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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Benedictine + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Benedictine University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Life of Browning by William Sharp + + + + + +Please note: + The Following Books relating to Robert Browning are now online: + --------------------------------------------------------------- + +Corson, Hiram. An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry, + 3rd edition. + This book is primarily concerned with Browning's poems. + Advantages: This book is an excellent introduction to Browning. + +Orr, Mrs. Sutherland. Life and Letters of Robert Browning, 2nd edition. + This book is primarily concerned with Browning's life. + Advantages: As a close friend, the author has a good grasp of the facts, + and is meticulous in her treatment of the material. + Disadvantages: As a close friend, the author is sometimes partisan. + +Sharp, William. Life of Robert Browning. + Despite the title, this book is as much a critique of Browning's works + as it is a biography of the poet. + Advantages: Further removed from poet, the author is willing to make + some criticisms. As an early and frequently quoted work on the subject, + this book is a good resource. + Disadvantages: Due to carelessness on the part of the author + and his publisher, a number of factual and other errors were made. + Although this electronic text has corrected many of the obvious errors, + they are frequent enough to leave misgivings. + + + + + +[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalised. +Some obvious errors may have been corrected.] + + + + + +Life of Robert Browning + +by William Sharp. + + + + + +Contents. + + + +Chapter 1. + +London, Robert Browning's birthplace; his immediate predecessors +and contemporaries in literature, art, and music; born May 7th, 1812; +origin of the Browning family; assertions as to its Semitic connection +apparently groundless; the poet a putative descendant +of the Captain Micaiah Browning mentioned by Macaulay; +Robert Browning's mother of Scottish and German origin; +his father a man of exceptional powers, artist, poet, critic, student; +Mr. Browning's opinion of his son's writings; the home in Camberwell; +Robert Browning's childhood; concerning his optimism; +his fondness for Carravaggio's "Andromeda and Perseus"; his poetic precocity; +origin of "The Flight of the Duchess"; writes Byronic verse; +is sent to school at Peckham; his holiday afternoons; sees London by night, +from Herne Hill; the significance of the spectacle to him. + + +Chapter 2. + +He wishes to be a poet; writes in the style of Byron and Pope; +the "Death of Harold"; his poems, written when twelve years old, +shown to Miss Flower; the Rev. W. J. Fox's criticisms on them; +he comes across Shelley's "Daemon of the World"; Mrs. Browning +procures Shelley's poems, also those of Keats, for her son; +the perusal of these volumes proves an important event +in his poetic development; he leaves school when fourteen years old, +and studies at home under a tutor; attends a few lectures +at University College, 1829-30; chooses his career, at the age of twenty; +earliest record of his utterances concerning his youthful life printed +in `Century Magazine', 1881; he plans a series of monodramatic epics; +Browning's lifework, collectively one monodramatic "epic"; +Shakespeare's and Browning's methods compared; Browning writes "Pauline" +in 1832; his own criticism on it; his parents' opinions; +his aunt's generous gift; the poem published in January 1833; +description of the poem; written under the inspiring stimulus of Shelley; +its autopsychical significance; its importance to the student +of the poet's works; quotations from "Pauline". + + +Chapter 3. + +The public reception of "Pauline"; criticisms thereupon; +Mr. Fox's notice in the `Monthly Repository', and its results; +Dante Gabriel Rossetti reads "Pauline" and writes to the author; +Browning's reference to Tennyson's reading of "Maud" in 1855; +Browning frequents literary society; reads at the British Museum; +makes the acquaintance of Charles Dickens and "Ion" Talfourd; +a volume of poems by Tennyson published simultaneously with "Pauline"; +in 1833 he commences his travels; goes to Russia; the sole record +of his experiences there to be found in the poem "Ivan Ivanovitch", +published in `Dramatic Idyls', 1879; his acquaintance with Mazzini; +Browning goes to Italy; visits Asolo, whence he drew hints +for "Sordello" and "Pippa Passes"; in 1834 he returns to Camberwell; +in autumn of 1834 and winter of 1835 commences "Sordello", +writes "Paracelsus", and one or two short poems; his love for Venice; +a new voice audible in "Johannes Agricola" and "Porphyria"; +"Paracelsus", published in 1835; his own explanation of it; +his love of walking in the dark; some of "Paracelsus" and of "Strafford" +composed in a wood near Dulwich; concerning "Paracelsus" and Browning's +sympathy with the scientific spirit; description and scope of the poem; +quotations therefrom; estimate of the work, and its four lyrics. + + +Chapter 4. + +Criticisms upon "Paracelsus", important one written by John Forster; +Browning meets Macready at the house of Mr. Fox; personal description +of the poet; Macready's opinion of the poem; Browning spends +New Year's Day, 1836, at the house of the tragedian and meets John Forster; +Macready urges him to write a play; his subsequent interview +with the tragedian; he plans a drama to be entitled "Narses"; +meets Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor at a supper party, +when the young poet is toasted, and Macready again proposes +that Browning should write a play, from which arose the idea of "Strafford"; +his acquaintance with Wordsworth and Landor; MS. of "Strafford" accepted; +its performance at Covent Garden Theatre on the 26th May 1837; +runs for five nights; the author's comments; the drama issued +by Messrs. Longman & Co.; the performance in 1886; estimate of "Strafford"; +Browning's dramas; comparison between the Elizabethan and Victorian +dramatic eras; Browning's soul-depictive faculty; his dramatic method; +estimate of his dramas; Landor's acknowledgment of the dedication to him +of "Luria". + + +Chapter 5. + +"Profundity" and "Simplicity"; the faculty of wonder; +Browning's first conception of "Pippa Passes"; his residence in London; +his country walks; his ways and habits, and his heart-episodes; +debates whether to become a clergyman; is "Pippa Passes" a drama? +estimate of the poem; Browning's rambles on Wimbledon Common +and in Dulwich Wood, where he composes his lines upon Shelley; +asserts there is romance in Camberwell as well as in Italy; +"Sordello"; the charge of obscurity against "Sordello"; +the nature and intention of the poem; quotations therefrom; +anecdote about Douglas Jerrold; Tennyson's, Carlyle's, +and M. Odysse Barot's opinions on "Sordello"; "enigmatic" poetry; +in 1863 Browning contemplated the re-writing of "Sordello"; +dedication to the French critic, Milsand. + + +Chapter 6. + +Browning's three great dramatic poems; "The Ring and the Book" +his finest work; its uniqueness; Carlyle's criticism of it; +Poetry versus Tour-de-Force; "The Ring and the Book" begun in 1866; +analysis of the poem; kinship of "The Ring and the Book" and "Aurora Leigh"; +explanation of title; the idea taken from a parchment volume +Browning picked up in Florence; the poem planned at Casa Guidi; +"O Lyric Love", etc.; description and analysis of "The Ring and the Book", +with quotations; compared as a poem with "The Inn Album", "Pauline", +"Asolando", "Men and Women", etc.; imaginary volumes, +to be entitled "Transcripts from Life" and "Flowers o' the Vine"; +Browning's greatest period; Browning's primary importance. + + +Chapter 7. + +Early life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; born in 1820;* +the chief sorrow of her life; the Barrett family settle in London; +"The Cry of the Children" and its origin; Miss Barrett's friends; +effect on her of Browning's poetry; she makes Browning's acquaintance in 1846; +her early belief in him as a poet; her physical delicacy +and her sensitiveness of feeling; personal appearance of Robert Browning; +his "electric" hand; Elizabeth Barrett discerns his personal worth, +and is susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song; +Mr. Barrett's jealousy; their engagement; Miss Barrett's acquaintance +with Mrs. Jameson; quiet marriage in 1846; Mr. Barrett's resentment; +the Brownings go to Paris; thence to Italy with Mrs. Jameson; +Wordsworth's comments; residence in Pisa; "Sonnets from the Portuguese"; +in the spring they go to Florence, thence to Ancona, +where "The Guardian Angel" was written; Casa Guidi; +W. W. Story's account of the rooms at Casa Guidi; perfect union. + +-- +* This date is a typographical error, but the date given in the text itself, + 1809, is also incorrect -- it should be 1806. Mr. Sharp's + lack of knowledge on this subject is understandable, however, + as, to quote from Mrs. Orr's "Life and Letters of Robert Browning" (1891): + "She looked much younger than her age, which [Robert Browning] + only recently knew to have been six years beyond his own." -- A. L., 1996. +-- + + +Chapter 8. + +March 1849, birth of Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning; +Browning writes his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"; +"Casa Guidi Windows" commenced; 1850, they go to Rome; +"Two in the Campagna"; proposal to confer poet-laureateship on Mrs. Browning; +return to London; winter in Paris; summer in London; Kenyon's friendship; +return in autumn to Casa Guidi; Browning's Essay on Shelley +for the twenty-five spurious Shelley letters; midsummer at Baths of Lucca, +where "In a Balcony" was in part written; winter of 1853-4 in Rome; +record of work; "Pen's" illness; "Ben Karshook's Wisdom"; return to Florence; +(1856) "Men and Women" published; the Brownings go to London; +in summer "Aurora Leigh" issued; 1858, Mrs. Browning's waning health; +1855-64 comparatively unproductive period with R. Browning; +record of work; July 1855, they travel to Normandy; "Legend of Pornic"; +Mrs. Browning's ardent interest in the Italian struggle of 1859; +winter in Rome; "Poems before Congress"; her last poem, "North and South"; +death of Mrs. Browning at Casa Guidi, 28th June 1861. + + +Chapter 9. + +Browning's allusions to death of his wife; Miss Browning +resides with her brother from 1866; 1868, collected works published; +first part of "The Ring and the Book" published in November 1866; +"Herve Riel" written; Browning's growing popularity; +Tauchnitz editions of his poems in 1872; also first book of selections; +dedication to Lord Tennyson; 1877, he goes to La Saisiaz, near Geneva; +"La Saisiaz" and "The Two Poets of Croisic" published 1878; +Browning's later poems; Browning Society established 1881; +Browning's letter thereupon to Mr. Yates; trips abroad; his London residences; +his last letter to Tennyson; revisits Asolo; Palazzo Rezzonico; +his belief in immortality; his death, Thursday, Dec. 12th, 1889; +funeral in Westminster Abbey; Sonnet by George Meredith; new star in Orion; +R. Browning's place in literature; Summary, etc. + + + + + + +Note. + + + +In all important respects I leave this volume to speak for itself. +For obvious reasons it does not pretend to be more +than a `Memoire pour servir': in the nature of things, +the definitive biography cannot appear for many years to come. +None the less gratefully may I take the present opportunity +to express my indebtedness to Mr. R. Barrett Browning, +and to other relatives and intimate friends of Robert Browning, +who have given me serviceable information, and otherwise rendered kindly aid. +For some of the hitherto unpublished details my thanks are, +in particular, due to Mrs. Fraser Corkran and Miss Alice Corkran, +and to other old friends of the poet and his family, +here, in Italy, and in America; though in one or two instances, I may add, +I had them from Robert Browning himself. It is with pleasure +that I further acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Furnivall, +for the loan of the advance-proofs of his privately-printed pamphlet +on "Browning's Ancestors"; and to the Browning Society's Publications -- +particularly to Mrs. Sutherland Orr's and Dr. Furnivall's biographical +and bibliographical contributions thereto; to Mr. Gosse's biographical article +in the `Century Magazine' for 1881; to Mr. Ingram's `Life of E. B. Browning'; +and to the `Memoirs of Anna Jameson', the `Italian Note-Books' +of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. G. S. Hillard's `Six Months in Italy' (1853), +and the Lives and Correspondence of Macready, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, +and Walter Savage Landor. I regret that the imperative need of concision +has prevented the insertion of many of the letters, anecdotes, +and reminiscences, so generously placed at my disposal; +but possibly I may have succeeded in educing from them +some essential part of that light which they undoubtedly cast +upon the personality and genius of the poet. + + + + + +------------------------ +Life of Robert Browning. +------------------------ + + + + + +Chapter 1. + + + +It must, to admirers of Browning's writings, appear singularly appropriate +that so cosmopolitan a poet was born in London. It would seem +as though something of that mighty complex life, so confusedly petty +to the narrow vision, so grandiose and even majestic to the larger ken, +had blent with his being from the first. What fitter birthplace for the poet +whom a comrade has called the "Subtlest Assertor of the Soul in Song", +the poet whose writings are indeed a mirror of the age? + +A man may be in all things a Londoner and yet be a provincial. +The accident of birthplace does not necessarily involve +parochialism of the soul. It is not the village which produces the Hampden, +but the Hampden who immortalises the village. It is a favourite jest +of Rusticus that his urban brother has the manner of Omniscience +and the knowledge of a parish beadle. Nevertheless, +though the strongest blood insurgent in the metropolitan heart +is not that which is native to it, one might well be proud +to have had one's atom-pulse atune from the first with the large rhythm +of the national life at its turbulent, congested, but ever ebullient centre. +Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of his being a Londoner, +much less to deny his natal place. He was proud of it: through good sense, +no doubt, but possibly also through some instinctive apprehension of the fact +that the great city was indeed the fit mother of such a son. +"Ashamed of having been born in the greatest city of the world!" +he exclaimed on one occasion; "what an extraordinary thing to say! +It suggests a wavelet in a muddy shallow grimily contorting itself +because it had its birth out in the great ocean." + +On the day of the poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey, +one of the most eminent of his peers remarked to me that Browning came to us +as one coming into his own. This is profoundly true. +There was in good sooth a mansion prepared against his advent. +Long ago, we should have surrendered as to a conqueror: now, however, +we know that princes of the mind, though they must be valorous and potent +as of yore, can enter upon no heritance save that which naturally awaits them, +and has been made theirs by long and intricate processes. + +The lustrum which saw the birth of Robert Browning, +that is the third in the nineteenth century, was a remarkable one indeed. +Thackeray came into the world some months earlier than the great poet, +Charles Dickens within the same twelvemonth, and Tennyson three years sooner, +when also Elizabeth Barrett was born, and the foremost naturalist +of modern times first saw the light. It is a matter of significance +that the great wave of scientific thought which ultimately bore forward +on its crest so many famous men, from Brewster and Faraday to Charles Darwin, +had just begun to rise with irresistible impulsion. Lepsius's birth +was in 1813, and that of the great Flemish novelist, Henri Conscience, +in 1812: about the same period were the births of Freiligrath, +Gutzkow, and Auerbach, respectively one of the most lyrical poets, +the most potent dramatist, the most charming romancer of Germany: +and, also, in France, of Theophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset. +Among representatives of the other arts -- with two of which +Browning must ever be closely associated -- Mendelssohn and Chopin were born +in 1809, and Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner within the four succeeding years: +within which space also came Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet. +Other high names there are upon the front of the century. +Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, John Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, by the way, +to recognise the genius of Browning), Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, +Victor Hugo, Ampere, Quinet, Prosper Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, +Strauss, Montalambert, are among the laurel-bearers who came into existence +betwixt 1800 and 1812. + +When Robert Browning was born in London in 1812, Sheridan had still +four years to live; Jeremy Bentham was at the height +of his contemporary reputation, and Godwin was writing glibly +of the virtues of humanity and practising the opposite qualities, +while Crabbe was looked upon as one of the foremost of living poets. +Wordsworth was then forty, Sir Walter Scott forty-one, Coleridge forty-two, +Walter Savage Landor and Charles Lamb each in his forty-fifth year. +Byron was four-and-twenty, Shelley not yet quite of age, +two radically different men, Keats and Carlyle, both youths of seventeen. +Abroad, Laplace was in his maturity, with fifteen years more yet to live; +Joubert with twelve; Goethe, with twenty; Lamarck, the Schlegels, +Cuvier, Chateaubriand, Hegel, Niebuehr (to specify some leading names only), +had many years of work before them. Schopenhauer was only four-and-twenty, +while Beranger was thirty-two. The Polish poet Mickiewicz +was a boy of fourteen, and Poushkin was but a twelvemonth older; +Heine, a lad of twelve, was already enamoured of the great Napoleonic legend. +The foremost literary critic of the century was running about the sands +of Boulogne, or perhaps wandering often along the ramparts of the old town, +introspective even then, with something of that rare and insatiable curiosity +which we all now recognise as so distinctive of Sainte-Beuve. Again, +the greatest creative literary artist of the century, in prose at any rate, +was leading an apparently somewhat indolent schoolboy life at Tours, +undreamful yet of enormous debts, colossal undertakings, gigantic failures, +and the `Comedie Humaine'. In art, Sir Henry Raeburn, William Blake, +Flaxman, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Crome, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Constable, +Sir David Wilkie, and Turner were in the exercise of their happiest faculties: +as were, in the usage of theirs, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Spohr, +Donizetti, and Bellini. + +It is not inadvisedly that I make this specification of great names, +of men who were born coincidentally with, or were in the broader sense +contemporaries of Robert Browning. There is no such thing +as a fortuitous birth. Creation does not occur spontaneously, +as in that drawing of David Scott's where from the footprint of the Omnipotent +spring human spirits and fiery stars. Literally indeed, +as a great French writer has indicated, a man is the child of his time. +It is a matter often commented upon by students of literature, that great men +do not appear at the beginning, but rather at the acme of a period. +They are not the flying scud of the coming wave, but the gleaming crown +of that wave itself. The epoch expends itself in preparation +for these great ones. + +If Nature's first law were not a law of excess, the economy of life +would have meagre results. I think it is Turgeniev +who speaks somewhere of her as a gigantic Titan, working in gloomy silence, +with the same savage intentness upon a subtler twist of a flea's joints +as upon the Destinies of Man. + +If there be a more foolish cry than that poetry is on the wane, it is that +the great days had passed away even before Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson +were born. The way was prepared for Browning, as it was for Shakespeare: +as it is, beyond doubt, for the next high peer of these. + +There were `Roberts' among the sons of the Browning family +for at least four generations. It has been affirmed, on disputable authority, +that the surname is the English equivalent for Bruning, and that the family +is of Teutonic origin. Possibly: but this origin is too remote +to be of any practical concern. Browning himself, it may be added, +told Mr. Moncure Conway that the original name was De Bruni. +It is not a matter of much importance: the poet was, +personally and to a great extent in his genius, Anglo-Saxon. +Though there are plausible grounds for the assumption, I can find nothing +to substantiate the common assertion that, immediately, or remotely, +his people were Jews.* + +-- +* Fairly conclusive evidence to the contrary, on the paternal side, + is afforded in the fact that, in 1757, the poet's great-grandfather + gave one of his sons the baptismal name of Christian. + Dr. Furnivall's latest researches prove that there is absolutely + "no ground for supposing the presence of any Jewish blood + in the poet's veins." +-- + +As to Browning's physiognomy and personal traits, this much may be granted: +if those who knew him were told he was a Jew they would not be much surprised. +In his exuberant vitality, in his sensuous love of music and the other arts, +in his combined imaginativeness and shrewdness of common sense, +in his superficial expansiveness and actual reticence, +he would have been typical enough of the potent and artistic race +for whom he has so often of late been claimed. + +What, however, is most to the point is that neither to curious acquaintances +nor to intimate friends, neither to Jews nor Gentiles, +did he ever admit more than that he was a good Protestant, +and sprung of a Puritan stock. He was tolerant of all religious forms, +but with a natural bias towards Anglican Evangelicalism. + +In appearance there was, perhaps, something of the Semite in Robert Browning: +yet this is observable but slightly in the portraits of him +during the last twenty years, and scarcely at all in those which represent him +as a young man. It is most marked in the drawing by Rudolf Lehmann, +representing Browning at the age of forty-seven, where he looks out upon us +with a physiognomy which is, at least, as much distinctively Jewish +as English. Possibly the large dark eyes (so unlike both in colour and shape +what they were in later life) and curved nose and full lips, +with the oval face, may have been, as it were, seen judaically by the artist. +These characteristics, again, are greatly modified in Mr. Lehmann's +subsequent portrait in oils. + +The poet's paternal great-grandfather, who was owner of the Woodyates Inn, +in the parish of Pentridge, in Dorsetshire, claimed to come of good +west-country stock. Browning believed, but always conscientiously maintained +there was no proof in support of the assumption, that he was +a descendant of the Captain Micaiah Browning who, as Macaulay relates +in his `History of England', raised the siege of Derry in 1689 +by springing the boom across Lough Foyle, and perished in the act. +The same ancestral line is said to comprise the Captain Browning +who commanded the ship `The Holy Ghost', which conveyed Henry V. to France +before he fought the Battle of Agincourt, and in recognition of whose services +two waves, said to represent waves of the sea, were added to his coat of arms. +It is certainly a point of some importance in the evidence, +as has been indicated, that these arms were displayed +by the gallant Captain Micaiah, and are borne by the present family. +That the poet was a pure-bred Englishman in the strictest sense, +however, as has commonly been asserted, is not the case. +His mother was Scottish, through her mother and by birth, but her father +was the son of a German from Hamburg, named Wiedemann, who, by the way, +in connection with his relationship as maternal grandfather to the poet, +it is interesting to note, was an accomplished draughtsman and musician.* +Browning's paternal grandmother, again, was a Creole. As Mrs. Orr remarks, +this pedigree throws a valuable light on the vigour and variety +of the poet's genius. Possibly the main current of his ancestry is as little +strictly English as German. A friend sends me the following paragraph +from a Scottish paper: -- "What of the Scottish Brownings? I had it long ago +from one of the name that the Brownings came originally from Ayrshire, +and that several families of them emigrated to the North of Ireland +during the times of the Covenanters. There is, moreover, +a small town or village in the North of Ireland called Browningstown. +Might not the poet be related to these Scottish Brownings?" + +-- +* It has frequently been stated that Browning's maternal grandfather, + Mr. Wiedemann, was a Jew. Mr. Wiedemann, the son of a Hamburg merchant, + was a small shipowner in Dundee. Had he, or his father, been Semitic, + he would not have baptised one of his daughters `Christiana'. +-- + +Browning's great-grandfather, as indicated above, was a small proprietor +in Dorsetshire. His son, whether perforce or from choice, +removed to London when he was a youth, and speedily obtained +a clerkship in the Bank of England, where he remained for fifty years, +till he was pensioned off in 1821 with over 400 Pounds a year. +He died in 1833. His wife, to whom he was married in or about 1780, +was one Margaret Morris Tittle, a Creole, born in the West Indies. +Her portrait, by Wright of Derby, used to hang in the poet's dining-room. +They resided, Mr. R. Barrett Browning tells me, in Battersea, +where his grandfather was their first-born. The paternal grandfather +of the poet decided that his three sons, Robert, William Shergold, and Reuben, +should go into business, the two younger in London, the elder abroad. +All three became efficient financial clerks, and attained to good positions +and fair means.* The eldest, Robert, was a man of exceptional powers. +He was a poet, both in sentiment and expression; and he understood, +as well as enjoyed, the excellent in art. He was a scholar, too, +in a reputable fashion: not indifferent to what he had learnt in his youth, +nor heedless of the high opinion generally entertained for the greatest +writers of antiquity, but with a particular care himself for Horace +and Anacreon. As his son once told a friend, "The old gentleman's brain +was a storehouse of literary and philosophical antiquities. +He was completely versed in mediaeval legend, and seemed to have known +Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic personages, personally" -- +a significant detail, by the way. He was fond of metrical composition, +and his ease and grace in the use of the heroic couplet were the admiration, +not only of his intellectual associates, but, in later days, of his son, +who was wont to affirm, certainly in all seriousness, +that expressionally his father was a finer poetic artist than himself. +Some one has recorded of him that he was an authority +on the Letters of Junius: fortunately he had more tangible claims than this +to the esteem of his fellows. It was his boast that, +notwithstanding the exigencies of his vocation, he knew as much +of the history of art as any professional critic. His extreme modesty +is deducible from this naive remark. He was an amateur artist, moreover, +as well as poet, critic, and student. I have seen several of his drawings +which are praiseworthy: his studies in portraiture, particularly, +are ably touched: and, as is well known, he had an active faculty +of pictorial caricature. In the intervals of leisure +which beset the best regulated clerk he was addicted +to making drawings of the habitual visitors to the Bank of England, +in which he had obtained a post on his return, in 1803, from the West Indies, +and in the enjoyment of which he remained till 1853, +when he retired on a small pension. His son had an independent income, +but whether from a bequest, or in the form of an allowance from his +then unmarried Uncle Reuben, is uncertain. In the first year of his marriage +Mr. Browning resided in an old house in Southampton Street, Peckham, +and there the poet was born. The house was long ago pulled down, +and another built on its site. Mr. Browning afterwards removed +to another domicile in the same Peckham district. Many years later, +he and his family left Camberwell and resided at Hatcham, near New Cross, +where his brothers and sisters (by his father's second marriage) lived. +There was a stable attached to the Hatcham house, and in it +Mr. Reuben Browning kept his horse, which he let his poet-nephew ride, +while he himself was at his desk in Rothschild's bank. +No doubt this horse was the `York' alluded to by the poet +in the letter quoted, as a footnote, at page 189 [Chapter 9] of this book. +Some years after his wife's death, which occurred in 1849, +Mr. Browning left Hatcham and came to Paddington, but finally went to reside +in Paris, and lived there, in a small street off the Champs Elysees, +till his death in 1866. The Creole strain seems to have been +distinctly noticeable in Mr. Browning, so much so that it is possible +it had something to do with his unwillingness to remain at St. Kitts, +where he was certainly on one occasion treated cavalierly enough. +The poet's complexion in youth, light and ivory-toned as it was in later life, +has been described as olive, and it is said that one of his nephews, +who met him in Paris in his early manhood, took him for an Italian. +It has been affirmed that it was the emotional Creole strain in Browning +which found expression in his passion for music.