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PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
THE following chapters are an essay towards a
study of the mind and art of Robert Browning.
They are critical and expository, literary and
ethical. They are studies of life and thought as
presented by the poet, and of the poet's work as
tested by these; studies of the poet's art, and
expositions of the matter as well as the bearing
of his work. This seems the right way to present
this poet.
A poet who reads the life and thought of his
age has strong claims on its deliberate attention;
and if it be too much to say that the best poets
of our own time concern most readers more than
any other poets, it is the fact that they have
much to give no others can give, and that without
them we do not know ourselves.
This kind of "criticism" is thought to be the
forte and the foible of Browning. His significance
in this respect I have tried to show; I trust it
has been shown on grounds proper to literature.
But it will be said that one who serves such a
function ought not himself to need explanation.
That will depend on other things besides the
b
xviii
value of his work. In the present case, anyhow,
the need seems to be a fact. The reasons for it
I have tried to explain. The great reason lies,
however, in the matter and significance of the
work. The poet must be read from the inside,
and as a whole. To be put in a position to do
that is to be put in a position to understand
the poet.
One scarcely expects all who read good poetry
to read Browning. But I would gladly commend.
the poet to those readers who have a genial yet
serious care for poetry, and who have a serious
yet genial care for life. And it one can show
the beauty and worth of the poet's work, and
place it rightly in the field of life and thought,
more of those to whom he really belongs may
read Browning.
▼
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
These studies were in part, and in the first
instance, lectures read to literary societies and
classes during the past six years. Their use
and their acceptance in that form has been one
reason for offering them to a wider public. But
this book is not those lectures. Besides new
chapters and much new matter, the whole has
been worked out afresh with a view to the
design above described, and with a strong sense
of the difference between the two forms.
In writing these studies I have used only the
poet's works and the excellent Browning Biblio-
graphy of Dr. Furnivall. But, as I have read at
their dates of issue most of the best critical essays
on Browning, it is quite likely that I owe sugges-
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
XIX
tions and qualifications to some of these, which I
would thus acknowledge. All who touch the life
and early writings of the poet are indebted to an
essay by Mr. E. Gosse. So far as the estimate of
ideas goes less has been done, except in essays of
Mrs. Orr, Miss West, Professor Dowden, and Mr.
R. H. Hutton, and in some of the papers of the
Browning Society.
I hoped when I began this book to have made
it a practically complete survey of the poet's work,
and especially to have given the more important
of the later poems.
Those who know the many
volumes of the poet's writings, and the matter.
they contain, will see why I have had to omit
these. And it seemed better, with the space I
had at command, to seek completeness within my
plan, and up to an important date, than to reduce
exposition to bare analysis and critical study to
illegible condensation, in order to include all the
poems intended. I am convinced that a mastery
of the method and ideas of the poet in the poems
here dealt with will afford a discipline and a clue
for the later poems, while I may be permitted to
say that in love for the poet, and with a desire
still further to extend the study of his work, I
should be glad, if opportunity offer, to include the
poems now omitted.
BRADFORD, September 1887.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION XV
as a right to be heard on the matters in question.
The true philosopher would be the first to allow
that the facts and principles such a poet is master
of are not only pertinent, but are of high and
peculiar value for our conclusions on the final
moral questions.
The breadth of Browning's "statement" of
these matters may be judged by the fact that his
readers include men of very varied schools of
thought, from orthodox Christians to the advocates
of "philosophic ignorance." Indeed, all who seek
a serious and spiritual "reading" of man's mind
and life will find much in his work with which
they can agree. In this spirit, and with this hope,
all that is written here of the matters now in
question has been written.
BRADFORD, July 1888.
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
THESE Studies were published some years ago,
and soon went through two editions. For various
N reasons they were not reissued at that time. They
are issued now because many inquiries for them,
since they went out of print, and other considera-
tions, seem to show that there is still room for
them in the literature of their subject.
The book has been carefully revised, in many
parts rewritten, three chapters are new, five others
largely so, and many additions have been made,
with the view of making it more complete within
its plan as a study of Browning's work. More
space has been allowed me than in the former edi-
tions, and I have been glad to avail myself of it,
though the longer and more important of the later
poems are still excluded. In "The Ring and the
Book," the "Dramatic Idyls," "Fifine," "Ferishtah,"
and some others of these later poems there is matter
for a further group of studies.
Since this book was first issued some important
events bearing on its subject have happened.
The poet, who seemed to write with much of his
old nervous force as late as 1889, submitted at
the close of that year to mortal fate, and was laid,
vii
viii
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
with impressive recognition of his services to
English life and literature, in the great Abbey
where he rests. In 1891 his Life and Letters, by
Mrs. Orr, was published. And last autumn the
Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, fitly edited
by Mr. F. G. Kenyon, were published. And a
fairly cheap and complete edition of Browning's
Poems has been issued at length.
Those parts of the book affected by Mrs. Orr's
Life, and by Mr. Kenyon's volumes, have been
rewritten. One is grateful for both. The sweet,
ardent, brave spirit of the wife is the main matter
of Mr. Kenyon's book, and there is less of the
husband and his work than one might have
expected. And Mrs. Orr leaves us longing for
more matter bringing us into direct touch with
the poet himself. For such matter we could
have spared a good many pages at the beginning
of her book, and all the "astrological hints."
The number of Browning readers has, I infer,
considerably increased during the last ten years,
and one judges that the attitude of readers is at
once free and cordial, recognising the poet's
vigour, his individuality, his wealth of poetry and
thought, though by no means accepting all parts
of his work. Such readers I would help, if I may.
Mr. Ernest E. Speight, B.A., has kindly done a
short index, chiefly of poems dealt with, and a few
leading matters.
JAMES FOTHERINGHAM.
BRADFORD, April 1898.
CHAP.
CONTENTS
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF BROWNING'S POEMS
INTRODUCTION:
BROWNING'S WORK IN RELA-
TION TO THE THOUGHT AND ART OF HIS
AGE-HIS PLACE IN VICTORIAN POETRY-
CERTAIN QUALITIES OF HIS WORK, AND THE
QUESTIONS THEY RAISE
I. LIFE OF THE POET-HISTORY OF HIS WRITINGS
-PERIODS OF WORK, AND GROWTH OF ART
II. LITERARY RELATIONS-THE AGE AND ITS IDEAS-
MODERN HUMANISM MATTER AND FORM
OF BROWNING'S POETRY HIS DRAMATIC
METHOD AND POWER
III. CRITICAL OBJECTIONS OBSCURITY
CAUSES-FURTHER ANALYSIS OF DRAMATIC
METHOD WITH REFERENCE TO IT-STYLE
AND ITS QUALITIES-CHARACTERISTICS .
IV. PAULINE
V. PARACELSUS
VI. SORDELLO
VII. BROWNING AS A Dramatist
VIII, FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846) .
IX. POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY, AND BROWNING'S
CRITICISM OF LIFE
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬――
AND
ITS
•
•
▸
1
PAGE
xxiii
I
29
56
77
104
III
140
165
185
198
xxi
'xxii
CONTENTS
CHAP.
X. RELIGIOUS POEMS:
THE SUN
XI. BROWNING'S POETRY AND THE IDEAL OF RELI-
GION-LEADING SPIRITUAL IDEAS.
SAUL, CHRISTMAS EVE,
XII. POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
XIII. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CASUISTIC STUDIES: CALI-
BAN AND BISHOP BLOUGRAM.
<<
INDEX
XIV. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CASUISTIC STUDIES: MR.
SLUDGE, THE MEDIUM .
XV. POEMS ON ART: PAINTERS AND PAINTING
XVI. POEMS ON ART: POETS AND POETRY
XVII. POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
XVIII. DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS
XIX. THE LOVE POEMS.
XX. BROWNING'S HUMOUR
XXI. NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING
EPILOGUE-
——
·
#
•
•
A
•
•
·
•
THE POET AND THE POETRY-HIS ART AND
MANNER OF WORK-DEFECTS AND VIRTUES
POWER THE POET AS
- GIFTS
AND
OF
>>
TEACHER RULING IDEAS — POINTS
CRITICISM
་
•
"
PAGE
238
267
301
350
376
404
423
442
456
480
513
531
548
567
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
OF
BROWNING'S POEMS
IN ORDER, AND WITH DATES, OF PUBLICATION
1833. PAULINE.
1834. Sonnet, EYES CALM BESIDE THEE, LADY, Monthly Reposi
tory (reprinted in Browning Society's Papers, part 12).
1835. I ARACElsus.
1835-6. THE KING (given later as song in part 3 of “ Pippa
Passes," revised, with six lines added); PORPHYRIA;
JOHANNES AGRICOLA (given later as "Madhouse Cells,”
in the "Dramatic Lyrics "); LINES (given later as song
quoted in part 6 of "James Lee's Wife "). These four
poems were printed in the Monthly Repository, edited
by the young poet's friend, W. J. Fox.
1837. STRAFFORD.
1840. SORDEllo.
1841. RELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. I. (Price 6d. pp. 16),
Pippa Passes."
(C
1842. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. II. (Price Is. pp. 20),
"King Victor and King Charles."
I

1842. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. III. (Price Is. pp. 16).
DRAMATIC LYRICS. Contents:
"Give
>>
66
Cavalier Tunes-1. "Marching Along"; 2.
a Rouse"; 3. "My Wife Gertrude. Italy" and
"France" ("Italy" given later as "My Last Duchess,
"France" later, as "Count Gismond "). "Camp" ar
"Cloister" (later, I. "Incident of French Camp
(C
xxiii
xxiv
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
"In a
2. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister ").
Gondola." "Artemis Prologizes,
"Waring."
་
Queen Worship" (1. "Rudel and the Lady or
Tripoli"; 2. "Cristina "). "Madhouse Cells," i., ii.
(vide above). "Through the Metidja to Abd-el-
Kadr." "The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
e t
66
CC
1843. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. IV. (Price Is. pp. 19),
"The Return of the Druses."
$49. POEMS.
1843. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. V. (Price Is. pp. 16), “A
Blot in the 'Scutcheon."
""
1844. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. VI. (Price Is. pp. 24),
"Colombe's Birthday."
3"
1844-5. THE LABORATORY (Ancien Régime); CLARET AND
TOKAY (afterwards "Nationality in Drinks"); GARDEN
FANCIES (I. "The Flower's Name"; 2. "Sibrandus
Schafnaburgensis "); THE BOY AND THE ANGEL;
THE TOMB AT ST. PRAXED'S (Rome, 15-); THE
FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS (part 1). These eight
poems were printed in Hood's Magazine between June
1844 and April 1845, and were reprinted in Dramatic
Romances and Lyrics, part 7 of "Bells and Pome-
granates.
>>
1845. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. VII. (Price 2s. Pp. 24),
entitled "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." Contents:
"How they brought the Good News from Ghent to
Aix";
Pictor Ignotus" (Florence, 15-); "Italy in
England" (renamed "The Italian in England");
"England in Italy" (renamed "The Englishman in
Italy"); "The Lost Leader"; "The Lost Mistress";
"Home Thoughts from Abroad.”
The eight poems
above given, as printed in Hood's Magazine, are in-
cluded, and the following besides, "The Confessional";
"Earth's Immortalities"; Song"; "Night and
Morning," i. and ii. (renamed "Meeting at Night,
"Saul" (part of);
tr
3)
60 Time's
:
Parting at Morning ");
Revenges"; "The Glove."
1846. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. VIII. (Price 2s. 6d.
"Luria," and "A Soul's Tragedy."
PP. 32), “Luria,
Two vols. (giving "Paracelsus," and "Bells and
Pomegranates"), as above.

o. CHRISTMAS EVE and EASTER Day.
OF BROWNING'S POEMS
XXV
1852. INTRODUCTORY ESSAY by Browning to certain (spurious)
Letters of Shelley.
1854. THE TWINS (done in aid of a Bazaar for a "Girls' Refuge"
founded and promoted by his wife's sister).
1855. MEN AND WOMEN. Two vols.
Vol. i.-Contents: "Love among the Ruins"; "A
Lovers' Quarrel; "Evelyn Hope"; "Up at a Villa
-Down in the City"; "A Woman's Last Word";
Fra Lippo Lippi"; "A Toccata of Galuppi's";
"By the Fireside"; Any Wife to Any Husband";
"An Epistle containing the Strange Experience of
Karshish, the Arab Physician"; "Mesmerism"; "A
Serenade at the Villa"; "My Star"; "Instans
Tyrannus"; "A Pretty Woman"; "Childe Roland
to the Dark Tower came"; Respectability”; “A
Light Woman"; "The Statue and the Bust ;
(C
Love in a Life"; "Life in a Love"; "How it
Strikes a Contemporary"; "The Last Ride To-
gether"; "The Patriot: An Old Story"; "Master
Hugues of Saxe-Gotha"; Bishop Blougram's
CC
Apology"; Memorabilia."
* ،
6.
MEN AND WOMEN.
6.
**
16
*C
Vol. ii. Contents: "Andrea del Sarto"; "Before
"After"; "In Three Days"; "In a Year"; "Old
Pictures in Florence"; "In a Balcony";
"Saul"
(whole of it); "De Gustibus-
Women and
Roses": 66
"Protus"; "Holy Cross Day"; "The
· Cleon":
Guardian Angel";
The Twins" (as
above); "Popularity"; "The Heretic's Tragedy: A
Middle Age Interlude"; Two in the Campagna";
↓↓
66
A Grammarian's Funeral
*
L
>>
W
; One Way of Love
;
Another Way of Love"; "Transcendentalism: A
Poem in Twelve Books";
Misconceptions"; "One
Word More: To E. B. B."
"
1856. BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM (written at Rome, 1854, pub-
lished in The Keepsake of this year).
1857. MAY AND DEATH, published in The Keepsake of this date,
and then in Dramatis Persone," with some changes.
1862. Dedication of Last Poems, by E. B. Browning, "To
Grateful Florence." The volume, edited by R.
Browning, had besides a Preface by him.
xxvi
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
1863. POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING. Third Edition.
Three Vols. (In these volumes no new work is given,
but "Sordello" is given as last poem of vol. iii., and
the poems made up to date were arranged in the order
they kept in all editions until the final edition, and
there very little changed-the arrangement being into
"Lyrics," and “ 'Romances," and "Men and Women,"
afterwards "Dramatic Lyrics," etc. Johannes
Agricola," then put as a romance, is now put among
'Men and Women." The "Soliloquy of the Spanish
Cloister," then named such, and "Porphyria," became
"Porphyria's Lover." The shorter poems were all put
first, and in the last two vols. the plays and the longer
poems, "Paracelsus," etc.)
CC
CC
1864. GOLD HAIR: A LEGEND OF PORNIC, Atlantic Monthly,
May. Given in "Dramatis Persona," and in the second
edition of that volume, with three fresh stanzas put
between 20 and 21.
1864. PROSPICE, in Atlantic Monthly for June; then in "Dramatis
Personæ."
1864. DRAMATIS PERSONA. Contents of this series same as now,
with these points of difference-(1) "James Lee"
became "James Lee's Wife," 1868; (2) "Deaf and
Dumb," written in 1862, was put in the series in 1868;
(3) and so was Orpheus and Eurydice" (printed in
Royal Academy Catalogue of 1864).
66
1868. POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING, 6 vols. (This
edition gave
“Pauline" and all up to its date except
Karshook's Wisdom," which was not reproduced.
It remained until 1888 the standard edition.)
1868-9. THE RING AND THE BOOK, 4 vols.
1871. HERVÉ RIEL, printed in Cornhill Magazine for March
(reprinted in " Pacchiarotto," elc., 1876).
1871. BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE.
1871. PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU.
1872. FIFINE AT THE FAIR.
1873. RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY.
1875. ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY.
1875. THE INN ALBUM.
1876. PACCHIAROTTO AND OTHER POEMS. (Contents as in final
cdition.)
OF BROWNING'S POEMS
xx-i
OF ÆSCHYLUS.
Transcribed by Robert
1877. AGAMEMNON
Browning.
1878. LA SAISIAZ and THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC" (with
Prologue and Epilogue).
1879. O LOVE, LOVE, THAT FROM THE EYES DIFFUSEST
YEARNING. A version of two stanzas of a Choral Ode
from the " Hippolytus" of Euripides, done for Professor
Mahaffy's little book on that dramatist in Macmillan's
series of "Classical Writers," to give its readers an idea
of the music and spirit of the original, vide p. 116.
(Contents as in final
1879. DRAMATIC IDYLS. First Series.
edition).
ISSO. DRAMATIC IDYLS.
edition.)
1883. JOCOSERIA. (Contents again same.)
1883. SONNET TO GOLDONI—
Second Series. (Contents as in final
Goldoni, good, gay, sunniest of souls.
Done for Album of Committee of Monument at Venice.
Given in Pall Mall Gazette for December 8th, but dated
November 27th (reprinted in Browning Society's Papers,
part 5).
1883. Paraphrase from Horace, ALL SINGERS, TRUST ME, HAVE
THIS COMMON VICE, Pall Mall Gazette, 13th December
(Browning Society's Papers, part 5).
ISS3. THE BLIND MAN TO THE MAIDEN SAID. A version of
a German song, found in a translation of Wilhelmine von
Hillern's novel, The Hour will Come, by Mrs. C. Bell,
and done by Mr. Browning (vide Browning Society's
Papers, part 4, p. 410).
1883. HELEN'S TOWER. Sonnet, written for Lord Dufferin, as
inscription for a tower raised in memo his mother.
Published in Pall Mall Gazette, 28th December 1883,
but dated 26th April 1870, given part 5, Browning Society's
Papers. Tennyson's lines for the same purpose, done ir
1861, are given, Memoir, vol. i. p. 478, with Lord
Dufferin's description of the memorial tower and its
site-“ An old world tower on the summit of a high
hill, looking over the Irish Sea to a long blue line of
Scotch coast.”
xxviii
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
1884. SONNET ON RAWDON BROWN, printed in Century Magazine,
February 1884, dated 28th November 1883 (vide Brown-
ing Society's Papers, part 5).
1884. THE NAMES. Sonnet.
Shakespeare!-to such name's sounding, what succeeds?
Dated 12th March 1884, given in Shakspere Show-Book,
May 1884 (vide Browning Society's Papers, part 5).
1884. THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST. A Sonnet done for album
given to Mr. A. Chappell, director of Saturday and
Monday Popular Concerts at St. James's IIall, printed in
World, 16th April 1884, and in Browning Society's
Papers, part 7.
1884. FERISHTAH'S FANCIES.
1885. WHY I AM A LIBERAL.
Sonnet, for book with same title,
edited by A. Reid, and published by Cassell & Co.
(vide Browning Society's Papers, part 7).
1886. SPRING SONG.
Dance, yellows and whites and reds!
Printed in The New Amphion, the Book of the Edin-
burgh University Union Fancy Fair. Given now in
"Parleyings," vi.
1887. PARLEYINGS WITII CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN
THEIR DAY.
1887. MEMORIAL LINES.
Fifty years' flight! wherein should he rejoice.
Done for Queen's Jubilee Memorial in St. Margaret's
Church (given in Browning Socicly's Papers, part 10).
1889. ASOLANDO.
NOTE.-In compiling the above List, Dr. Furnivall's Bibliography has been
used, and certain sections of the valuable Bibliography of Mr. T. J. Wise.
given in the Athenæum, 1894-96.
STUDIES OF THE MIND AND ART
ROBERT BROWNING
OF
BROWNING'S
INTRODUCTION
CION
WORK
IN
THOUGHT AND ART OF HIS
PLACE IN VICTORIAN POETRY—CERTAIN
QUALITIES OF HIS WORK, AND THE QUES-
TIONS THEY RAISE
RELATION ΤΟ
THE
AGE-HIS
IT was feared by some at the opening of the
Victorian era that science and machinery were
fast bringing us, if they had not already brought
us, to an age in which poetry could not live.
This was the assurance of Carlyle, and the fear
of Fitzgerald.
And there were reasons for the
fear, as it then seemed. Both the facts of litera-
ture and of life seemed to bear it out. For
some twenty years after the deaths of Shelley
and Byron there did not appear to be much
promise of a new or a strong poetry. And many
I
2
ROBERT BROWNING
circumstances of the time, many things in its
bias and temper, were little favourable to that art
which is the pure and disinterested yet passionate
expression of man's mind and man's life.
And others since that time have seen in our
occupation with political and economic reforms
and with material advances, and also in our
occupation with knowledge for its own sake or its
uses simply, conditions little favourable to poetic
art, or even antagonistic to it. Busy men are apt,
indeed, to be out of tune for poetry, and men who
care for affairs only, or for knowledge only, or
who by the daily custom and bent of their lives
are set restlessly on the "uses" of things rather
than the natural or the human joy and beauty of
them,—such men, by force of their very virtues, are
little capable of sympathy with an art that seems
to serve none of their ends, and to belong, indeed,
to another world than that in which their lives
are almost wholly spent.
Yet though these, and other things too, in the
life and spirit of our century have been unfavour-
able to a general and cordial regard for literary art,
we find that a new spirit and a fresh power declared
themselves pretty clearly and very soon, both in
prose and in poetry. Early in the forties both
Tennyson and Browning had done strong and
distinctive work, while in prose Carlyle had done
this in the thirties. The work thus begun was
nobly maintained. And now in surveying the
Victorian era as a whole we can see that it must
be accounted one of the great ages of our litera-
INTRODUCTION
3
1
I
ture, and especially of our poetry, "in spite of
democracy, materialism, and the reviews," to sum
up the fears of the prophet of the era.
Carlyle himself was the first to lead off the
"revival," and he remained a great and significant
force for many years of the era. But confining
ourselves to poetry (for which Carlyle saw no
future) it has long been clear that the two poets
who had most definitely proved their power by
1845, Tennyson and Browning, were and are the
leading poets of the era. And it would now,
perhaps, be generally allowed that, of the poets of
the Victorian age, Browning brought the strongest,
richest, and most active mind to poetry, and was
for that and other reasons the keenest and most
powerful poetic force of his time. In certain
respects he is not the equal of other good poets
of his age, of one great poet especially. In sense
of form and colour, in the eye for beauty and the
ear for music, in sense of fitness, and of the
structural and other limits of the art and medium
of poetry, in fine mastery of certain of its powers
and effects-though his powers in some of these
are great, greater than have often been recognised
-other poets of his age have equalled him, one
poet certainly surpassed him. But in wealth and
force of life and passion and thought, in variety
and energy of nature as of interest, and in a
certain Shakespearean play, breadth, and vitality of
mind, none of the Victorians have equalled him.
His lyrical and his dramatic powers, allowing
of course for differences of form and purpose,
4
ROBERT BROWNING
place him with the Elizabethans; his reflective
and critical powers put him with the best in that
kind of verse; and his subtlety and force as a
humorist are also great.
We have said that this, or something like this,
would now be fairly allowed. But it took a long
time to get this seen and allowed. Tennyson
and Browning had a very different experience in
the matters of critical estimate and popularity.
From the issue of the "Poems" of 1842, and
certainly from the issue of "In Memoriam,'
Tennyson was the favourite and the fashion of
the Victorian age. Browning did strong and
clear work as early as 1845, but not until 1870
was his quality and power as a poet broadly
recognised. For years his work remained unread
or misread-read by a few only of those who
read poetry, misunderstood of many of those who
looked into it. No small part even of the critical
opinion of the country was offended or puzzled
by it. For some thirty years this was the general
judgment and temper in regard to much of
Browning's work. Only after 1870 his work
began to find fair appreciation and acceptance.
Browning himself could never quite understand
why his work proved difficult and even bewilder-
He did not wish
ing to many for a long time.
it to be so, of course, and did not see why it was
So. He made some efforts to approach the
"public" and bring it to "like" him even. In
the main, however, he kept his path. He did the
work his genius chose and inspired, in the way he
}}
INTRODUCTION
5
felt to be true and fit. He made that work
clearer, stronger, fuller; and waited for that
audience without which the singer sings in vain.
After the better part of a lifetime of work and
song he found his "audience" a growing number,
and generously appreciative of and grateful for
his song.
After years of work it must have
been, and indeed we know it was, a high
pleasure to the poet to find his work understood
and heartily valued. This is the reality of fame,
that fame which for many has been but a hope,
and for some but a voice and a shadow-esteem
and use rewarding the integrity and fidelity of
genius. In some respects it may well have
seemed to the poet-bountiful, cheerful, and
strong as he was-like the judgment of posterity
itself. Only a long life enabled him to do this.
Wisdom and genius are always essentially "justi-
fied" of their works. But it is in such cases as
this only, when power, persistence, and truth are
well helped by time, that the thinker or the poet
finds himself at length approved, and his work
duly taking its place in that "hierarchy of powers
by which the thought and passion of man will be
ruled beneficially for long years to come.
To some, of course, this slow growth of appre-
ciation and regard will seem in itself an objection
and proof of defect. They will look at the long
time it took to win fame, rather than at the fame
won in the end; and they urge that, of all
writing, poetry ought to appeal most
quickly to those whom it concerns.
readily and
But it has
})
6
ROBERT BROWNING
not been so, nor is it in the nature of all poetry
that it should be so. There are, in fact, two
kinds of literature in this respect the literature
that from a fine simplicity and generality meets
with immediate acceptance; and the literature
which because it is more original or deeper, or
because it is more complex or more intellectual,
meets with a slower, or it may even be a somewhat
remote, acceptance. The work of many good
poets has had to pass through a time of waiting.
The simplest work may be the best, as they tell
us, but simplicity is not a matter of words only.
And there are facts of emotion and character, as
of action and belief, that are not simple; and
truth and adequacy must count in art as well as
simplicity. It has besides been found to be part
of the poet's function to lead in new developments
of mind and fresh constructions of experience.
And then the new experience, the freer and fuller
passion or thought, and the style framed to
express or suggest these, must be known and
mastered through the writings themselves before
the poet can be rightly appreciated. And the work
that meets acceptance only after a certain period
of waiting and preparation is by that assured of a
fuller significance.
In any case a generation passed between
Browning's first work and his due appreciation.
Now this means that his work has a pertinence
and fulness of interest for the later Victorian time,
such as it had not for the readers of the earlier
time. And what, we must ask, is the significance
INTRODUCTION
7
of this as regards the time? as regards the poetry?
change of literary taste and fashion? persistence
of the poet? or some coincidence of interests, as be-
tween the poet and the later time of a literary sort?
By such phrases it is often sought to explain,
or rather it must be said to set aside explanation
of, such facts as those just referred to.
But we
can never understand such facts, unless we bear
in mind that the facts of literature are vital facts,
in the full sense of the term. The roots of all
literature are to be found in life. It is originated
and maintained, not merely touched and modified,
by the passions and beliefs, by the principles,
interests, and hopes of men. To regard literature
therefore as casual, or decorative only, as ethically
superfluous and without essential relations to the
life it expresses or reflects, is to take it, not only
superficially, but falsely.
Like other vital facts, even when they seem to
lie apart, and to have merely special relations,
the facts of literature are in wide relations, are
animated by the larger forces and borne upon
the greater currents of man's work and life. And
the more alive literature is with passion and
thought, the more sensitive it is to every touch
of man's experience, the greater must be the
vital significance it carries. Of no part or kind
of literature, then, can this be so true as of the
greater poetry. There especially may be found, by
such as can read them, those "open secrets" of the
lives of men which go far to help us to understand
the spirit of those lives and of the life of man.
8
ROBERT BROWNING
And so it happens that the poetry that an age,
or any important section of an age, cares for,
finds really expressive and true, must tell much.
of the age itself. There are significant relations
and correspondences between such poetry and the
age for which it has vital interest-relations that
explain the interest of the poetry, and throw
light on the elements and conditions of the
secular life. That poetry is, in fact, a better
clue to the emotions and beliefs, to the dominant
and deeper passions and ideas, of the age than any-
thing else in its records. Since, then, the poetry
of Robert Browning has greater interest and fuller
pertinence to-day than it had forty years ago, it
must be because the time and phase of life upon
which we have come have closer relations with
this poet and his work than obtained between
him and the earlier years of the century. That
decade through which we are being borne rapidly
is more responsive to, and puts a higher value on,
the convictions and principles, the interests and
ideals, of this poetry than earlier decades of the
century did. Regarded in this way, the wider
appreciation and increasing value for Browning's
poetry acquire what may seem an unexpected,
but is surely a real significance as an index of
changes and movements greater and deeper than
any changes of literary fashion as such. From
this point of view, then, let us try to reach the
significance and ascertain the relations of the
poetry in question; and to do this it may be
best to go straight to the heart of matters.
INTRODUCTION
9
L
鲁
​Our age has been constantly called the Age of
Science, and by that has been mostly meant
physical or natural science. Our greatest ad-
vances were there, our ruling ideas were deter-
mined, and, in the case of many minds, exhausted
by the generalisations of that science. Our whole
bent of mind was fixed by scientific curiosity, our
standard of belief by the methods, conceptions,
and hypotheses of modern physics. Our image
of the whole was formed of the matter, and
bounded by the scope, of physical ideas. That
was the state of things as regards the mode and
measure of thought for fully a quarter of the
century, say from 1850 to 1880. But that is no
longer a fair, not to say a sufficient or complete,
description of the temper and thought of our time.
Many still hold, no doubt, by physical science as
the ruling factor and only legitimate sovereign of
the world of thought, and by them our character-
istics are drawn from that point of view. They
are such as these-our interest in and regard for
facts; our bias to what is real; our demand for
exactness of knowledge, for stringency of reason-
ing; our distaste for hypotheses, except those of
physics-these are our qualities and virtues. And
as art-work and theories about art always in
time take their colour and scope from the larger
ideas that are governing the age-from its view
of the world and life-so our art-work in its
various kinds and media has reflected this ruling
spirit. And those who argue from the scientific
basis of thought-content and even resolved to
10
ROBERT BROWNING
make it the measure of things every way—have
set forth, in regard to art, that imagination and
beauty, in the old senses, and all spiritual ele-
ments, have practically gone out of art, because
out of belief and life, and ought even to be
excluded deliberately and completely, that we
may have art rest sincerely on knowledge. They
would tell us that now we are to have, and in the
future can only have, a literature of fact, not a
literature of emotions and ideals any more.
Such, then, was the mode, and thus it was
argued by those who were ruled by the dominant
ideas of the years above mentioned, and much of
it continues still. But, looking at the matter in
a historic and not at all in a dogmatic way or
spirit, have we not got a good deal beyond that
time and phase of thought? To many of the
most active and representative minds of those
years, it did seem as if we had reached the final
phase of human culture and belief. Can that
mode of thought be now regarded as an ex-
haustive and final philosophy of man? Rather,
what is it we see by help of the test above given,
and from that point of view-that is, by taking
our higher and more vital literature as a clue to
the inner life and intimate thought of the present
time? Is it not the fact, in the terms of philo-
sophy, that a sensational and virtually physical
philosophy is giving way before an idealistic and
spiritual philosophy?-a mode of thought, de-
riving from Hume and concluding on Comte or
on Mill and Spencer, is giving place to a mode of
INTRODUCTION
II
thought deriving from Kant and Hegel, and as
yet without conclusion, but profoundly convinced
that the only conclusions that can be agreeable to
experience and adequate to the nature of man
must be sought on that ground, found at that
level and in that direction? The oracle speaks
there, though no philosophy has yet been able to
interpret its whole message; the great problems
are thinkable and soluble there, though no
system" has adequately yet resolved them.
((
Or the matter may be put in other terms and
from another side-in the terms and on the
grounds of literature purely. Looking at it thus,
what does the record show? We find that our
century's literature began with the transcendent-
alism of Wordsworth and the idealism of Shelley.
Neither of these, it is true, rested on quite definite
grounds of thought, on philosophic grounds. But
that does not affect their value as regards our
inquiry, or it may be that it adds to their value,
as implying a deeper grasp and a more vital
impulse. But those impulses, with their ideas,
seemed for a time to have been exhausted, and
to have been replaced by work involving no trans-
cendental ideas, carrying no ideal impulses, but
resting on positive ideas and physical conceptions.
Yet now is it not the fact that the idealism of the
earlier years of the century is coming back into
our literature—not in the old ideas, certainly, but
all the more for that in a truly romantic spirit
and scope? And this idealism has come upon
us again, in part out of the old, old depths of
I 2
ROBERT BROWNING
spiritual thought and passion; in part out of our
science, and what may be called our realistic
passion, our concentration upon fact and law out-
side us; and a new sense thus won of the ultimate
things always come upon by man's mind, what-
ever line it may take. Thus it happens that the
new idealism comes enlarged, because informed by
the results and expanded by the ideas of modern
knowledge, by its great conception of the history,
order, and extent of the universe. It comes,
therefore, with fresh sense of the mystery, and a
deeper sense of the greatness, of the system in
which we have our part. It comes also with
fresh conviction that the great things of man's
own mind and history, the poetry and religion
of the race, nobly interpreted and spiritually
affirmed, provide, not indeed a key to the great
secret, yet a clue guiding us among the questions
that arise at the end of all knowledge, and among
the things that wait at the end of all experience.
Browning's relations, as poet and thinker, to the
course of things thus generally described, and to
the movements upon which it is set, is a matter
of so much importance in the study of his poetry
that it must be early and frankly considered. It
may of course be said, it has been said, that they
do poetry a disservice who involve it in such
matters and movements as those we have de-
scribed, or connect it with changes such as these
in the course of thought. Poetry, as a transcript
of life, and almost a substantive part of it, should
spring from more general sources, and deal with
INTRODUCTION
13
simpler matters than these. And if Browning
has much to do with these things, then the diffi-
culty and peculiarity of his work is quite ex-
plained. We must meet the questions thus raised
at a later point. Here it may be said that a poet
who deals, as Browning does, with human motive
and passion, and with the "inner life" of men,
must work on some intuition of the life and
nature of man, on some basis of thought in
regard to these; must hold some positive relation
to the great ideas that have divided and dis-
tinguished minds on those points ever since men
have had interest in and thoughts concerning them.
And Browning's relations here, the motive and
quality of his work in this regard, are, it seems to
us, at once strongly distinctive and very signifi-
cant. Broadly, we may say his work, in the
aspect in which we are now considering it, is in
real and deep sympathy, and agreement even,
with the spiritual and ideal return of thought in
our time; and as this return has put many in
touch with his mind and work, who would scarcely
have been so twenty years ago, so his sympathy
and scope put him, partially at least, out of touch
with the years when art renaissance, physical
science, doubt, and criticism were the prevailing
moods and the ruling powers of the time. As
regards the poet, his relations here are as character-
istic of his genius as of his mode of thought. As
regards his readers, those relations are in good
measure the reason why the mind and the work
of this poet attract and satisfy, as they did not in
?
14
ROBERT BROWNING
earlier decades of our century. And surely the
strength, balance, and fulness of the humanities
of the work, as of the mind of the poet, are tested
and disclosed by his position and relations here.
And Browning's relations in this matter, which
we have said are as distinctive of his art as of his
point of view and mode of thought, may be come
at on several lines, and chiefly through the prin-
ciples of his work, and comparison of his work in
its principles and quality with other works of his
time.
Let us consider the matter on these lines
(1) Through the early affinities of his art;
(2) through certain qualities and principles of
his work as a whole; (3) through certain quali-
ties and principles of his mind, and his own rela-
tions to certain great matters.
The fact that Browning began with Shelley,
not with Keats, has much meaning here. It
meant, let us say, idealism, and a romanticism
that struck its roots thus early into passion and
life. The themes he then chose will be found to
show the same sympathy and scope. They may
be described as spiritual and passionate, and both
strongly. The medieval return, which in Keats
may seem chiefly imaginative, aesthetic, is in
Browning also ethical and vital. It is for him a
return to the age when, and to the types through
which, thought and passion boldly grasped the facts
and dared the depths of life. Carlyle resumed and
continued the Romantic Revival, and Tennyson
took up from Keats the Art Revival, early in the
thirties of our century. Browning is with the former
INTRODUCTION
15
rather than the latter in the scope and spirit of
his work. He is more set on truth and adequacy
than on finish and beauty of expression, more on
worthy and strongly human themes than on music
or facility of utterance. "Paracelsus" has more in
common with "Sartor Resartus" than with "The
Lady of Shalott" or the "Dream of Fair Women,"
and "Sordello" struggles in part with the problem
of Teufelsdröckh.
Nor is Browning romantic only, as frankly so
as Carlyle, though with many differences, rooted
in the strong thoughts and passions of men, and
seeking in poetry a medium for their frank and
ample expression, he is what, for critical dis-
tinction simply, we call "Christian," and his art
has that quality. This is, of course, a matter to
be developed later, and in connection particularly
with certain parts of his work. Here and on this
point we must be satisfied to say that in certain
principles and qualities of his work, Browning is
the strongest and most eminent master of Chris-
tian art during the Victorian era-of Christian
art in the sense defined by himself in "Old
Pictures," and elsewhere. He held from the first,
and from the first he wrought on the principle,
that the art that is to represent human life must
recognise the mystic greatness of thought and
passion, of effort and aspiration in man, and
must find ways to make itself the medium of this
greatness. We are not here concerned as to
whether this is a sound theory of art, but only
with the fact that it was a constant principle of
16
ROBERT BROWNING
Browning's art. It bewilders readers of "Para-
celsus" and "Sordello," and much later of " Fifine.'
It also consummates many a fine poem of the poet's
maturity. It stimulates the poet with a sense of
the greatness of his true subject, and it affects, of
course, his standard of truth and adequacy of ex-
pression, giving him, in fact, the standard indicated
in "Andrea del Sarto," and praised in "Old
Pictures," and in "A Grammarian's Funeral"-a
standard which even in art values ideality, fulness
of life, and a divine suggestiveness as more than
easy definiteness or technical perfection.
When we try this matter on the third of the
lines above named, we find the same results. It
has often been a question with Browning's readers,
in what relation he stood to the course of the
higher thought of his time-to that great discus-
sion always proceeding, never complete, which
affects the grounds of all thought, and how he
was affected by the discussion. Nor has the
answer to the question, when put and tried by
reference to his works, seemed clear or certain.
Browning spent a long life in a century much and
deeply moved by debate of great questions. There
were great changes in many minds and much
movement of the mind of the age in his lifetime;
and he took deep interest in the questions and
their discussion, but scarcely, so far as appears, an
interest that can be called personal. The debate
does not seem to have really affected his greater
convictions, or to have disturbed his central
position. His principles, broad and deeply placed,
".
-
""
INTRODUCTION
17
almost from the days of "Sordello," remained the
same. A man of strong nature and strong intel-
lect, he seemed to maintain a marked independ-
ence, and occupied a significant position amid the
controversies of his time. The great points only
of its debate appear in his work.
The many
doubts of Clough, the spiritual regret and trouble
of Arnold, the scepticism and pain of a dozen
writers and singers-his work is clear of these—
above them, it may be, but somehow remote from
them; while at the same time he showed, from
"Paracelsus" onwards, a clear grasp and deep
interest in whatever is general and permanent in
the efforts men have made to harmonise experi-
ence and belief. He kept throughout a sure and
sound sympathy with essential things. It results
from this, we think, that many writers who spoke
to the earlier years of his time, and who were
more heard then than he was, have less pertinence
now, because they have a narrower hold of life,
and the modes of thought they expressed and
emphasised have more or less faded into that past
which so soon comes for all that is partial; while
Browning, with his freer and stronger touch both
on the doubts and the beliefs, on the hopes and
fears, that do not pass away, but stay with the
heart of man, because their sources are always
present in man's life, is more heard and far better
understood now than he was then.
The same breadth and hold upon essential things,
which Browning has thus shown in regard to less
important controversies, he has shown in regard to
2
18
ROBERT BROWNING
the grand controversy of our century—that contro-
versy above described as between the realism of
physical science and the idealism of faith, imagina-
tion, and philosophy. The present, we have said,
may be described as an age of science, tending to
a deeper thought of things, and seeking a larger
interpretation of experience. Our higher poetry,
to be adequate, must unite the tendencies and
combine the principles of both. It is peculiarly
distinctive of Browning that he combines and
harmonises those principles. He has the scientific
interest, the critical observant temper and power
of eye and mind, the love of facts, the respect for
experience, the perfectly free search after truth
which mark the faculty and make the virtues on
which we have set such value of late; and his
work has those qualities and interests so strongly
marked that many of its readers have been drawn
to it by these powers, and are only aware of these.
His habit is not to pass over facts or refine or
dream them away, but most distinctly to see and
grasp and interpret them within his scope. He
seeks the world of facts and events, the world
of men; but it is not to remain and rest there.
He seeks a way through the world of facts and
experience, frankly and entirely faced and accepted,
to an order and a world beyond-the world of the
mind and the heart at their best. From Plato he
learned (cf. "Pauline") the reality of "the world
of ideas." By the vivid energy of his own mind
he has maintained his sense of that " " unseen
universe." But his way of reaching and making
INTRODUCTION
19
solid to himself whatever may be known or
guessed of that "ideal world" is through the
facts of man's mind, and the facts of experience
exactly known. He has no belief in any simple
intuition of thinker or poet. As against such
thinking, and as against all vague abstractions,
he is scientific, inductive if you will. His humour
is realistic; his dramatic method is personal,
particular. In a phrase he himself uses, he is at
once objective and subjective, and both intensely.
He has a strong hold on fact, a resolute aversion
from fancies and illusions, however arising, from
whatever part of man's nature they spring, by
whatever interests encouraged; keen and hardy
thought and care for reality are constant elements
of his work. His energetic curiosity has in it
something of Bacon; his vigorous research and
intellectual exploration something of Aristotle.
Science, in its large and thorough sense, though
no "pursuit" of his, is in complete sympathy
with the habit and operation of his mind. But
with this quality and these powers he is also a
thinker, and, above all, a poet. He is, therefore,
not mastered by his practical bent nor by the
world of facts, and he is certainly not absorbed or
over-impressed by recent aspects of knowledge, or
by the results of modern science. He knows how
"mere facts" neither exhaust the world nor satisfy
the mind. He knows the "infinite significances"
that facts have for thought, and how this signifi-
cance comes of the mind's own laws and depths.
He is, in a word, an idealist in the last resort
·
20
ROBERT BROWNING
Behind the energetic realism and strong grip on
facts is a "visionary power," and sense of ideas-
convictions and passions that claim and affirm a
world more real because ideal. Every fact-and
the body of experience is seen upon this ground—
is illumined and transfigured by this principle.
He has the poet's " ulterior, intellectual percep-
tion," the artist's sense of the reality of the ideal,
the thinker's conviction of its spirituality. Aware
of both sides of experience, and keenly aware of
its real side, he yet seeks on its ideal side the clue
to experience and to the ultimate elements of
man's own nature. Of all worlds, to him the most
real is the world of man's thought and passion;
and this world of man's mind and spirit has far
greater interest for him than any world of things
and forces. The beliefs and emotions, the char-
acters and actions, of men, the expression of man
through religion and art, the revelation of man in
literature and history,-here indeed is a realm of
facts of most curious and profound interest, facts
requiring and rewarding interpretation more than
any other facts, and throwing more light than the
whole body of physical knowledge on all that is
of most value for us to know. With the strongly
positive quality of nature that has been described,
Browning has bent his mind upon those facts.
above all others, and in his study and command
of them gives assurance both of solidity and depth.
In an age of science mainly physical, he has main-
tained and illustrated the supreme interest and
most real significance of man, not only to himself
INTRODUCTION
21
and with reference to every "use" of life, but with
reference to knowledge too. To this ground he
has kept; from this standpoint and with this
outlook all his work has been made.
And yet it must not be supposed that the poet
is a theorist or a dogmatist at all, either as respects.
philosophy or religion. Dealing with life and the
grand facts that concern both religion and thought,
he must involve results touching both, but as a
poet. No formal conclusions may stand between
him and life. According to a famous phrase, all
formulas must be set aside that life may be seen
truly, that the poet may use his qualifications for
the mastery, frankly and totally, of all facts that
concern him. With this freedom, and with his
powers, the poet becomes a spiritual thinker of
high value and pertinence at present. By sight
of a clear, strong mind, by energy and depth of
nature, he affirms the truths of man's mind in its
integrity—the actual significance and scope of
man as life and consciousness present him.
And now, having considered the question before
us, as it regards the mind of the poet and certain
principles of his work, let us consider it rather as
it touches his readers, that we may see more
closely the things that make this poetry so signifi-
cant to them, putting them in tune with it and
with its ideas. On the side of philosophy, we have
found what has been called an "idealistic reac-
tion" in progress among us; and that, as respects
both thought and religion, is a good key to most
other things and tendencies of the time present,
22
ROBERT BROWNING
The life and passion of a people are fairly one.
And what is known as philosophy, though a
matter strictly or explicitly concerning a few, yet
gives the drift and sense of all the more earnest
and distinctive thought of the time. And so it is
here. After some years, during which a restricted
and partial creed, type of culture, and mode of life
had on the whole their way with us-with many
of us, at least-we have come to feel that they are
too narrow for us. We have become aware of
elements ignored, of powers unsatisfied. We have
felt the need, in other terms, for some transfigura-
tion of the world of real knowledge and real
interests; for some great expansion and idealisa-
tion of life. Old conceptions and interpretations
were no more available. They had become dreams
or incredibilities. We were then as pilgrims out
in search of new shrines and homes. For a time
we had thought that the "higher ideas" of physical
and cosmical knowledge would serve us. They
seemed for a time capable of that development
and application which should satisfy all our reason-
able wants, reconcile the soul to experience, the
mind to "the burden of an unintelligible world,"
and the heart to the sorrows and limits of life.
But for not a few that appears no longer possible.
The glow and promise of the dawn has "faded'
into the light of day, the "common day" of real
life, and many things are seen more truly within
as without. And so many, sanguine or resigned
once, now seek the escape of some fuller solution
of questions. They seek to breathe again "the
"}
INTRODUCTION
23
larger, the diviner air" of the great and faithful
spirits of the past. They seek the power that
made these great and generous. They see that
such power flows from great convictions, and from
the free and sublime affirmations of the "soul."
There is a higher thoughtfulness, a finer earnest-
ness, and greater breadth of nature. Deeper
interest is taken in the history and problems of
man's mind; far deeper interest in the great
questions arising out of man's beliefs. The old
troublesome questions and longings, hopes and
fears, are seen to be part of the nature, not part
only of the delusions and superstitions, of man.
Culture and the heart have become more spiritual.
And so, whether it be in philosophy or art, the
history or the poetry of man's life, what we seek
is a vital affirmative interpretation of the mind
and the word. The new appreciation of Hegel,
and the increased and continued interest in
Browning, both spring from the same causes and
point in the same direction. We are no more
satisfied with a negative philosophy, with critical
studies. We seek a truth that shall sincerely
justify and carry forward the whole thought and
passion and power of man as they come to us out
of the past; as we find them around us in the
faith and work and art of the past; as we carry
them within us in that present which is not only
the memory but the soul of the past. From that
external nature which was over-ruling, from that
cosmical nature which was overpowering us, we
turn again to human nature and the full free mind.
24
ROBERT BROWNING
We see again that the realities of mind have a
substance and significance all their own. Man's
own mind must be true. Man's proper nature
must be our best guide to the higher truth. The
higher truths—that is, true views of the highest
matters must be spiritual views. And our
highest truth, that truth which must give the test
of belief, the measure of hope, the direction of
effort, and the symbol of faith, that must be built,
not only on natural knowledge, but on man's spirit,
must be not only a scientific but a philosophic
truth. It must be not rational and real only, it
must also be spiritual and infinite. It must give
credible interpretation of the world, it must in-
terpret man to himself. And it now seems possible
to do this only at the height and on the ground of
some great spiritual philosophy.
After what has above been said, it is hardly
necessary now to say that with the spirit and
ideas of this movement, of this religious reaction,
as it might be called, the temper and work of
Browning are in generous and frank agreement.
No work of the time is more so. Just when
many minds suspect or have proved the inade-
quacy of a certain type of culture and view of
life, and are looking for a freer and fuller ideal,
his poetry has gained wider attention and new
interest. During the years when physical science
and philosophical scepticism were the ruling belief
and fashion, another poetry and another poetic
ideal had their way with the representative minds.
of the time. A poetry deriving from Keats, not
INTRODUCTION
25
from Shelley or Wordsworth, was the mode-a
poetry delightful and beautiful in many ways,
and, as art, worthy of the praise some good
critics have given it, but without the substance
and vital power of the greater work, because
without the beliefs and ideals of that work.
That poetry has less hold now, Browning more;
and the two facts should be seen to appreciate
the change. Browning's intense and profound
humanity, his larger thoughtfulness, his reality
and regard for facts, his spiritual quality and
depth, his regard for ideas and the great principles
of man's nature, these qualities, indifferent or
objectionable before, are felt now to offer the
notes of the fuller ideals that are desired. He
kept his own course, and made work of his own
kind, through years that were out of sympathy
with him. By bent of genius, as by force and
breadth of nature, he had hold of a surer ground
and a larger thought than other writers of his
time. While these accepted the secular basis of
thought, he took life and history, the nature and
spirit of man in its whole scope, as his field and
ground. With frank acceptance and confidence,
nay with a positive delight, in whatever is real in
man, and with the most entire freedom as to all
doctrines about these realities, his test of faith has
been what best agrees with man as we know man,
-above all what best unfolds every sincere passion.
and power of man's mind and will. The soul is the
sovereign fact; and the true ideal, resting vitally
on that, and respecting experience and knowledge,
26
ROBERT BROWNING
must transfigure both in a spiritual sense, and
carry the life and mind of man onward to those
things that the spirit of man has always been
aware of, but the fulness of which is beyond the
grasp and even beyond the imagination of man.
The pertinence and import of our poet's work,
in this aspect, and in these relations of it, have
now, we trust, become clear on the broad ground
above taken. We have deliberately kept the
discussion to the points thus raised, reserving
further points of this order to the chapters pro-
perly concerned with them, and to the close of
our study. We may be allowed to add here that
in the present state of things, with much futile
belief and futile doubt, and much unreality in
both kinds, with that shift in the centre of
thought, and that reconstruction of belief, which
are in process in our midst, it is good to have the
grand moral facts and their human bearings made
clear by one who has kept just and equal hold on
the mind and spirit of man, and who regards the
matters in question in the ways above described.
For thus in the light of a large and free inter-
pretation of life we regain the depth and sincerity
of the mind; we recover through life and the soul
those truths that many have not yet recovered
through thought; and see that the great truths,
though they change in form, abide in their sub-
stance for ever, and grow for man with man's
growth.
But all this we feel brings up at the outset
one of the offences of Browning's poetry to
INTRODUCTION
27
certain good readers. That he should deal with
such matters of "belief and life" in and through
poetry is his offence for them. These matters, so
constantly interesting to some, may be for prose,
for philosophy perhaps, but they are not for
poetry. And it scarcely meets their objection to
say that Browning is never didactic, that he is
always dramatic, and presents these matters as
part of life.
He is dramatic, and he presents the
matters objected to as vital parts of his studies of
particular minds in given situations. But his
offence is that he brings these matters up so
explicitly and so often. And it may well be
argued that since he selects and develops his
personæ and his situations in the way and on the
lines he adopts, these matters must belong to his
own mind, to his intuition of man, and his inter-
pretation of life. They surely do so belong, and
it seems therefore better to take the question on
its merits, and as readers to reckon quite frankly
with this quality of the poet's work and all it
carries. On the critical side of it we take the
question up at a later point. Apart, as it seems
to us, from the preferences of certain readers, and
the one-sided theory of a certain school of critics,
the question whether poetry as such may deal
with criticism of life and with the great interests.
of belief requires little discussion.
All poets
deeply interested in man and in life do it. Shake-
speare does it as well as Milton; and Dryden and
Pope do it even more; and Tennyson does it as
well as Browning. / And the great poets of Greece

28
ROBERT BROWNING
did it long ago. And we all gain, on matters of
deep and permanent interest to us, through this
high function and human quality of poetry.
Much will of course depend on how these matters
are treated in poetry, and on the aspects of them
selected. And readers, who find the easy hand-
ling of familiar aspects poetic and interesting, are
apt to say, when less obvious aspects are pre-
sented under more strenuous treatment, that the
matter is unpoetic. But the principle is the same.
And it may be argued for Browning that his very
mode of presentment is such as to secure life and
reality for his approach to and treatment of these
matters. It is vain to say that he is never
didactic. It_is__fair to say that he is always
dramatic—that these matters are parts of life with
and for him, and are as we may say studied in their
place and at their worth in life. But the fact is, and
it is best to see it at once, that on these matters
our poet breaks fresh ground, and is independent,
as well as strenuous in his handling. As a thinker
he is alert to see their meaning, as a poet quick
to feel their interest, while as an artist he broadly
holds that art not only may but must present
what belongs to the best interests and makes for
the larger good of men. And on this, as on other
points concerning poetry, let us not be misled by
the easy dictum that art must be the minister of
pleasure. It should unfold the life and serve the
joy of men, as we venture to argue at a later point,
by giving the world of man's life in that higher
reality which reveals both its beauty and its good.

