R650100A. Dramatis Personæ.
The Christian Spectator, January 1865, pp. 44–57.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 358.
It gives us hearty satisfaction to perceive that Mr. Robert Browning’s latest poems have already reached a second edition. [p. 45→] Wider acceptance as yet he can scarcely hope, and probably does not even desire. Up to a very recent period indeed, his readers—not to say his admirers—were almost an esoteric school. “Christmas Eve and Easter Day” was the first of his works that compelled the recognition of the circulating libraries. For the rest, the general knowledge about him was almost comprised in this, that Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett had married a poet, whose writings were mostly unintelligible, but who had, in a lucid interval, composed a child’s poem, something in the Ingoldsby style, on the “Pied Piper of Hamelin.” He was also known to have written one or two poems on Scriptural subjects, as upon King Saul, and the risen Lazarus; but, upon trial, these pieces were so utterly unlike any other sacred poetry in the language, whether written for University prizes or not, that the admirers of Heber, Montgomery, and Hankinson drew back in hopeless bewilderment. As to “Paracelsus” and “Sordello,” it was the general understanding that they were past all comprehension. The story of Douglas Jerrold’s attempt to read the latter is well known. After a severe fit of illness he took it up, and from his utter inability to get at its meaning, concluded, with silent dismay, that his own brain had been seriously affected by the malady! Nor were his apprehensions relieved, until his clever wife had found the book as inexplicable. “What does the man mean?” she exclaimed. “Then, thank Heaven,” cried Jerrold to her unbounded astonishment, “I am not mad!”
Now we are not going to review “Paracelsus,” nor to analyze “Sordello.” But one observation we may venture, more applicable, indeed, to Mr. Browning’s earlier poems than to those immediately before us. It is a question surely admitting but of one answer, whether a poet is ever at liberty to make that demand upon our powers of attention and thought which is freely permitted to other writers. Some readers there are, we know, who take up poetry entirely for amusement. They like plain sailing, the say,
O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
That is their model stanza, sharp, clear, ringing. Its meaning, though not perhaps its grammar, is seen in an instant. You never ponder it, it never grows as you gaze. The description of Waterloo in “Childe Harold,” or the picture of “The Dying Gladiator,” or the apostrophe to the Ocean, conveys its full impression at once. No tasteful or imaginative mind gathers more from it by continuous meditation. Nay, the critic’s work [p. 46→] of analysis rather weakens than enhances the charm. Such poetry accomplishes its purpose, and its readers have their reward. Other works of genius there are—and the remark applies to the whole sphere of art—the enjoyment of which requires educated taste and critical ability. They deal with phenomena of the outer or the inner world, too evanescent for any but a keen glance to observe, or too subtle for any but a thoughtful, well-cultivated mind, to reach. Now it is the function of such art, not only to gratify higher intellects, but to aid the cultivation, in general, of the observant faculties. We study such poetry with an exertion of mental power, and a result of keen delight, not wholly dissimilar to our experience in the pursuit of some high philosophic argument. The theme only is different. We do not want philosophy, properly so called, in verse. Let honest sober prose still set forth the general principles and laws which regulate the world of mind. Only when all these are duly settled, there are still exceptional moods of thought and feeling, surprises in the even flow of life, sudden impulses of the soul, throbs of joy or pain, yearnings for the mysterious, the infinite, with strange passionate love or hatred, indignation or despair, for which poetry is the only fitting vehicle of expression. Here is the highest sphere of the drama, and all the greatest dramatic poetry is difficult. Have Shakespear’s commentators made him all plain yet? In Sophocles, too, the greatest dramatist of the old world, what suggestions of “corrupted readings” have we not been doomed to endure from critics and professors! Far easier has it been found to escape the mystery of the poet’s thought by an amended text, than to follow it into those depths which his own words but dimly unveiled.
On the whole, then, we entirely sympathize in the words of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, in the noble preface to her early works: “Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself, and life has been a very serious thing. … I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet.” Nor for that of the poet’s readers, we would add, if his themes are of the brightest and greatest. We would rather “construe” “In Memoriam” in silent thought, than sit with our feet on the fender reading “Enoch Arden:” and we do not greatly admire the recent critic, who, to illustrate Mr. Browning’s genius, quotes “The Pied Piper” almost at length, leaving “The Death in the Desert” without a line.
