R571000A. Poems (1849) and Men and Women.
The Christian Remembrancer, October 1857, pp. 361–390.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 367–379.
The reviewer who undertakes the criticism of some famous and popular poet of his own or an earlier day, a Tennyson, a Dante, a Homer, enjoys, despite the arduousness of his task, some great and obvious advantages. He can assume on the part of his readers a tolerable knowledge of the basis of facts on which his superstructure is raised. Mere allusions will at once be understood; the invitation to notice particular beauties of thought and expression will please admirers by whom the merits referred to have been unobserved, will please still more those who have already selected such passages as favourites. Even censures, if not always acquiesced in, may awaken interest, and afford matter for reflection.
It is far otherwise when we feel that we cannot calculate upon the reader’s intimate acquaintance with the writings to be analysed and made the subject of comment. The twofold process of rendering an account of the poems, and at the same time expressing opinions on their value, is perplexing to the writer, and but too likely to weary the reader. The latter is more inclined to distrust a guide over whose course he has so little control, and who may unconsciously distort the evidence, so as to support his own private views. Nevertheless, the office of such a critic, though a more humble one, may prove to many quite as useful, if they are thereby led to the study of an unduly neglected bard, and find the path to the comprehension of his difficulties in any degree smoothed and facilitated.
Although there may be among those whose eyes alight upon these pages, some who are more deeply versed than ourselves in the works of Mr. Browning, such readers will form but a small minority of our circle, and it is our wish to address the larger number. We propose, then, to give an account of the productions of this poet, to examine in detail some of the more important, to notice his chief claims (in our judgment), to admiration, along with his principal defects, and to try to assign to him his fitting place among the living poets of Great Britain.
It would be a waste of words to enter at any length into the history of the phases of our national poetry since the days of Queen Anne. This task has often been performed, and we may be content to accept the brief summary given by Mr. Robertson, in his “Lectures on the Influence of Poetry.” There was, firstly, [p. 362→] the poetry of conventional society, of which Pope is the greatest and ablest representative. Then came the French Revolution, and with it the poetry of sentiment and passion; too often, as is seen in Byron, of morbid sentiment, and unhealthy, because unchastened, passion. The work-day tendencies of our own age, and the rapid strides of physical science, are, not unnaturally, thought to have led by reaction to the poetry of mysticism; among whose votaries may be named, Wordsworth,* the present laureate, and Robert Browning.
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*The following lines of Wordsworth may be fitly instanced as tending to show the manner in which physical discovery often affects poetic minds:—
Desire we past illusions to recal!
To reinstate wild Fancy, would we hide
Truths whose thick veil Science has drawn aside?
No,—let this age, high as she may, instal
In her esteem the thirst that wrought man’s fall,
The universe is infinitely wide,
And conquering Reason, if self-glorified,
Can nowhere move uncross’d by some new wall
Or gulf of mystery, which thou alone,
Imaginative Faith! canst overleap,
In progress towards the fount of Love.
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The peculiar form of Mr. Browning’s mysticism appears to arise from this, that his poems almost invariably attempt to grapple with some of the more recondite difficulties of life. Plain questions admit of plain solutions, but our poet loves to deal with a class of problems which have been usually supposed (as it has been happily said) to defy description and elude analysis. The struggles of solitary and unaided genius with the masses, and its peculiar dangers and temptations, as in “Paracelsus;” the power of hidden agencies, the influence of what to human eyes looks small, over that which appears great, as in “Pippa Passes;” the difficulties which undue distrust creates, and the way in which it may actually evoke the treachery which it is pre-determined to suspect, as in “Luria;” the difference between quiet firmness, and loquacious but evanescent vaunting, as in “A Soul’s Tragedy;” the unsatisfying nature of all earthly joys, as in “Easter-Day;” these, and a multitude of kindred themes, mingled with many of a gentler kind, of exquisite grace and tenderness, are handled by Mr. Browning with remarkable depth of thought, freshness, and originality. That language should occasionally sink under the stress thus laid upon it, is not remarkable; the moralist, the metaphysician, and the theologian, all in turn complain of the insufficiency of their instrument. But in Mr. Browning’s hands, our mother tongue executes, we believe, as much as it is capable of in these departments of thought; it is terse, vigorous, flowing, and almost always admirably en rapport with his subject. [p. 363→]
That such writings should be difficult, that they should frequently need a clue, is almost a condition of their existence. Yet we venture to affirm that careful students of these poems will seldom be found at variance as to their main drift and intention; and that the key, once supplied by the more deeply to the less deeply read, will in most cases be felt and acknowledged for the true one. And unless he be of maturer age than to be capable of deriving pleasure from a style of poetry so different from that to which his earlier years were accustomed, or be disinclined to mysticism in every shape and form, we would certainly recommend the lover of poetry not to be daunted by the first blush of difficulty, but to persevere. He will probably ere long be surprised at his own indifference, when he comes to perceive the richness, variety, and nutriveness of the feast which is spread before him.
We commence with “Paracelsus;” partly because it stands first in order of time, partly because it is the most difficult,* and may thus be accepted by the reader as a kind of test of his capability of taking interest in Mr. Browning’s creations. If he is not repelled by the obscurities of “Paracelsus,” we may safely reckon upon his acceptance of subsequent works of equal interest, and far less difficulty. Let us first glance at the actual history of this aspirant after knowledge.
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*These remarks apply only to our author’s acknowledged and extant works. We have heard that a small volume entitled “Pauline” is by Mr Browning, and prior to “Paracelsus” in date of publication; likewise that “Sordello,” which is now withdrawn from circulation, is still more difficult to understand than “Paracelsus.”
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Paracelsus was born a.d. 1493, at the little town of Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, a place not unknown to our summer tourists. His names at length were, Philip Aureole Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, the surname being Grecised into Paracelsus, according to the fashion of the day, as exhibited by Melancthon, Œcolampadius, and others. His name of Bombast, or Bumbastus, has passed into an unhappy celebrity; the bombastic phraseology of his lectures having stamped the word with the signification which it has ever since retained. Believed by his admirers to be a successful alchemist, and almost infallible healer of disease, he was reviled by his enemies as a mere quack, a drunkard, a dealer in magic, possessing a bird of evil incantations in the handle of the long sword usually worn by him. (Mr. Browning, whose notes supply us with materials for this sketch, here reminds us of the lines from “Hudibras:”—
Bumbastus kept a devil’s bird,
Shut in the pummel of his sword;
That taught him all the cunning pranks
Of past and future mountebanks). [p. 364→]
After long wanderings in the East, and over a great part of Europe, he was appointed, through the interest of the Reformer Œcolampadius, to the Professorship of Physic in the University of Basle (or, as Mr. Browning more correctly terms it, Basil). He commenced by publicly burning the works of Galen and Avicenna, and announcing his own sovereignty over the healing art. A quarrel with a magistrate compelled him to fly from Basle, and after many changes of residence (some being compulsory), he died in a hospital at Salzburg, at the age of forty-eight, in the autumn of 1541.
An unpromising subject this, at first sight, for the hero of a poem! But we must first consider the merits of Paracelsus, and the many palliations for his faults. He was liberal and uncovetous; he did perform many wonderful cures, and may fairly, in Mr. Browning’s judgment, claim to be the father of modern chemistry. It is curious that in France, since the publication of the poem, and, perhaps, in consequence of it, the fame of Paracelsus as a savant has been renewed. If Paracelsus paid too little respect to the memory of his predecessors in his own department of science, he shares this fault with many a reformer; witness Aristotle, Luther, Bacon. If he displayed temper, it was under great provocation. If his theological tenets were wild and pantheistic, it must be remembered that he lived in an age of great religious excitement, and numbered Zuinglius as well as Œcolampadius, among his acquaintance.