** + +-- +* The three brothers were men of liberal education and literary tastes. + Mr. W. S. Browning, who died in 1874, was an author of some repute. + His `History of the Huguenots' is a standard book on the subject. +** Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her "Life and Letters of Robert Browning" (1891), + (now available online) refutes these statements. -- A. L., 1996. +-- + +By old friends of the family I have been told that Mr. Browning +had a strong liking for children, with whom his really remarkable +faculty of impromptu fiction made him a particular favourite. +Sometimes he would supplement his tales by illustrations with pencil or brush. +Miss Alice Corkran has shown me an illustrated coloured map, +depictive of the main incidents and scenery of the `Pilgrim's Progress', +which he genially made for "the children".* + +-- +* Mrs. Fraser Corkran, who saw much of the poet's father + during his residence in Paris, has spoken to me of his extraordinary + analytical faculty in the elucidation of complex criminal cases. + It was once said of him that his detective faculty amounted to genius. + This is a significant trait in the father of the author + of "The Ring and the Book". +-- + +He had three children himself -- Robert, born May 7th, 1812, +a daughter named Sarianna, after her mother, and Clara. +His wife was a woman of singular beauty of nature, +with a depth of religious feeling saved from narrowness of scope +only by a rare serenity and a fathomless charity. Her son's +loving admiration of her was almost a passion: even late in life +he rarely spoke of her without tears coming to his eyes. +She was, moreover, of an intellectual bent of mind, and with an artistic bias +having its readiest fulfilment in music, and, to some extent, in poetry. +In the latter she inclined to the Romanticists: her husband +always maintained the supremacy of Pope. He looked with much dubiety +upon his son's early writings, "Pauline" and "Paracelsus"; +"Sordello", though he found it beyond either his artistic +or his mental apprehension, he forgave, because it was written +in rhymed couplets; the maturer works he regarded with sympathy and pride, +with a vague admiration which passed into a clearer understanding +only when his long life was drawing near its close. + +Of his children's company he never tired, even when they were +scarce out of babyhood. He was fond of taking the little Robert in his arms, +and walking to and fro with him in the dusk in "the library", +soothing the child to sleep by singing to him snatches of Anacreon +in the original, to a favourite old tune of his, "A Cottage in a Wood". +Readers of "Asolando" will remember the allusions in that volume to +"my father who was a scholar and knew Greek." A week or two before his death +Browning told an American friend, Mrs. Corson, in reply to a statement of hers +that no one could accuse him of letting his talents lie idle: +"It would have been quite unpardonable in my case not to have done my best. +My dear father put me in a condition most favourable +for the best work I was capable of. When I think of the many authors +who have had to fight their way through all sorts of difficulties, +I have no reason to be proud of my achievements. My good father +sacrificed a fortune to his convictions. He could not bear with slavery, +and left India and accepted a humble bank-office in London. +He secured for me all the ease and comfort that a literary man needs +to do good work. It would have been shameful if I had not done my best +to realise his expectations of me."* + +-- +* `India' is a slip on the part either of Browning or of Mrs. Corson. + The poet's father was never in India. He was quite a youth + when he went to his mother's sugar-plantation at St. Kitts, + in the West Indies. +-- + +The home of Mr. Browning was, as already stated, in Camberwell, +a suburb then of less easy access than now, and where there were green trees, +and groves, and enticing rural perspectives into "real" country, +yet withal not without some suggestion of the metropolitan air. + + "The old trees + Which grew by our youth's home -- the waving mass + Of climbing plants, heavy with bloom and dew -- + The morning swallows with their songs like words -- + All these seem clear. . . . + . . . most distinct amid + The fever and the stir of after years." + (`Pauline'.) + +Another great writer of our time was born in the same parish: +and those who would know Herne Hill and the neighbourhood +as it was in Browning's youth will find an enthusiastic guide +in the author of `Praeterita'. + +Browning's childhood was a happy one. Indeed, if the poet had been able +to teach in song only what he had learnt in suffering, +the larger part of his verse would be singularly barren of interest. +From first to last everything went well with him, with the exception +of a single profound grief. This must be borne in mind by those +who would estimate aright the genius of Robert Browning. +It would be affectation or folly to deny that his splendid physique -- +a paternal inheritance, for his father died at the age of eighty-four, +without having ever endured a day's illness -- and the exceptionally +fortunate circumstances which were his throughout life, +had something to do with that superb faith of his which finds +concentrated expression in the lines in Pippa's song -- +"God's in His Heaven, All's right with the world!" + +It is difficult for a happy man with an imperturbable digestion +to be a pessimist. He is always inclined to give Nature +the benefit of the doubt. His favourite term for this mental complaisance +is "catholicity of faith", or, it may be, "a divine hope". +The less fortunate brethren bewail the laws of Nature, +and doubt a future readjustment, because of stomachs chronically out of order. +An eminent author with a weak digestion wrote to me recently +animadverting on what he calls Browning's insanity of optimism: +it required no personal acquaintanceship to discern the dyspeptic +well-spring of this utterance. All this may be admitted lightly +without carrying the physiological argument to extremes. +A man may have a liberal hope for himself and for humanity, +although his dinner be habitually a martyrdom. After all, +we are only dictated to by our bodies: we have not perforce to obey them. +A bitter wit once remarked that the soul, if it were ever discovered, +would be found embodied in the gastric juice. He was not altogether a fool, +this man who had learnt in suffering what he taught in epigram; +yet was he wide of the mark. + +As a very young child Browning was keenly susceptible to music. +One afternoon his mother was playing in the twilight to herself. +She was startled to hear a sound behind her. Glancing round, +she beheld a little white figure distinct against an oak bookcase, +and could just discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. +The next moment the child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately +at he knew not what, but, as his paroxysm of emotion subsided, +whispering over and over, with shy urgency, "Play! play!" + +It is strange that among all his father's collection +of drawings and engravings nothing had such fascination for him +as an engraving of a picture of Andromeda and Perseus by Caravaggio. +The story of the innocent victim and the divine deliverer +was one of which in his boyhood he never tired of hearing: +and as he grew older the charm of its pictorial presentment +had for him a deeper and more complex significance. +We have it on the authority of a friend that Browning had this engraving +always before his eyes as he wrote his earlier poems. +He has given beautiful commemoration to his feeling for it in "Pauline": -- + + "Andromeda! + And she is with me -- years roll, I shall change, + But change can touch her not -- so beautiful + With her dark eyes, earnest and still, and hair + Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze; + And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven, + Resting upon her eyes and face and hair, + As she awaits the snake on the wet beach, + By the dark rock, and the white wave just breaking + At her feet; quite naked and alone, -- a thing + You doubt not, nor fear for, secure that God + Will come in thunder from the stars to save her." + +One of his own early recollections was that of sitting on his father's knees +in the library, and listening with enthralled attention to the Tale of Troy, +with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in the fireplace; +with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment -- +from the neighbouring room where Mrs. Browning sat "in her chief happiness, +her hour of darkness and solitude and music" -- of a wild Gaelic lament, +with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning +his poetic precocity has been circulated, but is not worth repeating. +Most children love jingling rhymes, and one need not be a born genius +to improvise a rhyming couplet on an occasion. + +It is quite certain that in nothing in these early poemicules, +in such at least as have been preserved without the poet's knowledge +and against his will, is there anything of genuine promise. +Hundreds of youngsters have written as good, or better, +Odes to the Moon, Stanzas on a Favourite Canary, Lines on a Butterfly. +What is much more to the point is, that at the age of eight he was able +not only to read, but to take delight in Pope's translation of Homer. +He used to go about declaiming certain couplets with an air +of intense earnestness highly diverting to those who overheard him. + +About this time also he began to translate the simpler odes of Horace. +One of these (viii. Bk. II.) long afterwards suggested to him +the theme of his "Instans Tyrannus". It has been put on record +that his sister remembers him, as a very little boy, walking round and round +the dining-room table, and spanning out the scansion of his verses +with his hand on the smooth mahogany. He was scarce more than a child when, +one Guy Fawkes' day, he heard a woman singing an unfamiliar song, +whose burden was, "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!" This refrain +haunted him often in the after years. That beautiful fantastic romance, +"The Flight of the Duchess", was born out of an insistent memory +of this woman's snatch of song, heard in childhood. He was ten when, +after several `passions malheureuses', this precocious Lothario plunged +into a love affair whose intensity was only equalled by its hopelessness. +A trifle of fifteen years' seniority and a husband complicated matters, +but it was not till after the reckless expenditure of a Horatian ode upon +an unclassical mistress that he gave up hope. The outcome of this was what +the elder Browning regarded as a startling effusion of much Byronic verse. +The young Robert yearned for wastes of ocean and illimitable sands, +for dark eyes and burning caresses, for despair that nothing could quench +but the silent grave, and, in particular, for hollow mocking laughter. +His father looked about for a suitable school, and decided +to entrust the boy's further education to Mr. Ready, of Peckham. + +Here he remained till he was fourteen. But already he knew +the dominion of dreams. His chief enjoyment, on holiday afternoons, +was to gain an unfrequented spot, where three huge elms re-echoed +the tones of incoherent human music borne thitherward by the west winds +across the wastes of London. Here he loved to lie and dream. +Alas, those elms, that high remote coign, have long since passed +to the "hidden way" whither the snows of yester year have vanished. +He would lie for hours looking upon distant London -- +a golden city of the west literally enough, oftentimes, +when the sunlight came streaming in long shafts from behind +the towers of Westminster and flashed upon the gold cross of St. Paul's. +The coming and going of the cloud-shadows, the sweeping of sudden rains, +the dull silvern light emanating from the haze of mist +shrouding the vast city, with the added transitory gleam of troubled waters, +the drifting of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils +constantly being moved forward and then slowly withdrawn, +as though some sinister creature of the atmosphere were casting a net among +all the dross and debris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its own +-- all this endless, ever-changing, always novel phantasmagoria had for him +an extraordinary fascination. One of the memorable nights of his boyhood +was an eve when he found his way, not without perturbation of spirit +because of the unfamiliar solitary dark, to his loved elms. +There, for the first time, he beheld London by night. +It seemed to him then more wonderful and appalling than all the host of stars. +There was something ominous in that heavy pulsating breath: +visible, in a waning and waxing of the tremulous, ruddy glow +above the black enmassed leagues of masonry; audible, +in the low inarticulate moaning borne eastward across the crests of Norwood. +It was then and there that the tragic significance of life +first dimly awed and appealed to his questioning spirit: +that the rhythm of humanity first touched deeply in him a corresponding chord. + + + + +Chapter 2. + + + +It was certainly about this time, as he admitted once +in one of his rare reminiscent moods, that Browning felt the artistic impulse +stirring within him, like the rising of the sap in a tree. +He remembered his mother's music, and hoped to be a musician: he recollected +his father's drawings, and certain seductive landscapes and seascapes +by painters whom he had heard called "the Norwich men", and he wished +to be an artist: then reminiscences of the Homeric lines he loved, +of haunting verse-melodies, moved him most of all. + + "I shall never, in the years remaining, + Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, + Make you music that should all-express me: + . . . verse alone, one life allows me." + +He now gave way to the compulsive Byronic vogue, with an occasional relapse +to the polished artificialism of his father's idol among British poets. +There were several ballads written at this time: if I remember aright, +the poet specified the "Death of Harold" as the theme of one. Long afterwards +he read these boyish forerunners of "Over the sea our galleys went", +and "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix", +and was amused by their derivative if delicate melodies. +Mrs. Browning was very proud of these early blooms of song, +and when her twelve-year-old son, tired of vain efforts +to seduce a publisher from the wary ways of business, +surrendered in disgust his neatly copied out and carefully stitched MSS., +she lost no opportunity -- when Mr. Browning was absent -- +to expatiate upon their merits. Among the people to whom she showed them +was a Miss Flower. This lady took them home, perused them, +discerned dormant genius lurking behind the boyish handwriting, +read them to her sister (afterwards to become known as Sarah Flower Adams), +copied them out before returning them, and persuaded the celebrated Rev. +William Johnson Fox to read the transcripts. Mr. Fox agreed with Miss Flower +as to the promise, but not altogether as to the actual accomplishment, +nor at all as to the advisability of publication. The originals are supposed +to have been destroyed by the poet during the eventful period when, +owing to a fortunate gift, poetry became a new thing for him: from a dream, +vague, if seductive, as summer-lightning, transformed to a dominating reality. +Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes, +a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce." +He had never heard of Shelley, nor did he learn for a long time +that the "Daemon of the World", and the miscellaneous poems appended thereto, +constituted a literary piracy. Badly printed, shamefully mutilated, +these discarded blossoms touched him to a new emotion. Pope became +further removed than ever: Byron, even, lost his magnetic supremacy. +From vague remarks in reply to his inquiries, and from one or two +casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet called Shelley; +that he had written several volumes; that he was dead. + +Strange as it may seem, Browning declared once that the news +of this unknown singer's death affected him more poignantly than did, +a year or less earlier, the tidings of Byron's heroic end at Missolonghi. +He begged his mother to procure him Shelley's works, +a request not easily complied with, for the excellent reason +that not one of the local booksellers had even heard of the poet's name. +Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning learned that what she sought +was procurable at the Olliers' in Vere Street, London. + +She was very pleased with the result of her visit. The books, it is true, +seemed unattractive: but they would please Robert, no doubt. +If that packet had been lost we should not have had "Pauline": we might +have had a different Browning. It contained most of Shelley's writings, +all in their first edition, with the exception of "The Cenci": +in addition, there were three volumes by an even less known poet, John Keats, +which kindly Mrs. Browning had been persuaded to include in her purchase +on Mr. Ollier's assurance that they were the poetic kindred +of Shelley's writings, and that Mr. Keats was the subject of the elegiac poem +in the purple paper cover, with the foreign-looking type +and the imprint "Pisa" at the foot of the title-page, entitled "Adonais". +What an evening for the young poet that must have been. He told a friend +it was a May night, and that in a laburnum, "heavy with its weight of gold," +and in a great copper-beech at the end of a neighbour's garden, +two nightingales strove one against the other. For a moment +it is a pleasant fancy to imagine that there the souls of Keats and Shelley +uttered their enfranchised music, not in rivalry but in welcome. +We can realise, perhaps, something of the startled delight, +of the sudden electric tremors, of the young poet when, with eager eyes, +he turned over the pages of "Epipsychidion" or "Prometheus Unbound", +"Alastor" or "Endymion", or the Odes to a Nightingale, on Melancholy, +on a Grecian Urn. + +More than once Browning alluded to this experience as his first pervasive joy, +his first free happiness in outlook. Often in after life he was fain, +like his "wise thrush", to "recapture that first fine carefree rapture." +It was an eventful eve. + + "And suddenly, without heart-wreck, I awoke + As from a dream." + +Thenceforth his poetic development was rapid, and continuous. +Shelley enthralled him most. The fire and spirit of the great poet's verse, +wild and strange often, but ever with an exquisiteness of music +which seemed to his admirer, then and later, supreme, thrilled him to +a very passion of delight. Something of the more richly coloured, +the more human rhythm of Keats affected him also. Indeed, +a line from the Ode to a Nightingale, in common with one +of the loveliest passages in "Epipsychidion", haunted him above all others: +and again and again in his poems we may encounter vague echoes +of those "remote isles" and "perilous seas" -- as, for example, +in "the dim clustered isles of the blue sea" of "Pauline", +and the "some isle, with the sea's silence on it -- +some unsuspected isle in the far seas!" of "Pippa Passes". + +But of course he had other matters for mental occupation besides poetry. +His education at Mr. Ready's private academy seems to have been excellent +so far as it went. He remained there till he was fourteen. +Perhaps because of the few boarders at the school, possibly from +his own reticence in self-disclosure, he does not seem +to have impressed any school-mate deeply. We hear of no one +who "knew Browning at school." His best education, after all, was at home. +His father and mother incidentally taught him as much as Mr. Ready: +his love of painting and music was fostered, indirectly: +and in the `dovecot' bookshelf above the fireplace in his bedroom, +were the precious volumes within whose sway and magic was his truest life. + +His father, for some reason which has not been made public, +but was doubtless excellent, and is, in the light in which we now regard it, +a matter for which to be thankful, decided to send his son +neither to a large public school, nor, later, to Oxford or Cambridge. +A more stimulative and wider training was awaiting him elsewhere. + +For a time Robert's education was superintended by a tutor, +who came to the house in Camberwell for several hours daily. +The afternoons were mainly devoted to music, to exercise, +and occasionally to various experimental studies in technical science. +In the evenings, after his preparatory tasks were over, +when he was not in the entertaining company of his father, +he read and assiduously wrote. After poetry, he cared most for history: +but as a matter of fact, little came amiss to his eager intellectual appetite. +It was a period of growth, with, it may be, a vague consciousness +that his mind was expanding towards compulsive expression. + + "So as I grew, I rudely shaped my life + To my immediate wants, yet strong beneath + Was a vague sense of powers folded up -- + A sense that though those shadowy times were past, + Their spirit dwelt in me, and I should rule." + +When Mr. Browning was satisfied that the tutor had fulfilled his duty +he sent his son to attend a few lectures at University College, +in Gower Street, then just founded. Robert Browning's name +is on the registrar's books for the opening session, 1829-30. +"I attended with him the Greek class of Professor Long" (wrote a friend, +in the `Times', Dec. 14:'89), "and I well recollect the esteem and regard +in which he was held by his fellow-students. He was then a bright, +handsome youth, with long black hair falling over his shoulders." +So short was his period of attendance, however, and so unimportant +the instruction he there derived, that to all intents it may be said +Browning had no University training. + +Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Browning but slightly appreciated +his son's poetic idols and already found himself in an opposite literary camp, +he had a profound sympathy with the boy's ideals and no little confidence +in his powers. When the test came he acted wisely as well as with +affectionate complaisance. In a word, he practically left the decision +as to his course of life to Robert himself. The latter was helped thereto +by the knowledge that his sister would be provided for, and that, if need be, +there was sufficient for himself also. There was of course +but one way open to him. He would not have been a true poet, an artist, +if he had hesitated. With a strange misconception of the artistic spirit, +some one has awarded the poet great credit for his choice, +because he had "the singular courage to decline to be rich." +Browning himself had nothing of this bourgeois spirit: +he was the last man to speak of an inevitable artistic decision +as "singular courage". There are no doubt people who estimate his resolve +as Mr. Barrett, so his daughter declared, regarded Horne +when he heard of that poet having published "Orion" at a farthing: +"Perhaps he is going to shoot the Queen, and is preparing evidence +of monomania." + +With Browning there never could have been two sides to the question: +it were excusable, it were natural even, had his father wavered. +The outcome of their deliberations was that Robert's further education should +be obtained from travel, and intercourse with men and foreign literatures. + +By this time the poet was twenty. His youth had been uneventful; in a sense, +more so than his boyhood. His mind, however, was rapidly unfolding, +and great projects were casting a glory about the coming days. +It was in his nineteenth year, I have been told on good authority, +that he became ardently in love with a girl of rare beauty, +a year or two older than himself, but otherwise, possibly, +no inappropriate lover for this wooer. Why and when this early passion +came to a close, or was rudely interrupted, is not known. +What is certain is that it made a deep impression on the poet's mind. +It may be that it, of itself, or wrought to a higher emotion +by his hunger after ideal beauty, was the source of "Pauline", +that very unequal but yet beautiful first fruit of Browning's genius. + +It was not till within the last few years that the poet spoke at all freely +of his youthful life. Perhaps the earliest record of these utterances +is that which appeared in the `Century Magazine' in 1881. +From this source, and from what the poet himself said at various times +and in various ways, we know that just about the time Balzac, +after years of apparently waste labour, was beginning to forecast +the Titanic range of the `Comedie Humaine', Browning planned +"a series of monodramatic epics, narratives of the life of typical souls -- +a gigantic scheme at which a Victor Hugo or a Lope de Vega +would start back aghast." + +Already he had set himself to the analysis of the human soul +in its manifold aspects, already he had recognised that for him at least +there was no other study worthy of a lifelong devotion. +In a sense he has fulfilled this early dream: at any rate +we have a unique series of monodramatic poems, illustrative of typical souls. +In another sense, the major portion of Browning's life-work is, collectively, +one monodramatic "epic". He is himself a type of the subtle, restless, +curious, searching modern age of which he is the profoundest interpreter. +Through a multitude of masks he, the typical soul, speaks, +and delivers himself of a message which could not be presented +emphatically enough as the utterance of a single individual. +He is a true dramatic poet, though not in the sense in which Shakespeare is. +Shakespeare and his kindred project themselves into the lives +of their imaginary personages: Browning pays little heed to external life, +or to the exigencies of action, and projects himself +into the minds of his characters. + +In a word, Shakespeare's method is to depict a human soul in action, +with all the pertinent play of circumstance, while Browning's is to portray +the processes of its mental and spiritual development: as he said +in his dedicatory preface to "Sordello", "little else is worth study." +The one electrifies us with the outer and dominant actualities; +the other flashes upon our mental vision the inner, complex, +shaping potentialities. The one deals with life dynamically, +the other with life as Thought. Both methods are compassed by art. +Browning, who is above all modern writers the poet of dramatic situations, +is surpassed by many of inferior power in continuity of dramatic sequence. +His finest work is in his dramatic poems, rather than in his dramas. +He realised intensely the value of quintessential moments, +as when the Prefect in "The Return of the Druses" thrusts aside the arras, +muttering that for the first time he enters without a sense of imminent doom, +"no draught coming as from a sepulchre" saluting him, +while that moment the dagger of the assassin plunges to his heart: +or, further in the same poem, when Anael, coming to denounce Djabal +as an impostor, is overmastered by her tyrannic love, and falls dead +with the too bitter freight of her emotion, though not till +she has proclaimed him the God by her single worshipping cry, `Hakeem!' -- +or, once more, in "The Ring and the Book", where, with the superbest close +of any dramatic poem in our literature, the wretched Guido, +at the point of death, cries out in the last extremity +not upon God or the Virgin, but upon his innocent and murdered wife -- +"Abate, -- Cardinal, -- Christ, -- Maria, -- God, . . . +Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" Thus we can imagine Browning, +with his characteristic perception of the profound significance +of a circumstance or a single word even, having written of the knocking +at the door in "Macbeth", or having used, with all its marvellous +cumulative effect, the word `wrought' towards the close of "Othello", +when the Moor cries in his bitterness of soul, "But being wrought, +perplext in the extreme": we can imagine this, and yet could not credit +the suggestion that even the author of "The Ring and the Book" +could by any possibility have composed the two most moving tragedies +writ in our tongue. + +In the late autumn of 1832 Browning wrote a poem of singular +promise and beauty, though immature in thought and crude in expression.