R640400A. Poetical Works (1863).
The London Quarterly Review, April 1864, pp. 30–47.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 337.
The re-publication of these poems, in a more compact form than any in which they have hitherto appeared, is a sure indication of the fact that the number of Browning’s readers and admirers has been gradually increasing. Merit, however tardily, tends continually to wider recognition; and it is scarcely fair to blame that much-enduring animal, the public, for not being quicker-sighted in discerning the excellencies of an original poet and thinker. Appealed to on all sides by literary productions pleasant to read and easy to understand, it is not to be expected that people in general will encounter difficulties in the perusal of any work, and least of all in the perusal of any poem, unless positively assured that it will repay their labour. Originality, unless accompanied by a combination of other qualities rarely to be met with more than once in a century, is rather adverse to popularity than otherwise. Longfellow, with his simple thought and sweet versification, is the most popular poet now living. Tennyson, in one of his poems,—though not in propriâ personâ—expresses regret that
the fair new forms,
That float about the threshold of an age,
Like truths of science waiting to be caught—
Catch me who can, and make the catcher crown’d—
Are taken by the forelock.
And it can hardly be doubted that Tennyson’s thought, true, deep, and noble, as it is, would not have gained for him his wide reputation, had it not been for his other qualities as a poet, and for the fact that he is indebted to his predecessors for the mould which his thought has taken. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Carlyle, had to wait for fame. Tennyson, who has entered into their labours, had not to wait so long. Moreover, a poet may “fit audience find, though few;” and it often happens, as in the case of Wordsworth, that the depth of the impression produced bears a proportion to the limited number of the audience. Now, therefore, when bards can scarcely hope to win a fortune by their songs, when the old time, in which success was measured by immediate applause, has passed away, to be succeeded by a more thoughtful era, it would be unwise to complain that any original poet has not met with immediate recognition. It is a thing, at all events, not to be mended by complaint. Such phenomena as Moore’s £3,000 [p. 31→] for Lalla Rookh, and Milton’s £10 for Paradise Lost, may be regarded as significant facts, but are not worth fretting over.
To Robert Browning, certainly, belongs the character of originality. Whether attended by unintelligibility, as is often asserted, or by whatever other vices or virtues attended, originality cannot be denied him by any of his critics. He has had no predecessors, in the sense that Tennyson or our other poets have had; he stands more alone; and if he reflects the features of the age in which we live, it is in a way peculiar to himself.
In speaking of his poems, we shall first refer to their defects. And we do this, not because we would emulate the example of “the long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise,” nor because we forget the rebuke which our author himself administers to over-censorious contemporary critics,—
And here, where your praise might yield returns,
And a handsome word or two give help,
Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns,
And the puppy pack of poodles yelp;—
but because it is almost necessary in the circumstances. Browning’s faults are for the most part on the surface; and it is these which meet and deter readers on first making acquaintance with his works. Those who have entered more deeply into his spirit may be inclined to treat these blemishes very lightly. One becomes accustomed to endure them as characteristic of the man; and the most obvious may even have for some minds a kind of piquancy, which may be compared to the zest which is found by many in the vivid but eccentric manner of Carlyle.
Though it may be difficult to understand many passages, yet entire unintelligibility, or utter nonsense, is a thing which Browning is never guilty of. There is a meaning in every sentence, if only it can be got at. Whether it is always worth the pains necessary to arrive at it, the reader must determine. For undoubtedly there is often obscurity—and especially in the earlier poems—arising, not from depth or delicacy of treatment, or from obscure allusions only, but from imperfect presentation of the thought or image. Often, it is true, the thought is too deep or too subtle to be at once level to every intellect. But so it is with all thoughtful poets,—even with Shakspeare himself. The character of Hamlet, perhaps, requires more than a cursory acquaintance; and it may be doubted whether, after more than two hundred years, a very distinct apprehension of it has found its way into the public mind. It is possible, in the same way, that the character of Paracelsus, firmly drawn as it is, may not be grasped by every one on a first perusal. [p. 32→] And this may also be the case with single stanzas, where the thought is rare and delicate. Nor can an author be blamed if, from want of knowledge on the part of the reader, his allusions, historical or otherwise, are not apprehended. A learned poet like Milton abounds in such allusions; and Browning’s researches have led him through the by-paths of knowledge, as well as over the beaten tracks. Some of his poems almost demand an independent knowledge of the history of the period. Such a poem as “The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” will be understood best and most appreciated by one who is acquainted with the character of renaissance art; poems like “Fra Lippo Lippi” and “Andrea del Sarto,” by those who know the lives and works of painters; “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” and “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,” by connoisseurs in music. An example of the difficulty arising from this class of allusions may be given in a sentence occurring in the first book of Sordello, where the hero is spoken of thus:—
Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine!
