R510400A. Poems (1849) and Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day.
The Christian Remembrancer, April 1851, pp. 346–370.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 371–381.
It is not easy to determine how far originality is a legitimate aim in composition. For a man to sit down to say over again, and in the same manner as has been used a thousand times, certain facts or views, is a manifest absurdity. Each bard, the humblest that ever strung verses together, must be buoyed up by the fancy that there is some novelty, some sort of freshness, something of the morning dew about his efforts. However utter his failure, however trite and familiar are his thoughts, images, versification; however our ears may recognise the same sing-song, our memories echo the same reflections, images, descriptions, our understanding trace the origin of every thought, not to its alleged source, but from son to father, through the whole genealogy of poets, the writer has at least laboured under the impression that some grace, some subtle distinction stamps upon his effusions the image of his individual mind, and separates his work from all that has gone before. But this feeling, which is inseparable from the impulse which leads men to write at all, is very different from the conscious desire of saying things because they are new. Whatever has been intensely, deeply felt within the heart, in process of time, as the mind has leisure and calmness to contemplate and meditate upon what has so stirred it,—to see its bearings, to reckon up its consequences,—excites a longing for utterance and expression. It is part of the constitution of our being to be relieved, benefited, strengthened by the setting in order and communicating our thoughts; it is an instinct with some minds,—from a vivid realization of their [p. 347→] own impressions and emotions, from a consciousness of power, from an experience that they can influence, charm, do good to their fellow-men,—to seek their sympathy, to compel them to feel what they feel, to see what they see, to know what they know. But here it is the intensity of their feelings or convictions which impels them, a sense of their reality, importance or sacred value, not any deliberate speculations on their novelty; indeed they are actuated by a contrary intention, not to tell what is new, but their experience, which to them is old. Every one who studies his own nature, who comprehends himself, and in that process necessarily compares his mind with other minds, knows that there are differences innumerable between himself and all others. This impression need not be conscious, but it will yet actuate him to express fearlessly his own conceptions and sensations, untroubled by the apprehension that others have felt or thought the same. We cannot realize that we have a soul without being also aware that it stands alone, distinct and different from all that has gone before, or will follow after. It is quite another matter, of course, whether a writer has power to express this difference; but with that we have at present no concern. The consciousness of it is enough to set the mind at ease.
But it is one thing to trust in this separateness of our natures, and another to aim at producing evidences of it. The poet’s true object should rather be to excite sympathy in spite of it, to strike upon those chords which prove the whole world kin; and to do this he must either choose topics which concern men alike—men as men—the hopes and fears we are born with, the sorrows, the affections that come to us with the air we breathe; or, if his genius leads to strange or high things, he must connect them with what is familiar by clear, tangible, unmistakeable links of association; so that by the things seen we may apprehend what is not seen; which certainly needs at least an equal degree of experience of life and thought, with more common and simpler themes. There must have been a slow maturing process somewhere, at some time, to produce any new or valuable thought, and therefore, men’s most original conceptions are not those which at once strike themselves as such. They get familiar with them by degrees. What a correct critical judgment owns as such is struck out by the imagination working upon thought, reflection, memory, habits of comparison, and a world of silent hidden powers, on which it acts as the light, bringing forth into order what these seething elements have long been secretly preparing; and ten to one, when a man dashes off what he denominates to himself, with conscious complacency, an original idea, which he believes has never occurred even to himself before, it is a sham, a delusion, a clap-trap, [p. 348→] some notion which he has borrowed and travestied from his next neighbour, and which either youth or the perpetual immaturity of an unreflecting nature suffers him to be dazzled with: and if he possesses a showy style, or has the confidence to shade what he indistinctly apprehends himself, in language still more dim and oracular, the world for a time will be dazzled too.
It cannot be doubted by any one versed at all in the poetry of the day, that there is in its writers much of that deliberate aim at originality which we deprecate. It is, we may say, the fashion to be original—the fashion to strike out new lines of thought—to say things the like of which have never been said before; a fashion, we venture to say, quite as easily adopted and needing as small a stock of gifts, in spite of all its pretension, as any other costume which has preceded it. In one age it is the fashion to be metaphysical; in another, amatory; in another, pastoral: at one time every poet is compelled to look back into the past, in another to worship the present; sometimes all men are real, at another all are ideal. Sometimes the muse is cased in armour; sometimes prim in powder and pomatum. Now, her hands and feet are embarrassed by her crook and her sheep; then again, she is over the hills with hound and horn: at one time she is muffled up to the throat, at another we are glad of a rag to cover her. Now, nous avons changé tout celà. Now, every poet aims at dressing her to his individual taste, thinks for himself, and looks at things from a new point of view, explores new fields, and plunges into the empyrean vast. But lo! at the same precise moment, it turns out that every one else is guided by the same desires, is influenced by the same lofty ambition, and the muse has still no change of raiment, but even on common days must wear her mystic veil and star-be-spangled mantle, forced into ceaseless speculation and unvarying doubt. We are naturally impressed by the profundity of such an age of thinkers, till the very universality of the gift raises doubts of its genuineness; and, shaking off the awed bewilderment which at first enthralled us, we call common sense to our aid, and look about us, and after a process of slow disenchantment come in time to the conviction, that many a poet who now sets us upon doubting our own existence, or,—emulating the Titans,—would fain scale heaven, a hundred years ago would very contentedly have indited sonnets to Delia through his whole poetical career, nor dreamt that he had missed his vocation. We do not deny that, the present being in truth an intellectual age, his verses are better now than they would have been with only Delia for his inspiration. The age does so much for those who live in it that they all more or less share its characteristics. We are all probably cleverer than we should have been a hundred years ago; we probably use our minds [p. 349→] more, and on more important things. It does so much for us all. And this influence of our age is no doubt a talent committed to us. But it cannot make really precious things common—it can work no miracles—it cannot make the shallow waters deep, nor change lead or brass into gold. Great qualities will still be rare ones in all ages. And on the other side of the picture, and to counterbalance the advantages to us all, we have acknowledged—most thankfully acknowledged—as derived from an age of intellectual activity, there is one temptation peculiar to it, and to which, as belonging to it, we all are liable, in the form of an idolatry as degrading, as slavish as any past one which men have learnt to loathe,—perhaps, as touching our noblest part, more deeply debasing—the worship, we mean, of intellectual power; the submission of the individual mind to it as to a divinity above itself, which sometimes in men’s writings does not scruple to express itself in a deliberate preference of the idol to God himself, and without this hyperbole of impiety is yet evident as prevailing principle of the day wherever we turn, and especially through the whole range of literature. Authors, indeed, and poets, have a sort of interest in fostering this delusion, and persuading men to worship greatness wherever they see it: for, believing themselves to belong to the privileged class,—the men of progress, the model men, the regenerators of their species,—they may hope by nourishing the spirit of servile adulation to come in for their share of it in time, and thus exalting genius in general terms are all the while organizing a band of devotees for their own future service. This is a fact too generally granted perhaps to need illustration; but as a proof that we cannot exaggerate in our statement, we will present our readers with a passage from Paracelsus, by the author at the head of our list, Mr. Browning. Aureole Paracelsus, “the master-mind,” the “thinker,” the “explorer,” the “creator,” after a very discreditable career, is dying in an hospital, his respectable religious friend, Festus, is watching the ravings of delirium by his pillow, and thus addresses the object of his unshaken (unshaken by everything that ought to have shaken it) allegiance:—
Fes. Behold thy might in me! thou hast infused
Thy soul in mine; and I am grand as thou,
Seeing I comprehend thee—I so simple,
Thou so august! I recognise thee first;
I saw thee rise, I watch’d thee early and late,
And though no glance reveal thou dost accept
My homage—thus no less I proffer it,
And bid thee enter gloriously thy rest!
