R510200A. Sordello; Poems (1849); and Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day.
Fraser’s Magazine, February 1851, pp. 170–177.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 364–368.
mr. and mrs. browning.
Some ten or twelve years have passed since Mr. Browning’s first poetic attempts appeared, to be followed at intervals by fresh productions, constituting altogether two volumes, more than double the size of those with which Mr. Tennyson has presented the world, as the outcome of a much longer poetic life. Such an amount of verse, one would have expected, must contain materials for a clear and definite judgment on the writer’s powers; Mr. Browning’s niche in the Temple of the Muses should be by now a settled point. On the contrary, his poems are still caviare to the multitude; those who greedily devour, and indiscriminately worship, anything in the shape of verse, still differ widely in their verdicts; even those who possess, or fancy that they possess, canons of scientific criticism, are very much at a loss how to apply them to his case. These phœnomena, whether or not they prove genius in an author, prove at least originality; and all will allow this merit to Mr. Browning. No one can have perused Sordello and Paracelsus without acknowledging in them the work of a poet distinguished from the herd of scribblers, by vigorous and manful, often profound, thoughts, raciness of expression, and an amount of learning on the subjects which he handles, which is becoming more and more rare in these days.
Of Sordello, perhaps, we have hardly a right to speak; for Mr. Browning has not republished it in the last edition of his Poems. And certainly, those peculiar defects of his, to which we must be allowed hereafter to allude, had marred Sordello more than any other of his writings, even so far as to leave the reader in doubt as to both the story and the moral; as to whether a passage was dialogue or description, jest or earnest, different speeches by different characters, or one by the same. We should not have said so much, if we had not intended to qualify an accusation to which the poet seems already to have pleaded guilty, by most earnest praise, not of the book as a whole, but of such passages as the two which we shall quote; and there are many such. Even when the full account of their faults has been subtracted from their merit, they still remain, surely, poetry, and that such as not three men in England now can write. Sordello, p. 11:—
And thus begun
Schemes with a vengeance, schemes on schemes, not one
Fit to be told that foolish boy, he said,
But only let Sordello Palma wed,
——Then!
’Twas a dim long narrow place at best;
Midway a sole grate showed the fiery West
As shows its corpse the world’s end some split tomb—
A gloom, a rift of fire, another gloom
Faced Palma—but at length Taurello set
Her free; the grating held one ragged jet
Of fierce gold fire: he lifted her within
The hollow underneath—how else begin
Fate’s second marvellous cycle, else renew
The Ages than with Palma plain in view?
Then paced the passage, hands clenched, head erect,
Pursuing his discourse; a grand unchecked
Monotony made out from his quick talk
And the recurring noises of his walk;
——Somewhat too much like the o’ercharged assent
Of two resolved friends in one danger blent
Who hearten each the other against heart—
Boasting there’s nought to care for; when, apart
The boasting, all’s to care for; he, beside
Some shape not visible, in power and pride [p. 171→]
Approached out of the dark, ginglingly near,
Nearer, passed close in the broad light, his ear
Crimson, eye-balls suffused, temples full-fraught,
Just a snatch of the rapid speech you caught,
And on he strode into the opposite dark,
Till presently the harsh heel’s turn, a spark
I’ the stone, and whirl of some loose embossed thong
That clashed against the angle aye so long
After the last, punctual to an amount
Of mailed great paces you could not but count,
Prepared you for the pacing back again.
Or, again, p. 241:—
What has Sordello found?
Or can his spirit go the mighty round
At length, end where our souls begun? As says
Old fable, the two doves were sent two ways
About the world—where in the midst they met,
Though on a shifting waste of sand, men set
Jove’s temple? Quick, What has Sordello found?
For they approach—approach—that foot’s rebound ..
Palma? No, Salinguerra, though in mail;
They mount, have reached the threshold, dash the veil
Aside—and you divine who sat there dead
Under his foot the badge; still, Palma said,
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes,
Wider than some spent swimmer’s if he spies
Help from above in his extreme despair;
And, head far back on shoulder thrust, turns there
With short and passionate cry; as Palma prest
In one great kiss her lips upon his breast
It beat. By this the hermit bee has stopped
His day’s toil at Goito—the new-cropped
Dead vine-leaf answers, now ’tis eve, he bit
Twirled so, and filed all day—the mansion’s fit
God counselled for; as easy guess the word
That pass’d betwixt them, and become the third
To the soft small unfrighted bee, as tax
Him with one fault—so no remembrance racks
Of the stone maidens and the font of stone,
He, creeping thro’ the crevice, leaves alone.
Alas, my friend—alas, Sordello! whom
Anon we laid within that cold font-tomb—
And yet again, alas!