A herald-star I know thou didst absorb
Relentless into the consummate orb
That scared it from its right to roll along
A sempiternal path with dance and song,
Fulfilling its allotted period,
Serenest of the progeny of God!
This, of course, is unintelligible to any who are not aware that Sordello was the immediate predecessor of Dante. But there are obscurities of another sort with which Browning may be justly charged. It is one excellence of poetic or imaginative delineation that it tends to be clearer and more vivid, to render the object more palpable to the mind’s eye, than any other mode of expression. But, with Browning, there is often very little effort to be clear. A thought is struck out and jotted down,—one would say, it did not matter in what form, provided it were there; involved and ambiguous grammatical constructions are not wanting; and sometimes it is not till we have read one or two sentences onward that we obtain sufficient light to understand the sentence which has gone before. It may be that this is partly the result of haste. If so, it would have been well had the poet laid more to heart the purport of his line,—
Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.
It is the more singular, because, even where he is most indistinct, there occur passages of singular beauty and felicity of expression. Of the poems now re-published, Sordello most [p. 33→] abounds with the faults we have indicated,—so much so, that its first perusal is anything but a pleasure. But even in it there are scattered passages which leave little to be desired. It is quite refreshing, in the midst of the tortuous narrative, to meet with lines so admirably descriptive as the following, making one feel as if emerging from the shadowy windings of a forest into free air and sunshine.
His face
—Look, now he turns away! Yourselves shall trace
(The delicate nostril swerving wide and fine,
A sharp and restless lip, so well combine
With that calm brow) a soul fit to receive
Delight at every sense; you can believe
Sordello foremost in the regal class
Nature has broadly severed from her mass
Of men, and framed for pleasure, as she frames
Some happy lands, that have luxurious names,
For loose fertility; a footfall there
Suffices to upturn to the warm air
Half-germinating spices; mere decay
Produces richer life; and day by day
New pollen on the lily-petal grows,
And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.
You recognise at once the finer dress
Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness
At eye and ear, while round the rest is furl’d
(As though she would not trust them with her world)
A veil that shows a sky not near so blue,
And lets but half the sun look fervid through.
There are times when one’s thoughts flow with more lucidity and come more trippingly from the tongue; but it would be difficult for a poet, who can express himself so exquisitely as Browning is capable of doing, to convince us that obscurity is an evil which he might not have altogether avoided. As it is, it is one, perhaps, for which he has paid more than the due penalty.
The impression produced by any poem depends very much on the character of its conception as a whole. If, as a whole, it has been poetically conceived, and is at all adequately wrought out, the mind is able to rest in it with much more satisfaction than in a work of less symmetry, though perhaps of greater genius. We have a craving for what is rounded and complete, and, even in the slightest things, are glad to have an answer to our want. And there are some artists to whom everything assumes an air of poetry, and who delight to dwell carefully and lovingly upon their thoughts, moulding them tenderly into [p. 34→] shapes of beauty, and ranging them together in due relation and proportion. Browning cannot be classed among these. Many of his poems are symmetrical throughout, admirable both in conception and in detail; but many also are inadequately expressed; and there are some which even violate, in their leading idea, the essential conditions of a poem. Paracelsus, we are told in the preface to the first edition, was planned and completed within six months. Not much time, certainly, for lingering upon one’s conceptions, and educing them in harmonious order! The main idea is both poetic and noble, and the strength and richness of thought are altogether surprising. But we cannot wonder that to some extent it is imperfect in detail, and in the mutual relation of its parts. In these respects, it cannot bear comparison with the more perfect drama of Pippa Passes. The latter, more varied than Paracelsus, though less thoughtful, full of quick dramatic touches and vivid flashes into character, is yet complete in each of its parts, and they are simply but beautifully united by a single thread.