Without a doubt, the poems before us are in some parts difficult to read. They have to do with unfamiliar phrases of thought and feeling. Sometimes they rise higher than our ordinary mental atmosphere: now and then they sink lower, as in [p. 47→] that wonderful poem “Caliban upon Setebos,”* though there we have a reflected light upon our own “Natural Theology.” Many a new combination also there is of character and circumstance. Familiar faces are not where we should have expected to find them. Familiar scenes are regarded from new points of view. In the world of the affections, especially, all seems strangely displaced. The old story of change, disappointment, unfaithfulness, or of faithfulness till death, is chanted in new keys. Yet, as we listen, we recognise the profound truth. A critic whom we have quoted calls these new combinations “grotesque.” He is welcome to the word. Only, it should be remembered, that a keen appreciation of the incongruous not only co-exists with, but even depends upon, the quick sense of proportion and harmony. Mr. Browning’s genius is “mediæval,” it is said. Yes: but if the mediæval architect in his play carved the grinning gargoyle, he planned in his serious mood the cathedral from which it projects. Caliban’s speculations on the Deity are in keeping with the Caliban nature: the only wonder is, that Caliban should have any such speculations at all. But what finer tribute can we pay to the poet than to say that the Apostle John’s dying words also are such as we may well conceive that Apostle to have spoken?
________
* “My dam’s God, Setebos”—Caliban, in “The Tempest,” Act 1, scene 2.
________
Let our readers judge. The beloved Disciple, driven by persecution from Ephesus, lies in a cave of the wilderness. Affectionate disciples are near, soothing his last hours, and intent upon his farewell words. He tells them of the revelations which had been entrusted to him; tracing thus their order and significance. Could any Biblical critic have written more clearly or wisely?
Since I, whom Christ’s mouth taught, was bidden teach,
I went for many years about the world,
Saying “It was so; so I heard and saw,”
Speaking as the case asked; and men believed.
Afterward came the message to myself
In Patmos isle. I was not bidden teach,
But simply listen, take a book and write,
Nor set down other than the given word,
With nothing left to my arbitrament
To choose or change. I wrote, and men believed.
Then, for my time grew brief, no message more,
No call to write again, I found a way,
And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught
Men should, for love’s sake, in love’s strength, believe.
Or I would pen a letter to a friend,
And urge the same as friend, nor less, nor more.
Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed. [p. 48→]
But, at the last, why I seemed left alive,
Like a sea-jelly, weak on Patmos strand,
To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared
When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things;
Left to repeat, “I saw, I heard, I knew,”
And go all over the old ground again,
With antichrist already in the world,
And many antichrists, who answered prompt,
“Am I not Jasper as thyself art John?
Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget—
Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?”
I never thought to call down fire on such,
Or, as in wonderful and early days,
Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb;
But patient stated much of the Lord’s life;
Forgotten or mis-delivered, and let it work:
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 knew stars,
And named them in the Gospel I have writ.
For men said, “It is getting long ago:”
“Where is the promise of His coming?”—asked
These young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,
Of me, who, when their sires were born, was old.
I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully,
Since I was there, and helpful in my age;
And, in the main, I think such men believed.
Finally, thus endeavouring, I fell 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.
Pp. 97–99.
Then the dying man glances onward to coming days. What manifold questionings there would be!
“Was John at all,—and did he say he saw?
Assure us, e’er we ask what he might see.”
And how shall I assure them?
Vast problem for the dying man, who had seen the power and love made manifest! How should others see? By learning in life, the Apostle answers in part, the lesson of love.
For life, with all it yields of joy or woe,
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.
But the question returns, how to learn? The answer is, by a deeper experience than any mere testimony could afford. Who, [p. 49→] for instance, doubts the value of fire? “Could he give christ up were His worth as plain?” Yet here lies the difference. The physical boon is evident, indisputable; its recognition involves no probation: the spiritual blessing needs to be apprehended on other grounds. The very power to grasp it is a test of spiritual progress, for visible attestation is not everything. The disciples who had known Christ after the flesh all forsook Him and fled. But—
Another year or two,—what little child,
What tender woman, that had seen no least
Of all my sights, but barely heard them told,
Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,
Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God?
Well, was truth safe for ever, then? Not so.
Already had begun the silent work
Whereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze,
Might need love’s eye to pierce the o’erstretched doubt.
To quicken this insight, the testimony of facts, the demonstrative power of miracles, were necessary once. But, now?—
I say, that as the babe you fed awhile,
Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,
So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth.
When they can eat, babe’s nurture is withdrawn.
I fed the babe whether it would or no:
I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.
I cried once, “That ye may believe in Christ,
Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!”
I cry now, Urgest thou, “For I am shrewd,
And smile at stories how John’s word could cure—
Repeat that miracle and take my faith.”
