which may follow in a more popular, and perhaps less +difficult form. + +15th March 1835." + + +2. Preface to _Strafford_ (1837). + +"I had for some time been engaged in a poem of a very different nature +[_Sordello_] when induced to make the present attempt; and am not +without apprehension that my eagerness to freshen a jaded mind by +diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand epoch, may have operated +unfavourably on the represented play, which is one of Action in +Character, rather than Character in Action. To remedy this, in some +degree, considerable curtailment will be necessary, and, in a few +instances, the supplying details not required, I suppose, by the mere +reader. While a trifling success would much gratify, failure will not +wholly discourage me from another effort: experience is to come, and +earnest endeavour may yet remove many disadvantages. + +The portraits are, I think, faithful; and I am exceedingly fortunate in +being able, in proof of this, to refer to the subtle and eloquent +exposition of the characters of Eliot and Strafford, in the Lives of +Eminent British Statesmen now in the course of publication in Lardner's +Cyclopaedia, by a writer [John Forster] whom I am proud to call my +friend; and whose biographies of Hampden, Pym, and Vane, will, I am +sure, fitly illustrate the present year--the Second Centenary of the +Trial concerning Ship-money. My Carlisle, however, is purely imaginary: +I at first sketched her singular likeness roughly in, as suggested by +Matthew and the memoir-writers--but it was too artificial, and the +substituted outline is exclusively from Voiture and Waller. + +The Italian boat-song in the last scene is from Redi's _Bacco_, long +since naturalised in the joyous and delicate version of Leigh Hunt." + + +3. Preface to _Sordello_ (not in first edition, but added in 1863). I +reprint it, though still retained by the author, on account of its great +importance as a piece of self-criticism or self-interpretation. + +"To J. MILSAND, OF DIJON. + +Dear Friend,--Let the next poem be introduced by your name, and so repay +all trouble it ever cost me. I wrote it twenty-five years ago for only a +few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than +they really had. 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; for I lately gave time and pains to turn my +work into what the many might,--instead of what the few must,--like: but +after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I +find it. The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance +than a background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the +development of a soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always +thought so--you, with many known and unknown to me, think so--others may +one day think so: and whether my attempt remain for them or not, I +trust, though away and past it, to continue ever yours, R. B. + +London, June 9, 1863." + + +4. Preface to _Bells and Pomegranates_.--I. _Pippa Passes_ (1841). + +"ADVERTISEMENT. + +Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter I +much care to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full 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. What follows, +I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at +intervals; and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which +they appear, will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. Of +course such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; and to provide +against a certain and but too possible contingency, let me hasten to say +now--what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say +circumstantially enough at the close--that I dedicate my best intentions +most admiringly to the author of 'Ion'--most affectionately to Serjeant +Talfourd. + +ROBERT BROWNING." + + +5. Preface to _Bells and Pomegranates_.--VIII. _Luria_ and _A Soul's +Tragedy_. + +"Here ends my first series of 'Bells and Pomegranates:' and I take the +opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by +that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an +alteration, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, +poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so the +symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is actually +one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic) +acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authority +alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would +sufficiently convey the desired meaning. 