R560400B. Men and Women (Boston, 1856); Poems (Boston, 1850); & Sordello.

Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, April 1856, pp. 372–381.

As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 392–400.

Robert Browning’s poetry is certainly very hard reading, like Cowley’s and Dr. Donne’s. But the difference between him and such obscurists is, that with the earlier poets, both the style and the sentiment were equally conceits—while Browning’s style is the naturally quaint form of a subtle or sinewy thought. In any general classification of English poetry, Browning must be ranked with the modern school for his profound reality and humanity and faithful reliance upon nature. In any classification of poetry in general, he is strictly a dramatist—the most purely dramatic genius in English literature since the great dramatic days.

A great deal of the difficulty in reading his poetry arises from its purely dramatic conception and form. The man Browning is not to be found in his poems, except inferentially, like Shakespeare in his dramas. The various play of profound passion is his favorite realm. He loves the South, and southern character, as Byron loved the East. But Byron’s passion, however fiery and intense, is a passion of the senses—Browning’s is the passion of the soul, including and deepening the other. In other great English poets there is more daring indecency; but in none such startling audacity of passionate expression. It is the emotional nature of man with which he deals, and of man everywhere, and under all circumstances. Thus, while the quaint structure of his mind, and his rare and curious reading, show, for instance, his natural abstract sympathy with the fantastic horrors of the middle ages, springing, as they did, out of a kind of cold, religious logic; yet he dashes in the scene with a living picturesqueness, which invests it with a lurid but appropriate splendor. So absolute is his dramatic form, that the “Heretic’s Tragedy,” in his last volume, “Men and Women,” is as entirely mediæval as a fragment of an old cathedral. The intense satire and prodigious jeer of the poem arise from the reader’s knowledge that it was written at the present time. By some inexplicable power, which is entirely peculiar to Browning, without the faintest indication or expression of his personality, he seems to be present as a critic of all the scenes his various poems describe. But this consciousness on the part of the reader, never destroys, for a moment, the dramatic variety and completeness. The most exquisite illustration of this is “My Last Duchess.” There is no prelude, no key—but not only is the story perfectly told, so that you feel yourself to be in mediæval Italy, hearing an Italian talk, but without a word said, you have the whole thing impressed upon your mind as utterly iniquitous. We subjoin the two poems. The first is from his last volume, “Men and Women;” the second from the Dramatic Lyrics, in the second volume of his earlier works:

THE HERETIC’S TRAGEDY.

a middle-age interlude.

_____

(In the Original) rosa mundi; seu, fulcite me floribus. a conceit of master gysbrecht, canon regular of saint jodocus-by-the-bar, ypres city. cantuque, Virgilius. and hath often been sung at hock-tide and festivals. gavisus eram, Jessides.

(It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, a.d. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain, during the course of a couple of centuries.—R.B.)

_____

preadmonisheth the abbot deodaet.

The Lord, we look to once for all,

Is the Lord we should look at, all at once;

He knows not to vary, saith St. Paul,

Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce.

See Him no other than as he is;

Give both the Infinites their due—

Infinite mercy, but, I wis,

As infinite a justice too.

[Organ: plagal-cadence.

As infinite a justice too.

one singeth.

John, Master of the Temple of God,

Falling to sin the Unknown Sin,

What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod,

He sold it to Sultan Saladin— [p. 373→]

Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there,

Hornet-prince of the mad wasps’ hive,

And clipt of his wings in Paris square,

They bring him now to be burned alive.

[And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern,

ye shall say to confirm him who singeth—

We bring John now to be burned alive.

In the midst is a goodly gallows built;

’Twixt fork and fork a stake is stuck;

But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt,

Make a trench all round with the city muck;

Inside they pile log upon log, good store,

Fagots not few, blocks great and small,

Reach a man’s mid-thigh, no less, no more,—

For they mean he should roast in the sight of all.

chorus.

We mean he should roast in the sight of all.

Good sappy savins that kindle forthwith;

Billets that blaze substantial and slow;

Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith;

Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow;

Then up they hoist me John in a chafe,

Sling him fast like a hog to scorch,

Spit in his face, then leap back safe,

Sing “Laudes” and bid clap-to the torch.

chorus.

Laus Deo—who bids clap-to the torch.

John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged,

Is burning alive in Paris square!