Mr. Browning’s poem is dramatic in its form. But in the preface to the original edition he explained, correctly enough, that it differed from the ordinary drama, inasmuch as there was no “recourse to the external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis.” If we take a drama, as for instance, “Hamlet,” we see at once that the character of the hero is brought out by the events which befal him; the discovery of his father’s murder, the usurpation of his uncle, the marriage of his mother to the murderer. And thus Goethe’s celebrated critique upon this play commences with the inquiry. “What sort of person would Hamlet have been, if the tenor of his life had been unbroken by the shock of these calamities?” But if the central figure in a poem be that of a thinker whose course has been comparatively uneventful, the development must be represented as occasioned (in Miltonic language) by the wily subtleties and refluxes of man’s heart from within, rather than by the changes of that which is called fortune from without.
Such was the task attempted by our poet at (we believe) the early age of three-and-twenty. He has not taken up the position of a mere defender of the fame of Paracelsus; he does not simply point out that this supposed quack and magician had [p. 365→] discovered the circulation of the blood and the sanguification of the heart; that he has been recognised by Vossius as a great chemist, and by Lavater as a forerunner in the cultivation of practical physiognomy; that he has probably hinted many things in his neglected books, which have since been cleverly appropriated, and thus enabled other men to obtain reputation and applause. But admitting, along with these merits, a certain decadence in the morale of Paracelsus as he proceeds in life, the poet forms a conception of his character which shall explain, by the existence of a flaw from the beginning, the gradual failure of his schemes, and the ruin which overtook them in the end. It is obvious that with the correctness of this conception viewed biographically, we have little or nothing to do. A fair case might, no doubt, be made for its truthfulness as matter of fact. But all that we need ask in criticising a poet, is whether he has drawn a clear, intelligible, consistent portrait? And in proportion to the general ignorance surrounding the memory of any man is the smallness of the wrong effected by a representation not in accordance with literal truth. We do not inquire very critically as to the likeness of the picture of a medieval founder which graces the hall of a college, though we do require that he shall not be represented in vestments of a modern guise. If Shakspeare has overcharged the accusations against the character of Richard III.; if Schiller has misrepresented Wallenstein; if Mr. Henry Taylor has calumniated S. Dunstan, (we are only putting the case hypothetically,)—then a real wrong has been done, because these personages are all conspicuous in history, and in the last instance connected with questions which seriously affect our inward life. But as regards Paracelsus, if his poetic glorifier has overrated his merits, this can hardly be said to disturb any previously formed opinions, since most of us never had any; to say nothing of the fact, that of the two, undue praise is at least a more charitable excess than over-condemnation.
The plan of the poem is as follows. In part the first Paracelsus expounds to his friends Festus and Michal (Festus’s wife), in their garden at Würzburg, his aspirations after knowledge, after universal truth, and his desire to traverse the world in search of it. They try, but vainly, to retain him. This scene, headed “Paracelsus aspires,” is supposed to take place in 1512. The next, wherein “Paracelsus attains,” is fixed some nine years later. The knowledge-seeker is then at Constantinople. Despite his attainments, he is desponding and dissatisfied, and is only saved from utter despair by the entrance of a mysterious person, an Italian poet, named Aprile, who throws some light upon the probable causes of Paracelsus’s ill-success. Five [p. 366→] years pass, and we find our hero in his professorial chair at Basle. His sentiments have undergone some change. His yearnings after knowledge for its own sake have yielded to the more reasonable desire of imparting to others what he has already acquired. For this end he is content to relax in his endeavours after more knowledge, and to resign his search after absolute truth. The fourth part exhibits Paracelsus at Colmar, in Alsatia, after his forced flight from Basle, where men’s misplaced admiration for his inferior gifts had been succeeded by a still more unreasonable opposition and undervaluation of his real powers. The injustice he has suffered has engendered a feeling of bitter contempt for his fellow-men, and (like too many others before and since, as e.g. Robert Burns) he has sought solace from the failure of his great and beneficent schemes in lower delights, the joys of earth and sense. And if men will honour him, not for his really important discoveries and lofty aspirations, but simply for showing off the mere marvels of his art, let the dupes be duped; in his contempt he will play the charlatan. The last book brings us to the death-bed of the philosopher, in the hospital of S. Sebastian, at Salzburg. He is humbled; he sees his errors, firstly, in the attempt to disregard his brother-men, and then, in expecting too much from them, making no allowance for their imperfections, and not perceiving the good frequently latent in their mistakes.
Many are the questions incidentally discussed in this poem. Upon some of these we may touch as we proceed. And, firstly, as regards the original flaw in the designs of Paracelsus. His friend Festus maintains that Paracelsus is seeking knowledge too much for its own sake; that he had far better, instead of wild and desultory travel, study calmly in some retreat already dedicated to learning:—
You, if a man may, dare aspire to know:
And that this aim shall differ from a host
Of aims alike in character and kind,
Mostly in this,—to seek its own reward
In itself only, not an alien end
To blend therewith; no hope, nor fear, nor joy,
Nor woe, to elsewhere move you, but this pure
Devotion to sustain you or betray:
Thus you aspire.
And when Paracelsus objects to such a representation of his intention, and professes an earnest desire to serve God, who has directed the choice of his career, and summoned him to be his instrument, the reply of Festus contains the following remarkable lines:— [p. 367→]
Presume not to serve God apart from such
Appointed channel as He wills shall gather
Imperfect tributes—for that sole obedience
Valued, perchance. He seeks not that his altars
Blaze—careless how, so that they do but blaze.
Young and ardent, the aspirant is not yet to be daunted. In the conviction that the consciousness of power is a proof that it was meant to be employed according to the yearnings of the possessor, he makes use of one of those fine comparisons which are scattered with liberal hand throughout these poems:—
Be sure that God
Ne’er dooms to waste the strength He deigns impart!
Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once
Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
What full-grown power informs her from the first,
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
The silent boundless regions of the sky!
A like call is on him to travel in quest of truth; to bring new hopes to animate the world; new lights for the human race, lights whose glory shall be an anticipation of heaven. Festus urges, at least, a respectful attention to the footprints of the mighty dead, but the existing state of mankind is urged as a proof that the teaching of past would-be sages is contemptible, and Paracelsus again intimates that his service for mankind is a mere thing by the way, not by any means his main object. On this hint Festus utters his warning:—
Look well to this; here is a plague-spot, here,
Disguise it how you may! ’Tis true, you utter
This scorn while by our side and loving us;
’Tis but a spot as yet, but it will break
Into a hideous blotch if overlooked.
How can that course be safe which from the first
Produces carelessness to human love?
(The reader may possibly be reminded of one of Mr. Tennyson’s most didactic poems, “The Palace of Art,” and its well-known lines:—
And he that shuts Love out in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on the threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness.
But though the lesson may be practically identical in both cases, the mode of treatment is entirely distinct.)
We next, as has been said, find Paracelsus, nine years later, at Constantinople, in “The House of the Greek Conjuror.” His course (as Festus feared) has been, as that of a man, downwards, although he may have made progress as a savant. The mere [p. 368→] wish to consult a wizard reminds one of that monarch who began so well, and put down witchcraft, and then, in his day of misery and spiritual declension, sought out the cave at Endor. The knowledge-seeker feels his fall. He remembers the depth of his affection for Einsiedeln, and his friends there, and the loftiness of the visions which he then cherished:—
Then—God was pleased to take me by the hand;
Now—any miserable juggler bends
My pride to him:—
and, after a soliloquy of much depth and grandeur, is roused by the voice of Aprile, the Italian poet, who arrives at this important juncture to see him and to die. What is the precise meaning of this episode? A careful and conscientious critic in the “Revue des deux Mondes,” for August 1851, while confessing himself perplexed, suggests that we may see in Aprile an emblem of the genius of antiquity which is passing away before the newer spirit represented by Paracelsus. Now we are so much indebted to this critique of M. Milsand’s in what has been written, that it is with diffidence that we venture to dissent from him. But not being convinced of the justice of his view in this respect, we are compelled to put forth our own, which only partially coincides with his.