Among those poems which are rhymed arguments or discourses rather than poems proper, we may mention the “Old Pictures in Florence.” We single out this in preference to others, because it displays the defect we are illustrating in combination with many excellencies. After a prelude, in which we are told of the poet’s vision of old painters—Giotto and the rest—“who walked in Florence, besides her men,”—he proceeds to describe the difference between Greek and early Christian art. The marbles of Greece re-uttered
The truth of Man, as by God first spoken,
Which the actual generations garble.
* * * * * *
So, you saw yourself as you wished you were,
As you might have been, as you cannot be,
Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there;
And grew content in your poor degree
With your little power, by those statues’ godhead,
And your little scope, by their eyes’ full away,
And your little grace, by their grace embodied,
And your little date, by their forms that stay.
But a new light was dawning when men “turned their eyes inwardly one fine day,” and saw that they themselves, as they actually were, with great and enduring aims and destiny, made for eternity and not alone for time, were more worthy of portraiture than any outward forms, however godlike, which express only the brief passion of a day. In this thought the early [p. 35→] painters resolved to work, looking man in his wider nature, and saying in effect,—
Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters;
To bring the invisible full into play!
Let the visible go to the dogs—what matters?
And so the art of heathendom passed away, and the young art of Christendom shone upon the world. We do not know where, in the whole of literature, to look for a juster or, in spite of its occasional eccentricities, a more beautiful explanation of the transition. It shows of how much the writer is capable, both as a student of history, and as an art-critic. But it is not a poem, nor a fitting part of a poem, in the proper sense of the word. It is rather an endeavour to prove and illustrate a thesis. Its aim is, to account for certain historical facts. The highest place is not given to the imagination; it is employed as a useful servant, but not permitted to rule. Such arguments in verse may have a worth of their own, but an inferior place must at least be assigned them. “The Guardian Angel at Fano,” though shorter and less elaborate, embodies a truer soul of poetry than the “Old Pictures in Florence.”
Every one who has looked into these volumes, however cursorily, must have noticed the quaintness and occasional ruggedness of the rhymes. It is much the same, one would think, with what word the first line of the couplet is closed; another word can always be found to rhyme with it. A new word can be coined, if need be; an obsolete one can be rummaged up; there are Latin and other languages to draw upon; and what is the use of proper names, if they cannot be employed to point at once a moral and a rhyme? This habit of uncouth rhyming may be sometimes good:—
(The better the uncouther:
Do roses stick like burrs?)
but it is frequently the reverse. A quaint and unexpected rhyme is like a stroke of humour; it shows a capability of playing with one’s thoughts, and, when used on a suitable topic, may be considerably better than a pun. But to toss a serious subject from one horn to the other of such Hudibrastic lines is as inappropriate as to bandy jests at a funeral. When Jeremy Taylor is referred to in such doggerel as this,—
The sermon proves no reading
Where bee-like in the flowers I may bury me,
Like Taylor’s, the immortal Jeremy!—
our first emotion is not that of admiration for the “immortal [p. 36→] Jeremy,” which we presume is the sentiment intended to be excited, but of laughter at his admirer. So, when it is said of a certain German professor:—
When he gropes for something more substantial
Than a fable, myth, or personification,—
May Christ do for him, what no mere man shall,
And stand confess’d as the God of salvation!—
we perceive that the thought is serious enough, but the uncouthness of the rhymes “substantial” and “man shall” gives an untoward dash of comicality to the whole.