Par. Festus!
Fes. I am from noble Aureole, God!
I am upon his side, come weal or woe!
His portion shall be mine! he has done well!
I would have sinn’d had I been strong enough, [p. 350→]
As he has sinn’d! Reward him or I waive
Reward! If thou canst find no place for him,
He shall be king elsewhere, and I will be
His slave for ever! There are two of us.
Browning’s Poems, vol. i. p. 134.
But in order to win this homage, in order to reach the idol’s envied seat, it is needful to follow the requirements of the times, to be an “explorer, a creator,” and how is this to be brought about? Of necessity it must be by some means of which the author is himself vividly conscious, or he will not be sustained by his own enthusiasm. The first and indispensable step is to dismiss judgment from her place,—that obstinate, questioning, critical, restraining power, which checks so many high flights in us all; and thus freed, he must force himself—and it will not be difficult—into an unbounded self-reliance—an indiscriminate confidence in every suggestion of the fancy. “Believe,” says Mr. Bailey, the ingenuous author of Festus, “believe yourself inspired, and you are.” A great step is here gained: the history of all sects shows what apparently marvellous effects are produced by this one persuasion; and under such encouragement and the reins thus entirely abandoned, those must be very dull brains indeed that will not produce something uncommon—something that we shall all stare at; nor is it of dull brains that we would be understood to speak. It is not, perhaps, a very safe speculation, yet all our readers must be aware that there are a great many subjects which they leave unexplored, because having no guide through them, it would be wrong to speculate upon them. But, if suddenly released from this salutary restraint, and at the same time excited by the stimulants of vanity and ambition, any one ventured on such a course, he might elicit from his own unassisted thoughts something new, strange, startling, which he would himself be afraid to look upon, and which, therefore, might not unlikely excite in other minds of an indiscriminating character, sensations of fear or awe or curiosity, which would reflect upon the originator of them a character of daring invention. For instance, if he should choose, availing himself of the few glimpses inspiration furnishes us with, to compose scenes in heaven—to dramatise incidents, to make angels and the Creator of angels speak in his language, and express his own thoughts; so long as he had any power over numbers, any knack at sounding blank verse, to cover the too manifest impiety, we are much mistaken if he would not find many readers to think it fine, and to congratulate themselves on having experienced some new, agreeable sensations. What was the fruit in the writer of simple irreverence, would not improbably seem to them the noble flight of a genius not to be judged by common rules.
A choice, then, of an unusual subject, one which for any [p. 351→] cause has been hitherto avoided, is one road to this desired object. Another is a new mode of treating old ones. There is a certain code of morals, for example, which through all ages has been received and acknowledged. Vices, breaches of this code, of various kinds, have, it is true, been always invested by immoral authors with interest, they have sought to make men sympathise with error, but all the while admitting it to be error. The new mode of treating the question is, to justify and defend it; to maintain that sin is either a necessity of our nature, or a chosen selected road to good, and to encourage men by these arguments to the practice of it; and thus the part of the modern master-mind is not to throw an illusive, attractive halo round the sinner, but with unscrupling fidelity to depict him as he is, and to defend the sin. Such is the tendency of modern modes of thought, in those who think themselves enlightened; not often to be seen developed, though we think fully brought out in one poem in our list. Profaneness in the familiar treatment of sacred names and things, a quality which may be said indeed to be a main ingredient in the preceding modes, is also, in its own unaided nature itself, another distinct means; not indeed an invention of modern times, for it has before been successfully used to produce the same result; but systematized in this, and often enhanced by a kind of religious gloss. The defence of sin may be done in language scarcely to shock our ears, but the profaneness we speak of makes its chief assault on our senses, and aims to surprise them by unexpected combinations. Scripture names and characters familiar to us only through one set of associations, are brought forcibly before us in another, and made to speak in wholly new language. We entertain ideas, strict, formal, conventional, it may be, of certain awful or sacred characters; we feel that it would be unsafe, with our limited knowledge, tainted imaginations, worldly aims, to intrude in unwarranted speculation on their uninspired life and common existence, it would indeed be fatal to reverence for such to become a habit of mind; and therefore here is another unfrequented field for the experiments of the searchers after novelty of effect. Sentiments which would hardly keep our attention for a moment, when spoken in the writer’s own name, arrest it when put into the mouth of some saint of the old dispensation, and all the more effectually the more they are out of character; and one trained in a stern exclusive code is made to utter the thoughts and desires of modern liberalism. Out of character, we say, but there is a contrary view at which the admirers of this style arrive, who consider these startling juxtapositions of the ancient with the modern in the same person as proving a profound insight into human nature, looking through the husk of manners, habits of thought, associa- [p. 352→] tions, deep down into the heart itself. There was an example to the purpose in one of the earlier numbers of Mr. Dickens’s “Household Words,” where, in a little dramatic scene, the patriarch Abraham, whose especial call it was to leave a land of idolators, and to separate himself from worldly associations, is made to acknowledge his error in refusing the right hand of familiar fellowship to a fire-worshipper, and not allowing him to be exactly on a par with himself in God’s favour and approbation.