How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged?

Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there?

Or heave his chest, while a band goes round?

Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced?

Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound?

—Thinks John—I will call upon Jesus Christ.

[Here one crosseth himself.

Jesus Christ—John had bought and sold,

Jesus Christ—John had eaten and drunk;

To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold.

(Salvâ reverentiá.)

Now it was, “Saviour, bountiful lamb,

I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me.

See thy servant, the plight wherein I am!

Art thou a Saviour? Save thou me!”

chorus.

’Tis John the mocker cries, Save thou me!

Who maketh God’s menace an idle word?

—Saith, it no more means what it proclaims,

Than a damsel’s threat to her wanton bird?—

For she too prattles of ugly names.

—Saith, he knoweth but one thing,—what he knows?

That God is good and the rest is breath;

Why else is the same styled, Sharon’s rose?

Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith.

chorus.

O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith!

Alack, there be roses and roses, John!

Some honied of taste like your leman’s tongue;

Some, bitter—for why? (roast gaily on!)

Their tree struck root in devil’s dung!

When Paul once reasoned of righteousness

And of temperance and of judgment to come,

Good Felix trembled, he could no less

John, snickering, crook’d his wicked thumb!

chorus.

What cometh to John of the wicked thumb?

Ha ha, John plucks now at his rose

To rid himself of a sorrow at heart!

Lo,—petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;

Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;

And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;

And a gust of sulphur is all its smell;

And lo, he is horribly in the toils

Of a coal-black giant flower of Hell!

chorus.

What maketh Heaven, that maketh Hell.

10.

So, as John called now, through the fire amain,

On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life—

To the Person he had bought and sold again—

For the Face, with his daily buffets rife—

Feature by feature It took its place!

And his voice like a mad dog’s choking bark

At the steady Whole of the Judge’s Face—

Died. Forth John’s soul flared into the dark.

subjoineth the abbot deodaet.

God help all poor souls lost in the dark!

The terrible diablerie of this poem is quite unmatched in English literature. It is as morally effective as a whole volley of sermons, or strings of resolutions of an anti-papal league. The stanzas strike home like the blows of a trip-hammer. The poem is as simple in drift as any amiable verse of Mrs. Barbauld. But the resemblance ends there. The conception, the method, the treatment, the moral, are peculiarily Browning’s. It is the sinewy Saxon mind of the nineteenth century, sitting in judgment upon the spirit of the fourteenth. In rhythm, it is as melodious to the ear as a love-song of Moore’s, with a deep, inward music, that haunts the heart, as all Browning’s music does.

Here is “My Last Duchess,” which, as a work of mere art, is no less composed and polished than Pope; but with such a pregnant meaning in every line, that you seem to have read a tragedy, or an old Italian romance, and not a mere sketch: [p. 374→]

MY LAST DUCHESS.

ferrara.

That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive; I call

That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said,

“Frà Pandolf” by design, for never read

Strangers, like you, that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I),

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask me. Sir, ’twas not

Her husband’s presence, only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps

Frà Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps

Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or, “Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half blush that dies along her throat;” such stuff

’Twas courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.”

Sir, ’twas all one! My favor at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the west,

The bough of cherries some official tool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace—all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good; but thanked

Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

My gift of a nine hundred years old name

With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark;” and if she let

Herself be lessened so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

E’en then would be some stooping, and I chuse

Never to stoop. Oh! sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then. I repeat

The Count your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallow’d;

Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir! Notice, Neptune, tho’

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

There is all Italy in that poem. Nothing could be simpler and more intelligible—nothing more various, subtle, intense, and tragical. The concentrated meaning of the last few lines; the sly, complaisant, cold-blooded, jealous selfishness, the mock refusal of the proffered honor of going first, which only his unreal words, and not his real manner, present—for the reader sees that the count’s ambassador was holding back to let the duke advance; the self-possession which will not lose the chance of flattering itself by an affected contempt for the treasures of art; the hard, haughty, iron-willed, remorseless, sensitive, suspicious, smooth, gracious, and pitiless Italian noble, are as perfectly delineated in this sketch as in a portrait of Giorgione’s. Then the love-tale with which they are enlivened, and the duke’s contemptuous jealousy of appearing to have been jealous; the artist-monk who loves the lovely lady—her sweet, wasted nature, and lost life; her flower-like spirit, slowly sickening and withering in stately desolation—all these, with their wild changes in the fierce struggle, like the jangled strains of bells in a tempest, are so firmly and fully impressed, in much fewer words than they can be paraphrased, that we are disposed to rank this sketch with the best specimens of dramatic description.