* +Thirty-four years later he included "Pauline" in his "Poetical Works" +with reluctance, and in a note explained the reason of his decision -- +namely, to forestall piratical reprints abroad. "The thing was +my earliest attempt at `poetry always dramatic in principle, +and so many utterances of so many imaginative persons, not mine,' +which I have since written according to a scheme less extravagant, +and scale less impracticable, than were ventured upon +in this crude preliminary sketch -- a sketch that, on reviewal, +appears not altogether wide of some hint of the characteristic features +of that particular `dramatis persona' it would fain have reproduced: +good draughtsmanship, however, and right handling were far beyond the artist +at that time." These be hard words. No critic will ever adventure upon +so severe a censure of "Pauline": most capable judges agree that, +with all its shortcomings, it is a work of genius, and therefore +ever to be held treasurable for its own sake as well as for its significance. + +-- +* Probably from the fact of "Richmond" having been added + to the date at the end of the preface to "Pauline", + have arisen the frequent misstatements as to the Browning family + having moved west from Camberwell in or shortly before 1832. + Mr. R. Barrett Browning tells me that his father "never lived at Richmond, + and that that place was connected with `Pauline', when first printed, + as a mystification." +-- + +On the fly-leaf of a copy of this initial work, the poet, +six years after its publication, wrote: "Written in pursuance +of a foolish plan I forget, or have no wish to remember; +the world was never to guess that such an opera, such a comedy, +such a speech proceeded from the same notable person. . . . +Only this crab remains of the shapely Tree of Life in my fool's Paradise." +It was in conformity with this plan that he not only +issued "Pauline" anonymously, but enjoined secrecy upon those +to whom he communicated the fact of his authorship. + +When he read the poem to his parents, upon its conclusion, +both were much impressed by it, though his father made severe strictures upon +its lack of polish, its terminal inconcision, and its vagueness of thought. +That he was not more severe was accepted by his son as high praise. +The author had, however, little hope of seeing it in print. +Mr. Browning was not anxious to provide a publisher with a present. +So one day the poet was gratified when his aunt, handing him +the requisite sum, remarked that she had heard he had written a fine poem, +and that she wished to have the pleasure of seeing it in print. + +To this kindly act much was due. Browning, of course, could not now +have been dissuaded from the career he had forecast for himself, +but his progress might have been retarded or thwarted +to less fortunate grooves, had it not been for the circumstances +resultant from his aunt's timely gift. + +The MS. was forthwith taken to Saunders & Otley, of Conduit Street, +and the little volume of seventy pages of blank verse, comprising only +a thousand and thirty lines, was issued by them in January 1833. +It seems to us, who read it now, so manifestly a work of exceptional promise, +and, to a certain extent, of high accomplishment, that were it not +for the fact that the public auditory for a new poet +is ever extraordinarily limited, it would be difficult to understand +how it could have been overlooked. + +"Pauline" has a unique significance because of its autopsychical hints. +The Browning whom we all know, as well as the youthful dreamer, +is here revealed; here too, as well as the disciple of Shelley, +we have the author of "The Ring and the Book". In it the long series +culminating in "Asolando" is foreshadowed, as the oak is observable +in the sapling. The poem is prefaced by a Latin motto from +the `Occult Philosophy' of Cornelius Agrippa, and has also a note in French, +set forth as being by Pauline, and appended to her lover's manuscript +after his death. Probably Browning placed it in the mouth of Pauline +from his rooted determination to speak dramatically and impersonally: +and in French, so as to heighten the effect of verisimilitude.* + +-- +* "I much fear that my poor friend will not be always perfectly understood + in what remains to be read of this strange fragment, + but it is less calculated than any other part to explain + what of its nature can never be anything but dream and confusion. + I do not know, moreover, whether in striving at a better connection + of certain parts, one would not run the risk of detracting from + the only merit to which so singular a production can pretend -- + that of giving a tolerably precise idea of the manner (genre) + which it can merely indicate. This unpretending opening, + this stir of passion, which first increases, and then gradually subsides, + these transports of the soul, this sudden return upon himself, + and above all, my friend's quite peculiar turn of mind, + have made alterations almost impossible. The reasons which + he elsewhere asserts, and others still more cogent, have secured + my indulgence for this paper, which otherwise I should have advised him + to throw into the fire. I believe none the less in the great principle + of all composition -- in that principle of Shakespeare, of Raphael, + and of Beethoven, according to which concentration of ideas + is due much more to their conception than to their execution; + I have every reason to fear that the first of these qualities + is still foreign to my friend, and I much doubt whether redoubled labour + would enable him to acquire the second. It would be best to burn this, + but what can I do?" -- (Mrs. Orr.) +-- + +"Pauline" is a confession, fragmentary in detail but synthetic in range, +of a young man of high impulses but weak determination. +In its over-emphasis upon errors of judgment, as well as upon +real if exaggerated misdeeds, it has all the crudeness of youth. +An almost fantastic self-consciousness is the central motive: +it is a matter of question if this be absolutely vicarious. +To me it seems that the author himself was at the time confused +by the complicated flashing of the lights of life. + +The autobiographical and autopsychical lines and passages +scattered through the poem are of immediate interest. +Generously the poet repays his debt to Shelley, whom he apostrophises +as "Sun-treader", and invokes in strains of lofty emotion -- +"Sun-treader -- life and light be thine for ever." The music of "Alastor", +indeed, is audible ever and again throughout "Pauline". +None the less is there a new music, a new poetic voice, in + + "Thou wilt remember one warm morn, when Winter + Crept aged from the earth, and Spring's first breath + Blew soft from the moist hills -- the black-thorn boughs, + So dark in the bare wood, when glistening + In the sunshine were white with coming buds, + Like the bright side of a sorrow -- and the banks + Had violets opening from sleep like eyes." + +If we have an imaginary Browning, a Shelleyan phantasm, in + + "I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt + A strange delight in causing my decay; + I was a fiend, in darkness chained for ever + Within some ocean-wave:" + +we have the real Browning in + + "So I will sing on -- fast as fancies come + Rudely -- the verse being as the mood it paints. + . . . . . + I am made up of an intensest life," + +and all the succeeding lines down to "Their spirit dwelt in me, +and I should rule." + +Even then the poet's inner life was animated by his love +of the beautiful Greek literature. Telling how in "the first dawn of life," +"which passed alone with wisest ancient books," Pauline's lover +incorporated himself in whatsoever he read -- was the god wandering +after beauty, the giant standing vast against the sunset-light, +the high-crested chief sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos -- +his second-self cries, "I tell you, nought has ever been so clear +as the place, the time, the fashion of those lives." Never for him, +then, had there been that alchemy of the soul which turns +the inchoate drift of the world into golden ore, not then had come to him +the electric awakening flash from "work of lofty art, nor woman's beauty, +nor sweet nature's face" -- + + "Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those + On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea: + The deep groves, and white temples, and wet caves -- + And nothing ever will surprise me now -- + Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, + Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair." + +Further, the allusion to Plato, and the more remote one to Agamemnon, the + + "old lore + Loved for itself, and all it shows -- the King + Treading the purple calmly to his death," + +and the beautiful Andromeda passage, afford ample indication +of how deeply Browning had drunk of that vital stream +whose waters are the surest conserver of the ideal loveliness +which we all of us, in some degree, cherish in various guises. + +Yet, as in every long poem that he has written (and, it must be admitted, +in too many of the shorter pieces of his later period) +there is an alloy of prose, of something that is not poetry, +so in "Pauline", written though it was in the first flush of his genius +and under the inspiring stimulus of Shelley, the reader encounters +prosaic passages, decasyllabically arranged. "'Twas in my plan +to look on real life, which was all new to me; my theories were firm, +so I left them, to look upon men, and their cares, and hopes, +and fears, and joys; and, as I pondered on them all, +I sought how best life's end might be attained, an end comprising every joy." +Again: "Then came a pause, and long restraint chained down my soul, +till it was changed. I lost myself, and were it not +that I so loathe that time, I could recall how first I learned +to turn my mind against itself . . . at length I was restored, +yet long the influence remained; and nought but the still life I led, +apart from all, which left my soul to seek its old delights, +could e'er have brought me thus far back to peace." No reader, +alert to the subtle and haunting music of rarefied blank verse +(and unless it be rarefied it should not be put forward as poetry), +could possibly accept these lines as expressionally poetical. +It would seem as though, from the first, Browning's ear was keener +for the apprehension than for the sustained evocation of the music of verse. +Some flaw there was, somewhere. His heart, so to say, beat too fast, +and the singing in his ears from the o'er-fevered blood +confused the serene rhythm haunting the far perspectives of the brain, +"as Arab birds float sleeping in the wind." + +I have dwelt at this length upon "Pauline" partly because +of its inherent beauty and autopsychical significance, +and partly because it is the least familiar of Browning's poems, +long overshadowed as it has been by his own too severe strictures: +mainly, however, because of its radical importance to the student +who would arrive at a broad and true estimate of the power and scope +and shaping constituents of its author's genius. Almost every quality +of his after-verse may be found here, in germ or outline. +It is, in a word, more physiognomic than any other single poem by Browning, +and so must ever possess a peculiar interest quite apart +from its many passages of haunting beauty. + +To these the lover of poetry will always turn with delight. +Some will even regard them retrospectively with alien emotion +to that wherewith they strive to possess their souls in patience +over some one or other of the barbarisms, the Titanic excesses, +the poetic banalities recurrent in the later volumes. + +How many and how haunting these delicate oases are! +Those who know and love "Pauline" will remember the passage where the poet, +with that pantheistic ecstasy which was possibly inspired +by the singer he most loved, tells how he can live the life of plants, +content to watch the wild bees flitting to and fro, or to lie +absorbent of the ardours of the sun, or, like the night-flowering columbine, +to trail up the tree-trunk and through its rustling foliage +"look for the dim stars;" or, again, can live the life of the bird, +"leaping airily his pyramid of leaves and twisted boughs of some +tall mountain-tree;" or be a fish, breathing the morning air in the misty +sun-warm water. Close following this is another memorable passage, +that beginning "Night, and one single ridge of narrow path;" +which has a particular interest for two notes of a deeper and broader music +to be evolved long afterwards. For, as it seems to me, in + + "Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell + Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting + Of thy soft breasts ----" + +(where, by the way, should be noticed the subtle correspondence +between the conceptive and the expressional rhythm) we have a hint +of that superb scene in "Pippa Passes", where, on a sinister night of July, +a night of spiritual storm as well as of aerial tempest, +Ottima and Sebald lie amid the lightning-searcht forest, +with "the thunder like a whole sea overhead." Again, +in the lovely Turneresque, or rather Shelleyan picture of morning, +over "the rocks, and valleys, and old woods," with the high boughs +swinging in the wind above the sun-brightened mists, +and the golden-coloured spray of the cataract amid the broken rocks, +whereover the wild hawks fly to and fro, there is at least a suggestion, +an outline, of the truly magnificent burst of morning music +in the poet's penultimate volume, beginning -- + + "But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight + Above the baffled tempest: tree and tree + Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, + And every strangled branch resumes its right + To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free + In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, + While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, + Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, + Each grass-blade's glory-glitter," etc. + +Who that has ever read "Pauline" will forget the masterful poetry +descriptive of the lover's wild-wood retreat, the exquisite lines beginning +"Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, tangled, old and green"? +There is indeed a new, an unmistakable voice here. + + "And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters, + Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head, + And old grey stones lie making eddies there; + The wild mice cross them dry-shod" . . . . + +What lovelier image in modern poetry than that depictive of the forest-pool in +depths of savage woodlands, unvisited but by the shadows of passing clouds, -- + + "the trees bend + O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl." + +How the passionate sexual emotion, always deep and true in Browning, +finds lovely utterance in the lines where Pauline's lover +speaks of the blood in her lips pulsing like a living thing, +while her neck is as "marble misted o'er with love-breath," and + + ". . . her delicious eyes as clear as heaven, + When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist, + And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans." + +In the quotations I have made, and in others that might be selected +(e.g., "Her fresh eyes, and soft hair, and `lips which bleed like +a mountain berry'"), it is easy to note how intimate an observer of nature +the youthful poet was, and with what conscious but not obtrusive art +he brings forward his new and striking imagery. Browning, indeed, +is the poet of new symbols. + +"Pauline" concludes with lines which must have been in the minds of many +on that sad day when the tidings from Venice sent a thrill of startled, +half-incredulous, bewildered pain throughout the English nations -- + + "Sun-treader, I believe in God, and truth, + And love; . . . + . . . but chiefly when I die . . . + All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me, + Know my last state is happy -- free from doubt, + Or touch of fear." + +Never again was Browning to write a poem with such conceptive crudeness, +never again to tread the byways of thought so falteringly or so negligently: +but never again, perhaps, was he to show so much over-rapturing joy +in the world's loveliness, such Bacchic abandon to the ideal beauty +which the true poet sees glowing upon the forlornest height and brooding +in the shadow-haunted hollows of the hills. The Browning who might have been +is here: henceforth the Browning we know and love stands unique +among all the lords of song. But sometimes do we not turn longingly, +wonderingly at least, to the young Dionysos upon whose forehead +was the light of another destiny than that which descended upon him? +The Icelanders say there is a land where all the rainbows that have ever been, +or are yet to be, forever drift to and fro, evanishing and reappearing, +like immortal flowers of vapour. In that far country, it may be, +are also the unfulfilled dreams, the visions too perfect +to be fashioned into song, of the young poets who have gained the laurel. + +We close the little book lovingly: + + "And I had dimly shaped my first attempt, + And many a thought did I build up on thought, + As the wild bee hangs cell to cell -- in vain; + For I must still go on: my mind rests not." + + + + +Chapter 3. + + + +It has been commonly asserted that "Pauline" was almost wholly disregarded, +and swiftly lapsed into oblivion. + +This must be accepted with qualification. It is like +the other general assertion, that Browning had to live fifty years +before he gained recognition -- a statement as ludicrous when examined as +it is unjust to the many discreet judges who awarded, publicly and privately, +that intelligent sympathy which is the best sunshine for the flower +of a poet's genius. If by "before he gained recognition" is meant +a general and indiscriminate acclaim, no doubt Browning had, still has indeed, +longer to wait than many other eminent writers have had to do: +but it is absurd to assert that from the very outset of his poetic career +he was met by nothing but neglect, if not scornful derision. +None who knows the true artistic temperament will fall into any such mistake. + +It is quite certain that neither Shakespeare nor Milton +ever met with such enthusiastic praise and welcome as Browning encountered +on the publication of "Pauline" and "Paracelsus". Shelley, +as far above Browning in poetic music as the author of so many +parleyings with other people's souls is the superior in +psychic insight and intellectual strength, had throughout his too brief life +not one such review of praiseful welcome as the Rev. W. J. Fox wrote +on the publication of "Pauline" (or, it may be added, as Allan Cunningham's +equally kindly but less able review in the `Athenaeum'), +or as John Forster wrote in `The Examiner' concerning "Paracelsus", +and later in the `New Monthly Magazine', where he had the courage +to say of the young and quite unknown poet, "without the slightest hesitation +we name Mr. Robert Browning at once with Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth." +His plays even (which are commonly said to have "fallen flat") +were certainly not failures. There is something effeminate, undignified, +and certainly uncritical, in this confusion as to what is and what is not +failure in literature. So enthusiastic was the applause he encountered, +indeed, that had his not been too strong a nature to be thwarted by adulation +any more than by contemptuous neglect, he might well have become spoilt -- +so enthusiastic, that were it not for the heavy and prolonged +counterbalancing dead weight of public indifference, a huge amorphous mass +only of late years moulded into harmony with the keenest minds of the century, +we might well be suspicious of so much and long-continued eulogium, +and fear the same reversal of judgment towards him on the part of those +who come after us as we ourselves have meted to many an one +among the high gods of our fathers. + +Fortunately the deep humanity of his work in the mass conserves it against +the mere veerings of taste. A reaction against it will inevitably come; +but this will pass: what, in the future, when the unborn readers of Browning +will look back with clear eyes untroubled by the dust of our footsteps, +not to subside till long after we too are dust, will be the place +given to this poet, we know not, nor can more than speculatively estimate. +That it will, however, be a high one, so far as his weightiest (in bulk, +it may possibly be but a relatively slender) accomplishment is concerned, +we may rest well assured: for indeed "It lives, If precious be +the soul of man to man." + +So far as has been ascertained there were only three reviews +or notices of "Pauline": the very favourable article by Mr. Fox +in the `Monthly Repository', the kindly paper by Allan Cunningham +in the `Athenaeum', and, in `Tait's Edinburgh Magazine', +the succinctly expressed impression of either an indolent +or an incapable reviewer: "Pauline; a Fragment of a Confession; +a piece of pure bewilderment" -- a "criticism" which anticipated +and thus prevented the insertion of a highly favourable review +which John Stuart Mill voluntarily wrote. + +Browning must have regarded his first book with mingled feelings. +It was a bid for literary fortune, in one sense, but a bid so handicapped +by the circumstances of its publication as to be almost certainly of no avail. +Probably, however, he was well content that it should have mere existence. +Already the fever of an abnormal intellectual curiosity was upon him: +already he had schemed more potent and more vital poems: +already, even, he had developed towards a more individualistic method. +So indifferent was he to an easily gained reputation that he seems +to have been really urgent upon his relatives and intimate acquaintances +not to betray his authorship. The Miss Flower, however, +to whom allusion has already been made, could not repress her admiration +to the extent of depriving her friend, Mr. Fox, of a pleasure +similar to that she had herself enjoyed. The result was the generous notice +in the `Monthly Repository'. The poet never forgot his indebtedness +to Mr. Fox, to whose sympathy and kindness much direct and indirect good +is traceable. The friendship then begun was lifelong, +and was continued with the distinguished Unitarian's family +when Mr. Fox himself ended his active and beneficent career. + +But after a time the few admirers of "Pauline" forgot to speak about it: +the poet himself never alluded to it: and in a year or two it was almost +as though it had never been written. Many years after, when articles +upon Robert Browning were as numerous as they once had been scarce, +never a word betrayed that their authors knew of the existence of "Pauline". +There was, however, yet another friendship to come out of this book, +though not until long after it was practically forgotten by its author. + +One day a young poet-painter came upon a copy of the book +in the British Museum Library, and was at once captivated by its beauty. +One of the earliest admirers of Browning's poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- +for it was he -- felt certain that "Pauline" could be by none other +than the author of "Paracelsus". He himself informed me that he had +never heard this authorship suggested, though some one had spoken to him +of a poem of remarkable promise, called "Pauline", which he ought to read. +If I remember aright, Rossetti told me that it was on the forenoon of the day +when the "Burden of Nineveh" was begun, conceived rather, +that he read this story of a soul by the soul's ablest historian. +So delighted was he with it, and so strong his opinion it was by Browning, +that he wrote to the poet, then in Florence, for confirmation, +stating at the same time that his admiration for "Pauline" had led him +to transcribe the whole of it. + +Concerning this episode, Robert Browning wrote to me, some seven years ago, +as follows: -- + +== + St. Pierre de Chartreuse, + Isere, France. + + . . . . . + +"Rossetti's `Pauline' letter was addressed to me at Florence +more than thirty years ago. I have preserved it, but, even were I at home, +should be unable to find it without troublesome searching. +It was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether unknown to me, +had come upon a poem in the British Museum, which he copied the whole of, +from its being not otherwise procurable -- that he judged it to be mine, +but could not be sure, and wished me to pronounce in the matter -- +which I did. A year or two after, I had a visit in London +from Mr. (William) Allingham and a friend -- who proved to be Rossetti. +When I heard he was a painter I insisted on calling on him, +though he declared he had nothing to show me -- which was far enough +from the case. Subsequently, on another of my returns to London, +he painted my portrait, not, I fancy, in oils, but water-colours, +and finished it in Paris shortly after. This must have been in the year +when Tennyson published `Maud', for I remember Tennyson reading the poem +one evening while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, +from one obscure corner of vantage, which I still possess, and duly value. +This was before Rossetti's marriage."* + +-- +* The highly interesting and excellent portrait of Browning here alluded to + has never been exhibited. +-- +== + +As a matter of fact, as recorded on the back of the original drawing, +the eventful reading took place at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square, +on the 27th of September 1855, and those present, besides the Poet-Laureate, +Browning, and Rossetti, were Mrs. E. Barrett Browning +and Miss Arabella Barrett. + +When, a year or two ago, the poet learned that a copy of his first work, +which in 1833 could not find a dozen purchasers at a few shillings, +went at a public sale for twenty-five guineas, he remarked +that had his dear old aunt been living he could have returned to her, +much to her incredulous astonishment, no doubt, he smilingly averred, +the cost of the book's publication, less 3 Pounds 15s. +It was about the time of the publication of "Pauline" +that Browning began to see something of the literary and artistic life +for which he had such an inborn taste. For a brief period +he went often to the British Museum, particularly the Library, +and to the National Gallery. At the British Museum Reading Room he perused +with great industry and research those works in philosophy and medical history +which are the bases of "Paracelsus", and those Italian Records +bearing upon the story of Sordello. Residence in Camberwell, in 1833, +rendered night engagements often impracticable: but nevertheless +he managed to mix a good deal in congenial society. It is not commonly known +that he was familiar to these early associates as a musician and artist +rather than as a poet. Among them, and they comprised many well-known workers +in the several arts, were Charles Dickens and "Ion" Talfourd. +Mr. Fox, whom Browning had met once or twice in his early youth, +after the former had been shown the Byronic verses which had +in one way gratified and in another way perturbed the poet's father, +saw something more of his young friend after the publication of "Pauline". +He very kindly offered to print in his magazine any short poems +the author of that book should see fit to send -- an offer, however, +which was not put to the test for some time. + +Practically simultaneously with the publication of "Pauline" +appeared another small volume, containing the "Palace of Art", +"Oenone", "Mariana", etc. Those early books of Tennyson and Browning +have frequently, and somewhat uncritically, been contrasted. Unquestionably, +however, the elder poet showed a consummate and continuous mastery of his art +altogether beyond the intermittent expressional power of Browning +in his most rhythmic emotion at any time of his life. To affirm that +there is more intellectual fibre, what Rossetti called fundamental brain-work, +in the product of the younger poet, would be beside the mark. +The insistence on the supremacy of Browning over all poets since Shakespeare +because he has the highest "message" to deliver, because his intellect +is the most subtle and comprehensive, because his poems have +this or that dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other active minds, +is to be seriously and energetically deprecated. It is with presentment +that the artist has, fundamentally, to concern himself. +If he cannot PRESENT poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet, +though he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. Browning's eminence +is not because of his detachment from what some one has foolishly called +"the mere handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet." +It is the delight of the true artist that the product of his talent +should be wrought to a high technique equally by the shaping brain +and the dexterous hand. Browning is great because of his formative energy: +because, despite the excess of burning and compulsive thought -- + + "Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain + Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells, + Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight ----" + +he strikes from the FUROR of words an electric flash +so transcendently illuminative that what is commonplace +becomes radiant with that light which dwells not in nature, +but only in the visionary eye of man. Form for the mere beauty of form, +is a playing with the wind, the acceptance of a shadow for the substance. +If nothing animate it, it may possibly be fair of aspect, +but only as the frozen smile upon a dead face. + +We know little of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834. +It was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one +certain pinnacles of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away. +He began to realise the first disenchantment of the artist: +the sense of dreams never to be accomplished. That land +of the great unwritten poems, the great unpainted pictures: +what a heritance there for the enfranchised spirits of great dreamers! + +In the autumn of 1833 he went forth to his University, +that of the world of men and women. It was ever a favourite answer of his, +when asked if he had been at either Oxford or Cambridge, -- +"Italy was my University." + +But first he went to Russia, and spent some time in St. Petersburg, +attracted thither by the invitation of a friend. The country interested him, +but does not seem to have deeply or permanently engaged his attention. +That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless is manifest +from the remarkably picturesque and technically very interesting poem, +"Ivan Ivanovitch" (the fourth of the `Dramatic Idyls', 1879). +Of a truth, after his own race and country -- readers will at once +think of "Home Thoughts from the Sea", or the thrilling lines +in "Home Thoughts from Abroad", beginning -- + + "Oh, to be in England, + Now that April's there!" -- + +or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work -- + + "I cherish most + My love of England -- how, her name, a word + Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!" + +-- it was of the mystic Orient or of the glowing South +that he oftenest thought and dreamed. With Heine he might have cried: +"O Firdusi! O Ischami! O Saadi! How do I long after the roses of Schiraz!" +As for Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her: +but who has worshipped her with so manly a passion, so loyal a love, +as Browning? One alone indeed may be mated with him here, +she who had his heart of hearts, and who lies at rest +in the old Florentine cemetery within sound of the loved waters of Arno. +Who