Perfect knowledge, perfect love—these are the highest aims of God’s creatures. Theologians tell us that of two angelic orders, the cherubim and seraphim, cherubs know the most, and seraphs love the most. Yet neither order is supposed to be destitute of the other’s graces. And so, too, with mankind. Some systems seem to end in what may be termed the cherubic view; more in the seraphic: yet a continual intermingling and strange crossing of lines is oftentimes, so to speak, visible in the framework. It has been observed that among inspired teachers, the most learned of Apostles is the one who addresses the Corinthians on the supremacy of love; while the Epistle of the beloved disciple is precisely that which most abounds in allusions to light and knowledge. The most philosophic of English divines, a calm and profound reasoner, leads us from the contemplation of human nature to that of the love of God, and maintains that knowledge cannot be the chief good of man.* Nevertheless, affection without knowledge may degenerate into feebleness. In the words of a living writer,—“Doubtless, if to appreciate the use of the understanding were to undervalue that deeper science of the affections, if there were any incompatibility, any, even the slightest opposition, between the exercise of one and of the other, we should do well to forego even [p. 369→] the intellectual discipline, rather than dry up the living fountains of the heart: but yet reason is a genuine and glorious gift, and an instrument of the highest order for the attainment of truth; and there is no natural opposition, but a natural concord, between the exercise of reason and the growth of the affections; and the true progress of a man is dependent in great measure on that union.”**
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*Bp. Butler’s XIVth Sermon.
**Gladstone on Church Principles.
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Now Paracelsus has been exhibited as from the first deficient in real love for his fellow-creatures. He is indeed attached to Festus and Michal; but that attachment is something almost extraneous from his course, though in his better moments he feels its value. Aprile is at the opposite pole.
Paracels. I am he that aspired to know—and thou?
Aprile. I would love infinitely, and be loved?
It is, however, curious, and we presume not unintentional, that while the knowledge-seeker becomes the man of science, the lover of his kind is portrayed as a votary of art. The love for man and nature which Aprile feels, he wished to embody in the creations of sculpture, of painting, of poetry, and of music. And if, as is possible, the mention of sculpture suggested to M. Milsand the idea of antiquity, let it be remembered that ancient art, however successful with the chisel, did little worth mentioning with the pencil, and most probably never soared beyond the very rudiments of music. The speech of Aprile might be fitly quoted as an exemplification of the varied nature of Mr. Browning’s powers, for both in manner and matter it is extremely different from those placed in the mouth of Paracelsus: but we have not space for it. The lesson taught by Aprile, beyond the obvious one of our general need of the union of love and knowledge, appears to us to be as follows:—The man of science must use his knowledge, not only (in the noble phrase of Bacon) “for the glory of God,” but also for “the relief of man’s estate.” The artist must not, in his passion for the ideal, contemn the laborious toil by which the scientific interpreter of nature arrives at his results. A comment on this episode might perhaps be gathered from Schiller’s poem of “The Artists,” made accessible to English readers by the translation of Sir E.B. Lytton, though Schiller seems less favourable to the claims of science than the author of the poem before us. We must also remark, in passing, on Mr. Browning’s love for music. We are told, by one skilled in the instrument, that one of the poems in “Men and Women” (Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha) is simply a description of a fugue upon the organ. Mr. Browning is said, by common report, to be an admirable [p. 370→] musician, and his ideas of the functions of music suit excellently with the mystical character of beauty which pervades the work of some modern composers, more especially of the school of Mendelssohn. Aprile, when he is supposed to have carried sculpture, painting, and poetry, to their utmost limit, adds with great felicity—
This done, to perfect and consummate all,
Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing
Mysterious notions of the soul, no way
To be defined save in strange melodies.
It may, however, be asked, how far we can be reasonably expected to accept poetry, in which the meaning of the introduction of one personage is so obscure, that even admiring critics are not thoroughly agreed respecting it. Now it does so happen that we have just laid down the third volume of Mr. Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” at the place where (pp. 220, 221,) he quotes a very beautiful passage from the “Purgatorio,” describing the appearance of a lady presumed by commentators to be the celebrated Countess Matilda, the contemporary of Hildebrand. “The question is then,” says Mr. Ruskin, “what is the symbolic character of the Countess Matilda, as the guiding spirit of the terrestrial paradise?” Now, we do not mean to assert that Mr. Browning is a Dante; for there are not above three or four poets in the whole range of literature who can be classed with the great Florentine. But if such questions as the symbolic character of a personage in the “Divina Commedia” may be discussed without prejudice to the laurel wreath of Dante, a like inquiry can be no rightful ground for questioning the justice of Mr. Browning’s claim to a seat upon Parnassus.
To return, however, to the central figure of this poem, Paracelsus. His first feeling towards Aprile is one of contempt: but, subdued by the Italian’s earnestness, (and, by the way, it is in keeping that the northern should be the one who reflects, the southern the one who feels,) and somewhat conscience-stricken as he sees the youthful admirer of his fame sinking before him, he exclaims,—
Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn
To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both!
We wake at length from weary dreams; but both
Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and drear
Appears the world before us, we no less
Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still.
I, too, have sought to know as thou to love—
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.
Still thou hast beauty, and I, power. We wake:
What penance canst devise for both of us? [p. 371→]
It is with regret that we perceive the impossibility of confining within due limits a complete epitome of the poem. The passages describing the bitterness of the discoverer when he finds how little his best gifts are appreciated, the incidental pictures of natural scenery, and the problems respecting the influence of great men upon the mass, and the self-deceit which may alloy even their good deeds; these, among many others, we should like to quote, but we labour under an embarras des richesses. From among the many wise and kind remonstrances of Festus (whose affection and admiration for his friend are not suffered to make him blind to faults), we select the following as suggestive of a useful lesson for us all.
Listen: I do believe, what you call trust
Was self-reliance at the best: for, see!
So long as God would kindly pioneer
A path for you, and screen you from the world,
Procure you full exemption from man’s lot,
Man’s common hopes and fears, on the mere pretext
Of your engagement in his service—yield you
A limitless licence, make you God, in fact,
And turn your slave—you were content to say
Most courtly praises! What is it, at last,
But selfishness without example? None
Could trace God’s will so plain as you, while yours
Remained implied in it; but now you fail,
And we, who prate about that will, are fools!
In short, God’s service is established here
As He determines fit, and not your way,
And this you cannot brook!