Do you not observe in this, also, the presence of the poet as a kind of abstract moral and historical critic? Nothing is said or implied of him. But, as you read, you shudder—and that shudder is the protest of the moral nature, and seals the triumph of the poet’s art.

The secret sympathy of Browning’s genius with everything Italian, is one of the most remarkable peculiarities of his poetry. It is the key, also, to the character of his genius. Many of the recent English poets have had the same fondness for Italy. Byron was never so much Byron as in Italy; Shelley lived there; Keats died there. But none of them has so completely and dramatically reproduced the romance and trage- [p. 375→] dy of the Italian nature as Browning. His poem of “Sordello,” which nobody reads, because few have the patience to understand it, is a prodigious work, in this respect. Even if you do not fully grasp its drift and scope, yet, as a northerner, a Saxon, an Englishman, or an American, you are conscious of being, in a manner, denatured. You are taken up and into an absolutely different style of being and life. It is like walking in a dim twilight, through intricate ranges of grotesque Lombard art. There is a bewilderment of fascination, and an occasional gleam of such grace and happy beauty, that the darkest ages seem only ancestors of our brightest modern days.

This occasional obscurity is the grand impediment to the popularity of Browning—and yet it is surprising that the affluence of poetic meaning and beauty in the poems, which are entirely intelligible, should not suggest that the tougher ones are quite worth undertaking. Considering the enthusiasm which hailed Alexander Smith, who is a striking, but, in the strictest sense, a spasmodic writer, it is curious that so pure a poet as Browning should be so little read and comprehended.

The fact of occasional obscurity is not to be denied. Upon the whole, Browning’s poetry is harder to follow than that of any other great English poet. But the chief reason is, that he boldly aims to express what is, in its nature, so evanescent and shadowy—to put into words processes of thought and feeling, so delicately inwrought and fluctuating, that only sharp self-observers and students of human character can pursue them. For instance, “Luria,” and “A Soul’s Tragedy,” are like transverse sections of human life and human souls. As in the wax physiological models every exquisite detail is preserved, so the finest fibres of feeling, so to speak—the most intricate, and, at the same time, delicate convolutions of impulse, policy, and principle—are laid open in this poetry. The poet shrinks from expressing nothing, and there is, therefore, a variety of the profoundest passionate experience in Browning’s poetry, not to be surpassed out of Shakespeare.

Critics complain that they find no difficulty in understanding Pope and Thomson, and Cowper and Dryden, and Goldsmith and Byron; but the modern school, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Tennyson, and Browning, they declare to be beyond them. They find, in the modern men, a tendency to euphuism, a dazzling range of splendid and voluptuous words, but nothing else. It is contended, that the modern men mistake obscurity for profundity, and a glittering epithet for a beautiful thought. Now that Pope and the other poets are, in a certain sense, easier reading than the others, is true enough. But it is easier reading, because it is easier thinking. Shakespeare is no primer, nor so shallowly intelligible. The greatest things are simplest, certainly; but ease is not necessarily simplicity. Tom Moore never perplexes us about his meaning; but then, Tom Moore never has much meaning. To insist that, if a man has anything to say, he must say it so that everybody can understand it, is merely idle; for only experience can understand what experience inspires. To complain of Browning, because he is not so intelligible, at a glance, as Pope, is like complaining that Plato is not so easy as Steele. It is as impossible that Browning should write as Pope wrote, as it is that Pope should have written like Byron. The truth is, that no poet’s style is more profoundly individual and appropriate than Browning’s. The very form of his expression helps us often to the significance of the thought; and when we bear in mind what the character of his mental action is, how sudden, and unexpected, and vigorous, and subtle, and romantic; that he is peculiarly a psychologist; it may be better, instead of calling him turgid and blind, and asking him to say what he means, to reflect, that he has as much to say as any recent poet, and says it as perfectly, although entirely in his own way. The following poem, for instance, says just as completely what it means to say, as the most polished of Pope’s satires. But it is so intensely dramatic, that it is not necessarily understood, nor all its force felt by a reader who has not reflected upon the venom of jealousy, forever feeding upon itself, in the mind of an ignorant monk in a cloister.

soliloquy of the spanish cloister.