CHAPTER I
LIFE OF THE POET-HISTORY OF HIS WRITINGS
-PERIODS OF WORK-AND GROWTH OF ART
IT is matter of commonplace that the life of a
man of letters is to be found rather in the content
and history of his writings than in the events of
his life. But the facts of a writer's life are help-
ful always, often essential, in the study of those
writings. If the inward activity and experience
be more than all outward circumstances, yet
those circumstances have often close and im-
portant, and always suggestive, relations to the
life of the mind. We propose here to set forth
only such facts of the life of Robert Browning as
seem to us to have these relations.
He was born May 7th, 1812, at Camberwell.
It is well to know the stock from which an
original and highly endowed nature comes. It
helps us to trace his qualities, and understand, or
at least to define, his powers.
In this case the
matter is certainly interesting. The main stock
of the Brownings was, it seems, West Saxon, but
through his mother the poet was German and
Scotch as well. And the wise in these matters of
heredity see much in this descent-English realism
29
30
ROBERT BROWNING
!
and strong sense, a turn for German metaphysic
and idealism, and on the Scotch side an interest
in theology and a taste for argument.
The poet's father and grandfather were both of
them clerks in the Bank of England, well-esteemed
and successful. The grandfather was, we infer, a
somewhat hard, worldly, and wholly practical man.
The father was a man of finer nature and better
gifts, more generous, a lover of letters, a lifelong
reader and collector of books, who put the best
things of that sort about the poet from his boy-
hood. He had some turn for verse, and for grot-
esque rhymes especially. He was a careful reader,
and many of his books were old and rare. He
was, besides, a man of simple tastes and much
kindness. Both father and grandfather were
finely healthy men, living to be eighty-four years,
and of the father it was said that "he was never
old." But the poet's mother, described by Carlyle as
a "true Scotch gentlewoman," was of a delicate and
nervous constitution; and Mrs. Orr thinks that the
mother's temperament was traceable in the son, with
not a little of the energy and physique of his father.
Browning was educated at private schools near
his home; but studied for a short time, Greek
chiefly, at University College, London, and French
with a tutor at home. It may seem curious that
his father did not send him to one of the univer-
sities, except so far as the fact of the Brownings
being dissenters may explain that, but he certainly
encouraged and generously supported his son in
all intellectual tastes and pursuits.
LIFE OF THE POET
31
As a boy Browning was active, restless, quick,
keenly intelligent. His feelings were both sensi-
tive and strong. He was and remained always
tenderly and warmly devoted to his mother, and
he showed as a child a fondness for and interest
in the life of animals, and a power to draw them
to him.
He was early a rhymer, and soon made verses.
He was a busy reader of books, not of the hour,
but those older masters of English of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, when passion and
thought had scope. Yet his first verses naturally
show the influence of Byron, for the Byronic
fashion was then in its strength. Mr. Gosse has
told how he had "a volume of verses
a volume of verses" made the
year of Byron's death. But next year he found
some of Shelley's poetry, and was so struck by
what he found, that he sought out that poet's
publisher, and got the rest of his works. At the
suggestion of Mr. Ollier, the publisher, he got
Keats also; and it is a sure test of the poetic
sensibility of young Browning that he felt the
genius of these poets long before they had taken
their place in English poetry.
He passed, it seems, through a time of disturb-
ance and restlessness, both moral and intellectual,
both as to choice of work and place in life, and as
to the questions the revolutionary temper and
discussions had raised in minds like those of
Byron and Shelley, and many others of that time.
There are traces of this in " Pauline," surely. But
it is pretty clear that this period was not of long
32
ROBERT BROWNING
duration, and, though it modified the poet's creed
and way of viewing life, it left him as "Pauline "
implies, and "Paracelsus" makes clear, with a deep
religious emotion and conviction.
In the matter of profession he chose literature
or, we may say, poetry chose him and held
him. Other lines were thought of, it appears, but
his father honourably let him follow the true bent
and higher purpose of his mind. It was a noble,
if also, with moderate means, an ascetic choice,
and he kept to it for years with little encourage-
ment, and with no "gains" that may be "posted "
in any ledger yet devised.
He lived for poetry
when there was no hope of living by it, and to
poetry he gave his whole life.
Mrs. Orr has a story about his "reading and
digesting the whole of Johnson's Dictionary" by
way of preparation for literature. It scarcely
seems a sound or vital way of preparation, and
one must think that his study of the Elizabethans
shown in "Pippa Passes," and of Shelley and
Keats shown in all the early work, were much
more pertinent and fruitful. To literature, any-
how, from this time, he gave himself, and not to
study" the "British public," but to give what he
felt and saw, and to wait results.'
((
His first schemes were characteristic, ambitious
we may say, with that ambition which is the
promise of accomplishment, because it is the
instinct of power. He planned a series of mono-
dramas about 1831-2, whose object was to depict
certain leading types of men and women. His
LIFE OF THE POET
33
}
scheme does not seem to have got much beyond
conception and outlines, and only a fragment of
it remains in "Pauline," printed early in 1833,
and reprinted in 1868. The poem keeps its
place among his works, not for the value he sets
on it, but simply because he could not keep it
from being published; and yet it shows more than
his bias and leading interest. One critic felt the
poet in it, and spoke rightly of its vivid, spiritual
power; and, as John Mill valued and Dante G.
Rossetti copied it, the poem is certified of a degree
of power and beauty.
"Paracelsus," published in the spring of 1835,
was his next poem. It was printed at his father's
cost, and its reception justified the caution of the
publishers, though it could not settle the merits of
the work. Its energy and abundance of style and
thought and passion, and the splendour of many
of its passages, ought to have made readers of it
aware of the poet and glad of his power. But it
found few readers, though Forster and Macready
saw its worth. The author is still moving on the
lines of monodrama, but his aim is more definite,
and his resources are far greater than they were
in "Pauline." The work, we are told, is “ a poem,
not a drama," and "not a dramatic poem." The
author is not sure of the form, but it is clear that
he is seeking some sort of dramatic expression.
It was after the issue of "Paracelsus" that the
young poet, then living with his parents at
Hatcham, began to be known by other men of
letters. Talfourd, Hunt, Milnes, Dickens, Words-
3
34
ROBERT BROWNING
worth, and Landor are some of those whose ac-
quaintance was made by the author of " Paracelsus,"
as a poet of some distinction and of promise.
And among others to whom he became known
was Macready, the great actor, and Forster.
There was talk of a tragedy which Browning
might write. Macready, who wished to improve
the stage, and thought the young poet had
dramatic power, suggested a play. The subject.
of Strafford was afterwards chosen. The result
was that the drama of that title was written, and
played at Covent Garden, May 1837, the chief
parts being taken by Miss Faucit and Macready
himself. It was a success, but had only a run of
five nights.
In the preface to "Strafford," the poet speaks
of other work with which he was busy, and from
which the drama was a pleasant escape. That
other work was "Sordello," with which, we infer,
the poet was occupied from 1837-1840, when it
was published by Moxon. Few read, very few
understood, and perhaps none approved. Into it
the poet had poured, without stint or flagging,
the wealth of thought, of self-observation, of
experience, of poetic study so far gained, as if
to prove himself, and compel attention by the
fit, however few. He counted on more sympathy
than he found. And it was natural that, dedi-
cating the poem twenty-three years later to his
friend, M. Milsand, the poet should acknowledge
disappointment; and very natural that the public
failed to read his poem.
LIFE OF THE POET
35
With readers, so far, it is clear he had made
very little way. "Strafford" had been his most
successful work in that respect, and as by that he
had found a "pit audience" from the boards of
Covent Garden, he now sought a "pit audience"
through the press. Moxon suggested short works
in a cheap style. The poet agreed, and the plan
was carried out. His poems were issued in
pamphlet form, yellow paper covers, double
columns, at prices varying from 6d. to 2s. 6d.
That was the series known as "Bells and Pome-
granates." There were eight parts, the first issued.
in 1841, the last in 1846; the first began with
Pippa Passes," the last had "Luria" and
and a
"Soul's Tragedy." In these were issued the
dramas, except the first, the "Dramatic Lyrics
and the "Dramatic Romances "-the first work
by which the poet became known to the wider
public. The name of the series was explained in
Part viii." Bells" to denote the music, "Pome-
granates" to signify the matter it was meant should
go with the music; "sound with sense, poetry
with thought," was the aim of the series and the
meaning of the title.
(C
})
But here we have come to the romance of the
poet's life.
In 1839 he was introduced to Mr.
Kenyon, a lover of art and a friend of good men,
and through him he was introduced to a very
dear relative, Elizabeth Barrett. The early parts
of the "Bells and Pomegranates" had drawn her
attention, and won her warm approval. And in
her "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" she spoke of
36
ROBERT BROWNING
their author as one of the poets read to the Lady
Geraldine.
'Or from Browning some Pomegranate," which, if cut deep
down the middle,
Shows a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.'
جر
(C
her.
The phrase was happy and true, and showed that
finest sympathy which touches the heart of a poet.
through his work. The lady had proved her powers
in works of her own, and by culture, as by genius,
she was well qualified for a true and even perfect
He saw the
response to the mind of this poet.
poem and the reference, told Mr. Kenyon warmly
of his appreciation. Kenyon asked him to write
He did so, it seems, in January 1845. A
correspondence thus arose, and then personal
intercourse. Through some accident and a great
sorrow Miss Barrett was, as is well known, an
invalid, with no great hope of ever being any-
thing else, in spite of keen and happy activities
of mind, and "with nothing," she said, "to inte-
rest any one." But Browning was interested and
strongly attracted at once. Heart whole till then,
he gave his whole heart then and for ever to this
bright, gentle, delicate yet ardent woman. They
saw each other often, though she had seen almost
no one for years. Her own words are that she
was "caught up into love, and taught the whole
of life in a new rhythm." And her "Sonnets
from the Portuguese" (a disguise, of course), the
vital record of her love, so intense and frank and
beautiful, so full of sweet surprise and passion
-
LIFE OF THE POET
37
and joy at the strong love that had come to her,
when death seemed the likelier visitant, these
sonnets are perhaps the most perfect of her
works, and certainly one of the finest series of
love poems in the literature of the world. Scarcely
more ardent, never purer, notes were struck from
love's lyre.
She grew slowly stronger. The doctor ordered
a more genial climate for the winter. Her father,
in a way he had, opposed. There was only one
way to carry out that and other hopes, by end-
ing her engagement with Browning in marriage.
They were married, 12th September 1846, in the
Church of St. Marylebone, without her father's
consent. It was a romantic proceeding. It was
her way, not to health only, but to all that was
best in life; and though her father's attitude in
the matter was always a sorrow to her, she never
doubted that she did right to act on her own con-
viction and decision.
Just a week after the marriage they left for Italy,
by way of Paris. They spent the winter in Pisa,
but moved to Florence in April 1847, and soon
settled there in the Palazzo Guidi. For the rest
of Mrs. Browning's life they lived in Italy, mostly
in Florence, with occasional visits to other parts
of Italy, which were a keen pleasure to her, and
visits to England and France. It was a new life
for her, bright, interesting, supported by a perfect
friendship and a cordial love. Some of her best
work was done during those years, not so much
of his, though some also of his best. "Christmas
38
ROBERT BROWNING
Eve" and "Easter Day" belong to this time, and
also the series of “Men and Women.”
In the words of Mr. F. G. Kenyon (in his
recently published "Letters of Mrs. Browning,"
vol. i. p. 395), "her already happy life was
crowned by the birth, 9th March 1849, of her
son," Robert Barrett Browning. Their home and
life in Florence were fit and beautiful. She
revived wonderfully in the stimulus of it, and in
the mild climate. She loved Florence and Italy.
Her love of the land, her delight in its memories
and beauties, her interest in its affairs, were almost
those of a patriot. She lived fifteen years there,
and the "Casa Guidi Windows" and other poems,
and her letters of this time, show her interest and
the brightness of her life. Fragile, and something
angelic in look and expression, she had a nature
full of vivid and subtle force; and she put herself,
with a fire and enjoyment that those writings
help us to measure, into her life and tasks. There
are quite a number of descriptions of their Floren-
tine home and its gracious happiness by those who
then saw the poet and his wife in the Casa Guidi;
the poet robust, active, friendly; the wife with
slight figure, pale face, large brow, dark hair, and
deep eyes, "half angel and half bird," full of
quick enthusiasm, yet cordially human and brave.
But she was not and never could have been
strong, and in spite of all favourable conditions,
after a short illness and somewhat suddenly, she
died, 29th June 1861,-died, as Browning touch-
ingly says, with the assurance that she was well,
LIFE OF THE POET
39
And so
and would be better, unwitting of death.
"ended on earth," to quote Mr. F. Kenyon again,
"the most perfect example of wedded happiness
in the history of literature," regard being had both
to the life and its poetic expression.
The sorrow and surprise, we may say, of his
wife's death were deeply felt by Browning. For
the time her loss seemed to take the heart out of
his heart, and his dearest motive out of life. He
stayed in Florence only to see all due arrange-
ments made in regard to his affairs there. And
though his wife is buried there he never, Mrs. Orr
tells us, visited Florence again. "Why should
I come?" he said to a friend who asked him, "I
can see it all in my head," a remark and attitude
uncommon and very characteristic.
The influence of his marriage on Browning's
work, though it must have been very real, is not,
we think, very marked. He did less work between
1849 and 1861 than was usual with him. Mrs.
Browning speaks of his requiring quiet and seclu-
sion, of his only writing when the mood was on
him, and of the mood not coming for months
at this period ("Letters," vol. ii. pp. 434-35).
She says again that they worked apart and did
not read their work to each other until it was
finished.
And yet, in the work done by Browning at
Florence, there are surely traces of his wife's
influence. The work of that time has always
been, by many readers, highly valued, for themes
and style. In the former we may find his wife's
40
ROBERT BROWNING
:
})
interest.
Then it was, perhaps, owing to his wife,
that in preparing an edition of his poems in 1849,
containing the "Bells and Pomegranates and
"Paracelsus," he "revised with a view to remove
obscurities." And the new poems of the next years,
"Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day," in 1850,
and "Men and Women," 1855, speak not only of
the new interests of the life in Florence, but also
of the influence of that " Audience of One" beside
whom the work was made. "Men and Women
is a series which, for clearness and balance of
matter and style, it would be impossible to surpass
in the list of his poems, whether it was owing to
the period of his mind then reached, or to circum-
stances.
But the years of fellowship passed, and the love
which delayed death rose above it, spiritual and
consummate. Browning is lyrical whenever he
touches this theme, and, whether in the dedication
of "Men and Women," or in the invocation of
"The Ring and the Book," the poet sings with
keenest passion-looking still, "despite the dis-
tance and the dark," to her whose presence, though
unseen, was unwithdrawn, and whose power to
help was greater and more essential than it had
been in the past.
After his wife's death Browning devoted him-
self to his son and to his work, to the education
of his son, to work that might be good for and
bring good to the boy, to that song, moreover,
which he felt to be his due "to England" and "
God who best taught song by the gift" of his wife.
to
*
LIFE OF THE POET
41
He settled in London. It offended and de-
pressed him at first, but with his interest in men
and women it was good for him, and in time he
saw not a little of the best of London society.
Now, it seems, more deliberately and regularly
than in the past, he set himself to the day's task
of poetry. His many volumes after 1861 are the
fruit of this, and their subjects and quality are
partly, at least, a result of it. His home for the
rest of his life was in the great city. His holidays
for a series of years were spent in France, mostly
at certain quiet little places on the north-western
coast. And these visits gave him not a few of the
themes of his later poems. He visited Switzer-
land too, and that has left its traces. Latterly he
went back again to Italy, to simple old Asolo,
an early visit to which had given him the "scenery
of " Pippa Passes"; to Venice, which years before
he had visited with his wife; and to certain spots
in the Alpine country of Northern Italy, that
proved good for him, Sainte Pierre la Chartreuse,
and Gressoney St. Jean, and later to Primiero.
It was on one of these Italian visits, in the autumn
of 1889, that he fell ill and died at Venice on
Dec. 12. He had been failing for some time, but
maintained his mental vigour and clearness to the
very end.
He was buried in Westminster Abbey
on the last day of 1889 among the great poets of
his country, and beside Tennyson.
And here it will be well for the interest of the
matter in itself, and for its relation to the poetry,
to consider and draw out the personal qualities
}}
42
ROBERT BROWNING
and characteristics of the poet. He spent, we
have seen, most of his years in London; and
this seems fit. There, where man and his problems
and ways touched and interested him. He was a
man with men, mixing with the life of his fellows;
friendly and manly, taking his part in conversation
frankly, and in fit circles an able and interesting
talker. In a certain way he was a man of the
world, measuring men and their affairs at their
due value in the world, yet independent and
unworldly at the heart of him. Observant, prac-
tical, common-sensible, but with a core of passion
and ideality. His nature was, in fact, richly
passioned, on a ground of strong intellect, with
manly control and even reserve of emotion. But
in his love for his mother and for his wife, and in
the disturbance of feeling roused by the deaths of
these, or by whatever touched the memory of the
latter, we see the depth and force, we feel the fire
and tenderness of his mind. His strong sensibility
to music is another test of his emotional quality.
He had, owing to this, a marked tenacity and
constancy of affection. He had a keen memory
for suffering and a certain shrinking from it. He
was thus an optimist by temper and habit, forced
by bias and energy of the brain, and by dramatic
observation and sympathy, to weigh his optimism,
yet inclined to make the best of things. He was
not on the surface sympathetic, and never senti-
mental. His centre was not in the emotions any
more than it was in the sphere of facts. With
the core of passion went a power of "abstraction,"
CHARACTERISTICS, LITERARY HISTORY 43
a life of thought and imagination. He was, we
may say, very real and down upon the earth, but
aware, too, and all the time, of the "world
unseen," that world of principles, laws, ideals,
souls, which seems shadowy and remote to many,
but is life of life to the true and sure discerner.
<<
We now resume the thread of the literary
history. Between 1855 and 1864 is the poet's
longest interval of silence; only in 1863 came a
new and collected edition of his works, giving
"Sordello," which had not been given before.
This edition was dedicated to John Forster, and,
with that fine cordiality which Browning often
uses, he expresses himself "glad and grateful"
that he who, thirty years ago, had been so
prompt and staunch a helper," should seem
even nearer now" than then. In "Dramatis
Personæ (1864) he gave new work, sustaining
the strength, subtlety, and passion of his best, and
discovering new phases of his power as a poet
dealing with the mind, conscience, and spirit of
man. Growth of argumentative and psychological
subtlety and rapidity, a deepening of spiritual
thought, a mellow, vital wisdom, and in some of
the work a tender, meditative tone, these are the
notes of his first volume, published after the death
of his wife.
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He had now drawn a good degree of attention
to his work; this volume confirmed it. Critical
opinion, which in the best minds had long dis-
cerned his genius, was now in other cases also
clearer as to his powers. The sense of these
44
ROBERT BROWNING
things, or evidences still more tangible, led to the
issue, in 1868, of that edition of his works in six
volumes, which, containing all published up to
date, remained for twenty years the leading
edition.
In the same year was published the first part
of "The Ring and the Book," completed next
year (1869). In the first section of that work
the poet was still aware of
a "British public that
liked him not.” He bore it no grudge for this,
rather he hoped it might yet like and understand
him. The "Ring and the Book" scarcely seems
the kind of work to win the public, which will
hardly read four consecutive pages of serious
poetry, not to speak of four volumes. Long
poems, whether Spenser's, Milton's, or Browning's,
are seldom read as wholes; and there was a joke
at the time that only the poet, the reader for the
press, and a learned bishop who read everything,
read "The Ring and the Book" through. Yet
the poem is in many points and most parts read-
able—more so than some that preceded and a
few that have followed. And this is clear, that
“The Ring and the Book," as it proved the vigour
and fulness of the poet's mind, finally established
his position. The poem was received as the
poet's masterpiece, and as possibly the greatest
poetical work of our time.
Its fame and accept-
ance certainly initiated, though they did not for
some years bring, that wider interest which is the
last period in the external history of the poet's
writings. His subsequent works were among the
LITERARY HISTORY
45
literary events of their years of issue, and most of
them went through several editions.
After 1870 Browning continued to provide his
readers with new works, with a fertility and con-
stancy that were noteworthy at times yearly,
and sometimes two in one year. But, having
followed the history up to the time of the poet's
fullest work, and the time when his genius met
with secure recognition, we need only, as to the
later works, notice the direction they have taken
and any new elements or interests they discover.
There is one new group, beginning with
"Balaustion's Adventure" (1871), going on to
Aristophanes' Apology" (1875), and the "Aga-
memnon" of Æschylus in 1877. These represent
the learning of the poet, his care for Greek art,
and his pains to reproduce finely one Greek
dramatist at least. They were also suggested by
the scholarship, and quickened by the memory
and by the work of his wife (cf. close of
"Balaustion "). In "Balaustion" he has given a
"transcript" of the "Alkestis"; and in "Aristo-
phanes' Apology," of the "Heracles" of Euripides;
and in the "Agamemnon" a literal and not very
legible version of that drama of Eschylus. This
is not the place to enter into the merits of
"transcription" versus "poetic translation," nor
into the soundness of his estimates of the Greek
dramatists. He prefers Euripides, and if that
poet be read in his versions, or from his point of
view, the reader will no doubt agree with him.
In another group we may take "Prince Hohen-
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46
ROBERT BROWNING
stiel-Schwangau" (1871), harsh and hard as its
name, many readers think; "Fifine at the Fair"
(1872); and the original parts of "Aristophanes'
Apology" (1875). The first deals with the career
of Louis Napoleon, and presents what may have
been the motives and ideas of that singular
"saviour of society." The second, through
imaginary circumstance and argument of a
dramatic kind, deals with love's uses, rights, and
duties; the use of love, as of all experience, in
giving life, motion, and development to the soul.
The third deals with the dispute between tragedy
of a thoughtful, rational, and moral kind, and a
comedy which accepts life and the social order
for use and enjoyment. There is casuistic subtlety,
breadth, and impartiality, and there is dramatic
appreciation in these poems, but they are "hard
reading." They are full, ingenious, argumentative
to excess, and their dramatic method complicates
and obscures the argument.
In another group we may put "Red-Cotton
Nightcap Country" (1873), and "The Inn Album "
(1875). These poems rest on stories, presenting
and interpreting them by the poet's special method.
They were a surprise to some readers, and not a
pleasure. There is more "story" in these poems.
They use facts of that kind more, and are painful,
not to say "sensational," in theme. They show
courage and freedom in exploring man's deed and
man's heart. Do they also show a pathological
rather than an æsthetic or ethical curiosity and
development?
LITERARY HISTORY
47
"The Two Poets of Croisic" (1878) belongs
to the same class, in so far as it tells, and
construes in telling, the stories of two lives that
had interested the poet, and set him thinking over
those secrets of feeling and character that would
enact and so explain them.
And the "Dramatic Idyls" (1st and 2nd series,
1879, 1880) and "Jocoseria" (1883) follow the
same method as those poems that rest on and
reconstruct stories. In such cases the poet draws
more on actual life. The work is simpler in
materials and problems than earlier works, more
rapid and objective. But his treatment of these
stories is most characteristic, They show a
curious interest in all facts that throw light on
human nature and the problems of passion or
will, and they show what may be called his
"criticism" of fact. They bring out the use of
facts for this poet. "A story for the story's sake"
is not his way. He thinks very simple stories
may be very wrongly told-all the facts given
and their meaning missed, because the essential
fact has been left out. Nothing is so misleading
as the facts of human life to those who are with-
out a clue to their meaning, nothing more suggestive
than those facts rightly seen and vitally placed.
And our dramatist of the soul uses his genius and
his method upon facts so as to suggest truths
that go much beyond any mere narration of
them. It is not merely to give them animation
that he tells his stories dramatically, it is the
better to get at their life and vital meaning, at
48
ROBERT BROWNING
ť
their sources and substance. It is a new appli-
cation of his method, and yet with the old interest
and purpose, the "study of the souls" of men
through the matter of these stories; very different
work from "Paracelsus" and "Sordello," yet
animated by the same purpose that guided those
works forty-five years before.
"Ferishtah's Fancies" (1885) and "Parleyings
with Certain People" (1887) are didactic and
meditative. In dramatic form, they "discuss"
certain themes of life and art; "Ferishtah" being
wholly occupied with the "criticism of life," while
the later volume is more occupied with certain
questions of art about which the poet has never
spoken so forcibly. Both volumes were very
notable, especially at the point in the poet's life
at which they were done the first for mellow
wisdom; the second for intellectual vigour, de-
scriptive power, and a freshness and energy that
recall those of earlier periods. The poet was still
writing with a degree of vigour and freshness of
lyrical and reflective power in the year of his
death. His last volume was published on the
day of his death, and though some of the poems
of "Asolando" seem to be earlier work, much of
it is no doubt work of 1888-89. His activity
and zest lived with his life.
And so we raise the questions of the sequence
and changes of Browning's work, the growth of his
mind and art, the periods of his work. Between
"Paracelsus" in 1835, and "Asolando" in 1889
-an interval of fifty-four years-what changes
GROWTH AND PERIODS OF WORK
49
do we find? And has there been growth of mind
and art as shown in the list of works? Can
Browning's works be divided into periods, and, if
so, what are their characteristics ?
The classification of a poet's work on this prin-
ciple has been much in fashion of late, and is
certainly helpful, where it really generalises the
facts of a poet's career; useful when it even
approximates such generalisation of the order of a
poet's works and the growth of his mind. Can
we do anything of the kind exactly or even
approximately for the works and for the art of
Browning? The first impression of most readers
will almost certainly be that it cannot be done in
his case. Browning has been very much the man
and the poet his readers know throughout his
career, only, according to subjects, varying in
difficulty and obscurity, not in vital characteristics
or in the qualities and force of his genius. And
there is so much truth in this view that one of the
poet's ablest critics has expressed her judgment
as to the uniformity and equality of the poet's
work without qualification. "As a poet he has
had no visible growth; he shows no divisions into
youth, manhood, and age; no phases particularly
marked by the predominance of an aim, a manner,
or a conviction." His genius is thought to have
"reached its zenith in 'The Ring and the Book'
only because that gives the largest illustration of
it"; but, according to this critic, no reason can
be given for his writing it in 1868-9 rather than
in 1840, except the external cause that led to its
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50
ROBERT BROWNING
production then; and "Fifine" might change
places with " Paracelsus" without any discover-
able incongruity.
Now, there must be a fairly good case for such
a view when so careful a reader as Mrs. Orr not
only thinks thus, but is so clear about it. And
yet this is not likely to be the whole truth about
the mind, the man, or the work. That it can
even seem true proves exceptional balance and
early fulness of growth; but a mind that did not
grow, that was not enriched or changed by ex-
perience, and an artist who learned nothing from
the practice of his art, would be above or against
all laws. And, indeed, the work, when closely
considered, shows that what is probable is also
more or less actual. It is not easy to fix the
lines of change or define the elements of it, to
mark dates, separate works, and specify character-
istics; and we may allow that in no case can that
be done upon "hard and fast lines," such as are
used at times. The division at best can only be
made general and suggestive. Let us try what in
that sense we can make of it.
Regarding the matter in view of the chronology
of the poet's works, we must be careful to distin-
guish the question of form, and his definite choice
of that, from the question of subject and his power
over that.
And as to the question of form, it
will be found that the poet did not for some time
settle that, while his mastery over the resources
of his subject, and a certain maturity of expression,
were early reached. We shall find that for a time
GROWTH AND PERIODS OF WORK 5I
he seems to be seeking a form through which most
fitly and congenially to develop and present his
subject and the resources of his mind. This time
extends from 1832 to 1846. During this time he
was using, with greater or less felicity and success,
several forms; before its close he had proved his
true power to lie in the use of a certain form, and
at the close of it he concluded on that as his chief
form. This is the form he calls the dramatic-
lyric. And we may regard that as his first period,
on the above grounds. It is the time of youth
and prelude, 1832-1840. It is also the time of
early manhood, 1841-46. During the first part
of the time he was ascertaining the nature and
compass of his theme and field of work, and using
the forms of art he employed in " Pauline," " Para-
celsus," and "Sordello." The second part of this
time is that of the dramas and early dramatic-
lyrics. During this time he was finding his stand-
point and method as a poet-the way in which
he could best deal with his theme and his genius.
All the dramas, save "Strafford," are of this time,
and the poems called dramatic-lyrics and romances
—at first of a more lyrical, afterwards of a more
dramatic quality.
tr
Then in the same relation, that is as to the method
and form of his work, the years from 1846-
1869 would be a second period. During those.
years he was using the dramatic-lyric form with
his full power, and giving, through it his knowledge
and mastery of man and life, with a due balance
of the elements of his genius, the argumentative
52
ROBERT BROWNING
and intellectual, the dramatic and the emotional.
This was the time of his manhood and married
life, and of the early London years after his wife's
death. During this time some of the finest and
most perfect of his dramatic lyrics, and some of
the best of his dramatic monologues were made—
the first in "Men and Women" and "Dramatis
Personæ," the second in "The Ring and the
Book," with fine lyrical work too. At first, indeed,
the argumentative power is prominent in "Christ-
mas Eve" and "Easter Day," then the dramatic
and lyrical power in the "Men and Women"
series; then all his gifts, lyrical, argumentative,
ethical, dramatic, are found in the "Dramatis
Personæ"; and anon in "The Ring and the
Book," the dramatic and argumentative powers
reach a fulness and energy that took the world
by storm.
There would then be a third period, from 1870–
76, testing the work by the same tests. During
this time that balance of the powers of the poet's
genius, and of the elements of his work which we
spoke of as characteristic of the second period,
was disturbed. The argumentative and casuistic
power and interest are, on the whole, dominant,
more pronounced than the dramatic, and the style
and energy developed for dramatic-argumentative
uses seems too strong for the poetic and dramatic
interests. This is the time of his "hardest" and
"least poetic" work, the time when he is most
idiosyncratic in subjects, treatment, and style.
It is the time of "Hohenstiel-Schwangau" and
GROWTH AND PERIODS OF WORK 53
"Fifine at the Fair," and "Aristophanes' Apology."
It is also the time of "Red Cotton Night-Cap
Country" and "The Inn Album," which, with
all their ability and interest, are certainly “too
characteristic."
And there is, we think, a fourth period, when the
balance is kept again in much, certainly, of the work
then made. That is the time of the latest works,
from 1876 to 1889. It is the time of the lyrics
in "Pacchiarotto," of the three series of "Dramatic
Idyls," of "Ferishtah's Fancies," and of the "Par-
leyings." The work is on the whole simpler and
more dramatic, while the dramatic idyl, a fresh
development of the dramatic lyric, is by its very
aim more active, outward. And even where the
work is "criticism" of life, art, or thought, as in
"Ferishtah" and the "Parleyings," it is simpler,
and the lyrics of the time have often a fine fresh-
ness and point.
But what conclusions may be justly drawn
from this survey as to the mind and art of the
poet? As to the poet's mind, and his poetic
energy, there has been less of change than is
usually found over so long a period of years.
The change has been in the balance and proper
subordination of his powers and qualities, rather
than in their character and activity; much the
same mind, the same quality, the same ideals,
only a fuller mastery of resources and a surer
grasp of life.
The maturity and force of some
of the early work is surprising. Some of the
dramatic lyrics that show well his mastery are
54
ROBERT BROWNING
early work. The poems he called at first " Mad-
house Cells" are as early as 1836. The "Spanish
Cloister" is of 1841, and so is "Pippa Passes,"
with its fine poetry and dramatic interest, and
"The Tomb at St. Praxed's," with its dramatic
skill and delineative wealth and accuracy, belongs
to 1845.
The art of the poet has, however, varied more
than the poet's mind and power. The elements
of interest, and his skill in the matter of form and
utterance, have varied in the way above described.
And there have been changes of method and
growth of art, such as have been thus far indicated.
These will afterwards be more fully analysed and
illustrated. But if any reader will refer to the
chronological list of the poems, and note how
many of the finest of the poems fall after the close
of the series of "Bells and Pomegranates," he will
have one means at least of testing the general
position above taken.
Our survey of the work as a whole suggests
also the question of classification of the poems,
and one or two ingenious schemes have been
drawn. Mr. Nettleship has classified the poems
in relation to the poet's central idea of the pro-
gress or arrest of the soul. And his scheme is
interesting from that point of view, but surely too
narrow. Mrs. Orr, who regards the poems as
really one great group, has arranged them (in
part) according to their leading quality or main
matter, but does not consider her scheme as more
than suggestive. And the poet has himself
GROWTH AND PERIODS OF WORK 55
classed the poems up to 1864 by their form or
principle. The matter is always hard, and neither
poets nor critics make more than a partial success
in most cases, it may be. Browning as well as
Wordsworth exemplifies the difficulty, his dis-
tinction between the "dramatic lyric" and the
"dramatic romance" being in not a few cases
somewhat obscure. Yet this is to be expected
when classification is attempted of complex facts.
We offer only the arrangement made in the
groups that follow, though we think this grouping
will be found useful in regard of the matter of the
poems and the art of the poet.
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CHAPTER II
LITERARY RELATIONS-THE AGE AND ITS IDEAS
MODERN HUMANISM MATTER AND
FORM OF BROWNING'S POETRY-HIS DRA-
MATIC METHOD AND POWER
WITH the facts of the poet's life and literary
course before us, we now come upon certain
questions of much interest in regard to the poet
and the work, especially as we look at both in
relation to the time through which the poet has
lived.
We have spoken of his long waiting and the
slow acceptance of his work; a recent critic
speaks as if that acceptance were still to come.
During nearly forty years the poet, in the
strength and fidelity of genius, kept his aim and
maintained his work. The qualities of the man,
as of the artist, are in that; self-reliance and con-
viction are in every line of his work; the assur-
ance and sincerity of genius and of truth.
But, with such independence, what have been
the poet's relations to his predecessors and con-
temporaries in literature? Under what influ-
ences did his mind ripen and his art take form?
Who have been his teachers? and whence have
P
56
LITERARY RELATIONS
57
his impulses come? On the face of matters, it
may seem as if he stood alone, with an energy
that required no outside influences, and an indivi-
duality that resisted them; so bent on speaking
his own mind in his own way, that he has stood
apart from his contemporaries in their interests.
and forms of art. It seems impossible to place
him among them, or to classify his work with
theirs. And the intense way in which he has set
himself on matter rather than form, his emphatic
care for primary and direct expression,-these
also make his relations less apparent.
But there are such relations, though they are
not only less apparent, but freer and slighter than
in the case of others. Let us trace the chief of
them. Mr. Gosse has told us two things on this
matter that the poet's first models were some
of his father's favourites in eighteenth century
literature, and that early compositions of the poet
were Byronic. It goes without saying that Byron
soon passed. As soon as the sentiment, the in-
tellectual and moral basis, of the Byronic poetry
were felt, they must by this poet have been put
aside. But some things in Byron possibly made
a stronger impression. His energy and flow, his
general force and courage of nature, and his
manliness may have stimulated like qualities in
the younger poet, who has them on his own
account.
But he soon found work much more to his
mind, at once in its inspiration and its style.
This work, we have seen, was that of Shelley
58
ROBERT BROWNING
and of Keats, work of memorable interest to him.
Many traces of his care for these poets are found
in his own works. Naturally, Shelley made the
deeper impression, and of him we find most.
He
is the "sun-treader" of "Pauline," whose renown,
like sunlight, is to visit all the world, and he
has three pages of fine admiration in that poem.
Aprile in "Paracelsus " is a reminiscence of Shelley,
and depicts the defect and weakness easily arising
in that type.
In the opening of "Sordello" we
find Shelley as chief among those to whom our
poet looks as he begins his high task, though he
feels Shelley's "pure face" fit rather for Athens
than for mediæval Italy. And the "Memorabilia"
speaks the honour of Shelley; while his "Essay"
on Shelley is the critical but cordial statement of
Browning's thoughts as to the place of that poet
in modern poetry, and his principles and aims,
his work being esteemed as a "sublime though
fragmentary effort towards a presentment of the
correspondency of the universe to Deity," of the
natural to the spiritual, of the actual to the ideal.
It is characteristic that to Keats the references
are fewer. His care for Keats is less, but he is
aware of the genius and pure value of the poet.
Popularity" recognises these.
These references notwithstanding, it may seem
that neither Shelley nor Keats throws light on the
matter or the manner of Browning's work. The
music of the one and the beauty of the other,
the lyrical intensity and ideal passion of the first,
and the artistic sense and joy of the second, do
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LITERARY RELATIONS
59
1
not seem Browning's way.
Yet he has learned
from both, and been quickened in the very spirit
of his mind by Shelley. Browning regards Shelley
as the poet of the real-ideal; that is the effort and
goal of his poetry, the meaning of every fact, and
of all passion, all life, and beauty is in that. And
this, we have seen, is the spirit of Browning, and
the goal of his art. It is true that the real is
more apparent in the one, and the ideal in the
other; the dramatic in the one, the typical in the
other; but the principle is the same in both-
what a critic and friend of Browning described as
the power to "see in everything an epitome of
creation," the power to see and feel the ideality of
the real.
And so in style, in a quality of natural, intense,
and immediate expression, he is in sympathy with
Shelley. He has rarely, if ever, Shelley's melody,
never his spontaneity and divine freedom of utter-
ance; but he seeks, as Shelley did, the truest
statement within his reach without ulterior cares.
To Shelley poetry was life rather than art, and
that fine fire and singleness of soul which blent
truth and beauty and duty into one, and made
song its voice and minister-that is the high and
real meaning of poetry to Browning; and he first
found such song in Shelley.
But Keats? what affinities are there between
Browning and Keats? Tennyson and · others
derive from Keats clearly, but not Browning.
But Keats had fine impulses for Browning. The
care for beauty, the love of things Greek, and the
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ROBERT BROWNING
power to enter into them, the sympathy with
Medieval and Renaissance things, and a keen
passion for art, these he shares with Keats, and
if they have long since taken the quality of his own
mind, he found them first in the poetry of Keats.
Wordsworth, one of the great poetic influences
of our century, and, however limited, one of its
most original and forcible poetic minds, was
slowly growing into fame and influence during
Browning's early poetic years, and, in spite of
great differences of temper and scope, some of
Wordsworth's principles are part of Browning's
mind. The radical humanity, the transcendent
faith, the belief in simple things and duties, the
high purpose and spiritual basis of his poetry,
bring him into important agreement with the
great idealist of nature and of natural life.
There are other poets one can trace-Shake-
speare, of course-yet not without need to be
named. That idea of man, and curiosity about
human nature, and power to put the mind at
so many points of view, which make the dramatic
conception, these come to every modern mind
through Shakespeare. And Dante has given in-
wardness and intensity to this conception. It is
clear from "Sordello" that the austere nature
and thought of Dante, with its heart and crown
of passion and tenderness, early made impression
on Browning, and that his profound delineation
of the "soul," and sense of the grandeur of
spiritual results in man, gave direction and quality
to the modern poet's studies.
LITERARY RELATIONS
61
And if we seek farther afield for sources of
Browning's work, we find two fields wide enough
-Greek literature and a field of much curious
learning. Greek has been a lifelong interest. As
early as "Pauline" are proofs of this knowledge
and insight-passages that speak of the power of
Keats. There are references to Plato as one who,
"calm as beauty," held "the key of life," and the
fine description of Agamemnon, and the passage
that speaks in fit words of the impression made
on him by the classic stories in youth. And his
Greek translations are accepted by Greek scholars
as vital and true.
The other field, fields rather, of curious learn-
ing-rabbinical, mediæval, mystical, artistic-in
which he has gathered, it is only possible to name.
The chief interest of these has been for facts or
stories throwing light, often quaint and curious,
on the passions and beliefs of men. "Pauline
was prefaced by an extract from a book of Cor-
nelius Agrippa on the Occult Philosophy."
"Paracelsus" and "Sordello" both show the fields
in which the young poet was roaming, and a
hundred poems since show the same interests
and research.
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There is an inference suggested by this read-
ing, and the use to which it is put, that, if accu-
rate, is noteworthy; it is that the poet has cared
more for the literature of fact than of form; more
for the curious and suggestive, because vital,
records of man's mind than for "letters as
such for life in every form and all its fields.
62
ROBERT BROWNING
What has now been said of Browning's culture
may seem to imply that it has been remote from
his own time, and it has been so in part, and not
without bearing on his work. But his work and
ideas are to be understood in important points,
only in relation to his age with its principles and
motives—motives and principles that gave new
depth and direction, new interests and ideals, to
English life and letters between 1830 and 1850.
Keats, Shelley, and Byron all died early, and the
period and movement they interpreted closed with
their work. The new period, with the literature
that should express it, thus had the ground to
itself. This new period dates from 1832-33.
From that time we find a literature more or less.
distinctly marked by the new interests and ideas
arising. Between 1815 and 1824 we find the
free and fervid impulses of the modern spirit and
the ideas of the great Revolution in the works of
Byron and Shelley. Between 1824 and 1833
there was almost no poetry of value; it was the
time of Moore and Montgomery. But in 1833
the new time made its voices heard; Carlyle,
Tennyson, and Browning had all spoken by that
date.
And what, as we now see them, and as they
grew during the years following, embodied in
action and expressed in literature-what were
the characteristics and distinctive ideas of this
period? We might answer the question by
simply bringing into view, in their order, the
books of the years from 1830-1860-works of
THE AGE AND ITS IDEAS
63
Carlyle, Faraday, Newman, Mill, Ruskin, Tenny-
son, Clough, Arnold, Strauss, Froude, Mansel, and
Darwin; and the mere list of names, with the
works they suggest, indicates the mental history
and interests of those years, social and political,
religious and scientific. The life of the time wast
deeply and fruitfully moved on all these great
lines; the impulses and ideas of the great Revo-
lution were developed and applied in political
and social reform, in science and in belief. The
political discussion and social advance have been,
perhaps, the greatest in our history, resulting in
what has been justly described as our greatest
revolution-the enfranchisement of the people.
The growth of science in knowledge, method, and
ideas has been so great that many sciences seem
new-made, and man's image of the physical uni-
verse and its order appears largely a product of
the past fifty years, while the historical sciences
have made in important parts as great advances;
and the religious discussion has had, in the spheres
both of history and doctrine, as great and critical
an influence on the matter and spirit of belief,
and on the ideal of religion itself.
The age has been earnest, rational, humane.
It has been much occupied with the deeper ques-
tions arising out of society, and out of human life.
It has, in fact, set itself more frankly to these
questions, and to all problems of knowledge and
of faith, than any former time, and if its curiosity
has been largely physical, it has also directed
much thoughtful investigation upon the nature
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ROBERT BROWNING
and history of man. And its treatment of human
nature, like its sense of social justice, has been
truer and better considered than at any past
time.
Now, some of these movements and ideas have
not, so far as his work shows, been much to
Browning. Of political and social interests there
is slight trace. His interest has been in man's
nature and history, and in the great points of
ethics and of belief; and in these respects, though
even here he has been less affected by the secular
changes than many, his work is historically intelli-
gible only amid the influences of such an age as
has been described. The great theme of his
poetry, indeed, implies this relation, though it
is not governed by it. His conception of that
theme, his breadth and freedom, his curious im-
partiality and research in exploring and present-
ing it, are in real agreement with the deeper spirit
of the century, though not with certain sections.
or years of it, and, we take it, with certain great
spiritual ideas that it is the effort of modern
thought to unfold.
And so we come here closely upon a question
of much importance in the study of modern litera-
ture, and nowhere of greater point than in the
study of Browning-the question as to the source
and factors of the modern interest in human nature.
It is a large question, on which a good deal has
yet to be said. We take it here chiefly as it
bears on Browning. A care for and sympathy
with man as man is one of the vital ideas of
MODERN HUMANISM
65
modern literature. In its modern sense this care
and sympathy became explicit and deliberate in
the writers that in France preceded and pro-
moted the Revolution. It is true that a spirit
of this kind, and sentiments involving it, are
found implicitly before the Revolution. They
were precipitated and applied by that, and
though the failure of the Revolution and the
wars following arrested the growth of the new
principles, that was only for a time. They soon
began to act through literature and upon life.
In England, where there had been much fear of
the Revolution, this took place most and best.
Between 1820 and 1845 this is plainly seen.
Polity, law, government, and society were re-
formed by those ideas and in their spirit; a new
conscience and a new humanity began to act,
and before long with great results. We had, in
fact, come upon the era of humanity, and were
coming to realised democracy; this was the
meaning and this the result of our reforms. And
intellectual as much as social movements gave a
new importance to man, not only by giving greater
scope and importance to reason, but by a vast
extension of our knowledge of and interest in
man's history. The revival of religious earnest-
ness, followed by the rise of criticism, also gave
in time a deeper interest to man's mind, and to
every question of man's life. While, as new
questions arose in the life of the time, and
deeper questions both of knowledge and faith
were pressed home, and as the desire for justice
5
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ROBERT BROWNING
and for truth grew, the humanity itself gained in
character and depth, as our literature between
1840 and 1870 proves almost painfully at
times.
Two great interests, it has been said, have been
given to modern literature by the growth of
modern life and knowledge-nature and man.
Browning has taken man as his part of "nature's
infinite book of secrecy," and this bent and interest
has been singularly clear and strong in his mind
from the very beginning of his work. His first
plan was a bold scheme in this field, and his first
poems are studies of this kind. In the preface
to "Sordello," he says, "The stress of the poem
lay in the incidents in the development of a soul;
little else is worth study. I always thought so."
The words are strong and narrow, it may seem;
but they are not so strong as our poet's conviction
of their truth, nor so emphatic as his devotion to
their view of the poet's work. These words give
the aim and theme of all his work. There is
growth of knowledge, power, and means in the
work, but the interest is essentially the same.
From the first he has aimed at the spiritual study
and expression of man through the medium of
his art.
But if the poet's subject has remained essenti-
ally the same, how about his method and the form
of his work? There has been change and develop-
ment in his choice of form and method.
After a
time of some uncertainty, if not experiment, he
found his right point of view, his proper method
MATTER AND FORM OF WORK
67
as a poet whose aim was to present certain great
views of man. Reviewing his career as an artist,
and the forms he has used, let us see how this
stands. He began with monologue in "Pauline";
then subdramatic poetry in "Paracelsus"; then
the epic of a soul in "Sordello," where the poet
himself speaks, because he thinks in that way to
find freer expression for all he has to say of
Sordello. He felt his theme and aims to be un-
suitable for drama, where he must simply present
and watch the play, no whit more in the secret of
it than if a listener only; that is, no more free to
express his mind about those secrets.
But as a
form of art, fitted to its theme and legible, that
poem is very unsatisfactory. It has been less
read than any of his works, and its form is a good
part of the reason. He then made drama, and
after that he put forth a little book of "dramatic
pieces"; that is, poems lyrical in form, but
dramatic in principle. Then came three more
dramas, and next another little book of poems,
lyrical and dramatic. In 1846 he returned to
drama, and gave "Luria" and "A Soul's Tragedy."
Now, the question being, Which of these works is
most adequate to the poet and his subjects? there
can be no doubt as to the answer-the dramatic
lyrics are most vivid and sufficient. And the poet
thought so himself clearly, for after 1846 this is
the form he uses, whether for argument or narra-
tive, or for more strictly dramatic purposes;
whether in "Christmas Eve," " Men and Women,"
or "The Ring and the Book," that being the
-
I
+
!
}
1
I
1
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ROBERT BROWNING
1
fullest instance and capital test of his method of
presentation as a poet.
Clearly, then, this poet, in the expression of
whatever he knows about man, has tended to some
dramatic form, to some dramatic or subdramatic
method for a time to set drama, but always to
some kind of dramatic expression. The bent of
his mind, whether from its own qualities or from
its interest, is towards dramatic statement, what-
ever be the exact principle of his work in this
kind.
And so
no question in the criticism of this
poetry is more necessary than the question, What
kind of dramatic work does this poet make, and
what kind of dramatic power has he?
Is it really
dramatic, or only akin to the dramatic ? and if his
proper form of art be, as was said, the "dramatic
lyric," what exactly is that, and is it a legitimate
and accurate form of art ? There is much differ-
ence and some confusion as to the right answers
to these questions, but, as they involve the core of
the whole question of Browning's character and
power as a poet, and as his poetry cannot be
read fairly until his standpoint is reached and
his method understood, we must make as clear as
we can our answers to these questions regarding
his art.
It has been shown that Browning's bent is to
dramatic conception and statement. Even in
"Sordello," where the form is least dramatic, this
tendency comes clearly out. Browning made so
many plays that it is plain he had a liking for
DRAMATIC METHOD AND POWER 69
drama, and, it is said, he gave up drama and
contented himself with dramatic lyrics because
circumstances were unfavourable. But that is not
the fact, nor is it really to the point. It was not
circumstances that discouraged drama, but the
consciousness of his own powers that led to the
discovery and adoption of a better form. "Proper
drama" did not give the scope or the expression
he required. The best part of what he saw in
man he could not set forth in drama for the stage,
so another form came into use, giving the scope
and allowing the utterance he sought. All his
best work is in that form.
}}
Now, what is this form which has approved
itself by use ever since "My Last Duchess in
1842 ? What is the principle and method of it
as dramatic poetry? The poet throws himself,
intellect, feeling, and imagination, into the circum-
stances and experience, into the very mind, of
some person. By help of all he knows of them,
as well as by insight of his own genius and general
knowledge of men, he thinks in and for each. He
presents them and their case from the inside, not
so much as they might have seen it, still less as
they might have stated it, but as it is, as the poet
would see and state it for them, as they would see
and know it with his power to animate them.
And this is dramatically presented. It is not
set forth in any abstract or general way; it is
embodied, individualised. It is not only put from
the special point of view, but worked out through
the qualities and circumstances and in the terms
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ROBERT BROWNING
of the life in question. The "person" is before
you, not a mere notion or image. He lives and
moves, and lets you into the secret of life and
motives.
But he has the stage all to himself. And what
is the stage? and where is it? and who is the
actor? and what have you had in the play? It
is when we examine these points that the want
of clearness in critical estimates of this poetry
becomes plain. Such poetry, it is said, is not
drama, nor is it really dramatic. And if the
essence of all dramatic expression be action and
strictly objective statement, this must be allowed.
But is not that too narrow a conception? Is not
the very principle of dramatic expression in such
work? For, to put the matter in phrases of the
poet's own, not "action in character" only, but
also "character in action," must be held dramatic.
But where is the "action"? it may be said.
When the soul is in question, expression is action.
It is thinking and feeling made objective; it is the
character in motion and presenting itself. Inward
and outward facts are combined, but only to pre-
sent the "soul." Its relations to other lives are
involved in the play of the lyric, but only to define
itself. Of this drama the "soul" is the stage, and
the soul the single or leading dramatis persona.
Other persons and facts come in, but only through
it, and the whole world is seen for the time from
its point of view. The man and the life are seen
as related to and lighted up by something that
shows the very principle and quality of both.
DRAMATIC METHOD AND POWER
71
And this has been called "dramatic thinking,"
or "dramatic apology," as if the primary and final
interest were intellectual, or as if the poems were
only cases of special pleading, only thought, stat-
ing itself in terms and combinations of life, or
argument so vivid that it has dramatic force and
a voice like the voice of life, though the work all
the same is intellectual, not vital; abstract, not
concrete. And we admit that some of the lyrics
have that look, and some of them that quality
mainly. But almost everywhere the work has
true dramatic quality, and involves the person, not
the mind only; character, not thoughts about man
and life only. The conception is dramatic, the
statement vital, and even in work where the leading
matter is argument there is a body of dramatic
detail and suggestion that gives you the man or
the type as a dramatic image.
In the old sense, then, Browning's work is not
dramatic; in the above sense it is distinctly so.
Action and active relations are not its sphere, but
the mind itself. Its aim is to represent the man,
not merely what he did or would do in given
circumstances, nor merely what he said or would
have said in active life. Its scope is thought and
passion, not speech and conduct. Its field is the
soul and its forces, not the world and its actions.
And this is its charm and its worth for us. The
new dramatic poetry cannot be as the old drama.
A new spirit and view of man and a new aim
animate and command it-a more subtle and
searching spirit, a deeper curiosity, a fuller effort.
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ROBERT BROWNING
The art that deals with man in our time must, in
fact, express the modern interest and thought.
You may, of course, prefer a simpler, a more un-
conscious and outward presentation of life; but at
this time, and amid its science and philosophy and
spiritual debate, you are not likely to get it,
except, it may be, by forcible suppression or by
languor and weakness. The same thoughtful
and inward quality is in all our work dealing with
human life-in George Eliot as in Robert Brown-
ing. The great novelist, in her interest and in her
way of looking at men and human life shows the
same tendency and presents similar results. As
compared with earlier novelists, there is the same
kind of difference between their work and hers that
there is between the older drama and Browning's
poetry, while George Meredith shows still closer
affinities of aim and result. In fact, such art is
the fit exponent of the modern spirit in its human
interests and insight, and even Shakespeare, in
whom all things of the modern world of man
seem to be expressed or implicit, made "Hamlet"
and “Lear.”
Still, granting the dramatic quality of the poetry,
and its relation to modern life, are these poems a
proper form of art, and what is it we get by their
method? Is it possible to represent the "souls
of men? The phrase is easily spoken, and it
pleases certain minds, but has it any solid mean-
ing, and can its claim be made good? To do
what Shakespeare did asked genius enough, but
this seems a higher claim and a harder task. Let
"}
DRAMATIC METHOD AND POWER
73
ľ
it, then, be frankly said that we make no deep
mystery of the matter. If it be done, it is done
within the laws and by the means of art. And
how? It is done from the new point of view and
with the new field of vision, as Shakespeare did his
work from the older standpoint. Through his own
humanity and resources of nature and knowledge,
through vital sympathy and identifying imagina-
tion, the poet takes his stand within his dramatis
persona, and feels with and thinks for them. He
animates and moves them so that they present
themselves. He takes some critical moment or
situation, and from that point the character is set
in action, that keenest action of the mind within
and on itself, and so the man is given with an
intimacy and truth no drama dare use or could
reach by its proper means.
We have said the man is presented. But, look-
ing closely at many of these dramatic lyrics, is it
so? The poet speaks of the "soul," but that, you
will say, is only part of the man; and in dramatic
art, which must be audible, if not visible, it is a
smaller part of the man in action than some appear
to think. And again, you say, many of these
poems are strictly "lyrical," dealing with purely
imaginary persons and situations, and only con-
ceived to express some part of the poet's own
mind; while many of the poems are even worse,
regarded from our present point of view, for they
are simply meditations in character, or arguments
from an assumed dramatic standpoint. And all
you can have in such work, it may be thought, is
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ROBERT BROWNING
}
dramatic form without dramatic truth or reality.
It is only the poet's mind, and his view of what
may be said of and for certain "persons." His
soul animates and overflows the men and women
presented. And as in part proof of this, it is
urged that you cannot imagine any one save
Browning talking as all his men and women talk.
The poet is not only behind them; he is through
them and before them.
"}
And yet the men and women are there in some
sense, and their cases are put with vital fulness.
That seems to be the fact; but for greater clear-
ness on an important matter let us meet the points
just stated. The men given us in these poems
would not, and in many cases could not, have said
the things here said for them; but were such
things in them, do such things express them, even
if consciousness and thought must have been raised
to higher powers ere they could have uttered them
-for if these things and this speech of our poet
rightly interpret them in that inner sense, then
his method is justified and its results are vital.
But around all the persona and in all the style
you are aware of the poet-his mind runs through
and qualifies all; or, in other words, his dramatic.
expression is not purely objective. You have
the men and women always plus Browning. It
is so.
And so it is also in Shakespeare.
But is not that part of the charm and value, and
part of the means, is it not the necessary medium,
of such work? You could not have such dramatic
studies without this. The men and women and
DRAMATIC METHOD AND POWER 75
the questions of their lives are seen in the light
and amid the spaces of the poet's mind.
It may not be easy to say what it is you have in
this matter, what this "subjective medium" quite
exactly is. It is not a judgment passed on the
"persons," nor a deliverance of the opinions or
preferences of the poet. It is the sense of a large
free mind and personality identified in feeling and
thought for the time with the "persons" presented,
and working through them, but clear of their bias
and free of their limits.
But, further, it is said that, allowing for this
quality of characterisation, what is it you have in
Browning's persona? Not men in Shakespeare's
or Scott's sense? It is not so clear what that
sense exactly is, while the nature of personality,
and its relations to those more general as well as
universal elements that belong to all minds are
very far from being clear. But Browning certainly
gives types and generalisations in some of his
studies, and it results from his more spiritual and
inward dramatic poetry that his "persons" should
be less objective than those of Shakespeare or Scott.
Subject, however, to the conditions and design
of his art, he is a master of dramatic detail, and
has the quickest eye for essential circumstances or
quality. To require the same embodiment of
character from Browning that you have in great
drama or novels, is to forget the difference both of
means and of design. The poet would violate
his principle to give it. But he has known how
to define and embody with a vital precision, on the
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ROBERT BROWNING
whole adequate to his kind of dramatic poetry.
And if we do not maintain the critical perfection.
and æsthetic purity of Browning's work, considered
as dramatic art; if we allow it to be in the nature
of his mind, as of his purpose, that his work should
involve much of himself, and that the spiritual
should shadow the dramatic interest
we hold
it not only clear that his power is dramatic, but
his poetry is alive with the evidence and energy
of it, and his very thought works itself out in that
way, not in abstractions, but in terms of character
and life. Through all he knows of them, through
all he knows of man and man's mind, he animates
and reveals his persona, each one by himself, in
situations best adapted to test and bring them
out, and with a frankness and spirituality of
statement only possible under the conditions he
selects, so that the statement itself becomes the
expressive image of the mind and will of the
given “person," whether Duke or Bishop, whether
painter or Pope.
CHAPTER III
CRITICAL OBJECTIONS OBSCURITY AND
ITS
CAUSES-FURTHER ANALYSIS OF DRAMATIC
METHOD, WITH REFERENCE TO IT-STYLE
AND ITS QUALITIES—CHARACTERISTICS
WE have seen Browning's theme, his conception
of his subject, and his method in the development
and expression of that subject. It remains to
consider the characteristics of the genius with
which he has illustrated his theme, and certain
qualities and ideas that have helped him to unfold
his subject with the power he has shown. Nor
would our purposes of introduction be served if
nothing were said of the poet's style, and of that
obscurity which is often supposed to be its chief
note, and a leading reason for the objections many
take to his work, and for the difficulties they find
in so much of it.
It may be best to take the last points first.
The objections to Browning, on the part of good
and careful readers of poetry, are understood to
be numerous and reasonable. By some they are
thought to spring from the nature of poetry, and
certainly from the theory and practice of the art
as always hitherto understood; while all their
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ROBERT BROWNING
difficulties are thought to arise from the faults of
the poet, and his obscurity is assumed to be not
in the nature of his subjects, but only in his way
of treating them, and most of all in his way of
setting forth whatever he has to say of them. It
is still worth while to correct these mistakes, not
only in justice to the poet, but in the hope of
preparing a way of approach to him on the part
of some who could read him if they would, and
who, since they might, certainly ought, and lose
by not doing so. The work of Browning is still
received by some with a smile, and those who
read him are expected to offer to culture and
good taste some account of their peculiarity, if
not some apology for their conduct.
It is a pity
people are often proud of their narrowness-that
they emphasise their limits, and keep themselves
from the larger experience and the true judgment
by presuppositions that fall to the ground as soon
as they grasp the facts and give their minds fair
play in their appreciation.
And what are the pre-judgments that have
kept good readers from Browning's poetry? We
said that some of them arise from what is thought
to be the nature of poetry and its primary laws
as an art. Art, like other parts of the progressive
life of man, has often suffered from two causes.
People like what they have got used to, and erect
their taste and the works of the past into laws to
govern, and not into impulses and principles to
stimulate and guide the works of the future,
which is what they ought to do. So the standard
CRITICAL OBJECTIONS
79
of pleasure and the restraints of theory have
operated to conventionalise art.
But in propor-
tion as it is strong and sincere art is vital, and
should follow its own principles and instincts in
the last resort. And so, if new work should
require a revision of theories, before it can be
understood or classified, then it may be the worse
for the theories, not for the work. If Browning's
work should require a fresh consideration of the
laws of poetic art, there is nothing to complain of.
We really gain by enlargement of art and its
ideal. For what is the function of criticism in
regard to original work in art? To judge and
control art by some abstract and fixed standard?
To test the creations of genius by some absolute
theory of beauty and expression? To deliver
decisions according to "law and precedent" and
induction of "all previous instances," and so settle
what is valuable and ought to be enjoyed? Is
this the right relation of criticism to art? Or is
its proper task simpler and greater to follow,
note, and generalise the facts of art, and so
interpret its works freely and vitally; not to
legislate for art, but to learn and understand and
test art by frank appeal to the facts of experience
and of the mind in its relation to art? That is,
in truth, the right and fruitful task of criticism.
For is not every work of genius, pure and
distinct, in a real sense a work of nature, a
product of the free spirit, yet also a complex
result of natural qualities and forces working to
rational issues under natural laws?
And so
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ROBERT BROWNING
wisdom, not modesty alone, requires us, in dealing
with the works of the freest and strongest minds,
to know, enjoy, and explain rather than pass
judgment.
But, allowing these principles in regard to the
rights of readers and the business of critics, we
may seem no nearer agreement in regard to
poetry like Browning's. It will still be said,
Poetry should respect form, this does not; verse
should have beauty, and often this has none.
Art, having to do with beauty, should give
pleasure; this has other effects. In its themes,
and in its handling of them, this poetry constantly
mistakes art's province. This poetry is intellectual
and abstruse, at the cost of readers and of art.
It expresses the mind and humour of its author
with a disregard of principle, not of convenience
only." Now, though none of these objections are
exact or quite pertinent, they represent common
impressions and have apparent truth, and we shall
do well to get at the right point of view as to
the matters they touch. It is many years since
Carlyle insisted with his emphasis that poetry has
a right to as much attention as any other serious
work. But still many seem far from clear about
the matter, and some of Browning's advocates
have made things worse by talking as if poetry
might be anything as to form if only its matter
were valuable and noble; as if the only thing to
be asked of a poet, as of a thinker, were that he
should have thought, and get it well out. Now,
poetry has a right to give that degree and kind
((
CRITICAL OBJECTIONS
81
of thought that is adequate to the mastery and
treatment of its proper themes, and it has a right
to require that amount of thought on the reader's
part that shall be adequate to their full compre-
hension. And the poet must be a thinker as well
as a poet, if his themes have weight and great-
ness. Every poet of high significance, every great
poet certainly is so, and much of his truth and
value must depend on his quality and power as a
thinker. And yet the poet, as a poet, is not a
thinker. His great qualities are depth, energy,
sensibility of the heart and vivid force of mind;
power to see and to say; power of realisation and
power of song-that, seeing and feeling, he may
make others feel and see. If these be wanting
the man is not a poet, whatever other force and
grasp of mind he may have. In other words,
though intellectual quality and power in the
highest degree will serve the poet, and the highest
degree of poetic power is impossible without rich
and strong intellectual power, yet of itself such
power makes no man a poet and no work poetic.
The poet must be a poet first and last, if not also
midst and without end.
If, then, it be said that Browning is a thinker,
and that very much of his value depends on that,
it is not meant that that makes him a poet, or that
thought is to be taken in place of poetry. The
method, medium, and aim of the thinker all differ
from those of the poet, though results reached by
thought and authenticated by passion may be
incorporated by the poet. With the endowment
6
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ROBERT BROWNING
of the poet, and through the medium proper to
poetry, he may give the results of keen, sagacious,
and powerful thinking, the vital process of it even
through "character in action." And Browning
shows a greater activity and prominence of intel-
lectual faculty and result than is usually shown
by men of high and distinct poetic power, in part
from his method, in part from his personal quali-
ties and his frank expression of them. At times
there may even be a preponderance of these in
his work; but in most of his work, and certainly
in his best, he is poet first and thinker second;
and the body of thought is given in an element
of passion and imagination, and with a force and
fitness of utterance, that are strongly poetic; and,
looking at it from the dramatic point of view,
which is nearly always the poet's, the thinking is
dramatic and vital.
Still, the poet is not to be read lightly or
fluently, and if the thought be vital or poetic it is
there, and requires serious and sustained atten-
tion; and it may be that the dramatic point and
energy of the thinking is often an element in the
difficulty. Is it not, then, a mistake to ask so
much attention? and a still greater mistake to
leave many parts such that, after the best attention
many readers can give, they remain obscure? As
to the attention asked, there are, one judges, two
questions about that—whether, having given due
attention, you are repaid for your trouble; whether,
of all arts and studies, poetry only may not ask
pains to master it? When frankly put, these
1
OBSCURITY AND ITS CAUSES
83
1
questions imply their own answers. And then, it
may be, the objection is shifted, and is put,
perhaps, thus: Art that is truly such and rightly
made ought to give and will give pleasure. It
will, but to whom, and when? To those capable
of understanding it when they have given the
pains necessary to do so. Its pleasure is not
simple and immediate. Enjoyment of true and
deep art does not precede, it may not accompany,
it results from and follows real study of it. For,
however much trouble the artist may save you by
the vivid power of his work with reference to the
field or subject in its original state, he can never
save you the trouble requisite to master the theme
as it stands in his work, or to comprehend his
treatment of it.
And then the objection to this poetry is put in
another way.
It is said that the trouble it gives
arises from its want of form, its disregard of
beauty and harmony. As to the technical point
of form, we leave that so far as it regards verse,
and meet what is really the objection on other
grounds. The "form" of Browning's work, by
which readers are often offended, springs from
and expresses its dramatic individualism, and its
want of beauty-by which is often meant merely
melody and repose-from its dramatic realism.
The form and tone of the work ought to express
the mood and mind of the person thinking or
speaking for the time being, and so such work
cannot have the harmony and ought not to have
the uniformity of typical or epic work.
And as
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ROBERT BROWNING
to the question of beauty and the frequent want
of it in Browning's work-a fact no good reader
would deny that question goes much deeper
than any matter of forms or sounds only. It
turns, we said, on the poet's dramatic realism, and
that is, perhaps, the right way to meet the
objection. It rests on the poet's vision of life—
what he sees of life, and how truly he sees all
within his view. If he, as a dramatic poet and
thinker, hold that his work ought to give his
sincere impression, ought to agree with his per-
ception of the world, then he will put only so
much beauty into his work as he sees life and the
world to warrant, or only so much as shall be
true from the successive standpoints chosen. But
that may seem to reduce art to a measured or
even prosaic reproduction of life. Yet it is not
so, for it is the world not of common minds or of
literal and simple fact, but the world as a poet of
large mind and generous imagination sees and
interprets it, that should be the "real-world" of
art. And the true question of realism is, whether
the poet who essays a dramatic expression of life
should make his work, in the aspect of it called
beauty, agree with his own total impression of
men and the world of experience, or should set
and shape it to some conventional and pleasing
standard of things; whether it should chime with
the laws and issues of the world as he sees them,
or should seek agreement with certain images and
preconceptions of art.
Browning, anyhow, has held by the former
OBSCURITY AND ITS CAUSES 85
principle, and it explains the matters as well
as the æsthetic features of his work. The prin-
ciple itself would by some be contested, though
scarcely, we think, on a true judgment of what the
principle is to a poet and thinker like Browning.
For to him his view of art results from his view
of the world. His "creed" as thinker and his
governing conception as poet are the same—
real idealism. No man holds more deeply, and
no poet has given more forcible expression to
a conviction of the higher issues of life-to the
belief in the reality of a life and order more
perfect and more beautiful than the actual world.
But the way to it is through the realities of this
world, not through dreams and fine sentiments,
"vain opinions, false valuations, and imaginations,
as one would." The light and beauty come as
the facts of the world and the soul are seen
truly, and transfigured on the ground and by the
vision of that reasonable ideal which is the poet's
truest dream and the thinker's surest result.
But so much being allowed as explanation of
the form of this poetry, and of what some con-
sider its want of beauty, it may then be urged
that its difficulty and obscurity are neither justified
nor removed. For so many readers complain of
this obscurity that its reality must be frankly
admitted—we mean, in the sense that there is
something of exceptional difficulty in this poetry.
We will even allow that there are parts more diffi-
cult than they need have been, and parts where
the "darkness may be felt." And then we affirm
86
ROBERT BROWNING
that a great part of the alleged difficulty and
obscurity arise from its mere merits, are natural
to its subjects and its method. Let us, then, see
how this can be shown, and, in giving reasons for
the obscurity that is often felt, we may suggest
to some a way of getting over and beyond its
causes.
And first of the reasons I give for the obscurity
of the poet is this-that his writing is often, per-
haps usually, immediate, lying close to the facts as
he sees them, and certainly to the matter in his
mind. There often seems a vital transference of
thought and of its motives and process in the
mind supposed. The poetry is the frank and
direct expression of the man thinking. Of
Emerson's lectures it was said that they were
not so much speech as thought made audible;
and of Browning's dramatic poetry you might
say that it is not so much verse as the thought
and passion of the poet embodied, vitally con-
veyed. From the point of view of style, this is
open to criticism; yet it not only results from,
it conveys the dramatic energy of, the poet's
mind. It is, therefore, most suitable to his
method, and it gives a fine quality to his style.
And this suggests the second reason to be
given for Browning's obscurity that is, the
method and quality of his art. Nearly all his
writing, we have seen, is from a dramatic stand-
point. Even his lyrics are so many dramatic
utterances. The poet takes his stand inside
the personality and experience of some person,
İ
G
OBSCURITY AND ITS CAUSES
87
imaginary or historic, and he speaks for them
or he makes them speak. Their character and
circumstances are all assumed, and that without
prelude or explanation. You are carried at once.
into the midst of these things and thoughts; you
listen, you make the best of your way through
them, and keep on until you know the "person'
speaking, and his circumstances; and then,
possibly, having grasped both, you read the
poem again, and thus see the whole vividly,
and most of all the "person" in the foreground.
The matter takes time and patience, but you
get your own out of it. Things are not plain
all at once. But no one is to blame, and
certainly not the poet; it belongs, in fact, to
his method.
>>
"
Then, what we may call his complex use of his
dramatic method increases the difficulty. It is
not, as he uses it, speech you have, nor is the
scene outside. The case" is not made clear
as for some "third party," and the stage is really
the soul, and what you have is the man's intimate
utterance thought very often. And very often
you have not one person only on the stage, but
another or others. It is not soliloquy you have;
it is a kind of intense debate carried on with
reference to several persons, or a kind of drama
played through a single soul, where the necessity
the poet is under to work in the whole situation
and its details from the one point of view, and to
adapt the utterance to the other "persons," must
involve difficulty.
88
ROBERT BROWNING
Nor is the point of view the simple dramatic,
even allowing for the interior standpoint. It is
not simply the " person "the poet gives you,
animated and kept in spiritual action so that
he may reveal himself through and in his utter-
ance; there is a modern thoughtfulness and curi-
osity, searching and explaining, rising from facts
to their meaning, and from phenomena to their
sources. The poems are not dramatic lyrics
only; they are dramatic studies also. This
again is part of the complexity of conception and
design in the poet's use of his method-his wish
and aim to be "objective and subjective" too.
And this complexity of dramatic interest and
expression may suggest another reason for his
obscurity, and that is a reason it is not, perhaps,
easy to get over and impossible to get rid of-
that is, his swiftness of movement, his energy and
rapidity of thought, his quick, restless perceptions
and transitions, his swift and subtle qualifications,
his strong grip and eager march of mind both
among facts and thoughts. There is in Brown-
ing, indeed, that quality of energy and abundance;
that sense of a mind conscious of its own strength
and movement, and rejoicing in it; that ful-
ness of flow both of matter and utterance, which
Marlowe and Jonson, and above all Shakspeare,
have. It is not easy to follow such writing, but
it is a noble virtue, and the stimulus of it is
excellent, and no poet of our time has given it in
the same degree as the author of "The Ring and
the Book."
J
-
ANALYSIS OF DRAMATIC METHOD 89
And when mental energy is named, that is only
part of the matter. This poet is keen, alert, and
ready with his other powers. His senses are quick
and strong-eye and ear, sense of form and colour
and beauty. He is active and observant, and of
well-developed physical endowment. You find
something of the external abundance of the great
poets, in spite of themes and a method that hardly
encourage this kind of wealth.
The complexity of dramatic interest and ex-
pression has been noted, but there are further
points of that kind that add much to the interest
and something to the difficulty of this poetry.
The situations and moments of life and charac-
ter chosen are pregnant and complex; the per-
sons presented are far from being simple, and you
find them in moments of disturbance and debate
when the passion and thought of years is brought
to bear on some matter of the soul or the life.
Such hours are those of intense action, congenial
to the poet's mind, and best for his method of
dramatic revelation; but they are situations re-
quiring energy on the reader's as on the poet's
part.
And if the poet's choice of subjects and drama-
tic treatment of them means trouble, he adds to it
by the casuistic and speculative activity which he
often keeps up alongside the dramatic activity.
It is not only that his dramatic poems are
dramatic studies of spiritual quality and depth,
nor only that they are studies of complex charac-
ters and situations, but the dramatic and argu-
90
ROBERT BROWNING
mentative threads are often so worked together
that it is at times impossible to keep them clear,
or to know if the poet meant you to do so. And
to complicate matters further from the point of
view of art, and to add to the interest and depth
from that of thought, the poet contrives, or is
driven by interest of his own mind in the facts
and problems contained within the dramatic de-
velopment, to suggest the largest aspects of
thought in its bearing on these matters of
human life-to suggest the uncertainty and in-
completeness of art and of thought in dealing
with the complex drama, even of single souls, in
situations that involve their lives and their re-
sources.
And the fact is, broadly, that Browning does
not and cannot use his dramatic power simply
as a poet or merely as a dramatist. He has
the power to present poetry dramatic and accu-
rate in his kind of work. He is not, as some
think, a critic of life who uses poetry as the
medium of his criticism, or a thinker who uses
dramatic forms to state in the terms of life his
conclusions about life. He is a dramatist of true
power, and his poetry as such is vitally clear and
right. But behind and about all you have the
thinker. It is not necessary here to settle which
interest of the poet is the stronger, the poetic or
the speculative-and in some of the poems it is
impossible to settle it; but, without seeking to
determine that question for the poet's mind, it
is clear that he regards dramatic poetry as a
STYLE AND ITS QUALITIES
91
medium vital, and therefore most valuable, for
presenting the problems of the soul and of life,
and unless this be regarded in his work he must
often bewilder.
Enough, however, of reasons arising from this
side of the poetry. Many will deem that a reason
more on the surface has much to answer for. We
refer to the style of the poet. If that had been
other and clearer, the business of reading had
been easier. Browning's style is distinct and
individual. Its merits and faults are mainly his
own. His utterance is the energetic reflex of the
man and his thought. As such it must be known;
and it is swift and abrupt like the thought, and
condensed often as the thought is concentrated.
Thought and fact are primary, and language
must bend to the intense thinking. His eli-
sions are often puzzling, his clauses numerous,
his qualifications tiresome; his similes, often
happy, are strange at times; and his metaphors
sometimes run away with him, and become a
thing apart and grotesque. There are parts
that look as if they had been thrown off with
a profuse energy and indifference to finish-
parts that look like full and vigorous notes for
work rather than the completed work. Beauty of
expression seems of small account compared with
distinct and forcible statement, and his own keen-
ness and energy of mind have led to his thinking
too little of other minds.
All that may be said of Browning's style, and
yet this poet is really great in point of style,
92
•
ROBERT BROWNING
original and powerful in this as in matter.
Casual, harsh, and capricious as he seems at
times, reckless and grotesque as he seems, he
is in his best work masterly and sufficient. He
is Shakespearean in fulness, rapidity, and mastery
of utterance. His style is, perhaps, the most
vital and natural of recent poets-the fit medium
and counterpart of his matter; with great sim-
plicity often, great vivacity, with muscular quality
and grasp, and with nothing rhetorical or obtrusive
about it.
To compare Browning and Tennyson in the
matter of style, is to find a measure of their
merits and differences. Beauty, finish, musical
and emotional charm, care for every verse and
line and for the parts as parts, and care for
verse and phrase as things of beauty and pleasure
in themselves-these are Tennyson's qualities, not
Browning's; but in Browning power and mastery
of matter and word, tense grasp and alert speech,
force, animation, trenchant and decisive bearing
on the main purpose. There is manliness and
sincerity, an upright and masculine temper, even
in his speech, the pertinence and freedom of
animated and competent talk; and such style
fits his method, and lies close to his thoughts.
It is laid to his charge that he is never lyrical
and poetic, in the sense some have got to regard
as the whole of poetry. His tone and colour are
too low. Plain in word, and almost prosaic in
pitch, he offends some. But that is to miss his
standpoint and design. His style is framed to
STYLE AND ITS QUALITIES
93
his purpose; and in its qualities, and what some
think its defects, it may be regarded as the reflex
both of his mode of thought and his view of his
whole subject. Its quality and tints are realistic.
Its discords and grotesqueness of phrase and line
belong to its dramatic humour, and give the key
of the writer's thought. But the results are not
art, it may be said. They are not classic, but
Gothic art-a more natural and complete art,
because more sufficient as an image of life. And
our great dramatic thinker and poet sees SO
forcibly the quality of life, its completeness, its
moral infinity; he sees how all character is mani-
fold, intricate, never to be seized or expressed in
its exact truth; he is set on the soul, and, as
language can at its best but indicate the life of
that, he is satisfied that his style should be the
shadow and consequence of his "criticism" of
life and of art's just relation to it.
As to verse, and his powers in that matter.
In the opinion of some he has been indifferent
here. But he is really capable of great metrical
skill, as many poems show in all parts and periods
of his work. So fine a judge as Mr. Watts speaks
of such passages, "hundreds in which the music
is quite new, quite his own, and entirely beautiful,"
though the critic thinks the poet often "led astray
by his quest for new movements." His use of
rhyme is a trying point to some, part of his
humour often; but his blank verse is fluent and
masterly, no doubt because it is the most suit-
able to his mode of art and his theme-the
94
ROBERT BROWNING
verse that is nearest to speech, as has been
said.
It has now become clear that, on whatever side
Browning's work is regarded, you can understand
it only as you discern and allow for its dramatic
quality and design. He is the modern poet of
man, positive, comprehensive, and spiritual, and
he has the largest qualification for the work of
any recent English poet. The characteristics of
his work, the way in which he touches and illus-
trates human life and man's nature, the body of
thought and character through which it is done,
the genius and personality that inspire and vita-
lise it, the outcome of it, and the impression made.
by the whole work as a view of the life of man,
these questions arise when we come to regard the
work in its whole extent, and to estimate it with
reference to its great subject.
Some of these matters we shall consider along
with the groups of poems that illustrate them. It
will be well here to mark certain general principles
and features of the work and of the poet. And,
first, looking at the poetry as characterisation of
the lives of men, what wealth and variety of
character it contains, through so many types,
times, and races, Greek, Eastern, Mediæval,
Renaissance, Modern! And the freedom of
moral scope is as great as the variety of type.
It passes from Caliban to Aben Ezra. The
readiness and versatility of mind this implies
are only part of what it involves. The wide
research and frank curiosity are matched by the
JE
CHARACTERISTICS
95
To
moral breadth and impartiality of nature.
really present not the actions, but the minds and
feelings of so many "persons," to identify the
mind with them so far as to give the being and
body of their experience this means a rare
width and freedom of spirit, a rare power to
enter into the thoughts of men. Nor is it intel-
lectual comprehension only, large and subtle as
that is. There is free emotion. There is sym-
pathy and frank regard, which throws itself into
the particular case for the time, making it real,
giving not only the process of thought, but the
play of passion and habit, so far as it belongs to
his dramatic art.
And this is part, of course, of that vitality and
energy which gives so strong a fascination to
Browning's dramatic work. The fascination that
vital energy has in every form is here in its
finest form as energy of will and spirit. He
seems alive at every point, at every moment, and
he animates every person of his drama and every
line of his work. And this not only with a keen,
alert intelligence, but with the touch of a well-
strung nature. Mr. Bagehot called attention to
the tenseness and alertness of Shakespeare's mind,
so that his plays have the excitement and activity
of the playhouse; Browning's work has a similar
quality and power.
And what courage, and frankness of judgment,
and interest! What health and naturalness of
speech and feeling! He is not afraid to give
men and women in the bold lines and simple.
96
ROBERT BROWNING
truth of their souls and lives. He understands
the passion and trial of men. He knows the
"joy of life, the mere living." He has a Shake-
spearean cordiality and humanity; is open and
hearty towards man and life.
And, being the man and thinker we have
described, his characterisation is inclusive and
actual, not exclusive or abstract.
He has an eye
for all significant facts, and is quick to catch
their meaning. As an artist, he knows the
worth of expressive detail; as a dramatist, he
has a care for whatever throws light on his per-
sons; as a thinker, he is resolute to grasp the
whole problem in all its elements, and seeks no
vain simplicity, but the complex relations and
subtle balances of forces that belong to life and
fact.
These are some of the qualities of Browning's
characterisation, and out of them arise two ques-
tions. What is the principle of selection, what
the ground of interest, that has led the poet to
this gallery of men and women, so curious and
original? It seems difficult to define his dra-
matic motive. Not beauty or pleasure or morality,
or any simple motive of poetic invention, will
account for these dramatic works. What, then,
is the point of attraction and of interest? No
English poet of recent years has grasped so much
of the lives of men, has gone so far through the
field of man's history, or made such wide observa-
tion of its facts. Others have kept a narrow
range, and have offered familiar types; this poet
CHARACTERISTICS
97
has put before us, in the intimate passion and
truth of their souls, men of exceptional and various
characters. And his clue has been the human
interest and significance of his themes. A wide
and disinterested curiosity-nay, love and care
for the things of human spirits-is one leading
note of this poetry.
At a time when a great
general idea of science has given such interest.
and value to the simplest facts bearing on the
history of life, and a new and grand unity to all
research illustrating that history, Browning has
felt a similar interest, has given something of
the same unity and value to all facts bearing on
the interior life and its laws.
But Browning's interest in the facts of human
life, though wide and disinterested in the sense
just stated, is not so universal or free as Shake-
speare's. All kinds of characters and situations do
not interest him. Many of Shakespeare's people
would not answer his purpose. The stimulus of
interest and expression in his poetry is not, as in
the "objective drama," action or what bears on
action, but the "soul," and what moves or reveals
it. And so his critics have noted that the crises
and situations that do this are of special interest
to him-the times that throw the soul off its
habits and on to its deeper forces, that make
clear the drift and power of those forces; the
energies that are usually quiet, but that take or
make their hour by laws deeper than ethics
or psychical science may grasp.
From this comes another point of his work—
7
98
ROBERT BROWNING
that his dramatis persona are such as afford these
crises and the forces that generate them or respond
to them. As tragic situations belong to the
drama of action, and test and develop the will,
so tragical moments and decisions belong to the
inward drama, and test and develop the soul;
and the souls that give scope for these crises are
the deep and passionate people who have the
elements of disturbance in them. From the first
it is these people who have interested him. Even
lives that are wrecked by the conflict are his
element, for they unveil the human spirit-lives
in which there is a large composition and unstable.
equilibrium of forces.
And then, looking at the drift of the above
criticism, and at the lists of "persons," we come
more fully upon a question touched before-
What is Browning's essential interest? Is it
poetic or scientific? curiosity or human regards ?
Browning is human and cordial to the core, and
his poetry is so too. But the question is one
raised by his poetry and method far more than
by Shakespeare's. What is the "end" of all this
curiosity about, this description of, human life?
What is its higher interest?
"Man is of peren-
nial interest to man," and of deeper interest to
the dramatist than to any. Is it, then, only the
animation and play of his puppets that he
regards; or does he watch the parts and the
play with an eye to the larger play of life itself,
that he may find clues to the plan and issues of
that? Shakespeare, it has been thought, gave it
TO
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K
CHARACTERISTICS
99
}}
up, and threw his "book away, and laid aside
his powers to return to the common duties with a
sense of its mystery and goodness, but nothing
more. Browning is of another age and the poet
of another drama, and, as was said above in
speaking of the complexity of his method, his
work involves the interest of the thinker as well
as the poet. His interest in the facts of the
play goes with an interest in the laws and
issues of the greater drama of life itself. Some
find much fault with the poet because this is so,
and some seek to "defend" him by maintaining
that he writes only and always as a dramatist.
But the defence is not valid, and there may
surely be an activity of the thinker without pre-
judice to that of the poet.
And this reference to the thinker and his survey
of his own drama from that standpoint reminds us
of one great characteristic of his poetry—we mean
the way in which you have over and through it
all the suggestion, and even the expression, of
the poet's personality, the free mind of the poet.
Browning is not, and for many reasons could
not be, as Shakespeare is thought to have been
in this. His mind and personality are impressed
upon his work, and conveyed through it to his
readers who can read. And after all talk about
the duty to hide and suppress personality in
poetic work, vital contact with a true and strong
poet is surely one of the most stimulating and
precious things poetry can give you. But will
not this interfere with the truth and balance of
7
100
ROBERT BROWNING
***
...
the work? That will, of course, depend on how
it is done, and it must in no case be primary or
obtrusive; but the dramatic presentation may
surely be made, though you have about and
beyond that the mind of the poet and what is
the dramatic element when most vital but some
part of the mind of the poet?
In any case, careful readers of Browning admit
that in most parts of his work, and these the most
animated and striking parts, you find the poet
himself suggested or expressed.
We do not
mean his opinions, but something more and
deeper the man and his mind. You feel a rich
and strong nature, a fresh and vigorous spirit;
you have stimulated energy of feeling, thought,
and will. This is why some find him "hard."
He is too active and aggressive for them. But it
is a reason why others read him in spite of objec-
tion to subjects and style. They feel in his work
an ardent and potent mind. They get from him
the impression of greatness. Even in poems they
do not care about as a whole, they get the impulse
of vital power; they feel the depths of thought
and passion; they get a sense of mastery, force,
and reality.
And this though it may be said that the per-
sonality of the poet is an unknown quantity, re-
served, subtle, and elusive, “always self-asserting,
yet never defined; probably as mysterious to the
poet as to his readers," as Mrs. Orr finely wrote
in the Contemporary Review. But this is not
because the poet is not present in his work, or is
*
CHARACTERISTICS
IOI
withdrawn from his readers. It is because the
man and his genius make a complex body of
powers in very stable equilibrium. His nature
is full, and it is well balanced-intellectual and
passionate; idealistic, yet concrete and accurate;
spiritual, but shrewd; a "seer" and a "mystic,"
but also a humorist and a man of the world";
capable of intense meditation, and also of keen
activity and enjoyment; resolute of will and com-
pact of soul, yet tender and brotherly.
((
Nor is it possible to say how you get all this
and more; and another good critic, touching this
point, speaks of it as quite inexplicable, com-
paring our poet, in this matter of personal com-
munication and influence through his work, with
Cardinal Newman, a great part of whose influence.
has been of this kind. But communication of the
living spirit, of "the incommunicable qualities and
secrets of the soul," is only partly explicable in
any striking case of it. Poetic work is more
finely adapted than any work for this expression
and suggestion; and poetry like Browning's,
everywhere in touch with men and with life,
must be more living than most, conveying much
of the poet through themes and tone, through
what is said and what is reserved.
The poet is there, anyhow, to qualify and ani-
mate the work, and to give in subtle ways inter-
course with his nature. And it is seldom in
literature or in life that you find such substance
and strength, warmed with such passion and
kindled by such fire. And this, which is part
102
ROBERT BROWNING
of the power, is also part of the worth of this
poetry. Its masculine quality, its intellectual
force, its impartiality, its irony, yet spiritual
tenderness and depth, reflect the mind and the
poet.
And this poet's sense of personality is exception-
ally strong, and has been so ever since he made
himself known through literature. It is so in
"Pauline." And this is not merely an aspect of
his energy of will and force of brain; it is not
always found with these: it is a principle of his
mind and of his genius, so intense that it seems
a central idea, and has given his dramatic work
its keen individualism. So marked and per-
vasive is this principle that some take it as the
chief ideal and quality of the work. All his " per-
sons" have something of the intense personality
of the poet; the greater figures among them have
it in a degree that makes them unique in modern.
poetry. The depth and power with which they
realise themselves, with which they live and illus-
trate life, is extraordinary. Both the personality
of the poet and the principle of his art give his
poetry a keen animation, and render his persons
And
in the scope of passion and consciousness.
this principle is in deep agreement with the poet's
spiritual ideas, since he has such; as Mrs. Orr
sees, it is a central spiritual truth as well as a
principle of art. Every dramatic "argument," and
all the poet's thoughts turn upon it. Knowledge
and faith derive their quality and get their scope
from it. In other terms, the individualism of his
CHARACTERISTICS
103
art rests on a strong sense of the individuality of
thought, the unique import of self-consciousness,
the spirituality of mind. Self-conscious mind is
the chief fact known to us-is strictly the one
fact known by us, and as it is for us the centre
of the mystery of experience and its final fact, so
it must be the master-key to its meaning, imply-
ing it may be an Eternal mind, source, and home
of all minds. And if it be said that this intense
consciousness and spiritual energy is so rare that
Browning's art is untrue in this, as in its tense
passion and strong speech, the objection is met.
by reminding the critic that the persons are
chosen in those moments and situations when,
if ever, they throw themselves into keen self-
expression, and realise themselves to the full.
1
CHAPTER IV
PAULINE
(C
was
"PAULINE" is dated October 1832. It was
printed, scarcely published, in January 1833,-
without the poet's name. It was not reissued
until 1868, and then the poet explained that it
reissued with extreme repugnance, of
necessity," because certain misprints" were
being put forth to gratify public curiosity in
regard to this poem. It was then printed without
change. But in the final edition of his works
he "removed solecisms, mended the metre, and
strengthened the phraseology" a little.
He speaks of the work as "boyish," as an
"eyesore" to him, and as recording against. hm
the faults of his youth. It was done when he
was but twenty years. It is youthful and it has
faults. But besides the interest and significante.
the poem has in relation to the poet's after work,
it has in itself not a few points of interest, and n
parts of it no small poetic merit, freshness, and
beauty. One can well understand its interest for
early discerning readers. One can see why Mil
liked it, and why Rossetti loved it.
Its literary
sympathies, its spiritual temper, its climate of
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PAULINE
105
thought, its romantic beauties, and a certain soft
musical quality explain its charm for Rossetti, its
interest for Mill and others.
It is entitled "A Fragment of a Confession."
The confession is of a life, an experience, and
is made to Pauline, by a somewhat nebulous.
"hero," who had loved her, and returns after
various vague and unsatisfactory experiences to
her love, her soft sheltering breast. It is a con-
fession made in the stress of a crisis, whose nature
is even more obscure than the hero's career and
character. He has gone through much, and
suffered much, inwardly at least, and as result
some revolution impends; but naturally, consider-
ing the theme and the youth of the poet, what the
fruit of all was to be is left very much in the clouds.
The author spoke of it as "the only crab"
remaining of a certain "shapely tree of life,"
which he dreamed to rear in what he calls his
"fool's paradise" of youthful fancy and ambition.
This refers to a scheme of dramatic studies of
'typical souls," which he projected in his com-
parative ignorance of life, though such a scheme
shows the bias and hints, the range and energy of
his mind even then. And "Pauline" is a study
of one such "typical soul," filled in and presented
as he could, at the time-a "typical soul," we say,
not a "character"-and presented through its own
narrative of the experiences and moral states by
which it has been led to the crisis, which is the
occasion of the "confession" to Pauline.
Regarded as a "type" the general features and
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}
(C
qualities of the lover of Pauline can be indicated,
if not drawn, though the precise series of states
and experiences through which he is described as
passing is a more obscure affair. The author
spoke of it as "a crude preliminary sketch" giving
hints of the subject. This it surely does. The
speaker," we said, is the lover of Pauline, but
he has been, he implies, faithless to her, and it
may seem but little faithful to any one or any-
thing, save a vague, expansive, and greedy "self."
He is in fact the sort of spiritual egotist, so often
found from the days of "La Nouvelle Héloïse"
and "Werther" to those of "Don Juan." His
guiding principle has been a devotion to a sort
of "ideal self," conceived as a unit and apart;
and of this "self," the main feature has been a
craving for an ever fuller consciousness of life,
emotional and intellectual. It is the filling of
consciousness to the brim that has been his quest,
not with vulgar pleasures, though even such
pleasures are likely to count when such is the
quest—not with vulgar pleasures, but with the
pleasing and stimulating side of all higher things.
-with art and thought and humanistic admira-
tions, with philanthropic and religious passion too,
as bringing the beat of a fuller pulse, and the
throb of an ampler life. He would be all men,
nay all things, would enter into all experience,
and know the thrill of all life, in all its stages.
He has been restless, ambitious. He is profuse
in his confessions of follies, excesses, shames even;
and one can see that though these are only hinted,
PAULINE
107
as the young poet had no grasp of such things
then; and the "tale” as far as it gets is of emotions,
aims, ideas, not deeds at all, that these errors
were likely to come to such a mind in this world.
No one who sets out with such a principle, with
such an aim, can miss these among the conditions
of human life. To place as one's nearer and farther
aim the sentimental and conscious gratification of
self is to grasp at best a shifty and uncertain, at
worst a mischievous and disastrous, clue amid the
waves of passion and the ways of life.
And the reason why the young poet chose
such a "type" so early in his career, and for the
only one of his "monodramas" he ever worked
out, is surely thus implied above. It was because
the type drawn, the mood expressed, had been
often found, especially among cultivated and
poetic persons, since the rise of modern senti-
mentalism and self-consciousness. Rousseau is
the literary type of it, though he did not invent
it. Even Goethe had to work it off in "Werther,"
and it is part of the trouble of Faust. Byron has
much of it. And even Shelley brings airs of it,
not wholly cleared off by his generous ardours.
In fact, “Pauline" owes something of its theme
to "Alastor."
We have said that neither the stages, nor the
conclusion of the experience typified in "Pauline,"
are clearly given. The poet was too young to do
either. But there is perhaps more significance
than has been recognised in the fact that so soon
he drew the type, and saw its defects and dangers,
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ROBERT BROWNING
F
while seeing its value and virtue too. Your self-
conscious cultism, your sensitive spiritual egotism,
your quest of the Infinite through the life of the
emotions, or through a life of personal gratifica-
tions, breaks down. The poet has intuition of
this, though he cannot yet work it out. While he
felt deeply that we not only may, but must, seek
expansion, fulfilment, he saw thus early, if vaguely,
that we are set henceforth to that quest of the
Infinite which is the trouble and the greatness, in
art and life, of the modern time. But how through
the life of thought and action, of love and duty,
this quest is to be approached, he does not here
suggest, except so far forth as his poor "hero"
confesses the error and defect of his past search,
and indicates love and lowliness as a better way.
It is, however, a problem that has been before
the modern spirit for long years and in several
forms, and to it we shall find the poet return
again and again through his studies of the moral
and mental life of his time. It is, in the next poems
he made, more fully grasped-in "Paracelsus "
and "Sordello." It is in the "Grammarian," and
naturally in "Rabbi Ben Ezra " as a noble ethic.
There are other points of much interest in
Pauline," some of which have been touched
before. Browning's early culture, his love of the
Greek myths and poets, his idealism and admira-
tion for Plato, his love of Shelley, his appreciation.
of Keats, all these are in it; and besides these
we find certain traits of his own mental character,
and the fine romantic notes of his first poetic style.
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PAULINE
109
As regards the first point, some of the most.
striking lines of the poem, and remarkable for a
youth of twenty years, are from the poet's own
character. They are the lines on pp. 14, 15 of
the final edition, beginning-
I am made up of an intensest life,
Of a most clear idea of consciousness,
Of self, distinct from all its qualities.
Then further on this other point—
A mind like this must dissipate itself,
But I have always had one lode-star; now,
As I look back
·
A need, a trust, a yearning after God:
I saw God everywhere.
-that is an intense individuality, a deep religious
passion, and a strong conviction that the passions
and problems of the mind must somehow find
their goal and their solution in a Supreme spirit.
At a later point, at a point just past the editor's
apology for the hero's excitement and obscurity,
on pp. 37, 38 he recurs to the same idea as his
clue, and has these touching lines-
Can I forego the trust that He loves me?
O thou pale form, so dimly seen deep-eyed!
Have I been keeping lonely watch with Thee
In the damp night of weeping Olivet,
Or dying with Thee on the lonely cross,
Or witnessing Thine outburst from the tomb?
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ROBERT BROWNING
The references to music in "Pauline" are also
from the poet's own mind, p. 18; cf. 41-
music (which is earnest of a heaven,
Seeing we know emotion strange by it,
Not else to be revealed).
And there are many fine touches of romantic
fancy, not a few lines of lovely nature-poetry, and
that thrill of fresh passion at the interest of life
and the beauty of the world, which the very first
critic of the poem, to his honour, felt in it.
violets opening from sleep like eyes.
The morning swallows with their song-like words.
whose renown springs up
Like sunlight which will visit all the world.
•
two lonely things
Created by some power whose reign is done,
Having no part in God or His bright world.
•
Or these regarding Greece, as seen through
Greek literature, p. 16-
Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those
On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea.
Or the noble lines on Agamemnon, p. 26—
that king,
Treading the purple calmly to his death,
While round him, like the clouds of eve, all dusk
The giant shades of fate, silently flitting,
Pile the dim outline of the coming doom.
Or the lines on Andromeda, pp. 29, 30-
so beautiful
With her fixed eyes, earnest and still.
CHAPTER V
PARACELSUS
“PARACELSUS" was Browning's
was Browning's first published
work, for "Pauline," though printed, was scarcely
published. And "Paracelsus" was published in
1835 when the poet was in his twenty-third year.
As very early work it has its interest-interest
in regard to the poet-interest with regard to the
time when it was done.
A poet's early work, whatever its essential value,
has value with reference to the poet himself. His
early interests, bias, ambitions, show in such work,
the points at which he began in the freshness of
his powers and early grasp of life.
“Paracelsus" has this interest plainly written
upon it. The themes that drew and engaged our
poet of two and twenty years, his early enthusi-
asm and affinities of thought, the questions his
mind was busy with, the lives that interested him,
his first quality in the study of man, and the art
he then affected, these are all plainly declared in
"Paracelsus."
And such work in given cases, in this case, has
also interest with reference to the time during which
it was done. The silence of ten years had been
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ROBERT BROWNING
broken by only one new and significant poet.
Young Tennyson had done his first works when
Browning, still younger, came forth to take up and
extend the great traditions of English verse, as
they had been left by the group of romantic poets
whose early deaths left the blank in English verse
spoken of above. Both the classical, romantic, and
national strains and interests were obvious in
Tennyson from the first pretty strongly, and
a tendency to lyrical and dramatic-lyrical poems.
In Browning the romantic had clearly the upper
hand, and a strong human and ethical interest;
and his tendency was to the same dramatic stand-
point and form.
"Paracelsus" then, just because it is early work,
has these points of interest; and, it must be added,
as early work, as youthful work, it has its faults,
its defects, plainly written in the structure and on
the face of the poem. We can be quite frank
about that without involving any disrespect to our
poet, or to the interest of his theme.
The poem has grave faults and defects of
structure, quality, and style. It is diffuse. The
dramatic situation and motives are by no means
clear. The characters or the types-for the figures
are rather types than persons are by no means
distinct. The speeches are numerous and lengthy
—too many and too long, often. And there is at
times that "excess of phrase and colour which
young romanticists mostly fall into.
""
Such faults are on the surface of "Paracelsus,"
and have made it easy for some to set it aside
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113
and give reasons for doing so.
Its merits are
somewhat more involved, and ask tolerance, study,
and sympathy with the theme of the poem, and
the aim of the poet to ascertain them. But the
merits are solid, and the poem has essential
interest. There is a wonderful fluency and abun-
dance of style. There is so much poetry and
thought in it, and it leaves so many passages of
fine poetry and noble thought in the memory,
that one recurs to it with pleasure, even from the
heights of the poet's stronger and fuller work.
You infer that we do not defend the scheme and
build of the poem. We do not. As regards the
scheme and build of "Paracelsus," one can hardly
defend that. It is not drama, nor is it mono-
drama—dramatic-lyric. It is a dramatic poem.
Now, we are not going into the vexed question
whether a poet may make poetic drama to be
read; if it express his mind, and he can get it
read, he probably will make it—that is, if its pro-
duction vitally interests the poet, and the product
his readers. But, if "drama" of any sort be made,
we must have personæ vitally acting and reacting
on each other, and together bringing the conclu-
sion; and if the drama could never be "played,"
never be spoken, it must still be evolved under its
conditions in and through its dramatis persona.
Now we are probably pretty well agreed that
"Paracelsus" does not fulfil these conditions or
meet these tests. We have said that the persona
are not persons. Aprile is a type, Michal is a
type, even Festus.
Paracelsus is vital and fairly
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ROBERT BROWNING
defined. But it is not merely a series of scenes
rather than a drama, but the "persons.
persons" do not
steadily act and react on each other to evolve the
conclusions. Paracelsus alone “acts.” It is true
the others have some influence on him, largely
passive, indirect; but the drama of his career in
its power and its weakness springs chiefly from
within. The development is the development of
the mind and character, of the genius of Para-
celsus; the others, even Festus, and Festus even
in the last scene, are quite subsidiary to the play
of his mind and will.
The poet himself was aware of the objections
that might be made to his form. In a preface
to the edition of 1835, which it is a pity he has
not retained in its place, he explained that his
design was to display, not the external things
that led to the internal results, but so to display
the internal results as to suggest the external
factors, and even the incidents leading to them,
his care being for the mind and for results
there.
The æsthetic problem he is thinking of is thus
made plain. Drama uses a more or less external
machinery of actions, events, and persons to de-
velop its story and present its characters. And
this method has advantages and restrictions. Is
there, then, a method and form of dramatic art
that, while keeping external elements and factors
in the background, shall be able to fill the fore-
ground vividly with the characters in action, and
at the same time give the story, the circumstances,
PARACELSUS
115
the factors, so far as these are essential to under-
stand the history and qualities of the soul of the
man in himself? The poet held there is.
"Para-
celsus," anyhow, is not such a form, though the
aim of the poet, and the quality of the poem in
certain respects, are dramatic, and keenly so.
But though Browning did not find his form he
found his theme and his field of work. He entered
the province he was to make his own. He took
up the study he was to prosecute to the end. In
a phrase of his own, "Paracelsus" is a "Study of
a Soul." It is the development of a life through
inward growth and debate, through outward ex-
perience, friendship, work. It elicits and presents
the crises and results, it implies and so far unfolds
the factors and incidents in the development of a
life; and it does this chiefly through the mind of
the man who lived it.
The interest of the soul in this sense may of
course be questioned. It may be matter of doubt
how far this way of inward research brings out
really and accurately the life of man. And men
are likely to be divided to the end of time on the
relative pertinences and interests of the worlds of
fact and action, and the world of thought, emotion,
motive, character. Browning anyhow, as thinker
and poet, has always been clear on the point. He
has always affirmed the interest of the inner world,
and the value of the knowledge of it. And for
that view his poetry is the apologia a long
and strenuous defence of the interest and value
of the life of man-of man in and for himself.
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ROBERT BROWNING
Many of us seem to think that conduct and the
outward relations of our lives are the whole of
life. It is held to be vain, morbid, even to con-
cern one's self about anything further-to spend
care on, to turn regard to the inward order or
spirit. If the outward order and relations be
right all will be right. And much can be said for
that view and régime. The court being set among
the ways of practical life, the judge being common
sense, and the jury the men who seem to have
fixed much attention on themselves of late-" the
men in the street "the case for an active and
wholly outward life can be made to seem com-
plete. Nay, even in the court of conscience, in
certain schools of ethics at least, it is made to
appear so.
But it is not so, and though our poet does not
moralise about it, it is one of the outstanding
"lessons" of his whole art that the inner order,
the springs and play of life within, are of essential
account. The centre and ground of the drama
of life are there. You must find and know the
man there to know him really; you must test
matters by their results on the soul. Harmony!
with self and not with the out nature only is our
obligation and our law.
Such words and Browning's conception may of
course be taken narrowly, and in such a way as
to miss the true sense. The very use of the word
"soul" may seem to involve things that men
are not agreed about, and that are outside the
scope of literature as such. It is the word
PARACELSUS
117
}
Browning uses and prefers. But he uses it in
its freer, its fuller sense, for the man within, in
all his vital elements; and what is meant is, that
the interior facts and laws are of first-rate interest
in our study and towards our knowledge of man,
as they are of capital value in culture and well-
being.
The way in which Browning came to take this
view, to choose this theme, to take this special field
in the study of man, is an interesting question; and
such a poem as this of "Paracelsus" coming then,
and coming so early in the poet's career, and with
the qualities it has, raises the question. We need
only say here that this more inward note, develop-
ing towards what is sometimes called psychological
subtlety and search, came in with the romantic
revival in Germany and England. It is in Goethe
and Schiller. It is in another way in Wordsworth.
It is very much in Coleridge. It is in Shelley.
It was not only a new sense of the interest of all
human facts. It was a new and haunting sense
of the depth of the life of man; as it is often put,
it was a sense of the infinity of human passion
and of human nature.
We shall touch on this aspect of the poem
again. For the present we turn to the poem and
its theme, and have to consider the relation of the
design and form of the poem to its subject.
What is this relation? The poet claims that it
is dramatic, historic, and that under the conditions
of art chosen he has "presented" Paracelsus.
In what way, then, are the man and his story
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ROBERT BROWNING
<<
presented"? The poem is no story or picture
of the life and deeds of Paracelsus, no scrupulous
reconstruction of facts, so far as they have come
down to us, whether it gives us the personality
or not. Browning, indeed, says that the poem.
might be put within the leaves of any good life.
of Paracelsus as an interpretation of the man and
his aims. And, in a sense, we may allow that
true. Browning knew the facts and grasped fairly
the ideal aims of the life, but not closely or
exactly. He fills the CC
story" with his own
mind, with his time, with the modern spirit. And
so, it is a larger part of the truth to say that
the story of Paracelsus, as it has come down to
us, would not have suggested the inner story here
told to any one but Browning in the year 1835.
The poem is not, in other words, so much the
actual man as a poetic-spiritual interpretation of
his ideas and motives, seen from the poet's stand-
point and through the poet's mind. Not a true
story, then, do you say, but only an imagination ?
But are not the sincere creations of a poet's mind
truer than "true stories "truer to the heart of
man?
It follows, of course, that in reading "Para-
celsus," though you are not kept close to the facts,
you must know them in outline at least, and the
age of Paracelsus, to understand the aims and
ideas, the central figure, the scope of the poet in
his "study" of this soul, of this mind and this
life, and of life from this point of view.
Paracelsus was born in 1493, the year after the
PARACELSUS
119
discovery of America, and died in 1541, two
years before Copernicus. He won fame and
honour, also dubious reputation and dishonour,
as a physician and chemist. In both lines his
services and ideas were critical and valuable. He
felt deeply, and boldly proclaimed the absurdity
of the medical notions and practice of his time.
He led a revolt against authority and tradition,
appealed to experience broadly, and set himself
to seek facts. He sought, however crudely, to
put medicine on the ways of knowledge. He
brought physic into some relation to chemistry.
He had a right idea of the nature of diseases, and
insisted on the need to study them in their course
and growth. He introduced some valuable medi-
cines. In all such points he got sight at least of
a new era in medical art.
And the man was ambitious and original. His
desires outwent the desires of ordinary men, as
his ideas in important points surpassed the science
or the ignorance of his time. But he was not
scientific. He came too soon for that, and he
had not the temper for it. He came in the
transition time, when the dawn of scientific ideas
and method was beginning to touch the horizon
of the modern mind. He is a mystic, with a
leaning to magic as well as to observation, what
is called an occultist. It was a natural position
for "students of nature" in his time. But he had
such impatience, audacity, and vanity as to make.
it specially dangerous for him.
And the age was transitional in other great
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ROBERT BROWNING
matters, and well fitted to bring out the strength
and weakness of such a man. It was the age of
Luther and Erasmus-of the Reformation and
the Renaissance; the age of Columbus; the age
when feudalism and scholasticism and Catholicism
had broken down in the social, mental, and moral
orders, and when the first great period of modern
life began. It was a time of much discontent
with the past, a time of expansive thought and
desire, and Paracelsus shared its spirit. In medi-
cine he was something of a Luther, using some-
thing of Luther's methods—" burning their books,”
as Luther the papal bull, and, with fiery tongue,
denouncing their errors, that he might free the
bodies of men, as Luther thought to free their
souls. He provoked bitter opposition, of course.
Unfortunately, his aims and methods were not
pure and high. He was something of a quack as
well as a dreamer, and so laid himself open to
disaster.
The poem is an attempt to present vitally and
explain the course and aims of such a man, keep-
ing closely by the circumstances of his life so far,
but construing the inner life more freely. The
man, the age, the failure, and the results of his
mind and his life, are all so construed as to
disclose their inner truth and their significant
relation to human experience.
The poem is presented in five scenes, marking
the crises in the course and trial of Paracelsus;
and Paracelsus himself is made to express what
at those times passed through his mind—his
PARACELSUS
I21
"moods in their rise and progress."
These
}}
scenes are taken from his life, and turn on
events of his life. Along with him, a very few
other "persons
persons" are brought in. They give
occasion for his speeches, and their lives and
tempers make his more distinct by contrast.
They also give an element of beauty and
interest to his career by "touches of nature
and strains of human kindness. You are the
more disposed to take interest in and have
patience with Paracelsus in his singular and
solitary career when you see the kindness Festus
and Michal had for him. And their careers,
their gentle passions, and simple satisfied love,
their lives of an ordinary type, not only plant
you on the earth, but make more distinct the
different life of the bold and
and restless
So
thinker.
In the first scene Paracelsus and his friends
are found in a quiet garden at Würzburg, in the
autumn of 1512. Paracelsus explains the pas-
sion and purpose of his life. He sees that new
knowledge is needed. He believes it can be won,
and he devotes his life to win it. His friends
plead against his scheme, and try to draw him
from his way of seeking his end; but the glowing
speech, the energy, and radiant impulse of Para-
celsus overcome them. They fall in with his
hopes, and declare their faith in him and his
greatness. The large restless search of the
man's mind, his vague hopes and ambition, his
intellectual assurance and courage, his fateful
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ROBERT BROWNING
desire, which was in the Faust legend, which was
in the Tannhäuser legend, urging and urging him
on, these grow stronger through the scene, until,
in his closing words, they touch their climax.
The man has high aims and a scorn of common
aims. His passion is to know, and no partial
knowledge can ever seem to him enough. His
desire is to know "the secret of the world, of
man, of man's true purpose, path, and fate.” But
how reach such knowledge? for he is sure God.
impels him to seek and will guide him to gain it.
Not by the common ways, or at the usual sources.
Results have shown these vain. His way must
be one apart a way of genius and daring. But
surely it is wise to use the past and its gains?
No! The past is wrong, or mostly wrong. The
cureless ills of life prove its failure, and impress
the urgent need of a better art and a deeper
knowledge. To serve man by winning that
knowledge is his ambition; "to serve man," but
apart, in a temper of proud isolation and con-
scious greatness. Here is one peril. Man needs
the encircling love and help of his fellows even
in great tasks. Humility and sympathy are
needed for the soul and for the work; pride
brings failure and disaster.
So his friends remind him; but his ambition
and passion for knowledge fill his soul for the
time, and he bears down their fears in a great
speech, telling the sort and scope of know-
ledge he seeks. The true knowledge, light in its
fulness, is within. It is near to all. Set the soul
PARACELSUS
123
free from flesh and custom and ignorance, mis-
named knowledge, and it will be found. And it
has been found partly by those who have touched
its sacred "springs." He goes to gather it so.
This is pre-scientific mysticism and "divination "
of Nature's secrets. It is the occultist, not the
scientist. And here is another danger.
We next find Paracelsus, after an interval of
nine years, at Constantinople, in a conjurer's
house seeking, it seems, the help of magic to
master life, to know his next steps and the
future. Both situation and mood tell what has
happened since he made his "plunge" to find the
pearl of "sacred knowledge." In eager passion
and vague effort he has wearied himself in vain,
and the dangers of his method, as of his mood,
have grown clear. The great secret is unreached,
and life is going. He must mend or end matters
and his search, if it be by help of the conjurer.
He is not the man he was. Inner ruin threatens,
he feels. And though he has given all for know-
ledge, even youth and life, he has not won it.
And, worst of all for him, he seems to be losing
the power and freshness of the mind itself. But
"God, who is the Master Mind," surely values.
mind too much to let this happen to him.
At this point Aprile, a poet, who has also come
under shadows of failure to seek the conjurer's
help, is heard singing a song of those who have
failed and are "lost." Aprile comes in. He is
one of those who have failed, and his failure
becomes the means of a warning and a lesson to
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ROBERT BROWNING
1
|
Paracelsus, just when the shadow of failure has
fallen on his life and aims. Aprile has followed
a very different course, and used a widely different
method. Aprile has loved with eager and endless
passion all things in the world and the life of
man, has sought to grasp all things and give
them to men, that men might love him for the
new sense given them of the joy and beauty of
life. But he lost himself in the egoism of sensa-
tion and passion, and in the vague sense of
loveliness he knew not how to express.
His life
and powers have thus been wasted. Love and joy
were right, but the artist must know as well as
love, must "make" and not only enjoy, must
submit to the limits and master the means of the
art through which he is to give men what he sees
and feels, and perpetuate among them his joy in
and love of things.
Paracelsus sees this as the life of Aprile is put
beside his own. He has ignored love and put
aside enjoyment, caring only for knowledge. Let
Aprile know and Paracelsus love, "love infinitely
and be loved," and their tasks may yet be done.
As to the poet, it cannot be. He is spent and
dies, seeing as he dies that the true poet is he
who, without thought of self, has power to create
and give his creations to men, not because of
enjoyment only, but from love, and not from love
of things and the world only, but from love of
men. In the lesson thus learned Paracelsus seems
to himself to have "attained," the lesson being to
use the knowledge he has won in love for men,
PARACELSUS
125
and not to postpone service or life at the bidding
of a vague ideal passion.
With this he makes a fresh start, and in the
third scene Paracelsus is at Bâle, in 1526. It is
the mid-point of his life. Famous now, and a
professor, he is using the knowledge gathered,
and seems to have got that opportunity of serving
science and his kind which is regarded as the
right sphere for such men. How does it seem to
Paracelsus? Is he satisfied? Is this success?
He pours forth his mockery and discontent to
Festus, who is proud of his "success." He feels
himself no better than a zany in a show, the chief
fool helped by other fools in a farce. Both know-
ledge and opportunity seem fragmentary and
trivial beside the mind's ideal and the soul's
passion, and those about him, with their ignorance,
prejudices, and vulgar aims, make things small
and hopeless; and "truth is far away as ever.”
But it may be God's will men should not reach
the knowledge which Paracelsus desires, and, if so,
our duty is to give our best and do what we can,
since we cannot do what we would. It may be
so, but he cannot rest there. He cannot shut
himself within those limits. Neither his pride
nor his hunger for knowledge will let him, and,
besides, he is at war with his duties and circum-
stances. He has no faith in either, or in men, or
in himself in relation to his tasks and circum-
stances. He foresees failure, partly from faults of
his own, and more from faults of others. His
aims are the same as ever. He has the same
-
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ROBERT BROWNING
scorn of common aims. He cannot love and
enjoy and rest in the good of things, and wait
for the slow progress of the world. Life is sink-
ing into compromise, and the hypocrisy of custom
and contentment. He must maintain his search,
give a wider range to thought, destroy error, and
build up the true knowledge. Why not do this.
through the press, then, where his qualities need
not involve their defects? The whole of his work
could not be done that way any more than
Luther's could have been in his sphere. The
"false gods" must be thrown down visibly, with
scorn and denunciation. So these two talk and
debate together.
They have talked the night out, and as the
dawn comes, Festus, puzzled and feeling that
this life is not likely to prove satisfactory to his
friend, speaks of another. Paracelsus is fretted
for a moment by the thought, for it seems to
make this life a "makeshift"; and then he re-
flects that for man a life that gives scope for
"love and hope and fear and faith" is after all
best, although he, acting as if man were mind
only, has ignored these essential qualities. Any-
how his way of life is once more breaking down.
In the fourth scene he is at Colmar, in 1528,
driven from Bâle. He has sent for Festus, and
tells him how the episode at Bâle went and ended.
The affair of Leichtenfels (the patient whom
Paracelsus cured, and who, refusing him his fees,
was backed by the authorities in doing so), was
only an incident of it, the deeper cause being
PARACELSUS
127
He is bitter and
aversion to his aims and ideas.
unstrung. And what is his plan now? "To
know and enjoy at once," he says; and the words
seem wise, but not the mood, or the life he is
living. He has neither mastered life nor self, and
his pursuit of knowledge seems more a thing of
passion than of purpose; for even while he speaks
of toil to gain it, he says, "Mind is disease, and
natural health is ignorance." And his labours
are now desperate, and, though he will not admit
that his aims are mistaken, his life proves that
they are.
It is in this spirit that he sings the song of the
men who "clung to their first fault and withered
in their pride." Will he be like them, and cling
to his first scheme, having proved its mistake, or
must he change? He can't. He must keep on
in the hope that that way will bring him to his
end. And Festus thinks there must be for such
natures another law than for most men, and a
hope that will not fail. This he is the more en-
couraged to think, because, if Paracelsus has sinned,
he has also loved; and the scene ends with proof
of his love, for the heart of Paracelsus is touched
when he learns the death of his friend's wife, and
he forgets for the time his own troubles to com-
fort Festus.
T
The last scene is in the hospital at Salzburg,
thirteen years after. Paracelsus is dying, and
Festus watches beside him in love and prayer.
He is slowly returning to consciousness, and dreams.
of Aprile. He has heard the poet, now full of
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ROBERT BROWNING
I
music, chanting soft melodies all night, and in
the pardon of the poet he feels the promise
and the grace of his own forgiveness. Wild
words follow about his own life, and then, as he
dreams of Michal and Aprile together, he seeks
to keep by them and love. Then he longs for
the old power, for full attainment and divine
approval, only to see that this world is not for
such things, and that, as it is not, there must be
another. Then he wanders again, and when
Festus steadies him on the present, he sums up
his whole "attainment," the results and lessons of
his life, impartially as a mere "spectator" might
do, and with the breadth and seriousness of one
standing on the verge of "the boundless life."
He has sinned, and he has failed, but God's praise
has not missed, and he gains the high end of life
now in seeing God's will as to man's scope and
duty. A searching and impetuous soul, he felt
himself made for some great task. Though not
free from doubt, he had that inner sense and hold
of things which made "the secret of the world"
his-which made him, in a way thought could
not explore, aware of what God is, what men and
life are. And he reviews the plan of life as he
sees it, and man's place in it-the ascent of life
up to man; the ascent of man through the higher
minds towards God; the task of the greater
spirits being to anticipate and help the spiritual
progress of all.
His task was of this order, and
his design was man's service. Yet he failed in
this service. Why? Because of his pride of
PARACELSUS
129
!
P
power and knowledge, and because he did not
understand the gradual divine order of the world,
or the vital uses and necessities of that order; I
would have made an order of his own. He thus
made his task monstrous and impossible, and
brought himself to despair. He then learned the
place and power of love in man's life, and sought
to serve men,-but still apart from them, without
sympathy, without self-denial. Driven again to
despair by his failure at Bâle, he then came to
see that he had a further and harder lesson to
learn a lesson without which such work as his
could never be done: love in his heart had to be
wise and pure to discern the dim beginnings of
light in the minds, of love in the hearts of other
men. He had to learn trust, tolerance, hope; to
see that hate even may be a mask of love, and
error a stage truth. He saw at length the vital
unity of the great scheme which, by long evolu-
tion of many lives, accomplishes at length the
one life.
Such was the career of Paracelsus, as the young
poet, even then set to these high and serious
themes, understood it in 1835, such the problem
of the poem as he then presented it.
But now, let us ask, does the whole seem the
study of a type and career no longer significant-
an impossible quest by a wrong road? It is apt to
look so.
And yet it is not so, and without going
into details, let us try, on a survey of the whole
poem, to show that it is significant as study of
mind, as criticism of life.
The career and pro-
9
130
ROBERT BROWNING
blem of "Paracelsus" has significance, and still
further it is so presented by the poet as to grip
the life of thoughtful men in every time, and
certainly so as to touch questions that have gone
through our century, and are not in the larger
life of the age resolved yet. Let us look at
those questions.
And first, What was the career of Paracelsus, the
quest and problem of his life? The type and career of
Paracelsus certainly, as here conceived, are good for
the poet's purpose. The type is that of a man of
genius, intellectual, aggressive, self-confident, with
thirst for new knowledge, with sense of its value,
and gleams of ways to find it. When he starts
he does not know himself or the order of life.
He has to measure himself against both to find
himself and life, to learn the nature and conditions
as well as the limits of man's power.
His quest at first has been defined as a quest
for the absolute through knowledge-or say, for
self-fulfilment through knowledge, and the proud
and masterful uses of knowledge for others-there
he began. He finds that mere knowledge does
not "fulfil" even the mind, and still less the
moral life of man-the "self" so fulfilled is but a
fragment of man, and leaves his deeper desire and
He
higher function still to satisfy and achieve.
learns that love, not of one or two, but of men,
and of the world,-love, and service inspired
and guided by love,-must use knowledge to keep
it from being futile. He sets about the use of
his knowledge, as teacher, as physician, but with-
PARACELSUS
131
out the love that is moralised, with the love that
needs men because it feels itself a fragment, but
without the love that is one with men. He
fails again. In reaction he throws himself
upon
a life whose aim is described as knowledge and
enjoyment at one and the same time. But the
emphasis of that means really a life of passion, and
for a shallower and poorer nature than that of
Paracelsus that life turns quickly to failure. In his
case it is but the bitterness of a reaction which
others have helped to provoke. Perhaps for that
reason it takes some time to work it out, but
when it is wrought out we find him at length
accepting the gradual divine order of the world,
and the vital uses and demands of that order, as
one great scheme of moral evolution, which is
the fulfilment of all lives through the slow ad-
vancement of all up to the high consciousness of
the highest lives. And so Paracelsus passes,
pressing "God's lamp" to his breast, and sure
that the splendour of that light will pierce the
gloom that appears to gather about the close of
such a life as his.
So much in survey of what seems to us the
main problem of "Paracelsus." The question of
the method of "Paracelsus
Paracelsus" has interested some
critics, and as it appears to be coming into a kind
of vogue again it may be that a word on that side.
of the poem will be in place. What was the
method of "Paracelsus"? Occultism we call it,
but what is that?
we have called it.
A kind of mystical divination
So it is; but let us explain.
I
*
132
}
ROBERT BROWNING
Roundly, it may be said, men seek knowledge
within or without, or by some combination of
both-by careful generalisation of the facts of the
outward nature by study of the inner facts and
principles, or by some combination of these two.
Occultism is a special combination of the two.
It seeks the secret of knowledge and of life by in-
tuition of facts which flash on the qualified mind
with a light from the centre-that is the theory.
It assumes that the sensuous meanings of things
are not their true meaning. The true meaning is
hid. Only, it flashes out in particular facts, and
as the system of the world and life are one, these
facts give to those who catch their meaning,
their hints, clues to the else unknowable secret.
This is not science or philosophy, but a kind of
imaginative guessing-a sort of personal equation
of certain minds and Nature. It not only assumes
that there is more in heaven and earth than
is known to any philosophy or science, but that
it is not of the sort to be known by these methods,
or by any modes or order of research, but only
by a kind of "inspiration." It did not produce
much in the case of Paracelsus. It never will
But it is a
There is a
produce much; so some of us think.
recurrent passion of human nature.
mystical sense in most of us,—not all, perhaps,—
Our
a sense of a veil, and something behind it.
disappointment with the sensuous show of things,
our disappointment with knowledge even-our
sense of its limits and of the vastness beyond
it-our yearning towards a Reality that shall
+
PARACELSUS
133
5
carry reason and desire to the height, and meet
them there these and like things and emotions in
us lead to it. Spiritualism, theosophy, “psychical
research,” and other such phenomena express it.
Browning was early interested in this side of the
mind, and the facts belonging to it, and he seems.
early to have understood that, however little it
may tell of nature, it tells much of human nature.
And this brings us to the next of the points
suggested by the study of our poem as a whole,
the early time when the poet found, and the way
in which he kept right through, the romantic and
idealist spirit. From the first, and through years
and years of our century, dominated by a physical
scientific temper and method, Browning stood for
a fuller view of man,-let us say, he stood for man
and human nature against a merely physical
order, a mechanical nature. He was a man of
facts, but the facts that interested him, and that
seemed to him for ever significant, were the facts
of human nature-the facts of thought and feel-
ing, and of all the passion and all the endeavour
of man. These facts seemed to him supreme in
the world as we know it. And if it be our aim
to understand that world, if we seek squarely to
make out its meaning, we must keep these facts
in their place, and read them to the heart of them.
And though we may not set out to guess and
construe the meaning of the outward nature, of
the kosmos, by casual gleams and guesses, and a
kind of inspired reaction of our minds on single
and exceptional facts, we must hold by the prin-
134
ROBERT BROWNING
ciple, that the age-long aspiration and higher
reason of man are a clue to the meaning and to
the destiny of things-that unspeakable problem
which Agnosticism tried to shut out, but which is
coming back by queer ways on many who fancied
they were done with it.
There is another question, at once old and
new, which "Paracelsus" raises and illustrates;
-the question raised by the contrast between
Aprile and Paracelsus in their types of mind, in
their ideas of life-knowledge the one, we say,
and love the other. And some critics of Brown-
ing hold that Browning, more or less all through
his work, and very definitely in the later period
of it, esteemed love and condemned knowledge as
an organ of interpretation with reference to the
question we have just alluded to-the question
of life's larger meaning. Browning, these critics
hold, is agnostic as regards knowledge-trustful
as regards love. He has little faith in philosophy,
but much in the heart. The formulations of
science will bring you little or nothing for "the
life eternal," but the great emotions, the great
sentiment of religion, is the breath and medium of
that eternal life. So they read him.
What is to be said? This, we think, is what
is to be said,—that such critics fall into the error
of reading Browning's terms too narrowly, and
measuring a poet by a philosophical standard.
As regards "Paracelsus," for example, Aprile does
not stand for mere feeling. The poet, the artist,
cannot work through emotions only. In point of
PARACELSUS
135
fact, no mind ever does. And though the stress
may here seem to be, may be, on emotions, and
though some have unwisely laid it there in ex-
pounding Browning, let us urge, from all we know
of the poet, that that is not the whole truth in
regard to him. There is no doubt a sort of
thinking that is all head, as there is a sort of love
that is all heart-if one may be paradoxical in
order to get the meaning clear. But there is
another sort-a heart within the head-a head
within the heart-which, upon moral and practical
questions, is the ground of wisdom. We take it,
Browning recognised this. His love is the intuition
of the larger life, of the right posture and temper
upon the larger questions. And we cannot think
he would have favoured that division of human
powers, that split of human nature, which some
favour in order, it may seem, to get the "oracle
to speak their own message. Only that which is
wise, tested by experience and the total nature, can
continue to satisfy-can be held for truth in life.
Our highest knowledge of reality, if it do not come
to us through-and into that we do not here enter
-must be certified to us by the whole mind and
the whole of life. In "Saul," in "The Epistle of
Karshish," in the pope's speech in "The Ring and
the Book," in part of "Ferishtah's Fancies," and
finally in the poem called "Reverie " in "Asolando,"
our poet gave his conviction, his intuition as a poet
and critic of life, on this great matter. It comes to
what has just been said, though a fuller statement
must be postponed.
در
Um
136
ROBERT BROWNING
Another leads us out upon a further question
deeply implied in "Paracelsus," though a little in
the background. I mean the question, Where,
and what, is satisfaction? and how does a man
reach that solution of the vital problem which
gives him mastery, power, peace, reconciliation,
and rest, a clue to living as to all else that presses
on him out of the erewhile unknown infinite?
This question hangs over "Paracelsus" right
through, and is, as was indicated at the opening
of our study of "Paracelsus," the echo in poetry
of the question with which our century began both
in the spheres of art and thought; forced on life
by the revolt from the old régime, forced on
thinkers by the course of thought. It goes with-
out saying, that the question really raised was not
new. It was, indeed, the old question under new
conditions and in new terms so far, the question
that haunted the spirit of man at the close of the
classical age in Greece and Rome, at the opening
of the Christian era. It is a question that came
into modern life with the Renaissance. It is in
the old Faust legend, and in Elizabethan litera-
ture in the drama of Marlowe and of Shakespeare.
It revived with a new subtlety and breadth at the
beginning of the century. Forced on thinkers by
Hume, grappled by Kant in philosophy and by
Goethe in his spheres of art and criticism; it is
felt in Shelley and in Byron-the large desire, the
restless search, the pain of discord with the world
as it is, the longing for a surer and fuller know-
ledge, for a better world and a divine life. It is
f
PARACELSUS
137
the question we are still working out, and in truth
it has always to be freshly stated and resolved
anew.
What is to be said? That man as man seeks
and must seek the infinite-seeks and must seek
"the life eternal." But how? Some through the
life of feeling, of art or pleasure; some through
the life of knowledge, through thought and the
gains of science; and some through action, through
power, through the life of affairs. And there are
those who tell us that the infinite is not to be
come at by man any way, though they see man
impelled by thought, and by passion, and by will,
to seek it. How, then, is it? We bring the full
question of such lives as those of Paracelsus—of
such dramas as "Hamlet" and "Faust"-of such
poetry as that of Byron, and of Shelley even, to
their most vital point in that question, and
what is the answer? A fine writer recently gone
from us, Walter Pater, spent much of his time
over this very question, child of his time as he
was. At first in the Renaissance essays he said,
seek it in keen and vivid moments, in pure and
lovely sensations. In Marius he gave that up,
and set forth how ideas and ideals have more
to do with it. And in Gaston de Latour, so
lately published, he was back at it seemingly, to
affirm and illustrate again how the great senti-
ment of religion must be met, and has the clue.
What is to be said? Two things, I take it,
are to be said, speaking from our present stand-
point, of course. From that standpoint we say,
}
1
1
138
ROBERT BROWNING
then, two things are to be said—(1) that no
final intellectual solution is to be had or imposed;
(2) and further, that a moral solution, reached
through that discipline of life which brings us
into touch with the whole of the facts, is to be
had and meets our need.
})}
We say, no final intellectual solution of the vital
problem is to be had. This is why all solutions
are apt to seem only a compromise, in which you
are started on a high level and are left depressed
and disappointed at a lower one. The lesson of
life is that we must seek, and that rightly seeking
we find, a moral solution, and such solution meets
the vital and practical needs of life. As to the
relations between the two, that does not come in
here. But what is this solution as "presented
here? Some "doctrine, simple, ancient, true ".
so true and old that it leaves us where men have
always stood; or some great idea which makes
"all things new," which has been the spiritual
desire of many of us? The answer is surely that
it is faith in the ideal, and faith in the fact, faith
in ideals of the reason and the conscience, and
faith in the practical life of man-in the social
life and common good of men. Love and service,
union with man in work, progress and eternal
hope, on that line only men can find both scope
and rest-rest from the burden of insoluble
problems, and impulse for all labour and endur-
ance.
And if it be said, on survey of the whole, that
this question is so essentially a modern question
PARACELSUS
139
that the poet is scarcely justified in carrying it into
the Reformation era and the life of Paracelsus, this
is matter of criticism. There is fair warrant for it,
as we have seen. The intellectual excitement and
vague aspiration of the story of Paracelsus and
the legend of Faust belong to the same moods
and the same period; and these have in many
respects been repeated on a larger scale and with
clearer consciousness in our era. This Goethe
felt in selecting the Faust legend to depict through
it the modern spirit, and so Browning probably
felt in taking this theme. Intense individualism
and restless aspiration belong to many of us more
than to Paracelsus; and to this spirit, full of the
passion for knowledge, and haunted by great
questions, a moral solution of the problem of life
has sometimes seemed an impertinence. It was
all the solution Goethe had to give. It was the
solution Comte offered from a different point of
view. It is in a large sense the outcome of
philosophy too. And though Browning has
thought the question out more maturely in later
work, it is the spirit of his thought that for the
cardinal problem of life no other solution is
possible.
}
Į
CHAPTER VI
SORDELLO
“SORDELLO" was Browning's next work, and re-
mained, until the publication of "The Ring and
the Book," his most elaborate poem. Still more
strongly than "Paracelsus," it marks the matters.
that were of interest to him in his early years
of poetic work, his intellectual power and high
purpose.
It is harder reading than "Paracelsus "; it even
remains, with perhaps two exceptions, the most.
illegible, the least read, of all the poet's works.
Most of his readers, and many of his critics, put
it aside in impatience or despair. Some admit
they have not read it, and don't mean to; others
declare that they have tried and failed-and life,
they think, is too valuable and too busy to be
spent laboriously over the mysteries of the career
of a dreamer who did nothing, and whose inward
achievement seems a blank or a puzzle.
And the poem is hard reading for the best
practised; nor is it, save in parts, pleasant for
the most devoted. Now, why is this? Is it the
weight of matter or the depth and subtlety of ideas
in the poem? We cannot think so, and those
140
SORDELLO
141
All three
are not the reasons why some have broken down
with it. It appears to us that its ideas are
capable of such statement as should bring them
within range of readers of the poet's other works.
What, then, is it that makes the poem so great a
trial of patience, and even of wits? Is it the
theme, the structure, or the style?
have to do with the matter. As to the subject,
the poet said long after that it had roused but
little interest. The structure of the poem is
seldom satisfactory and often unsuitable; and
the style has many faults-undue condensation,
strange ellipses, abrupt transitions, long paren-
theses, an original and unpleasant use of inverted
commas, and many things brought in that add
to the substance, but not to the essential matter
of the poem, and that certainly do not conduce
to the clearness of the poem.
The poet thought of re-writing the poem (vide
Dedication to edition of 1863), and one fears that
is the only cure for its faults. But it was not
possible, of course. He might have made another
poem on the same theme; he could not remake
the "
Sordello" of 1840. So all he did was to
put that analysis of the poem which you find in
the form of headlines to the pages-brief lines
that are often useful and often useless.
But for all its faults "Sordello" is well worth
study. It has fine thought and poetry to reward
its mastery. In every such poem there is part of
a poet's mind expressed that he does not again
express; and great matters both of life and art
142
ROBERT BROWNING
are here.
And so, without attempting exposition.
in full detail, it may be enough to explain the
source and theme of the poem, its plan and course
of thought, and the poetical and vital questions it
throws light on.
"Sordello" is a study similar in theme to
"Paracelsus," though different in method, and in
the type and career chosen. In Paracelsus you
have the student and thinker; in Sordello the
type is poetic. He is more like Aprile than
Paracelsus, though there are marked differences.
Then, in "Sordello" the whole story of a poet's
life and growth are told, and told through the
mind and with commentary of the author himself.
The structure of the poem results from this. In
its form it is narrative; but the story is so told,
and is so much broken by reflection and dramatic
statement (brought in by help of inverted commas),
that the form proves unfit for the matter, and is
one of the chief causes of the difficulty of the
poem.
Browning calls the attempt made in "Sordello'
quixotic, and describes its design as a "study of
incidents in the development of a soul." And the
poem is one of the first examples on a large scale
of that kind of study. But "Sordello" has much
matter that hardly comes within that design.
The story of Sordello in its historical circum-
stances, the poetic function with its duties and
perils, and the spiritual problems illustrated by
the life and failure of Sordello, are the matter of
the poem, and from elaboration of those three
SORDELLO
143
lines of interest comes part of its difficulty. The
poet was thinking of his own art, and of a special
type of experience in relation to its higher tasks.
He was thinking of the poet in contrast with the
man of action, and in relation to the duties of the
world. The career of Sordello interested him,
because it gave scope for that theme, and led up
to still larger spiritual problems.
The subject was suggested in part by the special
position of the Mantuan poet Sordello in early
Italian literature. Sordello was a troubadour,
born in 1194, who wrote under Provençal influ-
ence and mainly in that dialect. He is the most
distinguished of Italian troubadours, and his ser-
vice lay in what he did towards the rise of modern
literature in Italy; the help he gave in rousing
the Italian mind to, and preparing the Italian
language for, the expression of poetic thought.
Sismondi speaks of "the harmony and sensibility
of his verses," and also of the "pure and delicate
style" of some of his songs, which have been
collected. Yet his fame afterwards came less
from what he did as a poet than from what he
was said to have done as a knight. Sismondi
quotes him as the most striking instance of the
way in which the troubadour was invested with
chivalric glories, and became the hero of romantic
adventures.
But the conception and theme came rather out
of the "Purgatorio" than out of the history or
the legends about Sordello, for Dante's words
about him, and not his own verses or fame, have
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:
kept his name alive. Dante treats him with
respect. He recognises his place; he ascribes
dignity and chivalry to him, composure and dis-
dain-" the manner of the couchant lion." And
in the cordial greetings of Virgil and Sordello we
have the meeting, not merely of two Mantuan
poets, but of the classical and modern literatures
of Italy (cf. "Purgatorio," cantos vi., vii.).
Dante calls the poet "the good Sordello"; but
he places him at the entrance of Purgatory alone,
yet among those who are expiating failure, and
far from the Paradise of God. And the Mantuan
troubadour singing, in the best verse he could
make, the praises of love is a graver and more
serious figure in Dante than he seems in history.
We are not aware that the facts of Sordello's
career warrant the notion that he had the ideas
and opportunity of Dante, and missed his chance
through lack of power. But there is enough in
the "Purgatorio" to suggest that the great poet
who founded modern Italian literature condemned
the poet who came only a few years before him-
self, for not having done more than he did, both
for the language and the literature of his country.
Browning credits Sordello with a perception
of tasks and ideas that were neither conceived
nor undertaken before Dante, and his poem thus
becomes a study of the failure of a poet who had
seen these things, but had not the power to
realise them through his art.
And the poem
takes a still wider scope; for he not only attri-
butes to Sordello impulses and ideas that belong
1
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145
T
1
to Dante, but thoughts and emotions that are
more modern, and so boldly makes his poem,
with all its burden of Italian history, a study of
poetic culture and the proper service of the poet,
and of a high type of ambition.
The Sordello of our poem, then, is, in the pro-
cess and matter of it, largely a creation of Brown-
ing, but it is presented against a background of
Italian history, and amid the circumstances of the
life of the actual poet. There are graphic pic-
tures of the doings and condition of Italy in that
thirteenth century, when Guelf and Ghibellin were
struggling so cruelly with each other in its cities,
and these pictures help us to understand the
difficulties, as they excuse the failure, of Sordello.
As Sismondi says, the age was one of brilliant
chivalric virtues and atrocious crimes-an age of
heroes and monsters, among whom the figure of
Sordello seems strange and out of place.
But it is in the nature of the problem, as of
the method, of the poem that these things bear on
its leading interest only in a general way, and the
poet takes these things freely. Sordello is said
to have taken passionately the side of the pope;
but Dante was Ghibellin, and saw in the empire
the best security for right government in Italy
and Europe. And Sordello, living in Lombardy,
took the same side. There are other points at
which the poem departs from the history. The
Mantuan poet remained, as we have implied, merely
a troubadour, and did not, as Browning's Sordello,
leave that stage behind him, moving on to the
IQ
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ROBERT BROWNING
ampler scope and higher aims of the later books.
of the poem.
But this is much as it ought to be, and readers.
suffer rather from the industry of the poet in
working up "all the chronicles of that period of
Italian history" than from his "inventions." The
figure and story of the Italian Sordello are dim,
and without such importance as to engage or
repay attention now. The theme as Browning
conceives it, and the career as he construes it,
have that importance. This kind of romances,
based on the suggestions rather than the facts
of history, and attaching historic names to figures
so different from the people who bore them, is
open to criticism certainly, and "pure invention”
would have advantages; but we must take what
has stimulated a poet's mind, and regard the
poetic and spiritual results as our proper gain.
And so with "Sordello" we follow the outlines
of the story only to make those results clear.
Sordello was born at Goïto, near Mantua,
where his mother died immediately after his
birth, and his early years were spent there in
perfect seclusion. He was, in fact, retained at
the castle of Goïto by Adelaide, wife of Eccelino
da Romano, who, because she feared he might
prove a rival to her own son if his birth and
parentage were known, kept both a secret, and
gave out that he was the child of an archer
named Elcorte. At Goïto he was left almost
wholly to his own thoughts and wanderings, and
grew up a dreamer and a poet. The place was
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147
fitted to nourish the dreamer, if not to develop
the poet.
The gloomy castle and the lonely
woods, the great font with its marble figures,
the arras with its mysterious forms, all appeal to
his fancy. A slender youth, his calm brow and
restless lip make plain his temper-one framed
to receive delight at every sense; of rich and
refined sensibility, apt to invest all things with
the colour and life of his own nature, and
quickened by a mystic sense of joy and beauty
in the world. But there are two classes of minds
endowed with such sensibility. There are those
who, blending their lives with outer things, and
aware only of their beauty, depend on the external
charm of things. They have need to belong to
what they worship. And there are those who are
roused by outer things to a fuller self-conscious-
ness, and who turn inwards the interest and the
homage others direct outwards. So lived Sor-
dello, pleased with his life and with his active.
fancy; the real world kept out, without task or
duty, alone, moral sense and social sympathy
dormant. But he awakes; he becomes aware
that his paradise is not complete. Judgment and
a sense of the need of others are born in him.
Has he learned pity, sympathy? or is it only
an egoistic craving for a crowd in whose eyes to
live his life and show his powers? Vanity, is it?
Anyhow, not finding a "world," he makes one-
giving his own life to each figure or name in it.
In this world, and no longer in the world of
flower and tree, he now lives. Boy as he is, he
1
!
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148
cannot act and be those folks; he can only fancy
their deeds done can only appropriate their
powers and be in imagination what they have
been in fact. And this he will do. He will
gather all their qualities into one and be spirit-
ually that one, and so more than the best of
them. So he imagines himself a poet-emperor.
He is Apollo, in fact, with Daphne for lover.
Nor can he doubt that for such endowment as
his this must happen some day. But when?
All has been but dream so far. Yet his dreams
touch reality as one evening he sees Palma with
her golden tresses. All that he hears of her
fixes his fancy on her. But time fleets, and he
does not yet see when or how he can escape
from Goïto, and meet the lady of his visions or
the world of men.
That time comes, however. Adelaide is at
Mantua, and Sordello has his freedom. It is the
spring, and he wanders forth, ripe, as he thinks,
for life, dreaming most of Palma. He gets out of
the woods and comes to Mantua, and beyond hope
he finds Palma. She is there, holding a court of
love under the city's walls. A minstrel is singing
of Apollo. Sordello listens. The song of Egla-
mor is left incomplete; Sordello takes up the song,
seizes and finishes the theme with fuller passion
and surer insight. He carries the crowd with him,
wins the prize, and is chosen Palma's minstrel.
This triumph, so new and strange on his first
contact with the world, and this act of Palma, sent
such surprise and delight through him that, coming
SORDELLO
149
He
on the excitement of the song, he swooned.
was carried, still unconscious, by a troop of jong-
leurs back to the castle of Goïto, where he lived
the whole over and over again, trying to under-
stand it, and he sees how he surpassed Eglamor,
and sees, as he thinks, the poet's relation to the
people. It is the part of song, made in fine enjoy-
ment of all it sings of, to set free the fancy of
others—to rouse them to see and feel the good
of things.
And what of Eglamor?
He sees and accepts
his defeat frankly. Sordello's is the fuller song,
and as his own art has been everything to him, as
he has loved it and identified himself with it-
finding in it the purpose and the good of his life
-so now that this is lost life is without use. He
dies, and is brought by a company of those among
whom he had been chief minstrel, to sleep among
the pine woods. Eglamor is the typical troubadour,
who loves art for its own sake, who is more aware
of his song than of the things about which he
sings, or of the soul whose passion song should
express, and to whom, therefore, art becomes the
whole of life and an end in itself.
Thus life has begun for Sordello-the very life
for which he seems to have been waiting—and
now he finds out a story of his birth, and the
reasons why he is at Goïto.__ Apollo, as he thinks
himself, he is only the child of Elcorte. What can
such as he do? Dream himself " monarch of the
world," but only through song? Be all, but only
in consciousness and imagination? Still through
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1
song and its power he may do much of what he
wishes. Only, what is it he wishes? Not the
perfection and triumph of his song, but the triumph
of the man through the song; self-assertion and
the consideration he thinks his due. Through his
work he would claim and win his place among the
great men of the world, holding that the power
to express and depict is the power to be and to do.
But is it so, and will the world take him at this
estimate, or even from this point of view?
He returns to Mantua with this ambition and
with these thoughts, and very soon finds that,
having looked to art for ends outside art, he
must use and so degrade his art to obtain these
ends. And having begun, he must go on as he
has begun. He does so, and pleases so far. But
why not himself enjoy this life, these passions, he
expresses? He is tempted to do so, only he sees
that to live the life of narrow and momentary joys
would be to sink the poet to please the man. The
poet must grasp the soul of joy, not simple joys—
"each joy he must adjure even for love of it"; to
lose himself in it is to lose the power to express
it. But then comes the thought that these abstrac-
tions, these "essential" passions, are not men. He
will try to give men the very stuff of life. He
tries, and finds the language he has to use an
obstruction. He works the language to his ends,
CC
welding words into the crude mass from the new
speech round him," and then, having formed so far
his medium, he seeks to present an action with
its actors, real and alive. But language fashioned
SORDELLO
151
by thought will not answer to such vital expres-
sion as he seeks. Perception may be one and
whole. Thought can only be partial, abstract,
and speech is its instrument. It is "as hard to
obtain a muse as to become Apollo," he concludes.
Still, if he cannot reach his aim and satisfy his
sense of things, let him satisfy the crowd of
admirers in Mantua. He sings Montfort and his
exploits, but only to find that Montfort counts
for them all and the singer nothing. No one
dreams that the singer could do what he sings.
He turns on them with angry declaration that
their praise is worthless. Thus, the man at strife
with the poet, and the poet with his own ideal,
all goes wrong with him. He is depressed and
weakened by the double discord, and, out of
harmony with himself, he gets more and more
out of sympathy with his circumstances. Art and
life become a compromise, which naturally he can
neither accomplish nor accept.
He discovers a
want of readiness and tact, of the shallow plausi-
bilities that are necessary to the business. He
speaks too late, and much beyond the occasion,
and is easily beaten by conventional wits and
minds of merely practical scope. The result is
that his just confidence is destroyed. He takes
his opinion and style from others, and loses him-
self and his proper power, and grows contemptuous
towards both his work and his audience. In this
mood, of course, no one is pleased. Naddo—your
conventional and altogether practical person-tells
him why he is failing. Let him limit his aims
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ROBERT BROWNING
and keep close to life. Let him use common
sense and speak to the "healthy heart of man."
These things he cannot do, at least not Naddo's
way, and such criticism only makes matters worse.
Having lost the right ground and light within,
he is swayed by every one, and his uncertainty
becomes hopeless.
With matters at their worst, he is set free by
events. Adelaide dies, Eccelino retires; Salin-
guerra, the leading soldier of the Ghibellin party,
is coming to Mantua in consequence. The minstrel
must prepare a song in his honour. The minstrel
tries, but cannot; the power of song seems dead.
So he returns to Goïto to get out of it all, and
from those places of his youth reviewing his Man-
tuan time, all seems a mistake and failure. Why
had our troubadour, starting with that first success,
failed thus? Was the will itself at fault? Pos-
sibly so. And yet he resolves he "will be king
again,” as he drops his poet's crown into the font.
How?
QUAN
The months go past at Goïto once more. The
troubadour episode is left behind, and his reflec-
tions bring him to a new point. He sees that life
has yet to start for him-real life and positive
experience, and this with the years going and
youth gone. Nature can change and recover;
man has but one life. He has become aware of
powers he ought to use, and through whose use
he will gain not enjoyment only, but life. So
far he has been renouncing life to live in his art.
His intense self-consciousness, seeking to assert
SORDELLO
153
•
another.
and complete itself, has put actual things aside.
But his art has failed to achieve his end, and his
renunciation seems now only a path of despair.
How is he to escape the dilemma thus arising?
A way opens-not that of the minstrel, but quite
Palma sends for him, and he goes to
see her at Verona, in the autumn of 1224. Her
father, who has withdrawn from public life and
made peace with the party of the pope, has pro-
mised her to the Guelf Count Richard of San
Bonifacio. She has no mind to marry him, and
with the help of Salinguerra she means to put
it off, and even to set it aside. She tells Sordello
of her love for him, and hints what they may do
together, with the help of Salinguerra. For years
she has aspired for his sake, seeing in him that
"out-soul" who should help and complete her
own soul, and now her hopes may be made good,
and she explains that they are to meet the great
imperialist at Ferrara, and learn the rest from
him.
Browning now introduces a long digression,
having come to the crisis of Sordello's life. He
is at Venice, and tells how there the impulse
to set forth the story of Sordello came to him,
and defends the kind of poetry he has made
in the poem. The digression is of much interest.
It expresses ideas important in their bearing on
Browning's aims and work, and marks the relation
of the poem to these, but belongs less to the argu-
ment of "Sordello," and so may be here omitted.
In the Fourth Book we find account of the
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1
sufferings of Italy from both parties, leading up
to a graphic picture of the man who has spent
all his life in action-the strong, decisive soldier,
Salinguerra. He makes a complete contrast
every way to Sordello, physically and morally.
But, leaving his story, we must follow the
career of Sordello. What is he to make of his
chance of a great practical life?—that is for
him the question now awaiting answer. So far
his thoughts have been of himself, even when he
thought of art. Now he comes to Ferrara to
make a grand discovery to find a world of
men not made for ends he has hitherto imagined,
but requiring service and manifold help; and he
is anxious to help the masses of men. But how
can he? He sees that Guelfs and Ghibellins are
equally selfish and injurious that the people
suffer terribly from both. Is there, then, a cause
distinct from both, and higher, purer, than either;
a cause through which mankind may triumph?
He is pondering this question by a dying watch-
fire, full of pain at what he has seen in Ferrara,
when a sentinel bids him sing of the Roman
Tribune Crescentius. This gives his mind a fresh
impulse, a new idea. He dreams a dream of a
New Rome the Mother City, whose upbuilding
should bring new life and a just order to
mankind.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Conta
But can the good of man be realised in and
through this shining city after all? Almost as
soon as he imagined it, great shadows of doubt
fell upon it. Such work must take ages. The
SORDELLO
155
•
life of man, the social order, is a slow, manifold,
and practically infinite evolution. One man, one
age, can only add a little to such a task. We
may imagine the whole; we can never see it in
fact; and our only way to realise it is to do the
task of the day. But all this may help, and the
work of each lives in the life of all, and the work
varies as the ages do. There are ages of power
and ages of knowledge, and workers who help
through knowledge and workers who help by
strength. The new age and order must be built
up spiritually; it must work through the Church
and wisdom. The empire must help it, and as
the best of what he can do he will persuade
Salinguerra—the soldier who has spent his years
in fighting the Guelfs-to turn Guelf! Only
Sordello could dream such a thing. But he
throws himself into it with his new zeal for
mankind, and puts forth all his passion and all
his eloquence in the effort to induce the Ghibellin
soldier "assist the pope, fill the scope o' the
Church, thus based on all, by all, for all." At
first he stumbles and hesitates; but, roused at
length to his best, he essays to prove the spiritual
power of the poet even over the great men of
action. The poet is the highest, most enlightened,
most energetic spiritual nature. By affirming the
higher being, the higher truth, he is royal, and
rules. In virtue of this he stands for man, and
lays the behests of mankind on those who have
the practical power of the world at their
command.
•
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་
He fails, of course. But Salinguerra is moved.
He sees the love of Palma for Sordello. It is in
his power to make any one whom he shall choose
Prefect of Northern Italy under the emperor. He
throws the badge that elects to the office over
Sordello's neck, and thus makes for him a fresh
opportunity or a great temptation. He has
pleaded for the Guelfic cause; will he, after all,
for personal reasons, take the imperial side and
marry Palma ? It is then that Palma tells the
story of Sordello's birth, and makes his decision
more difficult. He is the son of Salinguerra, not
of Elcorte. The soldier is both surprised and
delighted; Sordello is surprised and confused.
To give him time to grasp the situation, Palma
draws Salinguerra away, and Sordello is left alone,
with the badge about his neck, to make his final
choice. It is the day's close his life's close too,
as it proves and our poet, looking into the sun-
set, thinks the matter out. Many arguments urge
him to close with the offer for Palma's sake, for
his own, and many plausible arguments arise
in his mind of wider bearing; but in the end,
after a severe struggle, he plucks the badge
from his neck and stamps it underfoot. Palma
and Salinguerra hear the stamp, and return, to
find the badge on the floor and Sordello dying.
"A triumph lingered in his eyes," and his heart
still beat as Palma "pressed in one great kiss her
lips upon his breast," but the strain had killed him.
Such is the story and such the close of Brown-
ing's "Sordello"; but we can hardly leave the
-
SORDELLO
157
matter here, since it will be said that certain
questions raised by the poem have not been
answered. It is more or less clear why Sordello
failed as a minstrel, but it is not so clear why he
failed in the second half of his career, or, it may
be said, whether he failed at all, since spiritual
attainment is success, though not a complete suc-
cess, and the last act of Sordello's life shows
nobility and purity of nature of a rare kind.
True, he breaks down under the strain, showing
that neither in body nor in will was he strong
enough for the tasks imposed on him; but his
will made at least the higher choice.
As Browning puts matters, Sordello came
within sight of high tasks, both literary and
moral. He had a high conception of art and
a noble idea of the public good. But he found
no way of achieving either. He did not make
poems expressing his thought; he did not define
and fix his ideal in life, or among social forces.
But could he have done so? Salinguerra yawns
immeasurably at the futility of the notion, so far
as politics go. The soldier is a very imperfect
judge, we know, but his practical instincts were
right here. Neither through the Guelfs nor the
Ghibellins could Sordello have realised his ideal.
What, then, could he have done? What Dante
did, shall we say? He could have done the day's
task to the measure of his power, he could have
given noble expression to his ideas through his
own art, and trusted the Power that rules all.
He did neither. Why did he fail? This
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}
1
question is answered in the poem, though Dean
Church has said in his essay on "Sordello " that
it is by no means clear to him what the answer
is. At an early point in the poem it is indicated
that Sordello is an idealist, and one of those who,
for good or evil, can never rest in his art. The
dangers arising to such are threefold-(1) To
think life and work small beside the ideal, and
so scarcely worth troubling about by comparison;
(2) to attempt the impossible task of forcing the
ideal within the circumstances and tasks of life;
(3) or regarding art as a means only in the
service of man, and of the spirit, to care less for
it than is due and necessary, and so either to
seek some other way of more immediate service,
or to bend art forcibly to the service of ideas.
Sordello suffered from these tendencies and
from the circumstances of his life. His youth
was visionary, tending to develop an undue self-
consciousness. When he failed and lapsed again.
into dreamy isolation and discouragement, he was
delivered by events rather than by principles.
He did not know life or mankind then, nor had
he had that opportunity of learning the due
relation of his ideas to the affairs and possi-
bilities of the world, and to the minds of men,
which is so important a part of the discipline of
every man who is to help and tell on his fellows
in any great way. The defects of his first work
are its want of heart and sympathy, its want of
spiritual quality, and also a failure on the poet's
part to master the materials and principles of his
SORDELLO
159
art. And he suffers loss of power by his failure.
Soul and will answer less readily than they ought
to, but he keeps, it may be, he has deepened, his
ideal purpose.
He will not sing songs of merely
pleasant trifling; to serve and give truth as he
may, he declares to be his aim and if he hesi-
tates at first before Salinguerra, he rises at length
with fervour to real power and a very high view
of the poet's task. But he has spent himself in
reaching the vision; he has been dreamy, not
creative, kingly, and his life has disqualified him
for that highest kind of power-spiritual will.
It is, however, at the close, when he has to
decide on the offer of Salinguerra, that you find
the fullest statement of reasons for his failure,
and the largest review of his life. To condense
those is to give a very adequate answer to Dean
Church's question. He reviews his own life, and
what does he see? He considers arguments, and
what does he think? He has been sensitive,
many-sided; he wanted unity, central passion,
great conviction, a great love, or a great aim-
power of some kind to lift and support his power.
For years he met with nothing of this kind; so
others of less ability and poorer nature found a
task while he found none. And this sensibility
and dispersion is not all. He is an idealist,
impelled to seek the sum of all he admires and
loves in some perfect form. But the "best" such
spirits seek, passing beyond the good, never is
actual. Nature seems full of hints, of promises.
even, of the wealth of it; yet it is never found.
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饔
​Perhaps there is no such power or object. All is
within, and man must be a law to his own sphere.
Can, then, the necessary power be found within
the human sphere? Can the service and love of
men prove such? But that includes himself.
And how serve men? Can he make clear the
value and greatness of such service as rendered
to "the people "? He cannot. Yet it is plain
they need it. Only how little can be done!
Let one proclaim his truth and do his part, and
it will be years and years before it be accepted
and used, and there is probably all the truth
needed or likely to be used in the world at any
given time. These are doubts.
When he thinks
But here seems a clear point-if it be hard to
serve men to much purpose, you can at least
keep from oppressing them, and show your sym-
pathy and sincerity that way.
This will do some
good. But is that so certain?
it over in the full survey, it seems far from clear
to him how much of the ill in man's lot can be
removed, or even whether it ought to be. Good
and ill seem so bound up with each other; the
ill seems so often the basis and occasion of so
much of the good. Take it away, and where
were the occasion for much of what is most
excellent in man's life-for help and pity? In
fact, in regard to the large question, it does seem
that if you could give men the whole, you would
take away all use in the parts. So doubts give
him pause again.
But just as the gain of the people by his refusal
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161
seems doubtful, so his own gain by accepting
Palma and the office seems great. All that
men could gain by his sacrifice they will gain in
due time and by other means, while he loses all
by refusal. But if he lose, there is the life to
come, it may be said. There may be; but life
is now, and he craves life-the little stream
certain and near rather than the rocky fount on
far-off heights. Then he reflects that this cup
of life, that he makes so much of in the debate,
has been easily dashed aside many a time. Yes,
by those who had the faith or the hope that
mastered life. Let him find such power, and he
will renounce too, he thinks.
But much of the debate, so far forth, has, we
are to conclude, been on the surface. Sordello
now passes into a mood touching the deeper
thoughts of the past. He sinks through all
secondary states, and seems to get to the core
of principle and passion within-to lay hold of
the essential truth. He sees how all our notions,
even good and ill, may be but modes of time,
and how in other spheres things may prove
quite distinct. But a sense of this puts a man
out of time; and gives him a tendency to force
eternity upon time, the soul on the body. If
you look at matters of life from that point of
view, that seems the right course. And yet such
a course neglects the conditions of this life, and
puts it, indeed, out of place; to insist on the
soul's absoluteness is to destroy the body and
miss life. So it had been with Sordello; his
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spiritual vision had been won by the "flesh-half's
break-up," and had resulted in his showing him-
self inadequate for life. The problem was to
have kept these in their due relations, and take
life on its proper conditions. Yet how many
do that? Most men brutalise the soul-the
opposite mistake. Who shall find power to solve
the problem and conciliate both elements of
man's life? Who shall find wisdom through
love to "see the great before and after, the
small now," and, seeing both, do the duty that
is at hand? Plainly, some power or principle
Sordello did not find is needed for this. And
the poet, speaking for Sordello, says that what
is required is some power above man's nature
and sphere-some divine power, both infinite
and loving-revealed within man's sphere and
nature, and giving its transcendent yet clear and
practical sanction to duty. Idealists like Sordello
need such a vision, such law as this, divine and
human, resting on the eternal, yet touching close
the tasks of life, and giving these a large relation,
without loss of practical point and fitness.
To some it will seem on survey of this poem
that the whole problem is only the creation of
a poet's dreams. No one, it may be thought,
ever made so "sorry a farce" of his life as this
Sordello. So mad an idealist never went at
large. Never, it may be, one so consistent and
complete, for circumstances leave few men free
for such consistency; but the strife of principle
is very common, and perhaps very few earnest
SORDELLO
163
minds have kept quite clear of compromise in
the conflict.
Browning, we may judge, felt the strife in his
own mind, and with regard to his work, and he
had to adjust the relation of principles in both,
as the growth of his art proves.
"Paracelsus
and "Sordello" both speak of the ideality of
Shelley and the so-called "metaphysical" bent.
of Browning's mind. His dramatic art was his
"escape" from the dangers of his first poetry,
while the double quality of his mind became
clearer and better balanced as his genius matured.
Sordello anyhow, as Browning presents him, is
your poetic idealist, dealing first with the things
of art, and then called to deal with the things of
life, and finding his ideal in the way of his
handling either effectively. There are other
difficulties in both spheres for Sordello. Cir-
cumstances in both obstruct. But a chief diffi-
culty, when he grasps his thought fully, is his
idealism of spirit and aim. Reason seeks truth,
imagination beauty, the will right, and all the
ideal. Yet the ideal-whether as truth, beauty,
or right—is never to be come upon or expressed;
and life as we know it could not go on if it were
come on or expressed. Why is this? What is the
principle of the matter? the reason of the Law?
In "Sordello" the answer to this special ques-
tion is scarcely clear; it might well have been
clearer. We shall, however, find the point come
up again and again in Browning; and it is,
perhaps, best to hand over from this early poem
"}
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the solution of it as it comes within his poetry.
Yet we may here suggest how, by force of his
perception of life, and by pressure of his own
thoughts, our poet was grappling a question upon
which the whole drift of Hegel's thought bore,
whether as interpretation of mind, of life, or of
religion; and the solution of the problem offered
by him is found in his doctrine of the immanence
of God, the unity of the divine and human, and
the ideal significance of thought and duty, which
means, with reference to the chief problem of
"Sordello," that only as the thinker and worker
see the ideal as the law and meaning of the real
can thought or work be good.
The further question, raised by Sordello in his
hour of critical debate, whether it were good to
"realise the ideal," whether defect and evil are
conditions of good in man's life, must also be
reserved. Thus early Browning saw the question.
In "Reverie" he is still engaged with it, as an
idealist with a sacred trust in the conditions of
life and the laws of the world.
CHAPTER VII
BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
BROWNING'S plays are, we fancy, little read, in
part because they have been thrown into the
shade by later work. But their place in his
work, in the growth of his art, and in the ex-
pression of his genius, give them interest besides
the interest they have in themselves. For, in a
century that has produced very few dramas of
true value, the author of Pippa and Colombe and
Mildred Tresham, of Berthold and Valence, of
Ogniben and Luria, has added distinctly and
worthily to our stock of dramatic figures and
conceptions.
Browning began with "Strafford" in 1837. It
was given at Covent Garden on May 1, Macready
and Miss Faucit taking leading parts, "with all
the evidences of distinct success," but was of
greater promise than achievement, as Forster felt
in reviewing it. The character of Strafford is
well conceived, though not effectively realised
through the play, and as a whole it lacks the
proper energy and interest of acting drama.
The next of the dramas was Pippa Passes,"
in 1841. It is not a play, but a series of
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dramatic scenes bound by a lyrical thread, and
shaped to express a poetic idea. Browning, so
we are told, was walking one day in a wood.
alone, winding his way among the trees, and the
thought struck him that in like manner, in the
great wood of this world, many lives seem to
wind their way among other lives, apparently
without contact or influence. A little reflection
convinced him that, in spite of appearances and
conventions, the fact is not so; and he devised,
when the seed of his thought had grown, the
series of scenes presenting the "passing" of Pippa
to express his idea. That idea is the way in
which all lives, even lonely and lowly lives, have
a world of lives about them upon whom their
influence is greater than they know; and also
how we each judge partially, or it may be quite
wrongly, of the lives and happiness of others.
The design of "Pippa" was to present these
truths in dramatic form, and it has been done.
It is New Year's Day at Asolo, and Pippa, who
works in the silk mills of the place, is thinking, as
the day dawns, what she must do with her one
holiday. For one day she will be happy, if only
in dreams, with the happiness of the happiest four
in Asolo. She will be Ottima, lover of Sebald.
Yet no; that is a mad, bad love. Phene, then,
the Greek girl, who has come to be married to
Jules the sculptor. Yet again, no; that love is
new and uncertain. The love of the mother for
her child is deeper and surer; she will be the
gentle mother watching over her son. And then
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167
*
she thinks there is a higher love still-" God's
love." She will be the bishop who is to be at
the duomo that evening.
And yet it occurs to her, that even as Pippa
she has God's love, and there is, perhaps, less
need than seems to change places. For what
says her hymn ?" All service ranks the same
with God." So, with that idea in her mind, she
goes forth to her holiday, to pass these people
and see their happiness, and test the hymn's
truth.
She passes them, and we see their lives in
scenes of true dramatic power, made more ex-
pressive by their contrast with Pippa. First,
Ottima and Sebald, who, to be free in their guilty
love, have murdered the lady's husband in the
night. Day breaks here, restless and "ablaze
with eyes"; and, though they recall passionately
past hours of pleasure, and resolve to bury all
remorse in love, as he is in the act of crowning
her his queen, more proudly for their sin, the
words of Pippa's song fall on his ear-
God's in His heaven;
All's well with the world;
D
and conscience awakes. Sin is horrible, and the
strong, just, divine order rules, calm and mighty.
Sebald kills himself in his remorse, and Ottima
shows the nobler side of passion in possible self-
sacrifice.
by pro
In her dewy freshness of soul, Pippa goes next
where Jules and Phene return from their marriage.
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ROBERT BROWNING
Through the talk of his fellow-students we learn
that the sculptor has been entrapped into marry-
ing a Greek girl who has acted as an artist's
model. He finds it out. What can he do?
Give her all he has and leave her? But the girl
loves him, and has found life in her love. As he
is anxiously deciding what to do, Pippa's song of
the queen who loved the page is heard, raising
the pointed question, Why should we in love be
always page and never queen, getting rather than
giving? Here, for instance, is a soul with need.
of help, and to whom his mere touch has given
life. He will take her and go to some isle of the
Greek sea, with silence all about it, and begin life
and art in a new spirit and with vital aims.
Next Pippa passes to the turret where Luigi
and his mother are in talk about his schemes as
one of the Carbonari. His purpose is to slay the
Austrian tyrant, whose tyranny is cursing his
country. The mother pleads against her son's
purpose, and tries to draw him from it, and talk
especially of one whom he loves, by drawing him
to the sweet domestic life still possible even under
Austrian tyranny. He wavers, when the song of
Pippa, about the good king who lived in the morn-
ing of the world, by its contrast with Austrian
tyranny, rouses his patriotism. He goes, seem-
ingly to fulfil his purpose, faithful anyhow to its
patriotic core, and so escapes the police, who were
on the watch for him.
And, lastly, Pippa passes the house of the
bishop's brother, lately dead. There is talk
BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
169
there between the bishop and a steward over the
dead brother's affairs, and through this we learn
that Pippa is that brother's child, with claims to
his wealth. The ruffian of a steward designs her
ruin, that her wealth may go to others. The
bishop listens and is tempted, when the song of
Pippa, with its note of faith and innocence, touches
the bishop's better nature, and reminds him how
God has care for such lives. He revolts from the
scheme, and has Maffeo gagged and arrested.
It is evening now, and Pippa goes home, her
holiday spent, her songs and "fooling" done.
What is she now? The mill girl only, who, if
she touch these people at all, can only do it
through the silk she winds. So it seems to her;
and the day sets in cloudy gloom, the truth of
her hymn not clear to her. Yet the poet has
made the truth clear. Pippa has, in fact, touched
every one of those lives for good, and is happier
than they.
The next of the dramas was CC
King Victor and
King Charles," in 1842. It depicts and interprets
a dramatic situation, rather than a dramatic action.
Victor II. of Sardinia, having ruled with energy for
fifty-four years, abdicated in 1730 in favour of his
son Charles, whom he had neglected and despised.
It was a surprise to all, to the son most of all.
What was the motive and object of it? That he
wished to declare a marriage he had privately
made, and spend his closing years quietly? or
that he had certain designs he thought he could
carry out best through his son, whom he expected
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ROBERT BROWNING
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to control? The latter, Browning thinks, and in
working out the effects of the situation on the
characters of father and son is the interest of the
theme for him. The son, who had been thought
weak and pliable, was, in fact, strong, and meant
to rule now that he was king. He rules well for
a year, when his father, not finding himself able to
carry out his scheme, plots to recover the crown,
even by force. The plot is found out, and the
father is brought a prisoner before his son.
Charles, resolute so far, shrinks from so strange
a strife, and places the crown on his father's head,
who dies from the excitement, and so cuts the
knot of a difficult situation.
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"The Return of the Druses" (1843) was the
next of the plays. It is a romantic theme, tragical
and uncommon, with more "plot" than is usual
with Browning. Certain Druses, driven from their
home, by the Turks in the fifteenth century, settle
on an island near Rhodes, under the Knights of
St. John. They are governed by a bad prefect,
who kills their leaders. Only one boy, Djabal,
son of an emir, escapes and goes to Europe. He
there gains help of a Breton noble, and of the
Venetians, in a scheme to free the Druses, and
returns to carry it out. At home he falls in love
with Anael, who has vowed to give herself only to
her tribe's deliverer; so the passion of love unites
with patriotism to urge him on. But how is it
to be done? His people think God only can free
them within the due time by means of the Hakeem,
a divine manifestation. To rouse them, he claims
BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
171
to be Hakeem, is able to satisfy his tribe of his
claim, and for a time" believes" it himself. A
day is fixed for deliverance, and they wait. But
before it comes his "faith wanes. What is he
to do? He tries to be true in the strange situa-
tion, but is forced on by circumstances and events.
Anael, afraid of the love she feels for the man,
wishes to prove herself worthy of the divine
caliph; while he, thinking her love depends on
her delusion, is afraid to make known the fact.
She slays the prefect, a deed he meant to do, and
so forces the crisis. He tells her now the truth.
She will not have it so, and when she believes
him she holds by her love. Seeing this, he
resolves to keep his secret. But on the dis-
covery of the prefect's murder, Anael, in re-
action, denounces Djabal. He admits the justice.
of her denunciation, but declares his utter love
for her. She accepts her lover, and in strange
excitement dies with the cry of Hakeem on her
lips. The cry is taken up by the Druses, and
before Djabal can confess, the Venetians come,
and his task is practically accomplished. He
puts on two friends the duty of leading his
tribe home, then kills himself. So did these
two, by their love and death, restore the Druses
to their home; so did they become "divine" to
their tribe, and prove that "all great works in
this world spring from the ruins of greater"
plans and ideas: men design Babels and build
Babylons.”
tr
"A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is a tragedy of
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ROBERT BROWNING
simpler and more human interest. It was given
at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, February 11,
1843. Miss Faucit played Guendolen, Mrs. Stir-
ling, Mildred, and Mr. Phelps, Lord Tresham.
The play was given again by Mr. Phelps at
Sadler's Wells, in 1848. It was not quite a
success" either time.
either time. The public thought the
subject unpleasant. It is tragical certainly, but,
as the poet gives it, human and touching. The
leading figure is Lord Tresham, whose strength
and weakness meet in his pride and honour-
pride and a long line and a family name without
stain. And he finds, as he thinks, the family
'scutcheon hopelessly stained by a sister's weak-
ness. He does not know how or by whom the
dishonour has fallen. He has one feeling-
wounded pride; and one thought - vengeance
on the man who has done the wrong. He is
too proud and too angry to take thought for
anything save his name, because it is his. So
he slays his sister's lover, and then finds how
partial and arrogant he has been. He has
murdered Lord Mertoun, on whose behalf he
had supposed himself acting-has killed the man
whom his sister passionately loved, and whom
he wished her to marry. His sister dies broken-
hearted. He poisons himself in his despair, and
hands on his name and home to those whom he
warns to remember his pride and avoid his haste.
Self-consideration, veiled by a passion of honour,
has been his motive, leading to worse wrong than
Mertoun's.
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173
The figure of Mildred is tender, but too pitiful;
and that of Mertoun boyish and touching. Guen-
dolen has fine sense and womanly feeling. But
the play leaves an impression of slightness in
character, deficiency of action and vital detail.
There is a lyrical pathos and beauty of tone and
style in it. The sadness of the high-minded
proud Lord Tresham, over a deed he sees un-
justifiable and irreparable, is well given. When
in his pride and wrath he had slain Mertoun he
saw the narrowness of his judgment and view of
life, and "thro' all the troubled surface a depth of
purity immovable" in his sister's heart.
This drama raises a question in the criticism of
art, and one that has been pressed by the poet's
critics. Life is often pitiful, and we have to take
it as it is, but these tragedies that sadden us are
a mistake, it is said. And they are a mistake,
unless they suggest those higher powers and fuller
issues into which the sorrow passes, when nobly
borne or expiated, unless they purify the heart
and leave it more heroic. It is a world of many
mistakes, in which the nobler hearts often make
the mistakes, and in which sensible and ordinary
folks escape the sorrows and get the good things
of life; yet the world is made better and richer
by the pains of these hearts, and they envy not
"the common lot."
Colombe's Birthday" was the next of the
plays, and is in most respects the finest. Made
in 1844, it was produced at the Haymarket in
1853; Miss Faucit, who took a special interest in
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ROBERT BROWNING
Browning's heroines, playing the part of Colombe,
the most subtle and difficult of his women. The
play is localised and dated but we know of no
historic basis; nor is it, as here given, of any
special age or place whenever the heart, tempted
to make a lower, is upheld to make the higher
choice, there the essential action of the drama hast
taken place. The interest and development of
the drama lie in the play of feeling and in the
transformation or definition of character.
Colombe of Ravestein has been Duchess of
Her father con-
Cleves and Juliers for a year.
trived she should succeed, but by the Salic law,
which rules the succession, she has no title to the
duchy. It really belongs to her cousin Berthold,
and he comes to claim his rights. He has sent a
message to advise Colombe of his purpose, which
is given the lady through an advocate who has
come to plead the cause of Cleves. This advocate
is the hero of the play. A total contrast to the
courtiers, he brings the duchess the breath and
power of the world where words are real, good-
ness true, and loyalty sincere and unselfish. He
had seen her a year ago, and had been struck by
the nobleness of the woman, while the duchess
put her far above him. He now finds, as the
duchy is lost, that the woman is nobler than he
had imagined her.
Though Colombe had known of Berthold's
claim, his message was a shock to her; in part for
the loss of the duchy, but more because it made
clear to her the hollowness of the basis on which
BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
175
She
But
she had rested-the court and its vanities.
will resign and give all to Prince Berthold.
on reflection she cannot, for in Valence, the
advocate, she has one subject at least, and he has
made her aware of duties. She will try the
question on its merits,
And the prince comes-a large, practical man,
easy and confident, making his claim quietly, as
aware of its strength, and counting it a small
thing on his way to far greater. His maxim is,
that if there be little real difference between the
objects and satisfactions of men's lives, "mere
largeness" is something, and he holds that in this
world we must go by size, and settle about kind
in the next; a deliberate and principled worldli-
ness and unspiritual irony is his temper.
On the arrival of Berthold, it proves harder
than she had thought to leave her father's halls.
She appoints Valence to speak for her. He
declares how every true subject will stand by his
lady. Alone she may seem; but in loneliness
men come to reality and power. The court and
its fictions gone, the duchess will fall back on the
people. The dominion that rests on force only
is a name, and the good will of her people no
force can take from her. Berthold, who goes by
the size and forms of things, is struck by the man
and his spirit. But he feels the justice of Valence,
and he puts the whole case in his hands. The
advocate knows it is a question of law, and will
decide and advise on that ground. He is to
consider the papers before the evening. As he
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ROBERT BROWNING
goes to do so, Colombe retains him to make him
aware that she has grown to true clearness and
power of spirit, and can accept justice. It has
been to her a birthday for heart and soul, doing
in her the work of years, and the power has been
mainly his. So she helps him to his duty. But
as she goes she makes clear a fact that may bias
and perplex his decision. She loves him. In
that matter there is more hope for him in her
ceasing to be duchess; so he calls Cleves and its
woes to help him to be true.
The matter is, indeed, easy. The claims of
Berthold are clear. But now comes the hardest
of all questions for him to settle. Berthold
offers marriage to Colombe, not on the ground of
love, but on every other honourable and con-
venient ground; and Valence presents the whole
question on its merits. She is not duchess in law,
but may be so in fact by accepting a man who is
in many ways worthy of her a man of power
and purpose, so definite and so strong through
his very limitations that he gathers "earth's whole
good into his arms," and stands forth the type of
earthly success. The lady avows she had looked
for such a man as the advocate's generous words
tell of to complete her life, but wonders if he
loves. Valence says no. But how can he tell?
He knows love's way, and the prince has not a
tone of it. He knows through love; then, whom
does Valence love? Colombe follows up the
question, until she forces from him the confession
of his love. And yet she puts it aside for a time
BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
177
as if to test both. He appeals to her to prove
that love is best, and vindicate the pure and
simple nobleness of life. But for the moment she
feels as if his loyalty were less great. She will
see Berthold. The prince is advised to play the
lover and the man, but does not care enough for
the part to feign; and when the lady asks, “You
love me then?" he admits frankly it is not in his
heart or his plan. There is no need, he says, for
such fiction. He offers all that matters to sense
or to ambition. Before such cold alienation
from all rights of the heart she draws back, and
he puts the matter bluntly, as a choice between
taking the empire and giving up the duchy.
And then Valence is put to a last test, his
integrity proving equal to it. Melchior, a friend
of Berthold, assures him that the lady is only
kept from accepting the prince by an impression
that the services of Valence claim her hand.
Valence leaves her free to make her choice. This
decision Berthold deems heroic, and asks what
"reward" there must be for thus "yielding up
love's right." And Valence, in his noblest tone,
asks who thought of reward? And yet only to
have known Colombe, and been helped by her to
all that is good, is the true reward. He now
gives her the requisition. She subscribes it, and
asks him what on her birthday, which is to be her
wedding day, he wishes from her. One thing.
only he asks that the wrongs of Cleves be set
right. Berthold grants this. And then Valence,
thinking Colombe has taken the prince, is about
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1
to leave her, when she asks him to read what she
has written on the prince's summons-"I take
him; give up Juliers and the world.
This is my
birthday." Berthold, seeing now the full quality
of the lady, knows that she was too fine for his
ends. "Any garish plume will do to deck a
barren helm"; this "costly flower" is for rarer
uses. And he admires, though he does not envy,
and could not imitate the choice.
This play, as a presentation of its theme, is
beautiful and effective. Whether for acting drama
the theme be really fit, is another question. The
characters of Colombe, Valence, and Berthold are
vital and vigorous, though it may be Berthold is
rather a type than a person.
He is the embodi-
ment of secular ability and good sense; of the
success resulting from indifference to every prin-
ciple and feeling that does not help his ambition.
He knows there is a thing called "heart," and he
has heard of "spirit" and a "life beyond," but
the first he regards as in the way of life's business,
and the other as not pertinent to it.
Some one
has spoken of Berthold as our poet's ideal. There
are elements in Berthold the poet has strong
sympathy with efficient ability, realism, and
sheer will; but his defects are so great, his range
so narrow, that he cannot be regarded as ideal.
He is the opposite of Sordello, and for many
"uses” of life better than the "mad poet"; but
the single and capable judgment, the heroic un-
selfishness, the steady regard for "general ends "
of Valence, bring him nearer what may be called.
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BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
179
an ideal. And the two are not so much contrasted
as compared. Valence does justice to Berthold,
and on his practical and intellectual sides admires
him. And he does so because he has all of his
virtue and much of his power, only qualified by
principles Berthold does not regard. The test of
Colombe is in her choice between these two-a
choice heightened by the fact that the duchy goes
with the one, and a simple life with the other.
She likes the energy and practical scope and
manly quality of Berthold. But she must have
heart as well as brain, self-denial as well as self-
reliance; and in her and her decision the drama
depicts a pure and generous womanly ideal. Life
should rest on reality, not on forms; on love and
humanity, not on gold and rank and name. She
might have found reasons for taking Berthold,
and only a conviction that the heart has its rights,
that go to the core, not only of the happiness
but of the rightness of life, would have led her to
choose Valence. People take such decisions at
their peril, but those who can maintain them
alone know the proper worth of life.
"Luria" (1846) was the next play, romantic
and tragical. Luria was a Moor in the service of
Florence, proud of and devoted to the Republic,
but distrusted by her as an alien. It is the eve
of a great battle between Pisa and Florence, and
it is feared at Florence that, if Luria wins, he
will use his victory for ends of his own. Braccio,
the organ of these suspicions, is with Luria,
collecting what is thought "evidence" for a trial
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of Luria then going on, and to be completed on
his victory.
They mean to use him, and then
destroy him. Tiburzio, the Pisan general, who
gets to know the scheme, comes to tell Luria of
it, and draw him away from Florence. But the
Moor will not hear of betrayal, will not open the
intercepted letters. It is a pain to him to lose
faith in Florence. He clings to it; joins battle,
and beats Pisa. Then he demands of Braccio the
facts, which the commissary has to admit. Urged
again to punish Florence at the head of the Pisan
army, he will not, though he does punish a city
unworthy of such souls in his own way. He
poisons himself, and dies just as news of his
entire acquittal is brought from the city. Luria
is a fine conception, a heroic figure, bringing "new
feeling fresh from God, teaching what life should
be, what faith is and loyalty and simpleness”; in
him the passion and depth of the East come into
contact with the thought and purpose of the West,
feeling the greatness of the West, baffled by its
duplicity, but keeping its own heroism and great-
ness of soul; in him is the despair of a great
heart that has loved the power and brilliance,
and then learns the selfishness and baseness, of
Renaissance Italy. But the play is poetic rather
than acting drama. Its long speeches and develop-
ments of passion rather than action, and the want
of other characters beside Luria, are against its
representation.
There remain two dramatic fragments of much
power and interest-" A Soul's Tragedy" (1846)
BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
181
f
and "In a Balcony" (1853). "A Soul's Tragedy "
is in two parts, one giving the poetry of dream
and promise; the other the prose of fact, as tested
by opportunity, in the life of one Chiappino. He
is a confident and effusive man who would, in his
own opinion, quickly put the world right, if only
he had the chance. The chance offers, and he
finds himself without purpose or principle—a
creature of plausibility and expediency and self-
interest. He has denounced the rule of the
Provost of Faenza, and been sentenced to exile.
Luitolfo, a friend, a quieter but surer and better
man, has gone to get the sentence revised. In
his absence Chiappino gives himself the airs of a
hero in talk with the lady his friend is going to
marry. He loves this lady too, and grudges his
friend his better fortune. While he is abusing
his friend, Luitolfo knocks. Chiappino mocks
the fright in which he supposes him to have fled
from the Provost, but finds that the quiet friend,
failing in his suit, has struck the Provost, and
thinks he has killed him. He flees, followed, as
he thinks, by a hostile crowd. Chiappino helps.
him to escape, and then goes out to find the
crowd friendly. So he takes over the whole
benefit of his friend's act, and plays the part of
the hero of revolt.
In the second part we find the results of the
false start thus made, and of the man's want of
solidity and sincerity. It is a month after, so
that things have had time to grow. And here
the true hero of the piece comes on the stage—
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ROBERT BROWNING
"}
Ogniben, the pope's legate. He comes just as
our hero of the revolt is giving
<< reasons for
being in no hurry to realise his visions of a per-
fect state, or even common obligations. Now,
the legate is every way the man to detect his
conceit and expose his weakness, his want of
grasp and conviction. He is a typical Italian
ecclesiastic-human, humorous, with much know-
ledge of men and life, subtle and able, knowing
too well man's weakness and the irony of life.
His part is that of critic and humorist. His
convictions, if he has any, are well in reserve.
He finds these people with ideas and schemes.
interesting and not dangerous. Their own weak-
ness and the extreme difficulty of moving the
world keep them harmless. And his way with
them is to feign agreement, and carry their
notions on to conclusions that show their futility
and the shallowness of the minds in which they
arise. He has really a deep scepticism, and likes
to show, as matter of satire as well as argument,
how the intellect can always be got to argue on
behalf of what men wish. In his opinion, one of
the best uses of that very fallible organ is to find
ways of making the best of things as they are.
He does not think well of men's motives gener-
ally, does not pretend much that way for himself,
and knows that self-interest, active in all, is
specially acute in leaders of revolts. He has seen
twenty-three of these, and knows too much to
take them seriously. He easily shows the vanity
of Chiappino's fine words; exposes him to the
Str
BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST
183
people as one who had been trading on another's
deed; and, with words of light mockery, dismisses
him to profit by the fall his pride has had, and by
his new experience of affairs of State.
The piece is not a play, but is forcibly dramatic.
Ogniben is the most definite impersonation in the
dramas. The interest is in the characters; the
development and catastrophe are in the soul, not
in events, and the incidents are clearly invented
to present this.
"In a Balcony" is a fine fragment, character-
istic in its dramatic quality and in its bearing on
life. It takes us into the heart of the situation,
and presents the crises of the soul. Norbert loves
Constance, and has served the queen that he may
win her. His success may claim her now; but
the lady, knowing the queen, advises him to put
his suit as if his love were, in fact, for the queen,
and only took her kinswoman as a next and
possible best. The queen, with womanly hunger
for such love, takes the fiction for fact, and
comes eagerly to grasp the life it seems to offer.
She tells Constance all she means to do to take
Norbert's love. Constance tells Norbert, and
protests her entire love for him, but sees he has
other objects. The queen finds them thus.
Norbert declares his love in her presence. Con-
stance, having decided, if that prove best, to give
him up to the queen, tries to turn all his words
away from herself and upon the queen. He
counterworks this design, and in the end makes
it clear that his love is for Constance. This dis-
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ROBERT BROWNING
covery is painful to the queen, and the drama ends.
in gloom and peril, but in clear and certain love.
We have now before us Browning's whole
dramatic work, and two questions arise, What is
the quality of the dramas he made? Was drama
his proper medium? His own decision and
course appear to answer the latter question. He
has made no plays, we may say, since 1846. It
has been said that that is an accident—a serious
one if the poet's genius were really for drama.
Let us look, then, at our first question. Active
development and expression are the sphere of
drama, and characterisation must be through
these. How do the above plays answer these
tests ? The themes the poet chooses, and his
treatment of them both, we judge, show that his
interest and sphere are not the older dramatic.
There is a want of active development, of graphic
and characteristic conversation, of outward interest
and detail, and there is interest and matter of
another kind. Their main and growing power and
scope are such as do not fit the theatre. These
dramas, as they are made, are inadequate to the
dramatic interest and bias at work in them. In
their power and their defects they show that for the
poet's genius another form was necessary. There
is dramatic power, but it is power trammelled, not
expressed, by the forms and restrictions of drama.
The poet's intellectual and spiritual interests in
man's nature and life are, in fact, too strong for
that free contemplation of action and active.
relations required in drama.
CHAPTER VIII
FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846)
THE history of a poet's art has more than a
technical interest, for the growth of his art is in
degree the growth of his mind and of his subject.
It indicates his grasp of his matter, of his own
powers in relation to that, and the right means of
expressing matter and mind. And as to the last
point, mastery of matter and form in some sphere
of art, genius is more subject to growth than is
often thought to be the fact.
These early dramatic lyrics of Browning are
an instance of that law of choice and growth to
which genius is subject. When the first of these
lyrics was made, the poet had not made sure of
his method-had not found that form which he
felt to be the best for the expression of his mind.
By the time the last of these lyrics was made he
had become sure of both. Between the two is a
period of ten years. Part of the work of that
time we have taken in the dramas.
The poems
now to be taken will help to fix better the value
of the dramas, and will enable us to test in early
and simple instances that form and method of
dramatic work which the poet has used since
r
+
185
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ROBERT BROWNING
i
1846 as his most congenial and adequate form
of expression.
The history of his work as it bears on this
point makes clear, we have seen, the accuracy of
what has just been stated. "Pauline" was mono-
dramatic; "Paracelsus "
"Paracelsus" was dramatic in spirit
and design, but in a form more freely adapted,
as the poet thought, than drama for the expres-
sion of the mind and passions in their vital action.
The form did not answer his aim, but such was
his aim. "Sordello" was narrative, discursive,
but with dramatic interest and statement breaking
through it.
In 1841-2 the poet made drama, and also in
1842 he put forth the "Dramatic Lyrics," explain-
ing in a brief preface what they were--" lyrical
in form," but "dramatic" in principle. The
booklet had only sixteen pages.
But it had such
lyrics as the two "Madhouse Cells," "Queen
Worship," "Italy and France," "Waring," "In a
Gondola," etc. These poems were issued in 1842,
but some of them had been composed as early as
1836.
The first poem of the kind made by the
poet, and given in, the little book, was "Por-
phyria's Lover.” It was at first entitled "A
Madhouse Cell." In 1863 it was put among the
"Romances"; and in the edition of 1868 you
will find it beside "Childe Roland," as akin in
matter and principle. A strange poem, it may
seem.
It is the lover of Porphyria who talks in an
FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846) 187
intense dream. He is alone; a rainy night and
a sullen wind outside; his one thought Porphyria.
He sees her come in, and at once all is changed.
She has come from a feast, through the rain and
the wind, to sit with him. She puts his head on
her shoulder, spreads over all her yellow hair,
and tells her love. He sees the truth of her heart,
the weakness of her will she loves, but will never
break through circumstance, and be his. But her
true life is in her love, and to make this moment
eternal were best for love and for the soul. Το
free her from earth is the only way to that, and
so he strangles her with her yellow hair, and sees
her pass without pain to the freedom and good-
ness of the after-life. And they sit the night
through in a peace that seems God's approval of
the deed.
But what a theme! And did it happen? It
is a romance of overmastering passion. It took
place only among the wild motions of a lover's
brain. Dwelling on his love, and seeing no way
of hope for love but this way, he affirms so
passionately that love is all and death better than
the vanity of false life that he sees this happen—
sees death set love free and keep it pure.
But it is, then, it would seem, a study of mad-
ness, of monomania, and ought to have kept its
title. Why remove the title? Because the man in
whose brain it shaped itself so vividly might never
have done it in fact. There is much mania that
never gets beyond the brain, and there are moods.
trenching on madness that never cross the line.
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ROBERT BROWNING
Another poem published in 1836, and also called
"A Madhouse Cell" in 1842, was "Johannes
Agricola." It is a case of fanaticism, of religious
self-love, so complete as to be a kind of moral
insanity. Any strong passion or great idea may
in certain natures result in such mania, and the
madness is never pure and simple, because great
errors are usually the perversion of great truths.
John Agricola was a Predestinarian, so far gone.
as to become Antinomian-so far, that is, as to
have set aside moral law. "Elect of God" from
eternity, he could do no ill, and nothing could do
him ill—that is, bring his soul into any danger.
Every act and detail of his life was part of God's
plan, for and through him. This plan and the
divine will are above all criticism of the reason,
and even of the conscience of man. The neces-
sities of the divine nature are absolute-neither
moral nor immoral. Of this will the soul is the
special object; beyond all else the souls of the
elect are dear to God. It is impossible to assign
a reason for this divine regard; no virtue or good-
ness makes any difference. The only "reason
is in the elective Will of God, and in God it is all
a necessity-the last mystery of the divine nature.
The divine need of certain souls to love is the
secret of "salvation," and the inscrutable ground
of all hope. "Elect," sin's worst poison leaves you
"safe"; non-elect, your best virtues turn to sin.
It is strange, it is very strange, but the last ecstasy
of faith in it comes from its mystery, and the
absolutely free grace of God thus involved.
در
FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846) 189
But again you ask, Why depict such a mind?
The passion of belief makes the meditation lyrical,
as the man in his exultation thrusts aside the
whole physical universe to get to God-God and
the love of God "all in all" to him. This is his
interest, that he realises so madly a curious and
profound idea of the human soul-the soul in
God, and God in the soul, as all that has finally
any value or meaning.
The place given the poem in the latest edition
of the poet's works must mean that he attaches
real psychological interest to it. He puts it
among "Men and Women," and beside the
Epistle of Karshish.” The problem there is the
effect it would have on human conduct were one
to die and be brought back again to life. The
balance of life, it is inferred, would be so lost, its
centres so shifted, that life would be no longer
practicable. And in this poem, what is it? The
idea of God and of the Divine will may be so
held as to destroy all will and all morality, and
reduce life to a meaningless necessity. And yet
this "God-hunger," this passion of the soul, which
in coarse natures has such ugly results, has refined
higher natures to an unearthly beauty, and in
both the instinct has a deep meaning. Agricola
and St. Agnes are far apart, but St. Agnes's dream
of the "Heavenly Bridegroom," and the "Sab-
baths of Eternity," and Agricola's idea of " God's
breast," as "his own abode," are the same cry for
a God of the soul whom physical splendours hide.
rather than reveal.
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ROBERT BROWNING
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The next of the early lyrics, done also in
1836, is of different quality. It is a lyric of
sentiment, perhaps the only lyric of the kind in
Browning. It is that called "Lines" "Still
ailing, Wind?” And the poet laid hold of it to
criticise, and reject it years later when he wrote
'James Lee's Wife." Its weakness is the "pathetic
fallacy," the assumption that nature is caught up in
our moods. It is a natural weakness, and the voice
of the wind not merely touches, but seems to echo
and share our grief at times. But this is not
Browning's note, nor could he ever have given the
magic or the force of poets to whom it is natural.
In
The "Cavalier Tunes" are also lyrics of the
dramatic kind-spirited songs imagined for cer-
tain cavaliers; and what might be called "Ballads,"
such as "Count Gismond," and an "Incident of
the French Camp," were among these lyrics.
them you have a story told dramatically. In the
ballad, lyrical and dramatic elements are in this
way often present, and the life of the narrative is
gained by the effort of the imagination to see and
put all from some dramatic standpoint. Rossetti's
work has the most brilliant modern examples of
this, but Browning too gives the ballad-form
and quality.
"In a Gondola " is a series of these lyrics, a love
song in the form of a dialogue lyrically conducted
between the lovers, and giving vividly their feelings,
the situation, and the story. Their love is secret,
their meetings stolen, at risk of the lover's life;
but danger and death only heighten their passion,
!
to
J
FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846) 191
and as they glide through Venice in the gondola,
the life of the city seems the dream, their life the
reality. He is found and stabbed as they part,
but cares not; for, having lived, he can afford to die.
Placed next is "Waring," also of 1842. It is
a "romance," suggested by fact. A friend of the
poet, a man lovable and of much promise, rich in
feeling, but proud and shy, wanting self-confidence,
has suddenly left London and gone to "the far
end of the world." And the poem depicts the
man, expresses all the surprise and regret, the
thoughts and hopes, that came into the poet's
mind because of the departure of Waring. He
wishes him back if only to tell him his esteem,
while he is aware of his defects. He knew and
loved good work and true praise, and should have
put himself frankly forth in a world that goes,
and must go, by what a man has done rather than
by what it is in him to do.
But there is power
and hope of most things in Waring, given scope
and stimulus; and the second part of the poem
sets these forth, on occasion of meeting some one
who has caught a glimpse of Waring in the east.
In many of the "Lyrics" of the "Bells and
Pomegranates" series there is thus a keen dramatic
quality. But the finest, the most "dramatic" in
this poet's quality of drama, were the poems now
called "My Last Duchess," and "The Bishop
orders his Tomb." In these the mind and art of
the new poet were distinctly and decisively de-
clared—his field, his quality, his power.
For dramatic point and animation, indeed few
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ROBERT BROWNING
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of Browning's poems surpass that named then
Italy," and since named My Last Duchess."
Its humour, its rapid delineation and suggestion
of the speaker's own character, and also of
his wife's, show well the poet's power and the
capability of this form of dramatic expres-
sion. The speaker is the duke. He is show-
ing a portrait of his last duchess to one with
whom he is arranging for another. The dead
lady has become one of his art treasures, kept for
himself; and as they look at it he supposes a
question as to the depth and passion of her
glance. There was her offence. Her quick,
impulsive nature, easily roused and pleased,
offended his proud, cold nature. The glow was
in place when given to him, but when given to
everyone and everything as freely as to him and
his "nine-hundred-years-old name," it hurt him.
It was not a thing to speak of, nor to be put up
with. In his proud, hard way he took means to
stop it.
He stopped it, and it killed the lady.
Is he sorry?
Was it overdone? Not in the least.
He will exact just the same devotion and reserve
of the next that he did of the last duchess. She
is dead, but she is there, and his in her beauty
still. He is satisfied with that, and goes on to the
question of the dowry and the next duchess, and
his other works of art, as if all had one use only
-to be his and please him.
Later, and better even, among these early
lyrics is "The Bishop's Tomb at St. Praxed's."
It was published in Hood's Magazine in 1845,
FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846) 193
and republished among the "Romances and
Lyrics" in that year, and now put with the
poet's Renaissance studies.
The scene is the deathbed of a Roman bishop
of the sixteenth century. It is the bishop who
speaks. He is dying, and has accepted the fact
so completely that he sees himself dead and
buried, and lying through the years on his tomb
in St. Praxed's Church. His one thought now is
to arrange for, and, if he can, make all sure and
clear about, a tomb such as shall fit his value and
his taste, and he has called his sons round his
bed to talk to them at large of this matter. He
describes the tomb and his whole wish regarding
it, so that his life and soul are disclosed. He
has had, by his confession, his share of life's
pleasures; he means to have his share of death's
honours, since life, unhappily, cannot go on.
Both
may be "vanity," but both are the world's way
and good to man.
With his sons about him, he recalls their
"mother" and his gay life many years ago.
Sorry, is he? Not at all. It was good while
it lasted. It is past and gone, and vain regrets
are a bad kind of folly.
And the woman is
dead, and now it is his turn for that which
comes to all. Looking back, he wonders what
man's life is, and what death may be which
ends it. He doesn't know and scarcely cares,
yet often as he lies in the long still night all
seems a dream, and he hardly knows whether
he is dead or alive. But it will be death soon
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ROBERT BROWNING
7
for him, and so about his tomb. He has been
done out of the best place in the church, but
he will have the best tomb-one that will move
the envy of his rival even in the grave. He
has worked out the design for it, and enjoys.
the triumph of it as much as if it already stood
in St. Praxed's. The tomb is to be of jasper,
the slab antique black basalt, the columns peach-
blossom marble, the frieze bronze, and a ball of
lapis-lazuli between the knees of the effigy. And
whence came this precious ball? He stole it
from a burning church, and hid it for this very
use. But will his sons give it him, or steal it
from him, as he from the church? He has fears,
but he bribes them with all he can offer, and
goes on to finish the frieze, with its Pans and
Nymphs, and Christ and Moses. And he is
exigent as to the epitaph. It must be pure
Latin, Cicero's every word; not Gandolph's bad
Latin.
Such is his plan. Will the sons carry it out?
They get tired of his talk, and, he fears, will
take his property and give him a beggar's tomb.
He begs them, more than he would for his soul,
not to do so, and tries to hope as he dwells on
his plan, until he hears the Mass, and feels the
incense, and tells how often in the night he
seems to turn to a piece of sculpture as he lies
on his bed. But now he is tired, and wanders,
and ends by admitting that his scheme has no
chance of being carried out. His first impulse is
to punish his sons, but he does not. He sends
FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836–1846) 195
them away kindly, tolerantly, with sense, perhaps,
of retribution in their selfishness.
That the poem has fine dramatic points and
true characterisation is thus clear. And there
are still points of exegesis it may be well to
glance at as bearing on the bishop and his
age-for he is a type of his age.
well as the date the data
1. The bishop has a few serious phrases, but
no serious beliefs. His survey of life, his con-
cern with death, both prove it. "The world's
a dream," he says, though for him it has been
and is still the only reality. Yet there is
sincerity in his phrase. It looks and feels so
to him now because it is remote, its pleasures.
gone, only memories left, no inward gains. So
when he speaks of his life as "brief and evil,"
he reminds us of what Martial said that
though many of us have too much, none of
us ever have enough." Life had been "good,"
but it had gone too fast. There is wrong in
the fact that it should go at all, and death is
the last wrong to those for whom the flight of
the years is never a process of gain, but always
of loss.
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2. And how little difference death makes to
him! It is not great and solemn to the bishop.
He is the same man. The rivalries, the care
for artistic show, and all the vanity and world-
liness of the man you find beyond death and
on the tomb. And that is the fact of life.
To the frivolous, death is trivial. For what does
the bishop think of?-Of "what is beyond."
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ROBERT BROWNING
And what is beyond death for him?-The grave,
and nothing more; and so the grand question
is about a satisfactory tomb.
3. And how curious the passion of which the
bishop is so full-that passion for monuments,
and all our care for what may happen to our
names after we have passed away! Is it rational,
or is it the vainest of man's illusions? our self-
respect carried beyond death, or only a wish
to keep a kind of place and value in the world
when we have no place more in it? Two things
seem clear about it in the bishop's case—that
it is a sensuous rather than a spiritual wish,
and that the bishop does not think of himself
as dead. He is in the church still, not in the
grave, but on the tomb. That effigy becomes
the man; he feels through it and lives in it.
4. And what of the bishop's religion? He
has had a Church and a ritual, and he has cared
for them, but hardly a creed, and not a faith.
"The blessed mutter of the Mass," "the perfume
of the incense," "the aery dome of the church"
these are the notes of it. It is the religion
of a sceptical and sensuous age. The "angels
live" in the dome. There is no heaven for him.
His thoughts get no higher than the material
suggestions of ritual and art.
5. And his care for art is the bishop's strong
point, as it was the strong point of his age.
He is the epitome of the Renaissance in this
and in his style of art. His frieze, with its
mixture of mythologies, and his good Latin and
FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846) 197
bad morals express this. And Browning has
a liking for that age and its men and a secure
mastery of its types and secrets. This mastery
springs in part from sympathy. He likes the
sensuous energy and frankness, the vigour and
enjoyment and audacity, the care for art, the
learning, and all the picturesqueness and force
of the men and their lives, while aware, too,
of their terrible faults.
6. And so, as forcibly as Ruskin, he suggests
the ways in which the temper and character of
the Renaissance told on its art. This bishop,
worldly, selfish, and sensual, would invent such
art, and carry into the Church all the vanity of
his heart and his life. His art, indeed, is as
great an offence to his faith as his life itself.
But, leaving the bishop, let us recur to the
question of art we began with.
Such poems
make clear the principle of the work the poet
first made in these dramatic lyrics. Drama
would have put the bishop before you through
action and speech. Here he is put by speech
only. That is the sole action of the piece, and
yet it leaves on you a clear sense of the man
and the scene. How is so distinctly dramatic
result gained without the usual dramatic
means? By the energy of speech, which is
thought-intense and immediate self-expression.
The character is in action, and the poet's medium
gives that action vividly and directly.
a
CHAPTER IX
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY, AND BROWNING'S
CRITICISM OF LIFE
HAVING studied the rise of Browning's art, and
the ideas and aims of his earlier works, we propose
now to take his work more at large, and to con-
sider certain groups of poems with regard to their
substance rather than their form.
And, first, we take a group dealing with certain
problems and parts of life, on the ground that
they throw light from this poet's mind on ques-
tions of duty and spiritual culture. To do this, we
know, is likely to please some and offend others
-to please unduly those who care for literature
only as it has ethical value; to offend those who
think it should have no such value or bearing.
All cordial readers of Browning are thought to
belong to the first class, and Browning is their
prophet. But, though this is true of some of the
poet's readers, it is not true of the poet, nor is it
a possible view of literature. Browning's poetry,
in spite of its inward problems and spiritual
quality, is as just and profound in its idea of
literature as in its ideal of life, and both are
necessary to wise and great writing.
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LITERATURE AND LIFE
199
But the question now touched has been much
discussed, and of all recent poets Browning is
thought to raise it. Let us consider it so far as
to make clear our point of view. Literature,
some think, should be ethically neutral, simply
human, its use consisting in its interest and its
beauty only. But what, we must ask, is meant
by "simply human"? Morality is a very human
interest, and may surely occupy the place in
literature it has in life. Truth, too, is an interest
of man as well as beauty. And if beauty be
art's vision of truth and sense of man's pleasure
in it, there must be regard for truth, and not for
beauty simply. While all literature of power has
sprung from a passion and care for human life
that laughs to scorn the exclusion of any of its
interests, its "voice has been to the sons of men,"
its thoughts about the life of man, and the modern
mind is only more explicit and deliberate in the
matter, more spiritual and universal.
But, granting the principle, and allowing some
relations to be normal, the question may be
thought to have been shifted, not solved, be-
cause we have still to define the right relation.
Is it, for instance, that held by some earnest
people who think literature nothing if not
"moral"? But morality, and still more life,
includes much these good people do not include
in their conception, and their view is even
narrower on its literary than on its ethical side.
How, then, shall we indicate the right relation ?
A phrase put forth by a critic, whose phrases are
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often happy and light-giving, has been taken as
fairly answering the question. He described the
relation of literature to life as "criticism of life,"
and declared the higher value of literature to
depend essentially on its worth in this respect.
By some it has been thought that this is really
a Puritanic view of letters, and that Mr. Arnold
only stated that personal bias and inner thought
which he has shown in all his later writings when
he put forth that view. As he had said, besides,
that "conduct is three parts of life," and as
literature must to that extent be concerned with
"conduct," the matter seemed very serious.
Mr.
Arnold's care for literature and mastery of it was so
true that we should not much fear the effects of his
“Hebraism"; but his phrase is not large enough,
and may be put to perverse uses.
Shall we say,
then, that literature is the expression and inter-
pretation of life, wise, large, and free, and that
according to the power, breadth, and truth. with
which it grasps and states man's experience will
be its value to men?
And how is this done? In what ways does
literature help men to interpretation of life? Not
in any way of "criticism" in the narrower sense,
let us be clear. The proper concern of art is
with life, and not with notions about it. It must
present life itself in such ways that men shall see
it as they could not by their own insight. It
must put some significant part of life so that its
significance may be felt. That is art's first and
proper business. But that is only representation?
CRITICISM OF LIFE
201
Let us not mistake. Neither in science nor in
art is the pure objective possible or intelligible.
In other words, art is not life, but life as seen
through the mind and experience of the artist.
The ethical value of a writer will therefore de-
pend on the power and reach of the man, on his
scope and sanity of nature; not only on his point
of view and the value of his distinctive ideas, but
on the power and passion he has put into his
work; not on his wisdom only, but on his vital
power as a whole.
If this be our standpoint, and these our prin-
ciples, how do matters stand as regards the value
and characteristics of Browning's work as inter-
pretation of life? How does he help his readers?
After what has been above said of the poet's
qualities, it will be seen that in all the ways just
named he helps them. The man himself is a
moral power of great worth and energy. He has
breadth, variety, and strength of nature; great
force, not so much of single qualities as of many
qualities acting well together. He rouses you to
the reality and to the interest of life; to the
valour and force of man's will and mind. He
braces you by the vigour and clearness of his own
temper and bearing, both by the firmness of his
hold on things and by his manliness. His frank
acceptance and straightforward enjoyment are in
the nature of a witness to the worth and health
of things, with many uses in the poet's own
time.
And in the matter of moral truth and moral
ه
*
ته وه
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ROBERT BROWNING
impressions, the personality of a writer has much
to do with his influence. No man can ever
convey explicitly the whole reason of any of his
deeper convictions, still less of that most complex
conviction which we call his "view of life." And
it is the humanity of a writer, the "open secret"
of his sense of things as a whole and his own
relation to them, that moves and helps us beyond.
all he directly conveys. Browning has much of
this kind of power and value.
It often happens that characters of much
breadth lose something of power. It seems as
if here the breadth and the power proved them-
selves together, and found means of conveying
themselves through the work. There is power
at every point, and yet, except on certain great
principles, no emphasis.
So this poet has essential moral truth, essential
spiritual power, yet great freedom and natural-
ness; a large independence of rules and opinions,
and yet a strong hold of those principles which
alone get to the heart of duty and right. He
has, as moralist and as poet, the instinct and
sympathy of life; a care for what is alive or
makes for life.
And it is, we think, in this vital power, not only
of the poet, but of his poetry in its whole prin-
ciple and scope, that great part of his ethical
value consists. His poetry is almost wholly
dramatic, free and varied representation of the
facts of life and of the minds of men; and by
this he liberates our humanity, teaching lessons
CRITICISM OF LIFE
203
of intelligence and sympathy-nay, giving power
for these by setting us free from personal limita-
tions, and making us aware of that larger world
of passion and experience which, though it lie
beyond our bounds, is a most real part of life.
As part also of the dramatic aspect of his work
and its moral bearing through that, we must
understand that "criticism" of life which is con-
veyed by the very principle of his characterisation.
At the basis of his dramatic method will be found
certain ideas of high import in this reference, that
the soul is individual; that it has supreme worth
in the scheme of life; that the value of experience
is in the culture of the "soul"; that, as the worth
and result of life are found finally within, none
need miss life's good; that the experience of each
is so far adequate to the well-being of each; that
as experience develops the spirituality of the soul,
life gains depth and scope.
But here we touch distinctive ideas, or "views,"
of life as found in this poet; only, let us be clear
that even as to these the poet is not a "moralist "
simply. He does not select a world out of the
world by coming to it with a set of notions it
is to illustrate. As Mr. John Morley finely said,
speaking of Emerson: "All great minds see all
things; the only difference lies in the order in
which they choose to place them." This order,
and the estimate it implies, is great part of their
criticism of life. It both reflects and determines
leading ideas. And Browning, though he has
looked at the world's order and each man's good
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ROBERT BROWNING
constantly from the dramatic point of view, has
his order, and so leading ideas. These I now
put, through a study of the chief poems contain-
ing them.
I will begin with the poem called "The Boy
and the Angel." The poet calls it a "dramatic
romance."
It may seem rather a 'legend"
wrought as an allegory. It has the dramatic
form of many of the ballads. It is an invention
of the poet's imagination, giving quaint and fit
form to truths that were dear and beautiful to
him. Its inspiration is thus akin to that of many
legends of religious faith that sprang up in the
Middle Ages, blossoms as they were of deep feeling
and simple faith, quaintly shaped to the utterance
of sweet and noble ideals. In theme, spirit, and
moral this poem is simple, devout in the right
sense, cordial, and quaintly wise. The story may
be thus told: A boy in a monastery followed his
trade, doing his work well, by the work and in the
pauses of it "praising God." And Blaise, the
monk, was pleased, and told the lad that his
"praise" reached God as surely as the pope's at
the great Easter festival at Rome. But the boy
was not content; he longed to "praise God"
(ie. to please himself) in some "great way"-the
pope's in St. Peter's. And he got his wish, with
Gabriel's help. He became a priest, and rose to
be pope.
But, as he had been carried out of his
proper sphere by the mistaken kindness of the
angel, the boy's place was empty, his work now
undone. So the angel took his place. But the
CC
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
205
work and praise of the angel were not the boy's,
and could not replace the boy's. In time the
angel saw this, and took means to put matters
again in their natural order. He went to Rome, and
found Theocrite there as pope, preparing for the
great Easter service, proud of his place and of his
realised ambition. Gabriel made known to him
the great yet simple plan of life as he now saw it.
He is out of his place. In his place only can he
fulfil his proper tasks and God's will. Another
may fill the pope's place; none can fill his. In
the angel's words Theocrite first saw the divine.
way of duty and peace.
He went back to his
craft, and grew old at home. A new pope dwelt
in St. Peter's; and when Theocrite died, craftsman
and pope went together to God.
The legend is thus fitly made of the times
when men were learning the good, the social, and
religious worth of honest and useful work. In
classical society labour was slavish. In the feudal
age it was menial. The monastic rule, and the
temper of the best monastic minds, helped to add
to Western culture a principle greatly needed by
helping to make work as such honourable among
men and dear to God. And that idea had its
battle to fight against many discontents and
ambitions. To Theocrite the simple task and
daily round seemed poor. Piety, as he thought,
and pride much more, said that it were better to
do something" greater" for God. And he reached
the highest point of the monkish ambition, only
to find that, as wandering desires mistakenly
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ROBERT BROWNING
helped had carried him from his own tasks and
place, his life had ceased to bring its due praise
to God. The old way was not better only, but
the only good way. The lowly task was best
heeded and most valued by God, counting well
in His great plan a thought to reprove vain.
desires and sweeten simple lives.
And so through the legend Browning suggests,
with a mystic glow and depth such as he likes,
ideas to which, in the spirit of them, he attaches
great value the worth of each soul and of all sin-
cere work to God; the personal quality of all real
work; the duty of each to keep his own place, to
respect his own worth, and to rest satisfied with his
own tasks. In their proper place, and at their own
tasks, men are spiritually equal; God is "praised,"
and the order of the universe is served by the least
as truly as by the greatest. "Greater" and "less"
are words of no essential meaning in the matter.
The only really great thing is the whole divine
order. All value depends on helping that, and
all can help it. All lives rest on a divine order,
enter into a "scheme" that none of us com-
prehends, but that all further by simple discharge
of duty.
All work is consecrated and made right
by its due relation to that. If we move from our
place, we mar the music of God's order.
If we
keep our place, the highest value our work can
have comes from its being our duty.
In the first of "Pippa's Songs" you have the
same idea, and it is the keynote of the drama—
"All service ranks the same with God." All of
-
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
207
us, least and greatest, somehow serve Him, and
His will equalises all events and souls.
We are
all near to Him whose presence fills the world
and all our lives. This is a dramatic principle
and a vital truth for the poet; no "sentiment,"
as it often seems, but a law holding all lives.
In "The Statue and the Bust" you will find
what seems a very distinct, but is a perfectly
congruous, idea of duty. In the poems we have
just taken, the idea is that the simple duties and
circumstances of life are enough for happiness
and for the soul. Here the doctrine appears to
be, that it may be a duty to break through cir-
cumstances in order to reach a fuller life. Let
us see how it is. It is another legend or
romance. It arose in this way. In one of
the squares of Florence is a statue of Duke
Ferdinand I. The statue is so placed that the
duke seems to be looking towards the palace of
the Riccardi as he rides away, that palace stand-
ing at the corner of one of the streets running
into the square.
And this posture of the statue
appears to have given rise to a legend. The
figure looks fixedly at one of the windows of the
Riccardi palace, and so fancy read design in the
posture and meaning in the look. The story got
abroad that the duke had loved one of the ladies
of the house of Riccardi; that her husband,
knowing it, shut her in his palace, so that, if they
saw each other, it could only be from a window
looking into the square. The duke, in love for
the lady and scorn of her husband, had himself