I say, that miracle was duly wrought
When, save for it, no faith was possible.
Whether a change were wrought i’ the shows o’ the world,
Whether the change came from our minds which see
Of the shows o’ the world so much as and no more
Than God wills for His purpose—(what do I
See now, suppose you, there, where you see rock
Round us?)—I know not, such was the effect,
So faith grew, making void more miracles
Because too much: they would compel, not help.
I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has so far advanced thee to be wise.
Wouldst thou improve this to re-prove the proved?
In life’s mere minute, with power to use that proof,
Leave knowledge, and revert to how it sprung?
Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!
Pp. 109, 110.
We have quoted largely, yet scarcely sufficiently, from this re- [p. 50→] markable poem. It should be read in its completeness, not only for its symmetrical beauty and prophetic “keeping,” but because it is a “word in season” amid many of the conflicts and bewilderments of our own day.
The following energetic stanzas also show that Mr. Browning has clear and strong convictions on the religious topics mooted among us. The passage occurs at the end of a ghostly legend, of which it points the moral, explaining, perhaps, also why our poet has delineated so many other evil things:—
Why I deliver this horrible verse?
As the text of a sermon which now I preach:
Evil or good may be better or worse
In the human heart, but the mixture of each
Is a marvel and a curse.
The candid incline to surmise of late
That the Christian faith may be false, I find:
For our “Essays and Reviews” debate
Begins to tell on the public mind,
And Colenso’s words have weight.
I still, to suppose it true, for my part,
See reasons and reasons; this, to begin;
’Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart
At the head of a lie—taught Original Sin,
The corruption of Man’s Heart.
Pp. 33, 34.
Two poems—“Abt Vogler” and “Rabbi Ben Ezra”—seem intended to depict, under various emblems, the religious man’s loftiest aspiration. Thus regarded, we rank them as among the very highest of Mr. Browning’s productions. In the former, the inventor of the organ is at his instrument, creating the rich up-swelling harmony, which seems to his kindled imagination as though it wove itself into a vast and solemn temple. The thought, if not the words, inspired his soul—“Thou inhabitest the praises of Israel!” But the air-built temple vanishes as the music dies away, and the soliloquy continues:—
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. [p. 51→]
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.
Pp. 72–74.
Happy they who thus have music in their soul! Not in this poem alone has the poet shown that in all harmony there is to his ear an “inner voice” that speaks of spiritual truth. Different is the strain in “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” though the figure is of equal beauty. Life is moulded as on a potter’s wheel, and from base to rim is formed by the Eternal Artist’s plastic finger, as a cup to be filled with the wine of love and bliss. The meditation takes the form of a retrospect. Life is nearly over—what has been its purpose, aim, result?—
Ay, note that potter’s wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the past gone, seize to-day!”
Fool! all this is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes; but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee ’mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soil its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
What though the earlier grooves
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Scull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp’s flash , and trumpet’s peal,
The new wine’s foaming flow,
The master’s lips a-glow!
Thou, heaven’s consummate cup, what need’st thou with earth’s wheel? [p. 52→]
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily,—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
So, take and use Thy work!
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
Pp. 85–87.
Thus far we think we have shown that Mr. Browning is a true poet as well as a deep thinker; and, moreover, that if occasionally “grotesque,” his higher inspirations are most truly catholic. Possibly, however, our readers thus far may think that little has been said to prove him either “difficult” or “dramatic.” Let them then take our word for it; or, in the volume under notice, let them read “James Lee,” “The Worst of it,” “Le Byron des nos Jours,” and “Too Late.” These are all love stories—all sad, and all eminently dramatic, though in the lyric form. Their obscurity is chiefly in their incompleteness. Mr. Browning lets us overhear a part of the drama, generally a soliloquy, and we must infer the rest. Had he to give the story of Hamlet, he would probably embody it in three stanzas, the first beginning, “O that this too too solid flesh would melt!” the second, “To be or not to be, that is the question;” and the third, “Look here upon this picture, and on that!” From these disjointed utterances the reader would have to construct the story. And when to a plan like this, fully suggestive only to imaginative minds, and differently suggestive, perhaps, to every one, we add the strange exceptional character of the emotions with which he deals, it will appear no wonder that it is often hard, sometimes impossible, to follow him. It would be useless to quote, for the whole is insufficient. The author has a meaning, we see, evident and profoundly true; he has also a clear conception of the sequence of facts in which that meaning is embodied. The thoughtful reader, too, will interpret the hints and suggestions of the poem into a coherent narrative; but whether the reader’s story and the author’s will coincide, remains often an open question.