Gr-r-r—there go; my heart’s abhorrence!

Water your damned flower-pots, do!

If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,

God’s blood, would not mine kill you? [p. 376→]

What? Your myrtle bush wants trimming?

Oh! that rose has prior claims—

Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?

Hell dry you up with its flames.

At the meal we sit together:

Salvetibi! I must hear

Wise talk of the kind of weather,

Sort of season, time of year;

“Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely

Dare we hope oak galls, I doubt:

What’s the Latin name for parsley?”

What’s the Greek name for swine’s snout?

Whew! we’ll have our platter burnished,

Laid with care on our own shelf;

With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,

And a goblet for ourself,

Rinsed like something sacrificial,

Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps—

Marked with L. for our initial!

(He, he! there his lily snaps!)

Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores

Squats outside the convent bank,

With Sanchicha, telling stories,

Steeping tresses in the tank,

Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horse-hairs,

Can’t I see his dead eye glow

Bright, as ’twere a Barbary corsair’s?

(That is, if he’d let it show.)

When he finishes refection,

Knife and fork he never lays

Cross-wise, to my recollection,

As I do, in Jesu’s praise.

I, the Trinity illustrate,

Drinking watered orange-pulp—

In three sips the Arian frustrate;

While he drains his at one gulp.

Oh, those melons! If he’s able,

We’re to have a feast; so nice!

One goes to the Abbot’s table,

All of us get each a slice;

How go on your flowers? None double?

Not one fruit-sort can you spy?

Strange! And I, too, at such trouble,

Keep ’em close-nipped on the sly!

There is a great text in Galatians,

Once you trip on it, entails

Twenty-nine distinct damnations,

One sure, if another fails.

If I trip him just a-dying,

Sure of heaven as sure can be,

Spin him round and send him flying

Off to hell, a Manichee!

Or my scrofulous French novel,

On grey paper with blunt type!

Simply glance at it, you grovel

Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe;

If I double down its pages

At the woeful sixteenth print,

When he gathers his green gages

Ope a sieve and slip it in’t?

Or, there’s Satan—one might venture

Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave

Such a flaw in the indenture

As he’d miss till, past retrieve,

Blasted lay that rose-acacia

We’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine,

’St, there’s vespers! Plena gratiâ

Ave Virgo! Gr-r-r, you swine!

Nothing could be more complete and dramatic than that poem. How perfectly the enraged contempt and taunting sneer, coupled with pharisaical complacency, groveling superstition, and ill-repressed sensuality, are expressed! The locality and circumstance are inwrought with the whole, by a few vivid touches, and the entire poem shows the easy mastery of a consummate artist. The same things could scarcely be said in a more concentrated, effective, and suggestive manner.

But the power which appears in the quaint and horrible poems of our author, which is a power working to most legitimate ends—for what a prodigious moral in human history and development is thundered from each of the poems we have quoted—is no less evident through all his dramas, dramatic lyrics, and pure love poems. Love is peculiarly his inspiration. Not the love of girls, or sick striplings, but the terrible love of great, strong, passionate natures. Of all modern poets, Browning is the most subtle analyst of the passion, and yet, singularly enough, his poetry is full of its finest fire; for his knowledge does not come from philosophical investigation, but from the acutest perception. Akin to this is his remarkable appreciation of the passion, as it appears in women. No other English poet, but Shakespeare, has given expression to so many and different moods of love. He is sternly true to nature and experience. The slight influences that so strongly affect deep feeling, the inconsistencies, caprices, irrationalities, and surprises of human love, are shown by the poet in their most delicate and evanescent forms and relations. As a pure love-song, as a lyric of the profoundest passion, tenderness, and tragedy, can there be anything better than the following, from the “Men and Women:”

in a year.

Never any more

While I live,

Need I hope to see his face

As before. [p. 377→]

Once his love grown chill,

Mine may strive—

Bitterly we re-embrace,

Single still.

Was it something said,

Something done,

Vexed him? was it touch of hand,

Turn of head?

Strange! that very way

Love begun.

I as little understand

Love’s decay.

When I sewed or drew,

I recall

How he looked as if I sang,

—Sweetly too.