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ROBERT BROWNING
f
put where he might seem to wait and catch her
every appearance.
That is the tradition; but our poet, no doubt
regarding the whole thing as an invention, took
it his own way.
To make it a better vehicle for
the truth of human hearts he saw in it, he added
to and gave it fuller meaning. The bust is his,
and the reality the love had for a time. The
lady, newly married, but with heart quite free,
sees the duke ride past. The duke sees the
lady at the window. They love, and life begins
for both. At a feast the same night they met,
and the duke found means to make known his
love to the lady. But the husband heard, or,
anyhow, knew, and determined to keep the wife
a prisoner within his palace. The wife seemed
to submit, inwardly resolved to flee in disguise,
which she always found reasons not to do, until,
as the years passed, the love passed too, remain-
ing only as a dream. The duke also had his
plans, which he, too, found reasons for delaying,
through months into years. They could see each
other-she from the window, he from the square.
To that they were faithful, with that satisfied.
And then, when they marked the flight of years,
and the change of passion itself to the memory of
a dream, they knew the thing past hope and vain,
yet wished to commemorate it. And so they hit
on the device of the statue and the bust, aware
now that their lives in the matter had been no
more vital-an "idleness which had only aspired
to strive" and dreamed of being. Yet it pleased
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
209
them somehow to think that when they were gone
these images would speak truly enough of their
futile passion and shadowy lives. They are gone
ages ago; and what, asks the poet, are their
thoughts now? What a gift life was," if only
the temper and the power to use it had been
theirs! That temper and power they had not,
and so they do not "see God nor His soldier-
saints"; they remain in the cold. For such
natures there is no heaven. And what is the
point? for this poem, at least, is made for the
moral, and not merely for the tale.
What was
their crime?for they avoided one, surely. As
to that, to postpone action, to vacillate, is not
right; it is only weak. Virtue does not lie in
indecision and delay, and final indifference and
futility—a statue-and-bust sort of life. That,
indeed, is to be nothing, neither wrong nor right
we
the most hopeless of all conditions. And the
poet puts his point here in certain strong words
that have been a trouble and even an offence to
some of his readers. A crime will serve for a
test as well." What can he mean? He means,
that a negative and indolent virtue is no virtue at
all; that to keep from action on immoral grounds
is itself wrong; that the last danger and the most
hopeless wrong is to palter and conventionalise,
to chill the heart, and paralyse the will until the
custom of your set, or the mere chain of circum-
stance, hang on you with a weight heavy as lead
and deep as life. To live is our only chance of
coming right; to be dead even while we live is
14
210
"
ROBERT BROWNING
¡
蓄
​育
​the greatest of wrongs both in Dante and in the
Gospels. Live heartily and with purpose, what-
ever you do, and you will come at the Maker's
morality. Don't dream or vacillate your life
away. Don't let the precious years slip through
listless fingers, past a nerveles will. Be awake,
|
alert. Have conviction and aim, and give frank
effect to these through conduct and enjoyment.
The crowning disaster is to miss life, whether by
neutral quality or feebleness or cowardice. To
allow circumstances to shut us out from life is to
be entombed before we are dead, to be a ghost
among the living; and from the shadowy land
itself to look back on the dead years as lost
opportunity, a tale of what might have been. Any-
thing rather than this. If you choose to play, no
matter what the game or the stake, do your best,
and win if you can; not for the pelf, but for the
game itself. And here you will ask two questions.
What, in this view and on this principle, is the use
of life? and what is it to live? Let me answer
them thus. To live as this poet means it, and
presses it, is not to find great circumstance or
great things, not to carry out your plans of
pleasure or of golden success, and have a big
share of things in life. You may do that and
live; you may have that and not live. Theocrite
lived in his cell and his craft; Pippa at her daily
task and in her simple songs. Circumstance is
well in its place. But the great thing is the
will, the passion within, the soul. It is the mean-
ing and the zest you put into life and get out
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
211
of it. It is your thoroughness, your sincerity,
your power. And this answers the other and
highly important question,-What is the use of
life? The use of life is to live; not the game
nor the game's gains externally, but the full,
free play, the honest and even intense develop-
ment of the life itself, in all its powers and all
its good.
It
The "Grammarian's Funeral" is another poem
in which we have characteristic moral ideas.
is a romance of the later Renaissance, invented
by the poet for the character and ideas of which
he has made it the picture and the symbol.
A body of scholars is carrying the grammarian
to his grave, and the leader of the band tells the
story of the dead scholar's life as they carry him.
The man whose life has just closed had devoted
himself soul and body to classical learning. He
was a man very capable of other things, both in
literature and in life. He had the face and throat
of Apollo, and for a time his days had been spent,
if not in pleasure, at least lightly. But it dawned
on him that life was going, and nothing done, so
he set himself to grapple the substance of things.
The way to that, then, was the scholar's tasks. So
he turned to " those who knew man best-the
bard and the sage," and won learning, but wore
himself out. Friends suggest that it is "time to
live." But no; he will live when he has mastered
all learning. He will then be able to live a full
and really wise life. What good living until he
can do that?
But time and health are both
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ROBERT BROWNING
}
failing fast; it will soon be too late. That can-
not be. With so much to know, and to use when
known, man must have time for it all somewhere.
So back to his books, and to harder toil. Disease
comes of the tireless toil, and friends beg him now
to rest. But he cannot. His passion is keener
than ever. He meets death at his work, the
hunger and hope of the perfect science strong
still, the fact of it far off.
That is the story. Why tell it? What do such
lives imply? What is their bearing on man's
nature and scope? In an evident sense such
lives are most incomplete. They miss "living"
in many respects, and win only a little part of
the full life of man. But these lives are noble, if
partial. Their object may be narrow, but their
spirit is great. They do not miss life as the duke
and the lady did. They throw themselves with
ardour and reality into their part of life.
But this is not enough. To narrow life to a
pursuit of "grammar," however keenly we seck it,
is to make the loss of life almost too sad, if the
scholar have only this life, is it not? We can see
gains in, and still more by means of, such lives.
Their concentration has its gains, and the scholar
has his own joy, and they help to build up
knowledge and the life of the race. But that
does not satisfy us in thinking out the problem
of such lives. And these lives themselves seem
to involve more and fuller life. They seem so
strong in their instinct, so deliberate in their
choice. Their passion and their idea of know-
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
213
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​})
ledge seem to gain scope and ardour as their
physical powers fail. Their plans ignore death
and time, and assume eternity, as if they had an
assurance of things other men cannot see. They
appear to throw themselves on God, as if in the
faith that He will not make their noblest parts a
mockery. And their idea of culture-the idea of
perfect mastery of anything, even of "grammar
-is a counsel of perfection, a master passion of
the mind; part of that sublime ideal, which, at all
points of man's labour, has made the present and
the accomplished seem so small a part of the
possible and the necessary.
The narrow tasks,
the brief years, the small results, the large
passion, all look out into the Infinite of man's
life, and so surely of man's hope.
are no caprice; they follow a law.
obligation which throws them on their tasks is
part of a rational order. It must be because the
mind of man has its issues elsewhere that it
impels men to such devotion and denial.
These lives
That inward
There are lives of another kind, sharply con-
trasted against these lives of the scholar and the
thinker-lives of limited and practical scope, or
lives set upon mere earthly ends. They reach
their ends and have their rewards, while the
other lives, just because of their larger scope,
appear to fail in reaching even that they were
set upon.
Can it be that because of their
success," because the system of things seems so
far in their favour that the lives are to be
preferred? The higher lives certainly help man
(C