can forget his lines in "De Gustibus", "Open my heart and you will see, +graved inside of it, Italy." + +It would be no difficult task to devote a volume larger than the present one +to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy, +Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture, +Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia +and all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty +above conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled +gallery of portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, +what a movement of intensest life! + +It is pleasant to know of one of them, "The Italian in England", +that Browning was proud, because Mazzini told him he had read this poem +to certain of his fellow-exiles in England to show how an Englishman +could sympathise with them. + +After leaving Russia the young poet spent the rest of his `Wanderjahr' +in Italy. Among other places he visited was Asolo, +that white little hill-town of the Veneto, whence he drew hints +for "Sordello" and "Pippa Passes", and whither he returned +in the last year of his life, as with unconscious significance +he himself said, "on his way homeward." + +In the summer of 1834, that is, when he was in his twenty-second year, +he returned to Camberwell. "Sordello" he had in some fashion begun, +but had set aside for a poem which occupied him throughout +the autumn of 1834 and winter of 1835, "Paracelsus". In this period, also, +he wrote some short poems, two of them of particular significance. +The first of the series was a sonnet, which appeared above the signature `Z' +in the August number of the `Monthly Repository' for 1834. +It was never reprinted by the author, whose judgment +it is impossible not to approve as well as to respect. +Browning never wrote a good sonnet, and this earliest effort +is not the most fortunate. It was in the `Repository' also, +in 1835 and 1836, that the other poems appeared, four in all. + +The song in "Pippa Passes", beginning "A King lived long ago," +was one of these; and the lyric, "Still ailing, wind? +Wilt be appeased or no?" afterwards revised and incorporated in "James Lee", +was another. But the two which are much the most noteworthy +are "Johannes Agricola" and "Porphyria". Even more distinctively +than in "Pauline", in their novel sentiment, new method, +and generally unique quality, is a new voice audible in these two poems. +They are very remarkable as the work of so young a poet, +and are interesting as showing how rapidly he had outgrown the influence +of any other of his poetic kindred. "Johannes Agricola" is significant +as being the first of those dramatic studies of warped religiosity, +of strange self-sophistication, which have afforded +so much matter for thought. In its dramatic concision, +its complex psychological significance, and its unique, +if to unaccustomed ears somewhat barbaric, poetic beauty, +"Porphyria" is still more remarkable. + +It may be of this time, though possibly some years later, +that Mrs. Bridell-Fox writes: -- "I remember him as looking in often +in the evenings, having just returned from his first visit to Venice. +I cannot tell the date for certain. He was full of enthusiasm +for that Queen of Cities. He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions +of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, the moonrises, +by a most original kind of etching. Taking up a bit of stray notepaper, +he would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently +till it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilising the darker smears +for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen +the forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge or gondola +on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced. My own passionate longing +to see Venice dates from those delightful, well-remembered evenings +of my childhood." + +"Paracelsus", begun about the close of October or early in November 1834, +was published in the summer of the following year. It is a poem +in blank verse, about four times the length of "Pauline", +with interspersed songs. The author divided it into five sections +of unequal length, of which the third is the most extensive: +"Paracelsus Aspires"; "Paracelsus Attains"; "Paracelsus"; +"Paracelsus Aspires"; "Paracelsus Attains". In an interesting note, +which was not reprinted in later editions of his first acknowledged poem, +the author dissuades the reader from mistaking his performance +for one of a class with which it has nothing in common, +from judging it by principles on which it was not moulded, +and from subjecting it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. +He then explains that he has composed a dramatic poem, +and not a drama in the accepted sense; that he has not set forth +the phenomena of the mind or the passions by the operation +of persons and events, or by recourse to an external machinery of incidents +to create and evolve the crisis sought to be produced. Instead of this, +he remarks, "I have ventured to display somewhat minutely the mood itself +in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency, +by which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discernible +in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether excluded: +and this for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, not a drama." +A little further, he states that a work like "Paracelsus" depends, +for its success, immediately upon the intelligence and sympathy of the reader: +"Indeed, were my scenes stars, it must be his co-operating fancy which, +supplying all chasms, shall connect the scattered lights +into one constellation -- a Lyre or a Crown." + +In the concluding paragraph of this note there is a point of interest -- +the statement of the author's hope that the readers of "Paracelsus" will not +"be prejudiced against other productions which may follow in a more popular, +and perhaps less difficult form." From this it might fairly be inferred +that Browning had not definitively adopted his characteristic method: +that he was far from unwilling to gain the general ear: and that he was alert +to the difficulties of popularisation of poetry written on lines +similar to those of "Paracelsus". Nor would this inference be wrong: +for, as a matter of fact, the poet, immediately upon the publication +of "Paracelsus", determined to devote himself to poetic work which +should have so direct a contact with actual life that its appeal should reach +even to the most uninitiate in the mysteries and delights of verse. + +In his early years Browning had always a great liking for walking in the dark. +At Camberwell he was wont to carry this love to the point of losing +many a night's rest. There was, in particular, a wood near Dulwich, +whither he was wont to go. There he would walk swiftly and eagerly +along the solitary and lightless byways, finding a potent stimulus +to imaginative thought in the happy isolation thus enjoyed, +with all the concurrent delights of natural things, the wind moving +like a spirit through the tree-branches, the drifting of poignant fragrances, +even in winter-tide, from herb and sappy bark, imperceptible almost +by the alertest sense in the day's manifold detachments. At this time, too, +he composed much in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in later life. +Not only many portions of "Paracelsus", but several scenes in "Strafford", +were enacted first in these midnight silences of the Dulwich woodland. Here, +too, as the poet once declared, he came to know the serene beauty of dawn: +for every now and again, after having read late, or written long, +he would steal quietly from the house, and walk till the morning twilight +graded to the pearl and amber of the new day. + +As in childhood the glow of distant London had affected him to a pleasure +that was not without pain, perhaps to a pain rather that was a fine delirium, +so in his early manhood the neighbourhood of the huge city, felt in those +midnight walks of his, and apprehended more by the transmutive shudder +of reflected glare thrown fadingly upward against the stars, +than by any more direct vision or even far-borne indeterminate hum, +dominated his imagination. At that distance, in those circumstances, +humanity became more human. And with the thought, the consciousness +of this imperative kinship, arose the vague desire, the high resolve +to be no curious dilettante in novel literary experiments, but to compel +an interpretative understanding of this complex human environment. + +Those who knew the poet intimately are aware of the loving regard +he always had for those nocturnal experiences: but perhaps few recognise +how much we owe to the subtle influences of that congenial isolation +he was wont to enjoy on fortunate occasions. + +It is not my intention -- it would, obviously, be a futile one, +if entertained -- to attempt an analysis or elaborate criticism +of the many poems, long and short, produced by Robert Browning. +Not one volume, but several, of this size, would have to be allotted +to the adequate performance of that end. Moreover, +if readers are unable or unwilling to be their own expositors, +there are several trustworthy hand-books which are easily procurable. +Some one, I believe, has even, with unselfish consideration +for the weaker brethren, turned "Sordello" into prose -- a superfluous task, +some scoffers may exclaim. Personally, I cannot but think this craze +for the exposition of poetry, this passion for "dissecting a rainbow", +is harmful to the individual as well as humiliating to the high office +of Poetry itself, and not infrequently it is ludicrous. + +I must be content with a few words anent the more important +or significant poems, and in due course attempt an estimate +by a broad synthesis, and not by cumulative critical analyses. + +In the selection of Paracelsus as the hero of his first mature poem, +Browning was guided first of all by his keen sympathy +with the scientific spirit -- the spirit of dauntless inquiry, +of quenchless curiosity, of a searching enthusiasm. Pietro of Abano, +Giordano Bruno, Galileo, were heroes whom he regarded with an admiration +which would have been boundless but for the wise sympathy +which enabled him to apprehend and understand their weaknesses +as well as their lofty qualities. Once having come to the conclusion +that Paracelsus was a great and much maligned man, it was natural for him +to wish to portray aright the features he saw looming through the mists +of legend and history. But over and above this, he half unwittingly, +half consciously, felt the fascination of that mysticism +associated with the name of the celebrated German scientist -- +a mysticism, in all its various phases, of which he is now acknowledged +to be the subtlest poetic interpreter in our language, +though, profound as its attraction always was for him, +never was poet with a more exquisite balance of intellectual sanity. + +Latest research has proved that whatsoever of a pretender +Paracelsus may have been in certain respects, he was unquestionably +a man of extraordinary powers: and, as a pioneer in a science +of the first magnitude of importance, deserving of high honour. +If ever the famous German attain a high place in the history +of the modern intellectual movement in Europe, it will be primarily +due to Browning's championship. + +But of course the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim +is a matter of quite secondary interest. We are concerned +with the poet's presentment of the man -- of that strange soul +whom he conceived of as having anticipated so far, and as having focussed +all the vagrant speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, +now lambently pure, now lurid with gross constituents.* + +-- +* Paracelsus has two particular claims upon our regard. + He gave us laudanum, a discovery of incalculable blessing to mankind. + And from his fourth baptismal name, which he inherited from his father, + we have our familiar term, `bombast'. Readers interested + in the known facts concerning the "master-mind, the thinker, + the explorer, the creator," the forerunner of Mesmer and even + of Darwin and Wallace, who began life with the sounding appellation + "Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus ab Hohenheim", + should consult Browning's own learned appendical note, + and Mr. Berdoe's interesting essay in the Browning Society Papers, No. 49. +-- + +Paracelsus, his friends Festus and his wife Michal, and Aprile, +an Italian poet, are the characters who are the personal media +through which Browning's already powerful genius found expression. +The poem is, of a kind, an epic: the epic of a brave soul +striving against baffling circumstance. It is full of passages +of rare technical excellence, as well as of conceptive beauty: +so full, indeed, that the sympathetic reader of it as a drama +will be too apt to overlook its radical shortcomings, +cast as it is in the dramatic mould. But it must not be forgotten +that Browning himself distinctly stated he had attempted to write +"a poem, not a drama": and in the light of this simple statement +half the objections that have been made fall to the ground. + +Paracelsus is the protagonist: the others are merely incidental. +The poem is the soul-history of the great medical student +who began life so brave of aspect and died so miserably at Salzburg: +but it is also the history of a typical human soul, which can be read +without any knowledge of actual particulars. + +Aprile is a projection of the poet's own poetical ideal. He speaks, +but he does not live as Festus lives, or even as Michal, who, by the way, +is interesting as being the first in the long gallery of Browning's women -- +a gallery of superbly-drawn portraits, of noble and striking +and always intensely human women, unparalleled except in Shakespeare. +Pauline, of course, exists only as an abstraction, and Porphyria +is in no exact sense a portrait from the life. Yet Michal can be revealed +only to the sympathetic eye, for she is not drawn, but again and again +suddenly silhouetted. We see her in profile always: but when she exclaims +at the last, "I ever did believe," we feel that she has withdrawn the veil +partially hiding her fair and generous spirit. + +To the lover of poetry "Paracelsus" will always be a Golconda. +It has lines and passages of extraordinary power, of a haunting beauty, +and of a unique and exquisite charm. It may be noted, in exemplification of +Browning's artistic range, that in the descriptive passages he paints as well +in the elaborate Pre-Raphaelite method as with a broad synthetic touch: as in + + "One old populous green wall + Tenanted by the ever-busy flies, + Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders, + Each family of the silver-threaded moss -- + Which, look through near, this way, and it appears + A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh + Of bulrush whitening in the sun. . . ." + +But oftener he prefers the more succinct method of landscape-painting, +the broadest impressionism: as in + + "Past the high rocks the haunts of doves, the mounds + Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out, + Past tracks of milk-white minute blinding sand." + +And where in modern poetry is there a superber union +of the scientific and the poetic vision than in this magnificent passage -- +the quintessence of the poet's conception of the rapture of life: -- + + "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, + And the earth changes like a human face; + The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, + Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright + In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, + Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask -- + God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged + With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, + When in the solitary waste, strange groups + Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, + Staring together with their eyes on flame -- + God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. + Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: + But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes + Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure + Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between + The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost, + Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; + The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms + Like chrysalids impatient for the air, + The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run + Along the furrows, ants make their ado; + Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark + Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; + Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls + Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe + Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek + Their loves in wood and plain -- and God renews + His ancient rapture." + +In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest +the influence of the noble Hebraic poetry. It must have been at this period +that Browning conned over and over with an exultant delight +the simple but lordly diction of Isaiah and the other prophets, +preferring this Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks. +There is an anecdote of his walking across a public park +(I am told Richmond, but more probably it was Wimbledon Common) +with his hat in his left hand and his right waving to and fro declamatorily, +while the wind blew his hair around his head like a nimbus: +so rapt in his ecstasy over the solemn sweep of the Biblical music that +he did not observe a small following consisting of several eager children, +expectant of thrilling stump-oratory. He was just the man, however, +to accept an anti-climax genially, and to dismiss his disappointed auditory +with something more tangible than an address. + +The poet-precursor of scientific knowledge is again and again manifest: +as, for example, in + + "Hints and previsions of which faculties + Are strewn confusedly everywhere about + The inferior natures, and all lead up higher, + All shape out dimly the superior race, + The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, + And man appears at last."* + +-- +* Readers interested in Browning's inspiration from, + and treatment of, Science, should consult the excellent essay on him + as "A Scientific Poet" by Mr. Edward Berdoe, F.R.C.S., and, in particular, + compare with the originals the references given by Mr. Berdoe + to the numerous passages bearing upon Evolution and the several sciences, + from Astronomy to Physiology. +-- + +There are lines, again, which have a magic that cannot be defined. +If it be not felt, no sense of it can be conveyed through another's words. + + "Whose memories were a solace to me oft, + As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight." + + "Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once + Into the vast and unexplored abyss, + What full-grown power informs her from the first, + Why she not marvels, strenuously beating + The silent boundless regions of the sky." + +There is one passage, beautiful in itself, which has +a pathetic significance henceforth. Gordon, our most revered hero, +was wont to declare that nothing in all nonscriptural literature +was so dear to him, nothing had so often inspired him in moments of gloom: -- + + "I go to prove my soul! + I see my way as birds their trackless way. + I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, + I ask not: but unless God send His hail + Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, + In some time, His good time, I shall arrive: + He guides me and the bird. In his good time." + +As for the much misused `Shakespearian' comparison, so often +mistakenly applied to Browning, there is nothing in "Paracelsus" +in the least way derivative. Because Shakespeare is the greatest genius +evolved from our race, it does not follow that every lofty intellect, +every great objective poet, should be labelled "Shakespearian". +But there is a certain quality in poetic expression which we so specify, +because the intense humanity throbbing in it finds highest utterance +in the greatest of our poets: and there is at least one instance +of such poignant speech in "Paracelsus", worthy almost to be ranked +with the last despairing cry of Guido calling upon murdered Pompilia: -- + + "Festus, strange secrets are let out by death + Who blabs so oft the follies of this world: + And I am death's familiar, as you know. + I helped a man to die, some few weeks since, + Warped even from his go-cart to one end -- + The living on princes' smiles, reflected from + A mighty herd of favourites. No mean trick + He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed + All traces of God's finger out of him: + Then died, grown old. And just an hour before, + Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes, + He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice + Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors + God told him it was June; and he knew well + Without such telling, harebells grew in June; + And all that kings could ever give or take + Would not be precious as those blooms to him." + +Technically, I doubt if Browning ever produced any finer long poem, +except "Pippa Passes", which is a lyrical drama, and neither exactly a `play' +nor exactly a `poem' in the conventional usage of the terms. +Artistically, "Paracelsus" is disproportionate, and has faults, +obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear: but in the main +it has a beauty without harshness, a swiftness of thought and speech +without tumultuous pressure of ideas or stammering. It has not, +in like degree, the intense human insight of, say, "The Inn Album", +but it has that charm of sequent excellence too rarely to be found in +many of Browning's later writings. It glides onward like a steadfast stream, +the thought moving with the current it animates and controls, +and throbbing eagerly beneath. When we read certain portions of "Paracelsus", +and the lovely lyrics interspersed in it, it is difficult +not to think of the poet as sometimes, in later life, +stooping like the mariner in Roscoe's beautiful sonnet, +striving to reclaim "some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand." +But it is the fleeting shore of exquisite art, not of the far-reaching +shadowy capes and promontories of "the poetic land". + +Of the four interlusive lyrics the freer music is in the unique chant, +"Over the sea our galleys went": a song full of melody and blithe lilt. +It is marvellously pictorial, and yet has a freedom that places it among +the most delightful of spontaneous lyrics: -- + + "We shouted, every man of us, + And steered right into the harbour thus, + With pomp and paean glorious." + +It is, however, too long for present quotation, and as an example +of Browning's early lyrics I select rather the rich and delicate +second of these "Paracelsus" songs, one wherein the influence of Keats +is so marked, and yet where all is the poet's own: -- + + "Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes + Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, + Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes + From out her hair: such balsam falls + Down sea-side mountain pedestals, + From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, + Spent with the vast and howling main, + To treasure half their island-gain. + + "And strew faint sweetness from some old + Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud + Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; + Or shredded perfume, like a cloud + From closet long to quiet vowed, + With mothed and dropping arras hung, + Mouldering her lute and books among, + As when a queen, long dead, was young." + +With this music in our ears we can well forgive some of +the prosaic commonplaces which deface "Paracelsus" -- some of those lapses +from rhythmic energy to which the poet became less and less sensitive, +till he could be so deaf to the vanishing "echo of the fleeting strand" +as to sink to the level of doggerel such as that which closes +the poem called "Popularity". + +"Paracelsus" is not a great, but it is a memorable poem: +a notable achievement, indeed, for an author of Browning's years. +Well may we exclaim with Festus, when we regard the poet +in all the greatness of his maturity -- + + "The sunrise + Well warranted our faith in this full noon!" + + + + +Chapter 4. + + + +The `Athenaeum' dismissed "Paracelsus" with a half contemptuous line or two. +On the other hand, the `Examiner' acknowledged it to be +a work of unequivocal power, and predicted for its author a brilliant career. +The same critic who wrote this review contributed an article +of about twenty pages upon "Paracelsus" to the `New Monthly Magazine', +under the heading, "Evidences of a New Dramatic Poetry". +This article is ably written, and remarkable for its sympathetic insight. +"Mr. Browning," the critic writes, "is a man of genius, he has in himself +all the elements of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic." + +The author of this enthusiastic and important critique was John Forster. +When the `Examiner' review appeared the two young men had not met: +but the encounter, which was to be the seed of so fine a flower of friendship, +occurred before the publication of the `New Monthly' article. Before this, +however, Browning had already made one of the most momentous acquaintanceships +of his life. + +His good friend and early critic, Mr. Fox, asked him to his house +one evening in November, a few months after the publication of "Paracelsus". +The chief guest of the occasion was Macready, then at the height +of his great reputation. Mr. Fox had paved the way for the young poet, +but the moment he entered he carried with him his best recommendation. +Every one who met Browning in those early years of his buoyant manhood +seems to have been struck by his comeliness and simple grace of manner. +Macready stated that he looked more like a poet than any man he had ever met. +As a young man he appears to have had a certain ivory delicacy of colouring, +what an old friend perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly described to me +as an almost flower-like beauty, which passed ere long +into a less girlish and more robust complexion. He appeared +taller than he was, for he was not above medium height, +partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from +a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently +to music or conversation. Even then he had that expressive wave o' the hand, +which in later years was as full of various meanings +as the `Ecco' of an Italian. A swift alertness pervaded him, +noticeable as much in the rapid change of expression, +in the deepening and illuming colours of his singularly expressive eyes, +and in his sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift +to curve or droop in response to the most fluctuant emotion, +as in his greyhound-like apprehension, which so often grasped the subject +in its entirety before its propounder himself realised its significance. +A lady, who remembers Browning at that time, has told me that his hair -- +then of a brown so dark as to appear black -- was so beautiful +in its heavy sculpturesque waves as to attract frequent notice. +Another, and more subtle, personal charm was his voice, +then with a rare flute-like tone, clear, sweet, and resonant. +Afterwards, though always with precise clarity, it became +merely strong and hearty, a little too loud sometimes, +and not infrequently as that of one simulating keen immediate interest +while the attention was almost wholly detached. + +Macready, in his Journal,* about a week later than the date +of his first meeting with the poet, wrote -- "Read `Paracelsus', +a work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, +but occasionally obscure: the writer can scarcely fail +to be a leading spirit of his time." The tragedian's house, +whither he went at week-ends and on holidays, was at Elstree, +a short distance to the northward of Hampstead: and there +he invited Browning, among other friends, to come on the last day of December +and spend New Year's Day (1836).