It is as a dramatic poet that Browning chiefly excels. His conception of character is extremely vivid. When the acquaintance of any of his men or women is once made, they may be known as well, or even better, than if one had met and conversed with them. A turn of expression, a single phrase spoken as it were unconsciously, gives a clearer insight into their motives and feelings than any laboured description. And the tout ensemble is so complete; there is no halting, no confusion; the portrait is drawn easily, but firmly, and stands out as a likeness not to be mistaken. Those of his smaller pieces which are dramatic in spirit are generally simple in their construction. The sketch is embodied in a soliloquy, in a familiar conversation, in a letter, or in a song. Andrea del Sarto soliloquizes; the duke of Este speaks to his visitor; the narrator of “The Flight of the Duchess” abruptly begins, “You’re my friend;” Cleon writes an epistle to Protos. Variety there is in abundance: high and low, fair and foul, all fall within his range. What an interval is there between the great aims of Paracelsus and the animal hatred and envy of the monk in the “Spanish Cloister,” between the purity of “Evelyn Hope” and the passion of the two guilty lovers in “Pippa Passes,” between the young enthusiasm of David and the dry and polished sternness displayed in “My last Duchess!” And yet there need be no objection to any of these subjects. As Parmenides long ago told the youthful Socrates, even dirt has its ideal. Every class of characters has its type; and to represent these truly and well, even when in real life they would be scarcely endurable, or have little beauty to recommend them, has always been reckoned among the triumphs of art.
None of Browning’s dramas, it is evident, are fitted to be successful on the stage. The best are two which we have already had occasion to mention, and which are least of all suited for theatrical performance,—Paracelsus and Pippa [p. 37→] Passes. Those more adapted for performance are comparative failures, and fall far below the average of his shorter dramatic poems. The fact suggests several of the writer’s peculiarities. Like Goethe, he has given little evidence of the Shakspearean power of exhibiting marked changes in the character of his dramatis personæ, by evolving phases which the reader could not have foreseen, but yet feels to be perfectly natural. They are affected by circumstances, and their original temperament is gradually developed; but their special traits remain the same. The element of surprise is thus wanting, and there is a certain rigour of conception which becomes monotonous in a play, though in the shorter pieces, where no lengthened period is supposed to elapse, and the character is photographed at a single sitting, it make the likeness only the more marked. Besides this, Browning has not the gift, and possibly not even the desire, of expressing himself by the representation of outward actions. Born in an age when thoroughly spontaneous action is rare, and when individual men, with simply legible passions and strong intelligible purpose, do not bulk so largely on the stage of the world as formerly, he has caught the spirit of his time. It is the inner life of men, the world of thought and feeling rather than of action, which he strives to embody. If this can be done without action, his aim is equally well accomplished. In the recent dedication of one of his poems, he says,—and the words contain a key to much that he has written—“My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so; you, with many known and unknown to me, think so; others may one day think so.” It is evident from this, as well as from the whole tenor of his works, that the lovers of startling effects and cleverly-contrived melodramatic incidents need not look for such from his pen. In one sense among the most objective of poets, in another he ranks among the most subjective. He identifies himself with those whom he portrays: hidden behind these, we can catch scarcely a glimpse of him. But it is not their outward bearing which he chiefly reveals; he rather unveils the hidden centres from which all external action must spring. He is a keen and searching analyst, fearless in the exercise of his talent, and reaching both heights and depths which are beyond the compass of ordinary men. He answers to the description which he has incidentally given of a dramatist,—“analyst, who turns in due course synthetist.” And his power of conveying the results of this analysis and syntheses in a dramatic form, by the aid of language, and of language almost exclusively, is, so far as we are aware, a new thing in [p. 38→] literature. Hitherto we have failed adequately to acknowledge it. We are continually speaking, since Goethe set us the example, of objective and subjective poetry, and of the superiority of the former; we are for ever lamenting the lack of dramatic poems; and yet here is a poet, truly and originally dramatic, whose productions are the genuine offspring of our century, and not a mere re-echo of the older masters. We must take his works as they are, without too much grumbling at their failings; for such men as he, powerful, penetrating, and erratic, are not given us without their idiosyncrasies. If we are not satisfied with what he offers us, there is reason to fear that we must be content, as best we can, with the usual run of our modern dramas, written for a stage where the best actors are comedians, and the favourite plays are farces.