But although we must presently pass on to the consideration of other poems contained in these volumes, we cannot quit “Paracelsus” without a word upon a point of great importance to young authors. In the first edition of this poem, Mr. Browning intimated that it had been the work of only six months. This may seem an encouragement to others to spend but a short time upon their compositions. But let not the reader who studies “Paracelsus” in the collected edition of 1849, imagine that he has before him the result of hasty labour. Every page has been reconsidered, corrected, and improved, with a care to which we hardly know a parallel since the days of Plato. Simpler Saxon words have been inserted instead of Latinised ones; here a line struck out, there some explanatory addition be made; and in numberless cases the very arrangement of the printing altered, in order to make the sense more clear. Revisions—witness Cowper’s, of his “Iliad”—are often failures; Mr. Browning’s has been eminently successful. In scarcely a single instance do we regret the change.*
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*We will, however, mention two places in which we prefer the edition of 1835. In the striking and beautiful lyric of the fourth part, beginning, “Over the sea our galleys went,” we like “these majestic forms” much better than “the lucid shapes you bring.” And in page 187 of this old edition, there was the cautioning note,—“Paracelse faisait profession du Panthéisme le plus grossier.” (Renauldin.) This note is probably struck out only for the sake of neatness. Yet we desiderate it; for the reader was thereby clearly informed that the sentiments of that speech were those of Paracelsus, not of the author: and though we do not in the slightest degree accuse Mr. Browning of Pantheism, yet the distinctness of this virtual protest appeared to us wise and satisfactory. [p. 372→]
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Enough, however, has been said to enable the reader to judge of the character of this production, if he has been previously unacquainted with it. If, undaunted by its difficulties, he is induced to read the poem with care, he will probably agree with us, that a more brilliant and successful hero might have proved far less interesting than this half-erring, hysterical, wayward son of genius. We learn to sympathise with his very failings; they are but too natural, and place Paracelsus more upon a level with ordinary humanity. To the lyrical portions of the poem we may have occasion to refer hereafter. For the present we quit with two extracts a work which, considering the youth of its author, is surely a literary phenomenon. We will cite the philosopher’s description of his process of discovery, the imagery (it will be observed) being peculiarly redolent of a Switzer’s experience—
For some one truth would dimly beacon me
From mountains rough with pines, and flit and wink
O’er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble
Into assured light in some branching mine,
Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold—
And all the beauty, all the wonder fell
On either side the truth, as its mere robe:
Men saw the robe, I saw the august form;
So far, then, I have voyaged with success.
And the following, which is from the touching speech with which the poem concludes:—
In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love’s faint beginnings in mankind,
To know even hate is but a mask of love’s;
To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathise—be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice, and fears, and cares, and doubts;
Which all touch upon nobleness, despite
Their error, all tend upwardly, though weak,
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him.
And this I knew not, and I failed. Let men
Regard me and the poet dead long ago—
Who once loved rashly; and shape forth a third, [p. 373→]
And better tempered spirit, warned by both;
* * * * * *
Meanwhile, I have done well, though not all well.
As yet men cannot do without contempt—
’Tis for their good, and therefore fit awhile
That they reject the weak, and scorn the false,
Rather than praise the strong and true in me.
But after, they will know me! if I stoop
Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God’s lamp
Close to my breast—its splendour, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day!
Our next theme shall be the poem called “Pippa Passes.” Our readers may, perhaps, already be aware that this title does not refer to some unknown or imaginary pass among the Alps or Apennines. The word passes is the verb to which Pippa (the familiar Italian for Felippa) is the nominative. This, too, is a species of drama. Pippa, its heroine, is a girl who works in the silk-mills at Asolo, a small place in the Trevisan district, some five-and-thirty miles north-west of Venice. In this town are supposed to dwell, one Luca, with a faithless wife, named Ottima; a young French statuary, Jules, about to wed a maiden, called Phene; Luigi, an Italian patriot, living with a fond mother; and a dignitary of the Church, a Monsignor, who inhabits the palace by the Duomo. It is New Year’s Day, and Pippa is about to enjoy her one great annual holiday. Simple, pious, ignorant of the world, she resolves on imagining herself for the nonce to be in turn Ottima, Phene, Luigi’s mother, and Monsignor, whom she looks upon as the happiest four in Asolo.
All four are shown, as the poem proceeds, to have secret and gnawing cares. Ottima and her paramour, Sebald, have that very morning consummated their guilt by the murder of the aged Luca. Jules has been imposed on by some envious brother-artists, who have made Phene the unconscious instrument of their designs upon his happiness—designs which are framed on the mistaken supposition, that Phene is a girl of no character. Luigi is on the point of sullying his patriotic aspirations by an act of assassination; and Monsignor is bearded in his own home by an intendant of his late brother’s, who threatens ugly family disclosures. Each of these very different scenes is painted with extraordinary power; and in all four the voice of Pippa is heard without, as she passes by at some great crisis, and produces the most important results. That voice, at one time, strikes the ear of Sebald, hanging between remorse for his crime, and the resolution to take his fill of guilt, and remorse straightway predominates; another of its strains is heard by Jules, when he has discovered the attempt to cheat him, and he [p. 374→] feels that, at any rate, it is not on Phene that his anger should fall, but that their union may be as blest as ever, though not precisely in the same way. Luigi listens to a lay from the same lips, and the thought of attempting to serve his country by the crime of assassination is banished from his heart for ever; the Monsignor (to whom Felippa proves to be related) is half inclined to compromise and to hush up matters with the rascally intendant, when the child’s song bursts through every web of conventionality and sophistry, and the villain is seized and gagged. Pippa, still unconscious of all that has passed, retires to her chamber musing,—
Now, one thing I should really like to know;
How near I ever might approach all these
I only fancied being, this long day—
—Approach, I mean, so as to touch them—so
As to .. in some way .. move them—if you please
Do good or evil to them some slight way.
* * * * * *
Ah, me and my important part with them,
This morning’s hymn half promised when I rose!
True in some sense or other, I suppose,
Though I passed by them all, and felt no sign.
[As she lies down.
God bless me! I can pray no more to-night.
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.
All service is the same with God—
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.
[She sleeps.
This poem again exhibits Mr. Browning’s fondness for symbolic teaching. That any particular maiden on a given day unconsciously arrested and changed the current of thought in four different minds, over which a crisis of their fate was impending, we are not, of course, called upon to believe according to the letter. But that outward and visible levers of action, power, eloquence, station, and the like, may often exert far less influence over the fortunes of mankind, than secret ones hidden in their lowliness; that the lot of the empress may be most closely intertwined with that of the peasant, and the toils of one man’s lofty intellect be indirectly affected by the humble brain of another; that guilt is often dumb-founded at the very approach of hallowed innocence, and that in our better moments our true first impressions may assert their rightful superiority over secondary and more worldly-wise precautions; these are deep truths, well worthy to be again and again recalled; for that they are taught, if not usually by poets or philosophers, yet assuredly by Apostles and Evangelists. These lessons (and many more, both moral and intellectual, which are evolved in [p. 375→] the course of the action) are presented to us in “Pippa Passes,” in a manner remarkable for its beauty and originality. Although this production is with us a great and special favourite, it is so difficult to do it justice by mere extracts, that we refrain from giving more than the very first lines, having already quoted the very last. They are the words of Pippa, springing from her bed, and gazing on the glory of an Italian sun-rise,—
Day!
Faster and more fast
O’er night’s brim, day boils at last;
Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim,
Where, spurting and supprest it lay;
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid grey
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
In turning our attention to the dramas contained in these volumes, we are not favourably impressed by the dramatic powers of our author. It is true that skill in mere dramatic structure may co-exist with very limited faculties, and be wanting to very lofty ones. If Shakspeare and Schiller manifest it, so likewise does Kotzebue. On the other hand, neither Wordsworth, nor even Goethe, can lay claim to much praise in this respect. We are not surprised to learn that Mr. Browning’s dramas of “Colombe’s Birthday” and “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” admirable as they are in the closet, produced but little effect upon the stage. The speeches are too long, the situations often too recondite; the personages (not one, nor two, but nearly all of them) too much out of the order of every-day experience easily to bear the sensuous representation of the theatre. Shakspeare has avoided this danger. The mysticism of Hamlet is relieved by the common-place Polonius. Coriolanus stands in isolation, but Aufidius and Lartius are little more than foils to his splendour.
But in all other respects these plays are replete with interest. Of the two just named, “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon” is painfully powerful; and there is a grace and purity hanging over “Colombe’s Birthday,” to say nothing of keen satire and wise insight, which render it one of the most pleasing poems of our time. The blank verse, in which Mr. Browning perhaps shines most, is varied, spirited, and harmonious.
