R560109B. Men and Women.
The Daily News, 9 January 1856, p. 2.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 368–370.
Mr. Browning has given his poetical friends some very difficult “nuts to crack.” Complaints have been made even by his greatest admirers of the tantalising obscurity which hangs over the entrance to almost everything great that he has done. We grope about in the dark. We hit our heads against all manner of sharp angles, and get nothing but the pain for our trouble. We are misled by the ignes fatui that the heat of the author’s imagination draws up from the seething marshes of our brains. We determine to sleep upon it. We do so, and with our strength renewed, and with the help derived from the experience of our past failures, we succeed in worming our way through the dark labyrinth. Then we are repaid for our labour. When you do get the clue to one of the author’s mazes you come, like the ancient hero, upon a golden fleece. We are not unwilling to allow that when you do succeed in reaching Mr. Browning’s meaning it is a grand one. But the passage is too tortuous, the labour too great. The gold fields in his Australias and Californias task the energies of the miners too heavily. Surely this is a great fault. Mr. Browning has written passages which are not surpassed in the whole range of modern poetry. He is beyond question the profoundest thinker amongst all our modern poets. His learning—by which term we do not mean a mere acquaintance with the ancient or modern languages and histories, but a mastery over a large district of moral and metaphysical science—is tremendous. He is the most skilful mental analyst that we have. But this very skill spoils his poetry. He digs deeper into the mine of mental operations than his contemporaries or predecessors, but his labours are not rewarded like theirs. Tennyson finds gold at half the depth, to which Browning thinks it necessary to penetrate. Thus it is that with an imagination at least equal to that of Tennyson, with knowledge far greater, with as great a wealth of poetical language, Browning has not as yet taken a hold on the mind of the country, at all comparable to that taken by the Laureate. The cause of the different reception experienced by the two rivals, is that one is ever recurring to causes, and the other to effects. Browning is never satisfied without getting at the root of the matter, while Tennyson is always content if he gives you the fruit. To go a little deeper into the investigation, Tennyson is a lyrist, Browning a dramatist. The predominance of a certain feeling causes Tennyson to gush out into song. The desire to represent the conflict of feeling impels Browning to compose “Dramatic Lyrics,” or Lyrical Dramas. But then he is so solicitous that this representation should be perfect, that he is not happy until he has laid bare all the fibres of the organisms with which he would bring you in contact. And here is his great error. If we wished to explain the phenomenon of breathing to an uninstructed person, we should not enter into a minute discussion of every portion of the body connected with the function of respiration. Technology is not the whole of philosophy. The thorough comprehension of the operation of breathing may be demonstrated by the explanation of a few principal organs. Coleridge, in his remarkable treatise “On Method,” observes truly that much of the beauty of the drama will be found to depend upon “foregone conclusions.” That is to say, the personages in the drama act upon a conclusion drawn in their own mind without stopping to explain the reasoning. And most rightly, for if they explained this reasoning the action would be interrupted. But it is evident that the use of this method depends for its success upon the ability of the poet, or the whole play would be a succession of unconnected exclamations and actions. Now, Mr. Browning is chargeable with a most preposterous use of “foregone conclusions” in his poetry. By the abuse of that habit of minute analysis of which we have spoken, he accumulates such a heap of details that the very process of explanation that he attempts is frustrated. He cannot afford space to explain every detail, so they appear independent of each other. His speakers jerk out remarkable sentences, which appear at first to have no manner of connexion with what precedes, and it is only after a time, that you are able to make out the mental process which bridges over the distance between thought and its antecedent. These are serious faults in what would else be marvellous poetry. Let us add one more, and we finish our ungracious list of errors. Mr. Browning is too fond of making his speakers “talk at” the present age. Thus, the poem “Fra Lippo Lippi”—which certainly wanted an introduction, to make it intelligible to persons less deeply read in the history of painting than Mr. Browning—is nearly all occupied by a disquisition on the merits of the principles adopted by the Pre-Raphaelites. The poem is racy enough, and in parts highly dramatic, but it would have been far better had the disquisitions been omitted, and had it been left to depend upon its poetic and dramatic beauty. There are snatches of song in it equal to those found in Beaumont and Fletcher.
Enough has been said of faults: when all have been enumerated there is still enough beauty left to make the poems a treasure to all lovers of true poetry. In richness and force of expression Mr. Browning has scarcely an equal amongst his contemporaries; we could quote whole columns illustrative of this commendation. We prefer to select one which displays that peculiar rough strength for which he is so celebrated. It is very striking:
instans tyrannus.
Of the million or two more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
I struck him, he grovelled of course—
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to the earth with my weight
And persistence of hate—
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As if lots might be worse.
“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.
Had he kith now or kin, were scores
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.
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 gravamen’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!”
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.
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 beam,
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!
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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