And after all, not merely for such passages as these (as far as we can construe them), but as a whole, must we praise Sordello. Not for what it is, but for what it might have been; and so leave it, sighing,—“What a Poem, if it were but strained clear, and translated into English!”
Whereat the reader reminds us that we are flatly contradicting our own last page; and we confess it, and go on to Paracelsus.
This poem embodies, on the whole, the same question as Sordello—the fate of genius. In both, too, genius fails of its high aims from the very sublimity of them; in Sordello, from the false daintiness which refuses to use the tools which lie nearest it, because the evil time has soiled them, and it has not the courage or discernment to restore them to purity: in Paracelsus, from a deeper cause; from the proud fancy that he, the genius, is necessary to God; from the hope, ever betrayed to his simple friend, though impalpable to himself, that the high mission to which he feels himself anointed is to bring glory from men, thanks from God, to him himself. Like Lucifer, he takes God’s talents, and looks at them, not at the giver. He will use them for God, but take the profit of them for himself. He professes to trust God, and seek God’s glory, while at heart he has so little real trust in God’s love to man, so little belief that His is the glory already, that he fancies all past science an insanity, and himself the first man to whom its truths have been revealed.
Alas! he has a lesson to learn. He has to bear the Cross before the [p. 172→] Crown; and he faints under it. The disciple has tried to be above his master: but his reward is, even as his master’s was—calumny, insult, bigotry, and persecution—and he faints under it. Then, gulf by gulf discloses itself the inward lie of his idea. He has sought to know, that he might glorify himself. He finds out that in seeking for knowledge alone, he has cut himself off from his kind; he has cast away Love, the very root of knowledge. It is in vain to tell himself that he sought for knowledge that he might benefit his kind. His very desire of knowledge had a deep root of pride and selfishness; was not he the prophet commissioned to
Gather this
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed
About the world, long lost, or never found?
Then comes his Nemesis. He has got knowledge; he has discovered mighty secrets; but men doubt and laugh, and he shrinks into himself, loses all heart to use those secrets for the very purpose for which he sought them—the good of all. True, he will help men still; but only if they will applaud him as a God—and they curse him instead, and he returns curse for curse. He tries to allure, to keep, their failing admiration, and becomes a mountebank and a boaster. He falls back upon mere enjoyment. He has given up all for “the sixth sense of vanity”—that failing, he descends for comfort to lower senses still; till at last, all that is practically left to him of his scientific conquests, is—— Mr. Browning, as bound for his hero’s sake, may hint at it but delicately, but we must speak out—laudanum suum. And so he ends—miserably snuffed out in the wretched hospital cell,—the mountebank, the boaster, the railer, the swash-buckler, the drunkard, the opium-eater.— And yet the father of medicine, the slayer in after ages of the very pedant-schools which hunted him to death. Altogether as worthy a tragic theme, and as worthily treated, as any of late in these same intellect-worshipping times. But let Mr. Browning speak for himself, in a passage which condenses all the scattered elements of Paracelsus’s tragedy. He is dreaming and dying in the hospital of Saint Sebastian at Salzburg:—
* * * * Grey crew,
Yet steeped in fresh malevolence from hell,
Is there a reason for your hate? My truths
Have shaken a little the palm about each head?
Just think, Aprile, all these leering dotards
Were bent on nothing less than being crowned
As we! That yellow blear-eyed wretch in chief,
To whom the rest cringe low with feigned aspect—
Galen, of Pergamos and hell; nay speak
The tale, old man! we met there face to face:
I said, the crown should fall from thee: once more
We meet, as in that ghastly vestibule:
Look to my brow! Have I redeemed my pledge?
* * * Oh, emptiness of fame!
Oh Persic Zoroaster, Lord of Stars!
Who said these old renowns, dead long ago,
Could make me overlook the living world
To gaze through gloom at where they stood, indeed,
But stand no longer? What a warm light life
After the shade! In truth, my delicate witch,
My serpent-queen, you did but well to hide
The juggles I had else detected. Fire
May well run harmless o’er a breast like yours!
The cave was not so darkened by the smoke
But that your white limbs dazzled me: Oh, white
And panting as they twinkled, wildly dancing!
I cared not for your passionate gestures then,
But now I have forgotten the charm of charms,
The foolish knowledge which I come to seek,
While I remember that quaint dance; and thus
I am come back, not for those mummeries,
But to love you, and kiss your little feet,
Soft as an ermine’s winter coat! * * * * [p. 173→]
Cruel! I seek her now—I kneel—I shriek—
I clasp her vesture—but she fades, still fades;
And she is gone; sweet human love is gone!