'Faith and good works' is +another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: yet +Giotto placed a pomegranate-fruit in the hand of Dante, and Raffaelle +crowned his Theology (in the _Camera della Segnatura_) with blossoms of +the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come after, and +explain that it was merely '_simbolo delle buone opere--il qual +Pomogranato fu pero usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gli +Ebrei_.' R. B." + +It may be worth while to append the interesting concluding paragraph of +the preface to the first series of _Selections_, issued by Messrs. +Smith, Elder and Co. in 1872: + +"A few years ago, had such an opportunity presented itself, I might have +been tempted to say a word in reply to the objections my poetry was used +to encounter. Time has kindly co-operated with my disinclination to +write the poetry and the criticism besides. The readers I am at last +privileged to expect, meet me fully half-way; and if, from their fitting +standpoint, they must still 'censure me in their wisdom,' they have +previously 'awakened their senses that they may the better judge.' Nor +do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, +unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh. Having hitherto done my +utmost in the art to which my life is a devotion, I cannot engage to +increase the effort; but I conceive that there may be helpful light, as +well as reassuring warmth, in the attention and sympathy I gratefully +acknowledge R. B. + +London, May 14, 1872." + + + + +INDEX TO POEMS + +Abt Vogler, 23, 145, 146, 147 + +Adam, Lilith, and Eve, 220, 221 + +After, 128, 129 + +"Agamemnon (The), of AEschylus," 17, 202, 203 + +Andrea del Sarto, 23, 59, 82, 104, 107, 109, 113, 135, 179 + +Another Way of Love, 130 + +Any Wife to Any Husband, 124 + +Apparent Failure, 145 + +Appearances, 197 + +Arcades Ambo, 236 + +"Aristophanes' Apology," 17, 185, 190 + +Artemis Prologuizes, 63, 64, 85 + +"Asolando: Fancies and Facts," 231-239 + +At the Mermaid, 194, 196, 197 + + +Bad Dreams, 232, 234, 236 + +"Balaustion's Adventure," 169, 173, 186 + +Bean-Feast, The, 236 + +Bean-Stripe (A): also Apple-Eating, 225 + +Beatrice Signorini, 234 + +Before, 128 + +Bifurcation, 198 + +Bishop Blougram's Apology, 27, 105, 111-113, 144 + +Bishop (The) Orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church, 83-85, 115 + +"Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A," 17, 69-72, 74, 91, 95 + +Boy and the Angel, The, 89 + +By the Fireside, 126, 139 + + +Caliban upon Setebos, 27, 141-144 + +Camel-Driver, A, 224 + +Cardinal and the Dog, The, 236, 237 + +Cavalier Tunes, 62 + +Cenciaja, 201 + +Cherries, 224 + +'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower, came,' 118-120 + +"Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day," 98-103 + +Cleon, 105, 109, 111, 143 + +Clive, 214, 215 + +"Colombe's Birthday," 73-76, 91 + +Confessional, The, 86 + +Confessions, 27, 139-141 + +Count Gismond, 62-63 + +Cristina, 63 + +Cristina and Monaldeschi, 221-222 + + +Deaf and Dumb, 145 + +Death in the Desert, A, 141, 142 + +'De Gustibus,' 26, 130 + +Development, 232 + +Dis aliter Visum, 27, 138 + +Doctor ----, 193, 217 + +Donald, 222 + +"Dramatic Idyls," 208-213 + +"Dramatic Idyls" (Second Series), 213-218 + +"Dramatic Lyrics," 58-65 + +"Dramatic Romances and Lyrics," 56, 77-90 + +"Dramatis Personae," 135-150, 194 + +Dubiety, 233 + + +Eagle, The, 224 + +Earth's Immortalities, 80 + +Echetlos, 213, 214 + +Englishman in Italy, The, 25, 87 + +Epilogue to "Dramatic Idyls" (Second Series), 218 + +Epilogue to "Dramatis Personae," 194 + +Epilogue to Pacchiarotto, 194, 195-196 + +Epilogue to The Two Poets of Croisic, 208 + +Epistle of Karshish, 104, 105, 109-111, 234 + +Eurydice and Orpheus, 145 + +Evelyn Hope, 63, 122 + + +Face, A, 145 + +Family, The, 224 + +Fears and Scruples, 197 + +"Ferishtah's Fancies," 98, 223, 226 + +"Fifine at the Fair," 17, 111, 130, 177-182, 184 + +Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial, 201 + +Flight of the Duchess, The, 88 + +Flower's Name, The, 80 + +Flute Music, with an Accompaniment, 233 + +Forgiveness, A, 199 + +Fra Lippo Lippi, 23, 27, 105, 107, 113 + + +Garden Fancies, 80 + +Girl, A, 232 + +Glove, The, 87 + +Gold Hair: a Story of Pornic, 145 + +Grammarian's Funeral, A, 115 + +Guardian Angel, The, 23, 113 + + +Halbert and Hob, 210 + +Heretic's Tragedy, The, 27, 115, 116-117, 143 + +Herve Riel, 194, 200 + +Holy-Cross Day, 27, 115, 117 + +Home-Thoughts from Abroad, 77, 78 + +Home-Thoughts from the Sea, 78 + +House, 194, 197 + +How it strikes a Contemporary, 128 + +How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, 77 + +Humility, 233, 236 + + +"In