One other means we must mention out of many which might be particularized, and then pass on from this part of our subject. It used to be a part of the common law of literature, that before a man presented his thoughts to the world, before he committed himself to type and all the formalities of publication, he should at least know himself what he wished to say,—he should have some distinct definite idea on the subject he undertook to treat of. Nothing can be further from the thought of modern regenerators. They understand better the principles of intellectual chiaro scuro, and are aware of the value of mists, hazes and distances in giving mystery to the familiar, and importance to the trivial. Whatever is clearly seen, defined against the broad light of common sunshine, is known for what it is, and gains no adventitious value or importance; therefore it must have an intrinsic value to stand inspection. A contrary method entails as it were a double advantage to the author, for by raising a mist of indistinctness around his crude conceptions, he is both spared the trouble of facing them and ascertaining their real value; and by presenting them in a cloud to his readers he secures their being received by a certain portion of them for something infinitely grander and more important than they really are. The blinded reader, finding a difficulty to unravel, concludes it is caused by the inherent depth of the thought, and worships with the more fervour the mystery of the oracle.
But it is time to turn from general reflections, necessarily bounded and imperfect, to the individual examples at the head of our article, which have so far themselves suggested them, as they appear in different ways specimens of current modes of thought and of subservience to the age, though very distinct in character, and deserving of widely different treatment from the critic’s hand. A poet may be tinctured by his own day, yet will retain, so far as he has inherent force or genius, his individuality unimpaired. One bond necessarily connects the works at the head of our list in our first mention of them, however separate in their own aim and nature, and that not a common one in the relation of books to each other, and productive no doubt of endless confusion to booksellers and publishers. Almost at the same time husband and wife, the poet and the poetess, issue each [p. 353→] two thick, close-printed green volumes, identical in their aspect, and bearing the same name; “Mr. Browning’s Poems, in two vols.,” a new edition; “Mrs. Browning’s Poems, in two vols.,” a new edition. There is a harmony, a domestic agreement in this arrangement so pleasing, suggestive of such happy thoughts, of a household conducted on such melodious principles as quite to atone for the confusion our minds suffer, and the mistakes which pursue us in taking up the volumes. Fortunately the similarity is confined to name and outsides, and when we open the page something generally shows at once the sex of the speaker; some tender new coinage of the fanciful poetess, who never can find dictionary words enough to suit the capricious exigencies of her verse, betrays the Miss Elizabeth Barrett of our earlier acquaintance, while on the other side too often some rough indecorous rhyme and unscrupulous word declares the movements of a manly pen. Some such distinction must needs have been to produce those differences absolutely necessary in the conjugal relation. If Mr. Browning had been in the habit of writing of “Dream-breath and blè,” or of a
Ruffling of green branches
Shaded off to resonances,
or if Miss Barrett had made “Gallio” rhyme with “tallyho,” or “vestiment” with “testament,” we venture to pronounce in our utter ignorance of the real state of things, or of the authors, except as known to us in their works, that it could never have been a match.
Mr. Browning possesses one distinction, of which his friends make a boast, as placing him in the rank of original writers: he is with the commonalty of readers unpopular, by many is regarded as simply unreadable. He has excited much notice in the reading world, he is said to be in high favour in American literary circles—but the multitude as yet turn from him and refuse to listen. He has his devotees, however, and he is evidently proud of them, and likes very well to be a leader; on the other hand talking cavalierly, as men will, of the people who criticise his verses, loftily admitting the truth of their small carpings, but implying that they are incapable of entering into his keener train of thought, and new mode of expressing it, who will be hindered by such slight impediments. The general reader complains of a want of beauty; there is nothing pleasing, no fair scenes, no illusions, no music, no harmony of thought or diction, and is revolted besides, by far more grave and serious faults. His enlightened admirers, on the other hand, hail him as a teacher who comes with a mission, with real things to say, which he can say but in one way, a way which we must tolerate till we learn to love it: offering their [p. 354→] own rule as our example in the needful submission of our private judgment; which seems to be, in every case where the mind is shocked on a first perusal, to read the passage again and again, till it learns to like it. Paracelsus, Sordello, Pippa Passes, his latest work, “Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day,” are to be regarded as a poet’s “revelations.” Nature has made him what he is, and he acts on her dictates; he cannot be expected to adopt received modes; he has a higher task, they say, than to create beauty; force, action, life, are his elements, his genius is purely dramatic; it is forced to express itself in this didactic, harsh, severe form; and a host of other arguments, which are good or bad, according to the merits of their subject. His longer poems are most of them, it is true, cast in the dramatic mould, but, as we hope to prove when we reach that part of our subject, this is a wholly different thing from having genuine dramatic genius. We believe that his power lies generally in his shorter pieces and less ambitious efforts, which implies of course our want of faith in his “mission”; yet siding as we do with the multitude in their general judgment, we must yet admit that there is real force in his poems. We feel this both at the time of reading them, and, what is even a better test, because they stand forth distinctly in the memory out of the midst of many other volumes of poetry read at the same time. They assert their superiority over verse of a more poetical character by this power. What Mr. Browning wishes to say is frequently not worth saying, and very often would be better unsaid; it is heathenish or coarse, or asserting the supremacy of our lower instincts and passions, or gloating over our nature’s savage propensities, and often (though we believe not with a full realization) profane: also the verse is generally extremely unmusical, and seldom conveys the peculiar pleasure it is the duty of numbers to convey—though once or twice we have passages of melody, which show what he might have attained to had he cultivated instead of wilfully vitiated his taste—but he has the power of imprinting what he desires to say on the mind. We exclude from these remarks altogether the Dramas, in which he cannot make us realize the scenes he dwells upon. But in his Lyrics, and his Dramatic Poems, if either can be properly so denominated, he can produce a forcible impression. Many of the minor pieces in his collective poems might be adduced as examples, and several descriptive passages from his latest work, “Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day.” The first judgment of most minds, on glancing over this avowedly religious poem, would be, that it was written in intentional irreverence and impiety. The choice of the metre, the grotesqueness of the rhymes, often suggesting to the reader that he has stumbled on some forgotten page of Hudibras; the tone of [p. 355→] rough humour contrasted with the sacredness of the subject, and of the Vision which guides the poet in his search for truth, would justify the opinion; but though all this is in its nature profane and irreverent, we fully exonerate the writer from any intention of the sort. We even believe after its perusal, as opposed to the impression left by many of his works, that he considers religion a real and important thing, that he would willingly strengthen his faith, that the work was written with this aim. But it betrays the workings of a coarse, rude, though powerful mind, incapable of spiritual elevation, and despising flights because it cannot attain to them. In all systems it seeks the visible, the gross, the earthy; without this element religion seems to possess to him no body. But before proceeding to his religious views, or to the choice which terminated his doubting bewildered search, we will give some specimens of his secular manner. The following passage from Paracelsus gives his views of social regeneration. Paracelsus, we must explain to such as are unacquainted with the poem, is the mind’s life of one of this earth’s noblest spirits. As an historical character he does not come out very well, having in his intense burning desire for knowledge taken to forbidden arts, and at length, to win popular favour, condescended to the most base and humiliating means for obtaining money and distinction. One of his names, Bombastus, has become a byword, from the form of eloquence he chose to adopt in his charlatan career. Such as he was, however, he is asserted to have been the father of modern chemistry, and therefore a master spirit, and deserving of all the fine names which Festus, according to the passage already quoted, heaped upon him. It is thus that towards the close of his career he prophesies of progress. What this progress means, what it especially means from the lips of those who admit the inevitable starting point of each soul of the human family to be an utterly fallen nature, we do not pretend to say; but probably our present author had no theological difficulties to interfere with the free expansion of the grand theory. We give it at length, to put our readers in possession of the views on this subject of a growing school of opinion:—
And this to fill us with regard for man,
With apprehension of his passing worth,
Desire to work his proper nature out,
And ascertain his rank and final place;
For these things tend still upward—progress is
The law of life—man’s self is not yet Man!