If I spoke a word,

First of all

Up his cheek the color sprang,

Then he heard.

Sitting by my side,

At my feet,

So he breathed the air I breathed,

Satisfied!

I, too, at love’s brim

Touched the sweet;

I would die if death bequeathed

Sweet to him.

“Speak, I love thee best!”

He exclaimed.

“Let thy love my own foretell,”—

I confessed;

“Clasp my heart on thine

Now unblamed,

Since upon thy soul as well

Hangeth mine!”

Was it wrong to own,

Being truth?

Why should all the giving prove

His alone?

I had wealth and ease,

Beauty, youth—

Since my lover gave me love,

I gave these.

That was all I meant,

—To be just,

And the passion I had raised

To content.

Since he chose to change

Gold for dust,

If I gave him what he praised

Was it strange?

Would he love me yet,

On and on,

While I found some way undreamed

—Paid my debt!

Gave more life and more,

Till, all gone,

He should smile “She never seemed

Mine before.

“What—she felt the while,

Must I think?

Love’s so different with us men,”

He should smile.

“Dying for my sake—

White and pink?

Can’t we touch these bubbles then

But they break?”

10.

Dear, the pang is brief.

Do thy part,

Have thy pleasure. How perplext

Grows belief!

Well, this cold clay clod

Was man’s heart.

Crumble it—and what comes next?

Is it God?

This is the intensest romance, and yet it is the fact of every-day experience. Browning shows his right to stand among the poets and his sympathy with his own time, by nothing more than his close adhesion to reality. This little song might have been sung in a hundred American and English drawing-rooms. The great artist is he who has such absolute confidence in nature, that he knows art is best served by obeying nature. The English literature of this epoch is fully charged with this spirit. Tennyson’s “Maud” is a story of England of the nineteenth century; so is Hood’s “Song of the Shirt;” so is Mrs. Browning’s “Bertha in the Lane,” and “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” This is at once their excellence and their power. Study a little the song we have just quoted; mark, first of all, the sensitive propriety which chose the measure, then the wail of the music—a rapid movement, as if of intense musing, broken occasionally, as if by involuntary sobs. Then mark the exquisite gradations of feeling and description. They are akin to the wonderful gradations of color, that the painters love in Titian’s pictures. The first stanza accepts the heavy fact of fickleness and desertion. The first word is “Never;” then comes the musing wonder and questioning—the sad, detailed recall of the past, the sorrow wrung, pang by pang, from remembrance. The quick woman’s heart knows how slight the first cause of swerving may be—knows also, that the slightest deflection is the end, because love is the blending of the two parallel lines of life. The third stanza is a delicious truth of love, which no other poet has trusted the delicacy of his art enough to dare. Then follows the [p. 378→] doubt, the half self-crimination. There is no reproach of the lover, only a misgiving of herself. Then breaks out the deep, wild yearning to be loved again, that all the untold resources of her woman’s love may be revealed; and finally that victorious submission and perfect, although broken-hearted and half hopeless, renunciation, of which the love of woman is capable. This is the tragedy in the midst of which we live, which hides itself under smiles, and is so well concealed that we hardly dare suspect it; for “Love is love for evermore.”

This poem reveals, also, another of the distinguishing traits of Browning—his singular apprehension of womanly experience, and his consequent justice to the dignity and worth of womanly nature. It is safe to say, that Browning and Tennyson have either a finer sense, of the real character of woman, or a great gift of expressing that sense than any modern English poet. “In a Balcony,” in the last volume, a very long dramatic lyric, is, perhaps, the most noticeable single illustration of this gift in all Browning’s poems, although illustrations abound everywhere. In the earlier volumes, “In a Gondola” shows an entirely different play of the same sentiment. This latter poem is purely Venetian. The whimsical, wanton play of deep love was never more truly expressed, and the feeling, the wild sport and fantastic singing, the utter abandonment to the delicious caprices of love, all partake of the dark tragedy of the place, the climate, and the time.

More than any contemporary poet, Browning touches “the tender stops of various quills,” and, in continuation of our illustration of his dramatic affluence, we quote a Cavalier tune, which is as thoroughly England and the seventeenth century as the “Villa and City” of his last volume are Italy and the nineteenth.

marching along.