A Balcony," 105, 132, 135 + +In a Gondola, 64 + +Inapprehensiveness, 233 + +In a Year, 130 + +Incident of the French Camp, 62 + +"Inn Album, The," 7, 22, 190, 193 + +Instans Tyrannus, 129 + +In Three Days, 130 + +Italian in England, The, 87 + +Ivan Ivanovitch, 26, 210, 211-212 + +Ixion, 219-220 + + +James Lee's Wife, 118, 136, 137 + +Jochanan Hakkadosh, 219 + +"Jocoseria," 218, 223 + +Johannes Agricola, 59 + + +"King Victor and King Charles," 56-58, 66 + + +Laboratory, The, 86 + +"La Saisiaz," 98, 204, 208 + +Last Ride Together, The, 81, 125, 130 + +Life in a Love, 130 + +Light Woman, A, 130 + +Likeness, A, 141 + +Lost Leader, The, 77, 78 + +Lost Mistress, The, 79, 130 + +Love among the Ruins, 120, 121 + +Love in a Life, 130 + +Lovers' Quarrel, A, 27, 121, 122 + +"Luria," 4, 91, 95-98, 211, 212 + + +Magical Nature, 175, 197-198 + +Martin Relph, 209, 210, 211 + +Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli, 222 + +Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, 23, 24, 113, 114 + +May and Death, 145 + +Meeting at Night, 81, 82 + +Melon-Seller, The, 224 + +Memorabilia, 131 + +"Men and Women," 15, 58, 77, 85, 89, 91, 104, 132, 135, 141, 199, 232 + +Mesmerism, 129 + +Mihrab Shah, 224 + +Misconceptions, 130, 197 + +Mr Sludge, "The Medium," 27, 141, 144 + +Muckle-mouth Meg, 236 + +Muleykeh, 191, 215, 217 + +My Last Duchess, 59, 60, 61, 199, 233 + +My Star, 130 + + +Nationality in Drinks, 78 + +Natural Magic, 197 + +Ned Bratts, 26, 27, 210, 212 + +Never the Time and the Place 222, 223 + +Now, 233 + +Numpholeptos, 198, 199 + + +Old Pictures in Florence, 24, 113, 114 + +One Way of Love, 130, 131, 132 + +One Word More, 126 + + +Pacchiarotto, 27, 88, 194, 195 + +"Pacchiarotto and Other Poems," 194, 201 + +Pambo, 222 + +Pan and Luna, 214 + +"Paracelsus," 6, 37, 41, 49, 59, 74, 118, 218, 229 + +"Parleyings with certain People," 226-230 + +Parting at Morning, 82 + +Patriot, The: an Old Story, 129 + +"Pauline," 33-36, 37, 49, 59, 118 + +Pearl, A, 232 + +Pheidippides, 212, 213 + +Pictor Ignotus, 23, 82, 83, 85 + +Pied Piper of Hamelin, The, 27, 65, 77 + +Pietro of Abano, 217 + +Pillar at Sebzevah, A, 225 + +"Pippa Passes," 52-56, 94, 132, 151 + +Pisgah-Sights, 197 + +Plot-Culture, 225 + +Poetics, 232 + +Pope and the Net, The, 236 + +Popularity, 131 + +Porphyria's Lover, 25, 59 + +Pretty Woman, A, 130 + +"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," 17, 111, 173, 177, 184, 192 + +Prospice, 145, 148-150 + +Protus, 117 + + +Rabbi Ben Ezra, 145, 147, 148 + +"Red-Cotton Night-Cap Country," 7, 182, 185, 190, 192 + +Rephan, 231 + +Respectability, 129 + +"Return of the Druses, The," 65, 69, 74 + +Reverie, 231 + +"Ring and the Book, The," 17, 20, 136, 150, 169, 173, 233 + +Rosny, 232 + +Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli, 63 + + +St. Martin's Summer, 195 + +Saul, 89, 90 + +Serenade at the Villa, A, 25, 26, 124 + +Shah Abbas, 224 + +Shop, 194, 197 + +Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, 27, 80 + +Solomon and Balkis, 220 + +Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, 27, 62, 129 + +"Sordello," 7, 17, 37, 42, 44, 52, 55, 59, 145, 229 + +"Soul's Tragedy, A," 27, 91, 95, 132 + +Speculative, 233, 235 + +Statue and the Bust, The, 127 + +"Strafford," 41, 44, 57, 132 + +Summum Bonum, 232, 235, 236 + +Sun, The, 224 + + +Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr, 62 + +Time's Revenges, 86 + +Toccata of Galuppi's, A, 23, 113, 114 + +Too Late, 136, 137, 138 + +'Transcendentalism,' 128 + +Tray, 222 + +Twins, The, 130 + +Two Camels, 224 + +Two in the Campagna, 125 + +"Two Poets of Croisic, The," 206-208 + + +Up at a Villa--Down in the City, 27, 130 + + +Wanting Is--What? 222 + +Waring, 61, 62 + +Which, 234 + +White Witchcraft, 236 + +Woman's Last Word, A, 122, 124 + +Women and Roses, 130 + +Worst of It, The, 136, 137 + + +Youth and Art, 139 + + + + + +BY THE SAME WRITER + + +POEMS (COLLECTED EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES) 1902. + +AUBREY BEARDSLEY, 1897. + +THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE, 1899. + +PLAYS, ACTING AND MUSIC, 1903. + +CITIES, 1903. + +STUDIES IN PROSE AND VERSE, 1904. + +A BOOK OF TWENTY SONGS, 1905. + +SPIRITUAL ADVENTURES, 1905. + +STUDIES IN SEVEN ARTS, 1906. + +THE FOOL OF THE WORLD, AND OTHER POEMS, 1906. + + +The Temple Press Letchworth England + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF +BROWNING*** + + +******* This file should be named 17608.txt or 17608.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/0/17608 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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