Nor shall I deem his object served, his end
Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth,
While only here and there a star dispels
The darkness, here and there a towering mind
O’erlooks its prostrate fellows: when the host
Is out at once, to the despair of night, [p. 356→]
When all mankind alike is perfected,
Equal in full blown powers—then, not till then,
I say, begins man’s general infancy!
For wherefore make account of feverish starts
Of restless members of a dormant whole;
Impatient nerves which quiver, while the body
Slumbers as in a grave? O, long ago
The brow was twitched, the tremulous lids astir,
The peaceful mouth disturb’d; half-utter’d speech
Ruffled the lip, and then the teeth were set,
The breath drawn sharp, the strong right hand clench’d stronger,
As it would pluck a lion by the jaw;
The glorious creature laugh’d out e’en in sleep!
But when full roused, each giant-limb awake,
Each sinew strung, the great heart pulsing fast,
He shall start up, and stand on his own earth,
And so begin his long triumphant march,
And date his being thence,—thus wholly roused,
What he achieves shall be set down to him!
When all the race is perfected alike
As Man, that is: all tended to mankind,
And, man produced, all has its end thus far;
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God. Prognostics told
Man’s near approach; so in man’s self arise
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendour ever on before,
In that eternal circle run by life:
For men begin to pass their nature’s bound,
And find new hopes and cares which fast supplant
Their proper joys and griefs; and outgrow all
The narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade
Before th’ unmeasured thirst for good; while peace
Rises within them ever more and more.
Browning’s Poems, vol. i. p. 147.
This high-flown rant must be considered as the sentiments of our author. The impatience at the “narrow creeds of right and wrong” that exists now is perhaps not unnatural to minds who are for such wholesale methods of restoration. The quiet axiom, “Let each one mend himself,” and the like, falls coldly on ears which listen to promises of men being reformed altogether by a universal abstract “thirst for good.” But we need not moralize to our readers at length on such visions, nor on the small connexion such aspirations have with any practical self-improvement. The following, in a different style, are we think very spirited lines, and express with keen truth feelings common to all who have loved and lost their idol. Many a one may sympathise with a line here and there, who has not been forsaken and betrayed for the love of gold or distinction, who takes no part in the general tone, in the implied feelings outraged, nor in the threat of ceaseless uncompromising war, but only because he too has loved and known the bitterness of desertion. Whenever there is real feeling and pathos in the heart, these emotions [p. 357→] will force themselves into harmonious eloquent expression; we do not meet with many verses in Mr. Browning’s volumes that read off so flowingly:—
the lost leader.
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allow’d:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, follow’d him, honour’d him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learn’d his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakspeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley were with us,—they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
ii.
We shall march prospering,—not through his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
Blot out his name, then,—record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life’s night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain,
Forced praise on our part—the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!
Best fight on well, for we taught him,—strike gallantly,
Aim at our heart ere we pierce through his own;
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardon’d in Heaven, the first by the throne!
Browning’s Poems, vol. ii. p. 350.
“Count Gismond” is another example of nervous, forcible expression. The heroine of the story tells the history of the terrible day in which first she knew her husband, and was saved by him from ignominy. There is much truth and power in the abruptness, hurry, and simplicity of the narrative, and the absence of mere poetical decoration, all contrasting favourably with the deliberation of the action in Mr. Browning’s Dramas:—
count gismond. aix in provence.
Christ God, who savest men, save most
Of men, Count Gismond who saved me!
Count Gualtier, when he chose his post,
Chose time and place and company
To suit it; when he struck at length
My honour, ’twas with all his strength.
And doubtlessly ere he could draw
All points to one, he must have schemed!
That miserable morning saw
Few half so happy as I seem’d,
While being dress’d in Queen’s array
To give our Tourney prize away. [p. 358→]
I thought they loved me, did me grace
To please themselves; ’twas all their deed;
God makes, or fair or foul our face;
If showing mine so caused to bleed
My cousin’s hearts, they should have dropp’d
A word, and straight the play had stopp’d.
They too, so beauteous! each a queen
By virtue of her brow and breast;
Not needing to be crown’d I mean,
As I do. E’en when I was dress’d,
Had either of them spoke, instead
Of glancing sideways with still head!
But no: they let me laugh, and sing
My birthday song quite through, adjust
The last rose in my garland, fling
A last look on the mirror, trust
My arms to each an arm of theirs,
And so descend the castle stairs.—
* * * *
And they could let me take my state
And foolish throne, amid applause
Of all come there to celebrate
My Queen’s day—Oh, I think the cause
Of much was, they forgot no crowd
Makes up for parents in their shroud!
Howe’er that be, all eyes were bent
Upon me, when my cousins cast
Theirs down; ’twas time I should present
The victor’s crown, but .... there,—’twill last
No long time .... the old mist again
Blinds me as then it did. How vain!
See, Gismond’s at the gate, in talk
With his two boys: I can proceed.
Well, at that moment, who should stalk
Forth boldly (to my face indeed)
But Gualtier, and he thunder’d “Stay!”
And all stay’d. “Bring no crowns, I say!”
Gualtier then makes his false and infamous charge:—
I? What answer’d I? As I live
I never fancied such a thing
As answer possible to give.
What says the body, when they spring
Some monstrous torture-engine’s whole
Strength on it? No more says the soul.