Critics have been struck, and not unnaturally, with the foreign air that pervades a large portion of these poems. It is not merely that the scene is rarely fixed in England, but the [p. 376→] mode of thought, without being anti-English, constantly bears an indescribable savour of the Continent. Two countries more especially suggest themselves— Germany and Italy.
It might prove an interesting subject of investigation for a competent inquirer, to consider which of these countries had most powerfully affected English literature. At the present hour, Germany looks triumphant. In theology, both for good and evil; in metaphysics, in classical and oriental researches, and general philology, we seek our materials on this side of the Alps, eastward and westward of the Rhine. Nor can we be insensible to the effect of the imaginative creations of the Germans upon ourselves, as evidenced by Coleridge, by Scott (who began by translations of Goethe), and many a minor minstrel. Nevertheless, this potent influence dates from only a century back. And there threatens to be some slight reaction against it. In the field of history, Professor Creasy and Mr. E.A. Freeman strive to win back students to Italy and her annalists. Mr. Ruskin writes in depreciation of German art and German philosophy; though, by the way, one of his objects of admiration, Mr. Carlyle, is steeped in Germanism. And if we pass from our own day to an earlier date, while Italy still glowed with life, it may almost be said that our literature, perhaps European literature, could hardly have existed but for Italy. How does Chaucer appeal to his great predecessor “thus saith Dant;” and make his clerk of Oxenforde attribute the tale of Grisildis to “Fraunceis Petrark, the laureat poete!” How does Shakspeare carry us to Milan, to Verona, to Venice, to Padua and to Rome, as the scenes and sources of his plots! Would “Paradise Lost” have been composed, had there been no “Divina Commedia?” In the eloquent language of the historian of the Italian Republics, “The Italians had restored to the world philosophy, eloquence, history, poetry, architecture, sculpture, painting and music, and it had made rapid advances in commerce, agriculture, nautical science, and the mechanical arts. In a word, they had been the masters of Europe. Scarcely does there exist a science, an art, an acquirement of any description, of which Italy did not teach the rudiments to those very nations who have since surpassed the Italians … Such was the greatness of the nation in the days of her glory.” That glory has passed away, but still does Italy fascinate, as it were with a spell, the traveller from England and Germany, Russia and America. Intellectually—we speak not of other influences—how marvellously did she affect the mind of Goethe. How much do our writers on art, Mr. Ruskin and Lord Lindsay, Mrs. Jameson and Sir C. Eastlake, owe to her? What a blank would be left in the poetry of Shelley, Byron, R. Monckton [p. 377→] Milnes, Elizabeth Browning, were we to tear from their volumes all that breathes of Italy.
Oh, woman country, wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth’s male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead!
so sings Mr. Browning, striking a chord to which many hearts will respond, something in the spirit of that line of Filicaja’s famous sonnet,
Deh! fossi tu men bella, o almen piu forte.
But our poet is not one to give only praise or only pity; on the contrary he is fond, perhaps almost too fond, of exhibiting the weaknesses, inconsistencies, and meannesses of human nature. And thus Italy comes in for her share of blame. Her scampish artists (for she had scamps as well as saints among them) are represented by Fra Lippo Lippi. The heathenish tone of the Renaissance is portrayed in the lines headed “The Bishop orders his Tomb at S. Praxed’s Church,” a poem on which it were well for the reader to consult Mr. Ruskin’s criticism.* And though he has an ardent zeal for Italian liberties, yet in one of the most admirable of his dramas, that of “Luria,” he reminds us more forcibly than perhaps any historian of the wars and rivalries of the Italian cities in their days of freedom, and of what is far worse, their jealous, cruel, and murderous treatment of their successful captains. The way in which spies were placed on the stranger who (like Othello) led the armies of an Italian state, with the assumption that failure was intentional and success the sure harbinger of treason; then spies again upon the first spies; until a trial broke the leader’s heart, or he was siezed and hurried to the scaffold, or else disgraced and banished, are depicted with marvellous success in the scenes of “Luria.”
________
*Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages; always vital, right, and profound; so that in the matter of art, with which we have been specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the mediæval temper, that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged rhymes of his ...... I knew no other piece of modern English prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit,—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance in thirty pages of the “Stones of Venice,” put into as many lines, Browning’s being also the antecedent work. The worst of it is that this kind of concentrated writing needs so much solution before the reader can fairly get the good of it, that people’s patience fails them and they give the thing up as insoluble; though, truly, it ought to be to the current of common thought like Saladin’s talisman dipped in clear water, not soluble altogether, but making the element medicinal.—Modern Painters, vol. iv. pp. 377–379.
________
Italians cannot fairly complain of such a theme. The distinguished historian whom we have recently quoted, himself of a noble Pisan family, has given with great effect a narrative of [p. 378→] this nature, the sad and striking story of Carmagnola; a Piedmontese who fought for Venice, and was put to death in 1432, though apparently quite innocent, in a manner as dark and treacherous as it was ungrateful. We remember on the first occasion of our reading the account of Carmagnola, even in Sismondi’s English abridgment of his great work, being struck with its poetic character, and wondering whether it had ever been made a theme of song. And it was with gratification that we discovered that a religious and patriotic writer, now famous throughout Europe, Alessandro Manzoni, had won his first spurs in the arena of literature by his tragedy of “Il Conte di Carmagnola.” Goethe, who, with all his grievous faults, was ever generous to rising merit, helped largely to spread the reputation of the then new candidate for fame.
Here then is an opportunity of comparing Mr. Browning with a great foreign poet of our day. For save that “Luria” is not actually historical in its dramatis personæ, the basis of the plot is very similar to that of Manzoni’s “Carmagnola,” though the treatment shows that there has not been the slightest imitation. The Italian has perhaps in one or two points the advantage. As a lyrist, Manzoni is hardly surpassed by any living bard, and his laments over these old dissensions of his countrymen, which have borne such bitter fruit in their present subjection, have a marvellous pathos and dignity. Nothing in its way can be finer than the song of the Chorus, which he has adopted from the Greek stage, where it dwells on the common language and lineage and motherhood of the combatants, all children of the land so divided from the rest, so encircled with the Alps and sea:—
D’una terra son tutti: un linguaggio
Parlan tutti: fratelli li dice
Lo straniero: il comune lignaggio
A ognun d’essi dal volto traspar.
Questa terra fu a tutti nudrice,
Questa terra di sangue ora intrisa,
Che natura dall’ altre ha divisa,
E recinta coll’ Alpe e col mar.
Or where it depicts the ladies at brilliant soirées making a display of the necklaces and zones which a husband or a lover has snatched from the deserted wives and sisters of the conquered:—
Qui le donne alle veglie lucenti
Dei monili far pompa e dei cinti
Che alle donne deserte dei vinti
Il marito o l’amante rapi.
But in all that concerns the development of individual cha- [p. 379→] racter, and forcible representation of the essence of what is commonly known as Macchiavellian policy, we venture to think our own poet far superior. Luria himself is a magnificent conception; and though we always, for our own part, regret a dénouement which involves suicide, it must be remembered that Luria, like Othello, is not a Christian, but a Moor.
We have thus far only dwelt in detail upon the poems contained in the two volumes of the edition of 1849. A few words must now be devoted to the much smaller publication of 1850, entitled “Christmas Eve and Easter Day.” For this remarkable work brings our author before us as a religious poet. One of the first queries on this head that will probably occur to our readers is, whether Mr. Browning is reverent. Now the answer to this question is less obvious than might be imagined. A real distinction must be drawn, if possible, between what appears to us to lack reverence, and what is intentionally so on the part of the writer. For example, it is common among continental religionists, of whatever creed, to use the words of Holy Scripture with far less reserve than is usual in Great Britain. This we believe to be a real misfortune, but it would be unjust to class it with intentional mockery. Another kind of apparent irreverence sometimes arises from the very reserve which renders a man unwilling to own to all that he feels, when, in the words of this very volume—
When the frothy fame and frequent sputter
Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest.