** When alluding, in after years, +to this visit, Browning always spoke of it as one of the red-letter days +of his life. It was here he first met Forster, with whom he at once formed +what proved to be an enduring friendship; and on this occasion, also, +that he was urged by his host to write a poetic play. + +-- +* For many interesting particulars concerning Macready and Browning, + and the production of "Strafford", etc., see the `Reminiscences', vol. 1. +** It was for Macready's eldest boy, William Charles, that Browning wrote + one of the most widely popular of his poems, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin". + It is said to have been an impromptu performance, and to have been + so little valued by the author that he hesitated about its inclusion + in "Bells and Pomegranates". It was inserted at the last moment, + in the third number, which was short of "copy". Some one (anonymous, + but whom I take to be Mr. Nettleship) has publicly alluded + to his possession of a rival poem (entitled, simply, "Hamelin") + by Robert Browning the elder, and of a letter which he had sent to a friend + along with the verses, in which he writes: "Before I knew + that Robert had begun the story of the `Rats' I had contemplated a tale + on the same subject, and proceeded with it as far as you see, + but, on hearing that Robert had a similar one on hand, I desisted." + This must have been in 1842, for it was in that year + that the third part of `Bells and Pomegranates' was published. + In 1843, however, he finished it. Browning's "Pied Piper" + has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, and German. + The latter (or one German) version is in prose. It was made in 1880, + for a special purpose, and occupied the whole of one number + of the local paper of Hameln, which is a quaint townlet in Hanover. +-- + +Browning promised to consider the suggestion. Six weeks later, +in company with Forster, with whom he had become intimate, +he called upon Macready, to discuss the plot of a tragedy +which he had pondered. He told the tragedian how deeply he had been impressed +by his performance of "Othello", and how this had deflected his intention +from a modern and European to an Oriental and ancient theme. +"Browning said that I had BIT him by my performance of `Othello', +and I told him I hoped I should make the blood come." The "blood" had come +in the guise of a drama-motive based on the crucial period in the career +of Narses, the eunuch-general of Justinian. Macready liked the suggestion, +though he demurred to one or two points in the outline: +and before Browning left he eagerly pressed him to "go on with `Narses'." +But whether Browning mistrusted his own interest in the theme, +or was dubious as to the success with which Macready +would realise his conception, or as to the reception a play of such nature +would win from an auditory no longer reverent of high dramatic ideals, +he gave up the idea. Some three months later (May 26th) he enjoyed +another eventful evening. It was the night of the first performance +of Talfourd's "Ion", and he was among the personal friends of Macready +who were invited to the supper at Talfourd's rooms. +After the fall of the curtain, Browning, Forster, and other friends +sought the tragedian and congratulated him upon the success +both of the play and of his impersonation of the chief character. +They then adjourned to the house of the author of "Ion". +To his surprise and gratification Browning found himself placed +next but one to his host, and immediately opposite Macready, +who sat between two gentlemen, one calm as a summer evening, +and the other with a tempestuous youth dominating his sixty years, +whom the young poet at once recognised as Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. +Every one was in good spirits: the host perhaps most of all, +who was celebrating his birthday as well as the success of "Ion". +Possibly Macready was the only person who felt at all bored -- +unless it was Landor -- for Wordsworth was not, at such a function, +an entertaining conversationalist. There is much significance +in the succinct entry in Macready's journal concerning the Lake-poet -- +"Wordsworth, who pinned me." . . . When Talfourd rose +to propose the toast of "The Poets of England" every one probably expected +that Wordsworth would be named to respond. But with a kindly grace the host, +after flattering remarks upon the two great men then honouring him +by sitting at his table, coupled his toast with the name +of the youngest of the poets of England -- "Mr. Robert Browning, +the author of `Paracelsus'." It was a very proud moment for Browning, +singled out among that brilliant company: and it is pleasant to know, +on the authority of Miss Mitford, who was present, that "he performed his task +with grace and modesty," looking, the amiable lady adds, +even younger than he was. Perhaps, however, he was prouder still +when Wordsworth leaned across the table, and with stately affability said, +"I am proud to drink your health, Mr. Browning:" when Landor, +also, with a superbly indifferent and yet kindly smile, +also raised his glass to his lips in courteous greeting. + +Of Wordsworth Browning saw not a little in the ensuing few years, +for on the rare visits the elderly poet paid to London, +Talfourd never failed to ask the author of "Paracelsus", +for whom he had a sincere admiration, to meet the great man. +It was not in the nature of things that the two poets could become friends, +but though the younger was sometimes annoyed by the elder's pooh-poohing +his republican sympathies, and contemptuously waiving aside as a mere nobody +no less an individual than Shelley, he never failed of respect +and even reverence. With what tenderness and dignity he has commemorated +the great poet's falling away from his early ideals, may be seen +in "The Lost Leader", one of the most popular of Browning's short poems, +and likely to remain so. For several reasons, however, +it is best as well as right that Wordsworth should not be more +than merely nominally identified with the Lost Leader. +Browning was always imperative upon this point. + +Towards Landor, on the other hand, he entertained a sentiment +of genuine affection, coupled with a profound sympathy and admiration: +a sentiment duly reciprocated. The care of the younger for the elder, +in the old age of the latter, is one of the most beautiful incidents +in a beautiful life. + +But the evening was not to pass without another memorable incident, +one to which we owe "Strafford", and probably "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon". +Just as the young poet, flushed with the triumphant pleasure of the evening, +was about to leave, Macready arrested him by a friendly grip of the arm. +In unmistakable earnestness he asked Browning to write him a play. +With a simplicity equal to the occasion, the poet contented himself +with replying, "Shall it be historical and English? What do you say +to a drama on Strafford?" + +Macready was pleased with the idea, and hopeful that his friend would be +more successful with the English statesman than with the eunuch Narses. + +A few months elapsed before the poet, who had set aside the long work +upon which he was engaged ("Sordello"), called upon Macready +with the manuscript of "Strafford". The latter hoped much from it. +In March the MS. was ready. About the end of the month +Macready took it to Covent Garden Theatre, and read it to Mr. Osbaldiston, +"who caught at it with avidity, and agreed to produce it without delay." + +It was an eventful first of May -- an eventful twelvemonth, indeed, +for it was the initial year of the Victorian era, notable, too, +as that wherein the Electric Telegraph was established, and, in letters, +wherein a new dramatic literature had its origin. For "Strafford", +already significant of a novel movement, and destined, it seems to me, +to be still more significant in that great dramatic period towards which +we are fast converging, was not less important to the Drama in England, +as a new departure in method and radically indicative of a fresh standpoint, +than "Hernani" was in France. But in literary history +the day itself is doubly memorable, for in the forenoon +Carlyle gave the first of his lectures in London. The play was a success, +despite the shamefully inadequate acting of some of those entrusted with +important parts. There was once, perhaps there were more occasions than one, +where success poised like the soul of a Mohammedan on the invisible thread +leading to Paradise, but on either side of which lies perdition. +There was none to cry `Timbul' save Macready, except Miss Helen Faucit, +who gained a brilliant triumph as Lady Carlisle. The part of Charles I. +was enacted so execrably that damnation for all was again and again +within measurable distance. "The Younger Vane" ranted so that a hiss, +like an embodied scorn, vibrated on vagrant wings throughout the house. +There was not even any extraneous aid to a fortunate impression. +The house was in ill repair: the seats dusty, the "scenery" commonplace +and sometimes noticeably inappropriate, the costumes and accessories +almost sordid. But in the face of all this, a triumph was secured. +For a brief while Macready believed that the star of regeneration had arisen. +Unfortunately 'twas, in the words of a contemporary dramatic poet, +"a rising sorrow splendidly forlorn." The financial condition +of Covent Garden Theatre was so ruinous that not even the most successful play +could have restored its doomed fortunes. + +After the fifth night one of the leading actors, having received +a better offer elsewhere, suddenly withdrew. + +This was the last straw. A collapse forthwith occurred. +In the scramble for shares in the few remaining funds +every one gained something, except the author, who was to have received +12 Pounds for each performance for the first twenty-five nights, +and 10 Pounds each for ten nights further. This disaster +was a deep disappointment to Browning, and a by no means transitory one, +for three or four years later he wrote (Advt. of "Bells and Pomegranates"): +"Two or three years ago I wrote a play, about which the chief matter +I much care to recollect at present is, that a pitful of good-natured people +applauded it. Ever since, I have been desirous of doing something +in the same way that should better reward their attention." +But, except in so far as its abrupt declension from the stage hurt its author +in the eyes of the critics, and possibly in those of theatrical managers, +"Strafford" was certainly no failure. It has the elements +of a great acting play. Everything, even the language +(and here was a stumbling-block with most of the critics and criticasters), +was subordinated to dramatic exigencies: though the subordination +was in conformity with a novel shaping method. "Strafford" was not, however, +allowed to remain unknown to those who had been unable to visit +Covent Garden Theatre.* Browning's name had quite sufficient literary repute +to justify a publisher in risking the issue of a drama by him, +one, at any rate, that had the advantage of association with Macready's name. +The Longmans issued it, and the author had the pleasure of knowing +that his third poetic work was not produced at the expense of a relative, +but at that of the publishers. It had but an indifferent reception, however. + +-- +* "It is time to deny a statement that has been repeated ad nauseam + in every notice that professes to give an account of Mr. Browning's career. + Whatever is said or not said, it is always that his plays have `failed' + on the stage. In point of fact, the three plays which he has brought out + have all succeeded, and have owed it to fortuitous circumstances + that their tenure on the boards has been comparatively short." + -- E. W. Gosse, in article in `The Century Magazine'. +-- + +Most people who saw the performance of "Strafford" given in 1886, +under the auspices of the Browning Society, were surprised +as well as impressed: for few, apparently, had realised from perusal +the power of the play as made manifest when acted. The secret of this +is that the drama, when privily read, seems hard if not heavy in its diction, +and to be so inornate, though by no means correspondingly simple, +as to render any comparison between it and the dramatic work of Shakespeare +out of the question. But when acted, the artistry of the play is revealed. +Its intense naturalness is due in great part to the stern concision +of the lines, where no word is wasted, where every sentence is fraught +with the utmost it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us +by their vagueness become more clear: in a word, we all see in enactment +what only a few of us can discern in perusal. The play has its faults, +but scarcely those of language, where the diction is noble and rhythmic, +because it is, so to speak, the genuine rind of the fruit it envelops. +But there are dramatic faults -- primarily, in the extreme economy +of the author in the presentment of his `dramatis personae', +who are embodied abstractions -- monomaniacs of ideas, +as some one has said of Hugo's personages -- rather than men as we are, +with manifold complexities in endless friction or fusion. One cardinal fault +is the lack of humour, which to my mind is the paramount objection +to its popular acceptance. Another, is the misproportionate length +of some of the speeches. Once again, there is, as in the greater portion +of Browning's longer poems and dramas, a baneful equality of emphasis. +The conception of Charles I. is not only obviously weak, but strangely +prejudiced adversely for so keen an analyst of the soul as Browning. +For what a fellow-dramatist calls this "Sunset Shadow of a King", +no man or woman could abase every hope and energy. Shakespeare would never +have committed the crucial mistake of making Charles the despicable deformity +he is in Browning's drama. Strafford himself disappears too soon: +in the fourth act there is the vacuum abhorred of dramatic propriety. + +When he again comes on the scene, the charm is partly broken. +But withal the play is one of remarkable vigour and beauty. +It seems to me that too much has been written against it +on the score of its metrical rudeness. The lines are beat out by a hammer, +but in the process they are wrought clear of all needless alloy. +To urge, as has been lately urged, that it lacks all human touch +and is a mere intellectual fanfaronade, and that there is not once +a line of poignant insight, is altogether uncritical. Readers of this mind +must have forgotten or be indifferent to those lines, for example, +where the wretched Charles stammeringly excuses himself to his loyal minister +for his death-warrant, crying out that it was wrung from him, +and begging Strafford not to curse him: or, again, that wonderfully +significant line, so full of a too tardy knowledge and of concentrated scorn, +where Strafford first begs the king to "be good to his children," +and then, with a contempt that is almost sublime, implores, "Stay, sir, +do not promise, do not swear!" The whole of the second scene in the fifth act +is pure genius. The reader, or spectator, knows by this time +that all hope is over: that Strafford, though all unaware, +is betrayed and undone. It is a subtle dramatic ruse, +that of Browning's representing him sitting in his apartment in the Tower +with his young children, William and Anne, blithely singing. + +Can one read and ever forget the lines giving the gay Italian rhyme, +with the boy's picturesquely childish prose-accompaniment? +Strafford is seated, weary and distraught: -- + + "`O bell' andare + Per barca in mare, + Verso la sera + Di Primavera!' + William. The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while -- + `Verso la sera + Di Primavera!' + And the boat shoots from underneath the moon + Into the shadowy distance; only still + You hear the dipping oar -- + `Verso la sera,' + And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone, + Music and light and all, like a lost star. + Anne. But you should sleep, father: you were to sleep. + Strafford. I do sleep, Anne; or if not -- you must know + There's such a thing as . . . + William. You're too tired to sleep. + Strafford. It will come by-and-by and all day long, + In that old quiet house I told you of: + We sleep safe there. + Anne. Why not in Ireland? + Strafford. No! + Too many dreams! --" + +To me this children's-song and the fleeting and now plaintive echo of it, +as "Voices from Within" -- "Verso la sera, Di Primavera" -- +in the terrible scene where Strafford learns his doom, +is only to be paralleled by the song of Mariana in "Measure for Measure", +wherein, likewise, is abduced in one thrilling poignant strain +the quintessential part of the tense life of the whole play. + +So much has been written concerning the dramas of Robert Browning -- +though indeed there is still room for a volume of careful criticism, +dealing solely with this theme -- that I have the less regret +in having so inadequately to pass in review works of such poetic magnitude +as those enumerated above. + +But it would be impossible, in so small a book as this, +to examine them in detail without incurring a just charge of misproportion. +The greatness and the shortcomings of the dramas and dramatic poems +must be noted as succinctly as practicable; and I have dwelt more liberally +upon "Pauline", "Paracelsus", and "Strafford", partly because +(certainly without more than one exception, "Sordello") +these are the three least read of Browning's poems, partly because +they indicate the sweep and reach of his first orient eagle-flight +through new morning-skies, and mainly because in them +we already find Browning at his best and at his weakest, +because in them we hear not only the rush of his sunlit pinions, +but also the low earthward surge of dullard wings. + +Browning is foreshadowed in his earliest writings, as perhaps +no other poet has been to like extent. In the "Venus and Adonis", +and the "Rape of Lucrece", we have but the dimmest foreview of the author +of "Hamlet", "Othello", and "Macbeth"; had Shakespeare died prematurely +none could have predicted, from the exquisite blossoms of his adolescence, +the immortal fruit of his maturity. But, in Browning's three earliest works, +we clearly discern him, as the sculptor of Melos previsioned his Venus +in the rough-hewn block. + +Thenceforth, to change the imagery, he developed rapidly upon the same lines, +or doubled upon himself in intricate revolutions; but already +his line of life, his poetic parallel, was definitely established. + +In the consideration of Browning's dramas it is needful to be sure +of one's vantage for judgment. The first step towards this assurance +is the ablation of the chronic Shakespearian comparison. Primarily, +the shaping spirit of the time wrought Shakespeare and Browning +to radically divergent methods of expression, but each to a method +in profound harmony with the dominant sentiment of the age in which he lived. +Above all others, the Elizabethan era was rich in romantic adventure, +of the mind as well as of the body, and above all others, +save that of the Renaissance in Italy, animated by a passionate curiosity. +So, too, supremely, the Victorian era has been prolific of novel and vast +Titanic struggles of the human spirit to reach those Gates of Truth +whose lowest steps are the scarce discernible stars and furthest suns we scan, +by piling Ossas of searching speculation upon Pelions of hardly-won +positive knowledge. The highest exemplar of the former is Shakespeare, +Browning the profoundest interpreter of the latter. +To achieve supremacy the one had to create a throbbing actuality, +a world of keenest living, of acts and intervolved situations and episodes: +the other to fashion a mentality so passionately alive +that its manifold phases should have all the reality +of concrete individualities. The one reveals individual life to us +by the play of circumstance, the interaction of events, +the correlative eduction of personal characteristics: +the other by his apprehension of that quintessential movement or mood or phase +wherein the soul is transitorily visible on its lonely pinnacle of light. +The elder poet reveals life to us by the sheer vividness of his own vision: +the younger, by a newer, a less picturesque but more scientific abduction, +compels the complex rayings of each soul-star to a singular simplicity, +as by the spectrum analysis. The one, again, fulfils his aim +by a broad synthesis based upon the vivid observance and selection +of vital details: the other by an extraordinary acute psychic analysis. +In a word, Shakespeare works as with the clay of human action: +Browning as with the clay of human thought. + +As for the difference in value of the two methods it is useless to dogmatise. +The psychic portraiture produced by either is valuable +only so far as it is convincingly true. + +The profoundest insight cannot reach deeper than its own possibilities +of depth. The physiognomy of the soul is never visible in its entirety, +barely ever even its profile. The utmost we can expect to reproduce, +perhaps even to perceive in the most quintessential moment, +is a partially faithful, partially deceptive silhouette. +As no human being has ever seen his or her own soul, +in all its rounded completeness of good and evil, of strength and weakness, +of what is temporal and perishable and what is germinal and essential, +how can we expect even the subtlest analyst to adequately depict +other souls than his own. It is Browning's high distinction +that he has this soul-depictive faculty -- restricted as even in his instance +it perforce is -- to an extent unsurpassed by any other poet, +ancient or modern. As a sympathetic critic has remarked, +"His stage is not the visible phenomenal England (or elsewhere) of history; +it is a point in the spiritual universe, where naked souls meet and wrestle, +as they play the great game of life, for counters, the true value of which +can only be realised in the bullion of a higher life than this." +No doubt there is "a certain crudeness in the manner in which +these naked souls are presented," not only in "Strafford" but elsewhere +in the plays. Browning markedly has the defects of his qualities. + +As part of his method, it should be noted that his real trust +is upon monologue rather than upon dialogue. To one who works +from within outward -- in contradistinction to the Shakespearian method +of striving to win from outward forms "the passion and the life +whose fountains are within" -- the propriety of this dramatic means +can scarce be gainsaid. The swift complicated mental machinery +can thus be exhibited infinitely more coherently and comprehensibly +than by the most electric succinct dialogue. Again and again +Browning has nigh foundered in the morass of monologue, but, broadly speaking, +he transcends in this dramatic method. + +At the same time, none must take it for granted that +the author of "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon", "Luria", "In a Balcony", +is not dramatic in even the most conventional sense. Above all, indeed +-- as Mr. Walter Pater has said -- his is the poetry of situations. +In each of the `dramatis personae', one of the leading characteristics +is loyalty to a dominant ideal. In Strafford's case +it is that of unswerving devotion to the King: in Mildred's and in Thorold's, +in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon", it is that of subservience respectively +to conventional morality and family pride (Lord Tresham, it may be added, +is the most hopelessly monomaniacal of all Browning's "monomaniacs"): +in Valence's, in "Colombe's Birthday", to chivalric love: +in Charles, in "King Victor and King Charles", to kingly and filial duty: +in Anael's and Djabal's, in "The Return of the Druses", +respectively to religion and unscrupulous ambition modified by patriotism: +in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy", to purely sordid ambition: +in Luria's, to noble steadfastness: and in Constance's, in "In a Balcony", +to self-denial. Of these plays, "The Return of the Druses" seems to me +the most picturesque, "Luria" the most noble and dignified, +and "In a Balcony" the most potentially a great dramatic success. +The last is in a sense a fragment, but, though the integer +of a great unaccomplished drama, is as complete in itself +as the Funeral March in Beethoven's `Eroica' Symphony. +"A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" has the radical fault characteristic of +writers of sensational fiction, a too promiscuous "clearing the ground" +by syncope and suicide. Another is the juvenility of Mildred: -- +a serious infraction of dramatic law, where the mere tampering with history, +as in the circumstances of King Victor's death in the earlier play, +is at least excusable by high precedent. More disastrous, poetically, +is the ruinous banality of Mildred's anticlimax when, +after her brother reveals himself as her lover's murderer, +she, like the typical young `Miss Anglaise' of certain French novelists, +betrays her incapacity for true passion by exclaiming, in effect, +"What, you've murdered my lover! Well, tell me all. Pardon? +Oh, well, I pardon you: at least I THINK I do. Thorold, my dear brother, +how very wretched you must be!" + +I am unaware if this anticlimax has been pointed out by any one, +but surely it is one of the most appalling lapses of genius +which could be indicated. Even the beautiful song in +the third scene of the first act, "There's a woman like a dew-drop, +she's so purer than the purest," is, in the circumstances, +nearly over the verge which divides the sublime from the ridiculous. +No wonder that, on the night the play was first acted, +Mertoun's song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, +caused a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant auditory. +It is with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint from that +of Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, +no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, +like it; who, further, at a later date, affirmed that he would rather have +written this play than any work of modern times: nor with less reluctance, +that I find myself at variance with Mr. Skelton, who speaks of the drama +as "one of the most perfectly conceived and perfectly executed tragedies +in the language." In the instance of Luria, that second Othello, +suicide has all the impressiveness of a plenary act of absolution: +the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of lightning +after the concussion of thunder-clouds. But Thorold's suicide +is mere weakness, scarce a perverted courage; and Mildred's broken heart +was an ill not beyond the healing of a morally robust physician. +"Colombe's Birthday" has a certain remoteness of interest, +really due to the reader's more or less acute perception +of the radical divergence, for all Valence's greatness of mind and spirit, +between the fair young Duchess and her chosen lover: +a circumstance which must surely stand in the way of its popularity. +Though "A Soul's Tragedy" has the saving quality of humour, +it is of too grim a kind to be provocative of laughter. + +In each of these plays* the lover of Browning will recall passage +after passage of superbly dramatic effect. But supreme in his remembrance +will be the wonderful scene in "The Return of the Druses", where the Prefect, +drawing a breath of relief, is almost simultaneously assassinated; +and that where Anael, with every nerve at tension in her fierce +religious resolve, with a poignant, life-surrendering cry, +hails Djabal as `Hakeem' -- as Divine -- and therewith falls dead at his feet. +Nor will he forget that where, in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon", +Mildred, with a dry sob in her throat, stammeringly utters -- + + "I -- I -- was so young! + Besides I loved him, Thorold -- and I had + No mother; God forgot me: so I fell ----" + +or that where, "at end of the disastrous day," Luria takes the phial of poison +from his breast, muttering -- + + "Strange! This is all I brought from my own land + To help me." + +-- +* "Strafford", 1837; "King Victor and King Charles", 1842; + "The Return of the Druses", and "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon", 1843; + "Colombe's Birthday", 1844; "Luria", and "A Soul's Tragedy", 1845. +-- + +Before passing on from these eight plays to Browning's most imperishable +because most nearly immaculate dramatic poem, "Pippa Passes", +and to "Sordello", that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry, +I should like -- out of an embarrassing quantity of alluring details -- +to remind the reader of two secondary matters of interest, pertinent to +the present theme. One is that the song in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon", +"There's a woman like a dew-drop", written several years before +the author's meeting with Elizabeth Barrett, is so closely +in the style of "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and other ballads +by the sweet singer who afterwards became a partner in the loveliest marriage +of which we have record in literary history, that, even were there nothing +to substantiate the fact, it were fair to infer that Mertoun's song to Mildred +was the electric touch which compelled to its metric shape +one of Mrs. Browning's best-known poems. + +The further interest lies in the lordly acknowledgment +of the dedication to him of "Luria", which Landor sent to Browning -- +lines pregnant with the stateliest music of his old age: -- + + "Shakespeare is not our poet but the world's, + Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, + Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale + No man has walked along our roads with step + So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue + So varied in discourse. But warmer climes + Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze + Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on + Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where + The Siren waits thee, singing song for song." + + + + +Chapter 5. + + + +In my allusion to "Pippa Passes", towards the close of the preceding chapter, +as the most imperishable because the most nearly immaculate of Browning's +dramatic poems, I would not have it understood that its pre-eminence +is considered from the standpoint of technical achievement, of art, merely. +It seems to me, like all simple and beautiful things, profound enough +for the searching plummet of the most curious explorer of the depths of life. +It can be read, re-read, learned by heart, and the more it is known +the wider and more alluring are the avenues of imaginative thought +which it discloses. It has, more than any other long composition +by its author, that quality of symmetry, that `symmetria prisca' +recorded of Leonardo da Vinci in the Latin epitaph of Platino Piatto; +and, as might be expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti called +fundamental brain-work, is as luminous, depth within depth, +as the morning air. By its side, the more obviously "profound" poems, +Bishop Blougram and the rest, are mere skilled dialectics. + +The art that is most profound and most touching must ever be the simplest. +Whenever Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, are at white heat +they require no exposition, but meditation only -- the meditation akin to +the sentiment of little children who listen, intent upon every syllable, +and passionately eager of soul, to hearthside tragedies. +The play of genius is like the movement of the sea. It has its solemn rhythm: +its joy, irradiate of the sun; its melancholy, in the patient moonlight: +its surge and turbulence under passing tempests: below all, +the deep oceanic music. There are, of course, many to whom +the sea is but a waste of water, at best useful as a highway +and as the nursery of the winds and rains. For them there is no hint +"of the incommunicable dream" in the curve of the rising wave, +no murmur