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?
The knight gives the lie to Gualtier both by word and blow, and she already feels herself cleared. In the following stanzas the exclusive rest and trust of her thoughts in her champion, is of a piece with all the author’s notions of true affection:—
This glads me most, that I enjoy’d
The heart of the joy, with my content
In watching Gismond unalloy’d
By any doubt of the event:
God took that on him—I was bid
Watch Gismond for my part: I did.
Did I not watch him while he let
His armourer just brace his greaves,
Rivet his hauberk, on the fret
The while! His foot … my memory leaves
No least stamp out, nor how anon
He pull’d his ringing gauntlets on.
And e’en before the trumpet’s sound
Was finish’d, prone lay the false Knight,
Prone as his lie, upon the ground:
Gismond flew at him, used no sleight
Of the sword, but open-breasted drove,
Cleaving till out the truth he clove.
Which done, he dragg’d him to my feet
And said, “Here die, but end thy breath
In full confession, lest thou fleet
From my first, to God’s second death!
Say hast thou lied?” And, “I have lied
To God and her,” he said, and died.
Then Gismond kneeling to me, ask’d
—What safe my heart holds, though no word
Could I repeat now, if I tasked
My powers for ever, to a third
Dear e’en as you are. Pass the rest,
Until I sank upon his breast.
* * * * [p. 359→]
Much of Mr. Browning’s force of expression unquestionably lies in the development of sentiments and passions which form no fit subject for poetry,—low desires, fiendish revenge, sordid hate. There is a singular scene entitled “The Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxad’s Church,” which excels in this vein. The poet has thrown his mind into the subject, and delights in pourtraying in the person of a dying Churchman that absolute subjugation of the soul to the body, which a life of selfishness and sin may reduce men to. Another styled “Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister,” and beginning
G R—r—r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence,
is of the same character, where impotent hatred is expressed in a strain of apostrophes, interjections, curses, animal hisses and groans, perfectly adapted to convey the desired impression. We are brought into direct close contact, through the power of the poet’s imagination, with something infinitely low and base. Again, wherever his delineation of love has any force, it is as a lowering and degrading passion, a thing of sight and sense only, and never considered full and complete till it has renounced for its idol’s sake all higher hopes and desires; as in “Time’s Revenges,” where a poet and author, after describing his faithful friend, thus rhapsodizes:—
And I’ve a lady. * *
* * * * * * *
I tell you I stride up and down
This garret, crown’d with love’s best crown,
And feasted with love’s perfect feast,
To think I kill for her, at least,
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth’s end and manhood’s aim,
—So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,
Fill’d full, eaten out and in,
With the face of her, the eyes of her,
The lips and little chin, the stir
Of shadows round her mouth.—Vol. ii. p. 408.
His women are forward, and often immodest; qualities, however, which very little affect their admirers, who are enchained solely by personal charms: “great eyes,” “smooth white faces,” “coiled hair.” Nothing can be less intelligent than their love; no reserves are kept up, and the ladies generally make the first advances. Most of those depicted, show something which would disqualify them for the society of their own sex. These faults are all so common with a certain class of writers as to have needed no notice here, but for the stand Mr. Browning takes as one of the lights of the age; in his way a teacher, a guide to a higher state of things. The following extract is in illustration of the propensity of modern writers to invest sacred characters with their own fancies. For no reason that can be gathered from any appropriateness in the poem, any [p. 360→] catching of the ancient spirit in thought or language, he has chosen to embody his own notions of the animal joys of existence in the person of David. Never was presumption less rewarded. How dull must the ears have been which could listen to the sweet Psalmist of Israel, and parody his strains in such words as these. Abner summons David to charm the evil spirit under which Saul was subject. The opening lines give the description of the darkened tent, and the attitude of the possessed monarch:—
And I paused, held my breath in such silence!
And listen’d apart;
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shudder’d,
And sparkles ’gan dart
From the jewels that woke in his turban
—At once with a start
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies
Courageous at heart;
So the head—but the body still moved not,
Still hung there erect.
And I bent once again to my playing,
Pursued it uncheck’d,
As I sang, “Oh, our manhood’s prime vigour,
—No spirit feels waste,
No muscle is stopp’d in its playing,
No sinew unbraced;—
And the wild joys of living! the leaping
From rock up to rock—
The rending their boughs from the palm-trees,—
The cool silver shock
Of a plunge in the pool’s living water—
The haunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion
Is couch’d in his lair:
And the meal—the rich dates—yellow’d over
With gold-dust divine,
And the locust’s-flesh steep’d in the pitcher,
The full draught of wine,
And the sleep in the dried river channel,
Where tall rushes tell
The water was wont to go warbling
So softly and well,—
How good is man’s life here, mere living!
How fit to employ
The heart, and the soul, and the senses,
For ever in joy!”—Browning, vol. ii. p. 405.
Though “Pippa Passes” is styled a drama, it is so much more really a poem with some dramatic scenes, that we will mention it here. The idea is a good one. Pippa, a poor Italian girl, rises in the morning, resolved to enjoy to the uttermost her one holiday throughout the year, and falls to musing over the great and rich of her town, “Asolo’s four happiest ones,” who through accident have attracted common attention. They all have the [p. 361→] whole year to enjoy themselves in; in their abundance they could well allow some drawbacks to the perfection of that single day which is her all. The story is composed of four different scenes, in which these personages are engaged during that day, in each of which, as Pippa passes down the street, singing in careless unconscious happiness, some words of her song strike on their ears in some critical juncture, and wholly change their plans and purposes. The guilty lover is smitten with remorse; the poor tricked student who has been cheated by his companions in a revengeful frolic into a degrading marriage, recovers from his despair, and resolves to make the best of his poor bride; the young Italian patriot rushes off under her inspiration to act the regicide’s part; the crafty unscrupulous churchman is terrified out of schemes of infamous aggrandisement. There is power and beauty in many passages, characterised and disfigured by the faults we have noticed; but one great defect lies in the total inadequacy of Pippa’s songs to produce the alleged effect. It requires a repeated perusal to make any sense at all out of them; how they could have struck on any one’s ear or conscience is past conjecture. Nothing short of a miracle could have educed such effects from such causes. We give the following scene as an example. The villanous intendant is in conference with the avaricious priest, and is proposing to betray poor Pippa, who is it seems the true heiress of the wealth the churchman is seeking to obtain, and to carry her off the scene. Monsignore is on the highway to assent, when the voice of the unknown girl awakes his conscience,
Intendant. ’Tis as well settled once and for ever: some women I have procured will pass Bluphocks, my handsome scoundrel, off for somebody; and once Pippa entangled!—you conceive? Through her singing? Is it a bargain?
