R551201C. Men and Women.
The Critic, 1 December 1855, pp. 581–582.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 313–316.
It is grand to possess intellectual power, but grander still to use it profitably. It is an offence against humanity to squander it in idle vagaries. Speaking strictly of poetics, we fear much that intellectual power has been perverted into intellectual licence; that the liberty to speak as one pleases has pushed our authors into a dreamland of perpetual twilight, or seduced them to shuffle fancies with Andersonian dexterity, as if the loss of the majesty of art could be expiated by the ability to deceive or amuse.
If we are fallen upon the evil days when poetry is no longer the image of life, but an elastic compound which, like the india-rubber heads in toyshops, may be squeezed and tortured into all manners of unnatural shapes, God help us! It was the object of poetry to turn all things into loveliness; it is the object of poetry to grant us—a favour, perhaps—glimpses of the beautiful, as if only the more certainly to show that beauty cannot disentangle itself from obscurity, absurdity, or deformity. Here is Robert Browning, a practised author, a man of vast poetic resources—overflowing with the tenderest thoughts, with fancies thick upon him as flowers in June—with words, as Shelley says, of “electric life”—and yet he is going down to posterity—ay! and rapidly, too—as a precedent for “fantastic tricks.” Such a precedent our minor poets needed not, for already “that way madness lies.” We are not so much surprised as grieved, that he who can walk erect in the path of uncomplicated story—who can show his true Saxon proportions as he has shown them constantly in these poems, should have thought it indispensable to exhibit his twisted conceits. Such gyrations of the muse may be astonishing, but they are in no way graceful. Neither the shrewdness of the critic nor the learning of the scholar can compensate for the loss of real poetic ease. A poem entitled “Old Pictures in Florence” looks like metrical torture, though it is doubtless intended as an example of the freedom of metrical action. We wish we could believe of this poem that it is mere elephantine playfulness, intended for no other purpose than to show that it is compatible with power either to tear up huge oaks by their knotted roots, or to perform the most amusing stage-tricks. Our readers shall themselves judge of the value of the poet’s rhyme-twistings:
When they go at length, with such a shaking
Of heads o’er the old delusions, sadly
Each master his way through the black streets taking,
Where many a lost work breathes though badly—
Why don’t they bethink them of who has merited?
Why not reveal, while their pictures dree
Such doom, that a captive’s to be out-ferreted?
Why do they never remember me?
Not that I expect the great Bigordi
Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;
Nor wronged Lippino—and not a word I
Say of scrap of Fra Angelico’s.
But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,
To grant me a taste of your intonaco—
Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?
No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?
Could not the ghost with the close red cap,
My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman,
Save me a sample, give me the hap
Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman?
No Virgin by him, the somewhat petty,
Of finical touch and tempera crumbly—
Could not Alesso Baldovinetti
Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?
Margheritone of Arezzo,
With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret,
(Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
You bald, saturnine, poleclawed parrot?)
No poor glimmering Crucifixion,
Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
If such remain, as is my conviction,
The hoarding does you but little honour.
They pass: for them the panels may thrill,
Thy tempera grow alive and tinglish—
Rot or are left to the mercies still
Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English!
Seeing mere money’s worth in their prize,
Who sell it to some one calm as Zeno
At naked Art, and in ecstacies
Before some clay-cold, vile Carlino!
No matter for these! But Giotto, you,
Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,
Never! it shall not be counted true—
That a certain precious little tablet
Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover,—
Buried so long in oblivion’s womb,
Was left for another than I to discover,—
Turns up at last, and to whom?—to whom?
I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,
(Or was it rather the Ognissanti?)
Stood on the altar-steps, patient and weary too!
Nay, I shall have it yet, detur amanti!
My Koh-i-noor—or (if that’s a platitude)
Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi’s eye!
So, in anticipative gratitude,
What if I take up my hope and prophesy?
After reading this extract, will not every one be reminded—oh irreverent idea—of the Muses out on the “spree.” We will present a poem entire, in order to show Mr. Browning’s wilful adoption of abject phraseology, and his vagueness, or rather absence, of meaning. This habit of vagueness has, we fear, aggravated itself into second nature—into a disease of the intellect:
instans tyrannus.
i.
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
ii.
I struck him, he grovelled of course—
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate—
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As if lots might be worse.
iii.
“Were the object less mean, would he stand
At the swing of my hand!
For obscurity helps him and blots
The hole where he squats.”
So I set my five wits on the stretch
To inveigle the wretch.
All in vain! gold and jewels I threw,
Still he couched there perdue,
I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates and the flagon’s best spilth—
Still he kept to his filth!
iv.
Had he kith now or kin, were access
To his heart, if I press—
Just a son or a mother to seize—
No such booty as these!
Were it simply a friend to pursue
’Mid my million or two,
Who could pay me in person or pelf
What he owes me himself.
No! I could not but smile through my chafe—
For the fellow lay safe
As his mates do, the midge and the nit,
—Through minuteness, to wit.
v.
Then a humour more great took its place
At the thought of his face,
The droop, the low cares of the mouth,
The trouble uncouth
’Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain
To put out of its pain—
And, no, I admonished myself,
“Is one mocked by an elf,
Is one baffled by toad or by rat?
The gravemen’s in that!
How the lion, who crouches to suit
His back to my foot,
Would admire that I stand in debate!