It is one of Browning’s peculiarities, closely connected with that last mentioned, that it is the out-of-the-way phases of character, its subtle shades and odd manifestations, that he loves best to depict. Some of his poems, as, for example, the “Cavalier Tunes,” the “Incident of the French Camp,” and “How they brought the good News from Ghent to Aix,” are quite exempt from this peculiarity, and might be read with effect to any audience. But his manner of treating a subject is usually more recondite; and if there are two ways of interpreting the same event, he is apt to choose the least obvious. This may be best illustrated by contrast. In “In Memoriam” Tennyson has very touchingly described the scene at Bethany after the raising of Lazarus. In his stanzas, however, Mary is the principal figure. Lazarus is kept in the background, and the lines of the delineation shade gradually and softly into the mystery which surrounds him.
He was dead, and there he sits,
And He that brought him back is there.
Mary asks him,—
Where wert thou, brother, those four days?
but there is no reply.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal’d;
He told it not; or something seal’d
The lips of that evangelist.
In Browning’s poem entitled “An Epistle containing the strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician,” Lazarus is introduced in a very different manner. There, too, the subject necessarily recedes into mystery; but analysis is [p. 39→] carried much further than by Tennyson. The figure of Lazarus is vividly though obliquely drawn, and stands out abruptly against the unknown, as a tree, with its branches distinctly marked, may stand out against the unfathomable sky. Karshish writes to his friend and master, the sage Abib, professedly to give an account of his journey towards Jerusalem.
Crossing a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion’s cheek-teeth,
he has entered Bethany; and now he writes of the perils encountered on the way, and of various natural productions which he has observed. But he soon branches off to speak of Lazarus, whom he has met at Bethany. At first his description assumes a rigidly scientific tone:—
’T is but a case of mania, sub-induced
By epilepsy, at the turning-point
Of trance prolong’d unduly some three days;
and so on. It is clear, however, that this madman, and the testimony he has borne of Christ, makes a deeper impression on the mind of the Arabian savant than he is willing to allow. He cannot help giving utterance to his wonder:—
Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
This grown man eyes the world now like a child.
* * * * * *
The man is witless of the size, the sum,
The value in proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much.
* * * * * *
Should his child sicken unto death,—why, look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission of his daily craft—
While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child,
At play, or in the school, or laid asleep,
Will startle him to an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like! Demand
The reason why—“’T is but a word,” object—
“A gesture”—he regards thee as our lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone,
Look’d at us,—dost thou mind?—when being young
We both would unadvisedly recite
Some charm’s beginning, from that book of his,
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst
All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.
* * * * * *
And oft the man’s soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again [p. 40→]
His sage that bade him “rise,” and he did rise.
Something, a word, a tick of the blood within
Admonishes—then back he sinks at once
To ashes, that was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade
Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows
God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life.
Half ashamed of his own thoughts, and afraid of cynical criticism, Karshish passes on to speak of a plant which he has noticed, excuses himself for having dwelt so unduly upon a single topic, and bids his friend farewell. But still Lazarus is uppermost in his thoughts, and again he recurs to the story of the Sage of Nazareth and His claims:—
The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too.
So, through the thunder comes a human voice,
Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face My hands fashion’d, 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.
Schiller’s ballad of “The Glove” gives us an opportunity of contrasting with it Browning’s grotesque but characteristic rendering of the same incident. In the German poem, Cunigonde is represented in anything but a pleasing light. In the presence of king and court, she throws her glove into the lion’s den, and bids her lover bring it back to her.
Und zu Ritter Delorges, spottender Weis’,
Wendet sich Fräulein Kunigund:
“Herr Ritter, ist eure Lieb’ so heiss,
Wie ihr mir’s schwört zu jeder Stund,
Ei, so hebt mir den Handschuh auf!”
Fair Cunigonde said, with a lip of scorn,
To the knight Delorges, “If the love you have sworn
Were as gallant and leal as you boast it to be,
I might ask you to bring back that glove to me.”