(From without is heard the voice of Pippa singing:)
Overhead the tree-tops meet—
Flowers and grass spring ’neath one’s feet—
There was nought above me, and nought below,
My childhood had not learnt to know!
For, what are the voices of birds,
—Ay, and of beasts,—but words—our words,
Only so much more sweet?
The knowledge of that with my life begun!
But I had so near made out the sun!
And counted your stars the Seven, One,
Like the fingers of my hand:
Nay, I could all but understand
Wherefore through heaven the white moon ranges;
And just when out of her soft fifty changes
No unfamiliar face might overlook me—
Suddenly God took me! [p. 362→]
Monsignore (springing up). My people—one and all—all—within there! Gag this villain—tie him hand and foot! He dares—I know not half he dares—but remove him—quick! Miserere mei, Domine! Quick, I say!
Browning Poems, vol. i. p. 266.
Besides Paracelsus, and Pippa Passes, both in the dramatic form, these two volumes contain six regular plays, five of which are tragedies, and these embrace more than half Mr. Browning’s poetical works. It is clear, therefore, that he feels his genius to lie especially in the drama; that he believes it to be the best and aptest means for the expression of his powers. If, pursuing this persuasion to its probable conclusion, he goes on to think that he writes good dramas, that he has the gifts needed by a dramatic poet, we do not think he could have made a greater mistake. We would adduce these six plays as examples of failure. What merits they possess are not dramatic merits: in dramatic requirements they are essentially wanting, and therefore these plays are failures beyond their real deserts. When a composition is in a dramatic form, our taste has certain requirements which must be satisfied, which no substitute will atone for the want of. Every composition suffers if it is not what it pretends to be: no borrowed graces make up for the absence of qualities inherent in the thing aimed at; a sermon should be a sermon, a novel a novel, a poem should be a poem, a play a play. The drama, active, stirring, and full of change and incident, the very reflection of man in his moments of greatest excitement and elevation, is perhaps of all compositions the grandest and most exciting; but if we have only its husk and outer form, some of its external qualities and not the heart of it, it changes its nature into something more wearisome, unprofitable, trite and unattractive than any vehicle for thought and invention men have ever hit upon. If its form has been adopted to supply certain intellectual deficiencies in a writer rather than to express his fulness and play of invention, the result is something irksome beyond ordinary dulness. The dramatic talent, it need not be said, does not consist in bringing out a given event in conversation; this is often the resource of want of power. Simple narrative is commonly the best mode of telling things, but it is not everybody’s gift. We have no doubt it is easier to many people to put a story in the form of dialogue, than to relate it in their own person. Narrative implies a style; again, narrative must be terse, connected, to the point. In dialogue, on the contrary, there is no need of style; it is enough to be natural, and it is, we all know, only too natural to be diffuse, discursive, irrelevant; it is natural not to keep to the point; thus an author can, as it were, throw all his weakness upon his characters, and make them bear the blame. Narrative, then, simple, straight-forward, graphic, smooth, is, we repeat, a great test of an author’s powers; it is, moreover, the only proper [p. 363→] mode in most cases for conveying information. Take some grand event easily comprehended, if not already familiar, acted in by personages great in proportion to the event, and we have materials for tragic interest. But the proceedings in politics or war, or love, of ordinary people in an unknown insignificant field, are best told in the simplest fashion. Our demands in this form of composition are more inexorable and positive than in any other, our interest is more difficult to excite. If when we look for action we have prolix talking in its stead,—for nature, we have only the repetition in each character of the poet’s own mode of thought,—for passion itself, we have only a cold deliberate description of its workings, all our legitimate expectations being disappointed, we are in no mood to take what is offered to us in exchange for the more stimulating pleasure we had a right to expect. There may be wise sentiments, we heed them not, for they are out of place either in the time or in the speaker. There may be a flow of poetry, it stops the business of the play, and we regard it as an impertinence,—profound metaphysical inquiries, but they are felt as simply ridiculous if the personages of the piece stand idly by analysing their separate peculiarities, instead of being influenced by them; and in this perpetual disappointment of what we consider our just expectations, we grow weary and impatient.
We appeal to our readers, if a modern play is not amongst the most difficult feats of reading they are ever called upon to undertake—if they do not commonly rise stupified and confused from its perusal, with the haziest possible notion of what has been the drift of the whole. The dramatist in poring over some unfrequented because uninteresting fields of history, has formed his plot,—a cast of characters not much to be cared for, playing off a maze of intricate schemes upon one another. If the story were told intelligibly and shortly, it would scarce repay perusal; but the dramatist has other plans. We are to discover the plot for ourselves, and the characters of course are to be developed by it; while in order to show his depth, and his knowledge of the hidden workings of the heart, nobody means what he says, which is a grievous hindrance to our catching the clue. The people talk at length for our benefit, and detail their schemes for crowns, or places, or hearts: and we, in a region of mistrust, have to gather what it all means from “asides,” and hints carelessly let fall. We read on in doubt, incapable of ever taking a side, perpetually asking ourselves, with the children, “Is he good? is he naughty?” and nobody till the end of the piece tells us. A king of whose existence we never heard, but who does exist in some genuine record, comes forward reading a letter, or dictating to his secretary about Spain, and France, [p. 364→] and the Pope, and the Legate. The secretary is ambiguous, we alternately suspect him of being a spy, or a lady in disguise, for we feel it necessary always to keep our wits unnaturally and suspiciously on the alert: he proves to be nothing but a secretary after all, some impersonation of worldly wisdom discussing the pretensions of the European powers with the king, who seems inextricably involved with them all. They are overheard by a personage hid in a closet conveniently at hand; he appears in the scene, followed by the prime minister and some courtiers—more about Spain and Austria, and the Pope, who gives occasion for clap-trap sneers against priestcraft as often as he is mentioned, then the lady comes in, and either joins in the plotting, or is its victim. Somebody is disinterested and somebody is selfish, somebody is devoted and somebody is ungrateful. We turn to the dramatis personæ to help us, for by some mismanagement in the choice of names, perhaps a single vowel is the sole distinction between these opposites, the friend being signified by such an abbreviation as Cor, the enemy by Car, which is scarce difference to enable us always to distinguish between the hypocrite and the honest man. Towards the end of the play people get reckless of the time and patience of their hearers. The last scene is “a feat of loquacity”; they have all their motives to explain, a process which always takes time; at length, after the longest and most elaborate harangue of all, the one speech most distinguished by self-possessed rhetoric, the speaker dies; why he should die in the evident possession of such health and strength would be a difficulty, were it not solved by the exigencies of the play, which demand this sacrifice to constitute it a tragedy. We look back, and find within the last scene or two that the hero had taken poison; but the dose had affected his mind, and, as it would seem, appearance so little, that the incident might well escape our recollection. In the play throughout everything has given way to talk; the action has invariably waited till the speakers have finished what they had to say; the scenes have been throughout “reciprocal declamation.” Yet the dramatic talent lies not in talk but in action; we should see a plot developing, tending towards its accomplishment in every scene. In the dialogue everything is irrelevant which works not towards this end; and this end in view keeps the characters true to nature, as the forgetfulness of it leads to that endless prose and generalization which is fatal to the modern drama. In these “pro and con poems,” as they have been termed, there is always time for whatever people have to say. Our patience may weary, but we know by experience that the action will wait. The battle will not be lost, nor the city taken, nor the [p. 365→] critical moment let slip for all the misplaced talking, which in real life would stretch us on the tenter hooks of unendurable suspense.
