R630321A. Selections (1863).
The London Review, 21 March 1863, pp. 310–312.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 385.
With the confidence of anonymous partisanship, the editors of this selection avow in their preface that they expect to accomplish a very unusual feat. They believe that they will reverse a popular judgment of more than twenty years’ standing. “This little book,” as they somewhat affectedly style a volume which contains not less than the whole works of Virgil or of Milton, “originated with two friends who, from the first appearance of ‘Paracelsus,’ have regarded its writer as among the few great poets of the century, who have seen this opinion since gain ground with the best readers and critics, and who believe that such a selection as the present may go far to render it universal.” Even were the selection, which has been much overweighted with the dullest of all extracts—extracts from plays, more judicious, we fear that the vox populi, through the wisdom and the folly that are in it, is little likely to fulfil the editors’ expectation.
Immediate popularity is, indeed, no proof that first-rate poetical merit exists. But, where it does exist, we are disposed to think that immediate popularity is very rarely wanting. English literature alone supplies a great number of cases in point. The world of readers (not a large world, unhappily) has now and then underrated a poet on some other ground than his own characteristic powers,—as the glory of Shelley was long obscured by theological anathema, and the coarse, unintelligent criticism of Wilson and Croker for a while placed Keats under a cloud of political disfavour. An earlier instance of contemporary misappreciation, arising from very similar causes, was conspicuously dwelt on by Wordsworth in one of his remarkable prefaces. He treated the reception of “Paradise Lost” as a proof that high and original poetry is naturally destined to a period of non-recognition. Nor is it to be denied that Wordsworth was himself (though not without extenuating circumstances for the readers of the day) one of the clearest examples that his opinion may be occasionally verified. Yet, on the whole, a survey of the fates of books will lead to a different, to a more pleasant conclusion. When such subsidiary and personal incidents as we have alluded to have been eliminated, we shall find almost all true poets the pride of their day from the first. Chaucer was honoured throughout his life after the only fashion in which popularity could then display itself. The fame of our Elizabethan poets appears to have been steady from the beginning. Before 1616 Shakespeare was already enthroned in a supremacy only less decidedly recognized than now, because no one could then foresee that it would remain so long unapproached. It is enough to name Dryden, Pope, Swift, Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith. Even Gray is only an apparent exception to the rule of immediate popularity. What prevented the “Odes” from sharing the instantaneous recognition of the “Elegy” was not their profusion of poetry, but their profusion of learning.
There is, in truth, sound reason why the contemporary estimate of genuine poetry should in general be a trustworthy verdict. High and elevating pleasure is the end of this, as of the other fine arts. The poet is, by necessity, rather the child of his age than the forerunner of his age. He is more the seer than the prophet of his generation. To anticipate the future of religion and politics, to preach unwelcome novelties in science or criticism—this is rarely [p. 311→] his province. Hence his work, in its subject, appeals almost always to present feelings and intelligible interests, the things “which have been, and may be again.” And whilst thus amenable to immediate judgment in its matter, as a pleasure-giving art it also submits itself to immediate judgment in regard to its form. So essentially popular in its aim is poetry, that we might almost say its excellence is measured by the area of the circle to which it is addressed, and by which it is ultimately accepted. No doubt, by virtue of the law that genius only adequately comprehends genius, those who grasp the whole force of high utterance will be scanty in proportion to its height,—it is they who are the “fit audience, though few.” Yet this same highest song must be also, like “the common sun, the air, the skies,” comprehensible and enjoyable by the multitude. That poetry which is “caviare to the general” condemns itself. Excellent as it may be, it has somewhere lost sight of its vocation. It should please not only much, and long, but many. All who please at once are not true; all recognition does not last; yet in the vast majority of cases what we call eternal fame, is but the echo of the voice which hailed and encouraged the singer.
