SD2226. William Michael Rossetti to Thomas Dixon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 349–350 (in part)
45 Upper Albany Street.
[early January 1859] [1]
… I should be delighted to further you in reading and appreciating Browning, whom I regard as quite the best of living poets. I know nothing in print that would be of much use; but here are a few rapid and formless hints which I write down as they occur to me. (I am intending to write a lengthy exposition of his great poem Sordello: but doubt whether it will ever find a publisher).
1. The great quality which raises Browning above all his contemporaries is his intense and unrestricted human sympathy—his power of entering into all kinds of character and emotion, and his dramatic depth in realizing them: something of the Shakespearean quality, very rare nowadays. He is thoroughly a man.
2. He is never afraid or unable to say what enters his head; but pours everything out richly and profusely—often rather by hints than detailed statement, which is the secret of his obscurity (so far as he really is obscure.) He is utterly free both from prurience and from squeamishness—daring and high-minded.
3. He knows a most enormous variety of things in all departments of thought and enquiry: being, for instance, about the only poet who really understands fine art, and is to be relied upon in his judgements of it.
4. These qualities combined require his reader to keep his attention and thought well awake. He cannot be read as a mere pastime; but, with a fair exercise of thought, becomes exceedingly captivating, and ever new.
If you have not yet read him to any extent, and can get hold of his two volumes of collected Poems, I think the best way to begin him is by reading the Dramatic Lyrics—short pieces full of energy and character, embodying the mind and purpose of different periods and types of mankind. Several are quite clear, others more puzzling or abstruse, and these might be laid aside until you get more into his tone of thought and expression. Next you might read his best stage-play A Blot in the ’Scutcheon—full of poetry and emotion, and plain sailing enough. Next Pippa Passes—the noblest (I think) along with Sordello, of all his longer works. This may seem at first sight rather scattered and unconnected: each scene introducing a new set of personages and interests. But, if you catch hold of the central thought, the difficulty is conquered. This thought is that our most trivial actions may be controlled to some great purpose by God. Pippa goes out on a holiday singing careless snatches of song: and each of these snatches, unknown to her, exercises a strong and ennobling influence upon the persons who chance to hear it. A murderer and adulteress are overwhelmed with remorse: an artist who has been got to marry a female model by a practical joke is awakened to the power for good thus put into his hands: a patriot hesitating whether to deliver his country from oppression is roused to action: and so on: and at last a foul plot against Pippa herself is relinquished. Of the other dramas I should not much recommend an early perusal: some are dry and most of them require a certain mastery of the subject at starting. The early dramatic poem of Paracelsus is very grand, but abstruse. His last volume of short poems, Men and Women, contains many which offer no particular difficulty, and might be read from the first along with the Dramatic Lyrics: but it is not easy to know beforehand which to choose.
I think the long narrative poem Sordello about the noblest thing he has done. But it is by far the most difficult of all—exceedingly tangled and confusing, and only to be taken up at leisure, and after getting into Browning’s manner. Another long poem, Christmas Eve and Easter Day, is in a familiar strain so far as the narrative part goes; but there is much abstract religious thought and argument in it, not always quite tangible: and it repels rather than attracts most readers.
I hope this is not disagreeably long. I love Browning so much, both as a writer and personally, and know so well how delightful he is to those who once fairly enter into him, that I am always anxious to get him read. …
Publication: Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti, ed. Roger W. Peattie (University Park, Penn., 1990), pp. 103–105.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
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