of the oceanic undertone in the short leaping sounds, +invisible things that laugh and clap their hands for joy and are no more. +To them it is but a desert: obscure, imponderable, a weariness. +The "profundity" of Browning, so dear a claim in the eyes +of the poet's fanatical admirers, exists, in their sense, +only in his inferior work. There is more profound insight +in Blake's Song of Innocence, "Piping down the valleys wild," +or in Wordsworth's line, "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," +or in Keats' single verse, "There is a budding morrow in midnight," +or in this quatrain on Poetry, by a young living poet -- + + "She comes like the husht beauty of the night, + But sees too deep for laughter; + Her touch is a vibration and a light + From worlds before and after ----" + +there is more "profundity" in any of these than in libraries +of "Sludge the Medium" literature. Mere hard thinking +does not involve profundity, any more than neurotic excitation +involves spiritual ecstasy. `De profundis', indeed, must the poet come: +there must the deep rhythm of life have electrified his "volatile essence" +to a living rhythmic joy. In this deep sense, and this only, +the poet is born, not made. He may learn to fashion anew +that which he hath seen: the depth of his insight depends upon +the depth of his spiritual heritage. If wonder dwell not in his eyes and soul +there can be no "far ken" for him. Here it seems apt to point out +that Browning was the first writer of our day to indicate this transmutive, +this inspired and inspiring wonder-spirit, which is the deepest motor +in the evolution of our modern poetry. Characteristically, +he puts his utterance into the mouth of a dreamy German student, +the shadowy Schramm who is but metaphysics embodied, +metaphysics finding apt expression in tobacco-smoke: "Keep but ever looking, +whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something +to look on! Has a man done wondering at women? -- there follow men, +dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men? -- +there's God to wonder at: and the faculty of wonder may be, +at the same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, +and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one." + +This wonder is akin to that `insanity' of the poet which is +but impassioned sanity. Plato sums the matter when he says, +"He who, having no touch of the Muse's madness in his soul, +comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of Art -- +he, I say, and his poetry, are not admitted." + +In that same wood beyond Dulwich to which allusion has already been made, +the germinal motive of "Pippa Passes" flashed upon the poet. +No wonder this resort was for long one of his sacred places, +and that he lamented its disappearance as fervently +as Ruskin bewailed the encroachment of the ocean of bricks and mortar +upon the wooded privacies of Denmark Hill. + +Save for a couple of brief visits abroad, Browning spent the years, +between his first appearance as a dramatic writer and his marriage, +in London and the neighbourhood. Occasionally he took long walks +into the country. One particular pleasure was to lie beside a hedge, +or deep in meadow-grasses, or under a tree, as circumstances +and the mood concurred, and there to give himself up so absolutely +to the life of the moment that even the shy birds would alight close by, +and sometimes venturesomely poise themselves on suspicious wings +for a brief space upon his recumbent body. I have heard him say that +his faculty of observation at that time would not have appeared despicable +to a Seminole or an Iroquois: he saw and watched everything, +the bird on the wing, the snail dragging its shell up the pendulous woodbine, +the bee adding to his golden treasure as he swung in the bells +of the campanula, the green fly darting hither and thither +like an animated seedling, the spider weaving her gossamer from twig to twig, +the woodpecker heedfully scrutinising the lichen on the gnarled oak-bole, +the passage of the wind through leaves or across grass, +the motions and shadows of the clouds, and so forth. +These were his golden holidays. Much of the rest of his time, +when not passed in his room in his father's house, where he wrote +his dramas and early poems, and studied for hours daily, +was spent in the Library of the British Museum, in an endless curiosity +into the more or less unbeaten tracks of literature. These London experiences +were varied by whole days spent at the National Gallery, +and in communion with kindred spirits. At one time he had rooms, +or rather a room, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Strand, +whither he could go when he wished to be in town continuously for a time, +or when he had any social or theatrical engagement. + +Browning's life at this period was distraught by more than one +episode of the heart. It would be strange were it otherwise. +He had in no ordinary degree a rich and sensuous nature, +and his responsiveness was so quick that the barriers of prudence +were apt to be as shadowy to him as to the author of "The Witch of Atlas". +But he was the earnest student for the most part, and, above all, the poet. +His other pleasure, in his happy vagrant days, was to join company +with any tramps, gipsies, or other wayfarers, and in good fellowship +gain much knowledge of life that was useful at a later time. +Rustic entertainments, particularly peripatetic "Theatres Royal", +had a singular fascination for him, as for that matter had rustic oratory, +whether of the alehouse or the pulpit. At one period +he took the keenest interest in sectaries of all kinds: +and often he incurred a gentle reproof from his mother +because of his nomad propensities in search of "PASTORS new". +There was even a time when he seriously deliberated whether +he should not combine literature and religious ministry, +as Faraday combined evangelical fervour with scientific enthusiasm. +"'Twas a girl with eyes like two dreams of night" that saved him from himself, +and defrauded the Church Independent of a stalwart orator. + +It was, as already stated, while he strolled through Dulwich Wood one day +that the thought occurred to him which was to find development and expression +in "Pippa Passes". "The image flashed upon him," writes his intimate friend, +Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some one walking thus alone through life; +one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, +yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it; +and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo, +Felippa or Pippa." + +It has always seemed to me a radical mistake to include "Pippa Passes" +among Browning's dramas. Not only is it absolutely unactable, +but essentially undramatic in the conventional sense. True dramatic writing +concerns itself fundamentally with the apt conjunction of events, +and the more nearly it approximates to the verity of life the more likely +is it to be of immediate appeal. There is a `vraie verite' +which only the poet, evolving from dramatic concepts rather than attempting +to concentrate these in a quick, moving verisimilitude, can attempt. +The passing hither and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate, +a wandering chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a lower world, +changing the circumstances and even the natures of certain more or less +heedless listeners by the wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence, +is of this `vraie verite'. It is so obviously true, spiritually, +that it is unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life. +Its very effectiveness is too apt for the dramatist, who can ill afford +to tamper further with the indifferent banalities of actual existence. +The poet, unhampered by the exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely, +and artistically, achieve an equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude, +by means which are, or should be, beyond adoption by the dramatist proper. + +But over and above any `nice discrimination', "Pippa Passes" is simply a poem, +a lyrical masque with interspersed dramatic episodes, and subsidiary +interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that it should be acted +is a wholly errant one. The finest part of it is unrepresentable. +The rest would consist merely of a series of tableaux, +with conversational accompaniment. + +The opening scene, "the large mean airy chamber," where Pippa, +the little silk-winder from the mills at Asolo, springs from bed, +on her New Year's Day `festa', and soliloquises as she dresses, is as true +as it is lovely when viewed through the rainbow glow of the poetic atmosphere: +but how could it succeed on the stage? It is not merely that the monologue +is too long: it is too inapt, in its poetic richness, for its purpose. +It is the poet, not Pippa, who evokes this sweet sunrise-music, +this strain of the "long blue solemn hours serenely flowing." +The dramatic poet may occupy himself with that deeper insight, +and the wider expression of it, which is properly altogether beyond +the scope of the playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme +with the light that never was on sea or land, nor will he thereby +sacrifice aught of essential truth: but his comrade must see to it +that he is content with the wide liberal air of the common day. +The poetic alchemist may turn a sword into pure gold: +the playwright will concern himself with the due usage of the weapon +as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent value, +no miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake, +painting Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies, +while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously shine, +is impermissible to the portrait-painter or the landscapist, +who has to idealise actuality to the point only of artistic realism, +and not to transmute it at the outset from happily-perceived concrete facts +to a glorified abstract concept. + +In this opening monologue the much-admired song, "All service ranks the same +with God," is no song at all, properly, but simply a beautiful short poem. +From the dramatist's point of view, could anything be more shaped for disaster +than the second of the two stanzas? -- + + "Say not `a small event'! Why `small'? + Costs it more pain than this, ye call + A `great event', should come to pass, + Than that? Untwine me from the mass + Of deeds which make up life, one deed + Power shall fall short in or exceed!" + +The whole of this lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet, +not of a poet writing a drama. On the other hand, I cannot agree +with what I read somewhere recently -- that Sebald's song, at the opening of +the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian literature, +is, in the circumstances, wholly inappropriate. It seems to me +entirely consistent with the character of Ottima's reckless lover. +He is akin to the gallant in one of Dumas' romances, +who lingered atop of the wall of the prison whence he was escaping +in order to whistle the concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom. +What is, dramatically, disastrous in the instance of Mertoun +singing "There's a woman like a dew-drop", when he ought to be +seeking Mildred's presence in profound stealth and silence, is, dramatically, +electrically startling in the mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums +of the shuttered shrub-house, where he has passed the night with Ottima, +while her murdered husband lies stark in the adjoining room. + +It must, however, be borne in mind that this thrilling dramatic effect +is fully experienced only in retrospection, or when there is knowledge +of what is to follow. + +A conclusive objection to the drama as an actable play is that +three of the four main episodes are fragmentary. We know nothing +of the fate of Luigi: we can but surmise the future of Jules and Phene: +we know not how or when Monsignor will see Pippa righted. +Ottima and Sebald reach a higher level in voluntary death +than they ever could have done in life. + +It is quite unnecessary, here, to dwell upon this exquisite flower of genius +in detail. Every one who knows Browning at all knows "Pippa Passes". +Its lyrics have been unsurpassed, for birdlike spontaneity +and a rare high music, by any other Victorian poet: its poetic insight +is such as no other poet than the author of "The Ring and the Book" +and "The Inn Album" can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb. +From the outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima and Sebald, +there is a note of tragic power which is almost overwhelming. +Who has not know what Jakob Boehme calls "the shudder of a divine excitement" +when Luca's murderer replies to his paramour, + + "morning? + It seems to me a night with a sun added." + +How deep a note, again, is touched when Sebald exclaims, +in allusion to his murder of Luca, that he was so "wrought upon", +though here, it may be, there is an unconscious reminiscence +of the tenser and more culminative cry of Othello, "but being wrought, +perplext in the extreme." Still more profound a touch is that where Ottima, +daring her lover to the "one thing that must be done; you know what thing: +Come in and help to carry," says, with affected lightsomeness, +"This dusty pane might serve for looking-glass," and simultaneously exclaims, +as she throws them rejectingly from her nervous fingers, "Three, four -- +four grey hairs!" then with an almost sublime coquetry of horror +turns abruptly to Sebald, saying with a voice striving vainly to be blithe -- + + "Is it so you said + A plait of hair should wave across my neck? + No -- this way." + +Who has not been moved by the tragic grandeur of the verse, as well as +by the dramatic intensity of the episode of the lovers' "crowning night"? + + "Ottima. The day of it too, Sebald! + When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat, + Its black-blue canopy suffered descend + Close on us both, to weigh down each to each, + And smother up all life except our life. + So lay we till the storm came. + Sebald. How it came! + Ottima. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect; + Swift ran the searching tempest overhead; + And ever and anon some bright white shaft + Burned thro' 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 ----" + +Surely there is nothing in all our literature more poignantly dramatic +than this first part of "Pippa Passes". The strains which Pippa sings +here and throughout are as pathetically fresh and free as a thrush's song +in the heart of a beleaguered city, and as with the same unconsidered magic. +There is something of the mavis-note, liquid falling tones, +caught up in a moment in joyous caprice, in + + "Give her but a least excuse to love me! + When -- where ----" + +No one of these songs, all acutely apt to the time and the occasion, +has a more overwhelming effect than that which interrupts Ottima and Sebald +at the perilous summit of their sin, beyond which lies utter darkness, +behind which is the narrow twilit backward way. + + "Ottima. Bind it thrice about my brow; + Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, + Magnificent in sin. Say that! + Sebald. I crown you + My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, + Magnificent . . . + + [From without is heard the voice of PIPPA singing --] + + 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! + [PIPPA passes.] + Sebald. God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? + Who spoke?" + +This sweet voice of Pippa reaches the guilty lovers, +reaches Luigi in his tower, hesitating between love and patriotic duty, +reaches Jules and Phene when all the happiness of their unborn years +trembles in the balance, reaches the Prince of the Church +just when his conscience is sore beset by a seductive temptation, +reaches one and all at a crucial moment in the life of each. +The ethical lesson of the whole poem is summed up in + + "All service ranks the same with God -- + With God, whose puppets, best and worst, + Are we: there is no last nor first," + +and in + + "God's in his heaven -- + All's right with the world!" + +"With God there is no lust of Godhood," says Rossetti in "Hand and Soul": +`Und so ist der blaue Himmel grosser als jedes Gewoelk darin, +und dauerhafter dazu,' meditates Jean Paul: "There can be nothing good, +as we know it, nor anything evil, as we know it, in the eye +of the Omnipresent and the Omniscient," utters the Oriental mystic. + +It is interesting to know that many of the nature touches were indirectly +due to the poet's solitary rambles, by dawn, sundown, and "dewy eve", +in the wooded districts south of Dulwich, at Hatcham, and upon +Wimbledon Common, whither he was often wont to wander and to ramble for hours, +and where he composed one day the well-known lines upon Shelley, +with many another unrecorded impulse of song. Here, too, it was, +that Carlyle, riding for exercise, was stopped by `a beautiful youth', +who introduced himself as one of the philosopher's profoundest admirers. + +It was from the Dulwich wood that, one afternoon in March, +he saw a storm glorified by a double rainbow of extraordinary beauty; +a memorable vision, recorded in an utterance of Luigi to his mother: +here too that, in autumnal dusks, he saw many a crescent moon +with "notched and burning rim." He never forgot the bygone +"sunsets and great stars" he saw in those days of his fervid youth. +Browning remarked once that the romance of his life was in his own soul; +and on another occasion I heard him smilingly add, to some one's +vague assertion that in Italy only was there any romance left, +"Ah, well, I should like to include poor old Camberwell!" +Perhaps he was thinking of his lines in "Pippa Passes", of the days +when that masterpiece came ebullient from the fount of his genius -- + + "May's warm slow yellow moonlit summer nights -- + Gone are they, but I have them in my soul!" + +There is all the distinction between "Pippa Passes" and "Sordello" +that there is between the Venus of Milos and a gigantic Theban Sphinx. +The latter is, it is true, proportionate in its vastness; +but the symmetry of mere bulk is not the `symmetria prisca' +of ideal sculpture. I have already alluded to "Sordello" +as a derelict upon the ocean of poetry. This, indeed, it still seems to me, +notwithstanding the well-meaning suasion of certain admirers of the poem +who have hoped "I should do it justice," thereby meaning +that I should eulogise it as a masterpiece. It is a gigantic effort, +of a kind; so is the sustained throe of a wrestling Titan. +That the poem contains much which is beautiful is undeniable, +also that it is surcharged with winsome and profound thoughts +and a multitude of will-o'-the-wisp-like fancies which all shape +towards high thinking. + +But it is monotonous as one of the enormous American inland seas +to a lover of the ocean, to whom the salt brine is as the breath of delight. +The fatal facility of the heroic couplet to lapse into diffuseness, +has, coupled with a warped anxiety for irreducible concision, +been Browning's ruin here. + +There is one charge even yet too frequently made against "Sordello", +that of "obscurity". Its interest may be found remote, +its treatment verbose, its intricacies puzzling to those +unaccustomed to excursions from the familiar highways of old usage, +but its motive thought is not obscure. It is a moonlit plain +compared with the "silva oscura" of the "Divina Commedia". + +Surely this question of Browning's obscurity was expelled +to the Limbo of Dead Stupidities when Mr. Swinburne, +in periods as resplendent as the whirling wheels of Phoebus Apollo's chariot, +wrote his famous incidental passage in his "Essay on Chapman". + +Too probably, in the dim disintegrating future which will reduce +all our o'ertoppling extremes, "Sordello" will be as little read +as "The Faerie Queene", and, similarly, only for the gleam +of the quenchless lamps amid its long deserted alleys and stately avenues. +Sadly enough, for to poets it will always be an unforgotten land -- +a continent with amaranth-haunted Vales of Tempe, where, +as Spenser says in one of the Aeclogues of "The Shepherd's Calendar", +they will there oftentimes "sitten as drouned in dreme." + +It has, for those who are not repelled, a charm all its own. +I know of no other poem in the language which is at once +so wearisome and so seductive. How can one explain paradoxes? +There is a charm, or there is none: that is what it amounts to, +for each individual. `Tutti ga i so gusti, e mi go i mii' -- +"everybody follows his taste, and I follow mine," as the Venetian saying, +quoted by Browning at the head of his Rawdon Brown sonnet, has it. + +All that need be known concerning the framework of "Sordello", +and of the real Sordello himself, will be found in the various +Browning hand-books, in Mr. Nettleship's and other dissertations, +and, particularly, in Mrs. Dall's most circumspect and able historical essay. +It is sufficient here to say that while the Sordello and Palma of the poet +are traceable in the Cunizza and the strange comet-like Sordello +of the Italian and Provencal Chronicles (who has his secure immortality, +by Dante set forth in leonine guise -- `a guisa di leon quando si posa' -- +in the "Purgatorio"), both these are the most shadowy of prototypes. +The Sordello of Browning is a typical poetic soul: the narrative +of the incidents in the development of this soul is adapted to +the historical setting furnished by the aforesaid Chronicles. +Sordello is a far more profound study than Aprile in "Paracelsus", in whom, +however, he is obviously foreshadowed. The radical flaw in his nature +is that indicated by Goethe of Heine, that "he had no heart." +The poem is the narrative of his transcendent aspirations, +and more or less futile accomplishment. + +It would be vain to attempt here any adequate excerption +of lines of singular beauty. Readers familiar with the poem +will recall passage after passage -- among which there is probably none +more widely known than the grandiose sunset lines: -- + + "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 upon its bearer's hand + In one long flare of crimson; as a brand, + The woods beneath lay black." . . . + +What haunting lines there are, every here and there -- such as those of Palma, +with her golden hair like spilt sunbeams, or those on Elys, with her + + "Few fine locks + Coloured like honey oozed from topmost rocks + Sun-blanched the livelong summer," . . . + +or these, + + "Day by day + New pollen on the lily-petal grows, + And still more labyrinthine buds the rose ----" + +or, once more, + + "A touch divine -- + And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod; + Visibly through his garden walketh God ----" + +But, though sorely tempted, I must not quote further, save only +the concluding lines of the unparalleled and impassioned address to Dante: -- + + "Dante, pacer of the shore + Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, + Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume, + Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope + Into a darkness quieted by hope; + Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye + In gracious twilights where his chosen lie ----" + . . . . . + +It is a fair land, for those who have lingered in its byways: +but, alas, a troubled tide of strange metres, of desperate rhythms, +of wild conjunctions, of panic-stricken collocations, +oftentimes overwhelms it. "Sordello" grew under the poet's fashioning till, +like the magic vapour of the Arabian wizard, it passed beyond his control, +"voluminously vast." + +It is not the truest admirers of what is good in it who will refuse +to smile at the miseries of conscientious but baffled readers. +Who can fail to sympathise with Douglas Jerrold when, +slowly convalescent from a serious illness, he found among +some new books sent him by a friend a copy of "Sordello". +Thomas Powell, writing in 1849, has chronicled the episode. +A few lines, he says, put Jerrold in a state of alarm. +Sentence after sentence brought no consecutive thought to his brain. +At last the idea occurred to him that in his illness his mental faculties +had been wrecked. The perspiration rolled from his forehead, +and smiting his head he sank back on the sofa, crying, "O God, +I AM an idiot!" A little later, adds Powell, when Jerrold's +wife and sister entered, he thrust "Sordello" into their hands, +demanding what they thought of it. He watched them intently while they read. +When at last Mrs. Jerrold remarked, "I don't understand what this man means; +it is gibberish," her delighted husband gave a sigh of relief and exclaimed, +"Thank God, I am NOT an idiot!" + +Many friends of Browning will remember his recounting this incident +almost in these very words, and his enjoyment therein: +though he would never admit justification for such puzzlement. + +But more illustrious personages than Douglas Jerrold were puzzled by the poem. +Lord Tennyson manfully tackled it, but he is reported to have admitted +in bitterness of spirit: "There were only two lines in it that I understood, +and they were both lies; they were the opening and closing lines, +`Who will may hear Sordello's story told,' and `Who would has heard +Sordello's story told!'" Carlyle was equally candid: "My wife," he writes, +"has read through `Sordello' without being able to make out +whether `Sordello' was a man, or a city, or a book." + +In an article on this poem, in a French magazine, M. Odysse Barot +quotes a passage where the poet says "God gave man two faculties" -- +and adds, "I wish while He was about it (`pendant qu'il etait en train') +God had supplied another -- viz., the power of understanding Mr. Browning." + +And who does not remember the sad experience of generous and delightful +Gilead P. Beck, in "The Golden Butterfly": how, after "Fifine at the Fair", +frightful symptoms set in, till in despair he took up +"Red Cotton Nightcap Country", and fell for hours into a dull comatose misery. +"His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in disorder about his head, +his cheeks were flushed, his hands were trembling, the nerves in his face +were twitching. Then he arose, and solemnly cursed Robert Browning. +And then he took all his volumes, and, disposing them carefully +in the fireplace, set light to them. `I wish,' he said, +`that I could put the poet there too.'" One other anecdote of the kind +was often, with evident humorous appreciation, recounted by the poet. +On his introduction to the Chinese Ambassador, as a "brother-poet", +he asked that dignitary what kind of poetic expression +he particularly affected. The great man deliberated, +and then replied that his poetry might be defined as "enigmatic". +Browning at once admitted his fraternal kinship. + +That he was himself aware of the shortcomings of "Sordello" as a work of art +is not disputable. In 1863, Mrs. Orr says, he considered the advisability +of "rewriting it in a more transparent manner, but concluded that the labour +would be disproportionate to the result, and contented himself +with summarising the contents of each `book' in a continuous heading, +which represents the main thread of the story." + +The essential manliness of Browning is evident in the famous dedication +to the French critic Milsand, who was among his early admirers. +"My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book such +would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either? +I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since." + +Whatever be the fate of "Sordello", one thing pertinent to it shall survive: +the memorable sentence in the dedicatory preface -- "My stress lay on +the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study." + +The poem has disastrous faults, but is a magnificent failure. +"Vast as night," to borrow a simile from Victor Hugo, but, like night, +innumerously starred. + + + + +Chapter 6. + + + +"Pippa Passes", "The Ring and the Book", "The Inn Album", these are Browning's +three great dramatic poems, as distinct from his poetic plays. +All are dramas in the exact sense, though the three I have named +are dramas for mental and not for positive presentation. +Each reader must embody for himself the images projected on his brain by +the electric quality of the poet's genius: within the ken of his imagination +he may perceive scenes not less moving, incidents not less thrilling, +complexities of motive and action not less intricately involved, +than upon the conventional stage. + +The first is a drama of an idea, the second of the immediate and remote +consequences of a single act, the third of the tyranny of the passions. + +I understand the general opinion among lovers and earnest students +of Browning's poetry to be that the highest peaks of his genius +tower from the vast tableland of "The Ring and the Book"; +that thenceforth there was declension. But Browning is not to be measured +by common estimates. It is easy to indicate, in the instances of many poets, +just where the music reaches its sweetest, its noblest, +just where the extreme glow wanes, just where the first shadows +come leaping like greyhounds, or steal almost imperceptibly +from slow-closing horizons. + +But with Browning, as with Shakespeare, as with Victor Hugo, +it is difficult for our vision to penetrate the glow +irradiating the supreme heights of accomplishment. Like Balzac, +like Shakespeare again, he has revealed to us a territory so vast, +that while we bow down before the sun westering athwart distant Andes, +the gold of sunrise is already flashing behind us, upon the shoulder of Atlas. + +It is certain that "The Ring and the Book" is unique. +Even Goethe's masterpiece had its forerunners, as in Marlowe's "Faustus", +and its ambitious offspring, as in Bailey's "Festus". +But is it a work of art? Here is the only vital question +which at present concerns us. + +It is altogether useless to urge, as so many admirers of Browning do, +that "The Ring and the Book" is as full of beauties as the sea is of waves. +Undeniably it is, having been written in the poet's maturity. +But, to keep to the simile, has