214
ROBERT BROWNING
:
***
AND
Pred
more, and there seems that in the best minds
which draws them to such devotion and idealism.
And it is better to have your ideal and to follow
it with pure passion than to live a life which
reaches contentment and secures success just
because its scope is narrow and its aims poor.
The soul lives only as its tasks have that scope
and depth; and while the lives that look to the
present may end because "they have had their
reward," the higher lives are of good augury and
promise, and carry us onward in hope as generous
as the principle on which they have gone.
The "Grammarian," with its type and its ideas,
has other bearings pertinent to our life at the
present time. The specialisation of work and life.
has grown, with the growth of knowledge and of
the world, every year more narrow and intense.
After a certain point in life most men have to
throw themselves very much on one line and one
task, and they soon find how little of all that was
ideally possible to them can be actually reached
by them. It is obvious that for knowledge, and
for the arts, this is good and even necessary.
But it is surely a mistake to persuade ourselves
that it is all right, and that there is no loss
attaching to it, either as regards the work or the
worker. The work itself suffers, and grows much
more dull and mechanical, and the worker suffers
far more. What is the remedy, and where must
we look for compensation? Is it that the spirit
and thoroughness are the great thing; the mastery
of the man's powers given by duty, and even by
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
215
sacrifice? and is the sense of the ideal made
more solid for us by the difficulty of doing any-
thing really well? This at least is certain, that
intense specialisation makes it more necessary to
keep the sense of the ideal alive by thoroughness
and zeal, and that only as we put that quality
into duty can we keep hold on the powers and
hopes that make us men.
And we shall find that the whole question of
the relation of circumstances to man's life and
growth has been deeply grasped by the poet.
In the poem on a group of children by Woolner,
called "Deaf and Dumb," he has put a thought
often present to his mind in his studies of human
life. The children in the group were deaf and
dumb, and, looking at them as the artist had
made them, the poet saw finely suggested the
solution of a question life often raises. The eyes
of the children spoke, and their faces listened as
if the loss of the power of speech and the sense
of hearing had roused all the other senses to finer
life and fuller power. So it is, he thinks, with
the limitations and hindrances of life. It is the
prism reveals the hidden glory of the light by
stopping and breaking it up. So obstruction and
loss act in the life, and on the soul of man. They
bring out a quality and power that would in
other circumstances have remained unknown.
Parts of "James Lee's Wife," which we shall
refer to here simply in this connection, deal more
at large with the same things in experience, with
some things that touch all our hearts through
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ROBERT BROWNING
all our lives, though it may be never in the form
in which they arose to the wife of James Lee.
The theme of the section called "Under the
Cliff" is that "old woe of the world"—the
constancy of change, the inconstancy of all
besides. "Nothing endures"; nothing we gaze
upon in nature, and nothing we love, but is ever
being taken from us by this law. No perfect
moment, whether of dawn or of childhood, whether
of twilight or of love, but fades and gives place
to some other moment and something else. Yet
this, it may be said, is only a sentiment and an
appearance. To human nature it is, however, a
fact, and no one with much hold on life, or any
deep care for it, but has felt the pain of it,
making the past sad and strange.
But things
change only to give place to something better.
It may be, but even the something better is
another thing, and what
what our hearts crave is
something above change. What is the function
of this law, then, in our lives, and why are we
subject to it at every point, in spite of the heart?
It exhilarates the soul and keeps it alive and in
motion; it enriches experience; it enforces pro-
gress. Let us rise to it, and move with it, and
gather all the wealth of life as God fashions it.
The law of change, like all else in the order of
life, has this for its end and result-the in-
vigoration and growth of man.
((
'By the Drawing Board," section viii. of the
same poem, puts the problem of our losses and of
the defects of life in fuller outlook.
From our
"
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
217
present standpoint we may regard it as a parable
got from the relations of art and life. Which for
the artist is the more profitable field of study-
life, or the works of art in some of their most
perfect forms? Life, certainly. Life is not
abstractly perfect or beautiful. It does not answer
our wishes, or meet our æsthetic demands. It is
not, as we find it, ideal. In our hopes we plan
such a life, and then find the facts go against us.
What then? Life is best. We need its lessons
and discipline, and only so can we ever reach a
true art. The great artists have not worked in
dreamland, but in the world of life. They have
spent years in mastering that, not for its interest
only, but because they saw there the one way to
a right art. And in life it must be the same.
Experience and self-denial, mastery, not avoidance.
or dreaming, are the method of that most difficult
art, the art of living. And we cannot make life
beautiful our abstract way, because the matter
and scheme of it are so much larger than our
thought of or wishes about it.
The imperfection and disappointment, and also
the stimulus and strange satisfaction, of life are.
most forcibly expressed in "The Last Ride
Together." The speaker of this poem has loved.
wholly one who has not returned his love. He
accepts his fate, and only asks the lady for one
ride more together, in which they may still seem
lovers. She grants his wish, and as they ride for
the last time together he surveys life and the
experience of men through the mood and from
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ROBERT BROWNING
the standpoint of the situation. He gives himself
to love once more, and thinks this perfect moment
better than the risks of life. And if he has not
won, how uncertain life's gains mostly are! How
few really win, and how barren is most "success
-statesman's, warrior's, poet's! Who knows what
success" is really ?—and does not the "Infinite
beyond every partial deed and attainment make
all attainments seem poor, and all results in-
adequate to the demands of life? Perhaps it
were best, could it be, to eternise such a moment
as this; and since that cannot be, since he knows.
this must end, he concludes that the scope of life
is restricted as compared with the demands of
love, and with the possibilities of the soul under
the stimulus of any great passion.
But this is not a question only of things that
hinder and opportunities that fail. That is part
of it, certainly. But it has another side and a
better meaning; and that meaning we find in a
poem, puzzling to many readers-that named
"Two in the Campagna."
(C
در
))
This poem is in the main a love-poem, but it
deals through that with a wider theme, and with
a larger aspect of life-with an experience that
relates to life as a whole.
Its general position is this: that the satis-
factions of life are really inadequate to the heart;
that life's amplest experience leaves man still
unsatisfied. Man is mastered by a yearning after
what is perfect, and life in its finest passions and
purest unions remains partial.
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
219
Two lovers are together in the Campagna.
It is May, and the silence and the passion of
the season, the breadth and peace of the wide
spaces open everywhere to the vast sky-these,
as they touch the yearning of love itself, rouse
the still deeper desire at life's heart. It is the
man who speaks. "I touched a thought now has
tantalised me many times." In this situation, and
with his present mood, he may seize and resolve
it at last. And for a moment he fancies he has
the clue, though it be light and delicate as a
gossamer thread, and he follows it a little way,
only to find it lost again.
And so it ever is. We seem, now and again,
to find some "secret" of peace and of satisfaction.
It is in conscience and duty, in knowledge, in
love, or it is in the soul itself and some highest
truth of that; but as we close upon it and test it,
we find its sufficiency gone, and we are left again
to that experience of-
Infinite passion and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
Explain it how you will, such is the experience
of man. Change hurls him from point to point
of life, so that he has no rest in outward things.
And of the soul itself it is a law to reach always
on past its best things. It is kept from repose
by its own nature. We yearn for perfect trust
and oneness. We touch the heart, the truth, and
then stand away. How is it?
Where does the fault lie? What the core
O'the wound, since wound must be?
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ROBERT BROWNING
There is no account of the matter so good as this.
It is because we find within both the finite and
the Infinite, the human and the divine; limited
power, yet indefinite desire; a passion that clings
to the parts, and yet is haunted and held by its
sense of the whole. It is the pain and mystery
of the ideal that it impels us to realise itself, and
yet reserves us always for itself.
It is in all good
It gives those things their worth, and
yet we never find it. It is within, and yet far off,
as it seems, for ever.
things.
"Two in the Campagna" thus deals through
love with man's quest of the Infinite. And in
dealing with that quality of our nature it touches
other points-(1) that even the best and closest
affections do not fill the scope of the heart; (2)
that at the core of us all is that mystery of
personality which makes affection possible, and
yet in the last resort shuts us off from each other,
and reserves us for the Infinite,—
I would you were all to me.
But the mind, the heart, will not close and rest
thus, it seems—
I yearn upward, touch you close,
Then stand away.
And so the poem indicates how deep in the moral
structure of man, and at the core of passionate
love even, are found reserve and yearning, the
sense of an Infinite haunting and eluding us, of
a Universal claiming yet escaping us.
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
221
This is the romantic, spiritual note, felt one
way in Goethe, and in another way in Byron, and
heard so often in our century, and in this poet.
Has our poet through his intuition of feeling
read it well? or only, as it has been read in too
many cases, negatively, with stress on the limits,-
as it is in Carlyle, as it is in Goethe? The point
is in "Sordello," it is in "Fifine," it is in other
places, and at times the stress is on the limits,
but Browning's drift on the matter is positive.
Feeling, thought, spirit are Infinite.
But next, in illustration of the moral spirit and
ideal in this poetry, let us take a group of poems
that deal with the force and majesty of man's
sense of right. And first, with those that deal
with it as it bears on work and action, on the
true motive of the patriot and the artist. There
we find the moral idea affirmed as a final law—
right is right, whatever happen. "The Patriot'
puts this simply. But a year ago he was the
hero of the hour, acclaimed of all; to-day he
is brought forth to die, and the only reason is
that though he has added a year's service to
his former service, those he has served have
changed. What then? He is satisfied; for his
reward rests with God, who is not put out by
these events, and his will is kept pure by being
thrown on what is high, eternal, and made to
depend on that alone. For him it is best so.
At the same height is "Echetlos" ("Dramatic
Idyls"). It is a Greek myth. The legend was
of one who fought at Marathon and did noble
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ROBERT BROWNING
service in the great battle and then vanished, and
did not leave a name or a trace whereby to follow
him, or to commemorate him. The Greeks were
very curious to find his name, and pressed the oracle
for a name, and the answer was, Let them give
him only a name symbolical of the deed he did.
Let him be known simply as "the Wielder of the
Ploughshare," his weapon in the battle; for "the
great deed ne'er grows small. Not so, alas! the
great name as the Greeks knew only too well.
The closing lyric in "Ferishtah's Fancies "
finely, and you may think boldly, carried the
same principle to the highest level, both as a law
of work and a principle of faith. The poet is
there speaking of the motive and aim of his own
work. He has not taken his law from the world,
nor worked for its praise, and so the utmost he
looks for at its hand is justice. If the work be
good work, let it be taken for its worth. The
worker has had his reward in the power to do and
in the work done. With God, and for the soul,
the highest law is loyalty to the mind's ideal, and
the proper "reward" is fruit in the soul itself of
duty thus done.
"Instans Tyrannus" is a romance made to sug-
gest the strange authority of conscience in natures
where you would not expect it. A king had a
subject who puzzled and rebuked him by his
mere temper, and whom he therefore hated and
persecuted every way, in order to drive him to do
something that would excuse the king in destroy-
ing him. The man, in his patient, simple good-
""
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
223
ness, bore even the worst, until at length, in
embittered hatred, the king resolved to be rid of
him right or wrong-utterly wrong, he knew it.
And just as he was in the act of destroying him,
the man, meek hitherto, rose erect and threw him-
self on God. An arm seemed to shoot across
the sky, sheltering the innocent and threatening
the wrongdoer. The king stood confronted, as
from divine heavens, by his sense of guilt, and
by the majesty of retributive law. The poet held
that just such power hides among the forces of
human nature and of the world.
The story of "Halbert and Hob" ("Dramatic
Idyls," i.) puts this question of conscience in a
striking way, both as a moral and dramatic ques-
tion. A father and son were together alone one
Christmas night, and they quarrelled. The son
with brutal strength dragged his father towards
the door, with the design of throwing him violently
forth into the stormy night. They were both
strong rough men, and yet the father was like a
child in the hands of his son. The son was
struck by this, and the father told how, years
ago, he had in his passion done the same by his
father, and that he felt that punishment had come
on him now for it. The son was struck calm
before this new power, which awoke also in him-
self, and stopped; and father and son went back
to their places by the fire. The father was dead
by the morning, and the son an idiot. A similar
story is found in Aristotle, Ethics, but not as
Browning tells it, and not with his point at all.
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ROBERT BROWNING
Aristotle quotes it as the case of a man who
excused himself for beating his father, on the
ground that such outbursts of anger had run in
his family for a long time. For Browning the
law and issues of the case are deeper, and very
different. It is no case of the "naturalness of
anger." It is the case of one who, recognising
retributive law at work with him, bows before it,
with a new sense of right and wrong, and by
doing so touches the same sense powerfully in
another. The point is, that even in rude and
violent natures there is a slumbering but strong
sense of right.
"Is there a reason in nature
for these hard hearts?" Lear had asked; and
Browning replies, that whether there be or not,
a "reason out of nature" seems necessary "to
turn them soft" a power above the common,
and yet within the true nature, divine and human.
To conclude our study of the poems of this
class, I will take four that consider life as a
whole.
G
And first of these and most notable of this
whole class of poems is "Rabbi Ben Ezra.” In
it you have a large and mature expression of
the poet's thoughts about man's life. Ideas
found in other poems are here brought together
and presented in fuller and more connected state-
ment, and the thoughts are more here, and the
dramatic design less, than in other studies. The
ideas have indeed a dramatic fitness to the imag-
inary speaker; but the ideas are more to the poet
than usual, and it is, I think, right to find in the
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
225
poem, not "his philosophy of life," but certain
principles of that philosophy to which he attaches
a personal and large value.
It is a study of life from the point of view of
Hebrew thought. Aben Ezra was a Jewish
scholar and theologian of the Middle Ages. He
lived from 1092 to 1187. He was born at
Toledo, and made himself famous among the
thinkers of his people and faith.
He lived, as
the dates show, to a good old age-ninety-five
years; and, as he believed in a future life, the
dramatic meditation here assigned him may fit
very well with the thoughts of his later years.
The poem is a survey of life from a point
beyond its maturity. The rabbi is looking over
the past and into the future, and is weighing the
gains of experience and the whole meaning of
life. He looks at the facts and the changes and
the drift of the years to find what it means and
to what it tends, and he concludes that life must
be an education of the soul. It seems to him
that, whether he look back or forward, the only
real and lasting use he can see in experience is
to mature the soul. The growth and power of
the soul is the proper test of the results of life.
By that standard you must try all attainment and
success. You are on the right way, you succeed,
as you gain spiritual power. If this be so, then
the best part of life is that in which experience
and culture have given you knowledge and mastery
of your own nature. The best part, then, is not
youth nor middle life, but mellow age. When
15
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ROBERT BROWNING
this is seen, and the scope of life is ascertained
by this test, it is found that what men often
count the whole of life must be but a part of
life; that our life here is one of experiment and
development, not of accomplishment. Its higher
test is not what a man does, but the power he
unfolds, what he is on the way to be. The inward
aim, the entire thought and aspiration, of the man
-it is these that measure the man's worth and
the proper fruit of his life. The "divine judg-
ment" is an inward judgment, and looks less to
the work than to the spiritual quality and char-
acter of the man. It is this great principle that
explains the process of life-the pain, failure, and
loss that human lives so often contain. They
result from the soul's scope, are a means of keep-
ing it from resting on anything done or reached
in this life, and urge it on to its proper fulfilment
These are the general ideas; but now mark the
course of thought a little more closely-a matter
you will not find clear all at once.
The rabbi starts with the idea that the best of
life is to come. The common idea is that a
man's years up to his prime are his best; but
that is to make life dependent wholly on the body.
And yet even in youth it may be seen that man
is spiritual; for youth shows its discontent with
the actual, and overleaps all satisfactions. As the
life of the body is then at its best, that could not
happen if the sense-life were the man. If man
were animal," sensuous, then present selfish ends
and gains would satisfy, These do not prove
CC
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
227
1
enough, and the reason of this is, that man shares
the divine nature, and must give, not get only.
Now, whatever throws us on this true nature, be
it discontent, failure, pain, is good for us; and
the finest use of "the body" is to "project the
soul on its lone way."
But though this be the chief use and guiding
principle of life, man should not be ungrateful for
any good, and the proper rule of life is not ascetic.
The world is good and beautiful, and so is the
body in its due place. Do not let us put soul
and body against each other, or regard things in
that spirit. Let them rather combine in one
service, and realise the full good of the Maker's
plan. Only the end must ever be the soul's
advancement. The man must come out of it
more plainly a "god, though in the germ." The
proper gain of life is wisdom and spiritual man-
hood. And youth, with its discontent and
conflict, being past, a man must test his ex-
perience so far, and make clear to himself what
he has gained. This can only be done, in fact,
when youth is gone. Youth was uncertain-in it
was a war of minds and experiences; but in
manhood we see and know. Experience and the
soul bring matters to the test; the right and
good are discerned; and, the noise and dispute
having ceased, the meaning of the past and the
way we are on grow clear to us. And what is
the meaning and function of the past? Discip-
line, growth of faculty, inward knowledge, crafts-
manship, and a fine use of all tools given us.
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ROBERT BROWNING
The world looks to and rewards work only. And
from the world's point of view that may be right;
but it is a "crude," outside view. The true view
makes note not so much of what has been done,
but of all a man's instincts and purposes; all the
things that could not be done, that could not
even be expressed; all that went to make the
man. A man's worth to God is his true worth,
and God finds a man's worth in "the_man's
amount," as he is in himself, and not merely in
what he has been able to do.
It is thus the rabbi finds his final clue to life
and its process. The Hebrew idea of the potter
and his wheel gives him that image of life which
makes it all clear. It is just that shaping of the
pitcher on the wheel that explains it, that is what
it all comes to. Life and its changes are the wheel
on which man is being shaped to divine uses.
We think at times that all things, within us and
without, change and pass away with the flight of
It is not so. That is the illusion of the
years.
sense-life. The fact is that all that has told on
or entered into the soul, lasts and is. God and
the soul endure, and all circumstance is but
machinery shaping the soul as God wills.
The rest of the poem, in which the rabbi applies
this image to the whole scope and full interpretation
of life, belongs to the question of immortality, and
is dealt with under that section of these studies.
The next poems of this group we take are the
two called "Pisgah Sights" ("Pacchiarotto," pp.
75-82). In the first of these the speaker looks.
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
229
back on life from a point at which he can see the
whole like a globe lying beneath, and he states,
as the sum of wisdom gathered thus-a lesson of
unity and reconcilement; large acceptance, not
because all the questions raised are clear, but
because he sees how "good and evil, joy and
sorrow" work together, and need each other in
the world as we know it.
In the second of the "Pisgah Sights," the clos-
ing thought of the first is taken up. We reach
these large views only from some remote height
at life's close, and when we can make no use of
them. This is sad, thinks the speaker, and he
describes how he would have lived had he known
life as he now knows it. Cheerful acceptance, but
also indifference, would be our mood could we see
all; contentment, so far gone as to be inert sub-
mission, would be the temper of life. The man
of complete experience would regard a great part
of the things men strive for as trivial, and all
situations as equal. It is, in fact, the situation
of Lazarus. Does the poet, then, mean that a
really large and wise view of life would take all
interest and energy out of it? He does not
believe in that kind of wisdom. If life be only a
game of no great essential value, play it well for
the soul's sake. That is the end. And our best
wisdom is of the kind which gives light and power
for that. You cannot reach any absolute truth
about life; you cannot see all, nor would it be
well if you could. Use well, therefore, your best
"working view," and the rabbi's idea that spiritual
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ROBERT BROWNING
development is the proper good of life gives the
principle and even the substance of such a view.
Such are the poems dealing more or less
directly with the "criticism of life." It must
not, however, be supposed that these are the only
poems of Browning dealing with such interpreta-
tion. So far is that from being the fact, that it
may in truth be said that the whole of Browning's
work, from "Pauline" to "Asolando," is a criticism
of life and of the nature of man. And special
groups of his poems are more closely so, the love
poems, for example, and the art poems. Such
poems as "Old Pictures at Florence," and such a
poem as "Evelyn Hope" are clearly so, for the
main criticism of the former rests on a certain
view of the mind and life of man; and the love
passion of the latter, and of other love poems of
Browning, implies a profound criticism of the
meaning of man and the destiny of life. In the
view of these poems the soul is capable of an
infinite expansion, which is guaranteed and
reached through love. Our destiny is to grow
through love into the life of all things. Love is
thus the central principle of life-the power that
holds the universe together the clue to all
meanings the condition of all knowledge.
((
And this is why the clue given so simply in
the little poem called The Guardian Angel," is
the clue to so many solutions in Browning. The
point is thus put in the poem-
1
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
231
Beauty, love, duty, in life truly seen and well
understood are all one, and the core of all mean-
ings and all claims is still love for ever.
The poet goes with his wife to see Guercino's
picture of the guardian angel at Fano by the
Adriatic. He gazes on the figure of" the dear
great angel" sheltering and guarding the child,
until the idea of the picture fills his mind. It
then seems to him that the picture is an image
of life as it might be were men true, trustful,
simple. We largely make our world what it is
by our lack of truth, trustfulness, simplicity; and
duty is hard and strange for us, because we are
unloving. Let us get back to the "world as God
has made it," to a world of duties resting on
love, and we shall find it beautiful.
For as love
springs when beauty is felt, so duty is joy when
love is its ground. It is an old and a simple
philosophy. It is not, however, the temper or the
consciousness of childhood. It is rather, like all
real simplicity and right trustfulness, the ripening
fruit of just feeling and fine insight.
Our study of this group of poems has made it
clear that Browning is what is called an optimist.
He is vigorously and generously so. He believes
and looks for a "best." It is a big hope, and it
were interesting to look into its grounds in
Browning's work. But it involves larger con-
siderations than belong to ethics or the moral
interpretation of life, and must not be entered on
here. But before we close this part of our
studies, studies presenting or suggesting the
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poet's view of life, we take three poems that
involve the optimistic temper and outlook which
are so characteristic of him.
The poem called "At the Mermaid'" is in the
main a defence of poets and poetry against the
prejudices and misjudgments of common opinion.
People think that with the writings of these poets
in their hands they know all about them. Yet
they do not know the poets as they think. That
is the drift. But there is one passage of this
poem that is more general. It is that in which
Browning scornfully rejects "Byronism," as a
poetic temper and creed.
He will not carry
"the pageant of a bleeding heart" anyway, or wail
a wail of woe at all. He has found life good and
he will say so bluntly—
<
I find earth not grey but rosy,
Heaven not grim, but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
a sarcastic
"decadents."
The poem called " Apparent Failure," which
deals with a grim subject, yet gives, after the
harsh details of a visit to the Morgue, a note of
bracing cheerfulness even in face of such facts as
it is a comment on. The purpose of the Morgue
by the Seine in Paris is well known. In it they
lay out the unhappy ones who have been taken
from the river dead, the many suicides of the gay
city. The poet goes there one day and finds
three bodies laid out for recognition.
retort
retort on Byronism, and on the
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
233
He
"Poor men God made, and all for that."
cannot think so. He glances at them as they lie,
in tragic stillness. He finds one a mere youth,
and one an old man, the other in lusty manhood,
-all of them gone this quick way to death.
Does he see there the tale of those lives ended?
Were they given manhood and a "life-rent of
God's world" only for that? He cannot believe
it; and in face of such fates he declares his hope
that no lives will be thus cast away, but that a
sun will one day "pierce the thickest cloud" this
"earth has ever stretched" over human disaster
and despair. Sentimental, some will say.
But
that is never his quality, and the hopefulness of
such a passage, facing the worst and blackest facts
of life, rests squarely on his whole view of things.
He would have rejected an optimism "resting on
mere feeling." Unless hope rest on fundamental
intuitions, on great principles and the law of
things, "on the nature and on the unity of God
and man," it is of little power and less value.
Browning had no sort of respect for "lies," how-
ever pleasant. His dramatic quality in the appre-
hension and presentment of life, and his build of
mind, secure a close care for fact. In his own
way as poet he grapples the question of the vital
grounds of such a creed, again and again, at a
score of points. We find him at it in "The Ring
and the Book," in "Ferishtah's Fancies," in the
"Parleyings," in certain poems of "Asolando."
Only here, and as a capital test of the robust
quality and broad grounds of our poet's optimistic
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ROBERT BROWNING
faith, let us dwell for a little on a quaint and
difficult poem, with one of those grotesque names
he liked so well and used so often-the poem
called "Jochanan Hakkadosh," with a legend as
queer as the title, and drawn from one of the
poet's favourite sources of "fact and fancy," the
"Talmud." The legend of the old rabbi repeats
in another way, and with fuller scope, the parable
of "Pisgah Sights." The rabbi is dying in his
eightieth year, with mind sound and clear. His
disciples come to hear the sum of all his wisdom,
and he gives them his last message in words of
discouragement. We have power when without
wisdom, and wisdom when the power is gone, and
so a great part of life is wasted. But they refuse
to take that as the old rabbi's last oracle. They
must gather riper wisdom than that from him.
A way to do so is found, for they contrive to
keep him a year longer by getting him one
quarter of a year out of each of four typical lives
-lover, warrior, poet, statesman-that he may
distil wisdom's soul out of all experience. The
rabbi takes up the lives offered him, and from
his point of view, and with his consciousness, lives
through them. But it is vain, this game of a
double self, and a life seen through ere it is lived.
It is a natural fancy that, if we could only start
wise, we should then make the best of life and
be happy. How is it with the rabbi ? The
experiment ends in disappointment. Why?
Because ignorance and illusion are necessary to
life, and to forestall experience is to prevent, not
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
235
(C
enjoyment only, but wisdom too.
Life is a pro-
cess whose results can only be reached on the
lines of natural growth, and to force results is to
arrest and destroy, not to help experience. And
so his disciples, who had looked for a science of
man's life, are sad. But this is not the end.
Fear of persecution scatters his scholars, and
when they return three months later, they find
the rabbi still alive. And when, becoming aware
of their presence, he opens his eyes on them once
more, that which no lengthening of the earthly
life could accomplish has been, it seems, accom-
plished-light and joy look out from the old
master's soul. He had got the child-heart, and
won the seer's vision. He has somehow reached
a standpoint from which life is so seen that
cordial acceptance and profound reconciliation
are possible. He has, in fact, been kept on
earth three days after the spirit has reached the
"other life," and so he sees life from a point out-
side and above the earthly experience. He thus
sees the law and the results of all, and is
absurdly happy." But what is it he sees from
this strange new standpoint? What is the know-
ledge that explains and harmonises all? That
life's method of "encountering opposites" works
out a divine good, in which "every dream's
assured of soberest fulfilment." It is, in the
nature of the case, impossible to do more than
hint what might be seen from such a standpoint;
but the main matter is in the suggestion thus
made, that for the higher criticism of life such a
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ROBERT BROWNING
!
point of sight is necessary, and that the principle
is clear, though the process is perplexing. Every
view we can frame is but a relative truth, and our
largest view of life must be partial until from
some point above life we grasp the principle and
see the drift of the whole. Only as we plant our-
selves on the high ideals of the Spirit and trust
them can we get the "vision" that will inspire
and steady us. And to this in degree the poet
as seer helps us. From the high point he can
reach he assures us of the best. The issue will
justify the cost. All we do not and cannot know
confirms and surpasses the best of all we know.
And if the stress appear to be on ignorance, it is
not really so, for such confidence as this rests at
length, not only on the higher and purer trust, but
on the larger vision.
Life is thus, in our poet's view, a winepress,
from which, by the free mingling of all its ele-
ments, there comes in the end so strong a wine
that it may be drunk by those only whose brains
can bear ecstasies. And this is the poet's optimism,
not one of evasion, or illusion, nor any "dream
of good" to be won by impossible changes, but a
robust and free acceptance of the order of the
world and the condition of life as a divine way
to the soul's ideal. Things work for "good,"
but we must abide the full process, and await
the true issue We are on the way to that good,
as we live with energy and purpose; with hearty
care for life and the soul, for a full experience,
and a free development. We must not fear.
POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY
237
All good comes to those who persist and believe;
comes not in spite of but through experience,
and what are called the limits of life; and is the
“slow fruit of an enhancing toil," strengthened by
love a love which endures and trusts and doubts
-a trust that falters, but holds on and does not
fail.
That life is then a somewhat austere discipline
Browning sees, and he accepts the situation
heartily, though not ascetically. He accepts the
situation not as punishment, nor as destiny, and
not to repress nature, but for its results.
He sees
that will and heart and character in men are
braced and ripened, and that strenuous joys of life
and duty come out of it for those who live and
keep on living. We are, it may be, "hurled
from change to change," and never allowed to
rest long anywhere, but the régime is good for
those who accept the law and catch the drift of
it, and he held its promise infinite for the true
and the brave.]
CHAPTER X
RELIGIOUS POEMS: SAUL, CHRISTMAS EVE,
THE SUN
PASSING from poems that interpret life, I turn to
a group that may be called religious, not that they
are the poet's only or chief religious poems in the
larger sense, but that they deal more explicitly
with religious ideas than is usual even in Brown-
ing. The poems differ much from each other in
certain respects. The emotional key and musical
quality of "Saul" is very distinct from the argu-
mentative spirit and style of "Christmas Eve," or
the didactic aim of "The Sun." But in all of
them the ideas as such stand out, and they
compliment each other the better for their differ-
ences.
Their dates are widely apart: "Saul," 1845;
"Christmas Eve," 1850; and "The Sun
("Ferishtah's Fancies"), 1885. Standing thus
forty years apart, they show well the depth and
stability of the poet's interest in their themes.
He has always been and he remains deeply inter-
ested in these matters. Through his career as a
poet, the greater facts and ideas of religion have
found in him a student. Other poets besides in
})
238
RELIGIOUS POEMS
239
our age have been drawn to these questions, but
no one has so well expressed the inner spirit and
worth of religion or the essential greatness of its
ideas.
The mere mention of religious poetry is apt, we
are aware, to prove an offence to lovers of art; it
has so often, in all but its highest examples, been
a poetry of special emotions and narrow ideas; it
has so rarely had value as literature. Yet only in
so far as these and similar poems in Browning
have the general truth and broad interest of
literature do I present them for study. And it
seems to me that these poems, in their method as
in their matter, have that quality. I judge them
to be a proof of the depth of modern poetry, and
an instance of the modern spirit as regards the
whole subject of religion.
Religion in history is a great body of facts,
throwing light not merely on the institutions, but
on the very life of man. And religion in the
present is not merely a tradition from the past,
but a part of living experience. It has sprung, it
springs out of the nature and relations of man as
something strictly natural. In that sense these
facts of religion belong to and bear upon all who
have to do with man or human life.
And Browning has explored the facts in that
sense and with that aim. He is in deep agree-
ment with the great modern view of religion-of
religion as part of the vital study of man. He
has sought out these facts in his own mind, and
the facts of other minds and lives, for their proper
T
240
ROBERT BROWNING
interest and large significance as regards the nature
of man. Religion interests him little as a body
of opinion; more as a faith, though rather in a
way of suggestion than of definition; but most of
all as a revelation of man, and as a clue to man's
thought and passion, and only through these to
what may be known or guessed of the cosmic
order. With a wide, if not impartial and really
comprehensive interest in the facts of man's nature,
he has shown a special interest in the bearing and
import of the emotions and beliefs we call religious.
He has appreciated and shown the unique place
and power of religion among the facts of the
mind, among the factors of life. He has, as a
poet freely interested in man, exhibited the natural
energy, the inner power and reality of religion.
But it is as a dramatic poet. Let this be dis-
tinctly said and clearly seen, for two reasons.
However true theology may be, and however
valuable "edification" from their own stand-
points and within their own spheres, these are
not the poets, and with these the poet meddles
only to muddle, to lose his way and his value.
Looking at facts and ideas within the province of
religion, his part is to see them in their place, to
catch them in their action, to interpret and render
their living value. If the modern mind, looking
at the facts of religious history, regards them as it
regards other facts in their order, and seeks to
explain them in relation to man and experience,
and man with due regard to them, the poet must.
carry the process and principle to a further stage
RELIGIOUS POEMS
241
and a higher power. He must present them "alive
and at work" if we may say so--present them as
they play their parts in the souls of men, or as
they reveal the passion and play of the natures of
men at high points and in great moments.
We have said that Browning approaches these
matters as a dramatic poet, but many think that
he does not handle them as a poet, with lucidity
and beauty. This class of his works has certainly
given more trouble than pleasure to some of his
readers. Poems like
like "Christmas Eve" and
"Easter Day," "A Death in the Desert," and
others, seem to them more of the nature of reli-
gious discussions than of poetry. They are, they
think, too subtle, and carry too much thought.
They deal with philosophic, not poetic aspects of
their themes, and illustrate the bent of the author
rather than those parts of his themes that are of
best interest, while some of the themes seem
unsuitable. Fair objections lie against some of
them, let us admit, and some of us will not care
for this kind of verse whether Dryden or Pope,
whether Tennyson or Browning write it; and
Browning is certainly the "greatest sinner" in
the matter of intellectual elaboration. But it is
not true to say that in these poems, or anywhere,
he stimulates and engages the brain while he
leaves the heart untouched. And it may fairly
be said that poems that on sufficient acquaintance.
deeply interest many minds, not only for their
matter, and not only for their dramatic energy,
but for a quality of poetic conception and expres-
16
242
ROBERT BROWNING
sion in them, have "justified" an honourable, and in
certain cases a high place in their class; the inability
of many readers to grapple them, and the distaste
of others, being accepted as in part resulting from
faults of excess and defect that characterise some
of these poems.
The further questions raised by some of the
poems of this group, whether a poet does well for his
art and wisely for himself in treating such matters
as those taken in "Christmas Eve" and "A Death
in the Desert," must turn on the vital interest of
their themes, and on the quality of the treatment.
Drawn by his own interest, and that of his time,
the poet chooses them. If they have the interest
he assigns them, and he is able to grasp and
present the human truth of the themes thus
chosen, then he has made good his choice. So
far as he leaves them in any sphere of partial
interests he fails, as he does if he chooses themes
that have only such interest. How far this is the
case with certain of the poems at present before
us, and with certain parts of them, may remain a
matter of difference as between different readers.
But broadly we repeat, with regard to these poems,
that the poet's ground is human nature, and his
scope the cordial exposition of that. It is in this
way, as a dramatist of spiritual passion and faith
in man, that Browning has sought to present the
facts and ideas found in these poems. And the
interest and power of some of his studies of this
kind are so great, his statement of certain religious
ideas in their relation to the soul and to life is so
SAUL
243
forcible, that he may be counted in the class of
those who, by sheer vigour and vitality of concep-
tion, have given independent and original witness.
to the human truth of religion.
The larger relations of this poetry to spiritual
religion will be considered under another group of
the poems.
For the present we take only the
ideas presented in the poems now chosen. And
first let us take "Saul." This poem is one of the
early dramatic lyrics. It belongs to the "Bells
and Pomegranates" series in its first form. Its
date is 1845. In that form it only went as far
as section ix. When reissued in " "Men and
Women," in 1855, it was much enlarged, and,
from our present standpoint, had got a new pur-
pose. The poet had in the interval added its
great sections (x.-xix.). The subject had clearly
attracted him, and he threw all his power of certain
kinds into its development—his power of passion,
of music, of mystical thought and hope. In its
kind it is one of his finest poems-one of the
finest proofs of his poetic power, of his swiftness
and sustained energy of feeling and of verse;
while, in the matter of it, it has several aspects.
of deep and permanent human interest.
Let us follow the development of the poem, and
make clear as to its scheme. Saul, Israel's chosen
king and special hope, is mad, driven so by his
own wild and wilful passions. Those about him
are impotent to control or help him. David is
sent for as one likely to bring help. He comes
with music and song, and even more, with his
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ROBERT BROWNING
humanity and faith, to try what may be done for
the mad king. He tries all kinds of song and all
earthly appeals, and is only very partially success-
↑ ful. When impelled to save, he is driven by his
org
C
very helplessness and yearning out upon God-
on the Christ in God" and finds at length in
that (when the whole feeling and resource of his
nature has been roused) the saving help and vital
power he was seeking. The divine love and pity,
the essential humanity of Deity, are our last ground
of hope for such cases, and if, in a life such as ours
and with men as they are, that be not a necessary
truth, it is surely a beneficent and reasonable faith.
17-
The poem is a dramatic lyric. It gives an
account of the whole situation from a single point
of view. David is the speaker, and tells all that
happened as he saw and felt it. And, most fitly,
the whole is high-strung. It was a task to put
his whole nature to the test and bring out all his
passion, and Browning makes you feel it so, not
only in the resource of the poet, but in the strain
of the man. So it is highly lyrical. In other
words, Browning seeks the heart of the situation,
by taking his place within its chief actor, and
relating all thence. The poem is spoken by David
after the events are past, but only just past, when
the whole effort and experience are still fresh,
vivid, and strange. He has left Saul, and returned
to the pastures and the flocks; and the day follow-
ing he shapes the whole thing into song, seeing it
now in its course and from his higher standpoint,
And, as he gathers the story into song, alone, with
ODEX
t
S
SAUL
245
his sheep only round him, it seems to him dream-
like and yet most real, because most deeply
impressed on his soul.
The dramatic circumstances are simple, yet need
to be clearly grasped. (Having gone from bad to
worse, Saul now seems a ruin, melancholy mad……….
In his high place, and with his special responsi-
bility as divine minister, he has taken his own
way, not God's, and the wrong has eaten into his
soul-banished him, with his risks and his burdens,
from God. His nature has become morose, has
lost its balance. In the language of the old time,
he is "troubled by an evil spirit sent from God."
For three long days in the mid-tent's deep silence
he has been alone, nor given sign to tell whether
he be still alive, or how the dark strife goes. But
David has come, and Abner greets him out of his
deep anxiety with hope. David, with his gifts,
may help or even heal the king, and bring the
long sad strife to a close. His very coming seems
to bring freshness and health with it. The
radiant youth, "God's dew on his gracious gold
hair," and the lilies from the pastures tied about
his harp, both speak of a region quite different i
from this region of arid desert and anxious minds.
By such sweetness even the scorched soul of the
king may be refreshed. David kneels to God,
and then makes his way into the tent. Having
come to the inner tent, and seeing only its dark-
ness, he speaks to the king, who had sent for him;
but the king is lost to speech. But in the black-
ness of the tent he sees at length the giant shadow

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ROBERT BROWNING
of the king, then a single sunbeam falling on it
through the tent-roof; sees the king, drear, stark,
speechless, blind. He takes his harp, and, strip-
ping it of its lilies, he plays the tune used at the
sheep-folding, and then other tunes such as touch
and please the creatures of the pasture lands—the
simple songs that win all living creatures with the
mere sense of the good of life in its simplest
states. Then the glad song of the reapers, their
wine song, with its joy of men and their fellowship
in labour and the good of life, he struck from his
harp. And again other music, mournful or glad
-the gentle lament for the dead, and the happy
song of love and marriage; then the great march
of the union of men for help and defence.
But none of these touched the king; neither the
elemental pleasures nor the general emotions of
man's common life have any response in his nature,
or any power to recall him from his gloom and
isolation. He remains still far apart. So David
tries the deeper strain of worship, the sacred chant
of the Levites as they go to the altar of God.
And this does reach him. It goes to the root of
his woe and his loss-not with healing yet, but
only with pain. It recalls him to the reason of
his lonely sorrow, his shadowed faith, his lost
fellowship. It brings his misery to life. He
shudders so that the tent shakes under the pain
of the strong man. But that was all. The body
hung erect in its pain. He had been reached, but
remained far off still.
So the singer tries again, and he sings this time

SAUL
247

the jubilant song of man's life, in its pleasures, in
its tasks, in its ties and affections and memories—
all that makes life good, whether to the senses or
to the heart; the song of all this man's life had
brought him, and had once been to him, It was a
song meant to set his life in its true light, and to
carry the wholesome sense of it far into the king's
heart—into the very midst of his oblivion and
gloom. Full of sadness and remorse as he is,
how much life has given in the past! what uses
it has had, and good and honour too, lifting Saul's
name out of sorrow and above shame! Let him
now recall these things. Even his wrongs cannot
obliterate them, and his remorse ought not to keep
them out of his view. What gifts had been given
him! All gifts, given singly to most, combined
on his head, and high deeds and fame of heroes.
And here, in the first instance, the poet stopped,
either unable then to carry it farther, or not feeling
the need to do so. It has been said that he then
meant us to suppose that Saul was freed-that
that song of the good and kindness of the earthly
life was enough to restore him. It does not so
appear in the light of the fuller song. He had
been touched, roused out of torpor and death-
that was all. Death was past. Life had not
come aware of life, he had yet no care for it, no
real concern in its affairs. He was released and
stood now on its brink. His eyes and face wore
the look of pallid autumn sunsets, out of which the
life of the year seems gone, and all the glow and
activity only a memory.
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ROBERT BROWNING
What more can be done to give life? What
appeal can enliven and sustain? The whole good
of life poured into song had only awoke him from
death. He let the singer praise it, and he heard;
but for his part life was gone, and he would die.
So the mind of the poet seeks intensely for further,
greater truth; for higher, fuller stimulus. And
from the sense-life, with its good, he rises to the
life and good that are moral. He sings of man's
higher work and influence, the long fame of those
who have done great things. He sings the dignity
and honour of man, and all the fruits of kingly
will and works as they live on through genera-
tions.
At this the king was more deeply touched, more
fully roused. He had stood lifeless before; he now
sank and sat, and the singer by his vast knees.
Resuming the kingly motions, he lifted his hand
and placed it softly and gravely, but not listlessly
-rather now in " mild, settled will" -on the
singer's brow, bending back his head "in kind
power" and looking into his face "intent to
peruse it."
As the great eyes of the king looked at him,
the heart of the singer was filled with even fuller
love and fuller desire to bless, and there was much
still to do, to give. So the passion of help sprang
higher as he looked into the sad face, and knew it
Saul.
But how help? What is there beyond what has
been sung-the good of life, and noble memory
and long influence after death? Can there be
SAUL
249
more?
He feels that that does not restore and
fill the broken heart, and he would do all, give all,
that would heal and restore.
-
"}
And so in this mood, with this "divine desire,'
he is carried beyond harp and song, into the vision
and message of the prophet.] This vision and
message fill sections xvii. and xviii. (How is this
reached? He has put all that this life can yield
of good and power even to the great ones, and it
falls short. It leaves the heart still yearning amid
the misery of such lives as this of Saul for a fuller
hope, and therefore an ampler power. Can it be?
He looks at the world, and he sees evidence of
vast, possibly infinite, power. 'God is seen God"
at every point, and all is goodness and perfection;
but all is law. And yet love rises above the whole
order, and would give and bless and heal for ever
and infinitely. And this longing of endless pity
and help is surely the best thing, the most god-
like in man. If God be God, then it must be in
God, this great pity and love-and highest in
Him. The very greatness of God's gifts, the very
build of man's heart, seem to require this-the
(C
paz de alene, da te
(C
very ideal of the good God." Surpassing at


D
every point, in every power, the Creator must
surpass in this too. He must will to save, and,
willing, He must have power to do what is highest.
There is, therefore, a Life to repair and complete
these broken lives, and a God who is Power and
Law, but also Love for ever helpful. Surely
it must be so. Man is indeed of little power,
soon spent; and yet it is not what a man does
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ROBERT BROWNING
or can that tests him, but what he "would do."
And greatest of all he would do is the act of saving
another, even though sacrifice and suffering. So
lit must be with God.
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou-so
wilt Thou!
So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost
crown-
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in!
As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand
the most weak.
'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that
I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Iland like this
hand
Shalt throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the
Christ stand!
As the poet-prophet made his way home in the
night, his soul full of this highest truth, whereby
as it seemed to him all the pain and sin of human
life might be healed, the intensity of his motion,
his ecstasy of hope, gave all nature and the whole
of life a new meaning. The universe seemed
aware, seemed in sympathy. His hope had
become an "open secret." All the hosts of life
seemed to press about him, and the stars beat
with emotion, until the tumult and the rapture
were quenched in quiet and rest.
With the dawn, the trouble and sorrow and
SAUL
251
wrong seemed to have withered from the earth,
in the opening light of a final era of hope. The
birth of day and the grey of the hills had a new
tenderness, a new promise. The breath of the
morning air seemed a thrill of fresh joy, and all
the creatures knew the truth.
And what, you ask, is the general value of such
a poem ?—(1) It is a study of "a mind diseased,"
and the means by which it may be restored-by
music and song and human sympathy, and by
the influence of a generous and healthy nature.
(2) It is a study of character in one of those crises
that call forth all its resources. David, face to face
with the mad king, gloomy as the blackness of the
mid-tent itself, is a striking picture of courage and
tenderness. He tries one means, and then another,
and, unsatisfied with partial success; he rises by
sheer magnanimity of nature to that hope and faith
in which a full success is assured. Two kingly
natures, Saul and David; but David the greater,
the richer, more spiritual. (3) It is, too, a study
of the inmost spirit of the Psalms-of the relation
of the faith of these to the story of the passionate
and heroic king to whom so many of them were
ascribed:" Like as a father pitieth his child, e
so the Eternal pitieth";
"The mercy
Eternal is from everlasting to everlasting."
is a subtle and powerful exposition of t
problem of Christianity, and the gr
which that problem is solved. The
faith to the moral necessities of li
is best and deepest in the heart

252
ROBERT BROWNING
greatly shown. It is the sorrow and sin of the
'world that raise its deepest problem, and force us
on to the highest question; and whenever a strong
nature is face to face with such facts as this of
Saul's deterioration and madness, these questions
are raised. The question is raised by love and
care for the individual soul even more than by
thought. The idea of self-sacrificing love as the
only one adequate to the facts of life, and as
essential to the ideal of divine excellence, was
never so finely expressed or so vitally" argued."
The revelation of the Supreme Humanity of Deity,
and the commanding power and grace of this con-
ception of God, are most forcibly presented. The
splendour and tenderness of the Christian faith,
and what may be called the moral argument for it,
are here at their best. (5) And this new and
fuller thought of God seems to shed light, not only
on human life, but on the whole life of the world.
All things have part in it. It gives the secret of
the life of all; it is the mystery of that "pent
knowledge" and hidden law which waited to be
"revealed" in the upward strife of Nature.
Pant
But obviously there are two objections to such a
em. It is not historic. David could not have
hed these ideas, and certainly not in the form
ave here. This train of thought is modern
tian. That is true. The dramatic lyric,
g used it, allows, or at least uses, that
the reader gains by it, since the ideas.
by the imagination and passion of
they keep a real fitness in regard