’Tis only when they spring to heaven that angels
Reveal themselves to you; they sit all day
Beside you, and lie down at night by you,
Who care not for their presence—muse or sleep—
And all at once they leave you and you know them!
We are so fooled, so cheated! Why, even now
I am not too secure against foul play:
The shadows deepen, and the walls contract—
No doubt some treachery is going on!
Tis very dusk. Where are we put, Aprile?
Have they left us in the lurch? This murky, loathsome
Death-trap—this slaughter-house—is not the hall
In the golden city! Keep by me, Aprile!
There is a hand groping amid the blackness
To catch us! Have the spider-fingers got you,
Poet? Hold on me for your life; if once
They pull you—Hold!
Tis but a dream—no more.
I have you still—the sun comes out again;
Let us be happy—all will yet go well!
Let us confer: is it not like, Aprile,
That spite of trouble, this ordeal passed,
The value of my labours ascertained,
Just as some stream foams long among the rocks,
But after glideth glassy to the sea,
So full content shall henceforth be my lot?
* * * * * * * Is this too much?
I will learn this, if God so please, and die!
If thou shalt please, dear God, if thou shalt please!
We are so weak, we know our motives least
In their confused beginning; if at first
I sought .... But wherefore bare my heart to thee?
I know thy mercy; * * * * * *
* * * * * * Yet, yet first show
I have done wrong in daring! Rather give
The supernatural consciousness of strength
That fed my youth—one only hour of that
With thee to help—O what should bar me then!
Lost, lost! Thus things are ordered here! God’s creatures,
And yet he takes no pride in us!—none, none!
Truly there needs another life to come!
If this be all (I must tell Festus that)—
And other life awaits us not—for one,
I say t’is a poor cheat, a stupid bungle,
A wretched failure. I, for one, protest
Against it, and I hurl it back with scorn!
We wish that we could speak in as high terms of praise of the other poems which compose these two volumes; but in most of them all these defects, at which we have before hinted, come out as unpleasantly as they did in Sordello; while in those written in a chaster and more wonted style, such as the dramas of Colombe’s Birthday, Luria, The Return of the Druses, and A Blot on the Scutcheon, we miss Mr. Browning’s self. He seems to have given up with his private extravagancies, his private excellencies, and descended almost to the level of Sheridan Knowles and the stock five-act Commedia della Spada. There are fine “motives,” fine “situations,” fine “passages” in all; but not such as we might have expected from him. His men and women are not flesh and blood, but stage-properties; and we long even for a line of rant, much more one of real agony or pathos. Take, for example (we have not space to quote, and should wish the reader to judge for himself, in this and all other matters), the stirring “situation” of Mildred and Tresham in Act iii. sc. 2 of the Blot on the Scutcheon, and the passionless commonplaces in which, after all, it embodies itself. [p. 174→]
In Pippa Passes, on the other hand, and The Soul’s Tragedy, Mr. Browning’s characteristic personality shows itself more clearly; we feel that no one but he would have written them; they are never weak, never commonplace: but we must add, too, never pleasing. We are bound to admit that higher judgments than ours admire Pippa Passes; but in our opinion, here as in Sordello and Paracelsus the changes, rather of matter than of manner, are too abrupt. Each of them has, certainly, its one general key and hue; in Sordello, too violent, overcharged, and sulphureous; and in Paracelsus, too sustained and monotonous; in the two comedies, too merely didactic and prosaic. But the thought and the imagery were rather welded artificially together, than truly wedded to, and interpenetrated by, each other. Instead of painting his arguments, and arguing by his paintings, Mr. Browning is content to let mere lumps of the one alternate with mere lumps of the other, after the manner of Festus, though, we need not say, with infinitely less credit and clumsiness.
Does this proceed from mere haste and carelessness, or from a certain “arrhythmia,” a defectiveness of that highest poetic faculty to which all things are musical, teeming with secret melodies of their own, with mystic analogies between the meanest and the most sublime, between that which is most sportive and voluptuous, and that which is most severe and suprasensual? We cannot tell; but we half suspect that the latter cause is the true one: for we seem to trace the presence of the same defect in the crabbed and confused sentences, the absence of graceful grammatic flow, the exceeding harshness and cacophony of metre, the false and often ludicrous rhymes, and, above all, in the coarse, vulgar, and irreverent expressions which tumble in, needlessly and out of place, to jar our sense and taste just when we are beginning to admire. In a poem, for instance, of uncommon pathos and beauty, though of that lurid and unhealthy tone, in which, we are sorry to say, Mr. Browning’s muse seems to work most freely, the whole effect seems to us spoilt by the irreverent attempt at naïveté in the last line. But the reader shall be judge between us.