But the Small is the Great
If it vexes you,—that is the thing!
Toad or rat vex the King?
Though I waste half my realm to unearth
Toad or rat, ’tis well worth!”
vi.
So I soberly laid my last plan
To extinguish the man.
Round his creep-hole,—with never a break
Ran my fires for his sake;
Over-head, did my thunders combine
With my under-ground mine:
Till I looked from my labour content
To enjoy the event.
vii.
When sudden … how think ye, the end?
Did I say “without friend?”
Say rather, from marge to blue marge
The whole sky grew his targe
With the sun’s self for visible boss,
While an Arm ran across
Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast
Where the wretch was safe prest!
Do you see? just my vengeance complete,
The man sprang to his feet,
Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed!
So, I was afraid!
If Thomas Little were now alive, we think he would have withheld his sneer on Pope, whom he stated to have
Spoilt the ears of the town,
With his cuckoo-song verses, one up and one down,
since it is better to be spoilt by musical monotony and plain sense than to be confounded by such stanzas as “Instans Tyrannus.”
We have expended our bile; turn we now with lighter heart and a more willing hand to the poet’s manifold beauties. There is sufficient poetic wealth in “Up at a Villa,” “Down in the City,” to make a reputation for a poet. It is a gush of musical gossip, of genial utterance—for Robert Browning has come back to nature. Why should a man like Browning, with a fervid fancy and strong sense, ever turn aside from his best instructor? This charming little poem is presumed to be discoursed by an Italian person of quality, but of limited means. In point, humour, and geniality, our own thoroughly British Hood or Oliver Wendell Holmes, the American, might have written such a poem; but few else, since few possess sufficient humour and smartness combined. There are weighty reasons advanced why the speaker prefers the “City square:”
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house on the city-square.
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast. [p. 582→]
Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain’s edge as bare as the creature’s skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
—I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.
But the city, oh the city—the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there’s something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.
Charming this, is it not? but more charming still is the lyrical freshness which lives in the needy old nobleman’s objection to villa life.
What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
’Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:
You’ve the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive trees.
Is it better in May, I ask you? you’ve summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns!
’Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell,
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
* * * * *
All the year long at the villa, nothing’s to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like Death’s lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle,
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.
Enough of the seasons,—I spare you the months of the fever and chill.
Then again, the city is praised; but necessity, ever a hard and iron taskmaster, compels the choice of the villa.
But bless you, it’s dear—it’s dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
It’s a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers—but still—ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles.
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke’s guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.
Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
Such a poem as this only the more sorrowfully reminds us that Robert Browning is not always true to his genius. True to that genius, no poet would write his name more indelibly on the page of fame. Now we catch him in the right vein let us proceed with him while he is lavishing love and loveliness. There is that choice morsel, “A Serenade at the Villa.” We must give it entire.
a serenade at the villa.
i.
That was I, you heard last night
When there rose no moon at all.
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead, and so was light.
ii.
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm,
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I.
iii.
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning!—where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.
iv.
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
To my lute I left the rest.
v.
So wore night; the east was grey,
White the broad-faced hemlock flowers;
Soon would come another day;
Ere its first of heavy hours
Found me, I had past away.
vi.
What became of all the hopes,
Words and song and lute as well?
Say, this struck you—“When life gropes
Feebly for the path where fell
Light last on the evening slopes,
vii.
“One friend in that path shall be
To secure my steps from wrong;
One to count night day for me,
Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see.”
viii.
Never say—as something bodes—
“So the worst has yet a worse!
When life halts ’neath double loads,
Better the task-master’s curse
Than such music on the roads!
ix.
“When no moon succeeds the sun,
Nor can pierce the midnight’s tent
Any star, the smallest one,
While some drops, where lightning went,
Show the final storm begun—
x.
“When the fire-fly hides its spot,
When the garden-voices fail
In the darkness thick and hot,—
Shall another voice avail,
That shape be where those are not?
xi.
“Has some plague a longer lease
Proffering its help uncouth?
Can’t one even die in peace?
As one shuts one’s eyes on youth,
Is that face the last one sees?”
xii.
Oh, how dark your villa was,
Windows fast and obdurate!
How the garden grudged me grass
Where I stood—the iron gate
Ground its teeth to let me pass!
Then, again, what few things have we to equal, least of all to surpass, the stately simplicity, the fervid flow of feeling, in scenes “In a Balcony?” The man who can write three such scenes ought to have made, or ought to make, a brilliant reputation in dramatic literature. Our readers will mark well those scenes when they turn to Robert Browning’s two volumes, for they must turn to them from intellectual necessity. We caution our gentle readers not to be deterred if they alight on absolute prose, misnamed poems, full of scholastic ponderosities, or on fancies that have, or appear to have, no object to serve, or on power that plunges into the grotesque; for such things are but as the mad fits, the wild head-dresses, the straw-crowns of Lear, which obscure but cannot obliterate the kingly bearing. For all such drawbacks there is enough real poetry in the volume to atone, and to atone handsomely too! This one poem, our last extract, covers a multitude of sins.
one way of love.
i.
All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves,
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die;
The chance was they might take her eye.
ii.
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string—fold music’s wing.
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!
iii.
My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion—Heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? ’Tis well!
Lose who may—I still can say,
Those who win heaven, blest are they.
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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