CHRISTMAS EVE
¿
253
The large
to the speaker and his circumstances.
and tender heart of the royal psalmist, as imagined
in Hebrew history and poetry, would have re-
sponded to such sentiments, though there is no
reason to ascribe them to him, except in so far as
the Messianic strain in certain psalms gives a
basis for it.
M
And in the judgment of some the matter is
not poetic it is theological in these closing
sections, and they would have liked "Saul "
better without them. The poem, in point of
form and passion, in flow and charm of verse, is
one of the poet's best, and that seems to argue
that the matter has been transmuted. And so
it has been. The ideas are presented as part of
the passion and insight of the singer. It is the
very soul of the singer become faith and song.
Nor is the tone of the poem didactic—it is
dramatic narrative. The ideas are given as they
grow out of the circumstances and spirit of the
speaker.
"Christmas Eve" belongs to the early years
of Browning's married life and to the discussion
that had then begun to occupy the serious mind
of Europe. Historical and other criticism, par-
ticularly in Germany, had raised the question of
the trustworthiness of the early records of Chris-
tianity, and the still deeper question of their true
meaning, and the historic relations of the Founder
of the Christian Church and faith to that faith
and Church. The sensitive interest of his wife
in the questions thus opened, and in the deeper
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ROBERT BROWNING
question of the essential grounds of Christian belief,
told on the poet's own interest in the matter, and
led him thus early, 1849-50, to take the theme.
The poem may indeed be described as a study
of the central theme of "Saul" from a different
standpoint, through a different persona, and in a
very different atmosphere. That is a moral pre-
sentment of its theme set in circumstances of life
this is largely intellectual. That was concerned
with "the Christian Idea" in relation to the needs
of human life—this with the story and personality
in which the divine Idea has been centralised.
The one is a sort of prophecy and intuition of the
truth, and so of the fact; the other a criticism of
the Christian statement of the truth, of the historic
"evidences" for the faith of Christian men-that
the great truth became fact in the life, spirit,
and teaching of Jesus. The one is a lyric, the
other largely an argument in visionary dramatic
form. It is, we may say, a vision of Christ; of
the great figure and idea of Christianity, as seen
by a modern mind amid the division, debate, and
the doubt of the present century. And the
question has become, on the eve of the day
consecrated to the memory of the Christ, what
is to be thought of and believed about Him and
His religion. The Christian religion has become
so various and contradictory in its sects, and the
history of Christ has become so uncertain, that
the question now is, whether any of these sects
express the true idea-whether the divine idea
found historic expression in Christ, or whether the
{
CHRISTMAS EVE
255
idea has fashioned the character and the legend.
To the speaker's inner thought the great faith
clearly remains the figure and spirit of Christ
remain the highest authority and law; but that
inner faith has much difficulty to keep any relation
to "the Churches of Christ," and even to hold its
own clearly against modern criticism.
an
The poem is a kind of dramatic romance-
imaginary narrative, presenting the sections of the
debate in scenes of a kind of dream. The speaker,
who is clearly not the poet, relates what passed
through his mind one Christmas Eve as if it had
happened externally. He is in a chapel on the
edge of a common--a poor place, with wretched
service and vulgar worshippers. Driven in by the
night's storm, he would worship and listen for an
hour with the others to that gospel of the Christ
who came as Saviour centuries ago. But what
he sees and hears is very trying, and soon drives
him well within his own thoughts and fancies,
raising within his mind, by the quaint worship and
gospel of these people, the question whether
indeed any form of Christianity be pertinent or
credible any more. He fancies himself, in disgust
of this particular form, quickly out of the little
chapel again into the stormy night, with nature
alone for temple and teacher; and the contrast
between the narrow chapel and the spacious night
seems a fit symbol of the difference between their
creeds. Here at least God seems real, near, and
great. And as his heart is expanded with the
sense of that, a great and rare thing happens.
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ROBERT BROWNING
He sees a double lunar rainbow in mystic splen-
dour arch the heavens, and on its summit a figure.
which seemed the Spirit of the glory. It took its
place beside him, and he knew the divine Master
"with His human air." But he saw only the
back and the vesture of the Master, and the
Master seemed to be leaving him. Was this,
then, because he had left the poor chapel with
proud thoughts? He clings to the garment's
hem, and explains that he only left in the search
for a purer and truer worship, and for a truth
that should more fitly express the divine Spirit.
The Face then turned upon him fully, and he
was lifted in the folds of the vast vesture and
carried to St. Peter's at Rome, that he might see
another manner of worship and another form of
Christian belief. He sees the great church and
its crowds of worshippers waiting with rapture
the change of "the elements" into the flesh and
blood of the Lord-one form of that mystery by
which religion has seemed to break up earth and
time, and let in on man the new day of a divine
and endless life. He did not enter the church,
but the Master did. And why? Some part,
then, of His truth and life were here, in spite of
all the error and superstition. So said reason,
and remained still outside, afraid to risk a nearer
approach. But the heart spoke. Above all the
error there was and is love--the greatest thing;
the love that gave Christianity its first power, in
the might of which it conquered "the antique
sovereign intellect," and made a new world, and
CHRISTMAS EVE
257
in time a new art though always more or
less "blind." Feeling that, he went into the
church.
And that is well so far, but he would seek the
whole; not faith and love only, but intellect and
knowledge too. So they leave St. Peter's; and
he is carried again in the folds of the Master's
garment to the hall of a German professor, who is
lecturing on the origin of Christianity, on what he
calls the Christ-myth-trying to show how much
fact there really is for it to rest upon—that is, how
little. He is left outside with the hem of Christ's
garment, but Christ enters; only he sees the pro-
fessor and his audience, so different from St. Peter's,
and he hears the Christmas Eve discourse-hears
the professor argue that Christ was a "right true
Man," who taught much wisdom and retains high
value, though little understood by any who have
been His followers. He did not enter the lecture-
hall, "the exhausted air-bell of the critic," -nor
did the Master ask him. He bade adieu to the
professor, having had enough, and began thinking
this theory over. Stripped of all superstitions, and
all accretions, is this what it really comes to? But,
he then reflects, if Christ be only a man, able,
wise, and good, and there be no more "God in
Christ," does not the whole of Christian faith and
worship fall to the ground? Neither intellect nor
goodness can give a man any supreme right over
men, and the highest powers of these leave him
only a man.
The teacher who should master the
entire system of nature, and make known all its
17
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ROBERT BROWNING
C
secrets, would still be a teacher, not a creator.
The creator's part is far other and higher than
this to impress the truth of his own will and
nature upon mind and heart, and to furnish motive
and power to obey that truth, not to observe and
teach only. Now, the "God in Christ" does this
-gives power and motive to men by His life and
death; and His own claim is to do this-not by
belief of men in His wisdom, but by faith of men
in Himself as the Lord of life. If you believe
this, and feel the divine love to be so shown, you
gain a new and tremendous truth.
So he argues against the professor. Yet Christ
is Himself inside the lecture-room. There must,
then, be truth inside, since He stays there. What
is it? He puts it thus. The proper conclusion
of the argument was surely, "Throw away your
faith, now proved mistaken." But our professor
does not so; he says, "Keep your faith, venerate
the myth, adore the Man." There must, then, be
love even here, and a sense of the divinity. Nor
is this all. There is intellect and learning, and
much regard for that kind of truth. Such doctrine
as this can never be enough for life, it is true; but
there is power beyond the reasonings and theories
of men in their hearts and aims, if honestly set.
and in the order of life.
In this way he draws a lesson of genial toler-
ance-really of indifference to every form of belief,
a mood that gives up search and care for truth,
and, seeing that no belief can be perfect, regards
them all as very much alike-a lazy benevolence
CHRISTMAS EVE
259
without real conviction, and so without the powers.
of life. On this the storm broke out afresh, and
the divine figure and vesture seemed to leave him
alone again. Something must be wrong. He sees
how it is in the flash of the fear that fell on him
as he saw the garment receding. This mild in-
differentism is worse than the poorest belief. The
great matter is not to see the defect of this and
the other belief, but to find what is true and good.
for one's self--not by any means the whole truth,
but as much certainly as we can honestly come
by, and heartily live in. Belief and life are
individual, of the soul. Take sincerely your own
way of life; you cannot know more really, except
by putting things to that test.
With this he was safe again in the garment's
folds, and aware again of the little chapel and its
service, not of the wandering world of rain. Had
he been out of it? Had he been asleep and
dreaming, or only day-dreaming? He hardly
knew. Only this had passed vividly through his
mind, and had been real to him. And what has
he learned with reference to present circumstances?
Not to despise the bald service and the poor talk,
but to see in the one a helpful worship, and in
the other a divine message-living water, though
with a strong taste of earthy matter. The very sim-
plicity seems best as casting sensuous and worldly
aids behind, and letting "God's all in all Serene.
show with the thinnest human veil between."
And the poor congregation, offensive before, now
seem to witness to the justice of his conclusion by
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ROBERT BROWNING
the fact that, being as they are, they are helped
and bettered by their faith.
But what is the speaker's conclusion? the in-
tuition in which he rests after his quest? There
seems to be a difficulty here, judging by differ-
ences among readers of the poem. It has been
said that the point of "Christmas Eve" is to
affirm the utility, and even the necessity, for
undeveloped minds, of definite and historic forms,
of what offers itself as tangible and certain. It
has been so certainly, and it seems likely to re-
main so, nor are the minds for whom it is so
undeveloped." But is not the thought of “Christ-
mas Eve" rather this, that any sincere form of
Christianity, morally used, is a way of life, and far
better than the finest form of intellectual superi-
ority or indifference; and that, therefore, all sincere
forms of Christianity are Christian, and have vital
relations to the truth and spirit of its Founder:
a conclusion that settles nothing as between St.
Peter's and the little dingy chapel, and not much
as between the German professor and the common
belief. That is so. It does not decide between
them. Only it gives these principles of wider
use that some great faith as to God and man
seems necessary, and that not only must such
"faith
be brought to the test of life, but that the
root of every real faith is vital. It is a matter of
life, and all of it that has sound meaning springs
from divine dealings with each, and from the daily
experience wisely read, and by no means from
historical or other criticism, or so-called "evidences."
((
}}
CHRISTMAS EVE
261
If it be said that the poet need scarcely have
written so many verses to set this forth, since it is
by no means new, however true, the answer must
be, that under stress of the new criticism, and also
from the quality of the old belief, this truth was
being forgotten. Many were disturbed because
they feared, and some because they thought, to see
the fate of a great religion settled by a narrow
criticism. Browning recalled them to the truth and
ground of religion, so far forth.
That the "argument" is developed from a
point of view, and through a type with which the
poet has only a partial sympathy comes, we think,
from the circumstances and mood to which it
addressed itself. We shall find the fuller mind
of the poet in poems such as "A Death in the
Desert," and "Epilogue."
But why the style, some ask, the tone of
banter, the grotesque rhymes? Is the speaker
half in earnest ? Or is it the mood he is thrown
into by the chapel and service-all the quaint-
ness, etc., of it; and, as he never really leaves it,
does he keep this pitch as in tune with it? The
style is dramatic, and fits the mood of the speaker,
and it varies finely, as in the description of the
rainbows and St. Peter's. At bottom the speaker
is earnest, as he implies in his appeal to Christ.
at the close, though his earnestness is mainly
practical; not the search for truth in its highest
sense, so much as the care for what is sincere and
real in the higher life of men, and a desire to
follow experience as indeed divine guidance.
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ROBERT BROWNING
The sections of "Christmas Eve" that criticise
the Gottingen professor set aside his "doctrine of
Christ," and return to the doctrine of His divinity.
These sections are valid against the professor, but
also touch the deeper question raised by "Saul,"
the need to conceive the Deity as revealed in
terms of human life and love. In "The Sun"
("Ferishtah's Fancies," p. 33) this question is
considered in its more general form as the ques-
tion how, for all moral and religious purposes, we
are to think of the Ultimate Power, whether in
terms of nature or of human nature; and its con-
clusion is that, though we never can reach the
"nature of Deity," which is by us "inconceivable,'
our idea must contain "man's everyday concep-
tion of himself," since our instinct of worship,
our gratitude, for us both natural and good, are
meaningless if we may not do so, and there would
be moral loss both ways. And the mystery of man's
own nature is witness in its degree to the credibility
of the divine mystery. Man's "dust, instinct with
fire unknowable" makes the higher mystery con-
ceivable. What we reach on such a matter is a
moral conception, not an exact truth; and, though
we are certainly unable to "make square to a
finite eye the circle of infinity"-though we can-
not adjust our knowledge of the scheme of nature,
or our abstract idea of divine glory and perfection,
with such a doctrine, we must hold modestly by
this way of thinking, and firmly by this truth.
رر
Browning has come many times, in the course
of his work, full upon this question of the validity
THE SUN
263
It is a
and character of man's thought of God.
question that has been more openly and com-
pletely raised by the thought of our age than by
that of any previous age. It has passed out of
the sphere of abstract discussion, and has become.
a great spiritual and even practical question. It
belongs, for this reason, to the scope of a poet
to whom nothing is alien that enters into man's
life, and the way in which a poet and thinker with
Browning's qualifications sees this question as it
bears on man is a matter of much interest even
in the consideration of the question itself.
As to the way in which Browning has regarded
the question, one might insist, were it fairly
or strictly to the point, that his statement is
philosophically inadequate. He yields too much
to agnosticism. It was the spirit of his time. It
has also been in a sense the spirit of thoughtful
and imaginative men in all times, since the psalm-
ists and prophets of Israel and the higher classical
thought. But Browning, and all earnest men
really stand on the deeper ground, though they
may not recognise it. What we mean is, that
they stand on the reality of knowledge, on the
validity of reason and conscience with reference
to the nature of God. In the terms of Browning's
allegory in "Ferishtah's Fancies," your earthly
fire, though small, is akin to the heavenly sun,
and gives assurance of, and acquaintance with it.
Notions of quantity or extent, our little and the
divine great, are quite misleading, since it is really
a question of quality and principle. The question
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ROBERT BROWNING
If
is only, Is it knowledge? Does it interpret?
it does, then we are in the universe of thought
to which all reality belongs, and not shut out in
darkness.
But Browning's way of thought and his speech
are poetic, his scope moral. Yet within his scope,
and through his speech, he has given well certain
main points of the life of his time, and its higher
thoughts in regard to the things with which we are
now concerned. I would note these points as
shown in the poems above taken. The reality of
some Supreme Power, the validity of some great
Ideal, seems to be assumed. The question of the
worth of man's thoughts about such a matter is
frankly met. But the matter is regarded, not so
much as a question of knowledge, but as a
question of life. It may be that in the former
sense the question is too large, but, brought to
the test of man's history and life, the ground is
clear. And if any faith be valid, if any thought
be reasonable, then no better thought is possible
than such as is provided by the higher terms of
man's own nature; and we not only may, but
ought to, regard the instincts of man's heart, and
the higher uses of man's life, as leading parts of
the problem.
As bearing on these ideas, let us here refer to
three passages—one in "Sordello" (pp. 206, 207),
in which the poet gives obscurely the solution of
part of the problem of that poem. Sordello, he
tells us, had two great wants-the need of some
Power far above his life, and so out of “ rivalry
در
SORDELLO, KARSHISH
265
with it, and the need of some "representative" of
that Power within his own sphere-
Who, being for authority the same,
Communication different, should claim
A course, the first chose, but this last revealed-
Tis Human clear, has that Divine concealed.
Is this representative found in Reason and Con-
science and the service of mankind, or in some
"revelation" of the divine? The answer is not
clear, but the passage implies the need of faith
in some transcendent and present Power, whose
excellence is the meaning of all good, the ground
of all duty, and the inspiration of all love.
A striking passage in the "Epistle of Karshish'
is more definite. The Arab physician, after de-
scribing the "case" and the character of Lazarus,
goes on to speak of things Lazarus had said to
him, and of one thing especially: he had said that
the Man who had "cured" him (or, as Lazarus
believed, brought him back to life) was "God,
Creator and Sustainer of the world, who came
and dwelt on it in flesh" for thirty years or more.
He is ashamed even to have reported such a
notion, and goes off in haste to other things.
But he returns to it, next time as giving a new,
tender, and sublime idea of God-the idea of a
gentle humanity behind all the power. Strange
and incredible, yet how winning!
Such passages mark the poet's interest in that
idea of Incarnation which is so much to Christian
faith-it may be they show his sense of its value
and his grasp of its ground. In "Saul" and
"}
266
ROBERT BROWNING
in "Christmas Eve" he presents the same great
idea; in the first as a noble power in human life
and the soul of man; in the second as in some
sense a just interpretation of the Christ of Chris-
tian history. But his most explicit words on the
matter are to found in "The Sun."
That poem
starts upon the aversion of some devout minds
from the very idea of an incarnation, as degrading
the greatness and profaning the mystery of God.
But Ferishtah argues that the ground of it seems
to be involved in any "working idea" of God,
and hints that if some "great fact" were credibly
found, belief in it might be rational, as to many it
would be useful.
In "Ixion" ("Jocoseria," 1883) we come on
man's need of God, and the sources of his belief
in another way. It depicts forcibly that moral
necessity which impels man to seek the highest as
God. By his pain, and the terrible injustice he
felt it to be, Ixion is driven within sight of a
truth that makes his pain a consolation and a
triumph. He rises beyond "the gods" to God;
beyond Zeus to the Perfection he feels must be
far above such as Zeus. The gods of fear, fancy,
and caprice give place to a God of conscience,
and man realises his own dignity in realising that
supreme Law of Right, which must be one with
"the true God."
CHAPTER XI
BROWNING'S POETRY AND THE IDEAL OF
RELIGION-LEADING SPIRITUAL IDEAS
OUR last group of poems was described as poetic
studies of religious ideas. Even in these poems
one can discern a quality of sympathy and con-
viction. In the present group we shall find this.
quality more distinctly, as it seems to us.
They raise, therefore, more fully the question
of the relation of this poetry to religion, and the
question of the spiritual ideas that are found in it.
Of the first question we must say something now,
of the second at a later point. It seems hard to
get the relation of poetry to spiritual religion
clearly grasped. And as to the second question,
readers either hold most of the ideas found in the
poems as the poet's own thoughts, or they hold
that he has never expressed any of his own
beliefs at all.
C
In trying to make clear the poet's standpoint
and relation in the matter, let us recur to part of
what has been said before. Even yet, though
less than in the past, religion is too much regarded
as something peculiar and speculative—something
kept alive, if not made by theologians and
267
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ROBERT BROWNING
churches. And as in these senses it has lost
interest and value for many of us, it is apt to be
assumed that there is nothing in it now to warrant
a good poet in troubling us about it. And this
is so, unless there be a religion of the free mind
and the free spirit-a religion that was before.
"Articles" and Churches, and that will be after
all of these yet organised are no more. But if
religion, as the poet deals with it, be a matter
human and vital, the case is altered. Since these
things belong to man they belong to art, and are
distinctly within the province of the poet, on the
broad ground of life and fact.
*.
To give art the range, depth, and sincerity of
life was very much the meaning of the romantic
movement of the early part of this century, and
one result of the movement was to restore art to
its right relation to religion. And this result was
as just on its historical and moral sides as it
has been good on its æsthetic. The relations of
poetry and religion are ancient and profound.
The great drama of Greece is but one instance
of a general law. Arising in religion, it remained
a religious service, and was animated by religious
ideas. And we find other literatures powerfully
affected or fashioned by these ideas. Man's first
wonder, curiosity, and joy were religious. His
sense of law in human life, his sense of good and
evil, had reference to divine powers. And in
proportion to the greatness and beauty of these
ideas has been the power and worth of the art.
But it may be said that this was a partial
Na
THE IDEAL OF RELIGION
269
association and a temporary law, true and fit in
the past, but no longer so.
The law of progress
disengages life and art from a visionary and puts
them on a true basis. It "secularises " both. In
freeing science from effete systems of thought, and
giving widest scope to reason and inquiry, this
law has done vast good. But is it rightly read?
And what is its true bearing on the higher
thought and art? Does it mean the "secularisa-
tion" of man? Many speak as if it did.
But that may not be. Man's mind and passion
cannot be secularised. It is awkward, no doubt,
and cuts off the completeness of certain generalisa-
tions; but it is true. Man's thought and emotion,
man's wonder and awe, keep their old depth.
The ancient sense is only larger and more
explicit. And Browning's art seems to me to
interpret justly the romantic spirit in its relation.
to religion, as well as the new temper of mind in
its relation to matters of belief.
The poet's critics may help us to make clear
his true position in this matter. Some find fault
with him because his ideas are indefinite and
mystical; others because they are too definite.
The first because they seek special forms of
religious ideas; the second because they have no
care for spiritual ideas at all. The breadth of the
poet is seen in his respecting his own principle,
and giving you large "criticism" with true
spiritual conviction and a clear hold of great
ideas, a free study of types and convictions with
a grasp of the deeper thought and the larger life
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ROBERT BROWNING
—that universal sphere whence these particular
ideas take their meaning and draw their power.
Indeed, the sense and result of this larger thought
is so constant that the poet baffles many, and
reminds them of his own Sordello, who lost value
for, and even hold of, all "secondary states" and
partial forms in a sense of the spirit and truth
that he felt to lie within and yet beyond them.
And here is the ground from which to ascertain
the bearings of the poet's work on religious ideas.
A poet who is a thinker may tell in this matter
in four ways-(1) By the force and truth with
which he states certain ideas; (2) by the way in
which his representation of man makes the greater
religious ideas, which are the only valuable ones,
credible; (3) by the insight with which he pre-
sents religious ideas in their bearing on life and
duty, or by the way in which his "criticism" of
life brings out the worth of religious ideas in that
relation; (4) or he may show the relation of man
to his beliefs, and make men aware of that world
of passion and thought behind all opinion.
And Browning has, we think, told on the inter-
pretation of religion in all these ways, though not
in all equally. The number of spiritual ideas in
his poetry is not perhaps great, but the power and
freshness with which they are stated are great,
and so are the ideas themselves. And he has put
strikingly the bearing of certain ideas on the con-
duct of life. But his highest influence has been
exerted at other points. He has so presented
man in himself, and in relation to great principles
THE IDEAL OF RELIGION
271
of the spirit, that he has made religion seem
greater, therefore truer, to many minds. He has
so exhibited the bearings of belief on character,
and on the higher work of man, that the vital
value of belief has been surer. He has shown the
human substance and depth of the great ideas.
He has forcibly exemplified the subtlety and
individuality of all our higher thought, and has
thus given a finer sacredness and purer depth to
all sincere faith. And his dramatic interpretation
of all belief, if it imply its relative value, implies
also its vital quality, so making it in every case a
witness to those "unseen" things that are within
us all, and on the basis of which alone we can be
understood.
But this last point needs fuller explanation.
Browning's religious poems are dramatic studies.
He applies the modern dramatic spirit, and his
method as a dramatic thinker, to the study and
statement of religious ideas. Now, that is to use
a principle and a method in the criticism of re-
ligious ideas that would have been impossible to
art, because unattained by philosophy until the
present century. And what does this mean as
regards religion? It means disinterested study,
a free recognition of facts, a free interest in ideas,
a free interpretation of both, and of man as ex-
pressed through them from the point of view of
the spirit. This may seem a large claim, and we
are speaking of principles rather than achieve-
ments of a method, not of its application in
every case. It means a Shakespearean breadth
-
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ROBERT BROWNING
1
and steadiness of design and view in the expression
of man's "soul," with a Hegelian power of illustrat-
ing the spiritual quality of religious beliefs; or, to
put it in another and it may be simpler way, it is
the free criticism of the modern spirit, with a free
yet sure hold on the elements and ideas and life
of religion.
And this will guide us in a study of what we
may call the double strain of Browning's poetry,
the dramatic and the vital. The dramatist, we
have said, may suffer a double wrong. All he
says may be taken as his own; that is a "vulgar
error." Nothing he says may be deemed from
his own mind; that is an easy criticism. We
cannot hold it of Browning's work. As to the
poems now before us, for example. Some of
them are clearly invented for the ideas of which
they become the dramatic statement. In others
we find that recurrence of and insistence on certain
ideas, which always let us into part of a writer's
mind, while about all the work you have an
atmosphere of sympathy, and, involved in it, a
basis of thought which surely come of the poet's
own insight and faith.
And first of this group let us take "A Death
in the Desert." This poem was published in
1864. It is among the religious poems what
"Rabbi Ben Ezra" is among the life poems. It
gives the poet's great principles in the interpreta-
tion of religion, as the other poem does of his
interpretation of life. It is a dramatic romance,
clothing a serious study of modern thought in
THE IDEAL OF RELIGION
273
:
dramatic circumstance and personality, and so
making the expression of the whole lifelike, while
keeping sincere the statement of thought.
The story of the poem is legendary, but the
character and ideas of St. John are involved in
the poem.
The deaths of the apostles are mostly
wrapt in obscurity, and legends soon began to
arise about them. In that element of myth and
wonder the poet found a medium fit for his pur-
pose. How and where St. John died was soon
forgotten; whether he was dead became matter
of doubt. By some he was expected to linger
"until the Lord came." The poet gives a simple
story of St. John's last hours, fitting both the
legend and his design. The situation is impres-
sive and touching, fit for a message that is really
from "another world," and for future ages.
But its study is even more of that early age of
Christian belief itself and of problems then first
raised. It is the close of the great first age of
Christianity, when its apostolic tradition was
fading, and a new state of things was coming in
its place. St. John was the last of the first age.
According to the traditions Browning follows,
he saw the century out, and survived all others.
of the early band. He saw the new time and
the new spirit. It is reflected in his letters. The
Gospel inspired by him is addressed to it, as his
testimony that might remain and speak, when he
had passed away. And this is why the poet
chose him as the persona of his dramatic argu-
ment, spoken to an age that seemed to require
doda
18
274
ROBERT BROWNING
another St. John to state the great Christian
argument afresh. And he chose him, too, because
he loves the tender profundity, the deep simpli-
city and ardour, of the apostle of love.
And what was the new time, with its new
conditions? It was an age of speculation and
criticism, coming after an age of testimony and
faith. The Christian tradition, the doctrine of
apostles, had come into contact with Alexandrian
and Oriental thought. The simple message, with
its great story and great ideas, must now enter
into and hold its own against the modes and
systems of man's reason. So long as personal
testimony and teaching lasted, Christian faith and
doctrine seemed a simple matter, and authority
was clear.
But even before the close of the first
Christian age man's mind had begun its inevitable
play upon the Christian tradition and the Chris-
tian ideas. It was making its first attempt to
understand it, to put it in real relation to the
mind and to experience.
This was of course
done crudely, and even childishly, and through
many mistakes and with strange mixtures. The
age of the "heretics" had, in fact, come.
It was
a necessary step in the growth of the Christian
faith, the way to the only faith that
and keep a living place in the world.
not seen in that light. It was looked
as merely evil.
could live,
But it was
on at first
The inner meaning and law of the great pro-
cess that then began; the part it plays, and must
play, in the life of man; the service it performs
THE IDEAL OF RELIGION
275
for all ideas that are really spiritual;—this is the
main theme of the poem on the death of St. John.
Not, you may think, a poetical subject, but any-
how a subject no serious mind in our age has
been able to avoid, and according to the wisdom
of the answer given to it must be the worth of
one's religion, or at least of one's theology, in the
time that is to come. For it is the question that
rose at the close of the first age, come up again
most explicitly and completely, Whether the
Christian story and ideas can make good their
place in the world of thought? and that other
question, What is the reason of all the in-
vestigation and all the uncertainty of the modern.
mind, and why should the serious faith of men
be always liable to such debate? and, Is the
essence of faith really subject to it? The poet has
a solution of the problem as manly as it is wise
and spiritual. And in this poem, poetic in matter
and fit in style, he has given his fullest expres-
sion to that solution.
The poem opens with account of its own origin.
It is said to have been found in a manuscript of
Pamphylax of Antioch, who was with St. John
when he died. Its owner and editor had it from
Xanthus, his wife's uncle, who was also with St.
John. The manuscript has been sacredly kept,
and is now more precious because all who were
with the apostle are gone, as its present owner
soon will be.
The "manuscript" begins with the circumstances
of the death as told by one present. In a time of
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ROBERT BROWNING
persecution, and in his extreme age, St. John
fled from Ephesus in the care of certain disciples,
who have brought him for security to a deep
cave in the desert. They have been hiding there
for sixty days. St. John is dying, and they wait
the event with sacred sorrow. He is in a kind
of trance, but they hope he will come back long
enough at least for some final message. That
they may lose nothing of all that happens, they
have brought him from the inner cave to a place
where they may see his face. There are dim.
signs of life and thought, and they use means to
bring him to consciousness. Their best means
only bring smiles, as of one asleep, until a boy
in their company thinks of better means than
wine. He reads from the Gospel the great words,
so much to the point now, "I am the Resurrec-
tion and the Life." These words reach and
restore him. He sits up, and in the cave amid
the stillness of the desert he speaks his last words
to them, or rather to the world and the ages to
come.
At first all seems a dream to him-the past
real and near; the present, even his body, far off.
But the soul is clear and complete, though kept
by a mere thread to the worn-out brain, and with
just enough hold on the senses for him to know
the " sons near him, and to know that his com-
panions of the sacred days are all gone. Alone
left of all who knew the Lord, it must be for
some divine purpose, and that must be to give
more love and truth to men. Very soon none
"}
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will be left who can say, "I saw.” To say just
this, and tell what he "saw," has been his task
since the Lord left the world. This has been the
burden and use of his writings as of his life-to
tell men the way of life, and "urge them, for
love's sake and in love's strength, to believe,” and
so get into the way of life. And as he spoke
men believed simply, for he could speak directly
of the great days when truth's sea was at the full,
and the Word of Life was with men. But those
simple days passed. The story grew older, the
time farther off; men had many questions to ask
about it. And so he told the story more fully,
and more to the point of men's new thoughts, and
at length wrote, or had written, the story he had
told so many times. And still men believed in
the main.
In the midst of this labour he fell sick, and
seeing death near, and thinking of what should be
when the last of all who knew the Lord had gone,
he could only trust his truth to God's care for
man's good. But, waking out of sleep, he passed
into a prophetic trance, in which he saw the days
to come, and knew the minds of men, the way in
which the Gospel would be regarded and the
questions that would be put about it. Men will
ask, Was it John really? and did he say he saw
all this that is put in his name? and can we
believe him? Foreseeing all this, his soul was
filled with desire to meet these questions, and so
help these men of the distant future to the
truth.
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Yet how can he help them? The light is so
near and full to him-nearer now that the body
is worn thin and lets the light through at every
point. He wrote of the divine life and light,
"It was—I saw"; now he would say, "It is-I
see." It is the meaning of all the world to him
-love ever at work in the world, conquering the
wrong, healing the pain, and using even sin and
death to reach the good, and fulfil the glory of
life. He sees this, having seen the divine life;
but those far-off men cannot see as he sees.
How, then, are they to see the great truth?
Even in his Gospel it will seem only a tale of
what was, long ago. And yet, if they gaze with
love on the life and death these facts make
known, the world of meaning and light that is
in them for all will grow clear.
And this is the end for all, however reached.
The meaning of life and its use lie in the chance
it gives of learning the secret of that divine life,
with its gospel of love, and, having gained that
truth, sum and soul of all, to keep it, despite
all that seems against it-to keep it, and live in
it, and grow like it.
This is the end, he says, and may, so put,
seem simple; but it is not so, for the soul does
not learn as the senses do. Physical experiences
and truths, once reached, are clear and final.
Spiritual truths, because they are spiritual and
must enter into the life of men and interpret
life, are not of that kind or capable of that
proof. They must be grasped by the soul and
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279
The
proved through life. And this is good.
life and progress of the body are brief, those of
the spirit endless. The truth it has to grasp is
infinite, and so must be its progress towards it.'
The
Time's whole purpose is to prove the soul.
If truth
soul's proof lies in its growth in truth.
were clear, the soul's prowess were impossible.
As it is, there is scope, for the search can never
cease. Each age has to work out the great
questions for itself. Nor is this an accident,
still less an evil. It is a great law, and a
great good. To have it otherwise were to evade
life's proof, and so miss the very life of the soul.
And this explains even St. John's experience.
Those who saw the Lord would, it may be
thought, hold fast the truth. But they did not.
They took time to grow into it. On their first
trial they did not know it, and forsook their
Lord. Yet later, in the martyr age, how very
clear and brave all were! He sees now that
even in that age faith was passing from the
stage of simple trust in "the tradition of the
elders," into an effort to understand the truth.
As soon as that attempt began the "heretics
arose. He put forth his Gospel to meet the
needs of that time. And now that he sees an
age of deeper investigation and profounder
thought, he would meet that need too—would
meet, if he might, the whole thought of man,
that nothing may keep men from the divine
truth.
And he listens to catch the argument of that
})
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ROBERT BROWNING
3
"
later age, and he hears it. Your story comes
from a time long past. Such stories we have
proved to be mixed with error, and your
"wonders" are a trouble to us, not a proof
at all. Your doctrine is good, and this life is
very good, but as it comes to us it may be
only one of those myths man's imagination loves
to invent and likes to believe in. And what
you teach of God is good and commends itself
to the mind, but we cannot know that the fact
is so.
Man has always made God in his own
image, rising from lower to higher ideas—to
will, reason, and love; but these are man's, and,
for aught we can prove, they may be man's
only. Your faith is but the last and purest
phase of an ancient and fallacious mode of
thought-highest in its ideas but true? How
can we ever know that?
Having stated the whole thought of the after-
time, he meets it frankly. He goes back on
his idea of spiritual progress. Man exists to
grow, lives only by growth of the soul. The
conditions of faith change with the conditions.
of life. Miracle is first, and may serve then.
But once the truth has been planted in the
world miracles pass. Truth must then be proved
otherwise, and miracles may seem difficulties,
not evidences, to man's new thought of the
world. God will not overbear man's thought.
Enforced belief can never be living faith, and
the argument of faith must ever be morally
fit, vitally cogent.
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}
And what is the grand test of divine truth?
Its power to explain life, the nature of man,
and the system of God.
of God. And this it does.
The acknowledgment of God in Christ has this
final evidence that it solves man's greatest
questions. Finding this so, ought men to fall
into that worst of doubts, and doubt life itself,
or waste life's brief space in searching about the
roots of what commends itself to the soul, and
has become power and light within? No! In
itself it seems deeply true. Can it matter so
much how it arose? To use such a method is
to make a loss even of gain, and out of life to
fall back into death. To argue, for instance,
since all is might, what need of will, while will
is the one source of power really known to man,
is to fall back on a lower idea from sheer want
of faith in the higher, which is to turn round
on man's progress. And so to argue that love
is so human that it cannot be divine, and that
the legend of divine love has
hearts impelled by their own
think that way of God, is to reject the Christ
through very need, and in mere worship, of Him.
been made by
deepest life to
But now suppose it said that the story as we
have it cannot be true, and that thus it involves
in doubt the great idea it has made historic.
How is this met? By criticism of the records,
such as may separate exactly the facts from
the legend? No; but by appeal to the method
and the ends of man's life. Uncertainty and
error are parts of everything human, and on
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ROBERT BROWNING
every line progress is slowly made by throwing
these out in the growth of knowledge. Our
idea of God has been subject to this law. When
man asked, What is God? he became aware of
himself and of his place as man.
Man's progress
since has led him to esteem will, wisdom, and
love as highest and best. It were strange if
we must conclude that, being all they are to us,
they exist in man only, and so think of God
as simply power and law. That were to lose
by gain, and fall back on a lower idea.
Then, if it be said that as men we really
cannot know what God is, he answers— -That
is so, only let us admit this law of our know-
ledge as a whole, and accept its consequences.
Let us admit our partial ignorance and accept
progress as our true quality in the sphere of the
highest truths, even more than in other spheres.
Let us see that by the nature of knowledge,
as by the law of life, an absolute "revelation
is impossible, though men have vainly wished
and affirmed it. Spiritual knowledge has no
such finality and certainty, and ought not to
have, and if we affect that for it we arrest our
progress, and miss both knowledge and the
harmony and fulness of life.
Having delivered his "burthen," St. John
died. They buried him in the evening, and
then parted.
This is St. John's message, as Browning reads.
it, holding, it may seem, as little relation to
any historical teaching of St. John as "Saul"
در
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to David, and as little possible for the apostle
as that for the psalmist. In what sense, then,
is such a poem dramatic? Does anything but
confusion result from calling it so, or putting
such essentially modern thought under the mask
of the apostle? The poet arranges for the
difficulty, if he does not avoid the objection,
by making the whole a result of prophetic trance;
not St. John, but the mind and spirit of the
apostle as developed by-shall we say?-or as
related to and arguing upon very recent thought
and criticism, subsequent to Tübingen criticism and
scientific philosophy. And so, from Browning's
point of view, the question is, Whether the spirit
and ideas of the poem are in any real relation
to the principles of St. John-to his great ideas,
as we know them through his writings. We judge
distinctly that they are. That being allowed,
you may inquire what is gained by such imagi-
native utterances—for, on any ground, imaginative
they are. The poem is, we take it, the best
answer to that. Its circumstances add to its
force and interest, the poet's mind is stimulated
by speaking thus, and his whole argument-for
argument it is—is more fully developed through
the medium chosen. For him it is a natural
form. The matter shapes and vitalises itself
most readily and fully in that way.
But, weighing the matter of the argument,
let us ask, not whether it be historic, but how
far it is valid. So far as St. John is concerned,
he would necessarily be so full of the matter,
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ROBERT BROWNING
of the ideas and facts of the "wonderful life,"
that he could never get far enough away from
them to put them in line for proof. The poet
appreciates that point, and expresses it forcibly.
But does it not prevent the value, and narrow
the scope, of the argument? You may, of course,
look at that either from the dramatic or the
didactic point of view; and in the case of a
poem like this it is perhaps not easy to say
which has the leading place. Most readers
would say that the leading impulse of the poem
was interest in the ideas, not in the dramatic
situation or in the dramatic relations; and, if
so, that would settle its leading quality.
And what are those ideas, and are they valid,
or only valid from St. John's point of view?
The poem would be justified if the last point
only were true. (1) The spiritual and vital
nature of all the higher knowledge and of all
real belief about the highest matters.
(2) The
spiritual nature by consequence of all progress
in such things. (3) The necessity of doubt as
implied in experience, involved by discipline,
and essential to real knowledge. (4) The rela-
tions of spiritual convictions to the body of
man's other convictions involves progress in the
apprehension and in the application of spiritual
ideas. (5) The true progress in such matters
is one of evolution, not revolution, involving a
truer apprehension of vital principles, not a denial
of them; it does not, for example, follow because
man has seen that his nature and thought are
Ab
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285
no
measure of the world, that they have no
relation or value with regard to its interpretation.
(6) Spiritual ideals and vital powers are a far
greater thing than any critical or historical in-
quiries. Inquiries as to the origin of these ideas
are all very well in place. Their existence and
worth, the light and energy they give, their
service in life and for its interpretation, are the
greater things. (7) The only, or, at least, the
only serviceable and practical "revelation," the
only true faith, is to be found through the spirit
of man and the best attainable knowledge of
(8) Man, in the fulness and freedom of
his nature, is the end of life. Knowledge is
not the end. And one great test of belief is
what serves man and life best.
man.
The view of religion that is presented, rather
obscurely, we fear, in the poems placed as an
"Epilogue" to "Dramatis Personæ," is in fine
agreement with the points which have been
developed through the preceding poems.
There are three poems, and in each religion
is presented from a different standpoint and in
a different idea of it. In the first David speaks
for the Judaic religion and conception of God,
the religion of sensuous symbols and localised
manifestations. The "dwelling-place" of Jehovah
was the temple at Jerusalem. There the Lord
filled His house, bending porch and bowing
pillar by His presence, and making it holy
with His visible glory. And there, though forms
and ideas were crude, was the joy of worship,
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ROBERT BROWNING
the strong sense of a divine greatness and
mercy.
In the second Renan speaks. What a way
the world has travelled between the Hebrew
psalmist and hero, and our superfine, critical
French man of letters and sentiment!
Here we
find religion historical and sensuous, destroyed
apparently by reason and criticism, "all gone
across the dark." A star shone out of the wide
heavens, and came with its light to men; a face,
a form mild and great, grew upon the reverence
of men.
The Deity seemed knowable and human.
But it is so no more. That simple faith is now
incredible. The legend takes its place with all
other legends, sweet but untrue. The facts were
far otherwise. We are alone; only the infinite
vault and the unknowable universe! Watchers
of the twilight, we look up to find the void. We
turn to earth only to find, to our dismay, that
man is the highest known. Oh, the pity of the
discovery! But truth is truth, though man may
shrink from the sceptre and curse the crown.
But there is another and purer conception of
religion and Deity, another and truer relation of
man to God.
This the third speaker represents ;
and though he speaks of himself very modestly, as
"witless alike of will and way divine," he has a
very clear view and sense of this big question.
His we may term a religion at once natural and
spiritual, and this religion is confirmed, if not
given, by life itself. God does not hold the
Judaic, specialised relation to men or to a tribe.
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287
Nor does His presence depend on any interpreta-
tion of history. It is not a matter of the past. It
is a living and universal fact. The ground and
centre of it is the personality and experience of
each man. For each life is a real centre of things.
The universe for the time works towards and is for
that. The fable of the rock about which all the
waters played for a time is the fact of man's life.
Such is the play and function of Nature about
man during man's life. It is the fact, so far clear
and solid, that the play of the universe unfolds or
confirms this intense self-consciousness. What it
means, whither it leads, what it ends in, we may
not know; but so far it is. Through that the
universe becomes a grand temple, Nature a great
ritual, experience a divine culture, life a high
service, and the Deity a living relation and pre-
sence for all.
This idea of personality, its central importance
in ethics and in art, and its mystery, is one of the
leading ideas of Browning's poetry. It is the
basis of his art we have seen. It is the centre of
his philosophy, and the key to his religion. Life
derives its meaning from it, all thought is condi-
tioned by it, and it may be that the clue to the
future and all its developments lies in it.
The poem called "Fears and Scruples" well
illustrates the spirit and humanity of Browning's
thoughts about these matters. It is put in a kind
of parable, and is a simpler and more familiar
statement of thoughts about man's faith in God.
Can we know that the invisible God is, or what
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ROBERT BROWNING
And
he is? Can we make the grounds of our belief
honestly clear to others? There are two friends,
one greater than the other. They have never
met, and the only evidences of the existence and
character of the greater friend are letters which
bear out his high character as far as they go.
The humble friend is full of hope that some day
they will meet and his trust have its reward. But
the great friend does not come, and makes no
clearer declarations of himself. Acquaintances
whisper doubts about his very existence.
some one suggests that perhaps the unknown
friend keeps at a distance to put the other's trust
to the test. It may be so, yet to friendship's
heart it seems sad and strange. And then the
poem breaks forth. What if the friend be God,
and these be our relations to Him? The bearing
is obvious. The little poem touches simply a
frequent thought of the poet, the spiritual uses of
uncertainty. It also, we think, suggests a criticism.
of the ready and easy reasons some good people
have for the often obscure relations between God
and man, and how human analogies hardly explain
these or give their rationale.
And, in considering Browning's criticism of
religious belief, a due place should be assigned.
to the pope's speech or meditation in "The
Ring and the Book "-to that part of it which
contains what may be called his "confession
of faith." It is again dramatic, but for obvious
reasons it touches the inner mind of the poet, as
it states not the public but the frank, private
THE IDEAL OF RELIGION
289
!
thought of the pope, who is, it may be said, a
man after the poet's own heart. And the occa-
sion is one fit for it. The pope has spent a long
day in considering the case of Count Guido. He
has decided that the man is guilty and ought to
die. And now, in the late evening of the day
and of his own life, he reviews the story and the
merits of the actors in it. He reviews, too, his
own judgment, and the very grounds of it—those
great principles which make it right for him to
punish with death the murderer of Pompilia. His
tone is grave, modest, and sincere. He is clear as
to the story.
Life is difficult and man liable to
error. Yet use and experience give a man faculty
and right to judge of the things of human life.
But how of the sphere above man's life, upon our
knowledge of which depends so much of the value
of our conclusions in this narrow sphere ? The
pope feels strange doubts forced on him by this
story, and by the life of his own time. Shall he
face that doubt and dare to ask of the light in
light's own sphere? He allows that his light is
little, but he holds that it is from the sun and he
must go by it. Still, life to the end is trial, and
here he will try his faith. And he begins with
his idea of God. Man's knowledge of God is like
the eye's vision of the immensity of heaven-a
vision of scattered points. God is measureless;
man's mind an atom within the Infinite. Yet
God is appreciable by each creature in its own
degree, since a true love of God, which must for
each be the end of life, is impossible without
19
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ROBERT BROWNING
Why things are
knowledge. Why things are as they are, and
each of us in his place for God, we know not;
the choice is God's. And the universe, which
gives some true knowledge of God, does not give
an idea man can regard as complete. It shows
power and intelligence in full measure, but not
goodness in like degree, and not love. But there
is a tale of God in the life of Jesus which makes
the idea complete. That story the pope finds.
credible in itself, and necessary to his ideal of
God. The story as such may not represent the
full and proportioned truth of the divine nature,
but only a truth relative to man's life on earth,
and so far to man's heart; but it is the quality
of all our knowledge to be relative to our nature
and our needs, and so that it be really true any
way, he is not exigent in regard to it. For here
is its grand use with its story of love unlimited
in self-sacrifice, it both completes the idea of God
and interprets the world and man's life in it.
"The dread machinery of sin and sorrow" can
then be understood as giving man scope to learn
the perfection of God, and become creative, on his
And the very
own part, through self-sacrifice.
difficulties of the great story agree with life's whole
quality as probation" or discipline, and with
that necessity of progress and growth of spirit,
which are the very life of man's life.
" ((
But there is a difficulty which he feels strongly.
It is not that men take the present and forget the
future, and even reject the great truth. Men must
be free to do that. The real difficulty is that
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291
those who profess to believe it live as meanly as
worldlings. Take the archbishop who thrust Pom-
pilia back to her brutal husband, or the friar who
had not the courage to help her, or the nuns who
lied about her to secure her property. Can such
deeds be the proper fruit of "God's death for
man"? Are such effects proportioned to so great
a cause? But perhaps the fault is in the nature
of man? No; love and faith have sprung up pro-
fusely in the past, and they spring to-day out of
natural powers in men. The impulses of chivalry
and love do more than faith does. Then he notes
sarcastically with what energy his priests spend
themselves on mere trifles of ritual or dogma.
And he asks, almost in terror, Is this all that was
to be; only this, seventeen centuries after the
advent of the Christ of God, and as whole result
of the divine power then shown in the world?
Can this we see be "salvation," that "immeasur-
able change" we surely had the right to look for
when the Maker of the world came to save it?
This question is forced upon him by the state of
things about him, and yet he leaves it feeling sure
that God is, and that even this must be consistent
with His goodness-that goodness being to the
pope a first, and last, and necessary truth. He
partly sees how it may be. The very weakness.
in a faith may be the most beautiful power in
it, making it a test of moral will and spiritual
truth in men, and a finer incentive to humanity
and self-sacrifice than its triumph could be.
Then the question takes a new form.
There is
S
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ROBERT BROWNING
a world of men quite outside our Christian world,
and many of the men of that world have lived
better than your Christians are doing. Euripides,
for instance, who taught so steadily, four hundred
years before St. Paul, that virtue is the rule of
life, waiving "rewards and loving for love's sake "
only. How answer Euripides as to the higher
truth of the Christian faith? Frankly thus: that
faith has been partly lost in its own dogmatism
and security. It was better at the dawn. It will
be better again when the unspiritual certainty of
"the ages of faith" has been destroyed. Its
ignoble confidence makes it worldly, and heroism
impossible. But this "torpor of assurance" will
be shaken from their faith. The age of rational-
ism is at hand, when their dogmas will be broken
up; and then faith, which has got to be "faith in
the report," may become once more "faith in
the thing," in the living God, when men are
constrained to
Correct the portrait by the living face,
Man's God by God's God in the mind of man.
There are dangers in this process, as he sees by
men's lives already. The faith of many will fail,
and impulse will have too much power, leading to
good in some, to evil in others; but faith, and the
power of God in man's life, will gain in the end.
The argument here is dramatic, fit in its general
sense and spirit to the aged pope, though he must
have pretty well advanced into the age of reason
to have seen things as they are here put. And
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293
.
in spite of the fact that the pope speaks at the
close of the seventeenth century, and St. John
at the close of the first, they show many re-
semblances of idea and spirit. In those re-
semblances we come upon part of the mind of
the poet.
We thus come back on a ques-
tion raised before. Browning has hardly ever
spoken in his own person. And when an argu-
ment is dramatic, even when the standpoint and
line of it may be of the poet's own "invention,"
as in the case of some of the poems above, you
can never take the argument as expressing the
whole mind of the poet. At the same time,
you cannot doubt that you have part, and an
important part, of the poet's mind expressed in
such poems-great ideas or principles that inter-
pret man's spirit as he sees it. And these ideas
may be got at, with all due allowance for the
dramatic method of the work, through the ideas.
that recur, and through that medium of thought
which the dramatic studies involve; and the
continual use of the dramatic method is itself a
clue to the poet's conception of the problems of
human life and to his criticism of "faith."
Gang
We are
The subject is one of great interest.
aware of the difficulty of it. It would take a
chapter to itself, and require a careful citation and
comparison of poems throughout. But we have
taken so many of the poems on which the study
must proceed that it may be allowed us to sum
up briefly. It is the more necessary to do this
because, as was said, there is a want of clearness
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ROBERT BROWNING
about the point itself. Many have taken a line of
purely dramatic exposition, and others have treated
our poet as Shakespeare has been treated-taking
all serious opinions in his writings as if they were
his own.
We can, of course, do no more than state some of
those vital ideas that are to be found in or inferred
from his work, and that go to indicate his body of
thought as it bears on what we call religion. And
in doing this we shall not attempt an exact arrange-
ment of them, but be content with suggestion as
both most fitting for the matter and for the space
we can give to it, and congenial also to the poet's
own mode in putting forth his ideas.
Upon the great questions it may be thought
that a man's standpoint and balance of qualities
are almost his whole secret; and so it is, but
many of us will still need his help to see the
consequences of his greatest ideas. In Browning,
certainly, his personality stands in very distinct
relation to his leading ideas, spiritual and moral.
The key to his position is found in his spiritual
passion and intellectual strength, his broad and
disinterested contemplation of the world as it is,
and his ardent and generous sense of that higher
world revealed in, and necessary to, man's heart
and mind. Shelley's sense of the ideal and
Hegel's idea of "spirit" seem present in Brown-
ing's sense and grasp of "the soul." The religious
interest and power of his poetry spring from this,
in combination with robust realistic humour and
acceptance of life, and life's method.
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295
CC
As to the first aspect of his mind in this
relation. He sees in men, he knows in himself,
he recognises in the arts men have made to
express their minds, a large passion that no art
and no work of man has sufficed to express fully.
Religion has interest for him in so far as it
conciliates and interprets this sense of the
infinite," this large desire, as much of the intellect
as of the emotions. It interests him because of
the way in which it explains the depth he feels
in man and the world. With Carlyle, he knows
not only that a man's faith, "fit to be called
such," is the deepest and truest thing within, and
that it reaches out to and grasps the highest
without, but that only as a man has such faith has
he a way of understanding himself and life. And·
so, in a sense for him, religion, "fit to be called
such," is its own evidence. Its greatness is its
evidence; it is only true as it is great. The
ideal must be true if only it be ideal and keep
spiritual. And the Christian religion is true to
him, not because he is concerned with the doc-
trines that have grown up about it, but because he
accepts the spirit and ideal of Christ. In his
temper and scope he is Christian. No poet has
so finely, with such sympathy and power, inter-
preted the Christian ideas, their greatness, their
humanity, their spiritual depth. No one has
better seen what they have done in the life and
thought of the past. No one more frankly affirms
their essential promise. For him, as for Hegel,
the Christian religion is true because it is the
1
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ROBERT BROWNING
religion that has most profoundly read the spirit
of man, and presented the purest spiritual ideal,
both for duty and for hope. And so, as we read
him, this poet is religious and Christian, not
because he accepts any single statement of the
greatest truths, but because he would keep for life
and the soul a free way to the Highest; because he
would keep the freedom and depth of man's mind
as religion indicates and promotes these—would
keep for the spirit of man its full power and scope.
These words may seem vague, as words are
apt to be, about an aspect and function of
religion that has not been much recognised in
this country; but, in agreement with his genius.
and quality of thought, Browning has aspects and
truths more obvious. We said that no one had
better understood the humanity of the Christian
ideas; and that is true, whether we regard his
"doctrine" of God, or the way in which he has
grasped the problem of the world and the facts
and needs of men's hearts. As a dramatist and
thinker he has the clearest and steadiest percep-
tion of the conditions of life and the facts of the
world. He takes men and the world as they
stand for us all. No vain idealism hides from
him the state of things. He refuses bluntly to
disguise or evade the real problem by any partial
solution of it. His world is the world of all
experience.
And what light has he to throw on the problem
of problems there, the wrong and pain, and all the
evil and sorrow of the world? The answer of St.
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297
Paul and St. John mainly, though not in their
terms nor quite on their grounds-divine love
working out human good through a law of sacrifice
as well as retribution. And something very like
the great Hegelian idea of the nature and function.
of evil and pain you will find. Good and evil, truth
and error, if not complementary and necessary in
the great scheme, certainly work together towards
some result not to be reached in its fulness, so
far as we can see, without both factors. That is a
difficulty for most who either think or feel deeply.
Some of us seek escape in a kindly optimism
that reflects our own pity rather than the world's
order, and in some way or other many of us hide
the facts or forget them. Poets like Browning,
and thinkers such as Hegel, meet the facts in
full, state the problem in its integrity, and seek
a principle great enough to give a clue to
the world - process, that by moralising may
rationalise it.
Nor are they afraid of the principle in which,
as they suggest, the solution may be found. In
the case of Browning it runs all through his work
and thought. What has been called "the unity
of opposites" is both a poetic and a
a moral
principle with him. His form of art and his
criticism of life both go upon it, and the casuistic
and tantalising quality of his thought, as many
find, results from it. It is part of his real-idealism.
Through it he seeks that "unity of things with
each other, and with the spirit of man," which art
and thought both aim at.
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(C
Matter-of-fact and critical, more aware of all
the world and life present and suggest than
concerned with theories of them, he is not, so far
as we can see, careful to have a big theory" of
his own.
For him “all things end in mystery,"
and the scheme of things is unimaginable. We
regard the above ideas as part of his thought and
as in his works, but he leaves the impression of
holding all but the largest principles lightly. His
dramatic expression means this, and reflects it so
strongly that some have regarded the poet as
agnostic, to use the term that sprang up appro-
priately in his time. At earlier points of these
studies it has been indicated that he is not so,
though partly from his strong sense of the "little-
ness of reasonings and the greatness of things,"
and partly from his sympathy with the more
serious and modest spirit of his age, he stresses.
the limits of science, and thus gives to his position
an apparently negative quality that does not
really belong to it. His position is fairly described
in his own strange phrase as "ignorance confirmed
by knowledge"-knowledge gained from the life
of thought and within the little circle of ex-
perience, but trusted with reference to that "circle.
of infinity" which cannot conceivably contradict
the great and simple principles of our minds and
hearts. This, it seems to us, is Browning's
position on one of the great controversies of his
time, a faith, felt to fit the folds of the heart and
the fields of life, yet tempered and qualified by
wise doubts, and by a sense of all that lies beyond,
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299
knowable possibly but unknown. And this we
may say is a kind of Christian Agnosticism which
not a few of the strongest minds of Christendom
have held. It confesses ignorance while modestly
claiming knowledge, and its faith is chastened by
doubts of the adequacy of any "symbol" yet
devised or statement yet made. And ignorance
and faith are cordially qualified by a sense of all
that life and the soul suggest. The faith is thus
the faith of one who believes in God and the soul,
though caring little about and not looking for
any ordered and finished scheme of doctrine as to
either, while sincerely affirming as to both the
substance of the Christian ideas.
Browning is then, we have said, very conscious
of the limits of man's knowledge, and possibly
stresses these limits on certain points too often
and too much, but he quite understands, and
never in fact forgets, that these are not the limits
of man. Man, as well as the universe, is "greater
than we know," and man's own thought, his
intuition of himself and of things, is greater than
his science can state. The facts and powers of
man's nature are our largest suggestion of the
law and truth of things. And these must neither
be ignored nor explained away, because our
"theory of the world" for the time being cannot
interpret them, cannot be squared with them,
cannot even find room for them, it may seem.
Such, then, as we read this poetry, and the mind
expressed through it, was this poet's relation to
the ideal and mystery of religion, at the points
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where the consciousness of his time was so acute.
The test of the power and breadth of minds is
found in their ability to transcend while they
interpret the spirit and larger convictions of their
age, to give the truth and worth of these and yet
stand away from their limits, and never to fall into
the fallacy of their finality, but to keep clear
consciousness of horizons beyond the passions and
thought of the time. The sense of mystery has
been emphatic in religion as in science, in our
day, and will be for years to come. Browning
has it strongly, but holds firmly by the significance
of religion not as aspiration and awe only, but as
inspiration and light too.
Religion thus becomes the cordial and serious
endeavour of man through intellect, emotion, and
will, towards all that is highest, in the full belief
that such effort not only is the law of man's
nature, and a means of all good to man, but
"reveals" the Highest in and to man, and unites
him with the Highest in vital fellowship and
realisation.
CHAPTER XII
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
THE difficult and fascinating question of man's
immortality has had a marked and continuous
interest for the mind of the present century. The
literature of the subject—from Wordsworth's "Ode"
in 1805, through Tennyson's "In Memoriam" to
Browning's "La Saisiaz" and Meredith's "A Faith
on Trial"—is not only abundant but earnest and
beautiful.
And even more remarkable than the number
and value of these poems is their spirit, their
quality of argument, their broad approach to the
subject, their sympathetic yet free consideration
of the question on its merits and as a part of life.
In Wordsworth's great "Ode" the old question
is presented in a new way. The ideality of mind,
and so the spirituality of man, is inferred from the
glow, the energy, the independence of mind in the
early days of life.
"In Memoriam" is a great human record and
argument from love and life, from man's affections.
and powers, to a spiritual destiny for man, far
from confident, yet wistfully, earnestly trustful.
And George Meredith's fine poem after his wife's
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death is an argument from love and nature against
death. He goes forth in the spring morning, and
there flashes on him, self-absorbed in his sorrow,
the vision of a cherry-tree in bloom. And he
springs to the mystic conviction that loss and
sorrow are not final, that life is more and greater
than death in a world where that outburst of
beauty seems the law after all.
And Browning's poems of the group we are
now to consider are capital instances of this
interest, and fine examples of this spirit, this new
approach to the old theme. No poetry of our
time, indeed, has touched the whole question so
often, or treated it as a whole with such power,
freshness, and freedom, as a question raised by
man's nature, and by many facts of his life in this
world. You will find it in his work, from
"Pauline" and "Paracelsus" to "Ferishtah" and
"Asolando"; and whether love or life, work or
art, be the poet's theme, he is aware of and often
leads up to its bearing on this matter.
The poet's approach to, and interest in, this
theme are then cordial and deep. But it will be
well, before examining the poems in which directly
or indirectly he treats the theme, to make still
clearer his standpoint and aim, and our purpose in
the study of this group of poems, and of certain
poems related to them. We do not wish here to
treat the philosophy or the theology of human
immortality. We do not propose to handle these
poems as a plea or as a polemic on the grave and
great theme that is central to some of them, and
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
303
important in others we shall deal with. We must,
of course, touch points both of the philosophy and
the theology of the question. And we do not
disguise the strong interest the points of argument
and interpretation have in relation to the value
of the old hope for the life and heart of man.
But our main purpose is apart from any formal
doctrine or dogmatic position as to a "future life."
Our object is to make a free study of those parts
and ideas of this poetry which bear on the ques-
tion in its larger and essential meaning. The
words often used to state the question, and the
issues raised, are apt to carry meanings poorer
than this poet's thoughts and narrower than his
aim. The old words, " Immortality" and "Future
Life," do not well or sufficiently express it. It is
a question essentially of man's spiritual quality
and scope.
It is a question rather of the range,
growth, and fulfilment of life, and of the high and
precious aims of men, than of continued existence
or of deathlessness. It is study of literature and
matter of humanity that concern us first and most
-the substance, outlook, and ideas of this poetry
as they bear upon a true and sufficient conception
of the life of man.
Now, what are the grounds and what is the scope
of the poet's interest in this question that has had
so much interest for him? It will make that ques-
tion and the significance of Browning's work upon
it clearer if we recall certain principles of art. And
first, art, like philosophy, must be deeply human.
Made by and for man, it must find its centre and
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deeper ground in man's mind and experience. It
must interpret life and the world from man's point
of view. A purely objective art, we have said, is
as impossible as a purely physical philosophy.
Thought and imagination must work from the
same standpoint, with the same scope, in this
regard. In other words, the higher problem of
art is the problem of thought as stated by Hegel
-to reconcile "nature" and "spirit," to interpret
both spiritually, and let us say humanly.
Humanity and spirituality, then, we require in
the art and in the thought that shall express our
sense of things, our thought of ourselves. More
than ever we are aware of an outer and an inner
world. At the dawn of modern culture, and in
revolt from a partial and crude inwardness, men
sought the outward scope and joy, and this
has been emphasised by the growth of the world
and of knowledge ever since. But a simple out-
wardness, though possible as a reaction at the
Renaissance, and though it has seemed, for reasons.
indicated, possible to many since, is not really
possible to the modern spirit. The growth of
thought, as well as the "Christian consciousness,"
stand in the way of that. Whether we can, as
some think, reach a truer ideal
ideal and a fuller
interpretation of life or not, it is certain we can
only now do so as we front the whole nature of
man. Our ideal and interpretation must satisfy
all man has become.
And Browning's art stands the test of such
principles. The mere fact that he has dealt with
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305
the question at present before us as he has done
proves that he has the required scope. More
fully than any poet of our time, he has presented
this question as a true part of his study of man,
and it is there we come on the ground of his
interest in it. It is part of his vital dramatic
work. His interest is in all the facts of thought
or passion, of belief or desire, that belong to the
matter in the first place. Then, not resting on
the facts, and certainly not in any opinions about
them, both as poet and thinker he seeks out what
they may really tell of man's nature.
It is because he has taken man for his theme
and man's soul for his field that he deals with
these beliefs and desires. He comes to them as
dramatist and also as dramatic thinker, that
through them he may know man, and that he
may, if possible, throw light on that greatest of all
questions the meaning and scope of the soul itself.
But just what, you may very well ask, is meant
by the phrase "a dramatic thinker"? and what is
that problem exactly which you say offers itself
to Browning as such a thinker? Let me answer
both questions so necessary in the study of this
poet, and not least in connection with the theme
now before us for frank and full consideration.
By a "dramatic thinker," then, we mean one who
not only seizes the facts concretely, and in their
place in life, but one who so grasping them is
urged on by his interest in them, and by his way
of regarding them, to the question of what they
really tell of the nature and power of man. He
K
20
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sees the facts of passion and thought, of desire
and belief, in their place and at their play in the
field of life-in the world of man, and he does
not take them merely by themselves, but also in
relation to the man, and to the hidden whole of
his life—or, as we put it, to the meaning and
scope of the soul-" the man as God sees him."
That is the largest and most significant aspect
of the question in Browning's poetry as we read it,
and it is perhaps the deepest question present in
his poetry as a whole. The whole of his work tends
to that question. Its depth and suggestiveness
spring from his grasp of that question, from his
sense of its large meaning, from his power of
placing his facts against it as a background, or
in relation to it as a clue to what men think and
seek and are. His studies of character, his studies
of passion, his studies of art, as well as his studies
of belief show this "Sordello," "Luria," " Easter
Day," show it; his studies of life in the "Gram-
marian" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra,” and his studies
of art in “Abt Vogler." Thus the beliefs and
large wishes of men, so trivial to some wise people,
have immense interest for him-as human facts
and products, and so as revelations of the soul.
And it is at this point, and in relation to this
question, that we see more fully the reason for
that profound interest in Christian ideas of which
we spoke. He finds there the deepest and highest
idea of man. Christianity has been the creator
of the spirit. The Christian faith and the Christian
centuries have developed the greatest of spiritual
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307
promises and ideas-emotions and ideas that have
deepened and enriched the consciousness of man,
so as to have penetrated all art and all thought
with its own quality. And Browning has realised
that divine spirit-that great idea-as perhaps no
poet has done since Dante. His work rests upon
it. And what is the meaning of this? Does it
mean that, like Dante, the poet accepts this idea
as a definite and final solution of the mystery of
the soul? So far as his poetry is concerned, we
would not put it so, though we take it he would say
it has put man on the eternal way-has thrown
open for him the divine scope of his life. And
the grand use of the idea in his art and in his
dramatic study of man is the way in which it
reads for him the meaning and explains the powers
of human nature. The facts and problems of the
soul and of life are lightened by such a principle;
and if the moral facts of the world do not actually
warrant such a faith, these facts are not only more
tolerable, they are far more intelligible on such a
basis. The human problem is more thinkable.
And man's development has made this faith not
less, but in some great sense even more necessary.
Christianity not only planted in the general heart
the idea of "eternal life," but an idea of man and
an ideal of life which made that great idea of
eternal life "credible. And the growth of man's
spirit and thought has only given it fuller mean-
ing. The things men desire and their conception
of the universe are very different from what they
were, but the passion and scope of the modern
CC
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mind are really greater and more exigent than
ever, as "Hamlet" and " Faust," as Goethe no
less than Carlyle, shows. And Browning, as our
dramatist of the soul, presenting its facts and
seeking for some symbol of its secret, has thrown
this out, has expressed this greatly-finding in
Christian ideas the best and most sufficient prin-
ciple of interpretation of life and the heart.
Turning to the poems to find what the poet
has to give on his theme, you will find two kinds
of poems bearing upon it-those in which it is
touched only, and those in which it is the chief
or only subject. We can but glance at the first
class, though some of them throw much light on
our theme.
"Pauline" depicts a "soul" with something of
the large longing of Shelley, "Sun Treader” of
that poem, and the strange inadequacy they are
apt to give their lives. This man has missed his
way, missed the love he needs and knows, and
yet, ending by confession of and surrender to love,
he ends "happy, free from doubt, or touch of
fear," because, as we read him, he takes love's way
to be life's way, and he can trust love for ever.
In "Paracelsus" we have a rich and capable
mind to a great extent wasted, as regards this
life. He has wandered, and searched, and dared,
and sinned. He learns wisdom, as too many
have done, when the time and power to use it are
gone. Can that, then, be "attainment "—to see
the light of life, and fade into a darkness on which
nor sunlight nor starlight will ever break? No!
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
309
The gains of life, which are its end and use, are
not scattered on barren fields of death. They
surely belong to the soul, and live with it, and the
soul's grasp of and care for them, finest and firmest
at the last, is its pledge of “life to come.”
The close of "Paracelsus" thus means, from
our present point of view, that the ideal passions
of the soul, the size of its problems, the long and
splendid evolution of life, the drift of its discipline,
the still expanding grasp of man, learning through
error, winning through defeat, the eternal quest
and promise at the heart of life-all of these assure
Paracelsus that the good passionately sought
by such minds as his will somewhere be found.
And so he clasps God's lamp of hope to his
breast as he sinks into the darkness, sure that
some day he will "emerge."
The bearing of "Sordello" is the same. The
poet's career is a "failure," and yet the light in
his dying eyes is of "triumph." True, in his
narrow way, to the soul, he found at length its
freedom and hope. Much of the point of "Sor-
dello" is this, and most pertinent to our present
theme, that it is the whole that satisfies us—not
time, but eternity. The spirit's quality is "ab-
solute." The partial circumstances and opportun-
ities of life satisfy us only as we break beyond
them into the infinite of the soul. That is the
meaning behind all conscience-the scope behind
all duty. He only lives truly, even here, who
learns to break a way into the spiritual. We
spend, indeed, much of this life in learning and
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achieving that. Surely we do not learn it only to
lose all use for it so soon as death makes appear.
Thus we get both in "Paracelsus" and in
"Sordello" a strong sense of the way in which, in
certain lives, at least, the problems of conscience
and culture run out beyond this life, by the depth
and character they give life, and by other facts.
which carry us beyond it, not to explain the
situations in which men very often find themselves,
but the nature they find within them-the powers
life unfolds but does not fulfil, the ideals that are
grasped and left quite unrealised.
(C
Saul," we have seen in our study of that
poem, is full of these ideas: (1) that there are
natures that only an Infinite Power can rouse,
only the wealth of an infinite good, conditions
that only such power and good can reach and
recover; (2) that what rouses man to the height
and power of his nature is likely to be true and a
measure of reality. And the bearing of these
principles, if they may be accepted on our present
theme, is direct and close. They are an argu-
ment for the higher hope where hope seems.
hardest.
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​The argument," again, of the "Grammarian's
Funeral" on our theme is patent. His passion for
It is of the
knowledge is no "fad" of his merely.
mind's ideal—it is of the very build of mind, so
to speak, and the willingness, nay, the vital impulse
driving the scholar, to "sacrifice" so much of life in
the high service of that ideal, surely infers a kosmos,
an ordered system of life, that will find use for
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311
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and give scope to such souls as this of the scholar.
And there is other matter, there are other points
bearing on our topic in the "Grammarian.” The
poet boldly infers that those who trust the larger
scope, the far ideal, and do not clutch at the
moment's gains, are the nobler. They do the
higher service,-they enrich with wider aims and
nobler works the life of humanity, and the world
knows what it knows and is where it is largely
through them. And the question presses, are
they to be sacrificed to build up the good and
achieve the work of humanity? But that is not
all. He implies that they are in themselves, and
not merely in their uses, the nobler. They live
best, most wisely, who live so. They catch the
divine way and fit the large manner of the world.
They catch the aims and think the thoughts of
God-they guide the way of all progress. Are
they, for that reason, to "fall out," and miss "the
land they saw afar off"? or is it enough to have
seen it? The "Grammarian's" passion for know-
ledge is from the mind's own ideal, and tells better
than earthly opportunity the soul's orbit.
Browning's "Love Poems," such a poem, for
example, as "Evelyn Hope," and the depth and
quality of the passion, and what we may call its
vital function, as our poet reads it,-all this has
bearing on our present theme. For what is the
use of love?-to develop the soul. And what is
the deeper idea and spiritual ground of these
poems for the poet-the idea, so puzzling to some,
so startling to others, the idea that the soul's
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inmost passion means and requires not one life,
but, it may be, a series of lives rising through
much and long experience to a full glad life at
length; or, say, rising through all experience
ever nearer that ideal in which is life's fulfilment
-that ideal to which love is the best clue, and of
whose realisation it is the assurance, since, born of
the deepest and holding of the best in us, it is
part of the order through which we live.
Then "Abt Vogler," interpreting the scope of
music, reads the scope of the soul.
It is partly
the note of "Saul." "Thy power can fill the
heart, thy power expands." "There shall never
be one lost good." "On earth the broken arcs;
in the heaven a perfect round." "All we have
willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good shall exist."
All high passions and aims are a "music sent up to
God," which He hears, which we shall hear in full
by and by. And the failures of the sincere and
the true are never final, but "a triumph's evidence
for the fulness of the days" to be in God's time.
The passion of noble souls, the aspiration of the
infinite within the finite-of the divine in human
hearts, is the evidence of its divinity and the
promise of its fulfilment. For life's system is set
to a great music-with a sweep and a harmony
which we cannot catch now, but will catch some
time.
"Old Pictures in Florence," as ethical criticism,
rests, as we shall find, on the Christian and
spiritual idea of life. Even more in life than in
art, limited perfection passes-is doomed by its
#.
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
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very "perfection" to fade and pass. Spirit is in
the nature of it ideal,-the ideal is never realised,
but only approached. It thus asks "for ever,"
and opens for the natures that need it really the
spaces of eternity. And this is an æsthetic
because it was and is a moral truth.
The absolute ethics of our poet in such idyls as
"Pheidippides," in such poems as "Hervé Riel,"
declaring that goodness and right are their own
sufficing reward, implying that he who does the
right and loves the good, even though he suffer,
and even though he die for doing so, "does very
well for himself," in Whitman's phrase, may seem
to dispense with immortality. But does it? Sup-
posing we put it thus, and say that the "reward
of such lives is not only the consciousness of doing,
but the fuller power to do, right, it will then stand
as in the promise of the Gospels, will it not?
Your reward is in "heaven" and with God, in
the love and vision of the perfect right and good,
in the “heaven" of a purely perfected nature and
will.
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And that, indeed, is the point of the "Patriot,"
-with bearing thus on our present theme,-men
have not rewarded the true patriot. He is safer
so, for the soul is then left freer, purer, for the
divine and essential reward-the reward of a life
that fulfils life to its height, and fills it with the
fruits of its own high principles.
(C
Apparent Failure" also touches our theme,
and throws light upon it from the heart. It
declares we have seen our poet's faith that there
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is not, that there cannot be, any absolute failure.
What God loved once and made, and blessed,
cannot be wholly cursed! That were to say
that there "the system"
system" somehow fails-
love, reason, power exhausted in vain the
whole broken down at that point in that case?
No, he says-
My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretcht;
That after Last returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched.
That clearly will take more lives than this, and
to that hope for such cases the poet pledges his
heart!
When we come to the poems in which our
theme is more expressly found, we have two
groups to be considered.
First, three poems in
which it is part of the matter or design of the
poem; then two in which it is the main purport
and almost sole matter. In the first group are
"Cleon," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and the "Epistle of
Karshish"; in the second, "Easter Day," and
"La Saisiaz."
There is other matter in "Cleon." It is a
dramatic study of later Greek life and thought,
expressive in that respect, with style and feeling
finely adapted to its theme; but the point it leads
up to is the contrast between the attainment of
Greek culture and the promise and power of
Christianity on the ground of the spirit. The
results of Greek life are shown, its love of wisdom
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315
and beauty, its care for art, its love of pleasure,
its ideal of earthly success and satisfaction, its
final decay and despair.
The form of the poem is that of a letter from
Cleon, poet, artist, and thinker, to Protus, the king.
Protus had sent the poet princely gifts, and a
letter asking him how he faced death, which drew
on for both. Protus thought that Cleon, having
works to leave behind him, must meet the close
better than he could. What thinks Cleon? He
will tell his thought and feeling fully. And what
is it? A sense of discouragement, non-fulfilment,
and fear of death. And how is this for the man
who gathers up and perfects in himself the powers
and results of Greek culture? He gives the king
the reason of it. He has made the works Protus
has heard of, and is master of the arts.
He can
do both more and less than the men of the earlier
days. He has greater variety; they had greater
force. And it is clear that both work and life
were more to them than they are to Cleon. And
what is the secret of the evil? It is found, he
says, in self-consciousness and man's power of
reflection. For thus man not only became aware
of himself and of the joy he had, but of a world
of capability for joy that he could not gratify.
With the birth of self-conscious thought the desire
of man grew indefinitely, while the power of
enjoyment was reduced by this very growth.
The soul became the life, and yet without the
power to find satisfaction. The animal life was
limited, and so perfect in its way. The soul,
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freed from those limits, becomes painfully aware
of its own limited powers.
Life's inadequate to joy:
A man can use but a man's joy, while he sees God's.
We see the wider but to sigh the more ;
Most progress is most failure.
He agrees with the king. But the king would
say, Surely there is joy in making these works
and leaving them to men, and living in them after
death? Not so, writes Cleon. That after-life of
the worker in his work and through his influence
is a shadowy thing. The man is gone, though
the work remains. And, in truth, the poet is
worse and suffers more than other men; for, with
larger power and keener desire, he often gets less.
of life than they, and he is more aware of its
limits and defects.
It is so horrible that from a sheer sense of
need he almost dares imagine there must be
another life, where this infinite passion and the
pain of unsatisfied hearts should give place to
satisfaction and a due balance of desire and
capability. And he takes the image of the
butterfly as a possible suggestion of what may be.
But no; since it has not been revealed it is not
possible, for were it so Zeus must have told us.
In this case all that can be done is to make the
most of life while it lasts-to "live long and die
happy," glad for what has been. And he ends
with a sneer at Paul, regarding whom Protus had
made inquiry. He knows nothing of him except
that he is a barbarian Jew, and not at all likely
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317
to have the grand secret of that other life, of
which Protus above all things wanted to know.
That is all Cleon can see of it. It is the "joy-
hunger," the sense of contradiction between the
larger desire and the limited life of man, that
urges him to a surmise, not to a hope, of an after-
life. Greek, is it, though not of the best Greek
thought, and selfish-issue of a philosophy whose
worst charge against life was that it did not give
"joy" enough. It is Greek thought, not of the
era when life was great, but of the decadence. It
reflects the weariness and discouragement of
pagan life on the edge of the Christian era-part
of those moods to which Christianity appealed
with its "sanguine sunrise" of faith and hope.
But is there not something deeper in the argu-
ment than the tone and phrases of Cleon grasp?
When the "joy-hunger" becomes a hunger, not
of the senses, but of the man, not a cry for
pleasure, but a cry for the just fulfilment of the
soul, it has then gained a higher and fuller value]
We take next part of a poem already taken in
part on another theme, though not then in its last
section. The first part is a survey of life; its
last section, of life's close and sequel. In it you.
find another type of thought and another ideal of
life, and the bearing of these on a question of a
further life to develop the uses of this is very
forcibly presented. We refer to " Rabbi Ben Ezra,"
where are set forth the rabbi's views and hopes in
regard to the life after death. Cleon is Greek;
Ben Ezra is Hebrew. To Cleon life should mean
**** ____""__^="
SEE DAY
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fulfilment of man's thirst for joy and beauty. To
Ben Ezra life is discipline-a divine education, a
training and unfolding of the man for divine uses.
Progress of the soul in insight and in power; the
amount and worth of the man himself,—that is
the test, as it is the end, of life. Life must not
be judged even by the work done, by external
and tangible results; but by the more essential
and real results that develop and make will and
wisdom. All external things, both deeds and
circumstances, change and pass. The living man
abides, and the function of all circumstance, and
even of all duty, seems to be to fashion and
mature the soul. To Ben Ezra life does not seem
All ex-
adequate to fulfil the soul's purposes. We only
learn how and what to do, and find ourselves on
the verge with faculty matured, wisdom and skill
gained. Can it be, then, that death steps in just
to undo and waste all that? Can it be that,
having fashioned the cup on the wheel with pains
and success, the potter will but break it? To the
thought of Ben Ezra that is incredible.
perience seems to declare that life works to a
certain end-that end, both to reason and con-
science, implies a goal and uses beyond—and
upon that life he throws himself with confident
hope. "Not down, but up" you must look-
that must be the soul's path. Higher uses for
which this life has surely prepared. And he sees
the feast, and the Master's joy in the cup He has
fashioned and will use. Done with earth's wheel,
what he seeks now is the closer, finer touch of
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
319
God, and that sphere of highest uses which must.
be the complement and explanation of earthly
experience.
This is a higher strain-that hunger and thirst
of the soul after righteousness which we have been
told is blessed. Blessed! how? why? Because,
whatever may happen, it is the highest thing? the
best for man here and everywhere? Or blessed
also because it shall be filled and satisfied-be-
cause the order of life is finally in its favour?]
The force of the special argument of Ben Ezra
will, of course, depend on the strenuousness and
vigour of the moral nature—on the freshness and
zeal of the soul, so to speak; but if the order of
things be moral, the argument is good.
In the next poem
we take the matter is
approached from quite another point of view.
In "Cleon" we see the futility of longing based
on the lower view of life. Cleon did not dare to
hope. And yet at that very time there were
hearts quick and large with this very hope. It
is matter of history that Christianity gave an
immense impulse to the idea and faith of a life
beyond life and after death. This new and vivid
faith is illustrated in certain Gospel stories-
stories of men raised from the dead. The story
of Lazarus as given in the Gospel of St. John is
the most detailed and striking of these. Brown-
ing had read and dwelt on that story, was fascin-
ated and interested, as thinker and poet, in certain
aspects of it, and his impressions are recorded in
the "Epistle of Karshish." Like "
Like "Cleon," it is a
-
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ROBERT BROWNING
course.
dramatic study, as well as a study of our present
theme; we take it only in the latter sense.
Karshish is an Arab physician, who has come
into Palestine to gather facts bearing on his
researches and pursuits. He writes an account
of what he gathers to Abib, his master in the
medical art. He has in his wanderings come to
Bethany and found Lazarus, and he gives an
account of this strange case. This man says he
was dead-dead four days; was brought back to
life by a certain Nazarene, a physician of course,
and he has since lived for many years in the most
perfect health. Dead he could not have been, of
It was a long trance—a case of epilepsy—
so complete that it has led to a "mania." Still, that
physician must have had strange powers to heal so
completely. And the man really looks and lives
as if he had been dead-had seen some great life
beyond the bourne of death, and had come back
with its ineffaceable impression upon him. He
is dreamy, withdrawn, fantastical, with hidden
fountains of light and passion within, and strang-
est ways of taking common things. Of course,
the whole case is only a curious case of madness,
and Karshish apologises for making so much of
it, and turns from it to certain trivial discoveries
of a professional sort, as much more important
for his master. Still he is fascinated-is uncer-
tain as to the adequacy of his explanation; and
that Nazarene who wrought the cure must have
been himself an uncommon man and a great
physician, not only working cures like this, but
ma
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
321
speaking strange things-strange new things
about God and the divine love.]
And we must admit that the case would have
been strangely interesting, if Lazarus could have
been met nearly forty years after the event re-
corded by St. John. But it is not the historical
case the poet is set upon; that merely puts his
mind in motion on his problem, and gives him
a setting for it.
And the problem is this. If a man should
die, and rise again and return to the uses and
limits of earth for years, what would be the effect
of it on the man and on his life? It would
destroy his moral balance and his interest in life;
it would incapacitate him for action, for judgments
really fit and practical. Most events and things
would seem so little, and he would so far have
lost that sense of proportion among things, that
wise action would be impossible. The things of
the soul itself would alone seem important. Tell
a man, who had gone through such an experience
and reached the conviction it would give him,
that his child was dying, and your words would
not move him; but let him see the least signs of
evil in the child, and he would be strangely moved.
He must, in fact, live with so strong and vivid a
sense of the unseen universe and the final relation
of things to that, that he would judge and act,
not with reference to the sphere he was living in,
but with reference to the invisible-a mode of
action that could only perplex his conduct with.
reference to earthly duty. His impulses and
21
„
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ROBERT BROWNING
}
principles belong to the unseen, his tasks and
actions to the seen. And his submission to the
divine will has a quality of awe and prostration.
He does not even care to proclaim his faith
learned from the Nazarene, in spite of the strange
importance it has for him, for he has seen how
truth must prevail. And yet he is not cold or
apathetic; on the contrary, he is kind and loving
cares very gently even for the birds and the
flowers. And he is indignant at the folly and sin
of men, as if he saw its madness from some
height far above our common life.
The leading idea here is an idea most character-
istic of Browning, and to which he recurs, perhaps,
more frequently than any other; and the aspect
of it that is found in this poem is nowhere put
so clearly. A man who had come back from the
dead would be out of place in life. The mistake
of Sordello would be a necessity for one in the
position of Lazarus. For a wise and proportioned
conduct of this life, we must not be too conscious
of the spirit and its ideals. For the moral con-
duct of this life, we must not be too sure of a
life beyond. Certainty about a life to come, and
CC
sight" of that life, would put most things in
this life out of place, and render duty impossible.
The position in which we actually find ourselves is
as necessary to the uses and conduct of life, as it
is to the moral quality and activity of faith. There
is here a truth many of us cover over by a host of
unreal words affecting a certainty about that "un-
seen world" such as we cannot honestly have,
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
323
such as would not be good for us if we were in
earnest about things. Let us understand the
conditions and limits of life; let us be sincere and
wise. Let us live and judge by the best stand-
ard of earthly duty, and not affect impossible
elevations. But this, you may think, is the
principle of Blougram, and agrees with his worldly
realism. It is to avoid the mistake of Sordello,
and the Grammarian, and Lazarus, but only by
keeping too firm a hold of this life, and letting the
next take thought for the things of itself. But that
were to make the positions alternative and choose
the lower. And that is not Browning's sugges-
tion, nor is it the temper and bearing of his thought.
We must live with a due regard for both sides of
life-for the ideal and universal, as for the real and
temporal, for the seen as for the unseen; keeping
well in view the sphere of duty as of divine rela-
tions and truths, and modestly testing all principles
and truths through that wise service through which
only they can be realised or even known by us
We now come to the first of the poems in
which our present theme is the one theme,
"Easter Day." It belongs to the middle period
of Browning's work, the time that followed " Men
and Women," the early married years in Florence.
It has poetic qualities of the earlier, and intellectual
qualities of the later, work. It is dramatically
conceived, and often vivid in conception and
statement, and yet so subtle and elaborate is it
that for many readers it is difficult, or impossible.
As in the companion poem, "Christmas Eve,"
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ROBERT BROWNING
the choice of theme and strain of thought were
no doubt influenced by his wife's devout and
ardent yet liberal Christianity, and by the discus-
sions then going on among scholars as to the
facts of Christian history. The poem ought there-
fore to be read on some reference to the "Leben
Jesu" of Strauss, and beside those poems of Arnold.
and Clough that touch the same questions.
The question of the historical evidences for the
resurrection of Jesus, of the grounds and value of
Christian belief in that event, had been fully
opened, and was bewildering many minds nour-
ished in the Christian tradition. The debate had
indeed, in many minds (cf. Clough and Arnold,
in loc.), gone so far as to have set aside those parts
of the Christian story.
It is characteristic of Browning's approach to
and treatment of such questions that he only
glances at the above question, grave as it seemed
to many thoughtful minds just then. That is not
the question the Christian Easter-tide raises in
his mind. His question is not of history and
difficulties as to facts long ago. It is a question
of life, and difficulties as to the standard and
conduct of that.
The poem is in fact, as its title implies, a study,
in a certain way, of that idea and hope of which
Easter is the symbol and the festival. Untroubled
by the doubts, and not greatly concerned as to
the evidences above referred to, the poet is pro-
foundly interested in the Christian idea and hope
in its relation to life and the soul. He saw there
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
325
a theme congenial to his kind of dramatic research,
or, as it may seem here, of psychological drama.
Thus, in an atmosphere troubled by the problem
of satisfactory evidence for a unique and moment-
ous event, the poet set himself to test within the soul
the inner worth and true meaning of the idea of
life involved in Christian belief. In other words,
his test of the credibility of human immortality
is not the proof of any physical event, but its fit-
ness for the life, its value for the soul of man.
Immortality is credible, and an after-life natural, if
the principles and passions of the mind make it
possible to require it, if a “divine life" be the right
and good life always. So in "Easter Day" the
soul is set in action, and it is dramatically shown.
how the spirituality and greatness of the mind
and heart appear to affirm and require the scope
of such a faith; or, if the dramatic point of view
be more rigidly regarded, the vital process of the
Christian ideal is presented within this particular
soul. The difficulty and greatness of the ideal
are most forcibly shown, and the fact that, how-
ever difficult of application in life, it is the only
ideal that satisfies certain souls, and is involved
in all their desires and thoughts.
In harmony with this, the poem opens with the
moral question, the depth of which it is to show,
"How hard it is to be a Christian." And from
that point a dramatic argument starts as between
two minds—one representing reason and worldli-
ness; the other, faith and spiritual earnestness.
And it is the believer who in this case feels the
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ROBERT BROWNING
difficulty, because the difficulty is not a difficulty
about Christian writings or beliefs, but the vital
one of being really a Christian. The difficulty, in
fact, is not intellectual; it is moral-the difficulty
of realising the idea honestly in life. And if it be
said that this is a matter of course, since every
task and purpose has a degree of difficulty, if you
apply yourself earnestly to its full accomplishment,
he replies that there is something special in this-
something that makes it harder than is the case
with other aims. It is higher and greater, shall
we say, and for that reason harder? It is great
and high, but that is not really the heart and
ground of its difficulty. Perhaps it is, then, that
God fixed it so made it harder than other duties?
That is a mere "perhaps," and explains nothing;
only the fact is clear, whatever its cause-the
duty is hard, and its hardness increases as you
go on, and become more fully aware, not simply
of the greatness of the duty and of its relation
to life, but of its proper grounds; its want of that
absoluteness which so many suppose it to have.
But this looks like putting the matter the wrong
way. The difficulty, surely, is to really believe;
only believe, and you can do what else you are
required to do. Let a man be sure that it is
God's will about him he should be a Christian, and
that this command is enforced by an eternity of
joy or pain, and he will have motive enough for
obedience, will he not? This looks a plain issue
and a simple case.
But the case is not, and
cannot be, like that. It is true enough, from one
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
327
point of view, that "could we joint this flexile,
finite life once tight into the fixed and infinite
life," it were easy to spurn the earthly life; only
the essential choice cannot be made so. Your
choice must be made on grounds proper and vital
to the question-must be morally pure and free, so
to say.
A choice made on such cogent reasons
would leave the will non-moral, the heart un-
spiritual, and would destroy the discipline and the
worth of life.
And anyhow you cannot do that. We have not
this positive knowledge and certainty. We have
only faith and moral evidence, and, seeing that so
much of life goes by that kind of evidence, and so
many things take their value from it, cannot we
take the will of God and our higher obligations
on the same grounds? This seems fair. But
surely, though this kind of "faith" may be fit for
man's ways and affairs, it can hardly be the
method of God. He should go by more exact
laws. But this, again, is only a guess in the dark,
and is even wide of the facts. For look at the
world, in which you have the works and method.
of God, and what do you see there? Everything
so plain and certain? Can you build your con-
clusions into so perfect an order? Or are the
greatest points there too often obscure? They
are. And what then? Here our man of plain
sense and commonplace faith is not very sure of
his ground. A scientific faith is "absurd," he
allows, for it would defeat faith's end; but we
must, he thinks, at least have a rational, that is a
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ROBERT BROWNING
clear, probability. On the strength of that he could
do all that is required. Men often, on very slight
motives, practically "renounce the world." One
man devotes his life to completing his list of
Coleoptera, and another surrenders all objects in
life besides, that he may have for his own
grignon with the regent's crest."
CC a
Probability will do, then; and all that is required
is to renounce the world in the sense you imply?
In that case the matter seems to have become
easy. If you wish to be a Christian you can find
"evidences" of the kind you desire, no doubt-
evidences to confirm what you wish. You look
for the "external" sort, and find, say, a mummy
scrap proving Moses really lived, or you explain
the story of Jonah and the whale; or you seek
the "internal" sort, and find the human heart
made exactly for the creed you incline to. Only
what then? How does this help you to the
Christian temper and ideal? You believe, what
is called belief, but has your belief given you any
new moral power ? Are you less worldly for it?
Can you now in heart and will give up the world?
You might, perhaps, if the crude, impulsive way
of asceticism were the way to do it; if it could
be done once for all, and under some excitement.
But you won't do that; you will find arguments
ready for an easier way. You will make it a piety
to enjoy the good things, and go on in the old
way of the world, only with gratitude to God for
His gifts.
But can that be all? and how, if it be, are we
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
329
+
to understand the tremendous facts of Christianity
as they are usually understood and "received"?
Did all that is said to have happened, happen only
to give a reason for so much temperance and
restraint as should make pleasure safer in the end
-life continuing on the same level, and seeking at
heart the same ends? Can that be a reasonable
view of the great history-a result proportioned
to it? It cannot be. And, besides, there are
certain words that put other commands very
plainly on "Christians." You will now say,
"Take the safe side and deny yourself. It has
been done so often that it can't be very hard, and
there seems reason to do it." "Yes," says faith,
in all this, seeming to turn upon shallow and
commonplace religion, that finds these precepts of
renunciation easy because none of its words are
real, and none of its precepts are realised- yes,
it is very well to say that; but how if, after all,
death be the end, and we throw life away upon
a vain hope? It is easy to give up if the gain be
clear or your faith strong, but how different when
neither is the fact! Your friend of the Coleoptera.
gave up his way of giving up; but he had his
beetles, and for him that seemed much. How
if I should renounce, and still renounce, and then
have only death-the shadow?
"
(C
And what is the true reply to that, both frank
and brave? This only that the gain cannot be
proved; but, whatever happen, we have "saved the
soul" by choosing the higher part, as such, and
on its own grounds. Now, to make such a choice
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ROBERT BROWNING
must be hard, and the difficulty does not lie in
belief, but in the ideal quality and obligation of
the Christian life.
Thus we have returned upon the point at which
our argument began, and now the friend who
would like to make a middling "best of both
worlds" is made uneasy by such thoughts, though
he does not see how to meet them, and he com-
plains. What is the good of making the matter
so hard? Why not leave him his "hopes" and
his easy view of life? Because," answers the
earnest man, "blind' hopes may be false and
are hurtful. They may spice the meal of life, but
disguise the fact and issues of it and hide its bitter
close." But no faith with any depth or truth in
it can consent to be used that way, and no man
with any sincerity could be put off on that issue.
And then, to make clear that he means all he says,
and has felt in his own mind its full force, he
relates an experience and crisis of his own life, so
vivid that it seemed a thing outside him—an
experience in which the depth and nature of
life's choice were disclosed to him with startling
power.
((
And it is here you find the dramatic situation
of the poem.
Two friends are together one
Easter Eve. One of them is in the habit of
watching through the Easter night, pondering the
meaning of its story and hope; and he does
this because of a strange and solemn thing that
happened to him just three years ago. He was
crossing the common that night, thinking of the
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
331
Easter-tide and its meaning, and he asked himself
gravely the question as to what that story meant
for him, what its faith really was to him; whether,
in simple, inward truth, it was anything at all.
This kind of directness and honesty, he says, had
in other things always been his habit; even as a
child he would know the fact, for good or ill.
And as he examined himself, common sense,
which looks to the outsides and customs, and has
but a low ideal, encouraged him to take a flattering
view of the case. He made progress on the whole,
and he believed in the main. Of course his
progress was not rapid, and with his knowledge
there were many things he couldn't be sure about.
But he'll reach the port, some day, and that is
enough. But he insisted against the Voice, is it
enough, this kind of Christianity, that at the most
means so little? and, with his habit of seeking
out the facts, he wishes it were clear. It will be
clear some day. Some final Easter morn, perhaps,
will bring in the great judgment in which he affects
to believe, and prove that this shallow dream has
been folly and loss, never life at all. This is said
or thought in a half-mocking way, but the word
"loss," with its note of threatening, provokes him,
and, with the remark that such talk is rather for
children than for men, he throws back his head in
a mood to give up the matter.
But the "debate" was only beginning. As he
threw back his head with a light laugh, the sky
seemed suddenly to become one blaze of fire, night
was gone and all the earth lit up, and the end of
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ROBERT BROWNING
the world seemed to have come, and that great
judgment, that a minute ago had seemed so far
away as not to concern him. The sense of this
burned all darkness from his soul too. Here was
the clear light he had affected to seek, disclosing
the inmost fact. He saw his choice; he knew
himself; he felt and understood his essential
worldliness. He had reasons for his choice, and
was very ready with them. The world was so
good, so fair, so near. He could not, in so short
a life, give it up at least, not wholly. That was
too hard; and he was going to give up some day,
and the command was not so plain or so exacting.
Surely at worst this cannot be so great a sin, or
merit a hell as its punishment.
Then the sky was ablaze again, and he heard a
Voice that said, "Life is done, and though art
judged"; after that, all looked as it had used to
look. He could not make it out. The world
gone, yet here; judgment past, and eternity
begun, and yet all things as in other days. It
must be a horrid dream. He tried to shake it
off, and was regaining quiet, when the Voice spoke
again beside him, and he saw now a Figure that
seemed the Angel of the Judgment-sombre and
vast, and its tone one of profound decision and
stern pity. He fell at its feet, and heard the
Voice declare the state of the case and the nature
of judgment. It declared the intense individuality
of judgment, and how judgment consists in the
revelation of the soul to itself, and in giving it
the fruits of its own choice. Judgment strips
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
333
away the shows and vain impressions of life;
God and the soul are the inner facts of a man's
life, alone. The test of man in the mortal life
arose from its mixed character. They chose well
who chose the spirit, because they knew it the
higher. While they who used the spirit only to
put a starry heaven far over earth, to give life zest
and finish, were earthly, not spiritual. So he did.
He chose the world; he has the world. It is his
to glut his sense upon it.
He did not feel it
This was his punishment.
so at first. He was glad to have the world and
all its treasures. But the austere Voice was
scornful. So soon and so easily satisfied! The
world you take for so much is but one rose out
of the summer's wealth of God's infinity, thrown
you out of the heaven from which you have shut
yourself by its choice. You have the world
indeed, but you are shut up to it and within it
by the conditions of your choice, and it must be
now unvisited by any gleams or depths of the
spirit you despised.
Yet all the world! He thinks there is enough
there for man-enough in its beauty and wisdom
and good. But the Voice again. The world is
indeed all, and more than you know; but the
whole of it is only a little part of God's fulness.
All the beauty of this world is but the promise
of the infinite beauty and good that are God.
They who choose this world take the part and
miss the Whole. And the world has no sub-
stance or meaning as you take it.
And now
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ROBERT BROWNING
we see the spirit is not and cannot for men be
shut out.
And this is how it is seen.
That thought of meaning and beauty beyond
the shows of sense touched the springs of the
spirit within. His trust was gone from mere
natural things. But there was art, where beauty
takes meaning from the mind and passion of man.
He will take art, and that will give joy and per-
manence to nature and to man-that is only the
beginning of new departures. The deeper thought
has only started, and it sinks deeper still, and
searches farther. He will take Greek sculpture
and Italy's painting. These will satisfy.
But the deeper thought awoke again-that far
searching of the soul of which the Voice is the
organ has begun and proceeds. The Voice spoke.
Take art; but art itself is the finest witness to a
beauty greater than art ever expressed. Art
seizes moments. The Whole is felt, imagined,
but never grasped. The very spirit of art is an
effort towards an ideal never reached. His best
works disappoint the artist himself. And he is
greater than his work. His mind is unexhausted,
and in good part unexpressed through his work.
Such spirits are our amplest evidence of the
things that remain beyond. Here they have
enough only for one stage. By use and mastery,
and by the soul itself, they reach on to the glory
of that fuller revelation-when, the world being
broken up, eternity shall let in upon them the
divine fulness. And so Art, being what it is,
seeking what it seeks, involves the soul.
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
335
There is still thought and science left-the
finer sense of things. He will take mind and
all its knowledge. That will break his bonds
and give meaning and reality to his world yet.
So he thinks. But even as he spoke he had a
sense of illusion in it, now that the end has come
and earth is all. Science needs a goal, and the
pursuit of knowledge is great part of its pleasure;
and besides, intelligence, as much as art, implies
the unseen Whole. The quest of truth carries us
to a "world of spirit," and its ideal is meaningless
if that world have no reality. The best minds, in
their best hours, have a sense of "gleams" that
come from a sun, and "sting with hunger for the
fuller light"-centre and source of all light.
With a kind of despair he now chooses love.
But even in doing so he feels that love has lost
its substance if earth be all. Men and women are
but masks, passing phases and moments of no
man knows what, and life a show, if there be no
soul in them. And how does the Voice beside
him take this final choice? It reminds him
severely how late his choice of love is; how he
had missed the meaning of the world's good-
the love of God in it-and had ignored the
highest revelation of love-the love of God in
Christ—as an incredible story, or a tale of man's
fancy. Nor does he know yet that love, above
all, must be divine and spiritual.
His devices are now spent, and earth has failed
him. The soul has tested itself upon its choice,
and has proved its vanity. To have all the world
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ROBERT BROWNING
and be shut within it, to be enclosed within time
and matter, is despair and death for the soul.
Better far the old life, with its sorrows and hind-
rances. Best of all the old life, with its trials and
duties and spiritual horizons. So he throws him-
self on God's mercy, and prays to have the "old
life again, if only he may go on and on, hoping
some eve to reach the better land."
king
The prayer was granted, and the poem closes
with some hints of how it all happened-a vision
the speaker had, or a dream that passed through
his mind, as he thought over these things intensely
that night three years ago. It was a new birth
for him, anyhow, and the truth then found
remains a spring of higher life to him every
way.
And what is that truth? The close of the
poem suggests the speaker's gratitude for a life
that tests the soul and keeps it from becoming
earthly, and he speaks as if his own temper and
ideal were somewhat timid and narrow. But the
poem itself suggests other and broader truths,
some of them very forcibly. The essential spiritu-
ality of all the higher things in the life and work
of man seems to involve "another life." Man's
use and enjoyment of this world depend on its not
being final.
Once shut a man within this world,
and he would discover that the limitation was
fatal to his proper life here; while man's art and
science, his poetry and philosophy, stretch inward
and upward to a perfection and a truth that
experience does not contain and yet suggests.
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
337
Man has, in fact, become aware of the spiritual
infinite. To restrict him within the limits of a
worldly choice or an earthly hope is to embark
on a career doomed to failure and futility. It is
no more possible to rest in the lower choice now
that the higher has been revealed. To prefer the
higher as such, to guide life in the spirit and by
the law of such preference, is not only duty but
well-being. It is no exterior command only; it
is a law of life.
But the poem and its train of thought may be
looked at from another point of sight. Many
people would like another life to follow this who
do not see or care what that means as to man's
nature, and who have no care for what it means
in regard to duty. They think of "going on,"
without seeing that the power to go on must rest
on greatness, and must imply a higher idea of life
altogether than many use. Only as man has
powers fitted for eternity can he expect eternal
life, and if he have the powers of an endless life,
his ideal of life now must be of the spirit. Look-
ing at the matter from this point of view, we may
put it thus that the divine and the infinite belong
to man, not as they are revealed to him, but as
they are revealed in him; and only as they are
revealed within him can man hope for or truly
desire the spiritual future of the Christian faith.
And from this standpoint may we not describe
this poem as an experiment of the soul on its own
highest beliefs to ascertain the inner principle on
which they must rest to be true, and to see how
22
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ROBERT BROWNING
L
they stand in relation to the life of man in this
world-to the working ideal of this life?
And how does this bear on the question with
which we found the poem open? That question
we found to be, not one about belief and the
evidences of the "resurrection "-the question
that would have been certain to arise in many
minds at such a time-but the question as to
the Christian ideal and its practicability in such
a life as man's. Where is its difficulty? In its
quality, as in its greatness, and in the "mixed
quality" of man's present life. And how is that
question solved in the poem? The speaker takes
a high tone, and has a fine scorn for compromise;
but he appears, as we said, to fall himself into a
narrow idea of matters at the close.
His own
"trial" lies towards worldliness, and he hopes yet
to "escape" with care. But that is not Brown-
ing's idea; and though it has been the temper
of many, it is not an ideal. Renunciation is
the method of that; but renunciation is not our
highest word, though it may often be our wisest
rule in given cases. It is certainly not Brown-
ing's temper or ideal, and so far as it is the
proper result of Christian ideas, and particularly
of the Christian doctrine of a future and purely
spiritual life, he would differ from it. In this
aspect "Easter Day" may be regarded as a
study of a type that he has only a partial
sympathy with a sympathy with the earnest-
ness and the spirituality and the resolve to take
the higher side, but not with the notion that one
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
339
must watch for very life to "escape" the world.
His own idea is more nearly expressed in the
words of the Voice than in the closing words of
the poem-
A world of spirit as of sense
Was plain to him, yet not too plain,
Which he could traverse, not remain
A guest in.
But this and other points in the general theme
we shall find in "La Saisiaz." This poem has
unique interest in its class, and among the poet's
works even. It is one of a small number of
personal poems, and its subject is taken directly
at a later point of the poet's life. It belongs to
1877, and was written because of an event that
touched the poet deeply in September of that
year. The poet, his sister, and a friend, Miss
Smith of Liverpool, the "A. E. S." of the dedi-
cation, had gone for an autumn holiday to La
Saisiaz, a quiet little place on the mountains near
Geneva. They were there in August and Sep-
tember, and Browning greatly enjoyed his visit.
until the shadow fell that gave birth to this poem.
He wrote at the time, "How lovely is this place,
and what wonderful views on every side, Geneva
lying under us, with its lake and plain bounded.
by the Jura, and our own Salève near us—the
peace and stillness so delightful. And here I sit
reading and reading Euripides." And then after
the bright weeks Miss Smith died very suddenly.
Browning was very susceptible to strong per-
sonal impressions from events like this. And
340
ROBERT BROWNING
thus the sad event, touching him so closely,
started again the old question, old as life, yet
new on every fresh occasion that impresses the
facts of life, and discloses the pathos and strange-
ness of death, while the questioning spirit of
the old master of life, whom he had been reading,
possibly gave tone to his thoughts.
The poem opens with account of the place, and
circumstances which gave rise to it. The moun-
tain scenery, the pleasures of climbing, the society,
the talk of the evening, and then the sudden
shadow that fell with the morning. Looking
for his friend by appointment, he found her dead,
"captured in death's cold for ever." They buried
her in a place protected by Salève, where not
even the village sports encroached upon the
silence, and there she has slept through two days.
The poet is leaving next day, finding the place
painful; but before leaving he has climbed Salève
again, as they meant doing together. As he
looks on the hills alone, and thinks of the quiet
graveyard and the strange distance now between
him and his friend, the question springs up, Where
is that friend? To that question he would dare
seek a true answer. They had talked of that
question of "the soul and a future life," only a
week ago, with a mild, remote interest. What
point the question has now, for this is now its
form! Did that friend, so dear and true, end
and pass away when she died, a tribute only to
the flowers and the moss, her very memory to
fade with the friends who knew her, and every
Nga
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
34I
trace of her earnest spirit to be as if she had never
been? and this all the comfort, that others live
and reach the fuller life, though we and all who
shared life with us are dead and gone? The
heart rebels against such a doctrine; but what
of that. The question is, What is the fact?
What may, in the full light of knowledge, be
justly held and honestly believed about it?
So he proceeds to the question in that spirit.
He sees these facts-the conscious mind and the
universe exist, the soul and God. How and
whence they are, he does not know. That they
are, he knows. He finds himself in a stream
whose source and end are equally hid from him.
He is, then; will he continue? He tries the
usual arguments in answer-God's goodness, uses
of the belief, human hopes. But with our experi-
ence the matter is not made clear that way. He
falls back on our ignorance and the narrowness of
our experience, a point and moment in an endless
series. We are, but what we are is unknown to
us. We know what pains or pleases us--so
much and no more.
But this can only give you
private judgment? That is all. "Knowledge
stands on my experience; all outside is surmise"
only. This ground clear, he states his judgment.
He cannot understand this world as a final divine
scheme; as a place where man is in process.
of training through good and ill, through pain.
and grief, it is more intelligible. But does it
serve this end so plainly? He sees death. Then
he sees, too, that death has its uses in life;
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ROBERT BROWNING
į
it gives zest to life, and that through pain men
learn sympathy, and that good and ill work
together for man's development; but the pro-
cess, as this world is made, cannot be right,
"If the harsh throes of the prelude die not off
into the swell of that perfect piece they sting me
to become a-strain for." We are, it seems, led
up to an expectation life does not meet. And
further, with so much sorrow and wrong in the
world, the question is forced upon him, Was
this the only way open? If it be of necessity,
he will try to bear it; but if it be of Divine
Will, from a Cause all-good, wise, and powerful,
then he would wish to see far better the reason
and good of it to make it square with such an
idea of God. In fact, with the world as it is,
and man's life in it, and man's mind, he can only
"acquiesce" if there be another life, and the “soul
may carry high through death her cup unspilled,"
all life's gains for further use and fuller life. This
is his judgment. But he does not hope to prove
that it is the solution of life's riddles, and a con-
solation for all the sorrows of men. He has no
wish to play the prophet's or the critic's part;
only, with the thousand failures of life in view,
he finds experience tolerable on that hypothesis.
And then the thought of his friend recurs, and
the cry of the heart against death-the longing
for renewal of friendship. But this is sentiment,
he says, and all his argument so far may seem
"surmise prepared to mutter hope, but also fear."
He would keep strictly by the facts. So he tests
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
343
the question another way-by the very law and
first principles of man's soul and conscience. He
has been looking at it in the light of the moral
inadequacy of life, and in the light of man's faith
in God; he will now test the belief in an after-
life by its fitness for man's conscience and for the
conduct of this life. Upon this solid ground he
argues the question out as between fancy and
reason, the soul standing arbiter between the two
to judge of the whole case. We condense and
arrange the debate between the two thus. You
say there is another life, likely, by a law of pro-
gress we see even in this world, to be a better;
then why prolong this one? What good does it
serve to go on with this twilight, if we may pass
into the day? We do so, it is said, by a divine
order which we break through at our peril-hell
for those who break, and heaven for those who
keep, the great command. But even if that com-
mand make us wait, it cannot make us live; and
if we know that life is yonder, not here, we cannot
really throw ourselves with zeal into this tem-
porary life.
But may we not do so if this brief
life take infinite value from its relation to that
greater life, if it prepare for that life, and if that
life be fixed by the decisions and conduct of this
life? That is not clear, for if we are sure of this,
and thus have overpowering reason for the higher
choice, does not our choice cease to be free, and
our conduct lose its value? Once fix your dogma
in man's nature, and do you not abolish moral
good and ill, and make this life a calculation of
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ROBERT BROWNING
养
​gain and loss only? Life, then, would have no
use for the soul, but only for the body? This
cannot be, of course, not with man's nature and the
- scheme of things as we know it. And so we are
thrown back on this side also upon uncertainty.
We cannot think the thing out in its full scope,
and reach intellectual assurance.
All we can
reach is a probability that fits in with experience
and the heart. But that seems precisely what we
need. By the conditions of life, as by the nature
of morality, life's ends would be frustrated by
certainty; they are served by hope.
This is the argument, put modestly and kept
deliberately in a low key, as if with a sense of
the greatness of the question, and the limited
value of all merely personal judgment on a
matter that involves the very constitution and
issue of life. But what, you may ask, is the
result the judgment of the soul, calm and large?
To the consideration of the great question you
may think nothing is here added. In a sense we
admit that. Nothing material is added to the
"argument for a future life," except in this way-
that you have the deliberate judgment of a highly
competent thinker, and one who has long con-
sidered the life and soul of man, that the best
solution of the riddle of most men's lives may be
found in the faith of another life. This is the
poet's deliberate judgment on a broad survey of
the moral facts of life. Its personal quality he
admits. Its interest and value on this ground his
readers will recognise. But this is not the main
Ag
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
345
bearing of the meditation recorded in the poem.
Its main points and most original "criticism" are
these the bearing of the faith in another life on
the conduct of this life; the reason for our un-
certainty in regard to the question. The first
point has been dealt with before, but never more
directly. So far as the doctrine of a life to come
damages or interferes with the effective conduct
of this life, it is hurtful, and must be somewhere
mistaken. The second question is the question
of this poem, and very pertinent to the theme
and to present hopes and fears regarding it. If
there be another life, why is not the question
made so clear that we need have no doubt about
it and may
use the fact" in this life? The
question, says the poet in effect, is just in that
state in which it ought to be for the spiritual good
of man.
He lives his life better so.
(C
And this connects "La Saisiaz" with a "Death
in the Desert," which in its own class has some-
thing of the personal quality of this poem, apply-
ing to the religious question as a whole the test
here applied to the question of a "future life."
It is greatly to the advantage of man's spiritual.
life-that is, of man's best life in this world-
that these questions should have the quality, the
uncertainty, they have; and the "end" of life is
not science, but spiritual fulness and power. And
this, let us say, is again an interpretation of the
facts of life, and the order of the world; no vain
attempt to get away from them in the direction
of rationalism or dogmatism of any sort,
14
346
ROBERT BROWNING
Of other and later poems that touch this ques-
tion of "Immortality
Immortality" we should wish to say
something.
"The Ring and the Book" is in its general
scope one of those large tragic statements of life,
which suggests the sad and strange inadequacy
of many lives, and some of the best, to fulfil the
spirit of life that is in them.
"Pompilia," for example. Can you call the
painful history of Pompilia "life," even if you
grant the development of soul through tragic
experiences and fatal circumstances?
And in regard to Guido, was not the pope
human as well as Christian when he suggested,
in regard to him, that the very use of death
might be to flash in upon him the vision of a
truth and duty he had not yet seen to thrill
him with the birth of a life he had not yet
known? And our poet finely suggests the pos-
sibility of that when, after all his "lies" in regard
to Pompilia, he makes the villain appeal for help,
mercy, to her, last and nearest of all-as if to
hint that deeper than his villainy was his sense of
the purity and goodness of the woman who had been
his wife. Strip off the lies and give this sense a
chance, and there is hope for the man, and a future!
The Epilogue to Dramatis Persona," with
its fine suggestion of a spiritual religion — a
religion that does not wait for any future state
to find God and grasp life-suggests, by that very
conception, the depth and spirituality of life, and
thus its range and possibilities.
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
347
"Fifine" rests broadly on this principle. The
soul is trained, unfolded by the frank love of
all things lovely; the law of its experience is
vital-a law of continual change and advance.
And in the "Bean-stripe" section of “Ferishtah's
Fancies," Browning is found weighing up the
interest and worth of "impersonal immortality,"
and arguing from the heart against it. If it be
the best we can have, to put it bluntly, we must
e'en make the best we can of it; but to say that
it solves our problems and fills our lives is con-
trary to the fact. It is much less than the broad
principles and high passions of our minds seem
set towards.
The argument of "Reverie" involves the hope,
for surely it were strange and tragic if "Power
"should come full in play," and the brave hearts
that desired it, and worked for it, be dust?
And the Epilogue to "Asolando," and so
to all this work, looks onward with courage and
unending hope.
And now we can hardly conclude our study of
the subject without looking back and asking,
What is the sum of the poet's thoughts about it?
What has he added to the "criticism" of belief
in this matter? By the method of his art, as by
the temper and breadth of his statement, he has
put the question on its proper basis, and given it
its true scope.
He has taken the matter in a
large way, implying the slight and uncertain
value of single arguments, the cumulative force
of the whole case. It is no question of evidences
"}
348
ROBERT BROWNING
and logic. It is a question of man and life a
question of man's true nature and power; and
a question, not simply of the inadequacy and
unsatisfactoriness of life, but of life's drift and
" promise." And so he has dwelt on the energy
and reach of man, on the spirituality of thought
and passion, on the infinite and the eternal within
man; for the argument depends on what man is
capable of and worth. And he is very frank
about the unsatisfactoriness of life as we see it,
whether tested by conscience or judgment; its
inadequacy to man's affections, aims, and powers.
The world is intelligible and tolerable, though
with difficulties then, if there be a "life beyond."
And the order and method of life seem rational
on that basis; its experience and discipline seem.
then to have a purpose. But the "heart and
personal claims perplex the question. It is not
what men wish, but what they are fit for, that
must count. Man's continued power to serve the
ends of the universe must be the ground of hope.
That is the principle and the test of the true
immortality. The endurance of whatever is essen-
tial, of the true and the divine, is assured-the
completion of the value, the solution of the prob-
lems, and the realisation of the ideals of the
spirit. Does that imply personality in the after-
life that is the question eagerly pressed. We
do not know. Our poet has nowhere given or
distinctly implied an answer. He wisely leaves
it; though the whole principle of his art conveys
that impression of the value of personality that you
}}
POEMS ON IMMORTALITY
•
349
may well hold his drift to be on the side of that
idea, not as a matter of sentiment, but of science.
Then he has other ideas that may seem more
practical. No one has so forcibly put the folly
of "losing" this life in any way in the name of
another. It is life that matters, not existence.
Life here and everywhere belongs to those who
live. The great question is not about a "future
life," but about realising the true idea of this life,
and so leading up with energy to the life that
may be when this no longer serves. The poet's
own energy and freshness are such that he has,
far more than most, inward sense of the soul, as
Goethe described it, as an essence that works
on from eternity to eternity." And as this sense
of power gives him assurance, so it gives him his
conception, of a "life to come." It is not a
"heaven," a stage of finality and fulfilment. It is
the life of the soul, rising and expanding through
what may be an "infinite series" of lives, "unhasting,
yet unresting," because it serves no "taskmaster,'
but in love and power fulfils the very spirit of life.
CC
And here the poet approves his grasp of that
principle of which we said he is so true an inter-
preter-the great Christian idea-the idea of
spiritual ascent and evolution as the chief law of
life. That is the meaning of this life. It is the
ground and law of all life to come. If that
principle hold good of man, life to come is
possible and desirable; if it hold good, life and
duty here and hereafter are great-are, in truth,
spiritually infinite and of eternal value.
"}
:
CHAPTER XIII
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CASUISTIC STUDIES:
CALIBAN AND BISHOP BLOUGRAM
CC
"POETRY," said Wordsworth, "is the image of
man and nature." And there is nothing clearer
in regard to it than this-that in poetry you will
find man's thought of man most fully spoken.
These poems on "Caliban" and his theology, and
on Bishop Blougram," and his defence of his
position as a Roman Catholic bishop in the nine-
teenth century, are a most pertinent and forcible
instance of this law. In their curious interest and
picturesque research, their original characterisa-
tion, and casuistic power and subtlety, they give
a striking "image" of man as man is seen in our
time. The poet who made them was making a new
thing in poetry, but he was acting on the impulse
and following the interest proper to the poet as
sincerely as Shakespeare when he made his plays,
and presented in that way his "image" of man in
the age of Elizabeth.
We are of course quite aware that many who find
"Hamlet" and "Lear" great and true "images
and of human life, find Caliban'
and "Blougram" and "Sludge" harsh and tire-
of man
*C
}}
· 350
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
351
!
some, and are little inclined to count them poetic.
"images" of man. They would prefer in fact to
assign them to another branch of literature, and ex-
clude them from poetry. The defects of Browning's
qualities show more in such poems, we frankly
allow. His argumentative and casuistic turn, his
bent to over - elaboration and to carrying on
several trains of thought together, his tendency to
give a too intellectual quality to his treatment of
certain themes are more or less felt in them,
though the group we have just named must not
be roughly put together in respect of these features.
In "Sludge " the poet gives freest scope to certain
objectionable qualities. In "Blougram," though
the study is subtle and elaborate, the vigour is
great, and the coherence and pertinence clear for
those who will take trouble. While "Caliban " is
so fresh and original, so well conceived and pre-
sented, that in spite of a certain subtlety inevitable
to the conception, and the "philosophic" quality
of certain parts, it gives little trouble once its
situation and purpose are grasped. On the whole,
then, we judge that if these poems be taken broadly
on their merits, certain allowances being made, it
will be seen that Browning acted as truly from
the poetic mind as Shakespeare in his choice of
themes, though with a less pure and sure instinct.
in his treatment of such themes as those we are
now dealing with, even that being to some extent
accounted for by the differences of atmosphere
and point of view. Shakespeare's dramas were
not merely a form of art for which the age gave
8
352
ROBERT BROWNING
occasion, and in which it took pleasure; they
were the fit expression of its thought of human
life. We have already seen that nothing is more
striking in recent literature than the scope and
quality of its interest in man, and this interest is
other than the Elizabethan. And Browning's
poetry, it was stated, must be judged in relation
to that, and not in relation to the older thought.
But there are certain points of the modern interest
reflected in such poems as these that remain to be
noted.
The interest in man, which was at first social
and religious, and has in truth remained so, be-
came larger and more varied with the growth of
knowledge and the rise of other interests. The
extension of science, especially in the departments
of man's own history, gave it new material and
ideas, and a wider range. It was no longer
ethical or spiritual only. It included, more or
less, all the facts and questions of man's life; and
our researches into the earliest accessible history
of man gave it a field of fascinating interest
and great extent. We are not, of course, now
speaking of poetry, but of other literature; only
both conception and matter have told on poetry,
and markedly on Browning's work.
And there is another question related to these
researches, and even more distinctive of recent
years and ideas, also reflected in the poems now
before us—we mean the interest now taken in the
study of early forms of belief, and in the sources
and formation of opinion generally. The natural
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
353
"
history of belief, all the forces that enter into and
fix or shape belief in interesting cases, is matter
of much curiosity to us in our present mood.
Human history we now see to be an evolution
of ideas as really as of customs and institutions
stretching back to the beginnings of experience,
and forward through phrases none can foresee. It
is seen that the beliefs of men are very largely
fashioned by environment, race, culture, and per-
sonal qualities. Belief, in fact, is a vital far more.
than a logical problem. Variation and develop-
ment, so far endless and practically infinite-
variation and development by selection of the
fittest among ideas as among organisms-that,
with whatever qualifications, is the modern formula
for the growth of beliefs.
Now, clearly this process may rouse two sorts
of interest-one scientific, the other dramatic;
the first in the beliefs themselves, their process
and value; the second in their vital bearings, the
ways in which they illustrate the man thinking.
Browning's is the latter interest, and it is a curious
proof of his intellectual and dramatic energy that
he has given such subtle and powerful statement
to a special dramatic problem, which you will not.
find illustrated in any other poet. And in this,
also, the poet, in subject and conception, is in
sincere relation to his age.
And these poems, related as they both are to
the researches and ideas just described, show
diversity of power and reach in the studies they
represent. Caliban, the study of a crude and
23
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ROBERT BROWNING
simple nature, a primitive mind, if mind it may be
called, that worked in that curious brain; Blougram,
a complex and cultivated, a powerful and modern
mind; yet both dealing with the same problem, both
studies of the sources and process of the higher be-
liefs of man's conclusion from his experience as
to the system amid which he finds himself, and
the quality of the law that rules all things.
>>
These poems belong to different dates in the
order of our poet's works: "Blougram's Apology
is of the Florence time and the "Men and
Women" series, that is, as to composition, before
1855. It thus belongs to the period that his least
partial critics regard as his "best." "Caliban
came in the "Dramatis Persona" volume, and
thus falls as to composition before 1864, that is,
after Mrs. Browning's death and the return to
London. With other poems in that first volume,
after he had lost his wife's fellowship and criticism,
it is thought to show an increasing intellectuality.
The latter poem, it goes without saying, is
from those parts of the "Tempest" which present
that strange creature in the world of Shakespeare's
latest art, with Ariel and Prospero; Blougram
and Gigadibs are of a different age and a very
different world. It was surmised at the time
that Blougram was a "study" of the busy and bril-
liant Romanist divine who became Cardinal Wise-
man; and it has been said that that prelate took
it to himself, in an article on the "Apology" put
out in the Rambler in Jan. 1856. The matter
seems uncertain and is of no great importance.
"}
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
355
The position and writings of Wiseman were then a
matter of interest. But in the case of "dramatic
study" such as this, the poet is not dealing with
a particular case, but rather with a typical case,
generalised and interpreted through the resources
of his own mind. It is well to see that.
Canine sei Zimme
We shall begin with "Caliban" as the simpler
study, and see how he puts his experience together
into a kind of "natural theology." It was a bold
and characteristic thing of Browning to try his
art and prove his genius by such a study.
Perhaps to him only would the problem have
occurred in this way, and no one else could have
given it such congruous, subtle, and forcibly
dramatic statement.