He leaps the barrier, and returns with his prize amid the applause of all; but when Cunigonde rises to receive him with welcome in her eyes,
Er wirft ihr den Handschuh ins Gesicht:
“Den Dank, Dame, begehr’ ich nicht,”
Und verlässt sie zur selben Stunde. [p. 41→]
He toss’d the glove in the lady’s face!
“Nay, spare me the guerdon, at least,” quoth he;
And he left for ever that fair ladye.
It is evident that not the slightest sympathy is intended to be excited for Cunigonde. Haughty and self-centred. she has wantonly risked the life of her lover, and is deservedly repaid by scorn. In Browning’s hands, the incidents acquire another appearance. The glove was thrown while De Lorge
sat there pursuing
His suit, weighing out with nonchalance
Fine speeches like gold from a balance.
And when it is recovered and flung in the face of its owner, when the king applauds the deed and condemns the lady, when
Lords and ladies alike turn’d with loathing
From such a proved wolf in sheep’s clothing,
* * * * * *
Amid the court’s scoffing and merriment,
As if from no pleasing experiment
She rose, yet of pain not much heedful
So long as the process was needful,—
As if she had tried in a crucible
To what “speeches like gold” were reducible.
* * * * * *
To know what she had not to trust to
Was worth all the ashes and dust too.
Afterwards she explains her conduct to the poet:—
Too long had I heard
Of the deed proved alone by the word:
For my love—what De Lorge would not dare!
With my scorn—what De Lorge could compare!
And the endless descriptions of death
He would brave when my life form’d a breath.
* * * * * *
When I look’d on your lion, it brought
All the dangers at once to my thought:
Encounter’d by all sorts of men,
Before he was lodged in his den,—
From the poor slave whose club or bare hands
Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,
* * * * * *
To the page who last leap’d o’er the fence
Of the pit, on no greater pretence
Than to get back the bonnet he dropp’d,
Lest his pay for a week should be stopp’d.
So, wiser I judged it to make
One trial what “death for my sake” [p. 42→]
Really meant, while the power was yet mine,
Than to wait until time should define
Such a phrase not so simply as I,
Who took it to mean just “to die.”
The blow a glove gives is but weak:
Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?
But when the heart suffers a blow,
Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?
As for De Lorge, he marries a beauty who becomes a favourite of the king, and is in the habit of dispatching her husband from the royal presence in quest of the gloves she has mislaid, or some such trifling matter.
And never the king told the story,
How bringing a glove brought such glory,
But the wife smiled,—“His nerves are grown firmer:
Mine he brings now, and utters no murmur.”
Had we been giving examples of poetic excellence alone, neither of these two poems might have been chosen; but they have sufficiently answered the purpose for which they were selected. The difference between them may serve also as a specimen of the variety in mode of treatment, as well as in subject, exhibited throughout these volumes. Indeed, in passing from one really good piece to another, one often feels as if transported, by a flying leap, into an entirely new region. There is no repetition of the same ideas, and there is all the diversity of actual life in diverse periods and climes.
It may be remarked here, that Browning’s poems are usually stamped, beyond a chance of misapprehension, with the features of the period and country to which they refer. He appreciates the peculiar traits of the different epochs so admirably, that characteristic allusions well up naturally and spontaneously. Ruskin, whose opinion with regard to anything relating to mediæval art, if not entitled to absolute deference, is always worthy of respect, has said of him, “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 natural productions, are turned to a similar use. How thoroughly eastern is the figure of the youthful David!—
God’s child, with His dew
On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue [p. 43→]
Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat
Were now raging to torture the desert!
And the description of his playing before Saul:—
Then I tuned my harp,—took off the lilies we twine round its chords
Lest they snap ’neath the stress of the noontide—those sunbeams like swords!
And I first play’d the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,
So docile they come to the pen-door, till folding be done.
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for, lo, they have fed
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream’s bed;
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star
Into eve and the blue far above us,—so blue and so far!
“Cleon,” again, though a trace of the nineteenth century may crop out here and there, is as thoroughly Greek in its tone as anything which one finds written now-a-days. And the majority of the poems conversant with Italian subjects seem to breathe the air of Italy, and vividly present to our imaginations the fair and passionate south.
