R640625A. Dramatis Personæ.
The London Review, 25 June 1864, pp. 683–685.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 343.
Mr. Browning’s new poems are not likely to produce any immediate effect upon the reputation he has already acquired. They will be received with rapturous admiration by the circle of thoughtful and cultivated readers who have already made him “the god of their idolatry,” but they will scarcely succeed in overcoming the distaste of those who have hitherto found themselves unable to appreciate his peculiar genius. There are many real lovers of poetry which does not soar too high above their heads, who feel hurt if they are asked to listen to what are not “easy things to understand.” They expect the stream of verse to flow always clear as crystal, so that they may see at a glance the gold and gems which decorate its bed, and the beings of beauty who sport beneath its waves. Mr. Browning reminds them unpleasantly of a mountain torrent, swiftly swinging along discoloured waters, and only here and there allowing a momentary glimpse to be caught of a glittering form, a gleaming shape. To them the greater part of the present volume will prove utterly unintelligible, and the lucidity of its remaining portion will fail to reconcile them to the obscurity by which they will consider it is encompassed. But those who are not equally unaccustomed or averse to mental exertion, and who are not easily deterred by the difficulties which hedge around almost every truth that is worth discovering, and especially those who, in reading poetry, far from wishing to have every image brought before them blazing in the full sunlight, rather prefer “to see an idea looming through the mist,” will find much that is wise, much that is beautiful, in Mr. Browning’s latest utterances. Their subjects embrace some of those which are worthiest to arrest our attention, and to occupy our thoughts. The endless struggle of man with adverse fate,—the constant longing for happiness so seldom gratified, so often unfulfilled,—the ever-renewed contest in the human mind between faith and doubt,—the yearning of the soul towards the unseen world,—such, together with many of the ordinary joys and sorrows which chequer life’s career, are the themes which Mr. Browning treats. With two exceptions the poems are all soliloquies, and with his usual dramatic power he has given life to the persons to whose voices he wishes us to listen, while at the same time he enables us to see far through their outward semblance into the inmost working of their hearts. In the three most important pieces he dissects as many forms of belief: the lowest, in which the savage or the bigot grovels before the power he worships with servile fear; the highest, in which perfect love casteth out all fear; and the creed of shameless egotism, the negation of belief in aught but self. “Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology in the Island,” is the title of the first, in which Caliban, sprawling—
now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit’s much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
brings his intellect to bear upon the great questions of man’s existence, and
Talks to his own self, howe’er he please,
Touching that other, whom his dam called God.
Reasoning from his knowledge of himself, Caliban constructs the idea of Setebos, a mighty being who “dwelleth i’ the cold o’ the moon,” all-powerful, but ever ill at ease, and who has created man and the universe in which he dwells—
Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else?
He could not, Himself, make a second self
To be his mate; as well have made Himself.
He would not make what he mislikes or slights,
An eyesore to Him, or not worth his pains:
But did, in envy, listlessness, or sport,
Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be—
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while.
Things he admires and mocks too,—that is it.
Because, so brave, so better though they be,
It nothing skills if He begin to plague.
Caliban supposes that Setebos is “good i’ the main,” and “placable if his mind and ways were guessed;” but sometimes cruel, always jealous and capricious—a being whose anger should be appeased by unhesitating obedience, by self-abasement and mortification of the flesh and the spirit. He fears that Setebos has a spite against him, “just as he favours Prosper,” but hopes to escape his ire by not seeming too happy, thus leading him to
Misconceive, suppose
This Caliban strives hard and ails no less,
And always, above all else, envies Him.
Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights,
Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh,
And never speaks his mind save housed as now. [p. 684→]
For Setebos hates to see his creatures perfectly happy, not being himself capable of enjoyment. Why his fetish should be rough, and cold, and ill at ease, Caliban cannot tell.
There may be something quiet o’er his head,
Out of his reach, that feels nor joy nor grief,
Since both derive from weakness in some way,
and which has either made Setebos, or has driven him into the cold and aching void which he has striven in very spite to fill. Caliban, however, cares little about this higher power, thinking only of Setebos, who is able to hurt or benefit him according to the caprice of the moment; but hoping the while—
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch
And conquer Setebos, or likelier he
Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die.
At this point, Caliban’s reflections are interrupted by a storm, which, like a true fetish-worshipper, he interprets as a sign of his offended Deity’s wrath.
What, what? A curtain o’er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—oh yes,
There scuds His raven that hath told Him all!
It was fool’s play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death’s house o’ the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze—
A tree’s head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fools to gibe at Him!
Lo! ’Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may ’scape!
Strongly contrasted with this sketch of an abject superstition, not entirely confined to the narrow range of Caliban’s island, is the portrait of him whose creed was, “God is love.” Bedded on a camel-skin, in the secret chamber of a rocky cave, St. John the Evangelist lies dying, his friends watching over him in silence, while a Bactrian convert keeps watch without, lest the persecutor should come unawares. For a while, the aged apostle is lost in unconsciousness; but, just before the lamp of life is extinguished, there comes a leap of light, and—
He opened his eyes wide at once,
And sat up of himself and looked at us;
And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word:
Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cry
Like the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff,
As signal we were safe, from time to time.