And there exists another modification of the same feeling, when the reserve takes the form of some ironical turn of expression. Instances of all three of these may be easily discovered in Mr. Browning’s poetry. We should be sorry always to undertake their defence, and we fear that some, who would otherwise reap benefit from “Christmas Eve,” may be repelled by parts, despite the apology, of which a distich has just been quoted. The author imagines himself on the eve of the great festival,—firstly, at a sermon in a little dissenting meeting-house, (by the bye, what Dissenters are there who keep Christmas Eve?) then at a service at S. Peter’s, Rome, and thirdly, at a lecture at Göttingen. And the conclusion is, that he could understand Dissent, though repelled by its vulgarity; that he could understand Romanism, though repelled by its excess of ceremony; but that German Rationalism appeared to him alike inconceivable and inconsequential. The Hudibrastic rhyming, here and elsewhere adopted by Mr. Browning, may, we think, be likened to that strange prose style with which we are familiar in the works of a very different person—Mr. Carlyle. Both peculiarities are partly natural, partly strained beyond nature; [p. 380→] both remarkably felicitous at moments and in reference to certain themes; both at times repulsive and scarcely reverential in their application; both, though impressive in the hands of such masters, wearisome and almost intolerable in the hands of imitators. As, however, we only mentioned, without exhibiting, our poet’s powers of humour and fine irony, we are glad to take the opportunity of quoting a specimen, where the lash is applied with as much fitness as skill. It relates to the lecture of the Göttingen professor:—
So he proposed inquiring first
Into the various sources whence
This myth of Christ is derivable;
Demanding from the evidence
(Since plainly no such life was liveable)
How these phenomena should class?
Whether ’t were best opine Christ was,
Or never was at all—or whether
He was and was not, both together—
It matters little for the name
So the Idea be left the same:
Only, for practical purpose’ sake,
’Twas obviously as well to take
The popular story,—understanding
How the inaptitude of the time,
And the penman’s prejudice, expanding
Fact into fable fit for the clime,
Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it
Into this Myth, this Individuum—
Which, when reason had strained and abated it
Of foreign matter, gave, for residuum,
A man!—a right true man, however,
Whose work was worthy a man’s endeavour!
Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient
To his disciples, for rather believing
He was just omnipotent and omniscient,
As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving
His word, their tradition,—which, though it meant
Something entirely different
From all that those who only heard it
In their simplicity thought and averred it,
Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:
For, among other doctrines delectable,
Was he not surely the first to insist on
The natural sovereignty of our race?
Of the remaining poem, “Easter Day,” we must speak in terms of the highest admiration. It is, in truth, though couched in most poetic form, a very solemn sermon; unattractive, therefore, of course, to those who dislike sermons in every shape, but full of most pregnant and suggestive matter for those who look closely enough into their own hearts to feel the difficulties attendant upon faith and obedience, and, at the same time, really recognise the insufficiency of earthly pursuits, and even earthly [p. 381→] affections, to fill the heart which was created for higher things than these. This poem might not inaptly bear as a motto those golden words in the first chapter of the “Confessions of S. Austin:”—“Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te.”
Mr. Browning’s latest volumes, “Men and Women,” which we have here made the excuse for a general estimate of his writings, should not, perhaps, be attempted until the reader has in some degree attuned himself by the study of the earlier works to our poet’s peculiar cast of thought. We do not mean that they will not prove very valuable, and very enjoyable, without such a process, but they will certainly gain very much by it. Wordsworth’s dictum—
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love,—
is true in respect of a very valuable if not a large class of authors; and the fifty poems comprised in these latest volumes seem to need that clue which fondness for our poet’s earlier works will go far to supply. They are sketches of very varied phases of life, drawn alike from history and experience—the experience of a deep and earnest thinker. Some of our contemporaries of the daily and weekly press appear inclined to charge all the obscurity upon the indolence and hurry of the writer. With unfeigned respect for their abilities, we would ask, whether it is not possible that they themselves may have been compelled to read and criticise in a hurry. Ecce signum. A newspaper, justly distinguished for the excellence of its criticisms, selected the following lines as remarkable for their obscurity, and left the reader to discover the sense. They are taken from a singularly original and delicate “One Word More,” wherein the poet commends his productions to his poetess-wife:—
There they are, my fifty men and women,
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together;
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
We trust that our readers will agree with us that a moment’s thought will render the signification of these verses patent enough. Mr. Browning has won the hand of a lady who can not only love him, but can appreciate his powers. “Take, then,” he says to that great poetess, “my fifty men and women,—that is to say, the poems of these now completed volumes: accept them as you have already accepted their author, and let me give to you the productions of my head, as I have already given the affections of my heart.” If the expression, “naming me,” be objected to, we can only say that it is tolerated in plain prose. [p. 382→]
Thus, in the very first chapter of a popular novel, Mr. Reade’s “Never Too Late to Mend,” we find, “What did me, the Honourable Frank Winchester?” We do not cite Mr. Reade’s authority as final, but it is certainly hard to deny to poets a licence which is not condemned in prose writers.
We ought to apologise for wasting time in the explanation of what is so obvious. But an example was needed to show that the accusation of obscurity may be made very recklessly, even in quarters where we might least expect it. Of the causes of Mr. Browning’s obscurity, where he really is obscure, we have already spoken, and would only now repeat, that without denying the justice of the charge, in toto, it is only fair to admit, in his case, palliations which are freely accepted for poets of past time. If Mr. Nelson Coleridge might justly defend Pindar from the charge of being a rambling rhapsodist, on the ground that his links of connexion are too fine for the perception of the careless reader; if a recent editor of Æschylus, Mr. Paley, may truly assert of his author, that “he is difficult because he is profound, or in other words, because he treats of matters beyond the reach of man’s ordinary knowledge and perceptions;” if Dante and others may be not only excused, but even admired, because they are figurative and symbolic,—we claim a like privilege for the poems now under consideration. Obscurity which is meaningless is indefensible; obscurity which, by a little thought and attention, will reveal the form behind the veil, is often attractive from its very vagueness: it leaves us something to fill up, it suggests the illimitable and infinite. Is it always most pleasant to see the outline of scenery cut clearly and distinctly against the sky? Have we never heard of men who, amidst the unbroken azure that met their gaze in the Mediterranean, have sighed for a passing glimpse of the mists that robe the Highland mountains?
We shall only suggest the key to a few of the poems contained in “Men and Women,” lest we should endanger a diminution of the profit and pleasure which the reader may experience in opening the words for himself. Several, indeed, are self-explanatory. The touching sketch headed “Protus;” the playful satire on “Up at a Villa;” the picture of “Cleon,” a gentlemanly poetising Greek of the apostolic age, too nonchalant to inquire into the claims of Christianity—are among the most obvious of these poems. In some cases, where the story is equally clear, the issue is, indeed, left uncertain; but this very uncertainty, probably, adds to the interest. We may settle for ourselves, according to our temperament, or according to the feeling of the hour, sanguine or despondent, whether, at the close of the scenes “In a Balcony,” the queen long [p. 383→] retains her harsh feeling towards Constance and Norbert; and whether the lovers who take “The Last Ride Together,” make that ride the last of their meetings, or only the last of their isolation. More difficult are the lines headed “Any Wife to Any Husband:” but read with the idea that they represent the greater enduringness of woman’s love, the greater chance of widows abiding in their loneliness than widowers, they become not only clear, but very beautiful and pathetic. Yet we must own, that there are some of the “Men and Women” around whom the dimness is deeper than we can pierce: and if such obscurity be found to withstand the efforts of abler heads than ours, it may be fairly considered as having been carried to excess, and being, so far, a fault and blemish.