Take for example Mr. Browning’s tragedy of “Luria.” There are good passages and some just observations, but as a dramatic effort it is simply monstrous, a monstrous impossible fidelity, playing upon and set off against an equally monstrous treachery. All the characters of the piece, however else opposed, man or woman, soldier or civilian, crafty Italian or half-savage Moor, agreeing in talking metaphysics in the precise moment for action; analysing to one another, in the most critical junctures, and in situations of the most direct hostility, their own motives and their views of life; and this with a prolixity and zeal for philosophical inquiry not to be equalled by any class of human debaters ever met together for the sole purpose of discussion. Even the semi-barbarian Hussein talks of, “I, with my Arab instincts.” The characters are all impersonations of abstract qualities. Luria is generosity, and always generous; Braccio is deliberate self-justifying treachery, and always treacherous; Dometzia is revenge; Hussein the Moor is instinct; and all act up to their characters, till in obedience to the author’s turn of thought the reformation begins, and it proves that—
The only fault’s with time,
All men become good creatures, but so slow!
Luria, the Moor, is the Florentine general; Tiburzio is the Pisan general; the two states being at war with one another. The tragedy is at its close. Turn over the leaf, and half-way down, Luria dies from the effects of poison he had taken for reasons it is not very easy to divine. Circumstances had given Tiburzio the advantage, which he has rejected on the following grounds. The action itself; the grounds for it; the deliberate detail of motives to a dying man, are all, we maintain, outrages to nature and probability.
Luria. Tiburzio not at Pisa?
Tiburzio. I return
From Florence: I serve Pisa; and must think
By such procedure I have served her best.
A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one—
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than they all.
Such man are you, and such a time is this,
That your sole fate concerns a nation more
Than it’s apparent welfare; and to prove
Your rectitude, and duly crown the same,
Imports it far beyond the day’s event,
Its battle’s loss or gain—the mass remains;
Keep but the model safe, new men will rise [p. 366→]
To study it, and other days to prove
How great and good was Luria’s having lived.
I might go try my fortune as you bade,
And joining Lucca, helped by your disgrace,
Repair our harm—so were to-day’s work done;
But where were Luria for our sons to see?
No, I look farther; I have testified
(Declaring my submission to your arms)
Your full success to Florence, making clear
Your probity, as none else could: I spoke,
And it shone clearly.
—Browning’s Poems, vol. ii. p. 209.
In “Charles and Victor” the plot is taken from some obscure passage of history, and never, we may say, elucidated from beginning to end. The story is at once unintelligible, as far as Mr. Browning has brought out the motives of the actors in it, and devoid of interest. “Colombe’s Birthday” leaves us often in the same sea for actuating motives, nor can we account satisfactorily nor in accordance with our notions of feminine propriety, for the duchess so instantaneously falling in love with a chance advocate that comes to her court. In “The Return of the Druses,” the reader is kept in a mist which never clears. The choice of subject is in itself fatal to interest; up to the very end we neither know nor can bring ourselves to care, which of the two lovers the heroine prefers. The “Blot in the Scutcheon” has more human interests, and has one or two effective scenes, but the story is objectionable, nor is there anything distinctive in the author’s treatment of it.
Every reader of dramatic poetry must be alive to the happy effect of relieving its severer beauties by the occasional introduction of the more directly poetical lyric element, and have felt the exquisite repose which Shakspeare often infuses through this means. But for this purpose it is evident there should be some connexion between the pure poetry our minds are thus led to, and the prevailing subject of the drama. We however have noticed a modern fashion of inserting passages of this description without any regard to this rule. Descriptions of nature, for instance, are inserted in critical scenes which bear no relation either to the poet’s own mind, or to the situation in which they are brought to bear. The highest poetry can assimilate nature to our feelings, the preoccupied mind only seizes upon what harmonizes with its sensations. The poets of whom we speak think it enough to take a square yard out of a hedge or river bank, and simply describing, catalogue-wise, all the plants that grow, all the birds that haunt, all the vermin that burrow within its limits, lay it like a plaister upon the diseased mind, expecting it to possess some marvellous healing power. It is very pleasant and a healthy exercise to peruse in this minute spirit some piece of real nature: in painting too, where the eye [p. 367→] is at least delighted by the truth of imitation, there is also considerable pleasure from such an accurate investigation; but it is otherwise in description: there the impressions on sense are faint, and the fancy to be pleased must see fitness. When we are engaged in the contemplation of some mental struggle, there is almost an impertinence in the sudden transporting of our attention to the alluvial formation of some river bank, as in the following passage. Paracelsus is dozing; his friend sits by him, and in order to gain his attention, sings thus:—
Fest. Softly the Mayne river glideth,
Close by where my love abideth;
* * * *
Par. More, more, say on!
Fest. The river pushes
Its gentle way through strangling rushes,
Where the glossy kingfisher
Flutters when noon-heats are near,
Glad the shelving bank to shun,
Red and streaming in the sun,
Where the shrew mouse with pale throat
Burrows, and the speckled stoat,
Where the quick sand-pipers flit
In and out the marl and grit
That seems to breed them, brown as they.
Nought disturbs the river’s way,
Save some lazy stork that springs,
Trailing it with leg and wings;
Whom the shy fox from the hill
Rouses, creep he ne’er so still.
Par. My heart! they loose my heart, those simple words;
Its darkness passes, which nought else could touch.