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his king,

Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing;

And pressing a troop unable to stoop,

And let the rogues flourish, and honest folk droop,

Marched them along, fifty score strong,

Great-hearted gentlemen singing this song.

God for King Charles! Pym and such carles,

To the devil that prompts ’em their treasonous parles!

Cavaliers up! Lips from the cup,

Hands from the pasty, nor bite take, nor sup,

Till you’re (chorus) marching along fifty score strong,

Great-hearted gentlemen singing this song.

Hampden to hell and his obsequies knell,

Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!

England, good cheer! Rupert is near!

Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here,

(Chorus) Marching along, fifty score strong,

Great-hearted gentlemen singing this song?

Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls

To the devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!

Hold by the right, double your might;

So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight.

(Chorus) March we along, fifty score strong,

Great-hearted gentlemen singing this song.

This little poem, one of a series of three, is one of the finest specimens of the union of sound with sense. The vigorous, steady tramp, the solid advance of the verse, is like the march of the great-hearted gentlemen. They tread all together, pealing their chivalric chorus. It rings with enthusiasm—a lyric of loyalty.

It also shows the exquisite sense of melody which distinguishes Browning. He is a musician not only by the ear, but by study. It is a favorite science as well as instinct with him. Hence in his poetry, which is so often dismissed as rough and uncouth, there is the most pervasive music. Look at any of the poems already quoted, to feel this. “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” in the “Men and Women,” is a poem which only a sensitive musician could write. The musical composition which the poet hears, becomes history, and painting, and poetry to him, and, as he listens to the tripping measure, all Venice comes dancing to him—true Venice with the intrigue, the mystery, the frivolity and fire.

* * * * *

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—“Must we die?”

Those commiserating sevenths—“Life might last! we can but try!”

“Were you happy?”—“Yes.”—“And are you still as happy:” “Yes—And you?”

—“Then more kisses”—“Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?”

Hark—the dominant’s persistence, till it must be answered to! [p. 379→]

So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

“Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play.”

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,

Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

This is the verse of a man who feels the poetry of a science, to whom its technical rules are not whims, nor accidents, but replete with significance. Of the same general kind is “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.” Master Hugues is a famous old church-composer and contrapuntist; and the organist of some dim, dingy German church, left in the loft alone, settles himself to a colloquy with the old composer, to make him deliver the secret of some knotty fugue. He describes the scientific course of the composition, with a rollicking exuberance of language which is quite startling, and then plunges on to discover the spiritual meaning, in the midst of which effort he sees that his candle has burnt out, and halloos lustily, to the sacristan, not to leave him in the lurch.

While in the roof if I’m right there—

… Lo, you, the wick in the socket!

Hallo, you, sacristan, show us a light there,

Down it dips, gone like a rocket!

What, you want, do you, to come unawares,

Sweeping the church up for first morning prayers,

And find a poor devil, at end of his cares—

At the foot of your rotten-planked, rat-riddled stairs?

Do I carry the moon in my pocket?

We have quoted copiously from the volumes of our author, because there is so much general misconception as to the character and intelligibility of his poetry. We have also spoken of the shorter poems, both as more easily quoted, and rarely beyond the immediate comprehension of a thoughtful reader. By comprehension we do not mean exhaustion. Few poets more absolutely require, or more copiously repay study and repeated reading. The longer poems, especially “Paracelsus” and “Sordello,” are not to be grasped without the closest attention. “Sordello” is as hard reading as anything we know. It is a dramatical, metaphysical poem; but not of the “Life-Drama” school. Sordello is a Lombard troubadour, a forerunner of Dante.

Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine!

A herald-star I know thou did’st absorb,

Relentless into the consummate orb,

That scared it from its right to roll along

A sempiternal path with dance and song,

Fulfilling its allotted period.

Serenest of the progeny of God,

Who yet resigns it not; his darling stoops

With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troops

Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent

Utterly with thee, its shy element,

Like thine, upturneth prosperous and clear.

Still, what if I approach the august sphere,

Named now with only one name, disentwine

That under-current, soft and argentine,

From its fierce mate in the majestic Mars,

Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass,

In John’s transcendant vision, launch once more

That lustre? Dante, pacer of the shore

Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,

Unbitten by its whining sulphur spume,—

Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope

Into a darkness quieted by hope—

Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God’s eye,

In gracious twilights where his chosen lie,

I would do this! If I should falter now—

The poem is the story of his life—a romantic, mediæval life, in which the singer tries to “weave his chaos into cosmos.” We will quote one other passage from “Sordello,” admirably illustrating Browning’s power of natural description, which we cannot further criticize than to say that the peculiarity of this excellence in the poet is the personal consciousness which he attributes to nature. The same thing is observable in Tennyson, and in others of the modern poets; but in none is it more absolute than in Browning.