Where such fame has for many years been wanting, although no subsidiary or personal prejudices have intervened, it must always raise a strong presumption that the silentia populi (if we may venture on the phrase) rest on grounds which it is in vain to expect will be abandoned. Like Mr. Browning’s, the poetry may be true and high in an uncommon degree, yet in matter or in form there cannot but be a too little, or a too much. And it does not appear difficult to discover the causes which have hitherto rendered the gifted writer before us unfamiliar to his contemporaries, and which, we fear, are not less likely to render him such to their children. The editors claim for the contents of their volume “range and variety of power.” This praise hardly appears discriminating. Mr. Browning, indeed, possesses not only power, but an intensity of power rarely exceeded. Some of his descriptive touches rival Dante or Lucretius in pregnant picturesqueness. Many lines show a strength of sad irony acrid as that honey which of old suggested the word sardonic. The subtle analysis of passion, the anatomy of the uncertain heart or the perplexed conscience, are touched with a lucid and almost poignant brevity. The reproduction of the circumstances of past phrases of life is often, though perhaps not uniformly, successful. The verse, though in general to our ear deficient in music and in flow, is generally adapted with rare skill to the expression of the thought. All this is power; but it is power exercised upon subjects more remote from the ordinary experience of men, than in the work of any other true poet we are acquainted with. Mr. Browning has a profound feeling for the English character, and for the English landscape. Yet none of our lyrical writers has taken so few of his pictures from England. Excluding the fragments from plays, which not less unfairly to the poet than unwisely for his readers have been inserted, we find in one of the most elaborate pieces a minute analysis of the aspect in which the old Florentine painter, Lippo Lippi, regarded his art. Another is a similar study on Andrea del Sarto. A third paints the composite feelings with which a sensual and æsthetic bishop of the Cinquecento regarded his monument. Two are devoted to different phases which poisoning assumed at the same corrupt period. “Cleon” is intended to paint the eclectic mode of thought on life and on art prevalent in Greece at the Christian era; “Probus” is a sketch from the least familiar portion of Byzantine history. The sermon which the Jews of Rome were compelled annually to attend,—the wrath roused in a modern reader by the pedantry of a mediæval schoolman, and the consequent persecution of his book,—the ideas of an idle Italian in the country and of a bad monk in a Spanish convent,—the fashion in which a sensible worldly Roman Catholic bishop in England might talk religion with a Saturday Reviewer, supply other motives. It may be doubted whether the highest poetical genius could render these and analogous subjects more than what readers at large must consider literary curiosities. At least they must be either dramatised with Shakespearian force, or treated as canvasses to display elementary human sentiments, if they are to fulfil the common conditions of first-rate poetry, and be at once the delight of the many and the passion of the few.
Mr. Browning’s are, indeed, finished works of art in their way; but that way (we must think) fails to satisfy these conditions. That he recognizes that his genius does not lie in the dramatic form, we may infer from his abandonment of it announced in the dedication to his last drama. With high and unusual excellences, his plays appear to confirm the author’s decision. In his dialogue each character is prone to the same searching introspective habits, the same hesitating self-analysis. They are, indeed, often skilful monologues in disguise: the poet answering the poet through the long procession of subtle and well-elaborated verses. Nor, again, are the passions represented or the phases of life described, such as most men can sympathize with. They are often such as few men can follow. The reproduction of the past is generally excellent, the details especially marvels of sharp, decisive handling. The intricacies and dark corners which most writers would not perceive, are brought out with lucid keenness. But the wider interests of life, the elementary passions of mankind are so subordinated meanwhile, that the excellence of the work is almost as much archæological or psychological as poetical. It is addressed to students of the bye-places of the heart,—of the cross-lanes of history. Thus the success of the poem is too deeply staked, not on its universal poetry (as in “Coriolanus”), but on its historical accuracy. Yet even here we must doubt whether any real phase of Greek thought is represented by what at least seems to us the pervading modernism—the subjective self-scrutiny—of “Cleon,”—whether any Arabian before the preaching of Mahomet would have written in the spirit of “Karshish,”—whether the Bishop’s Tomb be not anachronistic in its fine details. The peculiar style of the art, the notice of “brown Greek manuscripts” as a legacy, of the law-Latin of the Bishop’s predecessor,—these elaborate touches refer—or seem to refer—to fifty years earlier than the date of the Gesù Church, also mentioned. So arduous a task—so hopeless—is it even for such ability as the author’s to photograph the past!