Browning’s Poems, vol. i. p. 136.
In Mr. Browning we recognise one of the numerous class who possess more faculties than soul, more intellect than aims, comprehension and insight without commensurate aspirations: he fails because he has not spirituality enough to use his own powers aright. And yet men are so necessarily estimated by what they can do, that it is a hard matter for one distinguished by the possession of any powers, to be as alive as other men to his own deficiencies. Because in certain things he is above his fellows, it would be difficult to persuade him that in many material points he is as far below them; that there can be a whole class of elevating instincts and intuitive convictions that most men have, and that he is without. We believe, however, that it is these deficiencies, these wants, these points of inferiority which have originated Mr. Browning’s latest poem, “Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day.” What can be said of a man who is without reverence, without ready sympathy for the unseen, who ill discriminates between the pure and the base, who confesses himself more than others tied down to earth and [p. 368→] incapable of looking beyond it; but that he is inferior to others, not the less really inferior in these vital points, though he can ably express his wants, and others could very inadequately express their fulness. It is the possession of wealth, not the power to count his possessions, which constitutes the rich man. Something of these higher deficiencies of comprehension is visible in the following passage, which yet has much feeling and beauty in it. He is speaking of the new reign of love which Christianity brought in:—
Do these men praise Him? I will raise
My voice up to their point of praise!
I see the error, but above
The scope of error see the love.—
Oh, love of those first Christian days!
Fann’d so soon into a blaze,
—From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,
That the antique sovereign Intellect
Which then sate ruling in the world,
Like a change in dreams, was hurl’d
From the throne he reign’d upon:
—You look’d up, and he was gone!
Gone his glory of the pen!
—Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,
Bade her scribes abhor the trick
Of poetry and rhetoric,
And exult, with hearts set free,
In blessed imbecility
Scrawl’d, perchance, on some torn sheet,
Leaving Livy incomplete.
Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!
—Love while able to acquaint her
With the thousand statues yet
Fresh from chisel, pictures wet
From brush, she saw on every side,
Chose rather with an infant’s pride
To frame those portents which impart
Such unction to true Christian Art.
Gone Music too! The air was stirred
By happy wings: Terpander’s bird
(That, when the cold came, fled away,)
Would tarry not the wintry day,—
As more enduring sculpture must,
* * * * *
Love, surely, from that music’s lingering,
Might have filch’d her organ-fingering,
Nor chose rather to set prayings
To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.
Love was the startling thing, the new;
Love was the all-sufficient too;
And seeing that you see the rest.
As babe can find its mother’s breast
As well in darkness as in light,
Love shut our eyes, and all seem’d right.
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, p. 38. [p. 369→]
It is under these impressions that he reviews the various forms of religious profession, despising, as he supposes, illusions, but really rejecting the meaning and spiritual aims of each, and facing and as it were delighting in the gross, carnal, earthly corruptions which disfigure them. In the Roman Catholic ceremonial he delights to picture direct idolatry. The smoke of incense is not a vapour that aspires, but a fume which inebriates the senses; the taper’s burning puts out the light of day; transubstantiation is described in revolting language, but such as he alone can apprehend. Even to the flimsy unsubstantiality of German rationalism, which he despises, and which translates every sacred doctrine and fact into a myth, he contrives to give a body in the coughing and spitting of the professor; while apparently the form of Christianity in our own land which attracts him and most fulfils his longings and instincts, is the service in a Ranters’ meeting. Very few religious characteristics there are, but he makes what he can of them, and as it were brutalizes them to fulfil the requirements of this taste for body and reality. Thus he carefully records the close smell of the chapel, the lath and plaster of the building, the personal vulgarities and deformities of the worshippers, the gross illogicalness and prosiness of the preacher, the “hog-gruntings and horse-neighings” of the singing, and the conventicle twang of the hymn,—all are positive inducements to him in the choice, we know not whether real or only poetical, of a denomination. The fair order of our ritual, the spirituality of our sacraments, the exquisite beauty of the language of our services, the sweet tones of our organs, the correct accentuation and cultivated delivery of our preachers, would all be so many drawbacks and act repulsively to the necessities of a vitiated taste, which needs something which all parts of our nature may embrace, not only the refined and elevated, but what every coarse and vulgar element of our being will also find congenial.
We have given Mr. Browning credit for some real feeling and genuine anxieties on the subject of religion, but our extracts from his works may all give a different impression. In justice to him we must, therefore, give one passage in support of our favourable construction. In an imaginary argument with a friend, he speaks of the “Eternal and Divine” dwelling with man on earth:—
That Birth,
That Life, that Death! and all, the earth
Shudder’d at;—all, the heavens grew black
Rather than see;—all, Nature’s rack
And throe at dissolution’s brink
Attested,—it took place, you think,
Only to give our joys a zest,
And prove our sorrows for the best? [p. 370→]
We differ then! Were I, still pale
And heart-struck at the dreadful tale,
Waiting to hear God’s voice declare
What horror follow’d for my share,
As implicated in the deed,
Apart from other sins;—concede
That if He black’d out in a blot
My brief life’s pleasantness, ’twere not
So very disproportionate!
Or there might be another fate
I certainly could understand
(If fancies were the thing in hand),
How God might save, as that day’s price,
The impure in their impurities,
Leave formal license and complete,
To choose the fair, and pick the sweet.
But there be certain words, broad, plain,
Uttered again, and yet again,
Hard to mistake, to overgloss—
Announcing this world’s gain for loss,
And bidding us reject the same:
The whole lieth (they proclaim)
In wickedness,—come out of it!—
Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit,
But I who thrill through every nerve
At thought of what deaf ears deserve,—
How do you counsel in the case?
Christmas Eve and Easter Day, p. 94.
In the following passage he decides in favour of the conventicle, and at the same time makes his apology for whatever may have struck people as profane in his poem. The measure and rhythm are in admirable accordance with the substance of the whole.
Meantime, in still recurring fear
Lest myself, at unawares, be found,
While attacking the choice of my neighbours round,
Without my own made—I choose here!
The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
I have done!—and if any blames 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 or 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!
I put up pencil and join chorus
To Hepzibah tune, without further apology,
The last five verses of the third section
Of the seventeenth hymn in Whitfield’s collection,
To conclude with the doxology.
—Christmas Eve, p. 79.
The readers of Mr. Browning’s collective works will be very well satisfied to leave him singing a Christian hymn to any tune.
[This article continues with a notice of EBB’s Poems (1850); see pp. 000–000.]
Reviewed:
Poems (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1849.
Christmas-Eve & Easter-Day (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.
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