this epical poem the unity of ocean? +Does it consist of separate seas, or is it really one, as the wastes +which wash from Arctic to Antarctic, through zones temperate and equatorial, +are yet one and indivisible? If it have not this unity it is still +a stupendous accomplishment, but it is not a work of art. And though art +is but the handmaiden of genius, what student of Comparative Literature +will deny that nothing has survived the ruining breath of Time -- +not any intellectual greatness nor any spiritual beauty, +that is not clad in perfection, be it absolute or relative -- +for relative perfection there is, despite the apparent paradox. + +The mere bulk of "The Ring and the Book" is, in point of art, nothing. +One day, after the publication of this poem, Carlyle hailed the author +with enthusiastic praise in which lurked damning irony: +"What a wonderful fellow you are, Browning: you have written +a whole series of `books' about what could be summed up +in a newspaper paragraph!" Here, Carlyle was at once right and wrong. +The theme, looked at dispassionately, is unworthy of the monument +in which it is entombed for eternity. But the poet looked upon +the central incident as the inventive mechanician regards +the tiny pivot remote amid the intricate maze of his machinery. +Here, as elsewhere, Browning's real subject is too often confounded +with the accidents of the subject. His triumph is not that he has created +so huge a literary monument, but rather that, notwithstanding its bulk, +he has made it shapely and impressive. Stress has frequently been laid +on the greatness of the achievement in the writing of twelve long poems +in the exposition of one theme. Again, in point of art, what significance +has this? None. There is no reason why it should not have been +in nine or eleven parts; no reason why, having been demonstrated in twelve, +it should not have been expanded through fifteen or twenty. +Poetry ever looks askance at that gipsy-cousin of hers, "Tour-de-force". + +Of the twelve parts -- occupying in all about twenty-one thousand lines -- +the most notable as poetry are those which deal with the plea +of the implicated priest, Caponsacchi, with the meditation of the Pope, +and with the pathetic utterance of Pompilia. It is not a dramatic poem +in the sense that "Pippa Passes" is, for its ten Books +(the first and twelfth are respectively introductory and appendical) +are monologues. "The Ring and the Book", in a word, +consists, besides the two extraneous parts, of ten monodramas, +which are as ten huge facets to a poetic Koh-i-Noor. + +The square little Italian volume, in its yellow parchment +and with its heavy type, which has now found a haven in Oxford, +was picked up by Browning for a `lira' (about eightpence), +on a second-hand bookstall in the Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence, +one June day, 1865. Therein is set forth, in full detail, all the particulars +of the murder of his wife Pompilia, for her supposed adultery, +by a certain Count Guido Franceschini; and of that noble's trial, +sentence, and doom. It is much the same subject matter +as underlies the dramas of Webster, Ford, and other Elizabethan poets, +but subtlety of insight rather than intensity of emotion and situation +distinguishes the Victorian dramatist from his predecessors. +The story fascinated Browning, who, having in this book and elsewhere mastered +all the details, conceived the idea of writing the history of the crime +in a series of monodramatic revelations on the part of the individuals +more or less directly concerned. The more he considered the plan +the more it shaped itself to a great accomplishment, and early in 1866 +he began the most ambitious work of his life. + +An enthusiastic admirer has spoken of the poem as "one of the most +extraordinary feats of which we have any record in literature." +But poetry is not mental gymnastics. All this insistence upon +"extraordinary feats" is to be deprecated: it presents the poet as Hercules, +not as Apollo: in a word, it is not criticism. The story is one +of vulgar fraud and crime, romantic to us only because the incidents +occurred in Italy, in the picturesque Rome and Arezzo of two centuries ago. +The old bourgeois couple, Pietro and Violante Comparini, +manage to wed their thirteen-year-old putative daughter +to a middle-aged noble of Arezzo. They expect the exquisite repute +of an aristocratic connection, and other tangible advantages. +He, impoverished as he is, looks for a splendid dowry. +No one thinks of the child-wife, Pompilia. She becomes the scapegoat, +when the gross selfishness of the contracting parties stands revealed. +Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia suffers. +When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave her husband, +whom she now dreads as well as dislikes. Since the child is to be +the inheritor of her parents' wealth, she will not leave it +to the tender mercies of Count Guido. A young priest, a canon of Arezzo, +Giuseppe Caponsacchi, helps her to escape. In due course she gives birth +to a son. She has scarce time to learn the full sweetness of her maternity +ere she is done to death like a trampled flower. Guido, who has held himself +thrall to an imperative patience, till his hold upon the child's dowry +should be secure, hires four assassins, and in the darkness of night +betakes himself to Rome. He and his accomplices enter the house +of Pietro Comparini and his wife, and, not content with slaying them, +also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, and Guido +is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence alone is damnatory, +for she was not slain outright, and lingers long enough to tell her story. +Franceschini is not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply avenged +the wrong done to him by his wife's adulterous connection +with the priest Caponsacchi. But even in the Rome of that evil day +justice was not extinct. Guido's motive is proved to be false; +he himself is condemned to death. An appeal to the Pope is futile. +Finally, the wretched man pays the too merciful penalty of his villainy. + +There is nothing grand, nothing noble here: at most only a tragic pathos +in the fate of the innocent child-wife Pompilia. It is clear, therefore, +that the greatness of "The Ring and the Book" must depend even less +upon its subject, its motive, than upon its being "an extraordinary feat" +in the gymnastics of verse. + +In a sense, Browning's longest work is akin to that of his wife. +Both "The Ring and the Book" and "Aurora Leigh" are metrical novels. +The one is discursive in episodes and spiritual experiences: +the other in intricacies of evidence. But there the parallel ends. +If "The Ring and the Book" were deflowered of its blooms of poetry +and rendered into a prose narrative, it might interest a barrister +"getting up" a criminal case, but it would be much inferior to, +say, "The Moonstone"; its author would be insignificant beside +the ingenious M. Gaboriau. The extraordinariness of the feat +would then be but indifferently commented upon. + +As neither its subject, nor its extraordinariness as a feat, nor its method, +will withstand a searching examination, we must endeavour to discern +if transcendent poetic merit be discoverable in the treatment. +To arrive at a just estimate it is needful to free the mind +not merely from preconceptions, but from that niggardliness of insight +which can perceive only the minor flaws and shortcomings almost inevitable +to any vast literary achievement, and be blind to the superb merits. +One must prepare oneself to listen to a new musician, with mind and body +alert to the novel harmonies, and oblivious of what other musicians +have done or refrained from doing. + +"The Ring and the Book", as I have said, was not begun in the year +of its imagining.* It is necessary to anticipate the biographical narrative, +and state that the finding of the parchment-booklet happened +in the fourth year of the poet's widowerhood, for his happy married period +of less than fifteen years came to a close in 1861. + +-- +* The title is explained as follows: -- "The story of the Franceschini case, + as Mr. Browning relates it, forms a circle of evidence + to its one central truth; and this circle was constructed + in the manner in which the worker in Etruscan gold + prepares the ornamental circlet which will be worn as a ring. + The pure metal is too soft to bear hammer or file; + it must be mixed with alloy to gain the necessary power of resistance. + The ring once formed and embossed, the alloy is disengaged, + and a pure gold ornament remains. Mr. Browning's material + was also inadequate to his purpose, though from a different cause. + It was too HARD. It was `pure crude fact', secreted from the fluid being + of the men and women whose experience it had formed. In its existing state + it would have broken up under the artistic attempt to weld and round it. + He supplied an alloy, the alloy of fancy, or -- as he also calls it -- + of one fact more: this fact being the echo of those past existences + awakened within his own. He breathed into the dead record + the breath of his own life; and when his ring of evidence had re-formed, + first in elastic then in solid strength, here delicately incised, + there broadly stamped with human thought and passion, + he could cast fancy aside, and bid his readers recognise + in what he set before them unadulterated human truth." -- Mrs. Orr. +-- + +On the afternoon of the day on which he made his purchase +he read the book from end to end. "A Spirit laughed and leapt +through every limb." The midsummer heats had caused thunder-clouds +to congregate above Vallombrosa and the whole valley of Arno: +and the air in Florence was painfully sultry. The poet stood by himself +on his terrace at Casa Guidi, and as he watched the fireflies +wandering from the enclosed gardens, and the sheet-lightnings +quivering through the heated atmosphere, his mind was busy +in refashioning the old tale of loveless marriage and crime. + + "Beneath + I' the street, quick shown by openings of the sky + When flame fell silently from cloud to cloud, + Richer than that gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes, + The townsmen walked by twos and threes, and talked, + Drinking the blackness in default of air -- + A busy human sense beneath my feet: + While in and out the terrace-plants, and round + One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned + The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower." + +Scene by scene was re-enacted, though of course only +in certain essential details. The final food for the imagination +was found in a pamphlet of which he came into possession of in London, +where several important matters were given which had no place +in the volume he had picked up in Florence. + +Much, far the greater part, of the first "book" is -- interesting! +It is mere verse. As verse, even, it is often so involved, +so musicless occasionally, so banal now and again, so inartistic +in colour as well as in form, that one would, having apprehended +its explanatory interest, pass on without regret, were it not +for the noble close -- the passionate, out-welling lines to "the truest poet +I have ever known," the beautiful soul who had given her all to him, +whom, but four years before he wrote these words, he had laid to rest +among the cypresses and ilexes of the old Florentine garden of the dead. + + "O lyric Love, half angel and half bird + And all a wonder and a wild desire, -- + Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, + Took sanctuary within the holier blue, + And sang a kindred soul out to his face, -- + Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart -- + When the first summons from the darkling earth + Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, + And bared them of the glory -- to drop down, + To toil for man, to suffer or to die, -- + This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? + Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help! + Never may I commence my song, my due + To God who best taught song by gift of thee, + Except with bent head and beseeching hand -- + That still, despite the distance and the dark, + What was, again may be; some interchange + Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought, + Some benediction anciently thy smile: + -- Never conclude, but raising hand and head + Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn + For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, + Their utmost up and on, -- so blessing back + In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, + Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud, + Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!" + . . . . . + +Thereafter, for close upon five thousand words, the poem descends again +to the level of a versified tale. It is saved from ruin +by subtlety of intellect, striking dramatic verisimilitude, +an extraordinary vigour, and occasional lines of real poetry. +Retrospectively, apart from the interest, often strained to the utmost, +most readers, I fancy, will recall with lingering pleasure +only the opening of "The Other Half Rome", the description of Pompilia, +"with the patient brow and lamentable smile," with flower-like body, +in white hospital array -- a child with eyes of infinite pathos, +"whether a flower or weed, ruined: who did it shall account to Christ." + +In these three introductory books we have the view of the matter +taken by those who side with Count Guido, of those who are all for Pompilia, +and of the "superior person", impartial because superciliously indifferent, +though sufficiently interested to "opine". + +In the ensuing three books a much higher poetic level is reached. +In the first, Guido speaks; in the second, Caponsacchi; the third, +that lustrous opal set midway in the "Ring", is Pompilia's narrative. +Here the three protagonists live and move before our eyes. +The sixth book may be said to be the heart of the whole poem. +The extreme intellectual subtlety of Guido's plea stands quite unrivalled +in poetic literature. In comparing it, for its poetic beauty, +with other sections, the reader must bear in mind that +in a poem of a dramatic nature the dramatic proprieties must be dominant. +It would be obviously inappropriate to make Count Guido Franceschini +speak with the dignity of the Pope, with the exquisite pathos of Pompilia, +with the ardour, like suppressed molten lava, of Caponsacchi. +The self-defence of the latter is a superb piece of dramatic writing. +Once or twice the flaming volcano of his heart bursts upward uncontrollably, +as when he cries -- + + "No, sirs, I cannot have the lady dead! + That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye, + That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!) -- + That vision of the pale electric sword + Angels go armed with -- that was not the last + O' the lady. Come, I see through it, you find, + Know the manoeuvre! Also herself said + I had saved her: do you dare say she spoke false? + Let me see for myself if it be so!" + +Than the poignant pathos and beauty of "Pompilia", there is nothing +more exquisite in our literature. It stands alone. Here at last +we have the poet who is the Lancelot to Shakespeare's Arthur. +It takes a supreme effort of genius to be as simple as a child. +How marvellously, after the almost sublime hypocrisy of the end of +Guido's defence, after the beautiful dignity of Caponsacchi's closing words, +culminating abruptly in the heart-wrung cry, "O great, just, good God! +miserable me!" -- how marvellously comes upon the reader +the delicate, tearful tenderness of the innocent child-wife -- + + "I am just seventeen years and five months old, + And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks; + 'Tis writ so in the church's register, + Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names + At length, so many names for one poor child, + -- Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela + Pompilia Comparini -- laughable!" + +Only two writers of our age have depicted women with that imaginative insight +which is at once more comprehensive and more illuminative than +women's own invision of themselves -- Robert Browning and George Meredith, +but not even the latter, most subtle and delicate of all analysts +of the tragi-comedy of human life, has surpassed "Pompilia". +The meeting and the swift uprising of love between Lucy and Richard, +in "The Ordeal of Richard Feveral", is, it is true, within the highest reach +of prose romance: but between even the loftiest height of prose romance +and the altitudes of poetry, there is an impassable gulf. + +And as it is with simplicity so it is with tenderness. +Only the sternly strong can be supremely tender. And infinitely tender +is the poetry of "Pompilia" -- + + "Oh, how good God is that my babe was born, + -- Better than born, baptised and hid away + Before this happened, safe from being hurt! + That had been sin God could not well forgive: + HE WAS TOO YOUNG TO SMILE AND SAVE HIMSELF ----" + +or the lines which tell how as a little girl she gave her roses +not to the spick and span Madonna of the Church, but to the poor, +dilapidated Virgin, "at our street-corner in a lonely niche," +with the babe that had sat upon her knees broken off: +or that passage, with its exquisite naivete, where Pompilia relates +why she called her boy Gaetano, because she wished "no old name +for sorrow's sake," so chose the latest addition to the saints, +elected only twenty-five years before -- + + "So, carefuller, perhaps, + To guard a namesake than those old saints grow, + Tired out by this time, -- see my own five saints!" + +or these -- + + "Thus, all my life, + I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades. + -- Even to my babe! I thought, when he was born, + Something began for once that would not end, + Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay + For evermore, eternally quite mine ----" + +once more -- + + "One cannot judge + Of what has been the ill or well of life + The day that one is dying. . . . + Now it is over, and no danger more . . . + To me at least was never evening yet + But seemed far beautifuller than its day, + For past is past ----" + +Lovely, again, are the lines in which she speaks of +the first "thrill of dawn's suffusion through her dark," +the "light of the unborn face sent long before:" or those unique lines +of the starved soul's Spring (ll. 1512-27): or those, +of the birth of her little one -- + + "A whole long fortnight; in a life like mine + A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much. + All women are not mothers of a boy. . . . + I never realised God's birth before -- + How he grew likest God in being born. + This time I felt like Mary, had my babe + Lying a little on my breast like hers." + +When she has weariedly, yet with surpassing triumph, +sighed out her last words -- + + "God stooping shows sufficient of His light + For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise ----" + +who does not realise that to life's end he shall not forget +that plaintive voice, so poignantly sweet, that ineffable dying smile, +those wistful eyes with so much less of earth than heaven? + +But the two succeeding "books" are more tiresome and more unnecessary +than the most inferior of the three opening sections -- the first of the two, +indeed, is intolerably wearisome, a desolate boulder-strewn gorge +after the sweet air and sunlit summits of "Caponsacchi" and "Pompilia". +In the next "book" Innocent XII. is revealed. All this section +has a lofty serenity, unsurpassed in its kind. It must be read +from first to last for its full effect, but I may excerpt one passage, +the high-water mark of modern blank-verse: -- + + "For the main criminal I have no hope + Except in such a suddenness of fate. + I stood at Naples once, a night so dark + I could have scarce conjectured there was earth + Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: + But the night's black was burst through by a blaze ---- + Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, + Through her whole length of mountain visible: + There lay the city thick and plain with spires, + And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. + So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, + And Guido see, one instant, and be saved." + +Finally comes that throbbing, terrible last "book" where the murderer +finds himself brought to bay and knows that all is lost. +Who can forget its unparalleled close, when the wolf-like Guido suddenly, +in his supreme agony, transcends his lost manhood in one despairing cry -- + + "Abate, -- Cardinal, -- Christ, -- Maria, -- God, . . . + Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" + +Lastly, the Epilogue rounds off the tale. But is this Epilogue necessary? +Surely the close should have come with the words just quoted? + +It will not be after a first perusal that the reader will be able to arrive +at a definite conviction. No individual or collective estimate of to-day +can be accepted as final. Those who come after us, perhaps not +the next generation, nor the next again, will see "The Ring and the Book" +free of all the manifold and complex considerations +which confuse our judgment. Meanwhile, each can only speak for himself. +To me it seems that "The Ring and the Book" is, regarded as an artistic whole, +the most magnificent failure in our literature. It enshrines poetry +which no other than our greatest could have written; +it has depths to which many of far inferior power have not descended. +Surely the poem must be judged by the balance of its success and failure? +It is in no presumptuous spirit, but out of my profound admiration +of this long-loved and often-read, this superb poem, that I, for one, +wish it comprised but the Prologue, the Plea of Guido, +"Caponsacchi", "Pompilia", "The Pope", and Guido's last Defence. +I cannot help thinking that this is the form in which it will be read +in the years to come. Thus circumscribed, it seems to me +to be rounded and complete, a great work of art void of the dross, +the mere debris which the true artist discards. But as it is, +in all its lordly poetic strength and flagging impulse, is it not, after all, +the true climacteric of Browning's genius? + +"The Inn Album", a dramatic poem of extraordinary power, +has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, +at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence. +This analogy of the tidal ebb and flow may be observed with singular aptness +in Browning's life-work -- the tide that first moved shoreward +in the loveliness of "Pauline", and, with "long withdrawing roar," +ebbed in slow, just perceptible lapse to the poet's penultimate volume. +As for "Asolando", I would rather regard it as the gathering of a new wave -- +nay, again rather, as the deep sound of ocean which the outward surge +has reached. + +But for myself I do not accept "The Inn Album" as the first +hesitant swing of the tide. I seem to hear the resilient undertone +all through the long slow poise of "The Ring and the Book". +Where then is the full splendour and rush of the tide, +where its culminating reach and power? + +I should say in "Men and Women"; and by "Men and Women" +I mean not merely the poems comprised in the collection so entitled, +but all in the "Dramatic Romances", "Lyrics", and the "Dramatis Personae", +all the short pieces of a certain intensity of note and quality of power, +to be found in the later volumes, from "Pacchiarotto" to "Asolando". + +And this because, in the words of the poet himself when speaking of Shelley, +I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply the high -- +and, seeing it, to hold by it. Yet I am not oblivious of the mass +of Browning's lofty achievement, "to be known enduringly among men," -- +an achievement, even on its secondary level, so high, that around +its imperfect proportions, "the most elaborated productions of ordinary art +must arrange themselves as inferior illustrations." + +How am I to convey concisely that which it would take a volume +to do adequately -- an idea of the richest efflorescence of Browning's genius +in these unfading blooms which we will agree to include in "Men and Women"? +How better -- certainly it would be impossible to be more succinct -- +than by the enumeration of the contents of an imagined volume, +to be called, say "Transcripts from Life"? + +It would be to some extent, but not rigidly, arranged chronologically. +It would begin with that masterpiece of poetic concision, +where a whole tragedy is burned in upon the brain in fifty-six lines, +"My Last Duchess". Then would follow "In a Gondola", +that haunting lyrical drama `in petto', where the lover is stabbed to death +as his heart is beating against that of his mistress; "Cristina", +with its keen introspection; those delightfully stirring pieces, +the "Cavalier Tunes", "Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr", +and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"; "The Flower's Name"; +"The Flight of the Duchess"; "The Tomb at St. Praxed's", the poem +which educed Ruskin's enthusiastic praise for its marvellous apprehension +of the spirit of the Middle Ages; "Pictor Ignotus", and "The Lost Leader". +But as there is not space for individual detail, and as many +of the more important are spoken of elsewhere in this volume, +I must take the reader's acquaintance with the poems for granted. +So, following those first mentioned, there would come +"Home Thoughts from Abroad"; "Home Thoughts from the Sea"; +"The Confessional"; "The Heretic's Tragedy"; "Earth's Immortalities"; +"Meeting at Night: Parting at Morning"; "Saul"; "Karshish"; +"A Death in the Desert"; "Rabbi Ben Ezra"; "A Grammarian's Funeral"; +"Love Among the Ruins"; Song, "Nay but you"; "A Lover's Quarrel"; +"Evelyn Hope"; "A Woman's Last Word"; "Fra Lippo Lippi"; +"By the Fireside"; "Any Wife to Any Husband"; "A Serenade at the Villa"; +"My Star"; "A Pretty Woman"; "A Light Woman"; "Love in a Life"; +"Life in a Love"; "The Last Ride Together"; "A Toccata of Galuppi's"; +"Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha"; "Abt Vogler"; "Memorabilia"; +"Andrea Del Sarto"; "Before"; "After"; "In Three Days"; "In a Year"; +"Old Pictures in Florence"; "De Gustibus"; "Women and Roses"; +"The Guardian Angel"; "Cleon"; "Two in the Campagna"; "One Way of Love"; +"Another Way of Love"; "Misconceptions"; "May and Death"; "James Lee's Wife"; +"Dis Aliter Visum"; "Too Late"; "Confessions"; "Prospice"; "Youth and Art"; +"A Face"; "A Likeness"; "Apparent Failure". Epilogue to Part I. -- +"O Lyric Voice", etc., from end of First Part of "The Ring and the Book". +Part II. -- "Herve Riel"; "Amphibian"; "Epilogue to Fifine"; +"Pisgah Sights"; "Natural Magic"; "Magical Nature"; "Bifurcation"; +"Numpholeptos"; "Appearances"; "St. Martin's Summer"; "A Forgiveness"; +Epilogue to Pacchiarotto volume; Prologue to "La Saisiaz"; +Prologue to "Two Poets of Croisic"; "Epilogue"; "Pheidippides"; +"Halbert and Hob"; "Ivan Ivanovitch"; "Echetlos"; "Muleykeh"; +"Pan and Luna"; "Touch him ne'er so lightly"; Prologue to "Jocoseria"; +"Cristina and Monaldeschi"; "Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli"; "Ixion"; +"Never the Time and the Place"; Song, "Round us the wild creatures"; +Song, "Wish no word unspoken"; Song, "You groped your way"; Song, "Man I am"; +Song, "Once I saw"; "Verse-making"; "Not with my Soul Love"; +"Ask not one least word of praise"; "Why from the world"; +"The Round of Day" (Pts. 9, 10, 11, 12 of Gerard de Lairesse); +Prologue to "Asolando"; "Rosny"; "Now"; "Poetics"; "Summum Bonum"; +"A Pearl"; "Speculative"; "Inapprehensiveness"; "The Lady and the Painter"; +"Beatrice Signorini"; "Imperante Augusto"; "Rephan"; "Reverie"; +Epilogue to "Asolando" (in all, 122). + +But having drawn up this imaginary anthology, possibly with +faults of commission and probably with worse errors of omission, +I should like to take the reader into my confidence concerning +a certain volume, originally compiled for my own pleasure, though not +without thought of one or two dear kinsmen of a scattered Brotherhood -- +a volume half the size of the projected Transcripts, and rare as that star +in the tip of the moon's horn of which Coleridge speaks. + +`Flower o' the Vine', so it is called, has for double-motto these two lines +from the Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto volume -- + + "Man's thoughts and loves and hates! + Earth is my vineyard, these grew there ----" + +and these words, already quoted, from the Shelley Essay, +"I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply the high." + +I. From "Pauline"*1* -- 1. "Sun-treader, life and light +be thine for ever!" 2. The Dawn of Beauty; 3. Andromeda; 4. Morning. +II. "Heap Cassia, Sandal-buds," etc. (song from "Paracelsus"). +III. "Over the Sea our Galleys went" (song from "Paracelsus"). +IV. The Joy of the World ("Paracelsus").*2* V. From "Sordello" -- +1. Sunset;*3* 2. The Fugitive Ethiop;*4* 3. Dante.*5* +VI. Ottima and Sebald (Pt. 1, "Pippa Passes"). VII. Jules and Phene +(Pt. 2, "Pippa Passes"). VIII. My Last Duchess. IX. In a Gondola. +X. Home Thoughts from Abroad (1 and 2). XI. Meeting at Night: +Parting at Morning. XII. A Grammarian's Funeral. +XIII. Saul. XIV. Rabbi Ben Ezra. XV. Love among the Ruins. +XVI. Evelyn Hope. XVII. My Star. XVIII. A Toccata of Galuppi's. +XIX. Abt Vogler. XX. Memorabilia. XXI. Andrea del Sarto. +XXII. Two in the Campagna. XXIII. James Lee's Wife. XXIV. Prospice. +XXV. From "The Ring and the Book" -- 1. O Lyric Love (The Invocation: +26 lines); 2. Caponsacchi (ll. 2069 to 2103); 3. Pompilia (ll. 181 to 205); +4. Pompilia (ll. 1771 to 1845); 5. The Pope (ll. 2017 to 2228); +6. Count Guido (Book 11, ll. 2407 to 2427). XXVI. Prologue to "La Saisiaz". +XXVII. Prologue to "Two Poets of Croisic". XXVIII. Epilogue to +"Two Poets of Croisic". XXIX. Never the Time and Place. +XXX. "Round us the Wild Creatures," etc. (song from "Ferishtah's Fancies"). +XXXI. "The Walk" (Pts. 9, 10, 11, 12, of "Gerard de Lairesse"). +XXXII. "One word more" (To E. B. B.).