R640622A. Dramatis Personæ.
The Scotsman, 22 June 1864, p. 6.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 343.
The title which Browning has given his new volume is exceedingly suggestive. For, though a dramatic poet, his peculiar excellence lies, not in the construction of dramas, but in the exhibition of character. From deficiency in plot, and, still more, because he has not the art of developing his characters through a long train of incidents, his dramas often prove uninteresting. Even “Paracelsus,” though it contains many and great evidences of dramatic genius, would become wearisome were it not for the thoughtful vigour of the verse. “Pippa Passes,” an apparent exception, in reality proves the truth of what we have said; for its union of variety and power arises from its being not properly a single drama, but no less than four separate dramatic episodes, joined only by their connection with Pippa. It is as if a novelist were narrating the fortunes of the different inmates of a Parisian house—au premier, au second, au troisième, and so on, and uniting them by the story of the concierge, who comes in contact with them all. It is in such sudden unveiling of a dramatic situation, or of a single character, that Browning’s strength really lies. Let him attempt a drama, and the result is questionable; but when he gives us only dramatis personæ, he almost invariably achieves success. The power which he shows in his detached pieces of piercing to the centre of a character, or rather of making his subject stand before the reader, and disclose its inner nature and peculiarities, in a few words or sentences, is altogether unique. If we wish, therefore, to find him at his best, we turn, not to his larger pieces, but to “Men and Women” as originally published, or to the first volume of his collected poems.
Though a considerable time has passed since Browning’s last publication—it is now thirteen or fourteen years since “Christmas Eve and Easter Day” appeared—there appears to be very little change in his mode of thought and expression. There is the same strong thought, not always harmonious or poetic in its form; and occasionally, though not so frequently as before, the same perplexed or obscure utterance. We must be content to take him as he is, with his faults and merits—the latter outweighing the former—remembering that every poet who has written has, in so doing, formed a standard of his own, and that it would be unfair to judge him by an ideal which he would not accept. It would be difficult to say whether “Dramatis Personæ” is equal to or falls below the average of his other similar writings. It does not rise above it. We say this with regret, for we are of those who think that Browning has never done full justice to his powers. Nature, in giving him his genius, must have thrown into the bargain certain conditions which prevent his making use of it to the full. Had he more of the Laureate’s ability of turning his powers for a sufficient time into selected channels, the result would be greater than anything which he has yet produced. The present volume has the same inequality which characterises the first volume of his collected works, which it most resembles, and to which we have already referred. It has not so much variety; but there is not room for this, as its bulk is comparatively small. It has less eccentricity, to be sure. But, on the other hand, it contains nothing so tender as “By the Fireside” or “Evelyn Hope,” nothing so spirited as the “Cavalier Tunes” or “How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” and nothing so grimly striking in dramatic vigour as the “Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister” or “The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church.”
To our mind, the finest poem in the book is “Abt Vogler.” It was sufficiently shown by the former poems of “A Toccata of Galuppi’s” and “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha” that Browning has a high appreciation of music; and that he does not regard it merely as a means of amusement, but as a sister art with poetry, by which the burden of the world’s bliss and woe, its harmonies and discords, may be fitly uttered and sent up to God. “Abt Vogler (after he has been extemporising upon the musical instrument of his invention)” is a higher effort than either of these, and is worthy of Browning in his best mood. It is possible that it may not win all the admiration which it deserves, since a lofty ideal in music is a much rarer thing than in poetry; but we cannot doubt that it is worthy of being placed beside anything which its author has written, and that the rich imagination and soaring enthusiasm which it displays must at least command attention. We give seven of its twelve stanzas:—
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey calling its keys to their work;
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly—alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed—
Should rush into sight at once, as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.
And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
When a great illumination surprises a festal night—
Outlining round and round Rome’s dome from space to spire)
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.
In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man’s birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.
Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,
But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:
What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.”