We must, for the present, content ourselves with two quotations only from these last volumes; one as an evidence of our author’s light and playful satire, the other of a tenderness not unworthy of Dante’s self. Most of us have, perhaps, at some time, met with a pretty woman. Here is a portion of Mr. Browning’s sketch:—
1.
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!
. . . . . . . .
3.
You like us for a glance you know——
For a word’s sake,
Or a sword’s sake,
All’s the same, whate’er the chance, you know.
. . . . . . . .
6.
But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
Though we prayed you,
Paid you, brayed you
In a mortar—for you could not, Sweet.
Our allusion to Dante in connexion with the following verses is naturally suggested by the expression in the third stanza—“Bird of God,” which is evidently adopted from the “Purgatorio.” The subject is “The Guardian Angel;” a picture (by Guercino) at Fano.
1.
Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, may’st see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve. [p. 384→]
2.
Then I shall feel thee step on step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
And suddenly my head be covered o’er
With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb—and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding
Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door!
3.
I would not look up thither past thy head,
Because the door opes, like that child, I know,
For I should have thy gracious face instead,
Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low
Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,
And lift them up to pray, and gently tether
Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment’s spread?
4.
If this was ever granted, I would rest
My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands
Close covered both my eyes beside thy breast,
Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands,
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,
And all lay quiet, happy and supprest.
5.
How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After they healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! all is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?
It is time for us to attempt something like a summary. That Mr. Browning is a profound thinker, few, we suppose, will care to question. But then, is his teaching so true, so complete, that he can be safely recommended as an instructor? Now we do not think that it is complete. We must not pretend to claim this poet as a direct witness for the cycle of truths which it is the humble aim of this review to inculcate. Independently of an occasional coarseness of thought and expression (never, however, uttered in the author’s own person, but meant to be in character for a Lippo Lippi, and the like), there is, to our thinking, somewhat too much of self-reliance, too much of making every one his own instructor and priest. And if, as we hear, Mr. Browning’s own life has been eminently pure and upright, this is possibly the very reason why the need of human help in spiritualibus has not come home to him. But all do not feel thus. That is a striking passage in Sir E.B. Lytton’s “Harold,” where he represents his hero (we speak [p. 385→] from memory only) as seeking spiritual aid, because, by a fall, he has discovered his own weakness. It is either the fallen, or those who, from strict conscientiousness, are oppressed by the weight of such sin as the world hardly deigns to recognise as evil, who feel most deeply the need of a commissioned ministry and sacramental ordinances. In other words, that need is most felt by two classes, of whom we hear most in Holy Scripture and Church History, saints and penitents.
But, although we may desiderate many things in a teacher, there is a wide difference between such poetry as is in the main sound and healthy, religious and profound, and that which must be condemned as erroneous, immoral, and sinful. Acquaintance with such beauty as Byron does exhibit may be too dearly purchased, if the reader’s mind shall imbibe any portion of his morbid misanthropy, sensuality, and unbelief. But who would really fear lest the occasional deficiencies of Wordsworth’s instruction, or his slightly pantheistic tinge, in his references to nature, should injure the tone of any well regulated mind?
Among such instructors we claim a place, and that no lowly one, for Robert Browning. In no other secular poetry of our day do we perceive so full a recognition of another life. And if we dwell for a moment upon the central truth which is so great a bond amidst the dissensions of Christendom, that truth whose tenure cannot suffer men to go utterly astray, whose denial is the denial of Christianity, whose non-realisation creates a thick film over the mental eyesight, we know not of any poetry (not professedly sacred) wherein is so deeply pondered and strikingly proclaimed the mystery of the holy Incarnation. One other alone among the singers of our time can, we think, be ranked with Mr. Browning in this respect. In the works of many of his brethren, the deficiency is very sadly marked. But here, whichever volume we take up, that great and solemn verity is presented anew. It abides with the poet as he tells his thoughts at Christmas and Easter: it is the sum of the experience of “Karshish the Arab Physician”: it is made the climax of the strains which David might have sung to Saul; it gilds the dying smile of the impassioned Aprile. This last instance is thus far the more remarkable, inasmuch as the words of Aprile are an insertion, and do not occur in the earlier edition of 1835; but those of “Karshish,” in “Men and Women,” though he half thinks that his informant must be mad, may best, perhaps, serve to illustrate the depth of our poet’s reflections on this solemn theme.
The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-great were the All-loving too— [p. 386→]
So through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself.
Thou hast no power, nor may’st conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!”
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
Some of the chief merits and defects of Mr. Browning, besides those already alluded to, will appear by a comparison with the works of other poets. Not to go further back than our own century, to which Mr. Browning belongs, in spirit as well as date, we suppose that he may thus far be considered to be indebted to Wordsworth; that Wordsworth made poetry possible in our age, proved that no scientific progress nor march of civilization could efface poetry from the human heart. But in no other sense can we pretend to trace much of the Wordsworthian influence in these volumes. Mr. Browning is less devoted to external nature than the late Laureate, and much more interested in the mental photography of “Men and Women;” less of a landscape, and more of a portrait painter.
Turning to living bards, the first comparison, or contrast, must be with the present Laureate, Alfred Tennyson. The two agree in both being men of wide and varied culture—the knowledge being in each case remarkable for its accuracy, and displayed, not by any ponderous notes, but by masterly comprehension of the subject. In general popularity, Mr. Tennyson must long, perhaps finally, retain the advantage. His wonderful pictorial power, his interspersion of easy songs and ballads, with his more thoughtful productions, his exceeding finish and classic grace, possibly also some of his very defects, the absence of awe for many a consecutive page, a slight occasional tinge of voluptuousness, all tend to make him the greater favourite with a numerous class of readers. Mr. Browning is not so consummate an artist: his lyrics do not display the same melody, the same rotundity and method; and his one classic sketch, “Artemis Prologuises,” though the work of a true scholar, cannot be ranked with Tennyson’s “Œnone,” nor even with Mr. Matthew Arnold’s “Strayed Reveller.” But then it must be said, that the apparently rough and unconventional phrase of the poet before us, has constantly a force and point peculiarly its own. We feel, as we read, the force of his own query—
Do roses stick like burrs?
If Southey were right in pronouncing the popular fame a less happy lot for a poet, than to live in the hearts of his devoted admirers, that happy lot we venture to predict for Robert Browning. Tennyson may be the more artistic: but never [p. 387→] can there be applied to Browning’s poems the expression which has but too truly been used with respect to the chief collection of the Laureate’s, “A music-box of beautiful tunes.”