Quitting the subjects chosen by the poet for his manner of handling them, it will not be disputed that Mr. Browning is an artist who has a genius for vivid point, rather than for harmonious completeness. There is a frequent sacrifice of repose to accent. Quaintness in thought, words, and metre, as in subject, runs through all he touches. It is undoubtedly the quaintness of genius; yet, of all the qualities of genius, the history of literature proves that this is the least easy to combine with the high harmonies and passionate sweetness of immortal poetry. The unconscious sense of the multitude knows this, not less than the critical sense of the few—the demand of art, to put it in a word, is curves, not angles—whence our reluctant fear that the vox populi is likely to be here once ratified. Everywhere we find a keen rhetorical faculty, a direct reference to nature, an only too decided originality. Each line has a telling touch of detail and character; yet the picture, as it is unfolded before us, though it advances in force, does not always equally advance in artistic unity. The parts are often of striking excellence, the rounding into a whole less perfect. Hence Mr. Browning appears comparatively unsuccessful in his longer pieces. They are far too brilliant and forcible to be tedious; yet we have a sense that the writer does not know when to hold his hand. Half (to quote the old proverb) would have been more than the whole of the dithryambs of the “Saul,” or the ingenious pros and cons of Blougram over the wine and walnuts. The openings of the tales are admirable, but the flight is not always sustained. Thus, the “Flight of the Duchess” turns on a gipsey song, which is described as having had such a force of melodious magic in it as to allure the heroine from the Duke’s castle to the Bohemian camp. In lieu of this, we find a rather obscure discourse, for the poorness of which the supposed narrator offers an apology:—
More fault of those who had the hammering
Of prosody into me, and syntax,
And did it, not with hobnails but tin-tacks.
But this defence is not valid for the poet. We want, not the apology, but the song:—especially when half a dozen lyrics are close by to prove that he could have given us one which would have added to our treasures for ever.
Mr. Browning’s command of concentrated force and colour renders him most successful in his shorter pieces. Those who can master the strangeness of the situations, and accustom themselves to his manner in language and metre, will find it difficult to forget many of these lyrics. The “Ride to Aix,” the “Laboratory,” “Love among the Ruins,” “In a Year,” grasp their subjects with a vital insight, a downright originality, which leave us in no doubt under what class Goethe would have ranked them, when he said “There are so many echoes in the world, and so few voices!” And others might have been added, although it is in another form that we venture to think the poet’s power most satisfactorily exhibited. His genius is eminently successful in that “brief form” of picture which has lately regained the name of Idyl. Amongst these, the peculiar gifts of his nature render him happiest in the descriptive monologues; in the poems which more directly involve thought or argument, he appears to us to be no exception to the law which places these matters within the grasp—not of the singer, but the thinker. The problems of the schools, the riddle of the earth, receive imaginative treatment in his hands, but are not interpreted. This is not the poet’s function. But taking them within their peculiar limits, for what they aim at, several of those named in the earlier part of our essay are perfect. Taking the larger standard of universal art, little appears wanting (to name two special favourites) to the perfection of that sketch of a poet which is named “How it strikes a contemporary,” or to the stanzas in which Mr. Browning has repainted, in sweeter colours, the “Guardian Angel of Guercino.” We quote these lines, because they contain a repose and music, which we sometimes desiderate in the other masterpieces of the volume.
Dear and great Angel, would’st 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.
Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
And suddenly my head is covered o’er
With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb—and I shall feel guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding
Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door!
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 [p. 312→]
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 garments spread?
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.
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 thy 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?
Reviewed:
Selections (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1863.
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