If the structure of music which he thus describes has perished utterly, he is not sufficiently consoled by the thought that in the future still more beautiful fabrics may be reared, to be in their turn lost.
Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.
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Browning’s love of strange and out-of-the-way subjects finds expression chiefly in two pieces—“A Death in the Desert,” and “Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island.” In the latter, Caliban, resting in a cave during the heat of the day, delivers himself in rude speech of his thoughts of the Being who guides the world and is lord over its creatures. As might be expected, he is intimately acquainted with the beasts and birds that creep or hover around him, and we need not be too censorious if the probabilities are sometimes surpassed by his being made to speak of them more graphically than might have been looked for. “A Death in the Desert” is much more ambitious. It is a narrative of the death of St. John, supposed to be by one Pamphylax, an Antiochene, a witness of the death, who dictates the chronicle lest the memory of the event be wholly obliterated:—
For many look again to find that face,
Beloved John’s to whom I ministered,
Somewhere in life about the world; they err:
Either mistaking what was darkly spoke
At ending of his book, as he relates,
Of misconceiving somewhat of this speech
Scattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose.
Believe ye will not see him any more
About the world with his divine regard!
For all was as I say, and now the man
Lies as he lay once, breast to breast with God.
The attempt to handle such a subject by imagining not only the circumstances, but also what might have been the very words of John, is of the boldest kind. But, as in many paintings of sacred subjects, even the most famous, we feel, while we detect the hand of a master, that the result is inadequate. For one thing, there are too many of those “modern touches here and there,” which Tennyson speaks of in his “Morte d’Arthur,” as redeeming that poem from a “charge of nothingness.” These modern touches have certainly the effect of exciting our interest. When we see the nineteenth century turning up in some century long gone by, we are rather pleased upon the whole, and welcome it with familiar recognition. But if we wish our histories to be true, and would desire even fiction to keep as near to truth as consists with its nature, this is a style of thing to be avoided as much as possible. Nowadays it is very common. There are others beside Mr. Kingsley who appear to think that any period may be truly represented by being rendered into the spirit of our own. Is it a necessity of every time that the past can only be spoken of and understood by being translated into the guise of the present? Perhaps it is. But there are degrees of verisimilitude. And it is rather too much to represent St. John, in foreseeing the troubled faith of the future, as hitting precisely on the heresies of the last few decades, and endeavouring, by anticipation, to convert the disciples of Hegel or Feuerbach. Nor can we suppose that this most Christian of Christians would illustrate his discourse by a reference to the fable of the Promethean theft of fire. It is only fair to say that this is a fault from which Browning is, in general, remarkably free. And here we do not complain of the accessory details, but of the essential character of the thought.
“A Death in the Desert” may also serve as an example of Browning’s tendency to a kind of thought which is not really poetic. An argument remains an argument, enrich it as you may; and unless it fitly illustrates one of the characters introduced, it ought not to form any part of a poem. “Rabbi Ben Ezra” is an instance of the same thing. In its main conception it is a fine meditation rather than a fine poem, and the mind cannot easily rest in it, as a whole, for the sake of its beauty alone, though many may find comfort and strength to speed them on the way of life in intercourse with the wise Rabbi. Moreover, valuable as Browning’s thought usually is, even when regarded apart from its poetic worth, it shares in the eccentricity and inequality which characterise the man; and we cannot always compliment him on the way in which it is expressed.
Of the other poems it may be enough to say that they are all worthy of perusal, and will probably grow on the reader with re-perusal. For, after every deduction has been made, Browning remains a real power in our modern literature, and can scarcely fail to influence any one who takes the trouble of becoming acquainted with his works. More than any other living English poet, he is a poet for poets and for thinkers. Though the circle of his readers is increasing, and he is much more widely known now than he was ten years ago, it is not likely that he will ever become popular. But it may be, in accordance with one of Nature’s laws of compensation, that a more vital influence exerted over comparatively few will atone for the lack of a popularity less surely based.
Reviewed:
Dramatis Personæ (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1864.
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