Porphyria’s Lover. A Madhouse Cell.
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: straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist
And made her smooth white shoulder bare
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread o’er all her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me; she
Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free,
From pride and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever:
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night’s gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her and all in vain;
So she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Proud, very proud; at last I knew [p. 175→]
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee
I warily oped her lids; again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss;
I propped her head up as before,
Only this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!
The same defect, carried out into sheer disgustingness, defaces “The Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxed’s Church, Rome 15—;” a sketch which might else vie with Mr. Tennyson’s St. Simeon Stylites, evincing an acquaintance with the darker and coarser side at least of the celestial-infernal age which it describes, and a vivid dramatic faculty which makes it matter of astonishment that the poet’s dramas have fallen as yet so far beneath what he evidently might have written.
The “Cavalier Tunes,” in like manner, are simply blackguard—as, indeed, their originals too often were; but the poet ought surely, in reproducing the feelings of a past age, to give us rather its spirit than its flesh, its nobleness than its failings; or, if he must give the coarser side of the picture, let him give the fairer also, for the sake of historic truth and justice. Doubtless old Basing House re-echoed to many a roysterer’s pothouse carol; but a noble hand and nobler heart had graven on every window, Aymez Loyauté—and in that, and not in pothouse blustering, lay its strength. We might complain in the same tone of “Through the Metidja,” and “The Ride to Aix.” There is rattle in them, but no melody, and the latter is defaced by a line which, considering that horses are in the habit of breathing entirely through their nostrils, is as physically impossible as it is disgustingly circumstantial.
But we will complain no more: though, indeed, our complaints are really compliments; for had we not felt certain that Mr. Browning was worthy of better things, we should have left the matter to clear itself, as all poems do pretty accurately in “the righteous sieve of Time.” But there are fine ballads in the second volume, healthy and English, clear of all that Italianesque pedantry, that crambe repetita of olives and lizards, artists and monks, with which the English public, for its sins, has been spoon-fed for the last half century, ever since Childe Harold, in a luckless hour, thought a warmer climate might make him a better man, and that the way to raise one’s own spirit was to escape to a country where humanity has sunk below the beasts. When will poets, as some of our most promising artists are beginning to do, discover that the Italian mine is well-nigh worked out, and that those who go thither for teaching are likely to find swine bad lecturers on the pearls before them?
After all, Mr. Browning’s highest efforts are either on English subjects, or on such as he need not have gone to Italy to appreciate. “Count Gismond” and “Pictor Ignotus” are of all countries and none; “the Lost [p. 176→] Leader” is English, and nobly English, to its heart’s core; and so are these “Home Thoughts from the Sea:”—
Nobly, nobly Cape St. 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, turns to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
How can Mr. Browning help England? By leaving henceforth “the dead to bury their dead,” in effete and enervating Italy, and casting all his rugged genial force into the questions and the struggles of that mother-country to whom, and not to Italy at all, he owes all his most valuable characteristics.
With some such judgment already floating in our mind, we opened, full of curiosity and hope, Mr. Browning’s last volume of poems, Christmas Eve and Easter Day, and we cannot deny that our first feeling was one of disappointment and dislike. “What!” we said to ourselves; “no growth? no sign of the crucible and file? no greater harmony of tone, no greater union of parts, than before? Is the poet, in spite of all his undeveloped powers, going to end as a mannerist, and that a rugged and incoherent one? Here is the old levity and irreverence; the old coarse, ungraceful quaintness,—whether to call it humour or not we still cannot tell; the old curdled style, lumps of mere abstract argument alternating with lumps of mere objective description; the old obscurity: all the old faults, in short, showing more ugly than ever beside the greater sublimity and intrinsic sweetness of the subject with which they have chosen to meddle.” And when we had said this, we repented of our words. We remembered Goethe’s memorable observation, that “our first impression of perfect works of art is generally one of disappointment, often of dislike.” Of course, if we had had the doing of them we should have done them our little way, to fit our little wit; while the great man does them in his great way, which comprehends our little wits, and a hundred more. We recollected a similar feeling of all but wrath with Mr. Tennyson, at the first perusal of The Princess, and how, as we re-read and re-read, unsuspected beauties and harmonies unveiled themselves to our at first dazzled sense, till we found that our business was to try and borrow the poet’s eyes, and learn through them, instead of criticizing him through our own spectacles; and so, mindful of the somewhat humbling lesson which The Princess taught us, we re-read Christmas Eve and Easter Day, and re-read them again, till we had arrived, we fancied, at something of the general idea which the poems (for that they were true poems, however faulty and obscure, there could not be a moment’s doubt) were meant to express.