It is indicative of the range of Shakespeare's
curiosity, as of his power, that he should have
imagined, and in his last play should have
embodied, so strange a conception as Caliban.
It was natural that a poet of our time should
see and work out certain questions only hinted
by Shakespeare. The differences in interest and
scope between the poets and the ages, and their
resemblances too, are fairly measured in their con-
ception and by their handling of the theme.
In Shakespeare's days men's thoughts about
man had been much extended, and their curiosity
greatly stimulated. Many causes led to this, and
among them the discoveries and tales of travellers,
who had visited those new and strange parts of
the world then becoming known. These dis-
coveries made it very clear that the past as
356
ROBERT BROWNING
hitherto known, whether of English or classical
life, did not exhaust the forms of life or of thought,
and indeed were no measure of the ruder past, or
even of the present as found in little-known parts
of the world. And it was most natural that
Shakespeare, among the thousand forms of men
fashioned in his world-wide mind, should seek to
conceive the lowest and simplest type that had
existed with human properties.
And if in the age of Shakespeare these facts.
regarding the dim and barbarous past of human
life were first becoming known, and an image
being formed of the variety of the human world,
in our time such facts have first been extensively
collected and scientifically studied, and their bear-
ing on the history of belief and culture rightly
seen. The simplest elements of the mind, the
crudest ideas of primitive culture, have been
explored. And so Browning, started by the sug-
gestion of Shakespeare, and working in the spirit
and with the ideas of modern science, seeks to
thread his way through the quaint problems of
Caliban's theology.
-
Shakespeare made Caliban in the maturity of his
genius, and placed him in one of his finest dramas ;
and the conception is, in fact, one of the most
original and delicate in Shakespeare. Trembling
on the dangerous edge of crude animalism and
even brutality, instinctive, yet with intelligence
made all of self-interest and the "struggle for
existence," without gratitude, affection, or morality,
and yet with a kind of religion, he was a critical
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
357
Ther
task even for our greatest poet; and his success in
the impersonation, both in its consistency with itself
and its fitness to the world of Caliban, is wonderful.
And Browning has shown his dramatic power
by grasping Shakespeare's image as a whole, in its
subtlety and its crudity, in its picturesque and in
its moral interest. Shakespeare only hinted at the
latter. He saw the concrete "image" in its place
among the thousand figures of his world of man,
and only glanced at Caliban's "theory of experi-
ence." But it is the moral interest and the mind
of Caliban that occupy the modern poet. A rapid
analysis will show the method of the poem and its
course of thought.
i
The opening lines give the creature and the
situation. They are the words of Caliban, though,
owing to his peculiar use of the pronouns, they do
not seem to be his. It is the noon of a summer
day, and he is lazily sprawling in the mire of his
cave—a most apparent animal. But as he looks
over the sea, crossed by sunbeams, through which
at times a great fish leaps, he has thoughts, and he
will talk them out to himself now, because there
are times when it is not safe to do so-winter,
with its cold and storms. He ought to be at his
task; but Prospero is asleep now, and he loves
to cheat him.
He has his thoughts, and, strange as it may
seem, they are of theology. It had not then been
imagined that the world could go of itself. So he
has his deity, invented on a basis of experience.
This deity is Setebos-name and idea got from
358
ROBERT BROWNING
even.
his mother; for the "origins" lie behind Caliban
And this Setebos is a moon-god, the moon
having struck certain tribes more than the sun.
And his god, "dwelling in the cold o' the moon,"
is a maker, if not a creator. He has made the
sun and "this isle" (Caliban knows nothing of the
earth), but not the stars. Why not? Because
these seem to lie beyond the clouds and the lower
heavens in a sphere of their own. And what was
his motive in making these?—for some reason he
must have had. He was
"ill at ease"; could not
get away from the moon, and yet was not happy
there. That an uncomfortable deity must have
made this uncomfortable world, is Caliban's view.
But how did it help or please him to make Caliban's
world and Caliban? It is all argued by analogy
and from experience. Caliban is a matter-of-fact
and logical person, and, granting his premises, you
would find it hard to upset his conclusions, in the
mind of Caliban. He is self-consistent, and, with
other theologians too, self-consistency has been the
leading test of truth.
And what is his theory, then, about the making
of such a world as he finds? Spite partly, and
sport partly, must have been its motive and design,
seeing that both qualities are in it. It might have
served Setebos better to have made a "second
self"; but as he could not do that, he had to take
the next best. Caliban, you see, understands
blindly those necessities of thought" which hold
us to the final theses of the Paleyan theology.
And here comes an original view of another
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
359
matter. He has to explain his own power and
weakness in such odd combination. Man can do
many things nature does not, and so cannot;
Caliban can do more than Setebos, and yet all the
time is in his power completely. How is this?
It pleases him to have creatures he can admire,
and mock too? There is more sport that way.
Thus is explained man's freedom and power, and
the fatal limits of both. This must be, he argues;
for if he could make anything living, he would
keep his mastery over it by the most purely
arbitrary acts of power. And to him arbitrariness.
is the quality of power and the proof of greatness.
He has the love of mastery and the caprice of the
savage. He cannot give a reason even to himself
for many things he does. He sees little reason or
order in things about him. To such a mind all the
most striking things that happen take place at the
caprice of some imaginary power; and the deity of
the savage, reflecting the heart of the savage and
his image of nature, is masterful and capricious.
It is within his "right," and he uses that right as
he likes, mostly in mere self-assertion.
But, though sure to take his own way and keep
man in his place, the deity is not bad in the main..
He is fairly good, as life is. And if Caliban has
his limits imposed by Setebos, perhaps Setebos is
limited too. And he is clearly; for, if not, why
should he remain "ill at ease" in the moon? So
Caliban asks; and to other thinkers besides it has
seemed that a "free and omnipotent Deity" does
not account for the world as we know it; if God
Ay
360
ROBERT BROWNING
might do all things, surely many things ought to
be other than they are?
How, then, account for the limitation? What
hinders Setebos? Here again Caliban chimes
with others who have thought much on experi-
ence. He is a dualist, but of a novel kind. He
suspects a power over Setebos, whom he calls the
Quiet, as both hidden and impassive-a power
only guessed by the defect and limitation of
Setebos and his world. His mother was a dualist
of another sort. She held that the Quiet had
made all, and that Setebos vexed the world out
of devilry.
But he cannot see that. The limita-
tion of experience and the unhappiness of the
world must reflect the maker's own state; for a
deity that could do all things, being neither happy
nor unhappy, could have had no motive for making
such a world as that known to Caliban. Im-
passive bliss crossed by devilry does not explain
things, he thinks.
But things may change. The Quiet may "look
up" and make things awkward. So far it has
only troubled Setebos. He, seeing the happiness
of the Quiet, was set on to make this "bauble
world," with no object really, and possibly he will
"knock it all down again." Why not? Caliban
would do so. He has, in fact, no idea of end or
purpose. The world is neither rational nor
ethical to him. Casual and shallow from first.
to last, you may think, and yet his speculations
have a quaint resemblance to more dignified
theories that we have heard of His crude,
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
361
frank talk should give pause to some who essay
lightly the great question of motives and ends in
regard to creation and its scheme, and not least
to those who, in the name of science offer a view
of things very like that of Caliban. His question
of "ends" is, in truth, not merely insoluble; it is
unimaginable, in his terms and by his method.
But though good mostly, Setebos is not always
so, and might grow dangerous. How please him,
then? You cannot know. He keeps the secret,
and is not to be pleased except as he wills. For,
again, going by himself, and by the random and
often violent courses nature seems to take, he
thinks you are likely to anger the deity by the
assumption that what has pleased him once should
do so again. It is all caprice, and you must take
your chance. Not a cheerful outlook? It is the
fact, however, and the only way out of it, should
it grow intolerable, is death. That will make an
end of it, he is sure, though his mother thought not.
Meantime, humour the deity, do not seem too
happy, keep your thoughts to yourself mostly, and
the Quiet may conquer, or Setebos doze.
So Caliban accounts for experience. Ingenious,
you must allow, and Calibanesque. Caliban's god
is a magnified and very natural Caliban, only
rougher and in some points worse. This deity
knows nothing of law. Somehow things go on
when he does not meddle, but caprice is his law.
And he is not moral. He neither loves nor hates
his creatures; he made them for his own pleasure ;
he keeps them under his power, and they must
362
ROBERT BROWNING
mind they pay him the tribute of fear and the
compliment of envy.
But what is it the poet has thus put before us?
A fancy sketch or a true study? There are two
ways in which a poet might present the subject.
He might master all the facts that throw light on
the workings of the primitive mind and construe
these, or, by use of his own imagination mainly,
recover its elements and process.
Has the poet done either? We think not. He
has rather taken Shakespeare's Caliban, and in the
light of modern principles has made his image of
Caliban's world on the basis of Shakespeare's con-
ception. Caliban does not represent the simplest
stages of human thought. In the "Tempest,” and
as Shakespeare made him, he could not. And this
poem, though it throws much light on the method
and ideas of early religion, is not strictly a picture
of it.
Are we to take it, then, in any sense as a study
of the genesis and construction of theology? It
has this aspect and interest, certainly. The habits
and assumptions of the theological mode of
thought, when put forth with the crudity and
courage of Caliban, may seem a satire, not a
description. And some have used the poem as
a polemic against theology, and regard it as a
dramatic study of the evolution of ideas, that in
more refined forms have as little value as those of
the poem, because they have the same basis and
use the same method.
Caliban's theology has two sources-his reading
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
363
of the world, and his own nature and habits. Now,
that theology began in such sources and with very
crude ideas is matter of history. Shall we, then,
say it can never lose the baseness of its origin?
But all knowledge had a like origin. The origin
of ideas is not the chief or final test of their worth.
The value of experience and any theory of it must
depend on the universal elements it has, and its
use of them; and the growth of culture in these
things has largely consisted in a fuller and better
apprehension of such elements of the mind.
Caliban's theology affirms that the deity is like
Caliban. When a theology arises which affirms
that the best of man's mind is but the far-off
image and hint of the Supreme, the case is altered.
And no merely historical study of the origins of
theology can settle the question of the right of its
highest ideas to stand as in some true sense a
vision of the Invisible Reality.
Turning to "Bishop Blougram." What an
interval of life and thought between the two!
Yet there are deep instincts in common. Caliban
has no doubts, and talks his theology as the most
natural of theories. Setebos is very real to him in
the moon's cold sphere. Blougram is full of doubts,
and of a sense of possible revolution in the whole
mode of thought; but the instinct and idea of
the savage are in the Catholic bishop too, and in
fact hold him out of nature's depths.
The poem is an able and elaborate argument,
in which the bishop measures his mind and
creed against those of Gigadibs.
It leaves a
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ROBERT BROWNING
strong sense of mental vigour and courage, but
even more of personal force. It has two con-
trasted characters as well as contrasted views of
life, and it is dramatic, not only in the relation
of its swift and forcible casuistry to the two
persons" of the poem, but in its "study" of
the process of conviction itself.
"C
The bishop is not setting forth his theology
as Caliban was, nor is belief the chief thing with
him. It is his position in and his theory of
life rather that he justifies against the criticism.
and theory of Gigadibs. Our bishop is not a
theologian. He is a strong realist, a man of the
world, masterly and shrewd, who values life
highly, and all its good-the strength of whose
position" lies very much in the hold that his
creed and conduct have given him on the good
of the world.
CC
As the poem opens we see the men and the
situation—the hearty, kindly, worldly, overbear-
ing bishop; and the literary man, who is enjoying
the bishop's good things, and is proud of being
his guest. The bishop talks. He knows Gigadibs
has a kind of scorn for him as a bishop-regards
him from the point of view of a superior. For
Gigadibs knows, or thinks he knows, that the
bishop does not believe the dogmas and supersti-
tions of his Church, and he looks on the bishop's
position and way of life as very dubious, if not
contemptible, for a man of honour and ability.
The bishop, on his part, does not mind the
contempt of Gigadibs, the literary man. He
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
365
knows that Gigadibs would rather be Goethe
(ideal man of letters), or Bonaparte (ideal of
ambition), or even Count D'Orsay (a clever man
of fashion), than Blougram at his height. For
he thinks the bishop plays a false part, and to
be pope and not believe seems " eerie," even to
Gigadibs. "It is best to be one's self."
The plain and true life of Gigadibs is really
better than the best of the bishop's, then, is it?
his ideal, sincere life than Blougram's real, which
can never be true? No, the bishop will not allow
that. Abstract ideals are not his aim at all,
but very realisable ideals. The all he leaves for
Gigadibs, content to be much. The one remains
a fancy; the other may be made a fact. We
cannot any of us do what we would-plant solid
and detailed any of our fine schemes.
We can
only make the best of what we find, and wisdom
lies in accepting things as they are, and making
the most of them. We must go by life's laws
and conditions, not by abstract plans-very good
it may be, but quite beside the mark. For the
world is the world, and can never be turned into
a fool's paradise. If you must idealise, why,
then, idealise the real world; that may be worth
doing, and will have solid advantages.
For what is our situation? A simile may
make that clear. We are all crossing the world's
ocean in the ship of life, and have only a very
limited space allowed us. Into that space we
cannot put all we might wish for comfort or
for higher uses.
What then? Rebel against the
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ROBERT BROWNING
1
limits and throw all overboard because you can-
not take all, or choose and take what you can?
Men of sense take what the space permits, and
let the rest go. If you fling all away, because
your large ideas cannot be carried out, you only
make yourself absurd and your voyage miserable.
And so it is in the outfit of beliefs.
How
stands that ? You can't believe fixedly and
wholly. Very likely not. No more can I,
perhaps. What then? Throw all over and
hold by nothing? Suppose we do, in what
situation shall we then be in what precise
state of mind? Shall we then have reached a
life clear, sure, and simple? Not at all. We
have got a life of doubt mixed with belief, in
place of a life of belief crossed by doubts.
Fixed belief or unbelief are equally impossible
to men; certainty is out of reach. The grand
problem is for all of us insoluble in that sense.
"I believe," and doubts spring up, soon and
often. You deny, and doubts are flashed on
your mind by whatever touches the deeper springs
of passion or of thought. Nor is this done by
us; it is done within us by powers and instincts
"old and new as Nature's self."
The "grand perhaps," then, may be a truth.
There may be a God, and He may, being good,
have made Himself known to man. The Chris-
tian religion may be the way to and the truth
about Him. Many things in the heart respond
to it; it touches hopes and fears at the quick
of our natures.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
367
But if it may be so, it is far enough from
being clear. Admitted; yet that may be in
the nature of the case. It may arise from our
position, or it may be a test of faith, even.
Anyhow, what we have reached is, that neither
faith nor unfaith can be simple or supreme
powers in life or in the heart of man.
Let us allow them equal powers, and, left to a
man's choice, are the man of faith and the un-
believing man equal in life? By no means. In
this matter, again, a man's choice ought to be
according to the conditions of life and its limits.
Belief, then, enables a man to live in and work
with the world as it is. Doubt does not give
that practical advantage. Idealism and suspense
set you dreaming of a world that ought to be,
perhaps, but is not, while you leave the world
that is to those who take it as it comes.
And if belief be so plainly best on this solid
ground, what is the best way and kind of belief?
The belief that is decisive and thorough, since
that is practically the most powerful, and, indeed,
among the forces of the world the only service-
able belief. On every ground of character and
utility, if you choose to "believe," do so de-
cisively.
This being granted, from the point of view
of the actual world and real life there could be
but one faith for Blougram, one way of declaring
the probability of "the grand perhaps," and that
is Christianity in its Catholic form-the creed and
Church of Hildebrand, equally as a strong
368
ROBERT BROWNING
1
organised religion, as an ecclesiastical system,
and as a social power. That system and creed
effect for him, and for his whole way of life,
just what he wants; through it, in fact, his
ideal of life is made real enough, and placed
solidly in the world for him to enjoy. It has
given him a way of life, power among his
fellows, and most things as he likes to have
them.
Such is his confession, frank and to the point.
And now he supposes Gigadibs obliged to admit
the practical value and force of the argument—
to object that, both as argument and success,
the apology takes low ground, and implies an
ignoble nature.
(C
Well," says the bishop, "I take what is,
myself included. I am Blougram, not another.
I did not make myself, and I cannot remake
myself; all that is in my power is to make
the best of what God has made me."
This is one line of reply.
But he has another.
He does not allow to Gigadibs that the question
about character and tastes is so clear as he
thinks it. Not merely the foolish, whom Giga-
dibs despises, but wise men whom he respects,
would side with the bishop, and at last leave
the question open. For how is it with these
clever men? They like such cases as this of
Blougram. Not the plain and simple cases, but
the dubious and difficult cases, interest them.
They prove their own ingenuity over them, and
see more in them than they contain.
A para-
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
369
dox is dear to them, and impossible combinations.
Besides, the age is favourable for such cases.
very conditions make them possible, pardonable,
and interesting.
Its
Still, though these clever men of the world
tolerate, or, it may be, admire, the bishop, who
unites sense and learning and faith, Gigadibs is
disposed all the same to scorn. Well, then,
whom does our writing man, "clever to a fault,"
admire? Let us see, for it is life and embodied
ideals that put things to the proof. Is it Napo-
leon ? But for your unbeliever this case of
Napoleon won't do. Napoleon must have been
a strong believer in fate or himself, and must
have been very sure there was no moral govern-
ment in the universe and no divine judgment.
His career is unintelligible otherwise, or else he
was mad.
But a man of letters would rather be Shake-
speare. Blougram knows he cannot be the " divine
poet." And yet, if only he might have the
power, the full consciousness, the self-delight, of
Shakespeare, these would be life. And if the poet
said, "In face of my works and self-consciousness
your world is nothing," he could not gainsay that.
But does the poet say that? Does Shakespeare
act on that view of the values of things? His
life shows he did not, and proves that he was
the very man to understand the difference be-
tween having and imagining. So we find him
“leave_the_towers and gorgeous palaces" of his
poetry, "to build the trimmest house in Stratford
24
370
ROBERT BROWNING
·
town." He "saves money, spends it, and knows
the worth of things." So the bishop concludes
that the poet and himself, wanting the same.
things really, he having more of "the things,"
has the best of it, so far as this world goes.
But only get belief, enthusiasm, and the whole
case is changed. Sincere conviction-fire and
life within-Luther's great faith and life say,
and his argument breaks down. Only you can-
not have such conviction, and the bishop's course
is the best remaining.
But Gigadibs will say, "If you can't be Luther,
why not Strauss, in the changed times; that
were at least sincere?" The bishop replies,
"There's no fulness of life, no gain that way.
It's all cold and hopeless. Luther had his
'heaven in his heart'; Strauss has not even
thanks for his work, and, worst of all, he may
be wrong."
-
Now he supposes Gigadibs to take him on
new ground, and here, too, is ready for him.
He hears Gigadibs say, "Such faith as this,
without ardour or conviction, can't serve or give
men the power they need. A whole faith or
none is our choice."
"Not so fast," says Blougram.
Your talk is
vain and abstract. You don't know man or life.
We have already seen that in some sense faith
lies very deep. Allow its use or need, and you
soon get it. For when you sink deeper than all
arguments, you find that faith is a vital force
and necessity of the soul, which doubt itself only
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
371
tests and witnesses to. And this faith, which is
a vital function, is the very thing we want. We
need not "evidences" and "conclusions," but the
soul's claim and attraction for what is divine,
its choice on hidden grounds of will and passion.
And here it approves itself. Criticise as long
and as far as you may, its divine power and grace
win and hold men still.
Then as to talk of "whole faith," of absolute
belief in God. It is impossible in the nature
of experience. That were to "see God," which
no man ever did or can, nor was it meant we
should. Men think creation was to "reveal
God"; to "hide Him," it seems as matter of
fact. And all that hides God, all evil and defect,
is part of our discipline. In the "full light" we
could not live; it would burn us up. Experience
case-hardens us that we may live as men. The
balance between the forces of faith and unfaith
in our nature are the very element and means
of life for man.
But there was absolute faith once in "that
dear Middle Age noodles praise.” And what
was it worth? he asks. Very little for life.
He has a contempt for the ignorance as for the
morals of that time. It is not absolute faith
that is good for men. It is when the fight
begins in a man, when he has moral choice to
make, that life begins for him, the soul wakes
and grows.
Certainty destroys that. Incom-
plete faith is its very condition.
And so the bishop exults in "difficulties." He
372
ROBERT BROWNING
scorns those raised by modern knowledge. There
is a real pleasure in accepting faith in face of
them—the sum of all being that, though he has
great doubt, he has greater faith, and that is the
proper condition of the soul. But it may be said
that, though you may exult in difficulties, you
surely need not put delusions and lies on faith.
And he replies that the whole of faith is needed
for the masses of men, and that if you once begin
cutting away there is no end to that.
"Set eye
or heart or brain to that, and they all get drunk
alike." Best leave it, for the modern fancy for
religion as science is a mistake. Its use and force
in life are its working value.
Then the argument takes fresh ground. His
critic may say, "Your view of life, and even of
truth, is poor and worldly." And Blougram meets
this with a bold and blunt defence. What is life
for? Not to miss or throw away, but to live and
use, surely. This is the body's time; the soul's
comes after. There is a vain idealism which,
being always just ahead of and superior to its
actual state, misses life, and by that plan will
miss reality for ever. He turns from that with
contempt, and an emphatic preference of his own
way.
Gigadibs may next urge, 'Your argument
makes no account of truth, and yet, 'special
pleading' apart, truth is true, and can take care
of itself and the world in ways we cannot see.
Let us be true, then, and, if we doubt, say so.
Blougram does not meet this quite frankly.
در
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
373
"Act your doubt, then," he says, "and make the
most of your views of things. You don't; and
why not? Because you defer to instinct and the
'blind forces' of life. I do, and my instinct says.
that to do or be aught, I must have a God, and
to me my instincts are God's will, and so I live
and you don't."
To this Gigadibs may reply that his wish is to
know what is true, and to live honestly and fairly
among his fellows. And Blougram cannot meet
that. He cannot trust the world and man so.
The man who can do it is beyond him. But he
sneers at it as a view of the life of Gigadibs, and
browbeats him because he knows that the life he
likes is the sort Gigadibs esteems too. And his
"belief" on that ground has this advantage-it
has given him what the other's doubts have not.
So he takes his stand on his success, and scorn-
fully patronises his critic.
And this is the key to the argument and the
situation. He has met Gigadibs, the dealer in
words and views, the idle critic. He has not
really proved his case or justified his life. He
hints at a deeper argument in reserve; but, as
Gigadibs never asked it, we do not get it, and may
doubt, not of the bishop's ability to give it, but
of his own interest in it.
And is the poem, then, merely a piece of strong
special pleading, with nothing better in it? Does
the bishop, who has sense of the depth of religion
and of the quality of life, advance nothing of that
argument he hints at in case of need? There
374
ROBERT BROWNING
¡
are points of this argument, though not just as he
uses them. (1) His frank admission of the un-
certainty of belief, taken on intellectual grounds,
though he puts his admission to a very ecclesi-
astical use. (2) The bearing of moral considera-
tions and the conditions of life on the problems.
of belief, though here again he makes a strange
use of the rule, and gets an "emotion of convic-
tion,” equivalent to certainty, by a process that
will not bear scrutiny. (3) The inevitable and
universal quality of faith. It is no matter of
reasoning. It is part of the action of the soul.
The bishop uses that to give him a basis for a
very complex affirmation-makes it cover and
affirm the Catholic creed, in fact; but, though it
is far simpler than that, it is a fact, and a fact
that is much ignored. (4) He glances, too, at
the spiritual uses of ignorance and uncertainty, a
theme our poet is fond of; and though the bishop
only uses it to justify his worldly acceptance of a
formal creed, it has wider and purer uses.
Blougram, in fact, turns the edge of Gigadibs'
whole argument by admitting his positions to
show that they bear in his own direction, and not
in favour of his critic's scepticism, for those who
understand life. And this gives us another point
-the bishop's realism in religion and in life.
There lies his strength both ways. The criticism.
of religion is endless. The business of life is
urgent and close. Take the life next you and
use it, and do not, like a fool, merely criticise and
lose it. The value of beliefs is to be tested by
K
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
375
(C
their use in life. Life's problem being how to
get the most out of life, tested by the standard of
good sense and judicious acceptance of the world
as it is, and not in the least how to reach a
superior" or even a true view of things at large,
the value of "beliefs" and general theories of
things must be tested by the way they place one
for and help one to this broad result. That is
your most solid certainty, and your leading in-
terest as things are, and as men mostly are.
Kj
And Blougram is indeed the prophet of com-
promise, and he makes, against all such as Gigadibs,
an impregnable argument in its defence. Admit
his ideal of what is good, and you must allow his
success and good sense in reaching it.
But deny
that, declare your conviction that there is some-
thing higher and better even for this life, and his
argument falls to the ground, though he will
possibly think poorly of you. And yet he admits
in the case of Luther, as in the case of Shakespeare,
that there is a heaven of the heart and of the
mind--an enthusiasm of the spirit that, if you
can reach and maintain it, puts his lower, out-
ward success on one side. A high and strenuous
realisation of what is best, and a care for what
is true-set your life to these, and find your joy
in them, and the bishop's comfortable realism
becomes, by the bishop's own tests, and on his
own grounds, a very poor affair.
5
CHAPTER XIV
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CASUISTIC STUDIES;
MR. SLUDGE, THE MEDIUM
Of certain lines of Wordsworth's poetry Coleridge
said that, had he found them in the Sahara Desert,
he would have known whose they were. This
might certainly be said of "Sludge, the Medium."
Browning only would have taken the subject and
made the study of it that is here; and its fertility,
subtlety, zest of argument, and spiritual research,
its caustic humour too, and mastery of the twists
and turns of self-interest, as that plausible spirit
guides the ways of opinion, and shapes beliefs to
its own dearest ends, make the study of "Sludge
one of his most characteristic poems, with strong
points of interest, in spite of those faults of excess
above referred to.
>>
The poem came in the series of "Dramatis
Persona" (1864), but it turns on events and in-
terests of the later years of the poet's life in
Florence, and things in which his wife was much
interested. About 1852 the phenomena known
as "spiritualistic manifestations" began to attract
the attention of the curious and the credulous.
The movement began in the United States, and
376
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
377
"}
made a great stir there. Rumours of it reached
the Brownings in Italy, and then some of the
"mediums came to Paris and to Florence. The
thing was exciting, with its sensuous and eccentric
"proofs" of an "unseen" and spiritual world.
Mrs. Browning, it is clear from the letters so
recently edited by Mr. F. G. Kenyon, believed
that the movement had in part the significance it
claimed. Believing intensely that there was a
spiritual world, and holding that there might be
communications from it, even of this "spirit-
rapping" and "table-turning" kind, her attitude.
was one of sympathy, with a note of wistful
desire that the thing might be found valid on
the main point. She was impressed by the ap-
parent "evidences," and rejected hostile attempts
to explain these away. Browning, on the other
hand, was impatient of the whole thing, regarding
their "manifestations" as trivial, morbid, or even
dishonest dealing with grave matters. Mrs.
Browning speaks of the "facts," meaning facts.
pertinent to her chief interest in it, and tending to
"prove" the existence of " presences" and "intelli-
gences" apart from the operators; her husband sus-
pected nervous sensibilities and excitements, but saw
in the movement, and particularly in certain cases
of it, psychological phenomena of much interest.
And so in the same series in which he gave
his readers "Caliban " he gave them "Sludge, the
Medium." The minds of Sludge and Caliban are
not far apart, and their theologies, natural in both
cases, have common principles, though Caliban
.....
ROBERT BROWNING
378
1
V
is slow and primitive, and Sludge, under stress of
this age, is alert, ingenious, and sophisticated.
We may prefer the savage as the more whole-
some, but Sludge has more that touches our own
lives and thoughts.
But the choice of Sludge as a dramatic subject
may ask a word of explanation. In many ways
a "survival" from the age of Caliban, he may
seem too far behind our age for serious study.
In point of fact the study was suggested, not only
by the general phenomena above referred to, but
by Sludge's actual existence, so to speak, among
the dramatis persona of an age of science. The
model of Sludge was no doubt the notorious D. D.
Home, the medium, who came across from the
United States to startle and amuse certain of the
citizens of Paris and London by his feats of
mediumship, and by more questionable feats. He
is referred to sarcastically in "Prince Hohenstiel,"
etc., because the Emperor Napoleon III. was one
of his patrons. On his visit to Florence he was
taken up by certain friends of the Brownings, but
fell under suspicion even of his supporters. Mrs.
Browning speaks of him ("Letters," vol. ii. 226)
as a "weak and vain young man, exposed to
the flatteries of unwise coteries." But in another
letter she writes of his having turned an English
lady from "infidel opinions," as a fact of in-
terest, speaks of his "morals and his manners
as "wonderfully improved," and "hopes to hear
of more wonders." The career of Home did not
at all justify these hopes of Mrs. Browning.
h
The
y
"}
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
379
$
trick described in the poem was done by him at
the house of an American patron.
Here, then, was ancient superstition come to life
again in the midst of an age boasting its reason
and proud of its science-primeval cravings ready
to follow crude excitements on old tracks, and to
use the very facts of science to help it in its
quaint search, on its blind path. Faraday and
others argued that the things done in the mystical
séances, and called intercourse with "spirits" and
"another world," were capable of physical ex-
planations, and suggested such. Mrs. Brown-
ing speaks of Faraday's explanation (vide
Athenæum, July 2, 1853) as ignoring "the
essential phenomena," giving as such a "fact,"
and one that quite disposed of Faraday's theory
of unconscious pressure, "the moving of tables
untouched by a finger" ("Letters," ii. 122).
Elsewhere she says that when Faraday was in-
vited "to go and see Mr. Home, to see a heavy
table lifted without the touch of a finger," he said.
"he had no time" (ii. 247). In another place she
speaks with mild scorn of "the eminent men
of science, and other intelligent men" who are
satisfied with a "scientific," that is a physical,
explanation, and keeps recurring to what she
calls "the facts," and the testimony of those who
have " seen the "wonders" done. She ex-
emplifies well the difficulty in such matters to keep
the "facts" clear of theory, to understand how
"facts" may be honestly testified to, yet miscon-
strued and misreported.
"}
380
ROBERT BROWNING
Now, Browning could not help being interested
in the questions thus raised, but he took the
matter on another side of it. Supposing all the
phenomena explained, you have still to explain
the minds that can indulge these cravings, and
hold these beliefs. It was, perhaps, no great
matter what they did, or did not do; but the
process of thought and passion in their souls,
what they really thought, and how their thoughts
hung together with their experience, these were
things of great interest. And the interest was
by no means confined to those people and their
doings; for as these stood related to old things
of human history, so did they to principles of
human nature. It is a wrong view of such cases
that takes them as merely absurd, as having
nothing to do with minds that have been freed
from vulgar errors, and as arising wholly from
special fallacies. We are far from the time when
knowledge shall be so complete as to leave no
room for things of this sort. It may be that we
can never reach that time, and science itself seems
to leave us at points where those instincts and
surmises have play, that have haunted the soul
from the dawn of thought. The mystery of the
unknown remains for us all. And not only have
we all our part in the long history that has made
our "image of nature," but subtle affinities hold
us to the ancient passions and conceptions still.
Mr. Sludge tells his own story, and makes his
own defence. The poem is a speech spoken to
his patron, and meant to persuade him of the
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
381
medium's good faith. It is a critical moment in
the career of Sludge that gives us his apology.
It may be he has not considered matters in full
before, and he is not doing so now for the sake
of the subject. He has been cheating, which is
not new; but what is new, and what makes his
defence real, is that his patron has found him out.
Mr. Hiram H. Horsfall has proved that certain
raps, which Sludge said were "communications"
from the patron's mother, were made by Sludge's
toes. The occasion made the trick worse, and
Mr. Horsfall is so angry that he means to expose
and ruin Sludge. It is in face of this danger that
Sludge puts forth all his powers of plausibility
and persuasion, not to save his character, but to
keep hold on his means of living-one of those
situations that bring to a focus the history and
mind of the speaker.
He confesses, excuses,
attacks, explains, and defends; begins by seeming
admission that most of the medium business is
delusion, and ends by arguing that its essential
part is a great truth.
In our study of the poem it will be best to
follow the dramatic order, which is vital, not
logical; but it may make the points and bearings
of the argument clearer if we see what kind of
person Sludge was, and the life that had led him
to his calling, and so fix the type to which spiritual-
istic ideas and practices are most congenial.
Sludge was an American. Many conditions of
life in the States have favoured these growths-
the stimulus, the fermentation of old and new, of
382
ROBERT BROWNING
ignorance and progress, of primitive passions and
modern ideas, and freedom unchecked by European
traditions. His early life was one of hardship
and poverty. He got little education or training
of any kind-its most active part, in fact, being
got in the streets, in that mean struggle for
existence which sharpens the wits certainly, but
hardens and narrows the nature. He could read,
though his spelling, even when "inspired," was
bad, and his reading only fed a superstitious
fancy. All he knew was picked up at random,
on the impulses of crude curiosity. He had heard
of science, but knew nothing of it, and cared less.
His whole experience had given him no standard
of truth, except his own impressions, ingenuities,
and wishes. He had read the Bible, and its
miracles pleased him well. A world so framed
and managed was just his notion of things. He
liked the crude mystery, the pure caprice, and
individualism of the older ways of thought.
And this is the key to Sludge. He is clever,
but crude as Caliban; active and observant, but
shallow. He has no curiosity of the mind, and
does not understand knowledge. He has no
sense of the relations or of the proportions of
things. To him, as to Caliban, the bearings of
things are all arbitrary. His private opinion
seems to be that the world is quite unintelligible
as a matter of reason. Omniscience might know
things on all their sides, in all their purposes;
science cannot. But, as was said, he has no care
for that side of matters. All he hopes to know,
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
383
or cares about, is that side and those bearings of
things that touch his own life and interests.
And that note is the man to the heart of him.
He has the shrewdest eye for the "main chance."
He is keen to see and quick to use all points.
that make to the advantage of Sludge. And that
"eye" which others keep for human affairs he
carried into nature. In fact, a narrow and intense
egoism is his basis at all points. His nature is
not small only, and poor, but trivial and mean.
He has no soul, though much faith in spirits;
and his spiritualism and notions of the unseen
have been mainly used to help him to what he
cares for in this life. The whole value and
pertinence of things is to serve him. He might
not say that the universe is a contrivance in the
interest of Sludge, and an impertinence if it do
not provide him with a good life here and a
better hereafter; but he does hold, as a result of
egoism and ignorance together, that that is the
only aspect of it he can understand. Agricola
put the universe aside to get to God, because the
soul of Agricola was more to Agricola and to
God than all besides. Sludge is no Calvinist, and
"election" is not his way; but his ruling principle
is the same for Sludge as for Agricola, the
higher ideas only serve to intensify selfishness.
With such crudity of moral and mental con-
ditions he has taken certain ideas into his mind
the idea of spirits, of an unseen universe, and of
special divine guidance. As he holds and applies
them, his ideas are almost on the level of Animism,
384
ROBERT BROWNING
and you can hardly decide whether they have
taken hold of him or whether he has laid
hold of them to use them for his own ends. He
tells us they are out of the Bible, and that he
takes them as he finds them there. Most who
profess to believe the Bible hold, that though the
things there set forth happened long ago, they
don't now; not that the principles have changed,
only the mode. He holds by both as still good.
There are spirits; there is an invisible and divine
order. These things have not gone dumb and
dead. The world is still in touch with the power
((
And his
and purpose of God.
experience
confirms his belief; not clearly, of course, but
clearly enough for a man who likes ingenuity and
jugglery on its own account, and who has private
reasons for believing. It is a theory of things
which fits his mind, and, still better, his way of
life and his wishes.
"}
So Sludge believes his Bible, confirmed by his
experience. That arbitrary and often trivial super-
natural, which used to hold the foreground in
primitive religion, he has brought back to its old
place. All acts and events of this life have their
source in that, and must be explained by reference
to it. And he has given a great extension to the
primitive conception of things. That found God
in what was rare and great. He has learned
science, and knows that nothing can be really
explained, and that little things are "nearer God"
than great things. So he finds hints from God.
everywhere, and in the least things.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
385
But as these hints are occult and arbitrary, how
are they to be read, and the obscure relations of
things to one's own fate made out? Here, again,
Sludge falls back on a primitive mode of thought.
In the days when things had no rational meaning
or natural order, when all seemed casual, when
things had meaning only as they bore on the
fortunes of men, and all came directly from some
inscrutable divine power-the only way to find
their meaning was to call in divine help, and this
was done by divination. And so with Sludge.
If there be no order of reason in things, the right
way to track them is by chance (which is some-
how divine), by a mere trick, it may be.
And so
he uses the old tricks, and tricks that make the
ancient ones look wise. Here, in truth, is the
reductio ad absurdum of his entire mode of
thought. His devices expose the triviality of his
ideas. Life, law, and the whole system of God
are made infinitely small in the name of a religion
without morality or wisdom, and in which God is
only the highest point and chief factor of unreason
and self-interest.
And Sludge finds a society with uses and
encouragements for him and his notions; without
faith, but with much crude curiosity about spirits
and the unseen world. He easily feigns, or
actually believes, that he has powers of intercourse
with that world, and becomes a "medium."
medium." He
finds patrons, develops his art and his courage,
and grows famous. But his success, and the
need there is for such things to grow and keep
25
386
ROBERT BROWNING
their novelty, have led him too far; he has
cheated his credulous patron, and been found out.
Mr. Horsfall is so angry that he almost chokes
the medium; but Sludge, having got him to
listen, shows more ability than he had ever shown
before in an exposition of his ideas and a defence
of his career.
He allows, to begin with, that he was wrong,
but thinks his patron's "sainted mother" wishes
her son to let him off, and coolly begs the whole
question of his powers as a medium by proposing
to ask her. He will even quit America if only he
may start elsewhere with money enough. When
he sees his patron relent, he helps himself to a
seat and the good things on the table, and,
feeling happier after that, opens his defence in
earnest.
And his first defence is an attack on those who
blame him. It was they who made the things
they complain of possible. With their shallow
curiosity, credulity, and love of excitement they
induced it all. Were a lad to pretend he had got
money by supernatural means, they'd quickly call
him a thief; but if he only claim to have dealings
with spirits, that is different. Men have a conceit
that there is an "unseen world," and that some-
how and sometimes it touches this world. They
do not quite believe, and they do not disbelieve,
such things. The question is left open with a
balance on the side of belief, because of the stories
good men have told or credited. Thus the youth
finds his audience when he comes with his tale.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
387
He stumbles and blunders at first, but that proves
his honesty, and they find excuses, because they
are in league with the "delusion." With their
glib phrase that there is more in heaven and earth
than any of us know; with their notion not only
of mystery beyond life, but of a mystery always
at hand that is really the medium's own vulgar
mystery, they give him scope enough. He soon
sees all this, plays his game more steadily, and
gives them what they wish. And once having
taken him up, he becomes part of their amour
propre, and a kind of distinction for them.
Thus the "lies" began; and yet, so far, it was
not lies, but a kind of poetry of belief—a case of
that "over-belief" which is really necessary to
give belief its proper power over men's minds.
For most men all facts and ideas readily lose that
glow which is their life. This is why poets have
such use for mankind; they bring the fire and
fancy that make things live. And this is just
what the medium does for his facts and ideas; he
gives life to men's ideas of a spiritual world, and
intercourse with it.
That this power is dangerous he admits, for
the medium is pushed on by those about him.
There is sure to be some "cool head" who hints,
or says, that the thing is a delusion, But they
do not believe him, nor do they criticise coolly,
for now they have a personal interest in it, and
object to be proved fools. Having failed to
persuade, those who doubt keep quiet for the
sake of the company and the wine, and take the
388
ROBERT BROWNING
¿
((
'spirits" as part of the price to be paid for these.
And so again the story grows, helped, as every
legend is, by the fancy and belief of those who
receive it, until it gets far past its author's design.
Nor is anyone to blame-not the medium, cer-
tainly, who is forced on by the wishes of his
friends. In fact, the process is natural, and to
have stopped it the medium must have had such
courage and honour as few men ever show in such
cases, especially when self-interest is all on the
side of letting things take their course. Success
had brought him a pleasant life, and he could not
sacrifice that, he admits. What he did was far
easier, and also more natural. He added to the
fiction what he saw to be wanted.
It was
dangerous to have got into the middle of such a
stream, but exciting too, and he rose to the
situation, and soon had all the spirits in free
communication. The thing had got beyond his
powers, he felt.
The spirits made queer mistakes
and talked poor stuff. Bacon could not spell his
own name, and did not know his birthplace; and
Beethoven made music no better than a Shaker's
hymn. But that, too, is in the nature of the case;
it is because they have to speak through Sludge.
With the growth of the fiction doubts again
arise, and these doubts help him, for his patrons
argue that the doubts keep the thing from being
better; and if the doubter persist, the rights of
hospitality are invoked, or the doubter is quashed
by the argument that one man cannot be right
against a dozen. So he triumphs, with help of
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
389
those who have now even stronger reasons of
their own for backing him.
But this help and success have their cost. He
gets to a point where he would be glad to pause,
but he cannot. The sensation must grow, and
his art with it; and of that art he explains a
little. A mother full of longing for a dead child
comes and asks his help, her heart so strongly on
his side that she easily takes his fiction. But he
must know something of her child to make it
speak to her, and one who lays himself out to
gather that kind of knowledge easily learns
many things that come so pat as to surprise
those who do not know this art of miscellaneous
observation.
more
}}
Then he goes further, and becomes
cynical in regard to his audience. He declares
that, the conceit of the thing having once got to
"the proper depth in the rotten of man's nature,
it is really "impossible to cheat-that is, to be
found out." And how is this?-Because they
take the cheating as part of the very nature of
the medium, as such. It belongs to his qualities,
and proves nothing as regards the essential ques-
tion. He is angry as he thinks of their contempt,
and the injury he has suffered through it, ceases
for a moment to be a sneak, and exults in the
fact that he has cheated these people more than
they guess. But he professes comfort in the service
he has done what he calls religion. He has laid
the atheist on his back, for, as sceptics (i.e. all who
deny Sludge's religion) are liars, his "lie" was
390
ROBERT BROWNING
just the thing for them. Books and arguments
are nothing never prove what they mean to
prove; and for knaves, anyhow, his is the better
way.
So some help Sludge for what they think
Sludge's help to religion help him without
much care as to the truth of his spiritualism, for
he has seen in men
(( a real love of a lie"; of
pleasant delusions, and what makes for their
wishes or their conceits. And the fools are ready
for him, and the incredulous and conceited-" men
emasculated and cold," who take it for its novelty
and trifle with it; and your man of letters, who
likes a subject, and will write on anything that
pays; and the fribbles who want something to
prove their wits on over dinner, all these have
been his patrons, and he is glad to have " done'
them all. They well deserved it.
But now the argument goes deeper. He chuckles
again over his tricks and his art, but maintains that
there was something in it all, and to prove this he
gives the history of his own beliefs, above spoken
of. We all believe in a spirit-world, to which have
gone our fathers and the infinite hosts of mankind.
That world must be deeply concerned in this
world, is surely within reach, with the will to help,
and the power. If they may help, how do they?
A long tradition shows how. The Bible, even,
has its stories of spirits. Here, then, is the method,
and it holds still. Then there have always been
men of special powers in this matter-" seers of
the spiritual." From his childhood he has been
"}
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
391
one of these seers; never did rest in natural causes,
that cold and dull scheme of things. As were his
fancies about the "godsends" of his boyhood, so
are his notions about the things of life still. He
is still the one reality inside the "show," and reads
all from his own point of view.
The talk of many goes, or professes to go, on
the view that this visible rests on an invisible
order. They speak of Providence, but refer their
principle to rare events and great things only.
Yet, if their principle be true, it must be true of
all events. He takes and uses it so; he finds
signs and hints everywhere. You object that this
degrades the doctrine. That is your pride, and
is besides quite illogical. Or you say the Almighty
cannot be giving hints to Sludge at all points of
His work. But Sludge to himself is so important
that he sees nothing absurd in it.
The general
notion in regard to the matter is in truth radically
wrong, and the root of the error is the cold and
remote idea of religion which most people hold.
Their religion, on the side of it of most interest to
him, seems a dead creed about a power and an
order distant from and unrelated to the world in
which we all live. To Sludge, on the other hand,
religion is "all or nothing"; "no mere smile of
contentment" or "sigh of aspiration" towards an
order one dare not believe in, but "life of life and
self of self." It is the key to all meanings; it is
the meaning of all things.
And if you say that Sludge's application of the
idea proves it absurd, he will allow much error,
1
392
ROBERT BROWNING
and hold still that there's "something in it." Man
is a blunderer, and life many ways obscure, but
those who take all means and use all chances are
most likely to solve fairly the one great problem
of getting as much as posssble out of it all. That
is the grand advantage of his idea and method-
they enable him to make the utmost of the world;
to take yourself for chief of things, and be ever on
the watch so that you miss nothing, is a good rule.
in such a world as this.
So much for the rule, but what of the idea it
rests on? You think it absurd that the Infinite
should stoop to such care for Sludge, and in such
ways. But Sludge finds no difficulty there. He
takes easily "the great and terrible Name.” He
has never known awe or humility, has never felt
the Divine Greatness, or that conception of the
order of things which it involves. And so he is
complacently ready to show that the divine infinity
lends itself to the littleness of Sludge's creed. It
is the very quality of the divine greatness that
nothing is too small for it—since nothing can be
without it. Then the infinitely great, after all, is
made up of the infinitely little,-Sludge's thoughts
run on size, of course. He even retorts on his
critic that the less things are, you are so much the
nearer to the Ultimate" behind the atom comes
the very God"—the only God Sludge conceives,
one that hides in things and works in ways con-
genial to Sludge's notions and tastes.
He next presses Christianity and the Christian
spirit into the service of his defence. The Chris-
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
393
tian idea of God and God's relation to men are in
favour of his idea. The filial relation is the true
relation of men to God, as nature shows by the
intimacy and beneficence of her cares. And, being
His children, we ought to take life in that spirit.
He takes his life so, and is " guided" even in
trifles; he does not object to the word, for to a
mind like his all is trivial, nothing trifling. If it
be "heir," he means to live as "heir," and have
the benefit of it, now and for this life.
(C
He admits that many facts in our lives do not
fit his theory clearly; but what is more significant
is that there are facts in all lives that do-facts
not capable of a natural explanation. Such facts
are usually put aside or reserved, or they are
dubiously referred to. For Sludge they are lead-
ing facts, and fix the meaning of things. Most
cannot see life so. He who does has his gains.
With such a faith in use" the medium has
advantages. But he has drawbacks, as his present
circumstances remind him, and as he admits with
something of appeal to his patron's pity. Physi-
cally he is a poor creature, sensitive and some-
thing of a coward, with too lively a fancy and too
greedy for fame. These have been his tempta-
tions, and in part explain his conduct; but his
"gains" balance his defects, and he is content.
He quickly leaves the defects therefore to rise to
a bolder flight over his success. Mr. Horsfall is
angry at his cheating, and he has confessed to
"tricks." But he now inclines to regard his whole
course as right, and himself as innocent of cheat-
394
ROBERT BROWNING
ing. He allows that, had he seen whither his
course was taking him, he might have drawn back
afraid. But now, with results in view, the truth
won, the insight proved, he does not feel so. The
"lie" has given life to truth that had been dead
without its help. And he holds this true in regard
to all belief. In one sense he believes nothing,
but in another sense he is ready to believe that
"every cheat's inspired, and every lie quick with
a germ of truth."
But if there be truth, and a true way to show
it, why cheat? Because, he says, " there's a strange,
secret, sweet self-sacrifice in any desecration of the
soul to a worthy end." Not that it is meant to go
on in the false way.
"After the minute's lie and
the end's gain," the intention is to keep to the
truth, only there is so much against that.
And
this lying for the truth's sake is the clue to much
in careers like his.
Now he returns, with broader view, on an argu-
ment suggested before. His kind of " lying" is
the sort of thing all men do. They all "cheat,"
—that is, feign and fancy. There is no other
way to live in a world of "cheats "in a world
that itself is a "cheat," and where hardly any
realise the life they seek. If men were to “take
truth as truth is found," and the world just as it
is, life were worth nothing. You must "force and
mend it," or you will miss the good there is in it.
Many do, and have "the life to come."
But why
not both? And why not have "the life to come
brighten up this life? That is what Sludge does,
د.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
395
CC
and by the very means the poets use- lying."
They get thanks; why not Sludge, who does
more than they can, by his "influx of life" from
the world beyond, to take off the dulness and
discontent of the present life?
But now Mr. Horsfall is tired, or vexed at what
he thinks special pleading, remote from the ques-
tion of fact, and he brings the matter forcibly to
a close. He cheated. No casuistry affects that,
and he dismisses Sludge with a decisive contempt.
that does not go into distinctions, yet not un-
generously. And Sludge, as soon as he is alone,
throws over the sneak and the casuist, shows all
his malice, is sorry he hasn't made a better bargain,
even by telling more lies, but takes comfort from
the thought that there are many more fools in the
world ready to help him, and that his "business
is safe yet-with mankind as ally.
})}
Such is the study of “Sludge, the Medium," our
poet's fullest dramatic study before "The Ring
and the Book." The poem is fertile in points of
dramatic and intellectual interest.
1. How is such a story to be read? Is it.
Sludge that speaks, or is it Browning? Is this
the best case that could be made for the medium
by the subtlest argumentative mind English poetry
has had in our century? We have before said
that it is a condition of all poetic drama that the
poet's mind should animate and unfold the minds
of his dramatis persona. It is in the nature of art
such as Browning's that there should be a higher
degree of this in his work; and what you fairly
396
ROBERT BROWNING
may require is, that the growth should be dramati-
cally fit. Sludge would never have made this
apology. You may think he would not have
understood if made on his behalf. And yet it is
made within his mind; it presents his passions
and his image of the world, and it carries out his
principles. And so the poem is not a mere study
in casuistry, what may be thought or said from
Sludge's standpoint and for Sludge, but a study
of things and laws in the soul of Sludge.
And what of the ideal development under such
conditions and in such work? Is it truth, or what
is it? The question is of much importance with
regard to more than Browning's work. We should
say that what is thus given is moral truth-truth
of general human nature as the poet grasps and
construes it. "Invention" in such work is not
the devising of what never was nor ever will be,
but the finding of what is at work within given
types, and possible to the heart of man.
2. And the dramatic interest goes with another
the humour of the poet. This is seen in the
details and externals of the man, but is most of
all felt in the conception and breadth of treat-
ment, the type and the justice done to it. The
strange play of truth and error, of doubt and
belief, of reality and delusion, of audacity and
cowardice, of cleverness and crudity, of lying so
deep as to have become self-deception and sheer
inability to say how much is false and how much
true, whether in soul or conduct;-all this is
frankly given, and thoroughly characteristic.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
397
3. And if there be humour in the subtle and
free appreciation of the type, there is fuller humour
in the large and subtle suggestion through it of a
world-wide comedy in which we are all engaged,
and in which the serious opinions and aims of men
bear no small part. This man is a sneak, a liar,
and an egotist, you say, with hardly enough sound
matter in him to keep him alive; and yet the poet
not only brings him within the sphere of dramatic
but of moral interest. When you have seen his
picture of the soul, to which these things were
possible, you not only see how this man came to
be, but are startled by points of sympathy with
men and opinions around you, with principles and
temptations in your own soul. You see how much
of the lying of Sludge grows out of social unreal-
ities and follies; you see what opening there is for
Sludgeism among the passions and opinions of men,
their lazy or tired deferences, and conventions.
4. And this brings us to the chief points raised
by Sludge and his apology-the bearing of the
poem on spiritualism and on religious belief
generally. As to the first point. Those who
now study the question of "spirits" and mediums
would say the poem makes too much of arguments
and too little of pathology. Such cases are less
a question of perverse and narrow inferences than
of physical conditions involving certain powers and
psychical conditions that involve certain beliefs and
illusions. And the poet touches that side of the
matter in his account of Sludge. The grounds on
which he has chiefly taken it are perhaps of wider
398
ROBERT BROWNING
bearing and greater interest. And what is his
bearing on spiritualism and the theory of spirits?
Sludge seems to make his case for some kind of
intercourse with the "world of spirits" very plaus-
ible, on what may be called orthodox grounds of
belief. Grant him the common theory, the usual
beliefs, and how are you to close the door on such
developments as this of "spiritism" and Sludge-
ism? He says you can only do so by letting the
beliefs lie dead in the mind. And Dr. Johnson,
we know, was somewhat of that opinion. What
has been gained since Johnson's time to alter the
matter? That the climate of opinion and standard
of belief about such things has so changed as to
put such follies not merely out of fashion, but out
of court? Or shall we say that Sludge answers
himself, and that follies like his are a disproof of
his theories? Both are true and to the point.
And let us add, we are in no position to argue
such a question in the abstract. Even if ordinary
ideas be more or less granted, the question is one
of experience, not of inference from any general
beliefs. "Ghosts" may or may not be a possible.
part of the universe. Whether they be an actual
part of this world is a question of fact and evi-
dence. Just so, says Sludge; and look at the
"body of evidence," the universal tradition. Or,
as Johnson said, there are more stories to confirm
the belief than to support anything else men have
held. But all or most of the stories appear to be
capable of other explanations, and for how few of
them, after all, is there any proper "evidence." It is,
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
399
no doubt, in the nature of the case that this should
be so. And, as with Mrs. Browning and spiritual-
ism, when so many "facts" are witnessed to by so
many people, the general opinion is likely to keep
the question open, and to hold that there is more
in it than has yet been explained. The learned
Society for Psychical Research argues so much,
and doubtless there is more in "ghosts
" and
"spiritism" than has yet been explained by any
science. Only to bring the whole body of honest
phenomena within the realm of physical and
psychical causes, and so within a natural order,
would seem to Sludge, and to others besides,
worse usage than to leave them alone in their
antique mystery. To Mrs. Browning and to
Dr. Johnson the belief that there was some-
thing mystical, and possibly inexplicable, in the
matter, seemed bound up with their belief in
an unseen universe" and "another life." And
that has been always part of the power of such
views.
5. But the bearing of the poem on the quality
and method of religious beliefs generally is more
to us. Is Sludge in any sense a study and
warning on that matter? Have men, in the
interest of their own beliefs, often shown as little
regard for truth and as great powers of casuistry
as Sludge develops? Without doubt it has often
been so. The sphere of religious emotion is
peculiarly open to illusions of self-love. Neither
Blougram nor Sludge have any passion for truth,
or so much as a decent care for it.
There is no
400
:
ROBERT BROWNING
¿
chapter in the history of human errors larger or
more curious than that dealing with the vagaries.
and perversions of religious belief; self-will and
imagination shaping together not what is, but
what is desired, have there had a wonderful scope,
and the "souls" of men have been all too fertile
of delusions made in what they took to be their
own "higher interests."
6. And the success, as well as the argument,
of Sludge may seem to go even deeper, and leave
nothing of truth in human life at all. This man
plays his game until all seems "lies" in his sense,
and life itself a "lie" that needs illusion to make
it satisfactory. It is an extreme case, but in less
degree and in other ways the thing often hap-
pens; and the law of the matter appears to be,
that the man who is not true has no faith in truth,
and that those who set themselves the mean task
of making their beliefs serve their wishes and
answer to ends of their own, lose in time the very
sense of truth, lose, too, the life and support of
conviction. For beyond his exposure of Sludge,
and all that is shallow in his selfish casuistry, the
poet suggests not only the lies that ape truth, but
the truth that is great above and behind all lies,
and the need for a finer care for truth in these
things where it is so very easy to find what one
wishes to see.
7. And Sludge carries warning in another way.
He is a fanatic. For him "religion is all or
nothing." He would place and define certain
instincts and ideas, and, thrusting aside all natural
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
401
knowledge, would dominate life by dogmas and
inferences from them. He would do this in a
paltry spirit and for low ends. Others have done
it in a great spirit and for noble ends, but it is
a mere "passion of the brain," and a pernicious
fallacy in both cases. For not only is it impos-
sible for the mind of man to frame or apply a
view of things of such scope and authority, but a
sphere and system that are in place and divine
are set aside. And those who say with Sludge
that religion is the whole of life are apt to make
self-will and self-concern the soul of religion.
8. Then a word on a great question that runs
through the poem-that of the "supernatural,"
and the bearing of the poem on it. Minds like
those of Sludge degrade all they touch, and the
notion of an unseen order," after Sludge has
handled it, may seem no better than a poor super-
stition. To Sludge, law is nothing, and God, as
will not reason, is the only thinkable explanation
of things; and to him the visible rests on an in-
visible which is the real universe. But plainly,
Sludge's theory of things is something shallow, is
certainly in no way deeply considered.
Are we
left to the inference that the theory itself has no
deeper value than this may imply? Or does the
poet leave us with the impression that in the case
of Sludge, and of the general mind, this view
springs from fundamental principles and relations
of mind that are true parts of human nature, and
valid towards an interpretation of things? And
does he, from the way in which this is put forth
26
402
ROBERT BROWNING
as a study of mind in an age when a purely
natural explanation is offered, imply that no
science can abolish, and that only religion can
purify and ennoble, the “instincts" that haunt the
"confines of experience?" In the light of other
works, there is no doubt that this is so. The facts
of the world, and, above all, the facts of thought
and of the moral nature of man, imply and require
such an order. And as a student of that nature
the poet appears to suggest dramatically that
superstition or religion will govern the feelings,
beliefs, and conduct of men in their relations to
the Invisible and the Unknown-to the spheres
that lie beyond death and beyond knowledge.
To sum up, then, on the questions thus raised,
and which such dramatic studies do raise, however
little some of us may like to have them presented
in poetry.
Caliban, Blougram, and Sludge all
raise in different ways the question of the value
of man's thoughts, or of the intuition of human
mind, on the final matters of belief-Caliban, to
explain the facts of his experience, and to fit
himself the better for the world in which he finds
himself; Blougram, to present in an age of science
and criticism his "apology" for the type of
religion he adopts, and for his part in life; Sludge,
to justify his spiritualism and his conduct as a
medium, dishonestly haunting the bourne of life.
And when Caliban, Sludge, and Blougram ex-
pound our ideas and aspirations as to those great
matters, they may seem only forms of self-decep-
tion-the data got from instinct, the argument
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
403
guided by interest, the conclusions unchecked by
verification. It may seem so. As we said in regard
to Sludge's notion of a "Supernatural" Religion,
it may seem no more than a crude theory,
a primitive fear and faith, an illusion of the soul.
It is not so. Caliban and Sludge are in their kind
witnesses to the sincerity and depth of faith, and
Blougram to the depth and humanity of religion
as such, whatever we may think of his " apology," or
his form of it. And so, speaking more generally,
we may say that in his "criticism" of belief our
poet has given ample analysis of its psychological
elements and striking illustration of the quality
and extent of these elements in belief. But the
large impression left by his method and by his
work of this kind is, that though much of the form,
and possibly even part of the content, of faith
may prove to be psychological in the narrow
sense, something belonging to particular minds,
or sets of minds only, yet the substance of
faith is universal. And if he implies that none
can "turn the whole of faith to rational thought,'
he holds that faith is as truly "life and light" of
reason as of the "soul." While it always seemed
to him, mystic as his wife called him, and as in
part he was, that the deeper things of thought
and art are the truer for this, that they never
quite explain, because they can never exhaust, the
facts of experience, or the powers and realities of
man's spirit, with which they yet have real con-
tact and profoundly significant communion.
}}
CHAPTER XV
POEMS ON ART: PAINTERS AND PAINTING
CARE for art and sensibility to its impression is
one of the features of our time. It has united
itself with some of our best things and aims, and
it reads for us qualities and motives of our lives
and of our books. It is part of our better culture
—of our quickened sense of beauty, our new care
for the good of the world, our escape from the
too-much fact of so many lives, our quest for some-
thing gone from knowledge, as some have thought,
and others feared, yet needed by the soul. In some
points a new Renaissance has happened in our
century, and this care for art is one of those points.
Our poetry, since Keats, who "loved the prin-
ciple of beauty in all things," has been deeply
qualified by this care, and in poetry few have
shown such sympathy and power in this matter
as Browning. This may seem strange, since the
poet's own work is not eminent for beauty of form
or colour. Yet his interest and power here are as
true a part of his genius as of his relation to his
time. He has been called the artists' poet. He
is, in a larger sense, the poet of art. The artistic
type and qualities are dear to him. He is a
404
POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
405
cordial interpreter of the passion and aims of the
artist, and still more of the general passion and ideas
of art. He might, one fancies, have been a painter.
It is not easy to trace the sources of this
interest beyond the poet's own mind; but some
points are clear in regard to it. His early care
for Keats, and his lifelong care for Greek poetry,
have cultivated his sympathy. His residence in
Italy, the climate and home of art and artists, has
told on it, as many poems prove.
And in him,
as in the rest of us, it is part of the modern spirit,
part of our keen interest in the past, and in what-
ever preserves for us its life, part, too, of our
romantic feeling for the beauty of the world, and
man's life in it.
But Browning's power and interest in this
matter are a most characteristic part of his own
mind, and throw light on the body and spirit of
his work. His vivid senses, and care for the
forms of things; his love of definite expression,
and sense of the soul made visible in and through
fit forms; his quest of the ideal through mastery
of the real, his feeling that the real world can be
seen only in that purer other light of the imagina-
tion, of which art is the sovereign expression,-
his love of art tells of these things in his mind.
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It is part of his character too, and throws light
on his ethics. The method and spirit of the
artist are good in themselves.
The artistic way
of taking things, through love and enjoyment,
seems to him to gain more of the truth of things
than mere science can ever gain. The life and
406
ROBERT BROWNING
good of things is more than knowledge. And he
has a cordial sense of that goodness and beauty
of things, which is the soul and basis of art.

And there is another aspect of this poet's
interest in and delineation of art that seems often
missed. He is essentially a dramatic poet, and
his great interest is the soul, and even his art-
interest has this relation and scope. There are
two ways in which art and art-work may be
regarded-one we may call the aesthetic, the
other the spiritual. One is concerned with the
works and the pleasure they give, simply as_art,
or with analysis of the work and the pleasure;
the other with the light thrown on the artists them-
selves, and the light cast on man and man's mind
by the ideas and scope of art-by the impulse in
which art arises, and by its aims. Now, Brown-
ing's interest not merely touches the latter, but
often takes it as chief matter. His interest in art
for its own sake serves his keen dramatic interest,
his interest in man and in the soul.

The relation of art to character, the dramatic
and moral interest of artistic work and ideas, is
familiar now. Not so clearly seen is its relation to
the soul, and yet an important aspect of Browning's
poetry on art is neglected if this relation be not
considered. He will here lead you to ask, What
does art mean? Nor will he let you rest on the
notion that it means pleasure only, and delight
in "the shows of things." He believes that
heartily. But he will carry you beyond that to
a sphere of emotions and ideas, interpretation of
POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
407
which he finds in, and himself seeks through, art
-ideas and emotions that are not imitative and
sensuous, but of man's own heart and mind. The
soul of every true artist has sought, through the
medium of art, to convey its intuition and aspira-
tion. The higher principles and aims of art are
spiritual ideas. And art, through these aims and
ideas, is as true an interpreter of the passion and
thought of man as philosophy or religion.
1.
Coming to the poems, we shall find the poet's
interest in art proved by their number and variety
as well as by their value. As a poet interpreting
art, he has dealt with painting and sculpture,
with poetry and music, and with power, sympathy,
and insight in each case.

Of these art-poems we take first a group deal-
ing with Italian painting and painters-studies of
artists and types of art, or of art in a more critical
way. We begin with "Old Pictures in Florence."
The poet is the speaker, and it gives us part of
his mind, but freely, humorously, and in relation to
the circumstances and thoughts of the time, and
its style is meant to give its lyric-dramatic quality.
On a March morning, with the spring begun,
the poet is gazing through the clear air on Flor-
ence. He sees the fair city, but most of all the
Campanile of Giotto. It startles him by bringing
up Giotto, who has lately seemed to trick him
over a picture of his own, that the poet has been
hunting for and missed-" a precious little thing
that Buonarotti eyed like a lover." And Giotto
brings up the early masters and the spring-birth
408
ROBERT BROWNING
of Italian art. The poet has been studying those
masters for months, and the dead painters have
become part of the city's life to him. He has
seen them in the churches, standing by their
pictures, and felt their pain as they saw those
works dropping away. Yet why should they,
who are safe in heaven, trouble? Because their
work is yet to do. The work of the great
masters is done and safe; but the great masters
have surely put out these early masters, and
taken away their value? They will not think so
who know the place and worth of these masters,
the value of their impulse and idea.
**
And what was that impulse and idea? It was
they who carried art forward from the point
where Greek art had stopped, and indeed failed.
Greek art had given the life and meaning of man,
so far as the beauty and power of perfect forms,
animated by clear and active minds, could give
man. Men saw that serene perfection of
Olympian gods, but knew they could never reach
it. It put before them a godlike humanity—
admirable grace, dignity, strength; but its only
lesson was submission to man's limits, not aspira-
tion or effort towards a serene beauty that was
felt to be beyond man's reach. Thus soul through
body, and bodily perfection, as man's ideal, meant
an ideal both limited and unattainable, and
brought man's progress to an end. But the end
of progress is death in life for man. How, then,
was progress to start again with new life for man?
The new birth of hope and effort came when,
POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
409
looking inward, man found the ideal of the soul
and of a spiritual humanity. It was then seen
that the Greek ideal is inadequate as well as
impossible. In the soul was felt the power and
promise of what is "eternal." The nature that
has this principle and vision cannot reach the
serene and bounded perfection of antique art and
its ideals. But for that very reason it will pass
beyond them, and see them abolished.
The new
ideal requires and promises "eternity." The
sense of imperfection and inadequacy that be-
longs to life now is the result of the greater
ideal, and the evidence of the larger attainment.
What has come to perfection dies. We cannot
find the perfect form, because thought and passion
have grown too great for such absolute expression.
It is from this point of view that he regards
and values the early masters. Imperfect and
crude as they are in so many ways, they went
beyond Greek art because they were aware of the
spirit, because they first sought to represent man
in the light of that, and by that to give the
spiritual ideal. They "failed," but they took this
great step, and their aim and truth started art on
its new and greater course, and are yet to be
realised. So he reads the history of art.
Then after this flight he feels, as he leans on
his villa gate this warm spring morning, as if the
great ideal were too much for him. To go on
and on and never stop-an evolution of life
through an endless series of lives, always pro--
gressive is that the idea that has come into the
410
ROBERT BROWNING
world as the revelation of the spirit-as the law
of man's work and hope? It tires one to think
of it, and for the moment he leans to the notion
that some time we shall stop and rest, though he
has above suggested that we can only rest by
not stopping.
There is in this, of course, a turn of Browning's
humour, congenially used at points like these.
And such touches give us not merely the quality
of the poet-they give us his "criticism" of
certain matters. He checks his idealism by
frank_recognition of the other side of human
nature. He is broadly aware of that other side,
and is so frank as to its existence, and the con-
ditions of life attaching to it, that some of his
critics allege that his own intuition of the ideal
was apt to fail him. Yet the facts are so, and in
this as in other poems his humorous recognition
of both sides really leaves you with sense of
the higher unity__ in which the facts may be
harmonised.


With this fancy, anyhow, he ends his "philo-
sophy," and goes back to the early painters, whom
he banters for not showing a wiser care for their
pictures, by guiding them into the hands of those
who know their worth-himself, for instance, who
would be pleased with a Gaddi or a Pollajuolo,
and does not expect one of the greater names.
In his banter he gives a list of these masters, with
critical notes of their works, and gets back to Giotto.
Then he turns to Florence, and the bell-tower of
Giotto, and longs for the days when, in a free Italy,
POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
411
art may revive, and the Campanile be finished-
completing Florence as Florence Italy."
(C
Then come two poems dealing with artists,
dramatic studies, and also studies of artistic types
and styles, one in the second, and the other in
the third and great period of Italian painting.
The first of these, "Fra Lippo Lippi," put in
"Men and Women" (1855), belongs to the early
married years in Florence. The study was sug-
gested by Vasari, though it departs from his
story at certain points. Filippo Lippi, born at
Florence in 1412, was left an orphan when two
He fell to the care of an aunt, and
years old.
led a hard life until, at the age of eight, he was
placed with the Carmelite fathers in the Carmine
monastery in Florence. Here he soon showed a
quick eye and a turn for drawing, but no taste
for learning. His use for his books was to cover
them with sketches of what he had seen in the
streets. The prior saw his bent, and thought it
best to use his talent. He set him to learn art.
The chapel of the Carmine had been painted by
Massaccio, and Lippi went there daily to study.
He learned and used for a time the manner of
that painter. He soon grew famous, broke away
from the convent about 1432, and had his travels.
and adventures. On his return to Florence he
painted the "Coronation of the Virgin" for the
nuns of Sant' Ambrogio. They got him the
patronage of Cosimo de Medici, and for Cosimo's
wife he painted a Nativity, with a figure of St.
John Baptist. Lippi had a frank love of the
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ROBERT BROWNING
world and its pleasures, and a warm, impulsive
nature. The story that is the basis of the poem.
shows this. Once, when the painter was busy
with a work for Cosimo, and was confined to his
palace, that the work might be done as soon as
possible, the painter got so tired of his confine-
ment that he made ropes of his bed-clothes, let
himself down into the city, and took his pleasure
there for some days. And the story agrees with
Lippi's life as we know it. In his life, more than
his work, he broke quite away from monkish rule.
He loved a novice of one of the convents, and
took her from the nuns; and their son was
Filippino Lippi, the painter. He had a facile
and affluent hand, and Vasari says the beauty of
his work atoned for the failings of his life. He
died at Spoleto in 1469.
In many points the poet has dramatised Vasari,
giving life and character to the old painter and
his idea of art. Lippi is out on his escapade
from Cosimo's palace, and has been caught by
the city guard on his way back, and is telling
why he is abroad in the spring night. In
doing this he tells the story of his life and his
aims as a painter. The key to all is set by the
situation and temper of the artist. His free,
joyous energy, his humour, his cordial nature and
love of the common life of man, are in every line.
He had been shut up for three weeks at his work,
when, leaning out of the window one night into
the fresh warm air, he heard a sound of happy
voices and a rush of merry feet, and was off after
POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
413
them. But a "monk!" they will say. So he
tells them how he got into the convent, and his
life there. He laughs at the ascetic rule, but he
says there is one kind of renunciation he uses.
He has not the passion for gold so many are
learning in Florence; his passion is for the
beauty and good and joy of man's life. He
had always loved it, and in his early work had
drawn it frankly. The prior forbade him, and
ordered him back to Giotto's manner and religious
themes. He felt that art must soon break away
from that tradition and take to freer study; but
he kept the old way, and now it keeps to him.
It has been bad for his art and his life.Others
are coming who will depict life freely, and that is
art's proper business; not to tell pious stories or
"preach" to men, but to give men the joy and
beauty of the world as God has made it. He is
scornful about the uses piety makes of art-one
of his own pictures having been scratched to the
bricks; and then fearing he has gone too far, he
promises to make amends by painting the picture
for St. Ambrogio's, showing his humour and
sensuousness in his account of it; and at this
point, as he sees the soft grey of the spring dawn,
he knows it is time to be off.
C
The poem is, we said, a study of character-
vivid in that way-and a study of art; of the
motives and influence of the Renaissance as it
told on painting. (Lippi belongs to the second
movement of Italian art, and the new desires and
ideas of that period are forcibly shown in him."
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ROBERT BROWNING
Lippi's work does not show so clearly as his words
the new motives and aims, but his life and art
together bear them out. (He makes apology for
the want of truth and freedom in his work, and in
any case there was this conflict of ideas at the
turning-point. The ascetic temper and ideal had
become, in the growth of art and culture, too
narrow, and while art's themes remained religious,
its spirit and treatment were freer.
And so, if "Old Pictures" describes the central
idea of the early art, "Fra Lippo" embodies the
impulse that arose with the Renaissance. The
first gave only so much of "body" as should
show the spiritual idea; the second took to the
study of life with growing zeal and care. The
first did not know, and was afraid of, "the world
and the flesh "; the second began to grasp and
depict the value and significance of both. To the
first the world was a dream or a temptation; to
the second, its beauty and good, its "divine.
meaning," began to grow clear. There was a
new sense of form, of the meaning of beauty, and
of the function of art to express "soul" through
true and fair forms; to rouse men to—
The beauty and the wonder and the power;
The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades,
Changes, surprises
•
and give them sense, through free presentation
of its mere joy and beauty, that "God made
it all."
"Andrea del Sarto" is, again, a dramatic study
a study, also, of a type and of certain principles

OEMS ON ART: PAINTING
415
in art. It was suggested by a picture of the
painter, with Vasari's story as a comment on it.
Andrea del Sarto was of the third and great
period. He was born in Florence about 1488,
and died in 1530. Vasari says his father was
a tailor, and hence his name, "tailor's Andrew.”
Like others of that age with gifts for art, he began
as a goldsmith's apprentice. He did not care for
goldsmith's work, as Cellini did, but soon showed
talent for drawing. Having studied under one of
the painters of his time, he pretty soon won fame.
Vasari gives a list of early works of the painter
that were famous. He was set in 1509 to adorn
the church of the Annunziata, and some of his
best work is there. While at this work he married,
in 1512, Lucrezia del Fede, who was his fate in
more ways than one. His fame reaching France,
he was invited to the French Court by Francis I.,
and was generously encouraged there.
He was,
however, drawn back to Florence by his wife.
When leaving France he promised to return, and
got money to buy pictures for the king. He
spent the money for his own uses, and remained
in Italy. Vasari speaks very plainly of the evil
influence over the painter of his beautiful wife;
and, though he has much praise for his many
works, he speaks also of their defects. His
design and workmanship, his colour and finish,
were so good that he was called "Andrew the
faultless." He wanted inward power, fervour,
and elevation of mind. His technical skill was
so great that with invention he might have stood
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ROBERT BROWNING
beside the great masters. There is a story that
Agnolo said that, had his tasks been greater, he
might have rivalled Rafael; but fire and power
were both lacking.
The poem was suggested by a picture in the
Pitti Palace. In fact, its first design was to give
Mr. Kenyon an idea of that picture, a copy of
which the poet could not send him. In this
aspect the poem is a vivid success. The painter
and his wife are in talk over a letter which she
holds. His hand is on her shoulder, and he is
looking into her face, while she looks away from
him. She is cold and masterful, he loving and
submissive. By her beauty, as by her self-will,
she rules him. That is the picture. Turn to
the poem.
It is evening. The painter is weary,
and wants to rest. The twilight soothes him as
he looks towards "sober, pleasant Fiesole," and
he wishes his wife to stay with him kindly for a
little. It will help him, and he will do the picture
she wishes. Her beauty has done much for him,
as her figure in so many of his works proves; her
love would do more. But he knows that he pleads.
vainly; she is her own, not his, yet "very dear no
less." She smiles coldly as he pleads. He feels
the charm, but also the want of ardour and hope,
the greyness of everything in his life and work.
All is toned down to the tint of the autumn
evening, and he accepts it for its harmony and
quiet. It is God's will too; for nature and
circumstances are destiny, and men are not free.
And if it be not the best, it is many ways good
POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
417
and fit for him, with his defects and limits. He
knows his powers, the artistic value of his work,
but also its want of force and depth. His work
is exact and adequate to its themes. The work
of others, who are and see more than he does, is
for that reason less exact and perfect. The low
pulse gives a steady hand, but it is the craftsman's,
and truth and vital beauty are more felt in the
work of the others less skilful than he is.

This clear self-consciousness and technical
mastery are good as means; but the gain is loss
when they become ends. There is no progress,
and can be no future for any art that is without
spiritual effort and suggestiveness, however placid
and perfect it may be within its own limits. The
future is to those who see more than they as yet
express.
And why has he not done greater work? for,
though he can see Rafael's faults, he feels that
Rafael's work is greater than his own. Is it
because his wife has not given him love, and has
cared for the money, not for the work? But
neither Rafael nor Agnolo were so helped, and
the true incentives to all creative work must come
from the mind itself. Is it, then, a law of life.
that gifts be parted-executive power to one, and
passion and insight to another? It may seem so.
Yet he too had days of passion and a fire of souls
about him once, when in France; and he thinks
of those days, but only to fall quickly into his
mood of acquiescence. Yet he is not quite
satisfied, for perhaps he might have done more.
27
418
ROBERT BROWNING
He calls to mind Agnolo's remark about him.
Then he frankly allows he could not have made
Rafael's work. Still, what more was possible he
has given up for his wife, and he tries to find in
that a gain for all loss, and an incentive, not to
better work, but to work that will make more
money.
It is dusk now, and they go in. She is in
haste to go to a certain "cousin." He wishes
her to stay this evening, if only that he may
dream of one great picture" a virgin, not his
wife this time"-that should justify the praise of
Agnolo, and after that he will find her the money
she wants. But no; he will never, he sees, do
better work here. Will he anywhere take his
place with the great ones? He does not know;
he knows only the bondage he cannot break.
In "Andrea del Sarto," then, we have a study
of character, and of art as qualified by character.
The study of character is both exact and gentle.
Candid self-judgment is the quality of men like
Andrea. He describes himself and his work
frankly, touching the source of evils in life and
art. He is weak, and his art is limited. His
love for a selfish, worldly woman has been a
hindrance; but a radical and insuperable hindrance
lay in himself. He has not the passion or stuff
of the higher minds; their power and their divine
He can
necessity are both wanting to him.
express well what is in him, and there is nothing
in him he cannot express; but his mastery and
expression are adequate just because his thoughts
ご
​POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
419
SEDmited Stabat htt
are inadequate to the life of man and the meaning
of the world. His technical perfection results
from his limitation. That perfection is not the
highest note of art. In the highest art a certain
incompleteness may be the result of greatness,
and great work is often true and suggestive,
because of that incompleteness which conveys the
artist's sense of the greatness of his themeor
even Fra Lippo's sense of the wonder and beauty
of the world, and of man's life in it.
Then these poems, taken together, touch certain
ideas in the history of art. The early masters
went beyond Greek art, so far as they expressed
the Christian ideal. But they missed truth and
greatness in art, not only for technical reasons,
Striet, or stern
but because of their ascetic view of the Christian
ideal. With the Renaissance came a new impulse
and idea—the impulse of free enjoyment and the
antique idea of life and beauty. These ideals
could not, as then seen, be combined; and not
only did art fail for that reason, but life had
become worldly and corrupt, and the old motives
and ideas had lost their inspiring power and
sincerity, as the temper and work of Andrea
clearly show.
mind a materich

And, taken with "Pictor Ignotus," which is
put with them, these poems are studies of unful-
filled lives. Lippi through circumstances, Andrea
through moral defects, and the unknown painter
through moral sensibility and ascetic ardour, fail
to grasp and unfold an idea they see; and the
fact is very general, so general that it must be


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ROBERT BROWNING
accounted for, which this poet does by regarding
life with reference to the "soul," and by taking
fidelity and aspiration rather than achievement
and finish as its proper measure.
And there are, it will be seen, implicit or
expressed in Browning's criticism of art other
leading principles of his criticism of life, his
idealism, his value for personality, his care always
for life itself.

He has we have said a very cordial care for art,
but of art apart from all other interests in life he
knows nothing.
"Art for art's sake" was no
notion of his. Art as the chief interest and
consolation of life would not have consoled him,
would have touched his sense of humour some-
what keenly. His care for man was too robust,
his intuition of man's proper good was too large,
to allow him to mistake any means for that end.
And as he did not believe that that good could
be summed up in any quality or form of pleasure
merely, he held that the pleasure given by art was
not the last question about it; that in fact behind
that question for the artist was its bearing on life;
and, behind the question of the ideal of beauty
itself, the question of its relation to the truth of
things and the good of man.
And it is here we see broadly the bearing of
these art poems, so full as they are of interest in
art, and still fuller of interest in life as they are,
on the poet's criticism of life. In art, as in every
form of human activity, he insists on the value of
personality and its rights. Knowledge, experience,
POEMS ON ART: PAINTING
421
art, character, faith are all individual, and are of
value and of interest as they are the true fruits of
personality. As with the "Grammarian" and
knowledge, as with "Aben Ezra" and character,
so is it with the artist and art. Combining the
intuition of the "Old Pictures" and "Andrea"
with that of the poems just named it would appear
that neither knowledge, nor life, nor work, nor the
thought of the artist can ever be "made perfect."
The conditions of personality as well as the con-
ditions of life are against that. And yet the idea
of the perfect and the passion of beauty hold
every sincere artist and every earnest man. 1 We
never reach our ideal, and yet we rest only in
the consciousness of an honest approach to it.
No life is complete nor can be, and no work ever
satisfies the ideal of the true artist. And that is
because art and life alike are at their best, not in
partial fulfilments, but in resolute aspiration and
faithful advance. The end is growth. The con-
dition and law of all good is the ceaseless progress
of the spirit itself. The poorest and most futile
work is the work that is complacent, self-satisfied.
Honourable failure is better than that. Time and
circumstance may appear to be against us. Yet work
and circumstance are adequate to those who will
take circumstance and work the right way. Since
all work and service are of worth not absolutely,
but with reference to the progress of men towards
truth, beauty, goodness, it is the spirit in which and
the aim with which the work is wrought and not the
work itself that in the long-run count and endure.


422
ROBERT BROWNING
Circumstance and work our poet holds are always
equal to this. There are three grand mistakes-
(1) To be indifferent, inert, as the duke and the
lady in the "Statue and the Bust"; (2) to be
eager for absolute attainment, as "Paracelsus," or
so caught in a dreamy ideal as not to care for
action, which must always be partial, as "Sordello"
was; (3) to be complacent and worldly, as " Andrea
del Sarto." In life and work we must put our-
selves forth, and put our best into both. We
cannot have the perfect. "Earth is not heaven."
But the perfect is not only the goal, it is the law
and element of our lives. We must be "realists
we must work under the conditions and at the
task set us.
We must be "idealists we must
work at all points in "the light that never was on
sea or land." We must value all things, works,
duties even, as they bear towards the truth and
power of soul and will.
})
G
CHAPTER XVI
POEMS ON ART: POETS AND POETRY
BROWNING has shared our age's romantic interest
in art. He has also shared its interest in art
theories, and most of his poems on art have a
critical quality. It is matter of regret to some
that since Goethe's days our artists have been so
often occupied with these points. They hold that
art should be instinctive, and think it has been
made self-conscious by all this criticism.
It is,
to a great extent, a result of the intellectual
and inward quality of our interests and work—
our self-consciousness has produced the criticism,
if it has also been increased by it.
And since the days of "Sordello," which so
strongly expressed the poet's theoretic and ethical
interest in art, he has touched these things with
power and strong sense. The poems on art we
have still to consider are mainly of this critical
kind, and if their ideas should not seem, after all
our criticism, original, they throw light on the
poet's mind and aims, and put forcibly his ideas
about his own art.
I. We take a group dealing with the conditions
of art in the lives of the artists. The story of the
423
424
ROBERT BROWNING
sculptor in " Pippa Passes" bears finely on this.
The love into which he has been entrapped reveals
to him a principle higher than he had yet known,
shows him how helpful love is, how it is the true
principle of life and work. True work must rest
on the true spirit and the right relation to men
must be made in a spirit of pure service.
"Youth and Art" has the same truth. Two
artists, one a woman and a singer, the other a
man and a sculptor, lived in their early days of
struggle in opposite garrets. They had something
more than kindness for each other, and might
have helped each other. But, with fame and
fortune to make, they had no room in their lives
for simple love. They have made, not all they
wished, but some part of what they hoped of
both now, yet she feels something lost never to
be gained. They are worldly and cold, and you
feel that their art is less because they are so.
With more of the heart, and less of the world,
their lives had been happier and their art higher.
"Pictor Ignotus" touches the above point, and
the next to be considered. As the poet has put
this poem, made in 1845, with his "Men and
Women," and in the Renaissance series, he meant
it as a study of the meeting of the older, religious,
and free popular art. The work and breath of a
new time were round the painter-breath of popu-
lar interest and work of popular appeal. He
would gladly have made such work, and had the
joy of the fuller passion and the wider service.
Why not make the work, then? Because he
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
425
saw that popular work must reflect and gratify
the popular mind. He would not degrade his
art to that. And so he made his choice-the
cloister with its seclusion and its integrity. He
has missed fame, but he has kept his aims true,
his heart pure. With his proud self-respect and
severe conscience this was his only course, and
though he feels the loss of influence, and feels
too the narrow scope, the cold and shadowy
quality of his art, he rests in the conviction that
-it could not have been other than it is without
loss of that inward honour which to such as he is
more than life.