Then he proceeds to speak as one who, looking far into the future, beyond the simple faith of the earliest Christian era, and the subtle controversies which endangered its existence, had seen the doubts and fear of the present day, the unwilling distrust, the reluctant disbelief, the mournful surrendering of early hopes and severing of ties endeared by a thousand associations. He speaks of the message he had transmitted from Heaven to man, at first going about from place to place—
Saying “It was so; so I heard and saw,”
Speaking as the case asked; and men believed.
Then writing what the Spirit told him in the Isle of Patmos; afterwards reasoning from his knowledge, merely teaching—
Men should, for love’s sake, in love’s strength, believe,
and at times penning a letter to a friend to urge the same truth. Friends said he reasoned rightly, and they believed; but Antichrists arose, calling on him to explain this mystery or that difficulty, and forcing him to go back in memory to the days when he held actual converse with the Lord, and to reconsider facts which then had concealed their real import from him:—
Since much that at the first, in deed and word,
Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,
Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,
Fed through such years, familiar with such light,
Guarded and guided still to see and speak)
Of new significance and fresh result:
What first were guessed as points I now know stars,
And named them in the Gospel I have writ.
Thus, for many years he lived and strove to confirm all timid and wavering minds in their belief in the actual existence and the speedy coming of the Lord, whom he had himself known in the flesh, until at last, he says,—
I feel sick,
Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,
And went to sleep with one thought that, at least,
Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,
We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.
Yet now I wake in such decrepitude
As I had slidden down, and fallen afar,
Past even the presence of my former self,
Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,
Till I am found away from my own world,
Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound,
Along with unborn people in strange lands,
Who say—I hear said or conceive they say—
“Was John at all, and did he say he saw!
Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!”
And indeed it is to our generation he speaks; the difficulties with which he grapples are such as present themselves to the men of our own times, not to the disbelievers or heretics of his own. The question which he answers is no longer that which then troubled with the sickness of hope deferred the simple mind of many a Christian, but one which he foresees will arise in later days and in new lands:—
What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it!
I see you stand conversing, each new face,
Either in fields, of yellow summer eves,
On islets yet unnamed amid the sea;
Or pace for shelter ’neath a portico
Out of the crowd in some enormous town
Where now the larks sing in a solitude;
Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sand
Idly conjectured to be Ephesus:
And no one asks his fellow any more
“Where is the promise of His coming?” but
Was He revealed in any of His lives
As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?”
Conscious that a time will come when even those who desire to believe may find their whole faith deadened by mistrust, by a suspicion that the God they yearn to love and to worship may be merely a projection of their own minds, an ideal created by themselves in the consciousness of their own weakness and besetting needs, he strives to show how groundless are such doubts, how the acknowledgment of God in Christ, when accepted by the reason, solves “all questions in the earth and out of it;” and how infinitely better it is to accept a theory of a universe in which God’s love is the central force, the animating spirit, than to spend a barren and purposeless life in balancing improbabilities and establishing negations:—
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend—
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth: that is all.
A character utterly destitute of any regard for either truth or love is depicted in “Mr. Sludge, the Medium.” The portrait is powerfully drawn, but the colouring appears to be somewhat too sombre in its hues. So unmodified a scoundrel as the spiritualist is represented can scarcely be believed ever to have existed; and Mr. Browning seems to have constructed his effigy rather with the passion of a personal foe than with the self-control of an impartial artist. Bishop Blougram, in his masterly “Apology,” is supposed to have only half believed what he said; but Mr. Sludge is represented as gloating over his impostures, and boasting of his shame, without a shadow of even unconscious reserve. Detected in one of his tricks by an angry patron, he at first whimpers like a beaten hound, but after a time launches forth into a defence of his conduct. The analysis of his motives is made with extraordinary acuteness and ingenuity, but the result of the operation is as unsatisfactory as the patient is disagreeable. The cowardice of his nature is well contrasted with the boldness of his impudence, his disbelief in all that pride in his own powers of deception with his contempt for the dupes on whose credulity he trades. But the poem is long enough to become wearisome. Mr. Sludge is too ignoble a subject to interest for any great space of time the audience invited to listen to the professor of morbid anatomy who dissects him, in however scientific a style the scalpel is handled and the lecture is delivered. Far pleasanter is it to hear the noble language in which the “Rabbi Ben Ezra” clothes his ideas on the subject of God’s ways with man, or the melodious voice of “Abt Vogler,” as he expresses in words the thoughts which his music suggests of trusting love and fearless hope:—
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.
And what is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe;
But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome; ’tis we musicians know. [p. 685→]
Well it is earth with me; Silence resumes her reign;
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,—yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life; so, now I will try to sleep.
Reviewed:
Dramatis Personæ (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1864.
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