R630207A. Selections (1863).
Chambers’s Journal, 7 February 1863, pp. 91–95.
A Poet without a Public.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 385.
It is probable that no man of our times has written so much and so well without general acknowledgment as Robert Browning. The poet whom poets love best often lacks the favourable voice of the public; but although his more ambitious efforts may be unknown to them, some song, or graceful line, at least, of his, is usually familiar in many a mouth that cannot tell from whom they come. It very rarely happens that everything a writer of genius pens is “caviare to the multitude,” but it happens sometimes, and it has done so in the case of the author we have mentioned. Mr Browning is the poetic idol of men who give laws to cliques and coteries. The Athenæum “kotows” to him. Mr Ruskin quotes from him at length in obvious admiration. Even at the university, where new poets find little acceptance, his exquisite verses are set by enthusiastic professors to be rendered into Greek by the candidates for the Classical Tripos. And yet we are afraid that not one in ten of the people who subscribe to Mudie’s have ever read a word of his writings. The reason of this is certainly not that they are not worth reading. They have great beauty, undoubted originality, and a dramatic vigour that is equalled by no poet living. The obstacles to his popularity are, on the other hand, manifold. He has chosen to make his dwelling in Italy, and to select from thence the subjects of his muse. His preference for that spot is undisguised, and, to Englishmen, almost repulsive. At all events, under such circumstances, a poet can scarcely expect to be accepted in his own country.
His topic being thus alien, to begin with, he takes pains to deprive it still more of interest by selecting the period of action two or three hundred years back or so, his favourite century being the sixteenth. Finally, he strains off his possible audience—select enough already—by writing in as involved a style as he can, with passing allusions to the most recondite matters—after the manner of Carlyle in his French Revolution—which he chooses to take for granted everybody must know all about. There is a story told concerning one of his most unintelligible poems, Sordello, and Douglas Jerrold, which illustrates this objectionable feature very aptly. Jerrold was at Brighton, ill, fearful for his brain, and forbidden by the Faculty even to look at a book. Still, the books came down, as usual, for review, and the sick literary workman could not refrain from “smelling the paper-knife.” Among others came Browning’s Sordello, and the perusal of the first few pages filled the luckless critic (as well they might) with renewed terrors for his imperilled intellect.
“My dear,” observed he to his wife, as calmly as he could, “would you cast your eye over this volume, and tell me what you think of it?” [p. 92→]
Then he sat up in his bed, and watched her knitting brow and puzzled eyes with fluctuating hope.
Presently, the lady laid down the book.
“I cannot understand,” said she emphatically, “one single line of it.”
“Nor I either!” exclaimed Jerrold in a joyful frenzy “Thank Heaven, it is not I, then, that is mad!”
Sordello is perhaps the worst example of our author’s style; in that poem he seeks for the obscurity which he is never careful to avoid. But he has written not a few things, speckless, flawless, innocent even of this his favourite defect. His admirers have so often regretted the persistent obstinacy with which he has thus stood in his own light, that the appearance of the present volume of selections from his works, is what we have expected for years. Even now, Mr Browning himself seems to see no necessity for it, declines to edit it, is “in no respect responsible for the choice of the particular pieces.” We are obliged to him for his consistent perversity. The two disciples of his who have undertaken the task of introducing him to the reading public have acquitted themselves in this matter better than their master could have done. The Selection is very various, and from it may be gathered a pretty complete idea of this poet without a public. In the present pages, we cannot, of course, give any example of his dramas, but this is the less to be regretted since two of them at least—The Blot in the ’Scutcheon, and Colombe’s Birthday—have been made familiar to many by representation on the London stage. Here, however, is a sample of the Dramatic Lyrics, which cannot fail to delight not only lovers of poetry, but a much larger audience, all men who are accustomed to the saddle, and know what a horse is, and what he can do:
“how they brought the good news
from ghent to aix.”
[16—.]
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
“Good speed!” cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
’Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffeld, ’twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So Joris broke silence with: “Yet there is time!”
At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river-headland its spray.
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye’s black intelligence—ever that glance
O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris: “Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,
We’ll remember at Aix”—for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
So we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And “Gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!”
“How they’ll greet us!”—and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.
Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
And all I remember is, friends flocking round
As I sate with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground,
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
The great majority of these Selections are so complete in themselves, that to extract any portion of them is as barbarous as to make a torso of a statue in order that it may fit a niche on one’s staircase. Fra Lippo Lippi, and Pippa Passes, are of this kind; and such is The Bishop [Rome, 15—] orders his Tomb at St Praxed’s Church—an admirable picture of the disbelief, dilettanteism, and ecclesiastical pride of that licentious and artificial time. The dying mandate of the selfish priest to his so-called “nephews,” that they should give him a stately tomb,
Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe,
As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse,
and especially one richer than that of his old rival in love, as well as in church preferment,
Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
Put me where I may look at him,
is almost too delicate to bear removal; still, here is a portion:
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
St Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,
And Moses with the tables … but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! [p. 93→]
Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then!
’Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve
My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world—
And have I not St Praxed’s ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with greaty smooth marbly limbs?