"The Lost Leader" is indirectly a criticism
of the conditions of good and strong art in the
life of the artist. Your best singer will be a
"leader," perhaps must be. In life and in art
he will stand on the side of the high things and
the "forward" causes. The great ones are there.
But this poet has foregone his privilege and lost
his place, and the battle goes without him hence-
forth, or sets us, who still fight in the van and
with the freemen, against him. We lose, he far
more, and in the hour of glad victory we forgive
him. These verses with their vivid energy of
phrase and rhythm had Wordsworth primarily in
view, and his defection from the progressive and
democratic cause. But the verses in that reference
run quite beyond fact and justice, and Browning
wrote them with a wider reference, and let them
stand for that reference. They are typical, not
personal, and their point is, that pure fidelity to
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ROBERT BROWNING
generous causes and to the service of man is
better for a poet's influence and genius than those
rewards which, as he implies sarcastically, the
world gives but sparingly even to those poets who
desert to its side.
The poem called "Shop," with its blunt phrase
and tone, bears on life, but touches the artist as
well as the merchant. Its main point is the folly
and essential poverty of those who have no life
or interest except in their trade or calling; who
starve and crush the man into a hole behind the
"shop."
There are writers who have no life
except in their books, artists to whom nothing
has interest except their pictures. The man and
the work both suffer in such cases. The best
work requires a man's free soul and true life
behind it, and a fine interest in many things.
2. Our next group is one dealing with the
relations of the popular judgment to art. And
first "Respectability." This is its theme. An
artist and his wife have had a free ramble in
Paris, with picturesque views of the city's life.
But what would the world, or, in George Eliot's
phrase, "the world's wife," say if she saw them,
if she knew their freedom used in other ways?
Be severe and condemn, of course. But those
who would depict life must see it and keep in
touch with it. There are many gains for the free.
Life and experience, and the world of men, are
more for the artist than any conventions.
"Popularity" deals with popular relations to
the true artist in another way. You may take
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
427
the poet himself as speaker, and John Keats as
the case he had most in his mind. And he
thinks how the public ignored Keats until he lay
in his Roman grave. Yet, never mind; he is
"dear to God and the coming ages" for the work
he did and the genius he proved, and a few knew
him. And what happens when he is gone? Others
take his secret, copy his art, popularise and vul-
garise it, grow famous, and, it may be, rich by
doing so. He found the "Tyrian dye, blue as
Astarte's eyes." Hobbs, Nobbs, Nokes, and Stokes
get all the "profit" of it-and the good-natured
scorn of our poet.
"How it Strikes a Contemporary" deals with
popular mistakes about the poet.
It begins-
I only knew one poet in my life:
And this, or something like it, was his way.
He was a man of mark, though not after the
style or for the uses of the world.
His dress
and bearing made you aware of that. He mixed
in and noted the world, quiet, withdrawn, but full
of eyes.
He saw every one, stared at no one.
You stared at him, and though he barely looked at
you, he knew you and took your gaze as a thing
of course. Not knowing what these "ways" meant,
yet sure they must have some "use," people said
he was the king's "spy," and they could quote
cases that seemed to be explained by it. And
they mistook his private life as much as they did
his public function. The poet lived in the sim-
plest way, but the public thought he lived in a
voluptuous style. The speaker's father, a man of
428
ROBERT BROWNING
sense, saw in him the true Corregidor, " censor
of men's ways. The poem ends with the poet's
death, and the simple dignity and honour of the
close crown his worth-
Here had been
the general-in-chief,
Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death,
Doing the King's work all the dim day long.
8.7
""
The "scene" is Spanish. Was there thought of
Cervantes, and his way of life when he made
Don Quixote, and proved his place among the
world's great poets?
3. We come now to the most interesting
group of the poems dealing with poetic art
those in which we have more or less of a personal
expression.
And first of these we recur to the digression
in "Sordello." There the poet pauses at a crisis
of Sordello's story to give account of his own.
art and its aims. It opens with the distinction
between Eglamor's and Sordello's art-the first
able to put all his heart and soul into his work
and to make his songs complete, because his
theme is small and his art the whole of his life;
the other feeling his work but part of his life,
with greater themes, and work that shows in its
very manner, purpose, and passion outreaching it.
The latter is the true poet. The former is an
artist, or at most a troubadour. Beyond all his
work the poet feels a life great and free, and the
true mind has no sooner made any work than it
"strikes sail, cuts cable," and is away again upon
the broad and open sea. And this distinction
4
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
429
•
gives a clue to his choice of Sordello's story.
Other themes occur as he muses in Venice, but
he seeks some theme that shall give the realities
and scope of human life, in the hope of serving
mankind through the spiritual interest of his work.
And what is humanity? and how can he help
it in its need? He sees it vividly through what
he sees in Venice; sees its sin and weakness and
suffering, as of some erring woman. But can
he explain such a life, or help to clear it up for
these "warped souls and bodies" that he sees?
Life seems the grand teacher, through a very
maze of lies guiding by some thread or core of
truth, and through all the evil and pain working
a way to good. Such life seems, and we have to
master its method and purpose if we would help
men through it. How do this? By clever verses,
by pretence of knowledge, by laborious science?
By none of these, as it seems to him, but by
the living waters that flow from the rock of truth;
and this rock the poet must smite at his peril,
that the waters may flow forth for men. Some
poets only" see," and some reveal, the truth of
life, and "the best impart the gift of seeing to
the rest"; but insight is the basis, and truth the
bearing, of all their work, and the work must be
done with courage and devotion. These were the
principles our poet grasped, the aims he took, in
his early manhood, risking the ugly name of
metaphysical poet," and other perils too.
(C
The peculiar poem, "A Light Woman" con-
nects with part of the above passage, that in
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ROBERT BROWNING
which he sees the "lost ones of mankind as
first claiming his help. The theme of the poem
is an imaginary subject from life, and its design
is to show, through the case put, how complex
men's motives may be, and how hard it is often
to reach a judgment that shall include and ex-
plain the facts of conduct; only those who have
the power of getting behind apparent facts and
to the heart can hope to do so, and they have
often to pause, and even to fall back on the facts
as the best they can do. Here is the problem.
There are two friends. The younger and weaker
falls into the "net
" of a
light woman"; the
other, to free him, makes love to the woman on
his own account, and the woman loves him. What
is he to do? Quite misunderstood by his friend
and by the woman, he scarcely knows what to
think of himself, and certainly does not know
what to do. The problem is handed over to the
dramatic poet as one he ought to be able to deal
with, and in any case the pity of it!
(C
"Transcendentalism" is a piece of advice to
a poet not yet up to all the secrets of his art
to the poet of "Sordello" say (its date is 1855).
Its burden is, that the poet speaks and does not
sing; that he puts forth his thoughts solid and
bare, not draped in the folds of imagery and
metre. The thoughts are good, but to give out
this kind of things as poetry is too bad. Better
throw the harp away, get a Swiss horn, and shout
his "great thoughts" for all Europe to hear. But,
he may say, grown men want thoughts, not verses;
})
(
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
431
truths, not images. They ought to, perhaps, but
they really do not. They spend years in spelling
out the meaning of things through science and
philosophy, and find life's summer gone, and the
"meaning" still to seek. How help them? What
do they need ? Another book, tough and dark
too! No; they want some mage or poet, to give
them hold of the things in their inner meaning.
and beauty; to give them life in its glow and
its zest; to make them young again, and "pour
heaven into this shut house of life."
That were
worth doing. Try song that way. Sing from the
heart, and put the life of that into your song.
You are a poem, though all the poetry you make
as yet is nought. Was this mockery of his critics,
or self-criticism? Poetry is not magic, and the
poet is no magician, as the vulgar conceive it.
Yet poetry ought to do something of this kind
for us, by its thoughts, its images, its verses, its
emotion and influx of the poet's soul.
The last sections of "Pacchiarotto, and How he
Worked in Distemper" (xxiv.-xxix.) also deal with
his critics and with poetry. In the former parts
he thinks he has given them something to their
taste, something simple and direct, with none of
the "harsh analytics" they have so often charged
him with giving, and he greets them in a spirit of
frolic fit for the season, May day. One of them
explains that the good critics have only swept his
chimney for him, and that really he ought to con-
sume his own smoke, and not let so much of it
forth to become a public offence-a hit at that
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ROBERT BROWNING
labour and learning which may go to poetic work,
but ought not to give trouble to readers in it.
And he retorts with rough good humour that they
"bring more filth into his house than ever they
found there ❞—the offences they grumble at come
rather from their own minds and methods than
from his work, but since it would seem they are
made that way he is "pious" and will take them
as they are, and try to please them for once.
Hence this poem and the pitch of it, which he
calls whistling not singing. Having thus looked
at the critics and their " case he dismisses them
with further banter to resume his work in his own
way, and appeals at the close to Euripides, whose
approval goes for much more with him than the
judgments of those who would cut down literature
to the quality and measure of some Banjo-
Byron" or "Quilp, Hop o' my thumb."
"At the Mermaid'" ("Pacchiarotto," 1876) is
a monologue imagined for Shakespeare, and spoken
at the tavern that was the rendezvous of Eliza-
bethan wits. It deals with the true relation of
the dramatist to his work. It may be regarded
as a protest against certain recent criticism of
Shakespeare, and against an easy kind of criticism
that every dramatic poet is open to. It mocks
the notion that the poet puts himself and his life
into his work for all the world to find.
C
""
(C
The speaker says he has no wish to take the
kingly place some would give him; it is enough
to have done the work. But the work is not the
whole of life or all the man, and he wishes to live
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
433
a man's life with his fellows, cheerful, free, kindly,
independent. He has not sold his soul for the
world's praise, or made life's good turn on that.
He has kept his soul safe and clear within, and
wishes his work to stand by itself. By the work
let him be judged, without vain curiosity as to the
life. He has made no vain display of feelings or
of "morals," and if any seek a poetry of gloom
and discontent, he has none such to give. Life
has been and is good to him, and heaven "blue,
not grim," and men have been friendly on the
whole, while a few, honest to the core, have loved
him well. Nor of women has he had the sad
experience some like in their verse. Not." world-
smart," but friendly enjoyment, has, in fact, been
his note.
Now, despite its drift, what relation has this
to Browning? It was not made for or of Shake-
speare only, though much of it is fit for him.
The dramatist cannot keep his work clear of
himself in the way here implied; not even
Shakespeare could, if he even deliberately wished,
which is doubtful. To find the dramatist through
his dramas is indeed a task of much delicacy,
and can only be done by those who respect
the principles of dramatic art; but it can be
done more than this poem implies. And the
poem itself we may surely take in evidence, for
Browning is distinctly here in these notes of it-
the appeal to the work, the reserve of the heart,
the self-reliance, the cheerfulness and frank enjoy-
ment, the manly value for life as the more essential
•
28
434
ROBERT BROWNING
good, the scorn of sentimental art and of melancholy
as a poetic mood.
The poem that follows, named "House," sug-
gested, perhaps, by certain "Lives" and the public
curiosity in that matter, denies of even Shake-
speare's sonnets their directlyautobiographic quality.
If Shakespeare did unlock his heart so, he was not
the man or the poet some of us have thought.
An author may give the public a peep through his
window, but only an earthquake can be an
apology for destroying the privacy of a house by
throwing its whole front down. The public has
no right to such exposure of the whole "interior,"
and if it be made it only leads to blunders and
perversions. The intimate facts of life are for
those eyes only that have "the spirit sense," and
these can find what is of moment without any
vulgar exposure.
The "Epilogue" in the same volume is, of
course, personal; an expression of the poet's views
about his own work. Poets, it is said, should
give us wine, to gladden the inward sense, and
they ought. But neither poetry nor wine can
combine in one all the virtues. A certain kind of
sweetness cannot be united with real strength.
But is it not the very business of the poet to give
us the "impossible," "body and bouquet in one"?
There is such wine of poetry in the world, mighty
and mellow. Pindar and Eschylus, Shakespeare
and Milton, though those who loudly demand
this quality from living poets take no great
draught of it out of these poets. So let them
*
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
435
He "brews stiff
talk. And as to his own work.
drink," strong rather than sweet. But, like wine,
poetry grows mellow with age, if only it have
strength. Anyhow, he gives his best, with zeal
and without sparing. And his vineyard is earth,
"man's thoughts, loves, and hates." But why not
give it a lyrical, emotional, flavour? Because he
will not "strip his meadows of the cowslips and
the daisies." He keeps the tender and private
emotions for the health and good of his own heart.
The Epilogue at the close of "Dramatic Idyls"
(second series) has the same note. It contrasts
two kinds of poets, the one emotional, superficial;
the other with thought and depth of soul. Song
in the one flows lightly, on the least impulse; in
the other more slowly, but from fuller power.
And strength is the soil for song; the power of
a nature not lightly moved, but capable of strong
passion, thought, and will, and whose work grows
as the pine, because, like the pine, its roots are in
the rock.
The prologues to "Pacchiarotto" and "Joco-
seria" give other notes and aims. In the first,
the sight of a garden wall, and the thought of the
life beyond it, tell how often "wall upon wall are
between us." Song should remove the walls, and
bring heart to heart. It is the spirit that unites
men, and the poet has put his hopes on that
"subtle thing."
The lyric in "Jocoseria," "Wanting is-what?"
like the prologue and epilogue to "The Two Poets
of Croisic," turns on the power of love. The last
436
ROBERT BROWNING
of the three will serve best to put the idea as
regards poetry. At an ancient contest for the
prize of song, a poet was singing so that it seemed
certain the prize would fall to him, when one of
the strings of his lyre snapped. But all was not
lost, for a "mad thing" of a cricket, " with its
heart on fire," came to his help. Lighting on the
lyre, it gave the missing note, "low and sweet,"
and he won the prize. A parable-Love was the
cricket that replaced the broken string, and gave
its sweetness to the song.
The conclusion of "The Two Poets of Croisic "
(1878), all we can here speak of, has bearing on
the criticism of poetry. One of the poets, after a
brief blaze of fame, withdrew to the rustic quiet
of Croisic, and put verse aside. He did so be-
cause he thought he had once had "direct dealing
with God." The other found a brief fame, and
then sank into neglect. The poem puts dramatic
explanation of both cases. Then, in view of both,
the poet asks, By what tests shall we try poets?
In the spirit of Scott and Wordsworth he offers.
this test, "Which one led a happy life?" The
man's worth, and life's value to him, must be taken
as our final test. The strong because joyful man,
who stands master over his passions, using brightly
his acquist of power and experience, is victor in
every sphere, and nothing can make up to any
man for the lack of this.
Then there is a further aspect of our poet's
work, and another group of his poems, to which
brief reference must be made in relation to his
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
437
criticism of poetic art.
We allude to his poems
on Greek subjects, and his value for Greek poetry.
It has seemed to many that the complexity and
obscurity of Browning's characteristic work put a
classical standard wholly out of the question in
his mind, and in the expression of his genius.
Yet that is by no means the case, and a true
appreciation of his poetry has to comprehend the
fact, that our poet's conception of his art, and of
its subject and method, are such as to embrace a
Greek principle with a romantic scope. His in-
terest in Greek art was early, and it was genial
and lasting. It appears in "Pauline.” It is still
And there
fresh and strong in the "Parleyings."
was appreciation, not interest only. He seldom
used the Greek manner, but he could use it, as
Landor recognised. And his translations from
the Greek, mostly from Euripides, render spirit
and style with sympathy and accuracy. We
have found him in "Pacchiarotto" appealing from
the critics, who were so ready to "dust his jacket
without mastering his work, to Euripides, sure of
the sympathy of that old master of the truth and
poetry of human life. And this regard for the
poet of the "Alkestis" and the " Elektra," who
was a favourite also with Milton, was
an old
affection. As early as the "Dramatic Lyrics" of
1841 we find it. "Artemis Prologizes," one of
that series, marks thus early his sympathy with
Greek imagination and his interest in the work of
Euripides. The theme of that poem was sug-
gested by one of the dramas of Euripides, but is
>>
438
ROBERT BROWNING
taken up at the point where the old dramatist
stopped in the story of Hippolutos. Artemis
speaks because the centre of interest is in her
mind. Hippolutos, indifferent to Venus and
honouring Artemis, is lying wounded to death
through the malice of Venus. Artemis, in honour
of her pure votary, has carried him from the
funeral pyre itself to her forest depths, and is,
with help of Asclepios, bringing him again to
life. She tells the story of the love and lie of
Phaidra, and all that followed, and now she
watches while the healer's skill restores Hippolutos.
He lies as one asleep, and will come back. She
waits, in silence from this point, the event. There
the matter ends. It is a mere fragment. Its
interest is its Greek theme and its Greek manner,
its blank verse, and its dramatic-lyric quality. It
may be that it could scarcely as conceived have
made part of a drama. It may well be that there
was not matter in the myth for that. But the
dramatic situation is finely stated from the point
of view chosen, and the story fitly told.
It re-
minds one of "Cleon," with simpler theme and
phrasing, and the poet has put it with the series
of "Men and Women." Much of his matter
was unfit for this type of poetry, but thus early
our poet had skill in this manner. And the
poem has the interest besides of being his first
dramatic monologue in blank verse, and of this
length.
In "Balaustion's Adventure" we have not only
a sympathetic version of the "Alkestis," but a
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
439
praise of the fine interest and human power of the
author of that "strange, sad, sweet song." It
tells how Balaustion, a Rhodian girl, charmed the
Syracusans by reciting the touching drama, and
won a lover too. She is a creation of the poet,
and the qualities he gives her, her very name, are
a tribute to the dramatist, whose work she knows
so well and loves so much.
In Balaustion's second adventure, which is
given in "Aristophanes' Apology," we have our
heroine of the first poem set to defend her and
Browning's favourite dramatist against the great
comic writer, Aristophanes, and we thus get Brown-
ing's defence of Euripides against his greatest con-
temporary critic. It is the night when news of the
death of Euripides was brought to Athens, and
Aristophanes is returning from a feast held over
one of his own triumphs. He comes to the house of
Balaustion, where the dead poet is honoured, and
he defends himself and comedy, against tragedy
and Euripides. The tragedian was austere,
rational, antagonistic to the old principles and life
of Greece. He has been genial, conservative,
lashing the follies of his fellow-citizens but up-
holding good old principles. Balaustion, in turn,
argues that his defence is much too favourable,
and does not, besides, agree with results. And
then she turns to defend Euripides for his
humanity, his love of truth, and ends by reading
in proof of his quality the "Herakles" ("Hercules
Furens"). The great comedian listened, but at
the close returned to his "Apology"-a defence.
440
ROBERT BROWNING
now of his naturalism against the moralism of
Euripides, though he is made further to suggest
that a greater poet than either may come-one
who shall unite their gifts and points of view in a
fuller and more completely human art.
The knowledge of Aristophanes and of Greek
things shown in the "Apology" is great. The
genius of the Greek master of comedy is fairly
indicated. But the chief thing in the " Apology"
is the ways in which it shows how distinctly Brown-
ing had considered the principles raised by the later
drama of Greece, and how deliberately he preferred
Euripidean art and aims to Aristophanic natural-
ism. He likes the human and ethical standpoint,
the serious and truth-loving spirit of the tragic,
rather than the "pure Hellenism," of the comic
poet; while the "Apology" suggests, as we have
seen, a broader spirit and a larger view, an art
that unites the realism of the one with the higher
interests of the other-delight in and free study
of the world, with ideal aims and spiritual truth.
And is not this the aim of his own art? Let
me answer that question very briefly by a simple
statement of leading principles. Art may and
ought to deal with all the significant facts of
human nature and life. It should be commen-
surate with the world and spirit of man as man's
thought and passion have grasped them. And
the medium of art should correspond with this
view of its matter. In selection and subjects and
treatment art should be free, rational. It should
not be restrained by theories based on past ex-
Than
POEMS ON ART: POETRY
441
perience only, or by the conventions of custom
and pleasure. The poet must trust his own
genius and insight in his choice of themes, and
must establish his "rights" by his mastery and
vital power.
The substance and power of the
work are primary; its style and form secondary.
Truth, not beauty only, is required in art. The art
that is made with an exclusive regard for beauty
is as inadequate to life as it is false to the higher
thought of man. That emphasis on beauty and
music, which is part of our inheritance from the
classical revival, is narrow as art and untrue as an
"image of life." If the poet is to give men the
contact and power of life as he sees it—the im-
pulse of that vital thought and passion in which
the world and the soul are truly expressed—he
must use a fuller medium. To represent life, art
must deal frankly with experience, and, so dealing,
must not be afraid of the facts of pain and sorrow.
Its image of life and its image of man must both
be frank and adequate. This vital adequacy and
truth of art is a ruling principle, and essential to
its higher functions; for art is not an end so much
as a means. It should serve the life of man, not
in the interest of any types or theories, whether
of culture or belief, but as promoting the fullest
expression and the freest development of man;
and this it may do only by using the poet's
imagination, passion, and delight, and all the
means and powers of art and song, to give the
world of man's life in its "higher reality."
CHAPTER XVII
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
OF Browning's poems on art there remain those
dealing with music. In the other arts we have
found enjoyment and insight-the grasp of a
mind dealing vitally with matters proper to it.
The music-poems show even greater power. In
these the poet has fuller value and originality
as an interpreter. The poet's heartiness and
breadth of sympathy with the arts has led to
a question whether he might not have found
expression for his genius in some other art.
And in the dedication of "Men and Women
he hints at the possibility of such expression.
If there be another art in which this might have
been done most congenially, we should say it was
music.
))
•
· Browning has gathered much knowledge-
some of it quaint and remote, and, as part of
it, there must be much knowledge of music and
musicians. The composers to whom he refers,
the technical masterý implied in his criticism, and
in the statement of his ideas in the poems on
music, prove this; while his power to interpret
musical ideas, and to express the very soul of
442
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
443
music, show how full is his sympathy with the art
and its modern aims.
And this care for music means much more
than "ear" and sensibility to sound. It speaks
of the poet's large and subtle passion, and of his
spiritual sense of things. It is, in truth, fit that
the poet of "the soul" should prove his power
and scope by his relation to that art by which
so much of the modern mind, with its large ideas.
and desires, has been expressed.
We have three poems of this class, two dealing
with special kinds of music and views of life
suggested; the third with the general power of
music to express the passion and life of the soul
itself, and that world for which large suggestive
expression is best.
The first and lightest of the three is on a
"Toccata of Galuppi." It is spoken by some
one listening to the music, who has a basis of
conscience and purpose, and feels that life must
be looked at in the light of these.
And it puts a
train of images and thoughts suggested by the
music—a train of thoughts and images that give
the meaning of the music itself by interpreting
the emotions in which it took its rise and to
which its appeal was made. You may, of course,
object that this can only be dramatically true;
that by reading music this way you get a purely
subjective interpretation of it; and the poet meets
the objection by making his poem from that
point of view, though he would not say that such
criticism has a merely personal value,
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ROBERT BROWNING
Baldassare Gallupi was a Venetian composer
(1706-1785). Starting as an organist, he made
himself famous as a writer of operas, producing
fifty-four of these. He also wrote for the harpsi-
chord, and church music too. He wrote easily,
it seems, and his music is light and melodious.
But Dr. Burney, who met him in Venice in 1770
(cf. Grove, Dictionary of Music), speaks of "the fire
and imagination" of the composer; of "the novelty,
delicacy, and spirit" of his music. His works were
very popular, but, with all earlier operatic writers,
were thrown into the shade by Rossini, and he
has long been a name only known to the learned.
But the life and meaning of the poem depend
simply on its force and truth as an image of one
piece of his music. The speaker has been listen-
ing to a toccata of Galuppi-a light, simple kind
of music, and as he listens the past returns. He
sees the musician and Venice (though he never
was there), and the men and women who used
and loved this music, and, through the music
they loved, the lives they lived and the quality
of their hearts. And what he sees is not cheerful,
now that death has cast its solemn shadow over
the picture. Light was their music and gay their
lives, bright women and careless men; merriment
their key, and pleasure their good. They wore
the days out, and the nights too, and themselves
also, in balls and masks, while our genial musician
made fit music for them at the harpsichord. It
was all bright and graceful, and they would pause
at times as Galuppi's music fell on their ears, and
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
445
touched.
-
in a light way put questions the music lightly
A plaintive passage would hint, " Must
we die?"—for even such life is touched at times
by the sadness of the close. Yet, though it could
not avoid the question, it did not let the mind
dwell on it. It whispered hope, if only the
delusive sort which comes from putting cer-
tainties out of sight. "And are we happy?"
it would ask, and persuade them they were,
though men never are so when they put the
question that way, and it could not disguise the
fact that their hearts were unsatisfied. So they
listened, and then left him for their pleasures
until death put an end to it all. And as we
listen now to the cold, shallow music, death seems
the proper, not the casual, close of such lives.
Life with no more in it must end. Immortality
is fit where you have undying principle and pur-
pose; where no soul can be found, it were out of
place. But these, too, were men and women,
and to think of them as the music makes you
think is not only to feel the pathos of death, but
a chill of doubt cast on more serious lives, and on
the value of man.
"Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" is a study
and, from a certain point of view, criticism of the
fugue as a form of music. It gives the effect of
the fugue from the standpoint and through the
mood of the speaker, and the life it would be the
image of, and in the interest of life sets it aside.
for a better music.
"Master Hugues" (given by fugue?) is not in
S
446
ROBERT BROWNING
the dictionaries, and has no "Life." He is an
invention of the poet-the genius of the fugue.
And what is the fugue? It is a form of music
in which the parts seem to answer and pursue
each other over and over, intricately, elaborately,
until they may seem to lose themselves in the
"hot debate," and all without "result." From
one or two simple themes a great structure of
sounds may be evolved and built, as Bach does
in his great fugues. Such music has largely and
in many instances technical meaning and value.
It gives scope for ingenious construction and
masterly execution. It is the mathematics and
the mechanism of the art; it is the form more
than the poetry or the passion of music.
1
The speaker here is an organist who has been
playing certain great fugues. He has mastered
them, and is satisfied so far. But now that it is
all done, he would like to be clear as to the good
of this sort of music. What relation has it to
the reasonable ends of life? The question may
seem beside the mark, and it does not occur to
him that such music may be made simply for
itself. In his present mood he thinks that even
our master of the fugues must have had thoughts
and passions, and that his music must have had
meaning for him in relation to these. He has
seen this old master in the loft while he played,
come from the dead with his quaint face to listen
to his own music, and he wishes to talk the
matter over with him, as circumstances are most
favourable for doing so.
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
447
And so the question is discussed from section
xii. The structure and drift of the fugue are
described. You begin with your phrase. There
isn't much in that a brief series of single notes.
It is answered, though there seemed really
nothing to answer. Thus two have started.
Then another is added, and another, until five
are going, the wrangle getting faster and faster,
and not one of them with anything to say.
A
listener, who is not a musician, soon gets lost;
the whole thing turns to a maze, with no order
or result; and the musician even may tire of it.
But it may be this is its design and proper
result? The master meant to land us on this
very moral. This is his image of life; life is a
fugue, a web simple yet subtle and intricately
woven, but aimless and resultless, full of impotent
striving towards nothing, and without real con-
clusion not ended, but cut short by death.
Over us, indeed, are nature and truth, but by
vain habits and customs we keep ourselves quite
from them. We even make a body of laws on
purpose to bar our way to them; we take opinion
and usage without wisdom and without reality,
and put those for life. Nay, "the nothings grow
something"; we get to believe in their reality,
and so
"close the earnest eye of heaven -life's
fact and the soul's truth-and in the end have
(C
no glimpse of the far land at all." We take the
fashions and the traditions for the secret and the
substance. We are even wilfully blind. We
argue down our souls, and whoever may see.
}}
448
ROBERT BROWNING
Our fathers were wise and knew—all we need;
and so the folly goes on. To keep the "web"
whole becomes the great point, and we neither
live nor get any true hold of things.
It was his meaning, then, to have no meaning,
because he saw that life and conduct have none.
Ah! most wise master, so you knew life well,
and your music is worth playing, because by its
combined difficulty and futility it gives a forcible
sense of what men make of their lives. So far
he interprets and seems to agree, but now you
find he has been ironical; he has been bringing
the matter to the point of absurdity. This is not
the whole of life, though very much in men's
lives is like that; there is a better view, and he
throws the fugue aside for a music that is closer
to the right view and spirit. Clear off your
fugues, and give us Palestrina with the full power
of the organ, a music with natural passion and
depth, and vital, not only technical, result. It is
our fault that life is not better. Truth is near us,
and we can touch nature if we will.
But his light dips and goes out, and the poet
leaves him in lines that are the metrical echo of
the noise he must have made rattling downstairs.
in the dark church. The humour of the piece is
delightful, and the verse fits it. Its conception
and estimate of the fugue are questioned. But
the poet is not seriously concerned there. It may
be taken as the utterance of a mood, or of this
particular organist. It is in any case, we should
say, rather a criticism of a certain quality of
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
449
art and view of life, than a serious criticism
of the great fugues as a musical form
The last of the three poems, " Abt Vogler," is
the poet's fullest word on music. In verse and
thought it is one of his finest poems, and as an
interpretation of the scope and power of music
as it is now made and felt, it is, perhaps, quite
unique. Both verse and diction have a noble
fulness and fitness. The long roll of its Alex-
andrines seems to carry those tides of emotion
which the organ stirs and sustains. And the
imagery is expressive as the verse, and so is the
range of noble ideas. It is in truth a masterly
essay on the part of one always deeply moved by
great music to suggest the inexpressible reach
and power of the art. None of our poets, save
Milton and Shakespeare, have shown a similar
power of interpreting music through poetry.
The musician from whom the poem is named
Stan
is to a great extent a symbol of the art in its
Milan" ma
2 Dan All vid
modern scope. But a few facts of the abbe's
life, as told by M. Nisard, will make some points
clearer. (I take those facts from an analysis
made by Miss Marx.) Vogler was born at
Würzburg in 1749. He early showed his power
in music, and was sent by the Elector Palatine
to study under Martini at Bologna. He tired of
Martini in six weeks, and went on to Padua to
study under Valotti, on whose system of harmony
he based his own. He also studied theology,
and was ordained a priest at Rome in 1773, and
was well patronised by the Pope. Returning to

ht
29
450
ROBERT BROWNING
Mannheim in 1775, he opened a school of music
there, and published his "Theory of Music and
Composition." Later, he made a "Miserere,"
and wrote operas at Munich without success.
He went to Paris and produced an opera there,
which failed. Having travelled in the East, he
settled for a time in Sweden, and there invented
his "Orchestrion." His organ is described by
Grove (Dictionary of Music) as a very com-
pact instrument with four key-boards of five
octaves each, and a pedal board of thirty-six
keys, with swell complete. With his organ he
gave concerts in London in 1790, which were a
success, and this seems to have been the turning-
point in the abbe's career. He went back to
Sweden, and was there until 1799, and after that
visited the chief cities of Germany. At Darm-
stadt he had Weber and Meyerbeer as pupils,
and was much valued by them. His mastery of
his art was original and thoughtful, and his de-
votion to it full of zeal. His organ and powers
of extemporisation made him famous, and these,
with his serious interest in his art, made him most
suitable for our poet's purpose.
-
The poem is a monologue, and so the abbé is
free to speak his ecstasy, and the moment is fit.
He has been extemporising on his organ-putting
all his passion into it-and he wishes the music,
with all its meaning, would last. He has built a
palace, magically as Solomon, for the princess he
loved, only in the legend the palace remained,
while his fairer palace of the sounds is fleeting as
197
A
TA
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
45I
Date Y
the clouds and subtle as the air. Yet what
power and beauty were in it! and how nobly
built!-deep as the roots of things and high as
heaven, and with a light upon it beyond the glory
of Rome on a festal night.
*****
va Jl arena ma
Sevg
He has said Rome and in sight; but that is
not half the truth as to his city built of sounds
and for the soul. It rests on the deepest and
soars to the highest, and it does much more both
ways. It brings heaven to earth. If his passion
sought to scale the sky, heaven yearned down to
crown his aspiration. Music not only makes the'
soul alive and aware, it gives life the height and
hope and glow of heaven. The ideal of man's
highest passion is brought near, made real for the
time in the soul, so as to light up every point of
man's effort.
·
Nor is that all. As it kindles the soul with its
passion, music makes us aware of the universal.
The free scope of life is felt, its depths and springs
ってこ
​are opened. We are with the ages past and to
come; free of our limits, we catch the meanings
and see the unity of the system from its simplest
Ma B
Car

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CHANGE
to its highest parts. An intuition and sympathy
vaster than thought seem to comprehend things,
making their law clear, and the divine good in
and for them all.
MASKAVALESCOR
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£» NË - **
Pape
ها الفاتنه
This music achieves, or say music and the soul
acting as one. And what other art can do this
for us?
Painting cannot, for there means and
In music only you have an
method too are seen.
art that is above art;
FWD AN 3.
you have creative power
Ims

452
ROBERT BROWNING
Youngbaei
ea esmės,telegens Mana
and beauty, and the mystery that belongs essen-
tially to these-law, certainly, but the hidden
Power that is behind all law. And the wonder is
greater as we see how simple are the elements of
music. By itself each tone of the scale is nothing,
and you can do nothing with it except make it
loud or soft. But the musician takes it, and what
then? He finds the chord (the fundamental
chord, which is the basis of harmony, a tone, its
third and its fifth), unites the tone "with two in
his thought," and of the three makes not a fourth
sound, but a wonder before unguessed-"a star
of the eternal sky," whose beauty and power we
cannot explain.
So he built his golden palace on the impulse of
the moment. But it is gone. Such music is in
its nature momentary, and never to be brought
back; other great combinations may be, not this,
for all its life and glory. A better may be, but
that does not take away the sadness of this loss.
It seems part of himself gone. It belongs to his
soul to cling to all that has been fair, to the whole
self, to the eternity of all good. And the music
seems to say that good things may pass away.
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ML Te
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But can that be so? Can any good be so
transitory as the music seems to have been? It
cannot be; and he falls back on the soul and its
faith in the divine eternity to correct his im-
pression; and then music becomes a subtle and
splendid suggestion of the way in which this may
happen. His course of thought seems to be
this-the transience of the music, which a minute
*
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Kwa m
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
453
ago filled his whole soul, reminds him vividly of
that law of change and loss which plays so great
a part in life. Everything is for a moment only,
then seems to fade into a past that never comes
again. But surely the very joy of music, its sense
of beauty and wonder and resource in the universe,
proves that this "law of loss" is an illusion. The
permanence of good must be the true law, for that
is the orderly result of the divine eternity. The
eternal God is the Maker, the universe is His
palace. Being what He is, His work must stand.
Fear of change is thus out of place in a world
which He has made and makes. If he expand
the soul, it is to fill it. Our ideals are the instinct
of His designs. All good endures in ever fuller
good. It is evil that passes—is nought, or is on
its way to reach and be good. It is a mistake to
go by what is now seen; earth is part of which
heaven gives the whole.
|_ M
And so music, the amplest and most spiritual
expression of the heart, becomes symbolic, pro-
phetic. Its longing and dreaming are not a hint
only, but a promise of what is to be. All
aspiration is prayer to the Eternal, our souls.
seeking the good meant to be ours. And all the
effort and passion of human life that had good
for their aim are "music sent up to God," which,
by the law of things, reaches its goal.
It is the musician, then, who has a true hold of
life's order. He best feels its hidden law. The
very principles of his art, the way in which all
tones and pauses make his work, and in which
454
ROBERT BROWNING
*******
even discords can be used to reach the full
harmony, give him an intuition of God's method.
and its "far-off divine event." Thinkers reach
a timid and partial solution of the problem;
musicians hold the secret and know.
plats on is
But these hours, when insight seems to grasp
the heart of things, pass. Their vivid glory
"fades into the light of common day." "Silence
resumes her reign" as the great extemporisation
closes. This, too, is part of experience. We
cannot fill life with the harmony or the passion of
music and keep it so. Things are as they are.
It is earth now, though heaven may be to come.
There is defect and there is evil, and for the
present we cannot but think of evil as evil. He
will, however, hold by music's great assurance of
complex harmony as the result of the whole. He
will be patient and proud therefore, and return
faithfully, hopefully, to the levels of life and duty.
To descend from the heights to which music has
carried him, and get well back to those levels of
the every-day life, is for most a hard task-to the
master it is an occasion for mastery. And so, by
a series of bold movements, he seeks his way
back, and finds his resting-place at length on
"the C major of this life," on sober acquiescence
tempered by enthusiasm and insight.
This is how Browning read the meaning of
music through the soul of the Abbé Vogler, in
one of his hours of inspiration.
Is the poem
"true" only in that way? or does it, in a measure,
say what the poet himself felt about an art that

****
POEMS ON ART: MUSIC
455
We
had for him too rich power and meaning?
must think that the poem says in its own terms
very much what great music often said to the
poet. It depicts that world of high emotion into
which music carries the soul. It suggests that
sphere of the ideal and the universal which music
has the power to suggest. Whether its suggestions
be as hopeful and definite as those of the abbé
must depend on the mind set in motion by the
music; but music commands a sphere of emotion
such as this, and interprets the soul by its power
over it. All that is meant by this world of
sublime and subtle emotion neither thought nor
music can tell us, and the soul itself, in all the
A
fulness of its life, must be our final interpreter.
M
Page
Kit
(lag
CHAPTER XVIII
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS
AMONG the poems Browning made between 1845
and 1855 was a group called “dramatic romances,
and these, with certain others of the same kind,
were set together in vol. v. of the final edition of
the poet's works as issued by himself in 1888-89.
When the group is examined to ascertain what is
meant by a "dramatic romance" it becomes clear
that it is a poem in which the matter and
incidents are for the most part imagined, “in-
vented," and in which such fact as there may be
is construed with a view to certain ends of the
imagination; and they are called "dramatic
because they are devised from the standpoint and
through the persona of one of the "actors." The
"Grammarian's Funeral" is a "romance," and so
are "The Boy and the Angel" and "The Statue
and the Bust." But some of the poems set finally
among the romances were at first described as
"dramatic lyrics," e.g. "Waring," and "Porphyria's
Lover." What is the difference? It seems to be
that the "lyric" is imagined more strictly in the
sphere of emotion, of the mind itself, while the
"romance" is imagined in the sphere of event,
))
))
456
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 457
action, or it may be of vision, as in the case of
"Childe Roland," and we presume in that of
Porphyria's Lover." In both "romance" and
"lyric" one would say the poet is at work to
present a dramatic statement of his theme and
his thought, only in the case of the "romances
it takes the form of story or of vision, and
becomes, as in "Childe Roland," a kind of
dramatic picture, as we may call it, of his thought.
Yet why, it may still be asked, should the
poem, "How they Brought the Good News from
Ghent to Aix," be classed as a "lyric," while
"Porphyria's Lover" is put with the "romances"?
Neither ever happened, and surely the latter has
quite as lyrical and a more visionary quality than
the former.
CC
""
The fact is that the lines of distinction cannot
be very sharply drawn, and the poet's own
classification may in one or two instances be
fairly questioned. Some of these poems were
suggested by fact, others rest on fact taken as
typical, not actual, and both of these groups are
shaped in the medium of facts and events, while
others of the class are purely imaginary, and are
wrought in a medium of images and emotions.
The first groups include—(1) Certain poems that
are a kind of "ballads," dramatically presented,
e.g. "Incident of the French Camp," "How they
Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix";
while akin are the riding song called "Boot and
Saddle" (one of the "Cavalier Tunes "), and that
other riding song, "Through the Metidja to
458
ROBERT BROWNING
"
Abd-el-Kadr," though Browning has only made
one great ballad in the stricter sense, "Hervé Riel";
(2) such poems as "The Patriot: an Old Story,"
and "Instans Tyrannus," "Count Gismond," and
(3) "The Glove"; (4) a group which we may
call the romances proper, "The Flight of the
Duchess" and "Childe Roland," which are pure
inventions, though not of the same quality, the
latter being intensely visionary, the former, though
strongly coloured in the great parts by the
"passionate invention" of the poet, being more in
the nature of a romance of event and character.
First, then, are those we have called a kind of
ballads, and the great ballad of "Hervé Riel."
These poems show well certain of the poet's
qualities, his fine sympathy with heroic deeds, and
an energy of conception and movement unsur-
passed in English verse. The "Incident of the
French Camp" lays hold of an event that hap-
pened in the Napoleonic wars to give it a more
vivid life. The boy of the poem, a French
soldier, in fact, planted the French flag over the
market place of Ratisbon, was fatally wounded,
but bore news of the capture of the town to the
emperor. Seeing him hold himself erect with
difficulty, Napoleon said, "You're wounded."
"Killed, sire," said the boy proudly, and fell in
the glory of the soldier's last honour.
The "Ride from Ghent to Aix" is surely a
dramatic romance. It is a purely imaginary
piece. It was done at sea, in still waters, hanging
over the side of the ship, and longing for a good
475
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 459
swinging gallop. And the verse gallops splendidly
until the speaker's horse, last of three that set out,
drops exhausted in Aix, the rider saying that the
glory of bringing news of the pacification of
Ghent (the supposed news) belongs more to the
noble horse than to him.
CC
Through the Metidja," also anapæstic, every
line chiming with "ride," is a clever feat of verse,
and a capital riding song. Abd-el-Kadr was an
Arab chief who led his people in a sacred struggle
for their country when the French invaded Algiers,
and kept it up for some years.
"Boot and Saddle," built again on a single
rhyme, and chiming with "away," is supposed
sung by a cavalier as he gallops off to relieve his
castle, defended in his absence by his "wife,
Gertrude."
“Hervé Riel” is, we have said, a true ballad,
and it is a noble lyric, one of our noblest heroic
ballads, with strong grasp of the situation and
the hero, in lines that honour both. It is the
story of the simple Breton sailor who saved the
French fleet, pursued by the English after the
battle of La Hogue, by the skill and coolness
with which he led the ships through the narrows
of the Rance "at slackest ebb of tide," to where,
"'neath rampired Solidor," past Grève, they might
ride safely, and then, when offered reward for
such service to France, asked only for a whole
holiday to go to Croisic and see his wife, whom he
proudly calls "the Belle Aurore." As France has
It was a
no way honoured him, Browning will.
460
ROBERT BROWNING
tale got at Croisic on a holiday visit in 1867, and
written there. It was published in the Cornhill
Magazine in March 1871, during the Franco-
German war and the distresses of France; and the
sum got for the poem was sent by the poet to the
Paris Relief Fund, a fine touch of sympathy with
a country in which his later writings had shown
much interest.
"The Patriot" and "Instans Tyrannus," taken
before in another relation, show in different
degrees the poet's imaginative treatment of fact in
these romances. The facts are chosen, and the
poems are fashioned, to be the "image" of their
"morals”—to shape them, as we say, in terms of
life; the first to show what "patriots" may often
expect and get, and to hint the law behind; the
second to show how the strange passions and evil
wills of men, though they may too long have their
way, are in the last resort checked by a moral
power that is the "last nature" of men, and of
things as well.
"Count Gismond" is a tale of chivalry, imagined
to present the same emotion at a time when the
supreme appeal was to ordeal of battle. The
story is thrilled with memory of a past event, and
yet quieted by a sense of years of happy peace
intervening. It is told by the lady who was the
heroine of the event. She was an orphan, hated
by two cousins for her beauty. A certain Gauthier,
put up by them, charges her with dishonour, and
unfit to preside over a tournament. It was a lie
that could only be refuted in one way. That
J
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 461
way was opened by Count Gismond. He took
up the lady's cause and smote her accuser, com-
pelling him before his death to take back his lie,
and then claiming her as his wife in still further
vindication. The lady's entire confidence in her
cause and her champion are finely expressed, and
the whole story lives with the life of its time and
of the human heart.
"The Glove" is an old story retold in the
poet's own way, and we may say with his moral.
Leigh Hunt had told the old story in smooth
verses. Browning devises a fresh story in verses
that express by their double rhymes the humour
in which he regards the story and the Court of
Francis I. The lady threw her glove among the
lions to test her lover, and lost him and the
approval of the Court. Browning held the loss
in both cases good and the lady right. She was
tired of this trivial and make-believe chivalry.
She desired a true knight for a lover, and for the
rest fact that should answer to words. She has
not succumbed to the quality of her time and the
Court. That is gay, pleasure-seeking, trivial. Her
face has purpose in it and a care for reality. For
them life is brief and sweet, and not to be risked
at all. She is weary of the self-love and emptiness
and shows of the life they are living, and, pro-
voked by her lover's fine words, she sets him a
task to strike the note of real daring through the
shows. He does it, urged by fear of laughter, but
resents it, and insults the lady by flinging her glove
in her face. He did not look to be taken at his
462
ROBERT BROWNING
量
​word. She had thought as much, and knew now the
hollowness of their tournaments and their phrases.
And the sequel fits this reading of the story.
De Lorge, her lover that was, famous through his
double deed, easily won the finest beauty of the
Court, who loved him as such will in such places.
The lady of the glove had a better fate. A young
knight, who saw her quality and loved her, took
her from the Court and married her. His "calm
fervour" matches her firm sincerity.
Pierre Ronsard it is who tells the story, and fitly,
more interested he implies in human nature and
more genial than Clement Marot. Ronsard's part
is told with humour, in double rhymes except in
the lady's speech to him, and the learning is that
of the Pléiade, while the opening speech of Francis
with its frivolous weariness is a touch of local colour.
It was the age of "The Field of the Cloth of Gold."
Two "romances," that follow "The Glove" in
the poet's last issue, give in other ways the quality
of the class. "Time's Revenges" imagines a
situation, clues to the tragic humour of which are
given in the title, and in the closing couplet.
"There may be heaven; there must be hell;
there is our earth here." The speaker has a
friend devoted to him, would do any service for
him, he values his work so much, while he, on his
part, just barely likes his friend. And he is madly
devoted to a lady who does not even like him,
but would see him suffer anything if only that
"would compass her desire" to get an invitation
to "the famous ball to-morrow night." And he
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 463
sees the tragic folly of his passion "killing body
and soul," "youth's end and manhood's aim," yet
indulges it for the bitter dream of a joy that will
never be his. It is one of the situations our poet
gives keenly, with sympathy and manly humour.
“The Italian in England" is also a romance of
love, but in another key. It is the story of an
exile, who, when hiding from the Austrian blood-
hounds and starving, dared trust himself to a
peasant girl, seeing in her mien and face that she
would be true. She was true, brought him food,
and helped him to escape.
He "left and never
saw her more," but she lives in his heart, and he
longs to return to "the dear, lost land," if only for
an hour, to see her again.
"Mesmerism," "In a Gondola," and "The Last
Ride Together," are also romances of love, of the
love that weaves its web of fate within and about
the soul, never to be escaped. And they have that
quality of intense feeling and swift movement which
Browning gives uniquely to work of this kind.
"Mesmerism" has the quality of "Porphyria's
Lover." It presents one in whom the passion of
love and mesmeric power are so blent, intensifying
each other, that he is able to compel the woman
he loves to come to him, and prays for noble
restraint in the use of his power. The thrill of
passion and morbid fire is felt through the poem,
and the lyrical structure and speed of it are well de-
vised to be its medium. In calling it a
we take it as imagined only, and leave the
actuality of such phenomena an open question.
((
romance
}}
1
464
ROBERT BROWNING
"In a Gondola " and "The Last Ride Together,"
dealt with in other relations elsewhere, we take
here as romances. "In a Gondola " is an invention
of the poet, on the suggestion, it is said, of a
picture. It has the note of strong feeling, but
toned, quieted, as it were, by the shadow of tragic
fate stealing over the lovers. It is partly in song
and partly in speech, but both intense because of
their love and their situation. They are together
on the waters, shut in by the "dusk and splendid
folds" of night, and so far safe, but watched by a
certain "Three," who seek the lover's life, so that
these hours are deepened by tragic uncertainty.
A rhythm in keeping with the movement of the
gondola, and the still intensity of the lovers'
emotion, with a variety of measures, expresses
the theme. And the crisis that springs on
them is felt to crown rather than ruin their joy of
loving.
"The Last Ride Together" is one of those
supreme hours in the life of passion that Browning
liked to conceive and could present so admirably.
Its lyrical quality and movement, with its firm,
and passionate grasp of the dramatic situation,
make the poem one of the finest of its class. And
the mood of energetic abandon to the pure joy of
the hour, with clear sight of what it is, and that
it is the last-it is characteristic of our poet to
imagine and express this so finely. It is surely
part of the poet's energy and manliness of feeling
to conceive it happening in the way it happens,
and he gets his conception into his verse.
The
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 465
tense spring of the verse gives the passion and
the self-mastery of the lover in the poem.
But two of the romances have a visionary and
spiritual, or, as some think, allegorical quality of
their own, and may be called the Romances. We
refer, of course, to the "Flight of the Duchess
and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came."
در
The first of these in point of time is "The
Flight of the Duchess." It is also nearer the
others in manner. To some it seems a flight of
fantasy. It is, like others of the romances, an
invention of the poet. Its first suggestion, we are
told (Academy, 5th May 1883), was a line in an
old song Browning heard sung when a boy,
"Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O." And
that, it seems, started the first part, as we may
call it (sections i.-ix.) of the poem, published in
Hood's Magazine, April 1845.
Then a phrase
heard at a friend's house in the country afterwards,
when some one, to show how early and sharp the
winter was likely to be, told how "the deer had
already to break the ice in the pond," appears to
have started the poet's mind afresh on the track
of invention, and he wrote the remaining sections
of the poem. The "story" is simple. The
speaker is a huntsman, whose family has long
been in the service of the duke, and much valued.
This man tells the story so far as he understood
it, and, like all stories of years past that have
made a deep impression on the simple but intense
imagination of such people, it has grown to a
romantic legend. The style is meant to suggest
1
30
466
ROBERT BROWNING
ir
the speech and tone of the peasant, and verse and
phrase are such as to give his mode. You may,
indeed, demur to so rude a transcript, and most
of all to the rhymes; but if you accept the
dramatic intention, you must allow some freedom
to the humour of the speaker.
And the character of the huntsman is one of
the "successes" of the poem.
His bluff, hearty,
vivid nature; his simple yet deep and generous
heart; his shrewd sense and brusque realism, with
what you find in these natures, a strong vein of
poetry and ardour, and a truly chivalrous temper,
make him the very man to tell the story here told.
The story is told thirty years after the event.
Its period is that of decadent feudalism, in a
country where old fashions linger long. The
poem opens with a picture of the country. It
is a great, wide, wild land, bounded by moun-
tains with solemn pine woods on their slopes,
opening on a wider and wilder land bounded by
the sea.
The old duke was a strong baron, fit
to rule such a land and enjoy its life. The young
duke is of another kind and for another sphere.
The sturdy baron died, and left his young son to
his wife's care. She was a sickly, sour, masterful
woman, from another country, and of obscure
origin. The son is like her, and, to make him
more fully to her mind, she takes him to her own
country to be educated. So the old hall was dull
and empty for years, and when they came back
the results of descent and training were too
plain. The young duke was pert, full of his
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 467
travels, full of himself, scornful towards his own
rough northern land, and full of Parisian notions.
(C
And one of these ideas was a fantastic and
shallow regard for his own country and its past.
It was rough, but stood nearer picturesque
"heroic" times, and was full of crude poetry. So
he set himself to
"}
restore the past; to set up
again its dead forms, and make an idle show of
them. Having nothing solid to do, and no life.
in himself, he plays at living the life his fathers
really lived. Such a spirit is a double falsehood.
The past has no meaning to it, and the present
no use. There is no reality; all is shadow and
make-believe. The honest huntsman knows this;
sees the thing so hollow that it gets its value
even for the duke from the impression it makes
on others. And the very horse he rides, "all
legs and length," is a type of the sham it is.
But soulless as is the duke, he must marry.
So he brought a lady to his castle to be duchess,
not wife, as part of his ceremonial, for no moral
object. She was from a convent; a very little
lady, but quick, fervid, and full of life and enjoy-
ment, so much so she "might have been made in
a piece of nature's madness"-a woman, frank,
vivid, and natural, with interest in everything,
longing to live, with heart in every tone, mean-
ing in every look, fascinating and friendly to all.
What a contrast! The stiff, self-conscious, dead-
alive formalist, all affectation and pride, beside
this woman! And worse still the mother! Her
very first tone and glance chilled the girlish
A
*
468
ROBERT BROWNING
heart and took the light from her face. The
duke did not know her, did not affect to love
her. Such things were not in his plan. Yet it
had been better if in this case they had been.
The very retainers see the situation. The lady
got over her first shock, and meant to make the
best of so stupid a life. She would live the life
there was, and take her part in it. But that was
not the duke's idea. She was for show, not use,
and, being "his," must take his way, "sit, stand,
see, and be seen," just when required, and "die
away the life between." And when she tried to
give her help, she was treated as a child whose
opinions matter so little that they are simply
ignored.
She now saw where she was, and lost hope.
Chilled and frustrated, she grew sad and ill. The
duke saw this, and thought it done to spite him.
Any illness springing from the soul he could not
conceive. But he will bring her to reason, and
arranges a great hunting-party, in which she is to
take her part. The part gave much trouble to
find, and when it had been found she would not
fulfil it. The duke and the mother did their
worst to bring her to terms, but the lady kept
her purpose.
The hunting went without her help. The duke,
angry with her, left the castle by sunrise. Just
outside he came on a troop of gipsies. It was a
land, set between the civilised and ruder peoples
and cultures, where gipsies seemed native, and
showed their full powers. In the troop was one
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 469
who might be the very oldest gipsy above ground,
skilled in all their lore, well known in and know-
ing the country well. She begged the duke she
might go and pay her duty to the duchess; and
he, thinking to show the duchess what life and
sorrow might bring a woman to, and so teach
her submission, let the crone go, sending our
huntsman with her.
The gipsy had heard the lady's story from the
duke, and she had skill in the "cure of souls," if
he had not. So she went with zeal. She no
sooner left the duke than her mien and face
changed. She grew taller, brighter, younger.
Her eyes grew "live and aware"; her soul and
aim shone through her. And in the presence of
the duchess she became the very genius of a
great message and a great deliverance. Life's
pure fire seemed to flow with magnetic power
from her speech and spirit. Words, we are told,
failed to convey what was done and given, but
the substance is this. Crushed under the dead
weight of the life about her, and weary of its
vanity, the lady had revealed to her, with mystic
passion and promise, the vision of a true, keen,
full life—a life of free activity, of heroic deeds
and generous passions and sustaining love. Her
soul had longed for this. She found new life in
the mere vision, sprang to meet it, threw off the
vain life about her, and left it for ever.
Only part of the message that had this great
result is given, music being the medium for the
rest. These are the ideas that got into words. She
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ROBERT BROWNING
finds her race, proves her power and her right to
share in its tasks, is taken to its heart, and made
one with it in love, honour, and duty. She sees
that love, the love of those who live for great
common ends, is the only good in the world.
She sees that it is power as well-power so
great that if any two hearts and wills were to
become really one, and alive with some true pur-
pose, they would do more than has yet been
done in the world. And in this new life she is
offered just and warm regards, praise and blame,
never indifference. And when age comes, rich
in memories, and the past is reviewed, and all its
goods gathered at the last, another life will dawn
beyond the dark, and the soul pass to the scope
of that. Then the words cease.
<
And you
This is the heart of the romance.
ask, did it ever happen? or was the soul its
sphere, and moral passion its medium ? What
matters ? This was and is the "way of life," the
only way of escape from a life that has gone to
formality, worship of custom, selfish sentiment-
alism, pride, and show of sense, and that has no
love, service, or sacrifice in it.
The story does not go much farther. The
lady left the castle, beautiful and glad now, and
the huntsman, as if enchanted, helped her to go,
and in going, with the frank humanity that had
won him from the first, she left him a plait of her
hair. He has heard nothing of her since, and yet
her memory has been the romance of his life,
more so than his love and marriage; and in his
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 471
last years, his wife and children being dead, he
is going to seek her.
The combination in the poem of the mystical
and the grotesque makes it a trial to some
readers, but is very characteristic of its author.
He opens the way for the homely by choosing
his persona, and the strain of mediæval fancy is
in the story. Browning's usual resource for the
homely and the comic, his clever use of rhymes,
double and even treble, is turned to much account;
and other resources of his genius and his talent
are freely employed, as if the particular romantic
form used here gave scope for it. It is a constant
stroke of humour to tell such a story through the
mind of such a "person," and the point of view
thus got, and the effects thus secured, were part
of the plan. It gives the "older" type, and
shows how the fashions and qualities of the new
type and régime looked to such men.
But now, is this poem an allegory? or a
romance without moral design? a study, say, of
certain types of character in romantic forms of
them, and in circumstances fitted for them? I
should not call it an allegory—that is not Brown-
ing's mode; and yet, if we say that dramatic
statement of spiritual truth has been a mode of
his art, the difference is not great. The char-
acters are types, we must admit, and the poem
becomes quite mystical, and even the peasant
hears a wondrous music. He stands for common
sense, the duke for false culture, and the duchess
for the higher spirit and passion-so some have
I
ROBERT BROWNING
472
read it. It seems to us that this goes beyond the
design of the poet, and the matter of the poem.
We have above indicated certain dramatic and
moral points of the poem, and need only add that
it contrasts the free yet earnest life, a life at once
natural and spiritual, with a formal, external life,
a life of pompous and selfish routine and isola-
tion. The lady, by nature and race, is formed
to hate the one and seek the other; the duke to
do the contrary. All experience and the rich
promise of life are to the first, death in life to the
other.
And it may be that the poet had an eye
to certain "revivals and "mediævalisms" that
were making a vain effort to become a
way of
life" to Englishmen about the date of this poem
(1845), in setting his moral thus.
}}
<<
"Childe Roland" was first published in 1855,
and has, I believe, been a puzzle to most readers.
since. A study of madness, says an injured
reader, with some tendency to produce it.
poem as a pure
Shall we, then, regard the
fantasy, and nothing more? If we do, how
shall we take it, and what value could it have?
Much still, we should say, as the expression of
a series of emotions, or the invention of a
series of images that depict these, and so sug-
gest certain experiences of the soul. But how
is this? It is hard, we judge, for most of us to
understand how a poet may express himself in
images and metres simply, stating his emotions.
and perceptions in concrete imagery. The poet
has spoken of “Childe Roland" as a pure romance
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 473
made in that sense, and we shall take it first in
that way.
But how did the poem arise in the poet's
fancy? and what were its primary suggestions?
First, there is the line from Edgar's song in
"Lear"- a line that seems to have haunted the
poet's mind, insisting on interpretation: "Childe
Rowland to the dark tower came." That line
is from an old ballad, and takes us back dimly
to heroic times-to heroic legends and within
the charmed circle of Arthurian story. It is
possible that the line in "Lear" is from the
ballad of "Childe Rowland and Burd Ellen." And
that was a tale of the feats of Rowland, son of
Arthur, in bringing back his sister, "the fair
Burd Ellen," from the castle of the King of
Elfland, where she was helplessly enchanted. It
was a long and weary journey to Elfland, and
worse than the journey were the risks of the soft
twilight land and the hall of the king. But the
undaunted Rowland went, and brought back his
sister and his two brothers, who had tried and
failed, and this he did with help of the good sword
Excalibur and Merlin's wisdom. Such at least
is one form of the old romance, of which there
are only fragments, though a similar ballad is
found in several northern languages.
Then one would think that the tragic scenery
and situation of "Lear" in that great part of the
drama also wrought on the poet's imagination.
Edgar sings that song in the awful silence on
the heath and before the hovel, King Lear is
474
ROBERT BROWNING
his Childe Rowland, and the tower, both blind.
and dark, was the madness to which Lear was
coming. Other points in the picture, and things
entering into its composition, are mentioned by
Dr. Furnivall-the gaunt figure of a red horse
on a piece of tapestry in Mr. Browning's house,
which kept staring at him, and a picture seen at
Paris. As to the tower, two statements are made
Corfe Castle, and a tower among certain moun-
tains in Italy. None of these items may seem
of much importance, but they give a clue to the
nature of the poem through its elements and
composition. And as you read the poem you
will see how these images, with the emotions.
they touched, have formed a striking picture.
The hero of the adventure is the speaker, so he
has survived "the dark tower." As a knight, he
had gone round the world to carry out the task
laid on him. Many had tried and failed, and
that seems likely to be his fate. He has even
got to a point at which failure would be a relief.
It is the dull twilight of a dreary day. He comes
on a hoary cripple, with a look of malice, who
points out a path. He has no confidence that
the path is right, but takes it, caring only that
somehow his quest should end. He is in such
weariness that he seems cut off even from those
who have failed, and left to seek vainly alone.
And the whole scene looks the shadow of his
despair. The very sun "leers" at him as it sets.
But so much he knows-the "tower" is some-
where in the tract. So he took the plain, and
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 475
as soon as he had done so the path behind
seemed gone, and he was bound to his fate; he
must go on if only because there was nothing
else to do. And on he went, through a scene
starved, base, and dead, hardly a blade and not
a creature, save "one stiff blind horse, with every
bone astare." This horse seemed so wretched he
could not help hating it; it must be wicked to be
in such misery. It was all so bad he shut his
eyes to seek comfort out of memory and the past,
but there was no comfort that way. All those
once with him who have failed come back to him,
and to avoid the past he takes the path again. It
grew darker, drearier, and all seemed so dead that
he longed for anything-an owl or a bat, even,
if only it had life or motion. He came on some-
thing in motion-a restless, spiteful little river,
that seemed a curse to everything near it, and
whose presence only gave new horror to the
scenery. It was a relief to get away from it.
Surely something better must come. But no; a
worse tract, full of horrid, shadowy struggle, like
"wild-cats in a red-hot iron cage," base, cruel,
vain. And the very ground was evil; not only
waste, but hideous. This to bear, and the end
far off as ever, and neither desire nor aim left!
But there came another crisis. A great black
bird went past, and as he looked up, thinking
even that might be a guide in so strange a land,
he saw mountains shut him in on every side. It
all seemed a horrid dream; and now both escape
and progress seemed cut off, and he was giving
476
ROBERT BROWNING
all up, when he heard a sound as of a trap closing,
and knew the time and place to which all the
years had led.
And there in the midst was the
tower
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world.
It came on him unawares, after years of training
and quest.
As he saw it the dying sun shone
out, and the hills lay on watch for his fate, and
all who had failed seemed there to see him fail.
The woe of years was pressed into a moment.
But the passion of years turned to instant pur-
pose. To win or lose, he threw himself on his
task, and blew his knightly challenge.
Such is the poem. Have its images and inci-
dents any meaning or result? Is it a dream
without coherence or aim? Is it a symbol of a
whole class of experiences? or of some definite
conflict of the soul-some chapter of a "Pilgrim's
Progress," or adventure of a "Faerie Knight "?
It will be readily believed that the "riddle" of
Childe Rowland and his tower have been variously
read by those who have seen a riddle in it. The
"riddles" of the poets, when they set them, have
many sides, and give scope for guessing. So some
see in the poem a parable of the search for truth,
found only after infinite, weary, disheartening toil,
and as if by chance at length. Others find in the
romance an image of death, and all the vain fears
that gather and darken in that waste land of sun-
set. And others read it of any troubled crisis in
Sa
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 477
life, or of life itself, with its many fears and illu-
sions, which are chiefly shadows and moods of
the soul itself.
ct
Mrs. Orr holds that the poet had no mean-
ing" did not work with ethical purpose at all,
but in the medium and with the elements of pure
fantasy. And yet she speaks of the poet as
aware of, and as touching the ideal aspect of, his
marvellous picture. There can, we think, be no
doubt that the poem is the most purely romantic
and fantastic of all Browning's works, that that is
its predominant aspect. He could not have been
the strong romanticist he was without sensibility
and power of this kind, and the "suggestions" we
have referred to had curiously stimulated fantasy
in this instance. But being the poet he was in
other respects, he could scarcely avoid touching
his knight's intense adventure with ideal sugges-
tion, and certain phrases of the poem appear to
bear this out, while even dreams have relation to
life, and express mind, not brain only. The poet
had no design, and the poem is a vivid romance;
but his romance is some image of experience all
the same. And so at the risk of adding another
fancy to those this haunting and singularly ex-
pressive and Dantesque poem has provoked, let
us indicate the "ideal aspect" it suggests to us.
It seems to me a romance of the soul in one of
its hardest tasks the task of keeping true to
itself against itself; the task of keeping on when
the fire of life burns low, and experience looks not
so much painful as hideous and futile.
It is a
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ROBERT BROWNING
romance of that high courage which hardly knows
itself as courage or purpose, but which fights down
the depressions and terrors that crowd round one
when years of zeal and effort seem to have gone
for nothing; when duty looks so dull and uncertain
that disaster, or any change to break up the vanity
of things, seems desirable. To conceive high aims
and enter the knightly course is not so hard; but
to carry these through the years against weariness
and temptation requires that high virtue tenacity
and fidelity of the very soul. Childe Roland has
no foes to fight; that may be past. His critical
fight is, we said, in the soul, and against the whole
appearance of things. And life often seems a
conspiracy, not so much for defeating high purpose
as for dragging it down, making it seem foolish
and out of place; and the worst of all our doubts
at times is the doubt whether our best aims be
not absurd. Childe Roland had not failed. He
had kept on till it hardly seemed worth while to
succeed, and in the dreary dusk everything took
shape and colour from his own apathetic moods,
and the whole of heroism had sunk down to
going on because there was nothing better to do.
This, we said, may be the last trial of some, and it
asks more of virtue than tasks that seem far more
heroic.

And if any say, "that or some similar series of
ideas and emotions," we do not object.
A great
passage of music says one thing to one mind and
other things to other minds; and there is nothing
wrong with interpreter or music when it is so.
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND BALLADS 479
Poetry, cannot, of course, have the suggestive
power and freedom of music. Yet as all true
poetry has a power of suggestion reaching past its
mere words, so there may be poems made of the
elements and in the sphere where the art is most
concrete and simply suggestive. In this class is
"Childe Roland," with some of the romantic work
of Coleridge, in spite of its marked difference of
tone and texture.
And this reference might very well raise, could.
we here follow it up, two questions (1) As to the
principle of this class of imaginative literature,
of which there are so few instances; (2) why
Browning working so strikingly here did only
"Childe Roland." We can only suggest as to
the first, that such work appears to be a kind of
dream work, with a sharpness and energy dreams
seldom reach. And Browning has shown some-
thing of the intense visionary power in not a
few places of his work, though only here, and
with differences in "The Flight of the Duchess
and "Porphyria," giving scope to it.
"}
CHAPTER XIX
THE LOVE POEMS
BEFORE anything gets into song it must have
risen to a good degree of interest and charm in
life. Literature is the record of these interests as
they reach power in the lives of men. And one
point made clear by the historic method of literary
study is, that ideas and sentiments that seem
primitive and simple are really complex and of
late growth.
Love poetry is an instance of this. Love, it
may seem, is a theme old as song, and old as the
heart of man.
But the fact is not so. War and
adventure, the brave deeds and braver sufferings
of men, valour and danger, man's power and hero-
ism, and the pathos of man's fate,—these are the
old themes and springs of song.
But though not primitive, love, it may be
thought, must, as passion and song, be ancient.
Again the fact is not so. Love as we conceive it
is modern had its rise in the Middle Ages. The
union of Christian and Teutonic ideas with feudal
institutions and the temper of chivalry led to its
rise and fixed its quality. The Christian idea of
woman's worth, with the Teutonic idea of her
480
THE LOVE POEMS
481
place and honour in the home, gave her a new
dignity and a higher position. The rise of the
feudal castle and knightly service, and the place
of the lady in the castle-her relations and duties
towards the youth there for knightly training—
gave her new and special influence. The leisure
of the Middle Age, with its romantic dreaming,
and the mystical fervours of the time which
wrought the ideals of the Church on that of
knighthood, gave a higher quality to feeling. And
the worship of "the Mother of God," with its
honour of woman and its standard of womanhood,
told greatly in the same direction.
Through such causes chivalry developed a new
emotion, fixed it in human life, and gave it power
among the motives of men. It may be, as Vernon
Lee holds, that mediæval love was in many cases
ignoble; but, as she allows, whatever its precise
origin, the sentiment grew to a strange depth and
fervour, created a high code of honour, led to
romantic devotion, and produced the first liter-
ature of love for love's sake.
The "Vita Nuova" of Dante is the expression
of the mediæval sentiment at its best, the first
great expression of love as ideal passion—a passion
of the soul, pure, austere, and grand. Petrarch, in
a lower key, and one nearer the hearts of men,
made the sentiment the possession of culture and
the fashion of verse. To English verse the im-
pulse came from Petrarch, and first in the work
of Wyatt and Surrey, but better in that of Sidney
and Spenser, found utterance. In Spenser "all
S
3 I
482
ROBERT BROWNING
1
}
the loveliness of love and beauty" are realised in
verse fit for them. Romantic love is the theme
of Shakespeare's poetry, and the leading interest
of some of his plays, while the beauty and honour
of his women have embodied the visionary glory
of Spenser. The songs of the dramatists touch
the theme with beauty, and the seventeenth-
century lyrists keep the song with less passion.
but more art. It dies out after the Restoration
and during the eighteenth century; but with the
revival of deeper passion and ideas at that century's
close, and with the romantic movement of the early
nineteenth century, the true love-song is found
again. Shelley and Coleridge touched its finest
notes, and Rossetti, with inspiration and intensity
of Dante, has given a fervour and ideality to the
poetry of love at once Elizabethan and Italian.
But why go so far to get to Browning's love
poetry? Because Browning's work of this class
grasps strongly, and interprets with poignant
passion, the love-motives of the modern mind from
Dante to Shelley. It may seem indeed unlikely
that Browning should handle this of all themes
well; but if he be a genuine singer of love, it will
be allowed that the fact must throw light on his
general power as a poet. And if there be special
quality and power in this part of his work, elements
of original passion and insight, it will not only give
interest to this part of his poetry, but bear on our
estimate of the poet in other ways.
And here, as we glance at the kinds and motives
of love-poetry to ascertain the quality and scope
THE LOVE POEMS
483
of Browning's, we shall find the use of the survey
above made. The poetry of love may spring
from and express delight in several aspects and
qualities of its subject. Physical beauty and
charm is an obvious theme; beauty and interest
of character, grace and charm of manner and
mind is another theme, implying higher interests
and feelings. The attraction and sentiment of
womanhood enters into both gives sweetness
and force to both. And there is a still higher
level and strain-the attraction of mind for mind,
of soul for soul, of the man in his ideal desires for
the woman in her ideal qualities and promise.
In other words, love-poetry may be a poetry of
pleasure, of beauty, or of social sentiment, and it
may be a poetry of spiritual passion. It may be
made for the grace and wit of it; it may deal with
love in its place among the stimulating incidents
and joys of life; or it may be taken in its relation
to the deeper life of men and women, and as a
study of the heart's essential power and bias.
Now, some will think that love does not get to
that depth, and that in such a view we recur, not
merely to the passion, but to the dogma of Dante,
and yet it may be that the ideal and scope are the
heart's own. Browning certainly reads it so. The
mysticism of Dante, the ideality of Shelley, the
passion and depth of Rossetti, are truer to him
than any prosaic views or feeling. His character-
istic love-poetry is not only poignant,-it is inward,
ideal. Its passion carries the life with it, and goes
forth to grasp the life of what is loved; it seeks
•
"
484
ROBERT BROWNING
way.
what is intimate and vital in heart and mind.
Such love comes from and concerns the whole life;
it tells not only what has been won, but what is
desired; tells not of aspiration only, but of scope
—that bent and power of the soul which fixes the
orbit of each life. Every soul is on an eternal
The way it is on and the ends it is capable
of are best seen in its higher and deeper passions.
True passion is deeper, fuller than thought. Love
is greater than knowledge; and all we have really
loved of beauty and of good we shall yet be. Our
ideals that carry the life and power of our best
passions in them are promises. Life's powers are
not only best seen in, they are best quickened
by, the higher love. The soul is best developed
through its most powerful and vital emotions, and
in the play of such emotions through spiritual
love it is not only on the way to, but is even now
realising, its full and proper life.
From this point of view, and on these principles,
the first section of Browning's love poems may be
read; and first of them, "Rudel to the Lady of
Tripoli." It is a story of that Rudel, the trouba-
dour, who from the shores of southern France
yearned towards the far-off dream of the lady of
Tripoli. He had not seen her; she is a figure
of fancy only, but with power over him passing
reality and sense. He finds a pilgrim going East,
and to him he tells his love, that he may tell it
everywhere in the East, that it may come to his
lady's ears. He has taken as his device a sun-
flower, because, as the flower follows ever and
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THE LOVE POEMS
485
cares only for the sun, so he turns ever eastward
to catch one look of love's sun across the far sad
waters. And his songs and fame are as little to
him compared with love as the things about the
flower are to the flower, which cares the day
through only for the sun. Here is the passion
of love for love's sake alone the soul's passion
towards an ideal of its own creation-an ideal
made and maintained of its own forces and needs
-its need to love nobly and wholly.
(C
Cristina" is a higher statement of the same
passion. Published in 1842, it was then named
"Queen Worship." The queen was Cristina of
Spain, and the hero of the story loved her without
hope, yet so passionately that he went mad over it.
Where is the interest, and what is the meaning,
the poet seems to suggest, of such love, into which
without earthly hope the soul puts its life? The
poem is a dramatic answer to that question.
The youth is one of sensitive and ardent soul,
essentially sincere and faithful. He meets the
queen; she meets his glance as if she knew and
cared for him. Love springs up instant, complete,
final; and such love is right. Life is dark enough,
and men blunder much, but there are gleams of
heavenly light which disperse the illusions and
disclose the realities. Such passion is one of
these, lighting up the past of the soul and its
future, and making, life's meaning plain. The
lady, it may be, fit this, but put it aside, let the
world and its vanities rush in, and ignoring the
soul through contempt of love she missed life here.
I
1
486
But the man found and held life's substance and
secret in his love. The use of life he saw was to
grasp clearly love's ideal, and carry it beyond
earth into that sphere of better scope and surer
results, where ideals may be realised. That this
will happen he has no doubt, for such passion has
in it the power and promise of an "endless life,"
and love assures its goal. Such love is its own
reward; it abides all earthly loss, and the life
beyond is but the realisation of the life within.
"Evelyn Hope" is a more striking expression
of the same ideal; one of the most tender and
beautiful of love-poems, blending in one moment
of passion the pathos of death and the victory of a
deathless love. The form is dramatic-lyric. The
lover is by the dead girl. She has not loved him
--she did not even know him, and it was not her
time to love—but in her he saw the lady of his
finest passion and hope. And by her dead form,
though earth has given him nothing but this
knowledge, he is satisfied that he must some time
find what his soul worships and needs, else life
stands on illusions, not on truth, and the soul
itself is the worst of its vanities. A large argu-
ment over a matter of love! How are we to take
it?
As the language of passion resenting death
and this life's woeful incompleteness? or as a pre-
vision of the soul in a moment of intensest life?
The latter is the assurance of passion, of course,
and the past sympathises with it. This lover has
searched life, has tried the ages and the gains of
men, and has passed through a quest of fifty years
ROBERT BROWNING
THE LOVE POEMS
487
unsatisfied—without finding the ideal and harmon-
ising principle he sought. In "Evelyn Hope,"
"made of spirit, fire, and dew," that principle was
present, that ideal of nature's special grace was
vitally expressed, and as "God creates the love
to reward the love"-makes soul to complete
soul-he leaves in her hand a token of the union
that must come though there should be worlds to
traverse and lives to wait for it. But this, it will
be said, is no poetry of love, only of mystical
passion for an ideal, suggested, it may be, by its
object, but not given in it. Yet again, is not the
ideality the heart's own, and is not that largely the
quality of modern love from the "Vita Nuova" to
"Faust," from Shakespeare to Rossetti?
"Love in a Life" and "Life in a Love" are
variations under their own images of the same
theme. In the first the lover seeks through all
the "rooms," through all the ways and experiences
of life, for the loved one, and does not find, but
keeps on seeking, in the faith that love is ever to
find, and cannot be baffled. In the second, the
lover finds the loved one bent on escaping, but
that only adds zest to the pursuit and meaning
to life itself, whose law is search, not rest. "Two
in the Campagna" as a love-poem has the same
idea. Love is ever to seek because it is ideal,
and the heart is restless because passion is infinite,
while satisfaction is and must be finite.
And so this poetry is romantic and passionate,
rendering not merely the force but the mystery of
passion. "Poetry," said Börne, "gives us what
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ROBERT BROWNING
[:
nature denies," and yet what it gives is also a
part of nature, and our hearts respond because it
interprets them, as well by its scope as by its
intensity. That must still be our point of view
as we read such poems as A Woman's Last
Word," "A Lovers' Quarrel," and "Numpholeptos."
The first expresses, at the close of a disagreement
that words cannot heal, the heart's longing to
keep love whole even at the cost of surrender and
illusion. Over something, or over nothing most
likely, there has been strife, and the woman gives
way, though she keeps her thoughts. Differences
are nothing beside love's ideal and the heart's
agreement. She clings to the Eden of entire
trust, and will throw even truth over to keep it.
A moment of weariness, or fear of disillusion, you
think; but a paradise into which doubt has come
is paradise no more? Can it be regained?
Some answer to that question will be found in
"A Lovers' Quarrel." The difference in this case
has been greater and has gone much further. It
is the man who speaks, and he is alone. There
had been days of love that made the bleak winter
bright, but parting came of a mere idle word, and
now the spring days are a pain and a discord.
But the heart's one wish is re-union, and he were
well satisfied that winter and storm should make
life bare as a crypt, if only it forced his love back
to the only place that can never change or grow
unkind. She will come back, he is sure, if not till
the night is late and the storm at its worst, and he
will take her home, and love will be whole for ever.
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""
And our poet is not afraid of romantic notes
when the fidelity and absoluteness of love is the
theme. In "Misconceptions" the mere fact that
one who is loved had leant on her lover's heart,
using it as the bird may use the spray on its way
to the treetop, is taken as enough for honour and
joy. In "The Lost Mistress we find the same
note of surrender and loyalty. One who has
loved is resigning love for friendship; yet is so
frankly true to love's heart, so purely kind to
love's dream, that he begs warmest friendship for
love's sake. To such hearts, devoted to love and
not to self, love is all, and simple love enough.
So in the fine lyric "Natural Magic," love is the
magician working all the wonders, with ample
power to clothe the bare walls of life with the
beauty of June, and fill its blankest hours with
music and all its spaces with flowers, its powers
in this way a mystery and yet a fact! This
poetry of love in life is seen from another point
of view in "Magical Nature," which is an instance
of our poet's point and power in this sort of brief
lyric. The loved one is conceived as a flower
for delicate beauty, as a jewel for changeful un-
changing loveliness-the magic thus in her nature.
"In Three Days" is thrilled with longing and
hope, with quick desire that makes the time feel
long, and ardent hope that makes it seem short
until the lovers meet-only "three days and one
short night" hence. In quite another key, wistful
minor the strain of it, and set to a measure that
expresses the strain, is "In a Year." It is full of
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ROBERT BROWNING
the strange sadness of love's disappointment and
decay as it touches the woman's heart still loving,
and wondering why it has happened, and whether,
when "the cold clay clod" that was a man's
heart" has turned to dust, the true life will then
begin" what comes next? Is it God?”
Dealing with disappointment of another kind,
and raising certain ethical points in the relations
of love, while putting its magic and ideality very
strikingly, is the poem "Numpholeptos" (nymph-
caught, entranced). It is a kind of dream started
by the myths of nymphs too etherial and perfect
for mortal life, yet fascinating the hearts of mortal
men. The lover sees the loved one in that form.
She is above him, out of his sphere even, and yet
the vision attracts, impels him to seek, and gives
him hope. He may win her, but only when he
reaches the white light of a full yet stainless
manhood. He woos her again and again, but is
sent back to life for some fault or defect, with a
calm, pitying, yet unyielding smile. He is at the
point to resent the severity of the ideal, but its
beauty and power command him, and the quest is
renewed. Is that love's part, then, to reward the
victor only? or is it also to cheer and help the
struggle? Both certainly. Yet love is often the
sternest of idealists, exacting the best, and that
for love's sake. And the lover yields and clings
and hopes for ever.
Other notes of ideal or tragic passion we have
in other poems in all periods of the poet's work,
showing both his knowledge of the heart and his
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491
1
firm and subtle mastery of the lyrical measures
fitted to the various themes and phases of love he
has dealt with. "In a Gondola" has been re-
ferred to in other relations, but must be named
here for the pure intensity of its conception of
love and its ardent satisfaction with love as the
lover's only reward-the note of "Romeo and
Juliet." So with "The Last Ride." There, we
have seen, the lover is aware of questions and facts
beyond his hour of present joy, but in his pure
abandonment to this hour of love he shuts them
out, and realises only that this is heaven. And
if this be near tragic passion, Browning has finely
given the depth of such passion in poems like
"St. Martin's Summer" and "Too Late."
Martin's Summer" gives the glow of a dead love
kindled later in life and not known at first for
what it is, but recognised at the point described
in the poem.
A man loves a woman, and he and
she think the love is for her, but he comes to see
that the charm is woven by the ghost of an old
love. She has revived that and no more. To
build a “mansion" for love, then, were to build
it by love's grave, and find it haunted by a ghost.
He describes the situation in vivid phrase, with
tragic emotion, and begs her to leave and avoid
him, that the ghost may be laid and the past left
where the years have buried it. It is one of the
finest and strongest of these love-lyrics, dramatic-
ally and poetically keen and strong as Eliza-
bethan work. "Too Late" is a tragedy of another
sort.
It is the forlorn lament of one who feels
"St.
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ROBERT BROWNING
1
She
But
that he has lost the best thing life had for him.
He loved a woman, but did not seek her.
married another and never knew his love.
now she is dead, and for this life, at least, the
matter ends utterly. But this end is a new
beginning, for death sets her free and binds his
heart again purely to the dead. The husband
may tag her epitaph in his cold way, but in the
grave she is her lover's, and in the after life she
will be. So he turns his back on the world, with
remorse for the past, with resolve to pay all the
heart's debt and make his days one sacred ritual
of love and memory.
CC
".
(
•
These are romantic notes, it was said, but the
poet has other notes too in this part of his poetry
-notes humorous and masculine, though always
frankly passionate. "Love among the Ruins" is
mainly a picture of a wide, quiet, landscape, en-
closing the remains of an old capital. And there,
amid the ruins of the once busy city, two lovers
are to meet in the evening. One of them waits
and meditates. The noisy city is gone like a
dream, its very ruins almost gone, but love abides,
and renews itself for ever in human hearts, and
love's quiet hour is worth, it may be, all the
centuries of noise and glory. "Meeting at
night" and
and Parting at Morning" are also
pictures with love for motive-the glad meet-
ing at the day's close and the parting with
morning when the need for action and for a
world of men returns.
"One Way of Love" and "Another Way of

Th OVE POEMS
493
In
Love" are complementary, and humorous.
the first the lover has been stripping June of all
its roses to express his love. In the second, too,
the lover has done a good deal that way, but has
got tired of it, and in reaction from it feels some
scorn of himself for his folly, and some malice
towards the lady whose charms have befooled
him. So he asks, half-sighing, a smile in a yawn,
"If I tire of your June will she greatly care?"
The poem is the lady's reply. She knows how
men tire of love, and find the June with its
wealth of roses a bore. Let them change then,
only let them know that as June has her light-
nings that vary the weather and her perfection,
so gentle ladies have means to change the
monotony.
"Women and Roses" is a lyric of much beauty,
in a mood our energetic poet hardly ever allows
himself. It deals dreamily with the theme of
unreturned love, and in verse and imagery of fine
fitness expresses the loveliness of beauty apart
from the ordinary sentiment of love. He dreams
of a rose-tree with three roses, about each of
which gathers mystically the beautiful women of
the past, the present, and the future. But the
dreamer is out of the magic circles. They will
have nothing to say to him. They will not "for
once girdle" him, and yet the beauty of the rose-
tree is his too.
"The Flower's Name" is akin, we may say, to
"Natural Magic," its note that of love, which gives
beauty and value to all associated with it, to the