Apollo? That shall be the name, nor bid

Me rag by rag expose how patchwork hid

The man—what thefts of every clime and day

Contributed to humble the array

He climbs with (June’s at deep) some close ravine,

’Mid clatter of its million pebbles’ sheen,

Over which singing soft the runnel slipt,

Elate with rains; into whose streamlet dipt

He foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet sock—

Though really on the stubs of living rock.

Ages ago it crumbled; vines for roof,

Lindens for wall; before him, aye aloof,

Flittered in the cool some azure damsel-fly,

Child of the simmering quiet, there to die;

Emerging whence, Apollo still, he spied

Mighty descents of forest; multiplied

Tuft on tuft; here the frolic myrtle-trees;

There gendered the grave maple-stocks at ease; [p. 380→]

And proud of its observer, strait the wood

Tried old surprises on him: black it stood,

A sudden barrier (’twas a cloud passed o’er),

So dead and dense the tiniest brute no more

Must pass; yet presently (the cloud dispatched)

Each clump, forsooth, was glistening, detached,

A shrub; oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems!

Yet could not he denounce the stratagems

He saw thro’, till, hours thence, aloft would hang

White summer-lightnings; as it sank and sprang

In measure, that whole palpitating breast

Of Heaven, ’twas Apollo nature prest

At eve to worship.

“Paracelsus” is the history of the inner life of the middle-age scholar and searcher for the philosopher’s stone. It is his life, told from the point of view of thought, not of action; and Browning represents him as an enthusiast rather than a quack. It is a noble poem, which, with “Sordello,” better illustrates the quaint, curious, intellectual processes of which Browning is fond, than any other of his works.

Of the dramas, we have no room to say more than what we have incidentally hinted. As acting plays, they would hardly succeed, although “Strafford” and “Colombe’s Birth-Day” have had their career upon the stage. Browning is rather a dramatic lyrist in the completest sense, than a playwright—and of these dramatic lyrics, the “Pippa Passes” is the most remarkable. The story is simply that a young Italian girl, from the silk-mills at Asolo, walks through the town on New-Year’s morning, singing as she “passes” along. Her song floats into the windows of different houses, and into the hearts of the people there, and by its appositeness affects them profoundly. The poem proceeds in its description of the dramatis personæ and their situation, and the varying strains and sentiments of the singing mingle with the rest like a criticizing chorus. The conceit is natural and beautiful, and its elaboration in the work gives us one of the most striking poems in the language. The first hearers of the song to whom we are introduced, are Ottima and Sebald, the wife of an old man and her paramour. They have just murdered the husband, and the day breaks upon them together. It is a magnificent and terrible picture of the most imperial and voluptuous passion. The nature of Ottima is strong in sin. It sways and tosses her lover, who is appalled at the enormity of his crime and the audacious supremacy of his mistress’s love and lust. They lie in the hot morning, which seems to the quaking Sebald “a night with a sun added,” and recount their crime and the details of their passion, during which Sebald is gradually swept away and sustained in evil by Ottima. We quote the crisis of this scene, as a passage unequaled for its perfect expression of absolute passion, and that the reader may see and know that with this masterly and, in a sense, tremendous power, the poet is true to God, and not, as so many poets have been with similar power, to the devil:

Ottima. Then our crowning night—

Sebald. The July night?

Otti. The day of it, too, Sebald!

When the Heaven’s pillars seemed o’erbowed with heat,

Its black-blue canopy seemed let descend

Close on us both, to weigh down each to each,

And smother up all life except our life.

So lay we till the storm came.

Seb. How it came!

Otti. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect;

Swift ran the scorching tempest overhead;

And ever and anon some bright white shaft

Burnt thro’ the pine-tree roof—here burnt and there,

As if God’s messenger thro’ the close wood-screen

Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,

Feeling for guilty thee and me: then broke

The thunder like a whole sea overhead—

Seb. Yes!