Another living poet, who, as a dramatist, is capable of comparison with Mr. Browning, is the author of “Philip Van Artevelde.” Our admiration for that noble poem is not new nor slight: and in much of the portraiture of external life, in the admixture of the common-place with what is extraordinary, in dramatic skill and powers of rhetorical address, Mr. Henry Taylor has the superiority. The oration of Philip at the market-place in Ghent, on the occasion of his revenging his father’s death, is, probably, only inferior to those master-pieces of subtle pleading—the speech which Shakspere has placed in the mouth of Mark Antony, on the death of Cæsar, and that of Ulysses, in the Ovidian Narrative of the contest with Ajax, for the arms of Achilles. But while we accept in the main the critical principles of Mr. Taylor’s valuable preface to his chief drama, we are, nevertheless, conscious of a certain want of ethereality in his poetry. Granting, moreover, the value of his ethical precepts, whether delivered in poetry or prose, we cannot but observe with regret, that he seldom in his poetry passes that obscure and wavering border-line which separates religion from morality, without placing himself in a position more or less antagonistic to faith. His Saint Dunstan, in “Edwin the Fair,” is far other than the historic Dunstan; and the change is entirely for the worse. Isaac Comnenus, despite the thrilling monologue at Irene’s grave (the description, be it observed, bearing reference to an English, not a Byzantine funeral) is painfully heathenish; trusts in soldiers only, not in prayers; and hates, apparently, not merely superstition, but the very existence of a church. Now, Mr. Browning does, indeed, exhibit some of the more distressing features of the mediæval era: its persecution of the Jews; its tremendous punishments of heretics; the grossness of some of its artists; the paganism of the Renaissance. With respect to the treatment of the Jews and heretics, we suspect him of a little one-sidedness; though it is well that those darker features of the middle ages be not overlooked. But then there remains a general unmistakeable impression that this poet’s voice and lot are with religion against the world; with the unseen against the visible, with the central dogma of the Christian faith against the vague pantheistic dreamings of the day. Probably, with his own Aprile, he might say,—
I hear
The voice still low, but fatal clear,—
As if all poets that God meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to; but who, proud, refused
To do His work, or lightly used
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
And mourn, cast off by Him for ever—
As if these leant in airy ring
To call me.
There are two less known poets who resemble Mr. Browning in that they likewise grapple with some of the difficulties of our inward life; Mr. Clough, and Mr. Matthew Arnold. It cannot, however, be said, that either of these writers, though they have displayed no ordinary poetic powers, supply answers nearly so distinct, so suggestive, so Christian, as does Mr. Browning. In the touching utterances of Mr. Clough, all is left uncertain, and as past human ken in this life, though the author earnestly deplores this, and yearns for clearer light.* From Mr. Arnold we hardly obtain so much as this; the state of doubt is there, but scarcely the regret for it. Yet both of them are real poets, and even superior to Robert Browning in the grace and finish of their poems. There remains one other sweet singer of our time, whom it is impossible to pass over in connexion with our poet. Elizabeth Barrett Browning stands, unquestionably, at the head of our living poetesses. We will not enter upon the invidious task of comparing in detail the powers of the wife and husband; nor of inquiry into the tone of the lady’s poetry before and since her marriage. One or two observations, [p. 389→] however, may be made. It was to Mrs. Browning that we alluded, in specifying a writer of poetry, whose realization of the great mystery of our Lord’s Incarnation might be placed on a par with that of Robert Browning.** While, however, the outpourings of a feminine mind are so committed to paper by this poetess, as by their more openly impassioned nature and greater simplicity to obtain a larger share of popularity than the writings of her husband; they possess less attractiveness for a certain class of readers, from the very circumstance, that in them all is said (very beautifully said, it is true), but nothing left for the imagination of the reader to supply. There is less of reserve, less of suggestiveness. But, in truth, the poetess herself would not quarrel with these remarks. None can appreciate more fully the merits of the volumes, to whose author she has given her heart and hand. Years ago, in allusion to the original title of some of the poems of her future husband, Elizabeth Barrett described a poet as reading—
From Browning some “Pomegranate,” which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.
And subsequently, at a later date,—
My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes
God set between his After and Before,
And strike up and strike off the general roar
Of the rushing worlds, a melody that floats
In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind’s forlornest uses, thou canst pour
From thence into their ears.
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*As Mr. Clough’s poetry is but little known, we subjoin the following, as an illustration of the above remarks:—
I have seen higher holier things than these,
And therefore must to these refuse my heart,
Yet am I panting for a little ease;
I’ll take, and so depart.
Ah, hold! the heart is prone to fall away,
Her high and cherish’d visions to forget,
And if thou takest, how wilt thou repay
So vast, so dread a debt?
How will the heart, which now thou trustest, then
Corrupt, yet in corruption mindful yet,
Turn with sharp stings upon itself! again,
Bethink thee of the debt!
——Hast thou seen higher, holier things than these,
And therefore must to these thy heart refuse?
With the true vest, alack, how ill agrees
That best that thou would’st choose!
The Summum Pulchrum rests in heaven above;
Do thou, as best thou may’st, thy duty do:
Amid the things allowed thee live and love;
Some day thou shalt it view.
Mr. Clough’s other publication, the “Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich,” though strange in its social creed, and containing some lines of questionable taste, yet abounds in exquisite descriptions of Highland scenery (quite photographic in their accuracy), sparkling wit, and delicate delineations of phases of character and feeling.
**We say this without approving of all the erotic expressions applied to our Blessed Lord by this writer. The following is a happy exemplification of our ground of commendation. The subject is “The Look” of our Saviour on S. Peter.
And Peter, from the height of blasphemy—
“I never knew this man”—did quail and fall,
As knowing straight, THAT GOD,—and turned free,
And went out speechless from the face of all,
And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.
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These praises, though from partial lips, are just and merited; our author’s freedom from egotism, and his genuine sympathy with his fellow-men, being ever most conspicuous. The latter lines occur in Mrs. Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese;” which we own to having glanced at hastily, without discovering the very pardonable stratagem of the poetess, until a lady pointed out to us that they contained in reality the history of the wooing which led to this union. The husband has replied with equal grace and delicacy in the concluding poem of “Men and Women;” and, perhaps, we may challenge Germany, France, and Italy, to show us so great a poet and poetess, who [p. 390→] (to borrow M. Guizot’s motto to his graceful biography of Lady Russell) have so completely found L’Amour dans le Mariage.
It seems to us that Mr. Browning might, perhaps, gratify a larger circle, if he would compose a play wherein the dramatis personæ were for the most part of more ordinary stamp than we usually meet with in his compositions; or gave us a few more lyrical narratives of the same force and directness as that of “Count Gismond.”
We have not made any allusions to our author’s opinions in literature or politics. It is probable, from the tenor of the dedications prefixed to some of his poems, and other hints, that the literati occupy a higher place in his thoughts than we should be willing to assign to them, in the actual world. With political questions we do not meddle. But it may be observed, for the sake of those who like consistency and sincerity, that Mr. Browning’s liberalism does, at any rate, display these qualities. We are not sure that so much could be said for the Laureate. In the “Princess” we have, no doubt, a vivid description of a people’s feast in a great man’s park; but the poet begins by informing us, that he, “with others of our set,” (a superlatively exclusive phrase in academic society,) was visiting this baronet of ancient race, as a guest; and while others help to amuse, or instruct the mass of holiday-makers, he, and “the set,” seek their recreation in a corner of the grounds, in the composition of the story.
Those who are fond of literary criticism may find interest in some other inquiries in connexion with these volumes. How far Mr. Browning’s dramas will bear the Aristotelian analysis into plot, characters, diction and sentiments; whether they tend to confirm the theories of a modern disciple of Aristotle, Mr. Matthew Arnold, that inter-penetration of the mind with a grand action is the primary business of the poet; to what extent they confirm Mr. Ruskin’s definition of poetry, “the suggestion, by the imagination of noble grounds for the noble emotions,”—these points, however, must be left to the reader.
Laws of taste are not as those of morals; nor do we wish to dogmatize upon them. We may have been wrong in our selection of topics for praise or blame; wrong in our interpretation of some of the poems before us; wrong in our comparison of Robert Browning with other poets. But in one thing we are not wrong; and that is in thinking it a good work to attempt to bring to the knowledge of others the works of a philosophic thinker, and great poet; whose writings, if they cannot become widely popular, may at least contribute to the instruction and delight of numbers to whom they are at present unknown.
[John Gibson Cazenove]
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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