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ROBERT BRO ING
garden where it has been, to the flowers it has
touched, and even to a soft meandering Spanish
flower-name it has used.
"My Star" gives the intimacy of true love, and
the insight that comes of it. A certain star
darts red and blue-to the lover, to no others.
Others see Saturn, not "my star."
In "Song" the lover challenges all to admira-
tion and praise; knowing men's way of praising,
and their need to admire, he offers them this
theme.
"Earth's Immortalities is in another key,
and of a quality this poet seldom writes,—senti-
mental it may seem, though there are facts of
this order. Fame is immortal, and yet your
poet's grave is neglected and his name is being
covered with grey lichens. And love's
love's "for
ever" has been known to last less than a single
season.
"})
Confessions" is in its way another humorous
love-poem-quaint and vivid. The speaker is
dying, and the parson by his bed asks him
whether he has not found life a vale of tears.
He says bluntly "No," while his mind runs back
to his love-days long ago, and he lives it over
once more, so keenly that the things about his
bed, his very physic bottles, become parts of a
picture of the place where he met his lover in
"the old June weather," by "the rose-wreathed
gate." Glad for what has been, and free of cant,
he would gladly have his life again, and most of
all for love's sake.
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There remain two classes of the love-poems,
those of a personal nature, and the poems of
wedded-love. Of the first class there are only
two, for this poet keeps his life, though not his
personality, well behind his work. In "One
Word More" the poet gives his "Men and
Women," the first-fruits of their years of married
life, to his wife. And for his design the theme
is fit and expressive. Dante, wishing to show
in a special way his love of Beatrice, so the story
runs, made not poetry his usual work, but a
painting. And Raphael, with the same motive,
made poetry, not painting. Such special work
has unique value and beauty-the work by which
a man is famous is for all-this is for one. So
the poet here does other than his usual work, to
mark his love. Poetry, he says, is all he can do
in this life, though in other lives he hopes for
other tasks in other arts, and "all the gifts" in
all the lives for his wife. But he can make
another than his usual kind of verse, and he
makes this lyric, that he may speak in his own
voice, and from his heart, to her only. "Prospice "
looks forward to the last fight set for men. The
poet would meet that fight with clear eye and
soul, would face all the pain and the darkness,
"the press of the storm and the fear of the foe."
And this he would do to fare as the heroes of his
race, and to taste the whole of life; but, above all,
because he knows that beyond the fight comes
the meeting that will pay for all the pain-for in
the storm will come peace, and then still light,
}
496
ROBERT BROWNING
and then the union of soul with soul in love's
eternal life.
First a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest.
From such poems it is fit to pass to the others
named above; for it is one of the distinctions of
Browning's poetry that it has sung the "prosaic
and hazardous" theme of wedded-love. In fact,
two of his most subtle and original love-poems
are in this class. This is not a new thing in
literature. There are poems on the theme, while
Thackeray brought it within his art. But the
theme has been rare, and few have given it such
depth and beauty. Both choice and treatment
of this theme stand in relation without doubt to
the poet's life,—and, indeed, the words of one of
the poems in question make that clear. Those
words, twice said in "By the Fireside" (and
other words there too)" the great brow with.
the spirit's small hand propping it”—surely speak
of its inspiration, and make it right to say what
is here said.
(C
By the Fireside" is a little hard to read.
Its hardness comes from its point of view and
construction, and from the way in which story
and description are worked in with and delay
the main theme. The speaker looks forward to
the autumn evenings, and to the November of
life, and thinks what he will do then. He will
sit by the fireside with some great book, Greek
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497
and prose, not reading, but thinking on the
past, on his early days of love, and all the
days that came after. He sees, as he thinks
of it, the little chapel among the Alps, where
his heart first spoke out its love and found
the life that has been so good. Then in stanza
xxi., as he recalls the place and the years
since, and sees his wife by the fire, he dwells
on all they have become to each other.
And so
he asks her too to go back to that place and
time, that they may live it again, and, in the
light and consciousness of the years that have
grown out of it, realise its meaning. That, as he
now sees, was his spiritual birth-hour, the crisis
of his life. By the choice and event of that time
he found his soul's faculty and meaning; he took
his right place in life's order with motive and
power to fill it.
So the poem depicts the quality and influence
of masculine love, enriched by years of growth,
and matured by the experiences of life. Love
began then. All that went before, and that
poets have mostly sung, was a prelude only.
The rich and happy years that have come of
that hour and choice make the years of youth
look barren and poor. The union then begun
has grown until the two souls are as one soul-
the streams of their lives a single stream, and he
cannot now imagine any life for them apart.
What will happen when "earth breaks up and
heaven expands" he does not know; but he
knows that his wife must share and help in
dang
32
498
ROBERT BROWNING
whatever life may be-" see, and make him see,
new depths of the Divine."
(C
He did not know, we have said, the meaning
of what took place that evening among the Alps
by the Alpine chapel, nor did the motives of the
time forecast the results of it. Both love and
life have deepened, and he gathers its meaning
now with a sense of glad surprise. As he does
so, that moment, one yet infinite," seems to
blend with the evening and the scene, giving
and getting depth and colour. The intense twi-
light, followed by the tender evening, the one
star, the sense of the two souls near each other
and far from all besides, the lights and shadows.
of sky and woods, the stir and trouble of hope
and fear, the crisis of speech, the gentle-hearted
acceptance, and the moment after when the night
fell, and they knew their hearts one-all these he
now sees belong to the supreme hour when his
soul made the choice that has been its life-
a life
that age and death fulfil, and in which the best is
yet to be.
"Any Wife to Any Husband" is another
theme of married life-the pathos of the change
death may make in a man's love. The wife
knows his love true, and yet she foresees that
when left alone he will seek other faces, other
hearts. For this there are excuses, good as the
world goes, but which do not leave love's heart
whole and pure. She feels that in like circum-
stances, though in most ways weaker than her
husband, she could have been faithful. It seems
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499
strange, and feels bitter as she thinks of it, and
most pitiable, in that it seems a wrong done his
own soul. Yet she forgives him, because their
past life and her own love tell her that he is and
must remain hers, and will return to the place
she keeps for him in her heart for ever. Only,
why should he come stained by unfaithfulness
or weakness? Pride might keep him true, and
the faith of the life beyond. But he will fail,
and she accepts what she foresees, in the certain
hope of that final union which love claims and
assures. Thus does love ignore death, and seek
a home "where the eternal are."
"Earth's Immortalities," above referred to,
may give us here part of the sentiment of this
poetry of love. These are apt, indeed, to be
illusive; Love changes or forgets, Fame turns
to the fading memory of a name, Death conquers
and bears all away in the end. Yet love asks
and affirms deathless constancy, and condemns
the vanity of life apart from such elements of
spiritual permanence. Again the note of infinite
passion and the pain of hearts that feel and
resent the bonds of finite life!
"James Lee's Wife," a series of dramatic lyrics,
is another "study" of married life.
In this case
the love the constancy, at least is on the
wife's side again, and by her love she feels driven
to leave her husband to his own devices, and the
light such a crisis may bring. He loved her
once, or he liked her, but he did not know or
really esteem her. The ignorance was in degree
500
ROBERT BROWNING
mutual. Differences were accentuated and in-
creased by marriage and daily life, and they
could not come to a compromise. The woman
is the more restless and ardent of the two, more
capable and active. She has sensibilities and
ideas, longings and ideals; poetry and art are
her way, and she wishes life to have the quality
of the one and the beauty of the other. James
Lee, we infer, is prosaic, solid, and it may be
stolid. His wife has "fancies." They don't
hurt him, if they amuse her; but if she insists
on his sharing them, that will be another matter.
When she took him she knew the state, if not
the stuff or the limits, of his nature, but she
had hopes, and it may be the hopes were part of
her reasons for taking him. Love would improve
him. But he has no wish to be improved her
way, and what with her designs on him, and
her demands from him, and her moral discon-
tent, he feels bored. To love, and mutually
admire and stimulate, as she fancies, would only
be to hug the chains of a life of bondage; so
he thinks. He won't have it. She is disap-
pointed, and lets it be seen that she is, which,
of course, makes him still less disposed for culture
or conciliation. And they are living too much
alone-living in a quiet, simple way in a little.
house on the French coast, idyllic and picturesque,
no doubt, but just the situation to find out the
weak places in their union, and throw up the
discords of their characters. Then she is a plain
woman, and her husband is by her account manly
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501
and handsome; and he is not unkind, only rather
cold, reserved, self-sufficient. Altogether their
relations are strained; the situation is unsafe.
It breaks down, and the wife, in despair of any
other solution of a problem she has chiefly raised,
leaves the French coast and James Lee.
The situation and story, so far as we can get
at matters, are presented only by the wife. We
have never a word from James Lee. We could
have done with his version of the tragedy, but
he was not likely to have given it, nor would it
as given by him have been poetic. His story
would have been brief-his wife's "folly and
conceit" the main part of it. Yet at first the
series was called "James Lee," and some think
it ought to be so. The later title is fairer to
James Lee, and true to the dramatic point of
view, and as nearly all there was to tell took
place in the mind and heart of the wife, it
takes its title fitly from her.
The course and factors of the drama need
care, as you have these only through the wife's
thoughts and feelings. The first poem is spoken
"At the Window." The husband is coming
home after a short absence, and the wife longs
to greet him. It is the turn of the season, and
shadows of "the fall" are seen and felt. The
sense of change in nature hints a fear of change
in the things of her life-in the old and dear
things of love. But, no; such change can't fall
there. True, James Lee is only a man, but she
is his wife, and that bond should hold them true.
502
ROBERT BROWNING
So for the time her fear is set aside; but the
fear and the hint, only "a man," and the self-
consciousness, are ominous.
They are next "By the Fireside," and the fire
of driftwood gathered on that bitter coast of
France speaks of the deadly risks of the sea,
and the fatal chances of life. It is night, and
the sailor, seeing their lighted window, will think
how warm and bright all is within, not knowing
how ships and hearts may rust and rot in the
harbour, and that is worse than all the sea's
perils. Note the boding heart, the spirit of
revolt, the sharper sense of facts; with James
Lee beside her she feels the change and "the
hell opening under her."
In the third poem she is looking from "The
Doorway." The autumn darkens, and with it
her mood. The swallows are about to go, the
sea,is stormy, and threatens change and disaster,
and she hears the wail of the wind. The trees
suffer, and her heart with them.
But she argues
for content, and rouses herself with the thought
that the soul, made with divine range and power,
should be above outward things, and able to give.
them what they lack-to give, not to get. So
she will love and bear. But her place and tone
are lonelier, and love is not made whole by
arguments.
So in the next poem the accent of difference
is more emphatic. She is "On the Beach," and
talking matters over to her husband, who may be
with her, though her speech has the effect of a
THE LOVE POEMS
503
soliloquy, and seems to come as the hopeless end
of other talk. She reasons, but it is to show him
why he is wrong. He asked her love; she gave
it-gave it rather for what she hoped from than
found in him. She knew him "mere earth, with
much waste and many a weed"; she hoped for
richer soil and better things. She has waited
with her love and her care, and the better things
are still to seek. And still she waits, set on her
task and wedded to her hope, with praise for him
and blame, and most of all, love. But he is
offended by her candour and by her expecta-
tions, and the pity of it is that his annoyance
is as natural as her discontent. Her tone and
her ideas first bore, then vex him.
But she does not give up hope yet, and when
we find her "On the Cliff," she is trying hope
again. The turf is dry and dead, the rock low
and bare-" death's altar by the lone shore."
A grasshopper springs on the turf, and a butter-
fly settles on the rock. The life and beauty of
these change the face of both. Cannot love,
settling on the "low and bare" natures of men,
change them so? She has, you see, much
candour and a little hope. But the separation
grows. James Lee is not on the cliff, if he
was on the beach.
Hope is gone, and change certain, as she reads
"Under the Cliff," a poem made to interpret that
tone of "the wind with its wants and its infinite
wail," which had struck her before. The poem
does not, she feels, interpret that note of the
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ROBERT BROWNING
autumn wind which touches the heart so strangely
as the mystic echo of all sorrows that have ever
been. (The poem is Browning's own, made in
1836, though put as quoted. It is not quite in
tune with the series, but raises well the question
of this part.) The poem is youthful, she thinks,
and does not get to the depth of its theme. The
young cannot know that. They play with
failure and sorrow as sentiments only. It takes
years of both to mature the heart, and give it
touch of the larger reality-of the pathos of man
and the world. What, then, means that mystic
wail of the wind? It is nature's lament over her
own changes, over all that has been and never
can be again. All things pass away-that is
life's wrong and the world's woe. It may bring
us the perfect; it takes from us what is good and
dear. Yet, if it be the law, let us fall in with it,
and move with it to that fuller good to which it
urges us. But is that really the drift of all the
changes that make life? We cannot be sure of
that. God alone knows. Our part is to endure
God's act, and move onward. Only, made as we
are, there is pain in the process. Loss and change
may be part of a law of divine fulfilments; for us
they are sorrows. And so, with a sense of com-
ing change in her own life, the wife of James Lee
feels it. She sees the law, but not yet its good.
Does she in the next part? "Among the
Rocks" she speaks of a "doctrine simple, ancient,
true," but what is it? It is now a bright autumn
morning, and nature in this season of change basks
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505
with broad smile in the sun. Why so? Is it
that the law, being universal, must be good? or
is it that acceptance is any way our duty? Put
it thus: Change is the law, and love is subject to
it; but change is God's way to something better
than we at first choose. If we love what is not
worthy, or what is not enough, we need to find
this out, and our pain should rouse us to raise
the lower nature in others, and rise above it in
ourselves.
By "the Drawing-Board" she learns a further
lesson, hints of which came to her among the
rocks. Her last thoughts there seem to be that
it may be good to forego happiness here, and that
the higher aims find their satisfaction only after
much waiting and denial. Now her question is
as to duty, and this is how she finds her answer:
she recalls a saying (original here, we guess), “ As
like as one hand to another." How absurd, she
thinks, as she compares a cast by Da Vinci with
the hand of a peasant who sits for her as a model
-how perfect the first, how coarse the other!
But then, thinking how Da Vinci made the cast,
she sees that to reach such beauty all the artist's
mastery of the lines and secrets of the body were
required. Life, then, is the basis of the right art,
the way to the true beauty; and long study and
love are needed for it, and the surrender of one's
own fancies. But life is bigger than art, and
harder too, and in life use is more and more last-
ing than beauty. Let her learn patience, regard
for reality, other aims than such as are self-
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ROBERT BROWNING
pleasing, and, since love is denied her, let duty
take its place. No changes can affect that, or
narrow its scope.
Being found next "On Deck," she may seem,
in leaving James Lee, to be neglecting the lessons
she has learned. She is, in fact, carrying them
out, as she sees it. Having resigned love and its
hopes, she seeks a larger world of duty and ser-
vice. The heart of James Lee is closed for the
time. He has made her feel all she cannot be to
him. Yet her love for him is strong as ever.
She bears away in her heart and brain his every
tone and look. And her hope is that his love
for her may now revive until she be in his eyes
what he is in hers. Love can make both equally
fair and dear, and if to unite them love should.
make him " fade to a thing like her," she would
not know or care, since all care would be lost in
the joy of a true union.
But with such a love the separation may look
impossible. Yet it is not so. James Lee had
taken, it is clear, a hard and bitter tone. His
soul was "locked fast." He had made his wife
feel her defects, her very love a bondage, her best
things an offence. She must, then, to save his
soul and her own, set him free. It is better so,
for love and for duty. Some think hard things
of her for acting thus, holding that it can never
be right. The poet has, of course, nothing to do
with that question. He is right if the lady
would have done what he makes her do. The
situation had become intolerable to her, and she cut
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507
the knot, not meanly. What other way had she?
Tame submission that might have ended worse?
There is, we believe, sympathy with James Lee
at other points. His wife is, it seems, too serious
and moral, and the handsome and sensible husband
was right to resent a view of married life which
made it a spiritual education. But Browning has
written love-poems that insist even more strongly
on that idea. In "Dîs Aliter Visum," or "Le
Byron de nos Jours," he "argues that love is no
matter of pleasure or convenience, but a power
and opportunity for the higher uses of life, and
for the fulfilment of what is best in each The
first title is ironical; the second suggests the true
quality of the choice made. It is the woman
who speaks, and she is speaking to the man who
was the other actor in the drama, and in circum-
stances that give an edge to her irony and point
to her moral. They have met in a Parisian draw-
ing-room. They had met ten years before, when
the woman was young, her career to make, her
character to fashion. They were drawn to each
other. Love sprang upon the woman's side (for
that is the point of view of the poem surely), and
a little on the man's. But he was elderly, worldly,
prudent, and he drew back. And what has come.
of it now; as she sees it? She has married, but
never loved; he has neither loved nor married,
and though famous as a poet is meanly en-
tangled with a
with a woman he does not esteem,
and SO she says bluntly, what rhythm and
phrase, and the irony and candour of her whole
508
ROBERT BROWNING
utterance enforce, that through his cynical mistake
"four souls" have found life worse and less than
they ought to have found it. Their whole idea
of life has been false, and all their work poor.
To make worldly success primary is to deny the
soul and miss the scope of life. The love and
conflict, the high aims, the failures that let us
through into "eternity," are best for us. "Sweet
in sad and sad in sweet" is our proper food—a
life that keeps us from low content, and braces us
to divine passion and effort./
"Bifurcation" presents again, in another way,
the situation of "By the Fireside," of "Dis Aliter
Visum," and of" Numpholeptos" too-the situation
and the problem of opportunity thus arising.
But in this case it is the woman who postpones
love for what she takes to be duties.
The man,
with warmer soul, in harder circumstances, fails.
Who is to blame? Love could have given the
help needed, and ought to have given it. Through
such help love's ideal is reached, and life's too.
The harder, richer way of love is the right way in
such cases, and this "moral" in different ways
each of the poems above referred to seems to
point.
"The Worst of It" is a tragedy of married love,
and such a problem of passion in one of the crises
of the heart as this poet likes, tracking the heart's
way when both thought and feeling are alert
and intense. It is the man who speaks, and his
wife has fallen and deceived him, and the worst
of it is that he feels he owes all his good to her,
THE LOVE POEMS
509
and she part of her evil to him. He prays her
to return to purer ways for her own sake. He
would shield and excuse her wholly, and take
the blame and the pain too, if he could. He
feels how harsh the law of society is on women.
He makes nothing of the wrong done him.
He
only feels pity and a strange new tenderness, such
that should they meet in paradise he would pass
her without claim, and without reproach, grateful
only for all her love in the past had given and
done for him. It is indeed strong and keen, with
noble, gentle passion, and the verse is high-strung
as the sentiment is.
One other tragedy of love and marriage Brown-
ing has given among his later dramatic lyrics.
It is that named "A Forgiveness"; and in
grasp of passion, as in keen, strong present-
ment of tragic situation, it is one of the finest
of the lyrics of this class. The swift and com-
pact statement of the poem, its fine dramatic
combination and expression, with its intensity of
suppressed emotion, make it indeed remarkable
even among these lyrics. The moment chosen is
one singularly fitted to present the inner and
outer climax of the tragedy. The husband is
telling the story of his love and his misery to the
man who wronged him-he is at the confessional,
and the man behind the grate is the other man
concerned in the "action," which is the theme
of the poem. The story is of tragic misconcep-
tions, entangled by jealousy, embittered by scorn,
darkened by hate, brought to a crisis by revenge,
Aleja
510
ROBERT BROWNING
followed by forgiveness, and then, when miscon-
ceptions are cleared, and all is seen as it was, in
retrospect, by tragic love, with desire to punish
the man who had partly been the instrument of
the wrong.
The husband, who really loved his
wife, was devoted to public business, in part from
the interest of an able man in affairs, largely to
prove his love for his wife, and to reward her love
through his success and honours. She thought
he cared more for "affairs," for "power and place,"
than for her, and was unhappy. Full of his own
scheme and motives, and self-centred rather, as
such men are, he did not notice her feeling. She
sought to provoke and rouse him to love by
showing that another sought her love. He, re-
turning home sooner than usual one day, and
entering by the "postern gate," found that other
in his grounds. He could not at first guess the
meaning of the matter. But as the man skulked
off, his wife stepped forth to take the whole blame
of his being there on herself. So the husband
hardened to contempt, thinking he knew the
whole event and its meaning, and her device of a
heart desiring love was vain. For three years
they lived a public life that was an empty form,
and a private life that was a virtual separation,
and chill as death. Shut within his iron scorn,
he did not see what was going on in his wife-
how she was dying by the situation she had
But
created, and he perverted and embittered.
one night, after they had been honoured by a
visit from the king, and their public life seemed
THE LOVE POEMS
511
i
at its height, she asked him for a word in "the
room that was his." They withdrew thither, bitter
and sad, and she told him now the truth. She
had loved him, and sought his love, even in what
she had done, but now she wished to die, his cold
hardness having shown a side of him she had not
known. Her confession turns his scorn to hate,
and kindles a desire for revenge. He insists on
her writing her statement in a form he dictates.
She is willing, and will do it in her own blood.
He gives a dainty poignard from the land of
spices and poisons to do it with. She does it,
sick at heart. He knows she will die, and his
hate now turns to forgiveness as he sees the issue.
She dies in the night, and then his eyes opened,
he sees all, and love is reborn with remorse.
And afterwards, with complex passion and re-
venge, remorse and love, he comes to the very
church in which "she sleeps, as erst beloved," and
to the father who hears confessions there to stab
him through the grate for his part in the tragedy
of his life. The story, we said, is finely and
strongly told, and he who tells it has its quality
of strength, and the faults of pride, self-will, and
one-sided masculinity which made the tragedy of
his wife's fate and his own possible.
It is thus clear that Browning gives love ample
energy and value. He put his own keenness,
force, and tenderness of passion into it. He
holds by the duty of a frank and full develop-
ment through the proper play of life's most power-
ful and vital emotions. He seizes the interest of
:
.
.
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ROBERT BROWNING
love for the dramatic poet-its interest in itself
and in the light it throws on man. And he is
frank and positive in his dealings with love, as
with life. Browning's love poetry has, of course,
the quality and scope of his work as a whole-it
is intellectual, subtle, rarely in the simple sense
lyrical; but with qualities of genius so marked as
his, and with a "criticism of life" so valuable in
all its phases, even those of his readers who may
prefer other types of this poetry ought to see the
fine value of the above poems.
1
CHAPTER XX
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
WE come now to consider Browning's humour,
and the work in which it is more especially exem-
plified. Humour, it has been said, is the test of a
man, and of his power to see the world justly, and
no work dealing with human life can have large
application or be really great without it. Our
greatest poets are our finest humorists, and in
such a world as this, humour is, for very obvious.
reasons, a part of wisdom.
No dramatic poet can
be without it, and all "criticism of life" from
which it is absent must be partial, if not futile.
Browning has this power, and no study of his
art, no survey of his work, can omit his humour.
The recognition of it has been present, we trust, in
most parts of our study so far; for our poet's
dramatic expression and his thoughts are con-
stantly modified by it, and neither his art nor his
ethics can be rightly judged apart from it. This
pervasive humour has, in fact, drawn not a few
readers to Browning: some, it may be, read him
for that alone. They like his matter-of-fact
temper, his strong sense, his fine bluntness of
manner, his curious types of men; and they feel
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514
ROBERT BROWNING
behind his work a shrewd reality and manliness
of mind. Such readers are often impatient with
other things and qualities of his work. Yet it is
just his combination of principles that gives his
humour its special quality, as his humour gives
special interest and value to other sides and parts
of his work-his power to depict man and life,
and his larger views of both.
It is very hard to define humour-it is subtle,
penetrating, a temper, a point of view, a balance
or reserve of judgment. It is hard to define it
even in single cases of it. The latter is all we
try here.
And to the inquiry, What are the notes
of Browning's humour? most readers would reply,
a bias for the grotesque; those who have got
deeper would say a realistic mode and style of
art, and a casuistic subtlety and many - sided
quality of mind; and a few that his humour is
best seen in his dramatic breadth and power, and
in the fact that all he has to say of man and life
is said from a dramatic point of view, in that
subtlest and largest medium of humour which
comes from the necessary differences and partial
agreements of men, owing to the fact that the
bias and standpoint of each are his own; and a
few, carrying the analysis to even more subtle
points, might add that Browning's sharp sense of
facts and steady regard for them, united with hist
spiritual passion and thoughtfulness, give a rare
element and interest to his humour.
And this humour, arising from strong and varied
qualities, and pervading his work, shows there in
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
515
many ways.
It is felt in his wide, free, and curious.
interest in men. It is seen in the mixed and
curious characters he chooses to depict, and pre-
sents with such zest and enjoyment. It shows in
his quick eye for the incongruities and contradic-
tions of life, "the masses of absurd detail and
comic fact that lie about in history and the world."
His rhymes and metres, his words and images, his
rhythm, pitch, and style, all reflect it. With the
exception of Butler, he is our greatest master of
comic tone and grotesque suggestion by these
means. His copious mastery and easy abun-
dance of comic rhymes, of double and even treble
rhymes, his command of comic diction, and over
the sounds and associations that express his kind.
of satire, his skill in expressing the comic or the
grotesque by his very rhythm and pitch, and
indicating dramatic estimate simply by that means,
—these are no small part of his resources as a comic
poet, and these, little as they may seem to agree
with other gifts and parts of his genius, are a
distinctive and almost unique part of that genius.
And his power to depict fierce and strong passions,
grotesque situations and types of character, is a
further and eminent proof of his humour.
Browning's power of grotesque is, in truth,
great. His taste for and use of it are part of
the man, with caprice in it at times; but mainly
it conveys the image and emotion of life as the
poet sees it its follies, defects, surprises, its
amusing ugliness. As to the rights of the gro-
tesque to a place in art, little need be said, though.
516
ROBERT BROWNING
Browning's work raises the question certainly, and
to some his use of the grotesque seems part of his
disregard of beauty. It is rarely absent even from
his serious work. You are never "safe
safe" from it
-by one or other of the means named it breaks
upon you, apparently without ethical pertinence or
æsthetic function. And yet on examination, apart
from quite occasional tours de force, it will be
found that his use of the grotesque is significant.
And Browning has a broad and subtle humour
of characterisation, the power to present character
with its lights and shades, its limits and defects,
its generous errors and conceits, its powers of self-
delusion, and set all in the broader field of virtue
and reason. This breadth, vigour, and freedom in
the appreciation and interpretation of character
appears early and runs through his work. It
shows in the appreciation of " Agricola,” and the
handling of "Waring." It is felt strongly in the
study of "Lippi." The humour of "Master
Hugues" is good part of its pleasure. The large
and subtle appreciation of " Blougram," and the
rough yet genial treatment of "Sludge," show the
same quality. It is felt strongly in the broad and
vigorous development of "The Ring and the Book."
Even in poems like "A Grammarian's Funeral"
the humour of the poet qualifies both the estimate
of character and the criticism of life. And in
“Fifine at the Fair" the humour of the mind at
work is as clear as its energy and its subtlety.
The criticism of "Hohenstiel-Schwangau " has the
same quality, and so has "Aristophanes' Apology.'
>>
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
517
Browning's intellect and emotions never, in fact,
work apart from this spirit of humour. There is
a strong background of humour in "Christmas
Eve." It runs right through the "Flight of the
Duchess," romantic as that is, and it is in the
vivid expressive realism of "Childe Roland."
The purely humorous poems are not a numerous
group, but what a group they are! from the "Pied
Piper" and the "Spanish Cloister" and "Holy
Cross Day" to "Pacchiarotto" or "Ned Bratts"!
What end of poetry is served by such pieces as
these? They are vigorously told, and give pleas-
ure by their energy and by the light they flash on
certain facts of life. The significance of all moral
facts is part of this poet's creed, and if such poems
purge the mind by pity or pain," the poet is right.
And the art that presents life, and the modes of
man's emotion and intelligence in relation to it,
must find place for strong rough humour.
But the bearings of the poems of this group on
these and other matters will be seen by a glance
at the poems themselves. Almost the first of them
was "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." It was done
in mere sport for the son of Macready, the actor,
and thrown in to fill up Part iii. of the "Bells
and Pomegranates." But the special humour and
picturesque quality of the poem, its "unromantic
romance," its naïve realism and simplicity have
made it a pleasure to "children of all ages."
In the same group of early dramatic lyrics was
the "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister." It is one
of the poems of fierce and sarcastic passion that
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518
ROBERT BROWNING
our poet had a gift for, and whose "storm-sweep
he liked. It is the speech of a monk, who has
to live daily beside one so wholly unlike himself
and all he values or cares for, that he hates him
heartily, and pours grotesque abuse on the very
thought of him. At a distance he might have
felt amused tolerance or impatient scorn for
"Brother Lawrence," but as they are he breaks
out in aversion and disgust at all the man does
and is. He is a burly lover of " the world and
the flesh," while Lawrence is a simple monk; and
in the mood here expressed he would like to
catch his so innocent brother in Belial's or the
devil's grip, to punish him for being an irritating
simpleton. So great the differences of men and
nature to answer for both? Such the wrong of
a system that forces men like these into such
close contact, with so little to do!
Two other poems of the same quality and
similar power were done a little later,
"The
Laboratory" (1844), and "The Confessional'
(1845). The first is an utterance of passionate
intensity in a situation that gives passion scope. It
depicts the ruthless jealousy of one who is taking a
cruel pleasure in watching behind a mask every
detail of the preparation of a deadly poison for one
who is her rival in love, who has "snared" her
lover. She is impatient till it be ready, and will
give all she has for it. Every line and phrase is
keen with bitter fire, and tense with eager hate.
"The Confessional" has a fuller if less intense.
It pours forth the sorrow and scorn and
emotion.
))
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
519
loathing of a girl, who has been deceived by the
Church into betraying her lover to his death, for
the inhuman policy and lies of that Church. She
is in prison because her revolt against those who
deceived her would declare itself, but unsubdued
she intensifies her loathing of their system—she
will have neither "their heaven nor their hell."
"The Tomb at St. Praxed's" (also 1845, and
renamed later "The Bishop Orders his Tomb at
St. Praxed's Church "), with its broad and genial
appreciation of that bishop of the Renaissance,
is a masterly piece of humorous depiction, as
rich as it is accurate, as just as it is vivid and
strong. Here you find all the virtues and vices
of the Renaissance ecclesiastic drawn to the life
by one who knows "both sides of the account."
"Sibrandus Schnafnaburgensis" (published in
Hood's Magazine in 1844) is a hearty laugh at
pedants and pedantry. Bored with a dull book,
the reader pitched it into the hollow of a tree. A
month later he found it in a queer state, it having
been the sport of the elements, and of all those
living things that are found busy in such places.
And now he sees plainly that the author is too
deadly dry and dull for such a spot. Let him go
to the only fit place for such-the topmost shelf,
where dry-rot consumes.
"The Glove" is a humorous handling of an old
story, from the point of view of one interested in
human nature, and both point of view and pitch.
give a humorous tone to a romantic interpreta-
tion—a turn our poet likes well.
520
ROBERT BROWNING
"Up at a Villa-Down in the City" (1855)
is a broadly humorous contrast of the dulness of
the country and the liveliness and interest of the
town, from the point of view of rustic discontent,
a mood in which the speaker sees all in the country
on its worst, and all in the town on its best side
—the fun of it being that he does not know the
town, the pity of it that he cannot afford to live
there.
"A Serenade at a Villa" (1855) is fine as a
lyric, but has the note of humorous exaggeration,
and frankly suggests the point of view of the lady
who would rather have "the taskmaster's curse,"
and the stillness of the "thick, hot" midnight,
than such music as that made by the serenader
and his lute in her garden. The intensity of the
poem, and its keenly cut phrases, are from the
lover's point of view the day after, with note of
reaction.
"Old Pictures in Florence," in its banter of the
old masters, who are not taking due care of their
pictures, and above all in its ironic criticism even
of a leading principle of the poet's thought in the
poem, gives us his attitude of humour towards his
own convictions and preferences.
His special power and quality in grim humour,
satiric description, and ironic suggestion are best
seen in two other poems of the "Men and
Women" series,
series, "The Heretic's Tragedy" and
Holy Cross Day." The former is called "A
Middle Age Interlude," and describes in lines
of strong irony, and with grotesque detail that
CC
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
521
deepens the ironic force of the poem, and ex-
presses aversion and disgust, one of these scenes
of the Middle Ages when religious passion trod
every principle of humanity and reason under
foot. It gives the death of Jacques du Bourg-
Molay, who was burned at Paris, 1314, in the
form of an “interlude," supposed sung at festivals
long after. The poet suggests that it is "distorted"
in consequence, but the fact of such an event being
gloated over two centuries after increases our horror
of such passions. It is mainly "sung" by one
who is supposed to have shared in the scene on
the side of faith, and he is backed by a chorus.
The unshrinking realism of the piece drives home
its point, and presents the spirit of such scenes
with power, while implying the poet's aversion.
"Holy Cross Day" is a similar theme, artistically
and ethically. It turns on the medieval custom
of compelling the Jews to hear one Christian
sermon during the year, and that on September
14, known as "Holy Cross Day."
Holy Cross Day." It purports to
give, as against the cant of a certain bishop's
secretary, what the Jews really "said " (amongst
themselves) on being thus driven to church. From
this point of view it depicts most forcibly the evil
and futility of such a proceeding, and of Middle
Age conduct towards Jews, giving broadly besides.
a sense of its absurdity. The poem positively
throbs with hate and contempt for the Christians
and their creed; and with an extraordinary com-
mand of diction and rhythm to express it in
abrupt and grotesque words and lines, whose force
522
ROBERT BROWNING
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is heightened by the time and place at which they
are supposed spoken, it makes the soul of the
Jew, and the strange scene of which he is part,
live. Then the storm of hate falls quiet, and you
see the deeper mind of the Jew, the strain of old
religion, the hope of a Messiah kept fresh by
bitter wrongs, a hope so sure of God it appeals to
Christ (if He be Messiah) against the Christians.
Filippo Baldinucci" ("Pacchiarotto ") is the
story of another Jew, who took his revenge for
one of many wrongs done his nation. A fresco of
the Virgin had been so put as to overlook the Jewish
burying-ground at Florence. The Jews paid for
its removal, only to find a "Crucifixion" in its
place. Their remedy failing, a young Jew went
and bought the original of the Virgin, and bore it
off, not the least for its value, but to place it
among his pagan pictures. It is a story of a later
time, when the pious old days have gone by.
The note of sympathy is again with the Jews,
and the humour of the poet is used on their
behalf, for the conclusion of the story which
brings the powerful young Jew on the scene to
frighten the painter, and discomfit the author of
the insult, is Browning's. The first part of the
story is to be found in the life of Buti as given in
Baldinucci's History of Painters. The force of
the "moral" is increased by the fact that the
story is told by the farmer to his son as a
warning. It pleased the poet to think of the
means nature provides for foiling bigots, and his
sympathy is strong with the bold young Jew.
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
523
"Pacchiarotto" is another Italian theme to the
poet's mind, in its grotesquerie and in its moral.
Giacomo Pacchiarotto was a painter of Siena in
the sixteenth century. He had been a strong
reformer, one of a society known as the Bardotti
(the "spare horses," who walk by the waggon, and
tell how all ought to be done, but do nothing).
But criticism proved thankless and reform im-
possible, so he gave it up and took to improv-
ing a company of figures he had drawn on the
walls of a room in his own house. This went well
-at least he had his way and all the oratory he
wished. But men and affairs are not so abstract
and docile as that. Famine fell on Siena, and our
good painter, with his passion for reform, and his
confidence in his own ideas, was drawn away from
his imaginary audience to real affairs. The Bar-
dotti thought they knew how by revolution to put
matters right-turn things "upside down" and
they would be "right side up." And so thought
the painter. But when in his enthusiasm for the
cause and for his own powers he hinted that he
was the right leader, the other “radicals were
down on him. He fled, hid in the first place that
offered a tomb with small room for two, and in
two days he came out much the worse for his
quaint lodging in some ways, but well rid of
his crude radicalism. He now saw the wisdom
of sensible acceptance and slow progress, of
minding his own business, and respecting the
conditions of life and the laws of the world.
")
"Caliban" and "Sludge," which are earlier
524
ROBERT BROWNING
work than the foregoing, show a subtle intellec-
tual humour, with notes too of the broader
humour. The theology of Caliban and his cir-
cumstances the method, the ground, and the
details of his view of things-could only have
been developed by a true humorist, only such a
mind could track the ways, catch the associations,
shape the imagery, and vitalise the workings of so
quaint and primitive a nature as that of Caliban.
And the apology of Sludge is a larger and of
course a subtler piece of humour
no mere
advocate's plea" for the medium, but such a
study of the man amid his conditions, in his
principles and passions, and in the curious and
tangled ways of these, and in his by-play with
reference to other minds and the weaknesses of
these, as only a strong humorist could have given.
It is an CC
apology" for, an exposure of more than
Sludge, of human nature in its play among the
temptations and cravings of human life, and in
face of its limits. Some have thought of Brown-
ing that he was only too capable of " arguments.
They have not seen how such "arguments
these are wrought, not merely of matter of
intellect, but of matter of character. So it is
anyhow.
as
(C
"}
})
"Blougram's Apology," too, where the matter
and scope of the "argument" are more intellec-
tual, is finely humorous throughout. And it is
so, not only in the dramatic quality of the "argu-
ment," the monologue, which is a defence and a
reply, and not only in putting Blougram and
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
525
Gigadibs well on "the stage," but in the way in
which the whole statement implies the subsidiary
place of arguments in such cases, and suggests
the richer humanity and strength of the bishop as
against his critic. It sets the real defence of
Blougram broadly in the field of life and nature
-among the facts and conditions of life, and the
instincts and needs of human nature. The bishop
is a man with the need of a world of men; more
obviously it may seem he is a worldling with the
need of a world. And he is a shrewd critic of
men, with a considerable knowledge of that sphere
of fears and hopes and cravings which is called
the heart. He measures Gigadibs in himself, and
in relation to the world and man, and his irony
towards him is a complex of principles and judg-
ments that draw more from the large world of
thought and passion than from any direct argu-
ments he feels it necessary to offer against his
critic. Gigadibs will not carry the world he
knows, and his thin criticism does not greatly
affect the bishop, but it pleases Blougram's strong
mind to put a case that shall meet him, while he
suggests that better argument which he indicates
but does not present, and could not answer.
"Protus," put with the "Dramatic Romances
beside "Holy Cross Day," is a sketch of the
strange humours of fate, and of the contrasts of
life. It is a study of busts with "records" to
throw light on them-first Protus, the fair baby
face, with violets in the hair; and then John, the
blacksmith's son, with his rough hammered head
")
526
ROBERT BROWNING
and great jaw. And the point is that the fair
face, born in the porphyry chamber, with queens
round it, and so many hopes, was thrust aside
into utter obscurity by this other of the " griped
lips" and the rough head.
"A Likeness," among the "Dramatis Personæ,'
is a humorous account of remarks people make on
pictures, not knowing the associations, to their
owners. A man owns an etching so like a certain
face, that to him it is of touching value, and a
friend glances at it with a word of faint praise.
Such are the risks
risks of sentiment, even with
friends!
"Confessions" has a simple humour and a
pleasant sincerity. It is the story of an old love
affair, vividly recalled and told by a dying man
to the parson, who has been talking the common-
places of such times. And the frank temper of
it, waking up the past and brushing aside empty
talk with a smile, has the poet's sympathy.
"}
In the same group is the curious theme, humor-
ously set for its quaint comment on human nature.
"Gold Hair: A Story of Pornic." It is a story
the poet heard in the little Breton town.
A girl,
simple and saintly, hid thirty gold pieces in
golden hair of which she was vain, and carried
both to the grave, the gold pieces being her
secret, found years after-a case of the weak-
ness found in all hearts, and proof surely of
the truth of the Christian doctrine of "original
sin."
((
در
-
'Pambo' is another quaint instance of the
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
527
poet's humour. It turns on an old story, and
applies it bluntly to a modern case. One Pambo,
as the story is told in old Church history, went to
St. Anthony to learn a psalm, and the saint gave
him Ps. xxxix. I, "I will give heed to my ways,
that I offend not with my tongue." And being a
simple man he took only the first part, declaring
it enough, and after many years, says the old
historian, it was still enough for Pambo. With a
change Browning makes it apply to himself. He
takes it that the monk thought the latter more
than he could do, and for himself it would seem,
his critics being judges, he has found it too much
he has "looked to his ways" for years, still he
"offends with his tongue." It has to be borne
now!
tr
"Ned Bratts" ("Dramatic Idyls," first series) is
an example of the humour of the poet's later
manner. It is from a quarry containing much
honest but crude matter of human nature-the
writings of John Bunyan. It is based on the
story of " Old Tod" in "The Life and Death of
Mr. Badman.” It is a rough and vivid picture of
the hero and the scene. Into the packed court at
Bedford, on a broiling June day, one Ned Bratts,
a thorough ruffian, broke, to confess his crimes.
and ask instant execution. Under influence of
John Bunyan, then in prison, he had become
deeply penitent, and his only fear now was lest
he should have time to change to his old mind
and ways.
He tells the story of his life to an
amazed court, and gets his wish. He and his
528
ROBERT BROWNING
wife are hanged, and that way escape further
crimes, and, let us hope, "the City of Destruc-
tion." It is a grotesque story and scene, given
with much force and humour, suggesting the
question of "Halbert and Hob" as to the
reason in nature for such ruffians, and pointing
to the Power "above nature
above nature" that can soften
even these hard hearts.
This poem may indeed serve to bring out points
of style and design in its class. In metre and
words it is a kind of transcript of the facts, and
may seem a clear instance of that harsh realism,
without beauty or imaginative suggestion, that is
alleged against most of the "humorous " poems,
and so many others in Browning. And yet is it
so even in "Ned Bratts"? Leaving the question
of metre and words, which are from the poet's
truthfulness and dramatic sincerity, the spirit and
drift of the poem are on the side of beauty and
humanity. It is not very clear what forces led
to the penitence of Ned Bratts, or how far it
would have stood the test; but the poet leaves an
impression of thorough earnestness on the part
of, and of hope in regard to this rough pair of
converts.
In this and other ways "Ned Bratts," on
which the poet himself it seems put much value,
may suggest what else needs saying of Browning's
use of the grotesque, and of his humour as a
whole. Why does our poet use his powers to
depict so much that is "unpleasing"? Why so
much rough reality, such ready and amused ac-
BROWNING'S HUMOUR
529
ceptance of ugliness, villainy, and pain as parts of
the world? Why bring these with a kind of
delight in them into the world of art? These
questions are put, and they are fair. What
answers are suggested by our study of Brown-
ing's work in this aspect, in these parts of it?
It comes in part from his frank attitude, and
from the clearness and vigour of his perception
of life. He will not dwell on facts of beauty and
goodness only or long. The world is his field,
and he would know as much of it as he can.
He feels how the facts in question add to the
force and interest of life. And he is drawn to
the problem these facts raise. For him they
indicate the path and drift of great laws. He
sees how they work towards a higher life, and
illustrate his great idea of the balance and co-
operation of all moral factors as the law of
development. These facts as elements of the
general situation are cosmic, not chaotic. They
are very amusing, and give life a variety it would
not otherwise have. And besides they have high
uses, and are good in the long-run.
And so laughter with Browning rests on the
goodness rather than the evil and disorder of
things. His humour is not energetic only, it is
friendly, kindly. It sees much to laugh at, and
it has variety of laughter, but even its satire and
its irony are generous and manly, friendly to the
failings, patient of the follies, and hopeful of the
slow gains of men, though caustic towards their
meaner vices, and severe towards every form of
34
530
ROBERT BROWNING
cruelty and selfishness. The crimes of bigotry
move him to indignation and ironic exposure.
He has frank appreciation for the manifestations
of power and of strong character, but he detests
the abuses of such power, whatever infringes the
rights or reduces the good of men. He has
pathos for the humour of tragic errors, though
only at times does he touch that note, and anger
at times for tragic wrongs, but his general note as
a humorist is a kindly realism and optimism of
temper which can laugh at the mixed quality of
experience, and the defects of men and things,
without egoistic or fanatic reactions, without
didactic or reforming urgency and passion, and
wholly without cynical emotions or confusions.
His humour, in a word, is a part of his health.
and his wisdom, and, let us add, of his faith
and his hope.
CHAPTER XXI
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING
THERE is one aspect of Browning's work we have
scarcely touched, so far, or only incidentally-his
relation as poet to the life and beauty of nature.
In a century so deeply interested in the order and
life of nature, and so much engaged with the
nature sentiment as ours has been in many ways,
it were strange to find a poet, frankly in sympathy
with the life of his age, without this sentiment and
interest. And yet the general impression is, that
such was the case as regards the mind, and as
regards the work of Browning in this relation.
Nature poetry and the modern nature senti-
ment are, it is thought, " conspicuous by their
absence" in Browning, in the century that saw
the rise and rich development of a great nature
art.
And there is, without doubt, a general and a
significant truth in this impression. Neither the
modern scientific nor the modern æsthetic interest
in nature are found in the poetry of Browning,
as they are in that of some of his contemporaries.
Tennyson's steady interest in the larger facts and
ideas of science, and closer study of one or two
531
532
ROBERT BROWNING
tr
sciences (cf. Memoir, vol. i. pp. 298, 299, etc.),
and his life-long love of English landscapes,
scarcely show in Browning. And what has been
said of Matthew Arnold (Letters, vol. i. p. 9), that
he could never live long away from the presence
and peace of nature, would not have been said of
Browning. Mrs. Orr indeed quotes a remark of
the poet made in reply to the question of a friend,
"You have not a great love for nature, have
you?"
'Yes, I have, but I love men and
women better." Such a remark does not throw
much light on our question. Wordsworth might
and would have said that, and Tennyson and
Arnold. But Mrs. Orr seems to say, on her own
account (Life of Browning, pp. 316, 317), that
the poet's love of nature," inanimate nature" is
her phrase, was rather a late growth than a life-
long feeling and interest. He was always fond of
animals, and flowers pleased him by their perfume;
but nature at large interested him more as
"the
prefigurement or the echo " of human nature than
for itself, until his closing years, when he found
increasing pleasure in the mountain beauties and
air and sunshine of the southern slopes of the
Alps. In his letters of this time there is even,
Mrs. Orr says, "a ring of enthusiasm" in his
enjoyment of nature, and this enthusiasm "deepens
as the years advance."
Now the general truth in the matter is, and all
his work seems evidence of it, that in part from
his pre-occupation, and in part from his tempera-
ment, Browning shows less interest in nature than
•
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING 533
most men of culture and sensibility have shown
during the Victorian age. He is so much and so
steadily occupied with man and human life, that
nature at large-the nature that so many in-
fluences and circumstances have been drawing so
many of us to love, since Wordsworth and Scott in
their different ways took us to nature-the nature
of the hills and the sea, of the woods and the
fields, of the clouds and the sky;-this nature, and
our sentiment about it, had no great interest for
him. And his active temperament and energetic
passion, untouched by the moods of Arnold or the
sentiment of Tennyson, moods and sentiments
that yet belong to so many of us, did not make
the life, the quiet, the large order and beauty of
nature the emotional comfort or necessity to him, as
man or as poet, that they have been to many of us.
And yet there is fine nature poetry in Browning.
It is small in amount compared with the sum of
his work, and it is occasional, but it is in his work
from the first. And as much from its freshness
and force as from its distinctive quality, caught
from his genius, or reflected from his standpoint, it
is well worthy of distinct and careful consideration
in our studies of his poetry.
CC
His dominant interest in human passion and
thought, in the life of personality, are found as
early as Pauline." But even in "Pauline" we
found fine touches of nature poetry, and a zest
both of youthful and romantic appreciation of
certain facts of nature, e.g. and to quote phrases
only, "the_black_thorn boughs . . . were white
534
ROBERT BROWNING
with coming buds," p. 5; "climbing plants heavy
with bloom and dew," p. 8. Or take this from
P. 26—
the late glow of life, like change on clouds,
Proved not the morn-blush widening into day,
But eve faint-coloured by the dying sun
While darkness hastens quickly.
Or the passage, too long to give here, on pp.
33, 34, and others that might be quoted.
It seems clear from "Pauline" that the young
poet had felt the attraction of the modern senti-
ment of nature, as it touched certain poets before
him. He depicts the persona of the poem, as
drawn to identify his life with that of nature
(cf. p. 32); and in "Sordello" we shall find him
return to that idea, as one conception of the
poetic relation to nature, but only to set it aside.
on behalf of one much more independent and far
more characteristic of his own mind.
In a remarkable passage of "Paracelsus" he
has described the place of man, and the meaning
of man's nature in relation to the other nature.
As he thinks of it there, man is the apex of the
great order. The appearance of man within it
gives it a new meaning, or rather brings out its
true meaning for the first time. Epitome, and as
it seems climax, of the natural life, man is, through
his thought and emotion, the clue to nature (vide
the closing speech of Paracelsus, pp. 165-176).
This speech sums up, as we have seen, the gains
of the life of Paracelsus. Its great principle is
that of spiritual evolution—rooted in, unfolded by
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING 535
the supreme Spirit, and working towards "ends”
that mind alone rightly interprets (cf. especially on
our present point, pp. 170, 171).
And Browning took the results of this poetic-
ally and ethically. The winds become voices.
The pines of the deep wood commune together.
The peerless cup of the lake lily is an urn up-
borne by a nymph. Morning has enterprise, and
the glory of the sunset an emotion of triumph, and
the deep night a solemn quiet.
Nor is this, as the poet conceived, "the pathetic
fallacy." It is just interpretation, for nature is
In a
alive, and in her inmost life spiritual.
noble passage, which precedes that just referred to,
nature is set before us as thrilled with a mystic
joy, with life, love, and beauty, wherein the in-
dwelling God "renews his ancient rapture" spring
after spring, and age by age.
Now this may seem the antique mythopœic
fancy, touched by the imagination and principle of
Wordsworth. But even here the leading interest
is ethical, as we have seen, and the poet makes
little use of the principle here grasped, so far as
the forms and life of nature go.
Towards the passive imagination, and any brood-
ing over sensuous nature, Browning is quite opposed.
To the nature love of Aprile, and the nature
poetry of Eglamor, he was quite averse. They
make nature too much a ministry of sensations, or
at best of emotions (cf "Paracelsus," p. 58,
"Sordello," pp. 99, 100, cf. pp. 106-108), and
so Eglamor is described as "the copier," not the
-
536
ROBERT BROWNING
(C
'protoplast" dealing with surfaces and fancies
without hold of the creative principle and mean-
ing of things.
"Sordello" has not a few fine descriptions, and
among them, descriptions of nature. This for
example, on p. 54—
That autumn eve was stilled':
A last remains of sunset dimly burned
O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned
By the wind back on the bearer's hand
In one long flare of crimson; as a brand,
The woods beneath lay black.
Or those on pp. 87 and 91, or on pp. 134, 135.
But "Sordello" is little engaged with matters
of this kind. The drift of the "argument" is in
fact on the other side. Sordello begins with the
love of nature "in a drowsy paradise," but is woke
up by the touch of life to a better interest in
human life. He read his own life into nature in
idle fancy or mere sentiment, and the first touch
of actual life and passion broke up the vanity of
that dream-life. After his failure he returned to
nature again, but only to discover how different
nature is from man, how inadequate by herself
for man, and to be recalled by the mightier
interests of human life.
At the opening of "Pippa Passes” is a sunrise,
romantically touched-
O'er night's brim, day boils at last;
Boils pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
And in one of its strongest scenes, Elizabethan
in its nervous force, is the thunderstorm so vividly
·
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING
537
given in the words, from the situation and with the
feeling of Ottima (cf. pp. 22, 23).—
Buried in woods we lay, . . . ;
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burned through the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,
As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me; then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead.
From the point of view of the guilty lovers,
that is powerfully done; and the contrast in the
simple morning song of Pippa that follows, with
its note of birds and its freshness of dewy dawn,
is well conceived-
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn :
God's in His heaven-
All's right with the world.
Quick glimpses of landscapes, and rapid descrip-
tions of natural facts, occur frequently in Brown-
ing, and they are good, though quite subordinate.
In not a few of the dramatic lyrics you find these,
sometimes in a phrase only, or a line, but fresh,
and to the life. You have such in "The Ride
from Ghent to Aix," and in "A Lovers' Quarrel,"
"The Lost Mistress," "Up at a Villa," and others
of this group.
In "Meeting at Night" the
scenery is given in swift touches, that make
simply for the meeting of the lovers, we may say.
538
ROBERT BROWNING
But in others of these lyrics, and certain of the
dramatic romances, the scenery is more, and it is
more fully given. "Love among the Ruins" has
a picture, quickly drawn, yet distinctly seen, the
picture of a large pastoral landscape in the level
evening light, with the sheep moving across it,
and the tinkle of sheep bells. It is simple, but
good, and is heightened by the suggestion of the
bustling noisy city that was once there, but is
gone, only its ruins left now, with the tints of the
quiet evening on them. Love and nature endure.
Home-Thoughts from Abroad" is the picture
of an English spring, the lines made firmer and
warmer by the fact that it is drawn from a dis-
tance-a picture of spring in England, with its
song of birds, its blossoms and dew-drops, its
clover and buttercups, "the children's dower".
CC
The wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.
In "Saul" the appreciation of nature, and of
all the interest and good of the natural life of
man, is large and cordial, and there are vivid
pictures of both, fit for the shepherd poet of
passionate soul and frank humanities-
How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ
All the heart, and the soul, and the senses for ever in joy!
That is its note as regards nature and the healthy
life of men with nature, even while it rises to the
life of spirit.
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING
539
Many lines we might quote from "Saul,"—only
these we can
•
slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean-a sun's slow decline
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine
Base with base to knit strength more intensely.
The description of Florence in the spring
morning is well etched in "Old Pictures," and
the landscape in "Two in the Campagna" is
made to suggest and symbolise, though it does
not create, the mood of the lyric; its spaces, its
wide ocean of air, its great stretch of sky, are
symbols of that immensity of desire, whose spring
he has touched, whose satisfaction is to seek.
The warm breath and sweetness of the spring
night give charm to and bring out the temper
and meaning of "Fra Lippo Lippi"; and the
twilight of Florence, with its grey tone, its dreamy
peace, fits the pitch of "Andrea del Sarto ❞—the
pitch of his art, and the temper of his spirit.
7
The landscape in "By the Fireside" is also of
the neighbourhood of Florence; and it is not only
well described, as in "Andrea del Sarto," but the
scenery of the twilight hour are inwrought with
the mood of the lovers, in a way Browning does
not often use. The landscape acts on feeling,
qualifies passion, becomes a part of its fellowship,
and thus fixes itself in the heart, we may say,
not only in association, but in sympathy for a
lifetime.
The scenery of "James Lee's Wife," also, seems
to us related to the stages and moods of that
540
ROBERT BROWNING
CC
series of dramatic lyrics. It was composed at a
"wild little place in Brittany," a lonely place, with
a soft and a mournful wind." And the descrip-
tion of the dawn in one of the series (vi.), and of
the bright autumn morning in another (vii.), are
good examples of the kind of nature art our
poet did in association with his dramatic work.
The noble description of the double lunar rain-
bow in "Christmas Eve," besides fitting well its
dramatic purpose in the poem, is a masterly piece
of nature work. And so in another sort, though
still of the sky and its splendours, more purely
imaginative, is the part of "Easter Day" which
describes the awful dawn of judgment from the
heart of the midnight. Space forbids us to quote
either passage. They can easily be referred to,
"Christmas Eve" (iv.), and "Easter Day
))
(xv.).
In the Romances, we said there is more land-
scape. But there is one of the lyrics that has a
fine bit of work of that kind, we would refer to
before glancing at the romances. The night
scene in "A Serenade at the Villa," in dramatic
sympathy with the lover's passion and with his
situation, serenading on such a night, gives in
bold romantic phrases the storm and the excite-
ment of the lover, in reminiscence.
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning !-where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain,
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING
541
That is of a piece with the storm in "Pippa
Passes," and would have pleased Webster.
The Venetian landscape in "In a Gondola,"
with its rows of lighted houses and level canals, its
stillness yet passion, is well suggested.
So is the spring, given in "Waring," when in
the Kent country " 'tis cherry time," and
Or
All God's creatures crave their boon,
All at once and all in tune,
And get it,
through the bounty and the beauty of nature at
that fair time.
There are two poems almost purely descriptive,
and both of them occupied chiefly with Italian
landscape, "De Gustibus" and "The Englishman
in Italy." In the first, called a lyric, the differ-
ences between English and Italian scenery are
drawn out; England with its trees and cornfields,
its towers and song of blackbirds, Italy with its
Castle precipice encurled
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
A seaside house to the farther south,
with its single cypress, standing sharply out, and
the
Great opaque blue breadth of sea without a break
beyond-such are the contrasts.
In the second, called a romance, there is de-
scription in bright verse, and in a happy vein, of
Italian life in the country, and of the scenery of
the plain of Sorrento. It is told to a girl who is
sheltering in a cottage from a rainstorm brought
*
542
ROBERT BROWNING
by the sirocco. The Englishman is turning her
attention from the terrifying storm by telling her
of the things he has seen and done since yester-
day, especially he tells her of a visit to the
mountains and what he saw thence-looking far
over the soft plain and the sea, with the isles of
the sirens in the fair blue waters, and "the infinite
movement of the mountains," and overhead the
depths of the sky. It is all very brightly done,
but, like this poet, the human interest is strong,
the interest of the child to whom it is told, and
of the peasant life described in the early part of
the poem, and our interest in the speaker too.
The landscape in "The Flight of the Duchess "
fits the people and culture of the dukedom, and is
broadly drawn.
It is a great wild country, with
cornfields and vineyards, but much of it sheep-
walk, cattle-tract, and open chase bounded by
pine-clad hills; and beyond, a greater, rougher
country, a dreary, burnt-up plain, bounded by the
salt sandy shore of the great sea. It is a country
of farmers and huntsmen and old retainers, where
gipsies haunt, and the crude past lingers; and in
which, because of these elements, strange and
romantic things are possible. The rude back-
ground, thus given in the opening landscape, is
kept, we may say, in the pitch and chime of the
verse, except, of course, where the romance takes
that higher flight before described. It is as
characteristic of the descriptive power as of the
humour and fancy of the poet.
But "Childe Roland" is the most remarkable
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING
543
of the romances from our present point of view,
though one scarcely knows whether to call the
wonderful scenery of this romance "landscape "
at all. As we have before suggested, the scenes
that follow each other, each bleaker and harsher
than the other, up to the crisis, have a quality of
intense realism, a kind of startling sharpness and
vividness, like Dante's "visions" of hell; and yet
the whole seems to belong to an awful region of
dreams, its elements borrowed from earth but
combined and transformed at the bidding of
emotion and in the service of
the service of imagination.
Bleaker than the bleakest moorland, and wilder
than the barren mountains, with a silence and
loneliness of the land of death, and tints as of the
last sunset over a dead world, the poem is
perhaps unique in its quality and force of scenic
embodiment, and it is strongly dramatic in the
power with which it realises the emotions of the
speaker right through its course.
There is good description in "The Ring and
the Book," but little description of nature. What
there is marks the poet's memory and love of
Italian scenes and scenery of the years spent in
the land with his wife, for "The Ring and the
Book" was written when all that was past. Parts
of the monologue of Pompilia and the speech of
Caponsacchi contain brief scenes of this kind.
Speaking generally, one would say that the
later poetry of Browning shows less sympathy
with, and attention to, nature than the earlier
work--the poet is more fully absorbed by the
544
ROBERT BROWNING
special themes of his own art. But parts of
"Fifine" and parts of "Red Cotton Night-Cap
Country," and certain of the "Dramatic Idyls"
give a little work of this kind.
It follows of course, from the dominant interest
of the poet, that in his work landscape should be
subordinated to the other and stronger interest.
And there are instances of a fine subordination of
nature to dramatic feeling and purpose. We
have already referred to " Andrea del Sarto" and
"Fra Lippo Lippi" as cases. The soft twilight
tone of "Pompilia" is another instance. And
from remote periods of the poet's work we may
cite two others, "Porphyria's Lover" and "Ned
Bratts"; the beating rain and the sullen wind of
the one, and the broiling weather and the stifling
court of the other, give the mood and atmosphere
of each poem.
We have said that in Browning's later poetry
nature is even less than in the earlier work. But
in the "Parleyings," as if to show his sympathy
with the art of the painter and his power in that
kind of conception, his power too in a certain
kind of nature art, and his sympathy with Greek
art, with his sense of its limits, he sets himself in
his colloquy with the Dutch painter, Gerard de
Lairesse, to present a series of subjects for paint-
ings, in association with different times of the day.
They are in part studies of nature, from before
the dawn till after the sunset, more particularly
studies of Greek myths, in association with nature.
Through a dim thunderous dawn Prometheus is
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING 545
seen chained to his rock. When day has broken,
Artemis, goddess of nature, is seen in the clear
daylight, the huntress-queen, pure as snow, with
tint of the apple-blossom, but pitiless and proud.
With the noon-glow he gives in the forest depths
the satyr, that loved Lyda and was despised by
her, gazing on the nymph asleep. At sunset he
describes the preparations of Darius and Alexander
for battle, so typifying the solemn hush of eve.
And when night has fallen he sees as end of all the
glories of the day only a ghost, "voiceless with
deprecating hands"-bewailing the dead day and
expecting no morrow the Greek view of life.
The themes are thus Greek, and the outline and
style Greek, such as Landor would have approved.
And the aim is in part to give the quality of
Greek imagination, and its interpretation of life.
In part it is to affirm characteristically the law of
progress in art and life—to discard, in the very
spirit of "Old Pictures," the art which clings to
the past for that which includes the future, the
art whose very idealisation is sensuous for that
whose scope is spiritual, leaving the sad school of
Hades for that of Christian hope, whose type is
the eternal springtide.
It thus appears, on survey of those parts of his
poetry touching the matter, that Browning was no
worshipper of nature" in any of the senses that
familiar phrase has borne during the century. He
did not find in nature the chief companion or
consoler of man. He did not regard nature as
greater or more divine" than man. Neither the
(C
CC
35
546
ROBERT BROWNING
æsthetic nor the scientific worship of nature.
found the response in his mind that it has found
in so many. He is in truth sarcastic regarding
sentimental attitudes towards nature-towards
what he took to be Byronism in this matter, as
towards the sentiment of physicism. He will
neither cower in self-pity before the often terrible
and impassive greatness of nature, nor is he over-
mastered and awed by her physical extent and
splendours. He places himself firmly beside the
out-nature as greater and more significant than it
as sharing more of the highest nature.
His attitude and feeling in this respect are well,
if roughly and anti-sentimentally expressed, in
these lines, the allusion being to the famous
closing passage of "Childe Harold" (cf. Epilogue
to "Pacchiarotto," stanza xx.).
"O littleness of man," deplores the bard;
And then, for fear the Powers should punish him,
"O grandeur of the visible universe
Our human littleness contrasts withal ;
O sun, O moon, ye mountains and thou sea,
Thou emblem of immensity, thou this,
That, and the other,-what impertinence
In man to eat and drink and walk about,
And have his little notions of his own,
The while some wave sheds foam upon the shore."
The worship of material immensities, however it
might justify itself to sensuous imagination, he
regarded as poor poetry and bad ethics-as a
misapprehension of values and a derogation from
self-respect.
It is a proof of the slight stress he has put on
NATURE POETRY IN BROWNING 547
the poetry of nature that it is impossible to place
him in any of the "schools" of nature art since
Scott and Wordsworth. He would respond to
the sentiment of "Tintern Abbey," though scarcely
to that of Arnold's "Resignation."
Resignation." He was too
active and too intensely human to dwell in
Wordsworth's or in Arnold's way on the life of
nature. He feels nature as she responds to or
repels man in hours of sensibility. He has sense
of the surpassing beauty of moments and scenes.
of her life. And he has sense of her grandeur
and terror, and of her peace. But nature is
secondary, almost never primary. She is kept
subordinate to dramatic purpose and quality.
Browning rarely dwells on nature for herself.
He never broods on nature, and never seeks
through her the principle of beauty or the secret
of peace.
He is more disposed to read nature
through mind than mind through nature.
And so when we sum up the points and qualities
of his nature work we find that he gives strong
and rapid description, swift strokes and broad
effects, without detail. He is not much interested
in romantic nature for itself, but his appreciation
is often romantic, his phrases keenly cut and
well coloured, with an Elizabethan, and at times a
pre-Raphaelite, quality. And chiefly we find that
all in his thought and in his art has been sub-
servient to his study and expression of the things
of man's mind.
EPILOGUE
THE POET AND THE POETRY-HIS ART AND
MANNER OF WORK DEFECTS
AND
VIRTUES GIFTS AND POWER-THE POET
AS TEACHER "—RULING
(C
OF CRITICISM.
IDEAS-POINTS
WE have now brought under review, and con-
sidered somewhat closely, all sections and aspects
of Browning's work, and in fact no small part of
the whole of that work. Let us pause for a little
at the close to gather up and bring well together,
if we may, certain points that come out on survey
thus made (1) As regards the manner of Brown-
ing's work, his art, and what to many has seemed
his lack of art, and the difficulties thence arising;
(2) as regards the matter of the poet's work,
his leading ideas as a poetic thinker and master
of life, what is often called the "Message" of
the poet, and how that is to be construed through
the work itself considered as a whole.
a
As regards the poet's art and manner,
question that rises early and lingers late with
many readers, it will have been seen long ago, by
any who have come so far with us, that we hold
no brief for the perfect satisfactoriness of these.
548
EPILOGUE
549
That the poet is great here we hold of course.
He could not be the poet he is, or have the
power he has in the realm of poetry, were he not
So. But both his qualities and his defects have
stood, and stand even yet, in the way of readers.
And in certain cases, it may well be, they will
strike out works on which he spent no little
labour and time, from the abiding possessions of
English poetry. It is said that even his works
of the best period are often too long, and that
his works of the other periods are constantly so.
Tennyson speaks of him as the largest-brained
poet of his time, and the richest in thought, but
with emphasis on "brain" and "thought." The
late Master of Balliol wrote, even
wrote, even in 1887,
(Tennyson's Memoir, vol ii. p. 344): "Browning's
thought, feeling, and knowledge are generally out
of all proportion to his powers of expression.
Since I have been ill I have been reading a good
deal of his poems, and have come to like him,
and in some measure to understand him.” And
Edward Fitzgerald, who had a very true if not
catholic taste in poetry, found the larger part of
Browning quite impossible.
Now it goes without saying, that when men
such as these find Browning difficult or distaste-
ful, even after he had established his place in the
literature of his age, that there are reasons in
matter and manner, in temper of mind and form
of work, for the friction and dislike referred to.
And reasons are easily found, especially by such.
as seek to justify a distaste they do not care to
550
ROBERT BROWNING
get over. The ways of this poetry are hard for
a time, and in parts they remain so.
It goes
often through new country, and the poet has
scarcely cared to select or present it so that the
prospects please on first acquaintance, however
much they may interest on fuller knowledge.
The poet himself said to Tennyson, late in his
career (Memoir, vol ii. p. 230): "I cannot
change myself—people must take me as they
find me"; in other words, he had become fully
aware of the defects of his qualities, of the undue
energy of certain virtues of his genius.
And much of the friction and the difficulty is
just there, no doubt. Tennyson was dwelling on
his dictum (vide Memoir), that an artist should
make his work as perfect as possible; but that
was not Browning's bias nor his way-dramatist,
thinker, searcher of the soul, singer from passion-
ate interest in human hearts, he did not care to
finish his work as Tennyson did he could not
have done it. He gave himself to his subjects.
He put himself into his work with zest and
power, and the qualities of the mind thus at work,
as well as the quality and form of the work itself,
have been a source of difficulty. It has often
been said that his basis and quality are too
intellectual for poetry. And there is force in the
criticism. His intellectuality, his energy and
tenacity of argument and research, his interior
quality, his steady handling of psychical and
ethical fact, his study not of actions but
of thought and motive, and the springs of
EPILOGUE
55I
action, have taxed the attention of most and
mastered the patience of many. His quality of
passion too, rather than emotion or sentiment, is
unpleasing for many. And so is the intellectual
rather than the sensuous construction of his work.
His set on matter rather than manner, and his
indifference or insensibility to the minor graces
and lesser virtues of mood and style, goes with a
strenuousness and actuality that wearies some.
There is even a certain nervous restlessness of
mind and manner, a certain vigour and stringency
of temper and purpose, that tire those who go to
poetry for a play of emotions. Besides, he has
often the air, shall we say, of composing in the
thick and stress of working a subject out, rather
than in the mood of tranquil imagination that
should ensue on its mastery.
on its mastery. And he moves
at a speed that many will never follow, and
carries an amount of matter they will not bear,
and not only sees too many things, but seems
to see things from several points of view at the
same time. And he not only puts a broad grasp
on his subjects as wholes, but insists on their being
so grasped by his readers before they can under-
stand him; while there is the large fact that,
as dramatic lyrist and thinker, he essays new
themes and interests, he breaks up new ground
for poetry, and must ask the kind of discipline,
the quality of study, that are required for the
mastery of such work. He recovers, as we have
said, the impulse of the Elizabethans for psychical
presentment, and for psychical explanations, in
552
ROBERT BROWNING
a modern quality and in a field they scarcely
entered.
These then, let us say, are some chief reasons
for the difficulty of Browning, and for his alleged
obscurity—his themes, and certain strongly individ-
ual qualities of the work and of the workman. With
his method and dramatic principle we have already
dealt. But there is no doubt that these are a
leading cause of difficulty with readers, until they
have grasped them. The poet's theme and sphere.
are the hearts and minds of men, and through
these the heart and mind of man-significant
moments and crises of the lives of men, and the
scope and meaning of passion and the soul.
And his principle is what we have called the
principle of dramatic individuality, his method
what we have called dramatic monologue, his
form the dramatic - lyric. His presentment is
always individual; and dealing with the inner life
of his persons, it is intensely so. He starts from
the point of view of the person speaking.
He
assumes a knowledge of the circumstances and
history, and of the situation of the speaker; you
are thus plunged into the very heart of the cir-
cumstances and of the speaker. You must listen,
and go through with it, and then construe the
whole, backwards and forwards, so to speak,
before you know the persona, or the situation and
problem. And that is not all, for the poet's use
of his method, as we have seen, is not simple, it
is complex. It is not meditation you have, nor
one persona.
Several minds and characters are
EPILOGUE
553
often involved, much play of thought and passion,
and many circumstances, in complex presentment,
though all from the standpoint and through the
mind of one person. Nor is that all; for in the
work you have, further, the mind of the poet him-
self presenting his drama, and busy too with his
larger sphere and his deeper problem-the nature
of man, the scope and meaning of passion, thought
and will, of what he calls the soul. It is necessary
to see all this, and not easy to follow it; but as
the method is fit for the matter, so the present-
ment is such in its intimacy, individuality, and ful-
ness, that the gain is more than worth the trouble.
Then the dramatic quality and vivid individ-
uality of the poet's conception and work go far
to account for, if they do not justify, his faults, his
details, his changes, his light thrown here and
there, his speed, his broken style, his references to
out-of-the-way matters, his neglect of narration,
his rash and his often undue condensation,--they
come from the dramatic posture and animation of
his mind, and are part of his vehicle of expression.
That they run to excess, and with his humour
carry him into extravagances and mannerisms
we must hold. Most of these have been duly
analysed long ago,—his strange constructions, his
ellipses, his freaks of condensation, his packed
description, his grotesque diction, and we have no
need, nor have we space, to dwell upon them here.
And when it is said that Browning is indifferent
to art, and to the music and rhythm and colour
of phrase and verse, to the beauty and supreme
554
ROBERT BROWNING
harmonies of great and pure art, as Shakespeare
and Milton and Keats have felt and fashioned
them, it will be seen that we partly allow this.
Yet this comes, we have said, in part from his
dramatic realism; and many parts of his work,
regard being had to its dramatic quality and aim,
have strong excellence and fine value as art. His
style is strong, nervous, varied, direct, copious,
humorous, drawn from the great sources of style-
life and the elder masters of English. His gifts
in the matter of verse are good. He is facile and
even copious here. He makes blank verse of fine
strength for his work, and his lyrical verse has
verve, energy, subtlety. His lyrical measures
indeed, fitted to his different persona and themes,
have unusual variety and a supple and passionate
vigour. His gift for rhyming verse, we have seen,
is extraordinary, liable to abuse, but of exceptional
and quite graphic force often, in its command of
double and even treble rhymes.
When it is urged, that for a poet the intellec-
tual energies are too strong in Browning, that
for poetry the play of intellectual interests and
activities is too great in his work, and that
Browning often and at times ruthlessly sacrifices.
the requirements and effects of art for the expres-
sion of thought, that though he "refreshes the
heart he tires the brain," we should admit this
with regard to a good deal of the work of the
third period. We should allow that this is the
side to which he leans generally, but still hold
that, though to many his intellectual quality and
EPILOGUE
555
energy may well seem excessive, yet in great part
of his work, and that of course his best, the
passion of the poet and his kind of imagination
are just as fresh and powerful as the intellectual
force and subtlety are keen and abundant.
And now returning from " allowances, qualifica-
tions, and criticisms," to the merits, gifts, and
value of the poet, we need add little here to all
that has been already said in this book, except
what may seem further necessary to indicate
Browning's place and worth among Victorian
poets. Grasp his method, get at his point of
view and way of thought, put your mind in frank
touch with his poetic mode and interest, and you
find him a rich and generous giver. In knowledge
of human nature, in his kind of dramatic power, in
energy and subtlety of thought and of passion, in
spiritual range, in breadth of interest in and free
sympathy with the nature and history of man,
and in a certain stimulating and cordial vital
influence, he is great. In his dramatic studies,
and in his love poems, in depicting the crises
of character and thought, and in presenting the
crises of passion, he has shown not only great
power but variety and versatility. His studies of
motive and of the "approaches to action," and
of character in action, have given a new depth to
our dramatic literature. His character studies
and his love lyrics, which are also dramatic, show
a greater wealth of character, situation, and
passion, and even of metrical form and force,
than are shown by any poet of his time. His
556
ROBERT BROWNING
lyrical power is fresh and keen; his humour is
broad and strong; his satire is frank and friendly;
his talent for grotesque is forceful and distinctive;
his pity and pathos are true if rare; his criticism
of life is at once thoughtful and healthy, broad
and sound, and at the same time loftily ideal. His
interpretation of religious passion and faith is
the most penetrating and significant criticism of
religion our age has had from any poet. And
the personality of the poet, in wealth and health
and vigour of thought and feeling, in frank and
generous response to all high and good human
things, is felt through all his work. The charm
of Tennyson, and the different charm of Arnold,
the romantic beauty of Rossetti, the colour and
grace of Morris, the lyrical music of Swinburne,
are not Browning's; but for his own things and
by his own gifts he stands nobly and securely
with the best.
And this brings us to certain further points.
that we feel it necessary to deal with here-points
arising out of the interpretation of the poet's
leading ideas, or what is sometimes called his
message." It is very wrong of a poet to have
such ideas so some think-though it is singu-
larly clear, from the recent Memoir of Tennyson,
that he had them too, and not only valued them
highly, but used literature as a medium for them.
Browning had such ideas, and constantly expressed
them through his various persona and as parts of
his study of life. A critical estimate of them as a
whole, and an examination of them in the larger
((
EPILOGUE
557
field of literature and of philosophy, would de-
mand far more space than we can now give. We
have, within the limits of these studies, aimed
rather at exposition than at critical estimate and
comparison. But in view of what has been said,
and of certain criticism that has been made of
this side of Browning's poetry, we wish to set
down here, however briefly and simply, our judg-
ment on some points that have been raised. Mrs.
Orr has dealt with certain of the larger aspects of
Browning's criticism of belief in her Life of the
poet, and Professor H. Jones, in an able and inter-
esting book on Browning as a Teacher, has
subjected the poet to a somewhat elaborate ex-
amination from the point of view of his own
The stand-
philosophic method and principles.
point and principles of the critics are widely
different on the matter of philosophy, but their
criticism of the poet shows a general agreement
on a leading point: they both hold the poet to
have been agnostic on the fundamental questions;
the one to agree, the other to disagree with the
agnosticism; the one to approve the poet's criti-
cism of knowledge and belief because of its
agnostic basis; the other to condemn the teaching
and so far the poetry, on the ground of its agnos-
ticism. Professor Jones condemns what he takes
to be the poet's praise of the heart at the expense
of the head, his praise of love to the discredit of
knowledge; while Mrs. Orr, from her own basis.
of thought, reads the poet also in an agnostic
sense, and agrees with him. Professor Jones argues
K
558
ROBERT BROWNING
that Browning's whole view of things rests ulti-
mately on an absolute distrust of knowledge and
an absolute faith in love. And Mrs. Orr says that
the poet's ultimate intellectual attitude towards
Christian theism was one of admitted ignorance.
The point has been touched several times in
the course of these studies, but could not be dealt
with at large, nor can it now. A few sentences
only may be given to it. As respects the criti-
cism of Professor Jones, we have touched the main.
point of that in our study of "Paracelsus," and
elsewhere. We should largely agree with the
philosophic teaching of the book. We cannot
agree with its criticism of Browning on this matter.
And it seems to us that Professor Jones cuts the
ground from under this part of his book, as criti-
cism of the deeper drift of the poet, by the ad-
mission virtually made in the chapter on "Heart
and Head." It comes to this, surely, that no
thinker who was also a poet, and a master of
human nature, could by love mean only feeling.
He really means the total view of things won
from the standpoint and in the spirit and relation
of love. Love's intuition, in fact, is not emotion
only, but the insight of all the powers of one's
nature, qualified and stimulated by love. We
entirely agree with Professor Jones, that when
doubts arise, because theory lags behind experi-
ence, there is no way out of the wood then save
a fuller and better theory, and then love may be
one of the powers urging forward a larger solu-
tion. Love as such is not light, let us say, but
EPILOGUE
559
it is the fine medium of Light on the great
questions of life.
And if it still be said that the poet when philo-
sophising was agnostic, and, as Mrs. Orr tells us,
spoke, in the terms of a certain type of Kantian-
ism, of the hopeless contradictions of the logical
understanding on the greatest matters, even then
certain things might well be urged in deprecation of
Professor Jones' critical condemnation. We might
appeal from the "abstract thinker" to the larger
thought of the poet. Or we might appeal to the
philosophers themselves, and compare the positions
say of Mr. Bradley and Professor Seth with that
of Professor Jones, allowing the poet the advantage
of such comparison, and the rights of a somewhat
different philosophic position.
We here, in fact, raise broadly the question,
not of agnosticism, but of the place and part of
doubt in human life. Browning does recognise, in
frank sympathy with the spirit of his age, the
limits and uncertainties of knowledge in relation
to the great points of belief and the higher
interpretation of things, but holds that this
uncertainty, and the doubts that arise under
stress of experience, belong to the wholesome
conditions of human education, and are indeed
essential to it. We know in part, and proceed to
ever fuller and clearer constructions of experience.
This partial knowledge is a condition of progress,
and throws us on our highest principles. To
some this may seem a compromise with experi-
ence. It is not in any case agnosticism, for by
560
ROBERT BROWNING
the conditions of the problem our knowledge is
enough for its moral function, while as science it
is constantly being carried to fuller power and
better clearness.
Browning applies his principle to the doctrine
and growth of Christianity in "A Death in the
Desert"; and in "Karshish" and "La Saisiaz" he
brings it to bear on our faith in a future life, and
on the degree of uncertainty that attaches to any
science of that matter. And his conclusion is,
that our experience and the state of the question
in regard to both is such as was to be expected,
keeping in view the nature of the questions and
the discipline of human life itself.
But, says Mrs. Orr, the poet's attitude and
inner mind, on such questions, was really one of
doubt and confessed ignorance. His attitude
towards historical Christianity was, she would
say, one of ethical and spiritual response, but
of large intellectual uncertainty (cf. Life and
Letters, pp. 318, 319, 436). "Christ was a
mystery, and a message of Divine Love, but no
messenger of Divine intention." And further it
is said, that " no one knew better than He that
every act and motive which we attribute to a
Superior Being is a virtual negation of His exist-
ence." And yet we are told Browning “believed
that such a Being exists, and accepted His re-
flexion in the mirror of the human mind as a
necessarily false image, but one that bears witness
to the Truth." The words are curious, and show
the straits to which a certain type of "agnosticism
EPILOGUE
561
with faith" is reduced-" necessarily false," yet
bearing "witness to the Truth"! Are we to take
the words as an instance of the contradictions
into which "logical understanding " falls, whenever
it has the temerity to deal with or speak of these
high things? This is, of course, a question of
philosophy, and it seems to us that the philosophy
here is quite unsatisfactory. But setting that
aside, as unfit for our present discussion, one or
two obvious reflections surely occur.
And as
they seem to us important in their bearing on the
attitude of the poet on the questions we are
considering, we shall beg permission to set them
down at this point, and in view of Mrs. Orr's
interpretation of the poet's thought and "teach-
ing." And one obvious remark surely is, that the
reflexion of Deity in human mind can scarcely be
"necessarily false" if it bear witness in any
degree to truth, to reality. Partial, defective,
it may be, and is, but not “false." Then, further,
Mrs. Orr says that "his works rarely" show this
state of "feeling," and his conversation did so very
seldom. She then adds, that "the faith which he
had contingently accepted became absolute for him,
from all practical points of view," on the ground,
we presume, of moral argument, and, Mrs. Orr adds,
of "transcendental imagination, and the acknow-
ledged limits of Reason." And then leaving
philosophical criticism of belief, whether adequate
or not, Mrs. Orr (vide p. 437 of Life) gives her
view of what remains. She holds that the poet's
testimony to the value of the higher beliefs is then
36
562
ROBERT BROWNING
"most powerful when least explicit"-and most
valid when it is "the unconscious testimony of
creative genius to the marvel of conscious life-
through the passionate affirmation of the poetic and
human nature, not only of the beauty and goodness
of that life, but of its reality and persistence."
This is well said, and one agrees with it, but
how stand criticism and argument then? and
what is this worth as
argument for faith"?
What Mrs. Orr has to say of the "transcendental
imagination" and of the "limits of reason," as
grounds of belief somehow regarding matters that
we do not really know, might, indeed, draw one
aside to philosophy, especially as one recalls the
unphilosophic uses such conceptions and terms
have been put to; but, setting aside the questions
of philosophy as such, let us try the matter on
the broader and simpler ground that belongs to
us here. And when we do so, is not this what it
comes to? When leaving metaphysics, good or
bad, we put the argument as Mrs. Orr has put it
in the words quoted, and make our appeal to
interpretation of human nature and human experi-
ence, as these are read through the grasp and
insight of the poet as a master of both, we are
plainly taking our stand on the ground, not of
psychological religion merely, but of a large
ethical and human construction of things-not in
the light of our needs only, but of our natures and
our highest principles. And this surely is a
ground, not of ignorance but of knowledge, and of
valid though modest constructions of human mind
((
EPILOGUE
563
and of human life. And this is the right, as it is the
strong ground when dealing with a poet, and with
poetry, as we have before said and repeated.
This interpretation of things, and of man in
relation to them, is, of course, from the scientific
point of view, a large hypothesis, rather than a
completed truth; but it is a hypothesis whose
fundamental principles belong to the core of our
poet's intuition of man and of life. It is interest-
ing, it is important no doubt, to know what a poet,
who was a strong thinker, held when critically
reflecting on the great final questions, and the
conditions of our knowledge of these, it is more
important to read rightly what he grasped and
felt when working with his whole mind as a poet,
as seer, as interpreter of the things of man, and,
through his grasp and mastery of these, as inter-
preter of the things of the world.
The further question raised by Mrs. Orr's
criticism of the poet's religious position, his exact
attitude to Christianity as an "Absolute Revela-
tion" of the existence and character of God, and
of the destiny of man, we do not feel called upon
to discuss, or only so far as it comes up within
the works of the poet, and in that relation but
slightly. No historical "Revelation," we pre-
sume, can be absolute," either as to its
contents or its "
or its "evidences," though it may be
morally adequate; Browning certainly did not
conceive that such a "Revelation" had been made,
or was desirable. And if he held, as he certainly
held, that our knowledge of the greater things
CC
564
ROBERT BROWNING
is never complete, he held still more strongly that
this incompleteness is essential to human life.
Life is progress, and he conceived that a perfectly
clear and full knowledge of the great things would
bring both discipline and progress to an end.
At the same time, as we read him, he saw in history
and experience a stimulating and practically suffi-
cient revelation of the nature and law of Life; and
with the most generous faith and insistence he
urges men to live heartily in the light of a high
and noble conviction as to that supreme matter.
And he is Christian, we have said, not only
because he sees in the Christian spirit the purest
and highest ethic, and in the Christian standard
the fairest ideal of life, but because he recognised
the spiritual supremacy of the Founder of the
Christian faith and spirit, and because he held by
the sweet and noble reasonableness of the Christian
idea of God. We have argued indeed, justly it
still seems to us, that Browning's interpretation of
the Christian religion as a life of the spirit, and as
a theory of life that lifts life to a plane where all
its facts gain high uses and a divine meaning, is
one of the great things he has done as a poet.
And at this point, and on this ground, let us
say, we reach the last of the aims we set ourselves
in this part of these studies-that is, a summary
and interpretation of Browning's principles as a
religious and ethical teacher, though simply to
gather up and indicate the due construction of the
foregoing expositions. It has been shown that
the poet is idealist, in sympathy with Plato and
EPILOGUE
565
Shelley, and most of his work down to the "Bells
and Pomegranates has this quality. But with
the stress on the dramatic interest, and the de-
`velopment of the "dramatic lyric," and at length
with the adoption of that as the form of his work,
what has been called the realistic side of his
mind was brought strongly out. Only let us be
clear what this realism is. By recurring to the
principle of his dramatic form and the scope of
his dramatic art we get at it. That principle we
have defined as the principle of dramatic indi-
viduality, and that scope the embodiment of such
individuality in unique expression.
And here we
catch the meaning of what has been further called
Browning's real - idealism. As poet, he sees
things from the point of view, through the mind,
and in terms of the experience of persons. Thus
for him, as the dramatic interpreter of life, the
"real" is the "soul," and experience is a con-
struction, always from the point of view and
through the minds of persons. His realism then
lies largely in his intense apprehension and vivid.
presentment of all that makes life for "souls," for
persons; while his idealism consists, not only in
his grasping this basis, but in his affirming, through
his art and in his thought, the ideal quality and
range of emotion and thought-the full depth and
height and scope of life-the quest, the passion,
the effort, the aspiration of the soul. The develop-
ment of the “soul" is the sphere and interest of
art, and the development of the "soul" is the
scope and meaning of life-the proper fruit of all
~
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566
ROBERT BROWNING
experience. That is the issue of education in
"Rabbi Ben Ezra." It is, he conceives, the end
of this life and the goal of every other. The
evolution of spirit, he imagines, is the cosmical
goal, and is the only conception we can frame on
that great matter. This is his moral frequently,
his principle always. It is the result of "Para-
celsus" and "Sordello"; it is the moral of "The
Grammarian's Funeral," of "The Statue and the
Bust," and of "Andrea del Sarto."
And when Browning speaks of spiritual develop-
ment as the proper fruit of experience and our
goal of life, it is well to see how, by his art as by
his thought, he stands on and works out life's
facts. For him the spiritual is the full human
fact seen in its due relation to the whole of life,
and development of the "soul" is development of
the man in the just balance and unity of his
powers and relations. This is the spiritual and
at the same time real ethics of "Rabbi Ben Ezra "
-the due subjection of all the parts and aims of
life to the law of the whole, securing the integrity
and harmony of life, and an equal development of
its powers towards the highest service each is
capable of. The spirituality of life and the reach
and quality of human aims and passions we have
found further indicated in "The Grammarian,"
and more largely, more explicitly in "Easter
Day," while the quality and reach life must have
to satisfy the "soul" is given in other ways in
"Karshish" and "Cleon." The Grammarian's
quest is for the whole of knowledge, for the "per-
EPILOGUE
567
fect" that way. The persona of "Easter Day" finds
all things, the best things of life, lose their worth
when they become "finite." Cleon has found the
same under Greek culture and in Greek life.
Only a divine beauty and depth in things-only
a truly spiritual reach in life-gives things and
life enduring value for the mind and heart of man.
And this is got by setting things in their place
and in divine relations, and by keeping them to
their true function the development of the
"soul." A wholesome concreteness with his
ideality we have noted in our poet, and this is
seen here by his sharp sense of the defect of
types like Lazarus, and by his firm grasp of the
principle of the good Rabbi Ben Ezra, and of all
that is covered by his parable of "The Boy and
the Angel," in relation to our present question.
And this is his clue to the discipline as it is his
idea of the function of life. The test of life in
that aspect also is still spiritual result-develop-
ment of the man. And this he conceives is the
test of all circumstances and of all experiences.
They are good as they enrich and unfold the life
within-wisdom and power and good there-as
"they propel the soul on its way." They are
poor and null, or bad and hurtful, as they make
men miss that, or mar their progress in it. And
seeing that the scope of the soul, of mind, and will
in man, is spiritual and so infinite, that life is the
best, the most "successful," which is moving freely,
and with fullest, steadiest grasp of its law and
principle towards the ideal,
M
568
ROBERT BROWNING
1
|
And the " way of the soul," the element and
sphere of this ideal, it will be seen, after what has
been above said, is the way of the actual life.
The world of human relations, tasks, circum-
stances, difficulties, defects, sorrows, limits, losses,
is, Browning conceives, the very world wherein to
work our problem out and get well started to-
wards our ideal. By his principle, indeed, we not
only use but master environment towards spiritual
ends. Positive and cordial he would make even
the losses and defects, even the hindrances and
sufferings of life, serve to unfold life, moving
strenuously and gratefully forward to that only
end which seems to justify and consecrate all
experience an ever greater fulness, strength,
and gentleness of heart and will, a riper wisdom
and a richer power of the whole man.
He thus accepts the law of moral evolution with
its consequences. He holds by good, but is not
afraid of evil. He uses struggle and error as a
way to good, crisis and profound disturbance as a
means of education and high deliverance. Life is
perfected through many experiences, belief through
doubt, faith and hope through fear and effort.
His faith in the other life is a faith in life; his
faith in God a faith in the living Good, manifest in
life and in the soul. And the key-stone, we should
say, of his art and of his thought is the value,
not merely the interest, of the soul. His art, his
ethic, his faith, are all drawn from this source; and
partly because of his reverence for souls, and
partly because of his supreme and strenuous faith
EPILOGUE
569
in Good, he is able to face the worst and hope
the best, and urge life always onwards.
Here we touch again, at the close of these
studies, though only for a moment, the question
of the specifically religious idea as it is presented
in Browning-the question, that is, of the theistic
idea and interpretation. We saw in our opening
chapter how, by his mode of thought as by his
ruling interest, [Browning was disposed to take
man as his clue to the true nature of things, and
to take moral power and spiritual quality as his
clue to the value and meaning of man, and this
gave him his approach to, his principle for, the
matter now in hand-it gave him indeed, as
essential to his highest idea, a principle of con-
science, and a ground of reason. And this mode
of conception is part also of what we have called
his dramatic concreteness, his sense of and faith
in personality, and his way of taking and present-
ing things always dramatically. For it is, as it
seems to us, one result of his intensely dramatic
mode of thought that Browning uses the terms of
theism, often with great force and vividness, at
times with fine freshness and beauty, to express
his ultimate idea of the nature and law of life-
"the high and true nature of Reality."
In "Saul," in "Karshish," and in the Pope's
speech in "The Ring and the Book," particularly,
the moral and human power of the idea in its
Christian form and quality are nobly set forth. It
is thus freshly and touchingly put in the "Epistle
of Karshish".
T
K
570
ROBERT BROWNING
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 fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love."
And in "A Death in the Desert,” parts of which
have close and important bearing on our present
point, the poet says, and presumably more from
his own thought, that having reached the higher
conception of will, and of supreme personality,
with regard to the ultimate nature, we cannot fall
away or be driven from these, through our very
need of them. And he says further, in that
poem (cf. vol. vii. p. 130), that-
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Life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
•
•
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ANDA GA(1) Br
But, say certain good critics regarding all such
passages, these are dramatic utterances and figures
of speech, and we must not take our strong poet
as attributing "human emotions" to the Deity.
As to that," Saul" surely says, that unless we
conceive the Deity as animated by love we have
not conceived the Highest. And to it the Pope
would say that, given that conception of the
Highest, we have got a clue to the best and
deepest things in ourselves, and to all things in
life. And that we take it was broadly the poet's
own view. Love is no mere
Love is no mere "human emotion,” but
the greatest principle, as it is the purest activity

of our natures. And if we may not think our
и бо мав їх тут ийте гордит
EPILOGUE
571
highest thoughts, and attribute our purest and
loftiest principles to Deity, we are ignorant indeed.
But the Pope may answer that, and this must be our
last word on a matter whose scope and importance
demand much more, our finest, and our brightest
light of reason, and of goodness, may be but a
star in the infinite sky; but our "spark had for
its source the sun," and of the central sun itself
it bears, and must bear, true witness.
It is not only in deep agreement with our
poet's principles, but their necessary fruit, that he
should encourage and require a large freedom of
interpretation. The "Epilogue" to "Dramatis
Personæ," and the main argument of " A Death in
the Desert," give the vital grounds of this freedom.
The true faith is for him a living construction of
experience, besides being "soul of the soul, and
mind of the mind " of a man. But it did not
enter into his imagination to conceive a "religion
of the future" which could transcend, not to say
traverse, the noblest Christian idea of God. That
idea has difficulties, but it draws from our highest,
and finds room for heart and soul and mind. And
if with Renan (Preface to Feuilles Détachées), our
poet would have agreed that "all religions are
vain," with Renan he would more strongly have
said that "Religion is great, eternal." For the
drift of his thought, and the fashion of his art, tend
nobly to reconcile these two positions, so charac-
teristic of the mind of our time, by showing how
"the eternal, the universal" manifest themselves
in the forms of human character and human mind,
Life is to wake not sleep,
Rise and not rest, but press
From earth's level where blindly creep
Things perfected, more or less,
To the heaven's height, far and steep.
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
·
The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.
Reverie.
•
man knows partly but conceives beside,
Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,
And in this striving, .
Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone.
•
The Statue and the Bust.
A Death in the Desert.
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Trust God: see all, nor be afraid!
Rabbi Ben Ezra.
From the first, Power was-I knew.
Life has made clear to me
That, strive but for closer view,
Love were as plain to see.
Reverie.
>>
"ABT VOGLER," 312, 449
Agnosticism, 263, 298, 570
Ancestors of Browning, 30
Andrea del Sarto," 414-419
"Another Way of Love," 492
Any Wife to Any Husband,"
498
66
(C
Apparent Failure," 313
"Aristophanes' Apology,"46, 439
Arnold, 17, 546
Art and its criticism, 79-83
Art and life, 441
Art and manner of Browning,
440-41, 548
Art and science, 9
Art, interest in, 404
Art, the function of, 28, 441
"Artemis Prologizes," 437
"Asolando," 347
"At the Mermaid, 232, 432
INDEX
"BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE,"
45, 438
Ballads, 190, 457-60
Barrett, Miss Elizabeth (Mrs.
Browning), 35-40, 377
Belief and doubt, 559
Belief and experience, 374
"Bells and Pomegranates," 35
"Bifurcation," 508
CC
355
Bishop Blougram," 363, 524
Bishop orders his Tomb at St.
Praxed's," 193-97, 519.
Blot in the 'Scutcheon," 172
"Boot and Saddle," 459
"C
(C
6 C
Boy and the Angel," 204
(C
By the Fireside,” 496, 539
CALIBAN," 355-363, 524
Casuistic studies, 350
Causes of delay in acceptance, 6
"Cavalier Tunes," 190, 459
Character, 42
Characterisation, 94, 96
Characteristics, 95-103, 550-51
"Childe Roland," 472-77, 542
Christian art, 15
Christian belief and tradition,
273
Christianity, 295, 306, 325, 560-
564
"Christmas Eve," 253-61, 324
Classification of work, 49-55,457
Cleon," 314
"Cleon"
Ezra," 317
Colombe's Birthday," 173
and
"Rabbi Ben
46
(C
Complex dramatic method, 87,
552
Confessions," 494, 518, 526
"Count Gismond," 460
Cristina," 485
Criticism, 79
(C
573
(6
DANTE, 60, 143-45, 481
"Deaf and Dumb," 215
Death, 41
"Death in the Desert," 272-
285, 345, 560, 570
"De Gustibus," 541
Difficulties,
of manner and
matter, 550, f. 83-87
"Dis Aliter Visum," 507
Drama and Browning's genius,
184
574
INDEX
"Dramatic Idyls," 47, 53
Drama, Greek, 40, 437
Dramatic lyrics, 185-97
Dramatic method, 69–76
Dramatic quality, 553
Dramatic realism, 84
Dramatic romances and ballads,
456
"Dramatis Person," 43
EARLY ISOLATION, 4
"Earth's Immortalities," 494,
499
"Easter Day," 323, 325, 330
Echetlos," 221
Education of Browning, 30
Elaboration, 241
Eliot, George, 72
Elizabethan Drama, 72, 551
Energy of Browning, 88, 95
Englishman in Italy," 541
Epilogue to
"Dramatis Per-
sonce," 285, 346
Epistle of Karshish," 265, 320
Euripides, 437
Evelyn Hope," 486
(C
CC
66
66
FAUCIT, HELEN, 165, 172,
173
Faust, 136, 137, 139
"Fears and Scruples," 287
Ferishtah's; Fancies," 48, 53,
66
222, 347
"Fifine," 46, 50, 347.
Filippo Baldinucci," 522
Flight of the Duchess," 465,
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542
"Flower's Name," 493
Forgiveness," 509
Form and verse, 80
Formative influences, 57
"Fra Lippo Lippi," 411
66
GHOSTS, AND GHOST THEORY,
398
Giotto, 407
"Glove," 461, 519
Gold Hair," 526
"Grammarian's Funeral," 211,
311
"
Greek art and literature, 45, 61,
I10, 408, 437
Greek drama, 440
Greek imagination, 545
Grotesqueness, 515
"Guardian Angel," 230
"HALBERT AND HOB," 223
Hegel, 11
"Heretic's Tragedy," 520
"Hervé Riel," 458, 459
"Hohenstiel
Schwangau,
Prince, 46, 52
"Holy-Cross Day," 521
Home-Thoughts from Abroad,
C
538
House," 434
"How it Strikes a Contempor-
ary," 427
Humanism, 64, 65, 352
Humour, 512-30
46
IDEALISM IN LITERATURE, II
Idealism of Browning, 565
Idealism of Sordello, 163
Idyls, Dramatic," 47, 53
Immortality, 301
"In a Balcony," 183
"In a Gondola," 190, 464,
491
"In a Year," 490
"Incident of the French Camp,"
458
Infinite, quest of the, 108,
137
"Inn Album,” 46, 53
"Instans Tyrannus," 222, 460
Intellectual energy, 554
Interpretation of nature, 535
"In Three Days," 489
Inward search, 117
"Italian in England," 463
Italy, removal to, 37
"Ixion," 266
"JAMES LEE'S WIFE," 215,
499-507, 539
Jochanan Hakkadosh," 234
"Johannes Agricola," 188
Johnson, Dr., and belief, 398
66
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