—That’s if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf’s second line—
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
The portraiture of selfish egotistic men was never taken in hand more successfully than by Robert Browning. He commonly selects them from exceptional orders of society—monks, kings, or nobles of high rank—but the features are strongly marked, and recognisable enough by all attentive readers. Here is a pretty speech for a widower Duke to make to the ambassador who comes from him whom His Grace hopes to call father-in-law.
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 thus. 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-flush that dies along her throat;” such stuff
Was 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 favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the west,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
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 a 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 lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse
—E’en then would be some stooping, and I choose
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 disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir! Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.
Who does not pity the future Duchess, although we never hear her name, or know whether she be beautiful or young?
Of the supposed evil passions of the Cloister—like enough, however, to exist, where antagonistic natures are forced into close companionship throughout existence—there has been surely never painted a more terrible picture than this which follows—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!
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:
Salve tibi! 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 shew!)
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, 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’s a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails. [p. 94→]
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 gray 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 greengages,
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!
Singularly enough, this bitter satirist of men and morals, with so evident an enjoyment in the use of the lash, can be as charmingly humorous as Dickens himself; and we instance that author designedly, since inanimate objects and animals are by both writers as often made the subjects of humour as human beings. In the famous story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, whose dulcet strains led all the rats that plagued the town into the river Weser, Mr Browning assures us that there was one rat, stout as Julius Cæsar, who “swam across and lived to carry to Rat-land home his commentary.” This fortunate creature describes the rat-paradise which the deceptive musician conjured up to allure his four-legged brethren to destruction.
At the first shrill notes of the pipe,
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press’s gripe:
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserved-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out: O rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon !
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce an inch before me,
Just as methought it said: Come, bore me!—
I found the Weser rolling o’er me.
Throughout many of Mr Browning’s poems there runs a sardonic vein of thought, which has application enough to modern and home matters, though evoked by an old-world or foreign subject. There is (or was but lately) a political sect in this country, who might, for instance, have seen an admirable reflection of themselves in this passage from The Flight of the Duchess.
And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.
You’d say, he despised our bluff old ways—
Not he! For in Paris they told the elf
That our rough north land was the Land of Lays,
The one good thing left in evil days;
Since the mid-age was the heroic time,
And only in wild nooks like ours
Could you taste of it yet as in its prime,
And see true castles with proper towers,
Young-hearted women, old-minded men,
And manners now as manners were then.
So, all that the old dukes had been, without knowing it,
This duke would fain know he was, without being it;
’Twas not for the joy’s self, but the joy of his shewing it,
Nor for the pride’s self, but the pride of our seeing it,
He revived all usages thoroughly worn out,
The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out.
And chief in the chase his neck he perilled,
On a lathy horse, all legs and length,
With blood for bone, all speed, no strength.—
They should have set him on red Berold,
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!
Without wishing to draw a comparison between two great poets (and, indeed, for our own part, quite agreeing with the public voice as to which is the greater), it is observable that Browning most succeeds where Tennyson most fails. The satire of the latter is feeble by the side of that we have quoted, while he has scarcely any appreciation of the ridiculous, and could no more have written such a poem as that which follows than could Calvin or Louis XIV.
Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,
Printed on paper and bound in leather,
Last month in the white of a matin-prime,
Just when the birds sang all together—
Into the garden I brought it to read,
And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,
As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;
Added up the mortal amount;
And then proceeded to my revenge.
Yonder’s a plum-tree, with a crevice
An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the middle age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
When he’d be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady’s chamber:
Into this crevice I dropped our friend.
Splash, went he, as under he ducked
—I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate;
Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked
To bury him with, my bookshelf’s magnate;
Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;
Lay on the grass, and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.
Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,
And sate in the midst with arms a-kimbo;
So, I took pity, for learning’s sake,
And, de profundis, accentibus lætis,
Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake,
And up I fished his delectable treatise.
Here you have it, dry in the sun,
With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O’er the page so beautifully yellow—
Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!
Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?
Here’s one stuck in his chapter six! [p. 95→]
How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
Came in, each one, for his right of trover;
When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
Made of her eggs the stately deposit,
And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface
As tiled in the top of his black wife’s closet.
All that life, and fun, and romping,
All that frisking, and twisting, and coupling,
While slowly our poor friend’s leaves were swamping,
And clasps were cracking, and covers suppling!
As if you had carried sour John Knox
To the playhouse at Paris, Vienna, or Munich,
Fastened him into a front-row box,
And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.
Of our selections from these Selections, there would be no end, if we extracted all that pleased us; but it behoves us already to apologise for the length to which they have run. We have surely set forth samples sufficient to shew the richness and variety of the mind of Robert Browning. He has uttered dark sayings on his harp, long enough, and it is fit that all should begin to understand what he has got to say worth hearing. Never did oracle more need a prophetess, than did Robert Browning an interpreter, and these sibylline leaves will doubtless flutter far and wide. For our own part, we have done our best to draw the tardy attention of the Public to the words of a true Poet.
Reviewed:
Selections (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1863.
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