Otti. While I stretched myself upon you, hands

To hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and shook

All my locks loose, and covered you with them—

You, Sebald, the same you—

Seb. Slower, Ottima!—

Otti. And as we lay

Seb. Less vehemently! Love me—

Forgive me—take not words—mere words—to heart—

Your breath is worse than wine! Breathe slow, speak slow—

Do not lean on me—

Otti. Sebald, as we lay,

Rising and falling only with our pants,

Who said, “Let death come now—’tis right to die!

Right to be punished—nought completes such bliss

But woe!” Who said that?

Seb. How did we ever rise?

Was’t that we slept? Why did it end?

Otti. I felt you,

Fresh tapering to a point the ruffled ends

Of my loose locks ’twixt both your humid lips—

(My hair is fallen now—knot it again!)

Seb. I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now, and now! [p. 381→]

This way? Will you forgive me—be once more

My great queen?

Otti. Bind it thrice about my brow;

Crown me your queen, your spirit’s arbitress,

Magnificent in sin. Say that!

Seb. I crown you

My great, white queen, my spirit’s arbitress,

Magnificent—

(From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing.)

The year’s at the spring,

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in his heaven

All’s right with the world!

(Pippa passes.)

The song is the lightning flash, that cleaves, with avenging purity, the sultriness of passion. Remorse for his crime, hatred of his paramour, aggravate each other in Sebald’s bosom. The spell is broken, and he wakes to conscious despair. We cannot follow the rest of the poem. We believe, after this taste, our readers will do so for themselves.

This is the poet who is called obscure, because he is not particularly easy reading; and immoral, because he recognizes every great fact of human development, but is never for a moment warped from the true vision of what is essentially true.

Browning’s dramas would amply supply material for another article. Our present object has been rather to show the general character and affluent variety of the poet’s genius; and to remind the reader that if there is much of his verse which will demand close study to understand, there is very much which is really as simple and original and beautiful as any poetry. Browning is an objective poet in an age of subjective poetry. His heart beats strongly for the noblest truths. With all his profound sympathy with the spirit of many countries and times, he is never, for a moment, recreant to the loftiest spirit of his own age and country. Yet this sympathy never appears directly; never, by any chance, in the way of preaching. He holds the mirror to mediæval Germany, Italy, France, and England, and so firmly that the picture is perfect, and is its own criticism. He holds the mirror to his own day as truly, and the reflection is a profound commentary upon the time, as in “The Italian in England.” The proof of the genuineness of his dramatic power, in the Shakesperian sense, in such lyrics as “Pippa Passes,” “Frà Lippo Lippi,” “Andrea Del Sarto,” and the like. These, also, have the final evidence of their genuineness in the marvelous fidelity of his transcripts from external nature. A remarkable study in this direction is, “The Englishman in Italy,” which is full of a purely pre-Raphaelite accuracy.

A poet’s poet, he has been called. But if a poet’s poet, then how much a poet! We beg the reader not to judge this man unheard, nor to believe him only a phrase-monger, because some critics cannot slip along his verses as smoothly as they do upon some others. Browning is not less a poet because he is not like other good and true poets. He would be less a poet if he were more like them; for he would then be less original and individual. His individuality is not a spasmodic use of words for thoughts; but it is the exquisite perception of a strong and rich mind, using words with a delicate skill, and an inward music.

In the valedictory of “Men and Women,” his last volume, Browning lays aside the dramatic variety of character, and speaks before all the world to his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in “One word more.” Shelley, in the introduction to “The Revolt of Islam,” had paid a similar homage of the heart to his wife, in lines which he rarely surpassed. In both instances, it is the devotion of a loyal mind and a loving heart to the power which the true man and the true poet prove their truth by acknowledging. The singular thoughtful beauty and grace of Browning’s valedictory we can only mention, and we gladly seal our article with a few lines from it, showing how the poet and the man are one:

I shall never, in the years remaining,

Paint your pictures, no, nor carve your statues,

Make you music that should all-express me;

So, it seems: I stand on my attainment.

This of verse alone, one life allows me;

Verse and nothing else have I to give you.

Other heights in other lives, God willing—

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!

[George William Curtis]

Reviewed:

Poems (RB), Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850.

Men and Women (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1856.

Sordello (RB), London: Moxon, 1840.

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