In looking at the moral aspects of these poems, it will not do, of course, to found a judgment upon a single poem, or upon a few only. This would be unfair in the case of any poet, and most of all in dealing with one whose genius is dramatic. For the dramatic poet identifies himself for the time with his creations, whether the character of these be virtuous or vicious. In his case, skill in depicting vice no more implies actual vice than skill in depicting virtue necessarily implies actual virtue. Notwithstanding Shakspeare’s allusion to the “fuller’s hand,” it may be said that the dramatic artist runs less risk than other men in regarding the strange variety of his fellow-beings simply as natural phenomena, worthy of study and representation, apart from their goodness or badness. Like the physiologist who studies with admiration manifestations and laws of disease which it is better for others not to witness, the vocation of the dramatic poet may lead him to the study of abnormal forms of life. The wide sympathies with which he has been gifted enable him to dwell with comparative safety on phases of human existence which others could not touch without contamination. It is, therefore, only from the aspect of his works as a whole that we are entitled to judge. Viewing them thus broadly, they may be seen to contain the marks of an earnest and religious spirit. We do not mean that they indicate an adherence to this or that particular creed, though “Christmas Eve and Easter Day” is truly orthodox in its tendency. But what is far better than this, without the slightest ostentation, they evince [p. 44→] habitual thoughtfulness and seriousness in contemplating our nature, its destiny and its highest relations. He has looked reverently, and for himself, into the mysteries which surround our life, and is familiar with the deepest problems that can engage our attention. The complication, the strife, and the aspiration,—the
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn,—
are frequently present to his thoughts. He feels, as men of sympathy and imagination can best feel, how great are our capabilities of happiness or misery, how inexorable is the law of duty, and how solemn the choice which is offered us. And yet he believes, as the counterpart of this, that, in one way or another, humanity is working out “God’s own plan,”—that nowhere in all the universe can there be found—
one deed
Power may fall short in or exceed,—
and that, in spite of our inexplicable guilt and suffering, it cannot fail to be true that
God’s in His heaven,
All’s right with the world!
The scenes of nature often become to him revelations of higher things. Narrating his ascent of Calvano, he exclaims:—
And God’s own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains,
And under, the sea,
And within me, my heart to bear witness
What was and shall be!
So too, closing an impressive description of a lunar rainbow, he passes naturally and at once to the Power who dwells above the darkness and the light,—
Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
Whose, from the straining topmast dark,
On to the keystone of that arc?
When he has a moral, it is not a trite or hackneyed one. In “The Statue and the Bust,” when the guilty passion of the lovers fails to attain its aim, not from self-control, but from too weak an endeavour to overcome the obstacles that lie between, he condemns them all the more for this want of energy.
They see not God, I know,
Nor all that chivalry of His,
The soldier-saints who, row on row, [p. 45→]
Burn upward each to his point of bliss—
Since, the end of life being manifest,
He had burn’d his way thro’ the world to this.
If the end in view were a crime, the weakness which failed to attain it was a weakness bred of sin, of a piece with the sin and the crime.
Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
Venture as truly, use the same skill,
Do your best, whether winning or losing it,
If you choose to play!—is my principle.
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life’s set prize, be it what it will!
And if such a moral be objected to, he turns round sharply on the objector,—
You of the virtue, (we issue join,)
How strive you? De te, fabula!