Of Mr. Browning’s indignant moods we have as yet said nothing. Here, however, is much of his chief power. He can scorn and scathe most terribly. As a specimen of indignant irony, he has never, perhaps, surpassed “Bishop Blongram’s [sic] Apology,” in one of his earlier works; but in the volume before us, “Mr. Sludge, the Medium,” though perhaps some- [p. 53→] what too prolonged, is a wonderful effort of the same kind. This Sludge is of a class unhappily now familiar to the British public—an American impostor, trading on the popular awe of the supernatural. One of his patrons has found him out, and the rascal unbosoms himself. He confesses to have begun in downright knavery, yet encouraged by his dupes: these thought themselves very clever in being able to pronouce that Sludge’s feats are not common conjuring. “Little fear,” cried one, “that he will take us in!”—
Won’t he, ma’am?
But what if our distinguished host, like Sludge,
Bade God bear witness that he played no trick,
While you believed that what produced the raps
Was just a certain child that died, you know,
And whose last breath you thought your lips had felt?
Eh? That’s a capital point, ma’am: Sludge begins
At your entreaty with your dearest dead,
The little voice set lisping once again,
The tiny hand made feel for yours once more,
The poor lost image brought back, plain as dreams,
Which image, if a word had chanced recall,
The customary cloud would cross your eyes,
Your heart return the old tick, pay its pang!
A right mood for investigation, this!
One’s at one’s ease with Saul and Jonathan,
Pompey and Cæsar; but one’s own lost child. …
I wonder, when you heard the first clod drop
From the spadeful at the grave-side, felt you free
To investigate who twitched your funeral scarf
Or brushed your flounces? Then, it came of course,
You should be stunned and stupid; then (how else?)
Your breath stopped with your blood, your brain struck work.
But now, such causes fail of such effects,
All’s changed,—the little voice begins afresh,
Yet you, calm, consequent, can test and try
And touch the truth. “Tests? Didn’t the creature tell
Its nurse’s name, and say it lived six years,
And rode a rocking-horse? Enough of tests!
Sludge never could learn that!”
Pp. 192–193.
We quote the above passage as much for its pathos as for its underlying scorn. Our deepest affections are truly, in this wretched business of so-called spiritualism, the juggler’s instruments. But Sludge goes on to retort upon his patron:—
Who was the fool
When, to an awe-struck, wide-eyed, open-mouthed
Circle of sages, Sludge would introduce
Milton composing baby-rhymes, and Locke
Reasoning in gibberish, Homer writing Greek
In noughts and crosses, Asaph setting psalms
To crochet and quaver?
P. 197.
The point suggested in this extract receives a curious illus- [p. 54→] tration while we write. In the literature of Spiritualism, we find the following contribution, purporting to be from the spirit of Robert Burns:—
O-Cotland, thy loks and thy mountains,
Thy woods and heather so wild—
Thy waters, from nature’s pure fountains,
I have drank from when I was a child.
And again:—
Thy balmy breath of the morning,
As it comes upon life-giving wings,
When the lark from the nest is up-soaring,
What joy to the heart it brings!
We wish our “Spiritualist friends joy of their fellowship with the great poet! But we pursue our citations. It is objected that the new science is unfriendly to revelation. What has Sludge to answer?—
As for religion—why, I served it, sir!
I’ll stick to that! With my phenomena
I laid the Atheist sprawling on his back,
And propped St. Paul up, or, at least, Swedenborg!
In fact, it’s just the proper way to baulk
These troublesome fellows—liars, one and all,
Are not these sceptics! Well, to baffle them,
No use in being squeamish: lie yourself!
Erect your buttress just as wide o’ the line,
Your side, as they’ve built up the wall on theirs;
Where both meet, midway in a point, is truth,
High overheard: so, take your room, pile bricks,
Lie! Oh, there’s a titillation in all shame!
What snow may lose in white, it gains in rose:
Miss Stokes turns—Rahab,—not a bad exchange!
Glory be on her, for the good she wrought,
Breeding belief anew ’neath ribs of death,
Brow-beating now the unabashed before,
Ridding us of their whole life’s gathered straws
By a live coal from the altar! Why, of old,
Great men spent years and years in writing books
To prove we’ve souls, and hardly proved it then:
Miss Stokes with her live coal, for you and me!