What that idea is we decline informing our readers; to discover it for themselves will be a right good practice for their analytic powers, and a still better test of the healthiness of their own conceptions of Christmas Eve and Easter Day. Besides, to make any analysis, we must make a complete and a lengthy one; and one which would lead us into various vexatas quæstiones of doctrine and discipline beyond the scope of this periodical. We prefer, therefore, to give our conclusions, and to let the reader discover the premises for himself.
Now the first feature which struck us on this reperusal, was not so much the strength of the poetry—for Mr. Browning cannot well write weakly—as its intense earnestness. The writer believed with his whole heart what he was saying; of that, at least, there could be no doubt, as far as internal evidence of style can be accepted as proof, and a most powerful proof it is. He had not taken up the subject as a subject, as something which would do nicely to write about; but as a real, present, all-important question, explaining and deciding to him all which is most inward, deep, wide, eternal in his own being and in nature, in the present and for ever. He was not a talker talking on a theme; but a living man who had found, and loved, and worshipped, a Living Person. And must not that love, in the critic’s eyes, [p. 177→] cover the multitude of artistic faults? Not that it will for a moment justify them; for faith in Him who is the Word, the Light, should surely teach the poet only more reverence about his own words, more caution lest the pure light which is His gift be refracted and discoloured by any private trick of his own manner, any eidolon of his own limited intellect. It should make him only the more patient and careful to weed out every artistic defect, believing that He who alone can give the thought, will give also, to the patient and humble worker, the melody, the harmony, the simplicity, the perfect form, which are, like the thoughts, inspirations from Him, dim and partial reflexes of his ideal Manhood. But yet—is it for the critic in such a case to judge harshly, or in love? Must he not say to his own heart, “Wilt thou not love one who loves Him, whom thou professest to love? Take the message as coming, not from the poet, but from the poet’s Lord; and learn, rather than judge: perhaps then thou wilt find reason to be more contented with the manner of the message; to believe that thus, and not otherwise, it was projected upon the mirror of his brain, because thus, and no otherwise, he could have uttered it, thrown into it all his peculiar talents, all the force of his peculiar personality; because thus, and no otherwise, would it have become real and palpable to thee. Trust Him to do His own work; may not these very defects be signs of a higher calling than that of the glib-tongued multitude, whose rivulets can run smoothly, because their channels are ready scooped and polished for them? Which is better, he who polishes a doll, or he who rough-hews a colossus? Perhaps that very roughness and incoherence may be a sign that the poet is struggling with thoughts too great for him—and for whom are they not too great? That very jumbling of low-lived humour (as you hastily call it) with the most awful and transcendent themes—how can you tell that it is not the natural fruit, clumsy perhaps, but still honest, of his faith in the interpenetration of heaven and earth, in the divine origin of even the meanest things, which you yourself believe to be the greatest need of this age? That very irreverence, as you so hastily thought it, may be a sign of the fearlessness of real belief, which has looked at its object long and intensely enough to be—if a little too familiar—still not a superstitious coward, who atones for his six days’ atheism by a sanctimonious snuffle on the seventh. Recollect Jean Paul’s dictum, that no man really believes his own creed till he can afford to jest about it, and listen to the poet’s own self-justification, as to that of a brother:—
And if any blame me
Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,—
Or, worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
On the bounds of the holy and the awful,
I praise the heart, and pity the head of him;
And refer myself to Thee, instead of him;
Who head and heart alike discernest,
Looking below light speech we utter
When the frothy spume and frequent sputter
Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest!
May the truth shine out, stand ever before us!
Thus, step by step, we have passed on from dislike to palliation, from palliation to something very like justification, and now remain, as we expect many of our readers will, in doubt what verdict to give, and somewhat glad that our verdict matters so very little that it is not worth while giving, on it; unable to prophesy whether Mr. Browning’s poems will occupy a high and permanent place in our literature, but sure that if they do not, it will be from defects of manner rather than of matter, from the mere outward ruggedness of the utterance, and not from any intrinsic want of richness, nobleness, or health, in the nature.
On this latter point there can be no doubt. A higher verdict than ours has been pronounced on it, by the best poetess, in our humble opinion, whom England has yet produced. Her sponsorship shall be sufficient for us; all that remains now for us is to prove the value of her verdict, and the honour of her approbation—much more, of her love.
[This article concludes with a notice of EBB’s Poems (1850); see pp. 000–000.]
[Charles Kingsley]
Reviewed:
Sordello (RB), London: Moxon, 1840.
Christmas-Eve & Easter-Day (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.
Poems (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1849.
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