It will be said that Browning’s humour has sometimes led him to speak of serious subjects with undue levity. “Easter Day,” and the singularly fantastic “Heretic’s Tragedy” may be cited as examples of the offence. In reply to this, however, it may be urged that Browning’s humour is humour in the strict sense of the term, rather than wit. He rarely renders an object ridiculous by wilfully placing an incongruous object by its side, or describing it by an incongruous figure. He has rather the faculty of seeing the incongruity of objects actually placed in juxtaposition in the world, and of making others see it. Laughter and tears, as every one knows, are not placed far apart; but neither are laughter and reverence. Greatness and littleness are everywhere conjoined; and at times we scarcely know whether to revere the one, or to smile at the other. Food for laughter has been plentifully set before us, and it would be wrong for those who have the appetite to refuse to partake of it. Nowhere, perhaps, are the grandeur and absurdity of human nature so apparent, and so intimately conjoined, as in its modes of worship; and it is these which form the subject of “Easter Day.” Entering the church of St. Rumbold at Mechlin one day lately, while the bells in the tower overhead were sounding the musical carillon, it was in no spirit of contempt for the Catholic religion that we prepared to see Vandyke’s exquisite painting of the Crucifixion. But when our attention was arrested by a bevy of priests engaged in mass for the dead, bawling out the words as quickly as tongue could utter them, kneeling at intervals as nimbly as knee could bend, and bowing as fast as head could nod, Fried- [p. 46→] rich’s interview with the monks in the Cleve convent, so graphically described by Carlyle, flashed across our memory, and for a time the whole appeared supremely ridiculous. In the same manner, when, under the arched roof of some magnificent cathedral, one sees poor people fervently worshipping before a painted and tinselled doll with a smaller doll in her arms and the seven conventional swords in her bosom,* is it more fitting to smile, or to stand sadly apart? to kneel beside the worshippers in all simplicity of heart, or to look on with melancholy sarcasm? There is a humour in such things, which it is useless to attempt to exclude. But let us take four lines from “Easter Day” as an illustration:—
Love, surely, from that music’s lingering,
Might have filched her organ-fingering,
Nor chosen rather to set prayings
To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.
Here the similes, though ludicrous, are not far-fetched, but rise naturally enough. Those who have listened to the Gaelic psalm in a remote Highland congregation, its apparently tuneless fluctuation, its preposterous lilt, and the shakes and variations introduced at the discretion of each performer, will recognise the truth of the simile which compares some praises at least to “horse-neighings.” They may be conscious too that there is something amid all the lawlessness which a sense of humour fails to reach. But this latter element certainly would not be ignored by Browning.
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*We notice that this “painted brod,” as Knox would have called it, is referred to in “Up at a Villa—Down in the City,”—a humorous poem, embodying the wish of a Florentine sprig of nobility to live in the bustling town rather than in his quiet villa on the hill-side:—
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang, wang, wang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.
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In all his humour, there is no touch of cynicism. Not having learned to disbelieve in virtue in himself or others, he warms at the thought of all that is noble or generous. In speaking of the affections which bind men together, and especially of that emotion which is at once the favourite theme of poets and of lovers, he is often beautiful and tender. His female characters are, for the most part, strong, whether for love or hate, good or evil. Among the softest and most attractive are Michal, who fills the quiet home at Einsiedeln with peace, and whose memory, like the presence of a ministering angel, dwells with the wandering votary of science; [p. 47→] Colombe, cheerfully sacrificing all for love; and Pippa, doing good unconsciously by her snatches of song. Those poems, again, which refer to the thoughts and ways of men towards women, are remarkable for their keen dramatic sympathy. In “Women and Roses” we have a fine symbolical representation of the relation in general; while “Evelyn Hope” may be mentioned as one of its most beautiful embodiments.
As a poem of the affections, “By the Fireside” will be prized and lingered over by many readers. The description of the wife,—
Musing by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it
Yonder, my heart knows how!—
the reference to the future,—
Think, when our one soul understands
The great word which makes all things new—
When earth breaks up and heaven expands—
How will the change strike me and you
In the House not made with hands?—
and the reminiscence of the first confession of love, with that subtly imaginative touch,
The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a second the powers at play;
They had mingled us so, for once and for good
Their work was done—we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood,—
are all very beautiful. Of the dedication of “Men and Women” to his wife, it would be almost an intrusion to speak; but every one who reads it must regret more keenly that the light of Casa Guidi is darkened, and that one sleeps without the gates of Florence whose grave, like the burying-ground at Rome where rest the ashes of Keats and the cor cordium of Shelley, will become a place of affectionate pilgrimage to many travellers. High poetic lives, as Hawthorne truly called the poet and his wife, they are now for this world severed; but one day, perchance, they will be re-united, and take their place together among those spoken of in Paracelsus,—
White brows, lit up with glory—poets all!
[Frank T. Marzials]
Reviewed:
Poetical Works (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1863.
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