Surely to this good issue, all was fair—
Not only fondling Sludge, but, even suppose
He lets escape some spice of knavery,—well,
In wisely being blind to it! Don’t you praise
Nelson for setting spy-glass to blind eye
And saying—what was it?—that he could not see
The signal he was bothered? Ay, indeed!
Pp. 200, 201.
Even so. “St. Paul, or at least Swedenborg.” The story is told in a line. Yet we have all heard how valuable an ally this spiritualism has been to faith. Some mythical number of converts—generally ten thousand, we believe—is reported [p. 55→] from time to time as having been won from infidelity, to believe in that future state which these manifestations reveal. It had been a charity to leave them in their old belief. For such an immortality who could be grateful?
Βουλοίμην κ´ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν Θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ
Ανδρὶ παρ᾽ ακλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,
Ε῍ πᾶιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.
But we will leave Sludge, without attempting to consider the sly specious argument, wonderfully sustained by Mr. Browning, in which the impostor, half a dupe himself, tries to show that after all there may be something in his science. For one brief picture we much make room; it is that of the literary man, who “makes capital,” as the phrase is, for himself out of these “lying wonders.” That the scornful satire is not undeserved, the reader of modern fiction will at once acknowledge:—
Then there’s the other picker out of pearl
From dung-heaps,—ay, your literary man,
Who draws on his kid gloves to deal with Sludge
Daintily and discreetly,—shakes a dust
Of the doctrine, flavours thence, he well knows how,
The narrative or the novel,—half believes,
All for the book’s sake, and the public’s stare,
And the cash that’s God’s sole solid in this world!
Look at him! Try to be too bold, too gross
For the master! Not you! He’s the man for muck;
Shovel it forth, full splash, he’ll smooth your brown
Into artistic richness, never fear!
Find him the crude stuff; when you recognise
Your lie again, you’ll doff your hat to it,
Dressed out for company!
P. 204.
The more ardent admirers of Mr. Browning will think that we might have quoted more characteristic passages. Such stanzas as the following, for instance, ought to have suggested the staple of our criticism. A lover forsaken upbraids his mistress, who, as it would appear, has forsworn him, in order henceforth to live a blameless life. He says:—
Men tell me of truth now—“False!” I cry;
Of beauty—“A mask, friend! Look beneath![”]
We take our own method, the devil and I,
With pleasant and fair, and wise, and rare:
And the best we wish to what lives, is—death;
Which, even in wishing, perhaps we lie!
Far better commit a fault and have done—
As you, dear! for ever; and choose the pure,
And look where the healing waters run,
And strive and strain to be good again,
And a place in the other world insure,
All glass and gold, with God for its sun. [p. 56→]
Misery! What shall I say or do?
I cannot advise or, at least, persuade:
Most like, you are glad you deceived me—rue
No whit of the wrong: you endured too long,
Have done no evil and want no aid,
Will live the old life out and chance the new.
And your sentence is written all the same,
And I can do nothing,—pray, perhaps:
But, somehow, the world pursues its game,
If I pray, if I curse,—for better or worse:
And my faith is torn to a thousand scraps,
And my heart feels ice while my words breathe flame.
Dear, I look from my hiding-place.
Are you still so fair? Have you still the eyes?
Be happy! Add but the other grace,
Be good! Why want what the angels vaunt?
I knew you once, but in Paradise,
If we meet, I will pass, nor turn my face.
Pp. 42, 43.
But enough has been said about these vivid, abrupt delineations of exceptional moods. They are often fraught with fiery power. Mr. Browning is not reticent with respect to the stronger passions, nor does he veil his meaning in conventional phrases. Some readers therefore find him coarse; but we fear not to say that he is the most moral, as he is the most metaphysical and the most Christian, of our modern great poets. And the volume before us, though it has no wrought-out dramas like “Strafford” or “The Blot on the Scutcheon,” no lyrics like “Saul,” no ballads, and very few Ingoldsby-rhymes, is perhaps, on the whole, as complete a representation of Mr. Browning’s genius as any other of his works. We recommend it, therefore, as a Primer—an Introduction—and shall be much surprised if many of our readers, after reading it, do not henceforth make Robert Browning’s poems a study and delight. We close with some noble lines, different in strain from all that we have quoted before:—
prospice.
Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,
The best and the last! [p. 57→]
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears,
Of pain, darkness, and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute’s at end,
And the elements’ rage, the fiend voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become, first, a peace; then a joy,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!
Pp. 149, 150.
G.
Reviewed:
Dramatis Personæ (RB), 2nd ed., London: Chapman & Hall, 1864.
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