*6* + +-- +*1* The first, from the line quoted, extends through 55 lines -- + "To see thee for a moment as thou art." No. 2 consists of the 18 lines + beginning, "They came to me in my first dawn of life." No. 3, + the 11 lines of the Andromeda picture. No. 4, the 59 lines beginning, + "Night, and one single ridge of narrow path" (to "delight"). +*2* No. IV. comprises the 29 lines beginning, "The centre fire + heaves underneath the earth," down to "ancient rapture." +*3* No. V. The 6 lines beginning, "That autumn ere has stilled." +*4* The 22 lines beginning, "As, shall I say, some Ethiop." +*5* The 29 lines beginning, "For he, -- for he." +*6* To these 32 selections there must now be added "Now", "Summum Bonum", + "Reverie", and the "Epilogue", from "Asolando". +-- + +It is here -- I will not say in `Flower o' the Vine', nor even venture +to restrictively affirm it of that larger and fuller compilation +we have agreed, for the moment, to call "Transcripts from Life" -- +it is here, in the worthiest poems of Browning's most poetic period, +that, it seems to me, his highest greatness is to be sought. +In these "Men and Women" he is, in modern times, an unparalleled +dramatic poet. The influence he exercises through these, +and the incalculably cumulative influence which will leaven +many generations to come, is not to be looked for in individuals only, +but in the whole thought of the age, which he has moulded to new form, +animated anew, and to which he has imparted a fresh stimulus. +For this a deep debt is due to Robert Browning. But over and above +this shaping force, this manipulative power upon character and thought, +he has enriched our language, our literature, with a new wealth +of poetic diction, has added to it new symbols, has enabled us +to inhale a more liberal if an unfamiliar air, has, above all, +raised us to a fresh standpoint, a standpoint involving our construction +of a new definition. + +Here, at least, we are on assured ground: here, at any rate, +we realise the scope and quality of his genius. But, let me hasten to add, +he, at his highest, not being of those who would make Imagination +the handmaid of the Understanding, has given us also a Dorado of pure poetry, +of priceless worth. Tried by the severest tests, not merely of substance, +but of form, not merely of the melody of high thinking, but of rare and potent +verbal music, the larger number of his "Men and Women" poems +are as treasurable acquisitions, in kind, to our literature, +as the shorter poems of Milton, of Shelley, of Keats, and of Tennyson. +But once again, and finally, let me repeat that his primary importance +-- not greatness, but importance -- is in having forced us to take up +a novel standpoint, involving our construction of a new definition. + + + + +Chapter 7. + + + +There are, in literary history, few `scenes de la vie privee' +more affecting than that of the greatest of English poetesses, +in the maturity of her first poetic period, lying, like a fading flower, +for hours, for days continuously, in a darkened room in a London house. +So ill was Miss Elizabeth Barrett, early in the second half of the forties, +that few friends, herself even, could venture to hope +for a single one of those Springs which she previsioned so longingly. +To us, looking back at this period, in the light of what we know of a story +of singular beauty, there is an added pathos in the circumstance that, +as the singer of so many exquisite songs lay on her invalid's sofa, +dreaming of things which, as she thought, might never be, +all that was loveliest in her life was fast approaching -- +though, like all joy, not without an equally unlooked-for sorrow. +"I lived with visions for my company, instead of men and women . . . +nor thought to know a sweeter music than they played to me." + +This is not the occasion, and if it were, there would still be imperative need +for extreme concision, whereon to dwell upon the early life +of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The particulars of it are familiar +to all who love English literature: for there is, in truth, +not much to tell -- not much, at least, that can well be told. +It must suffice, here, that Miss Barrett was born on the 4th of March 1809,* +and so was the senior, by three years, of Robert Browning. + +-- +* Should be 1806. See note in Table of Contents. -- A. L., 1996. +-- + +By 1820, in remote Herefordshire, the not yet eleven-year-old poetess +had already "cried aloud on obsolete Muses from childish lips" +in various "nascent odes, epics, and didactics." At this time, she tells us, +the Greeks were her demi-gods, and she dreamt much of Agamemnon. +In the same year, in suburban Camberwell, a little boy was often wont +to listen eagerly to his father's narrative of the same hero, and to all +the moving tale of Troy. It is significant that these two children, +so far apart, both with the light of the future upon their brows, +grew up in familiarity with something of the antique beauty. +It was a lifelong joy to both, that "serene air of Greece". +Many an hour of gloom was charmed away by it for the poetess +who translated the "Prometheus Bound" of Aeschylus, and wrote "The Dead Pan": +many a happy day and memorable night were spent in that "beloved environment" +by the poet who wrote "Balaustion's Adventure" and translated the "Agamemnon". + +The chief sorrow of her life, however, occurred in her thirty-first year. +She never quite recovered from the shock of her well-loved brother Edward's +tragic death, a mysterious disaster, for the foundering of the little yacht +`La Belle Sauvage' is almost as inexplicable as that of the `Ariel' +in the Spezzian waters beyond Lerici. Not only through the ensuing winter, +but often in the dreams of after years, "the sound of the waves +rang in my ears like the moans of one dying." + +The removal of the Barrett household to Gloucester Place, +in Western London, was a great event. Here, invalid though she was, +she could see friends occasionally and get new books constantly. +Her name was well known and became widely familiar when +her "Cry of the Children" rang like a clarion throughout the country. +The poem was founded upon an official report by Richard Hengist Horne, +the friend whom some years previously she had won in correspondence, +and with whom she had become so intimate, though without +personal acquaintance, that she had agreed to write a drama +in collaboration with him, to be called "Psyche Apocalypte", +and to be modelled on "Greek instead of modern tragedy." + +Horne -- a poet of genius, and a dramatist of remarkable power -- +was one of the truest friends she ever had, and, so far as her literary life +is concerned, came next in influence only to her poet-husband. +Among the friends she saw much of in the early forties was a distant "cousin", +John Kenyon -- a jovial, genial, gracious, and altogether delightful man, +who acted the part of Providence to many troubled souls, and, in particular, +was "a fairy godfather" to Elizabeth Barrett and to "the other poet", +as he used to call Browning. It was to Mr. Kenyon -- "Kenyon, +with the face of a Benedictine monk, but the most jovial of good fellows," +as a friend has recorded of him; "Kenyon the Magnificent", +as he was called by Browning -- that Miss Barrett owed her first introduction +to the poetry of her future husband. + +Browning's poetry had for her an immediate appeal. With sure insight +she discerned the special quality of the poetic wealth +of the "Bells and Pomegranates", among which she then and always +cared most for the penultimate volume, the "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics". +Two years before she met the author she had written, +in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" -- + + "Or from Browning some `Pomegranate' which, if cut deep down the middle, + Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." + +A little earlier she had even, unwittingly on either side, +been a collaborateur with "the author of `Paracelsus'." +She gave Horne much aid in the preparation of his "New Spirit of the Age", +and he has himself told us "that the mottoes, which are singularly +happy and appropriate, were for the most part supplied +by Miss Barrett and Robert Browning, then unknown to each other." +One thing and another drew them nearer and nearer. Now it was a poem, +now a novel expression, now a rare sympathy. + +An intermittent correspondence ensued, and both poets became anxious +to know each other. "We artists -- how well praise agrees with us," +as Balzac says. + +A few months later, in 1846, they came to know one another personally. +The story of their first meeting, which has received a wide acceptance, +is apocryphal. The meeting was brought about by Kenyon. +This common friend had been a schoolfellow of Browning's father, +and so it was natural that he took a more than ordinary interest +in the brilliant young poet, perhaps all the more so +that the reluctant tide of popularity which had promised to set in +with such unparalleled sweep and weight had since experienced a steady ebb. + +And so the fates brought these two together. The younger was already +far the stronger, but he had an unbounded admiration for Miss Barrett. +To her, he was even then the chief living poet. She perceived +his ultimate greatness; as early as 1845 had "a full faith in him +as poet and prophet." + +As Browning admitted to a friend, the love between them +was almost instantaneous, a thing of the eyes, mind, and heart -- +each striving for supremacy, till all were gratified equally in a common joy. +They had one bond of sterling union: passion for the art +to which both had devoted their lives. + +To those who love love for love's sake, who `se passionnent pour la passion,' +as Prosper Merimee says, there could scarce be a more sacred spot in London +than that fiftieth house in unattractive Wimpole Street, +where these two poets first met each other; and where, in the darkened room, +"Love quivered, an invisible flame." Elizabeth Barrett was indeed, +in her own words, "as sweet as Spring, as Ocean deep." +She, too, was always, as she wrote of Harriet Martineau, +in a hopeless anguish of body and serene triumph of spirit. +As George Sand says of one of her fictitious personages, +she was an "artist to the backbone; that is, one who feels life +with frightful intensity." To this too keen intensity of feeling +must be attributed something of that longing for repose, +that deep craving for rest from what is too exciting from within, +which made her affirm the exquisite appeal to her of such Biblical passages as +"The Lord of peace Himself give you peace," and "He giveth His Beloved Sleep," +which, as she says in one of her numerous letters to Miss Mitford, +"strike upon the disquieted earth with such a FOREIGNNESS of heavenly music." + +Nor was he whom she loved as a man, as well as revered as a poet, +unworthy of her. His was the robustest poetic intellect of the century; +his the serenest outlook; his, almost the sole unfaltering footsteps +along the perilous ways of speculative thought. A fair life, +irradiate with fairer ideals, conserved his native integrity +from that incongruity between practice and precept so commonly exemplified. +Comely in all respects, with his black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features, +ready and winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous, +expressive gestures -- an inclination of the head, a lift of the eyebrows, +a modulation of the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand, +conveying so much -- and a voice at that time of a singular +penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future +upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate +any woman of kindred nature and sympathies. Over and above these advantages, +he possessed a rare quality of physical magnetism. By virtue of this +he could either attract irresistibly or strongly repel. + +I have several times heard people state that a handshake from Browning +was like an electric shock. Truly enough, it did seem as though +his sterling nature rang in his genially dominant voice, and, again, +as though his voice transmitted instantaneous waves of an electric current +through every nerve of what, for want of a better phrase, +I must perforce call his intensely alive hand. I remember once how a lady, +afflicted with nerves, in the dubious enjoyment of her first experience of +a "literary afternoon", rose hurriedly and, in reply to her hostess' inquiry +as to her motive, explained that she could not sit any longer +beside the elderly gentleman who was talking to Mrs. So-and-so, +as his near presence made her quiver all over, "like a mild attack +of pins-and-needles," as she phrased it. She was chagrined to learn +that she had been discomposed not by `a too exuberant financier', +as she had surmised, but by, as "Waring" called Browning, +the "subtlest assertor of the Soul in song." + +With the same quick insight as she had perceived Robert Browning's +poetic greatness, Elizabeth Barrett discerned his personal worth. +He was essentially manly in all respects: so manly, +that many frail souls of either sex philandered about his over-robustness. +From the twilight gloom of an aesthetic clique came a small voice +belittling the great man as "quite too `loud', painfully excessive." +Browning was manly enough to laugh at all ghoulish cries +of any kind whatsoever. Once in a way the lion would look round +and by a raised breath make the jackals wriggle; as when the poet +wrote to a correspondent, who had drawn his attention +to certain abusive personalities in some review or newspaper: +"Dear Sir -- I am sure you mean very kindly, but I have had +too long an experience of the inability of the human goose +to do other than cackle when benevolent and hiss when malicious, +and no amount of goose criticism shall make me lift a heel +against what waddles behind it." + +Herself one whose happiest experiences were in dreamland, +Miss Barrett was keenly susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song, +nor less keenly attracted by his strenuous and fearless outlook, +his poetic practicality, and even by his bluntness of insight +in certain matters. It was no slight thing to her that she could, +in Mr. Lowell's words, say of herself and of him -- + + "We, who believe life's bases rest + Beyond the probe of chemic test." + +She rejoiced, despite her own love for remote imaginings, +to know that he was of those who (to quote again from the same fine poet) + + ". . . wasted not their breath in schemes + Of what man might be in some bubble-sphere, + As if he must be other than he seems + Because he was not what he should be here, + Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams;" + +that, in a word, while `he could believe the promise of to-morrow,' he was +at the same time supremely conscious of `the wondrous meaning of to-day.' + +Both, from their youth onward, had travelled `on trails divine +of unimagined laws.' It was sufficient for her that he kept his eyes +fixed on the goal beyond the way he followed: it did not matter +that he was blind to the dim adumbrations of novel byways, +of strange Calvarys by the wayside, so often visible to her. + +Their first meeting was speedily followed by a second -- by a third -- +and then? When we know not, but ere long, each found that happiness +was in the bestowal of the other. + +The secret was for some time kept absolutely private. From the first +Mr. Barrett had been jealous of his beloved daughter's new friend. +He did not care much for the man, he with all the prejudices +and baneful conservatism of the slave-owning planter, the other +with ardent democratic sentiments and a detestation of all forms of iniquity. +Nor did he understand the poet. He could read his daughter's flowing verse +with pleasure, but there was to his ear a mere jumble of sound and sense +in much of the work of the author of "The Tomb at St. Praxed's" +and "Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis". Of a selfishly genial but also +of a violent and often sullen nature, he resented more and more any friendship +which threatened to loosen the chain of affection and association +binding his daughter to himself. + +Both the lovers believed that an immediate marriage would, +from every point of view, be best. It was not advisable that it should be +long delayed, if to happen at all, for the health of Miss Barrett was so poor +that another winter in London might, probably would, mean irretrievable harm. + +Some time before this she had become acquainted with Mrs. Jameson, +the eminent art-writer. The regard, which quickly developed +to an affectionate esteem, was mutual. One September morning +Mrs. Jameson called, and after having dwelt on the gloom and peril +of another winter in London, dwelt on the magic of Italy, +and concluded by inviting Miss Barrett to accompany her +in her own imminent departure for abroad. The poet was touched and grateful, +but, pointing to her invalid sofa, and gently emphasising +her enfeebled health and other difficult circumstances, +excused herself from acceptance of Mrs. Jameson's generous offer. + +In the "Memoirs of Mrs. Jameson" that lady's niece, Mrs. Macpherson, +relates how on the eve of her and her aunt's departure, +a little note of farewell arrived from Miss Barrett, "deploring the writer's +inability to come in person and bid her friend good-bye, +as she was `forced to be satisfied with the sofa and silence.'" + +It is easy to understand, therefore, with what amazement Mrs. Jameson, +shortly after her arrival in Paris, received a letter from Robert Browning +to the effect that he AND HIS WIFE had just come from London, +on their way to Italy. "My aunt's surprise was something almost comical," +writes Mrs. Macpherson, "so startling and entirely unexpected was the news." +And duly married indeed the two poets had been! + +From the moment the matter was mooted to Mr. Barrett, he evinced +his repugnance to the idea. To him even the most foolish assertion of his own +was a sacred pledge. He called it "pride in his word": others recognised it +as the very arrogance of obstinacy. He refused to countenance the marriage +in any way, refused to have Browning's name mentioned in his presence, +and even when his daughter told him that she had definitely made up her mind, +he flatly declined to acknowledge as even possible what was indeed +very imminent. + +Nor did he ever step down from his ridiculous pinnacle of wounded self-love. +Favourite daughter though she had been, Mr. Barrett never forgave her, +held no communication with her even when she became a mother, +and did not mention her in his will. It is needless to say anything more +upon this subject. What Mr. and Mrs. Browning were invariably reticent upon +can well be passed over with mere mention of the facts. + +At the last moment there had been great hurry and confusion. +But nevertheless, on the forenoon of the 12th of September 1846, +Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett had unceremoniously +stepped into St. Mary-le-bone Church and there been married. +So secret had the matter been kept that even such old friends +as Richard Hengist Horne and Mr. Kenyon were in ignorance of the event +for some time after it had actually occurred. + +Mrs. Jameson made all haste to the hotel where the Brownings were, +and ultimately persuaded them to leave the hotel for the quieter `pension' +in the Rue Ville d'Eveque, where she and Mrs. Macpherson were staying. +Thereafter it was agreed that, as soon as a fortnight had gone by, +they should journey to Italy together. + +Truly enough, as Mrs. Macpherson says, the journey must have been "enchanting, +made in such companionship." Before departing from Paris, +Mrs. Jameson, in writing to a friend, alluded to her unexpected companions, +and added, "Both excellent: but God help them! for I know not how +the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this prosaic world." +This kindly friend was not the only person who experienced similar doubts. +One acquaintance, no other than the Poet-Laureate, Wordsworth, added: +"So, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett have gone off together! +Well, I hope they may understand each other -- nobody else could!" + +As a matter of fact they did, and to such good intent +that they seem never to have had one hour of dissatisfaction, +never one jar in the music of their lives. + +What a happy wayfaring through France that must have been! +The travelling had to be slow, and with frequent interruptions, +on account of Mrs. Browning's health: yet she steadily improved, +and was almost from the start able to take more exercise, +and to be longer in the open air than had for long been her wont. +They passed southward, and after some novel experiences in `diligences', +reached Avignon, where they rested for a couple of days. +Thence a little expedition, a poetical pilgrimage, was made to Vaucluse, +sacred to the memory of Petrarch and Laura. There, as Mrs. Macpherson +has told us, at the very source of the "chiare, fresche e dolce acque," +Browning took his wife up in his arms, and, carrying her across +through the shallow curling waters, seated her on a rock +that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus, indeed, +did love and poetry take a new possession of the spot immortalised +by Petrarch's loving fancy. + +Three weeks passed happily before Pisa, the Brownings' destination, +was reached. But even then the friends were unwilling to part, +and Mrs. Jameson and her niece remained in the deserted old city +for a score of days longer. So wonderful was the change +wrought in Mrs. Browning by happiness, and by all the enfranchisement +her marriage meant for her, that, as her friend wrote to Miss Mitford, +"she is not merely improved but transformed." In the new sunshine +which had come into her life, she blossomed like a flower-bud +long delayed by gloom and chill. Her heart, in truth, was like a lark +when wafted skyward by the first spring-wind. + +At last to her there had come something of that peace she had longed for, +and though, in the joy of her new life, her genius "like an Arab bird +slept floating in the wind," it was with that restful hush +which precedes the creative storm. There is something deeply pathetic +in her conscious joy. So little actual experience of life had been hers that +in many respects she was as a child: and she had all the child's yearning +for those unsullied hours that never come when once they are missed. +But it was not till love unfastened the inner chambers of her heart and brain +that she realised to the full, what she had often doubted, +how supreme a thing mere life is. It was in some such mood +that she wrote the lovely forty-second of the "Sonnets from the Portuguese", +closing thus -- + + "Let us stay + Rather on earth, Beloved, -- where the unfit + Contrarious moods of men recoil away + And isolate pure spirits, and permit + A place to stand and love in for a day, + With darkness and the death-hour rounding it." + +As for Browning's love towards his wife, nothing more tender and chivalrous +has ever been told of ideal lovers in an ideal romance. +It is so beautiful a story that one often prefers it +to the sweetest or loftiest poem that came from the lips of either. +That love knew no soilure in the passage of the years. +Like the flame of oriental legend, it was perennially incandescent +though fed not otherwise than by sunlight and moonshine. +If it alone survive, it may resolve the poetic fame of either +into one imperishable, luminous ray of white light: as the uttered song +fused in the deathless passion of Sappho gleams star-like down the centuries +from the high steep of Leucadoe. + +It was here, in Pisa, I have been told on indubitable authority, +that Browning first saw in manuscript those "Sonnets from the Portuguese" +which no poet of Portugal had ever written, which no man could have written, +which no other woman than his wife could have composed. +From the time when it had first dawned upon her that love was to be hers, +and that the laurel of poetry was not to be her sole coronal, +she had found expression for her exquisite trouble in these short poems, +which she thinly disguised from `inner publicity' when she issued them +as "from the Portuguese". + +It is pleasant to think of the shy delight with which the delicate, +flower-like, almost ethereal poet-wife, in those memorable Pisan evenings -- +with the wind blowing soundingly from the hills of Carrara, +or quiescent in a deep autumnal calm broken only by the slow wash of Arno +along the sea-mossed long-deserted quays -- showed her love-poems +to her husband. With what love and pride he must have read +those outpourings of the most sensitive and beautiful nature he had ever met, +vials of lovely thought and lovelier emotion, all stored against +the coming of a golden day. + + "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. + I love thee to the depth and breadth and height + My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight + For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. + I love thee to the level of every day's + Most quiet need, by sun and candle light. + I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; + I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. + I love thee with the passion put to use + In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. + I love thee with a love I seemed to lose + With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath, + Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose, + I shall but love thee better after Death!" + +Even such heart-music as this cannot have thrilled him more +than these two exquisite lines, with their truth almost too poignant +to permit of serene joy -- + + "I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange + My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee!" + +Their Pisan home was amid sacred associations. It was situate +in an old palazzo built by Vasari, within sight of the Leaning Tower +and the Duomo. There, in absolute seclusion, they wrote and planned. +Once and again they made a pilgrimage to the Lanfranchi Palace +"to walk in the footsteps of Byron and Shelley": occasionally they went +to Vespers in the Duomo, and listened, rapt, to the music wandering spirally +through the vast solitary building: once they were fortunate +in hearing the impressive musical mass for the dead, in the Campo Santo. +They were even reminded often of their distant friend Horne, +for every time they crossed one of the chief piazzas +they saw the statue of Cosimo de Medici looking down upon them. + +In this beautiful old city, so full of repose as it lies "asleep in the sun," +Mrs. Browning's health almost leapt, so swift was her advance towards vigour. +"She is getting better every day," wrote her husband, +"stronger, better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes." + +That happy first winter they passed "in the most secluded manner, +reading Vasari, and dreaming dreams of seeing Venice in the summer." +But early in April, when the swallows had flown inland +above the pines of Viareggio, and Shelley's favourite little Aziola +was hooting silverly among the hollow vales of Carrara, +the two poets prepared to leave what the frailer of them called +"this perch of Pisa." + +But with all its charm and happy associations, the little city was dull. +"Even human faces divine are quite `rococo' with me," +Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend. The change to Florence +was a welcome one to both. Browning had already been there, +but to his wife it was as the fulfilment of a dream. +They did not at first go to that romantic old palace +which will be for ever sociate with the author of "Casa Guidi Windows", +but found accommodation in a more central locality. + +When the June heats came, husband and wife both declared for Ancona, +the picturesque little town which dreams out upon the Adriatic. +But though so close to the sea, Ancona is in summer time +almost insufferably hot. Instead of finding it cooler than Florence, +it was as though they had leapt right into a cauldron. +Alluding to it months later, Mrs. Browning wrote to Horne, +"The heat was just the fiercest fire of your imagination, +and I SEETHE to think of it at this distance." + +It was a memorable journey all the same. They went to Ravenna, +and at four o'clock one morning stood by Dante's tomb, moved deeply +by the pathetic inscription and by all the associations it evoked. +All along the coast from Ravenna to Loretto was new ground to both, +and endlessly fascinating; in the passing and repassing of the Apennines +they had `wonderful visions of beauty and glory.' At Ancona itself, +notwithstanding the heat, they spent a happy season. +Here Browning wrote one of the loveliest of his short poems, +"The Guardian Angel", which had its origin in Guercino's picture +in the chapel at Fano. By the allusions in the sixth and eighth stanzas +it is clear that the poem was inscribed to Alfred Domett, +the poet's well-loved friend immortalised as "Waring". +Doubtless it was written for no other reason than the urgency of song, +for in it are the loving allusions to his wife, "MY angel with me too," +and "my love is here." Three times they went to the chapel, +he tells us in the seventh stanza, to drink in to their souls' content +the beauty of "dear Guercino's" picture. Browning has rarely uttered +the purely personal note of his inner life. It is this that affords +a peculiar value to "The Guardian Angel", over and above its technical beauty. +In the concluding lines of the stanzas I am about to quote +he gives the supreme expression to what was his deepest faith, +his profoundest song-motive. + + "I would not look up thither past thy head + Because the door opes, like that child, I know, + For I should have thy gracious face instead, + Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low + Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, + And lift them up to pray, and gently tether + Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread? + + . . . . . + + "How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired! + I think how I should view the earth and skies + And sea, when once again my brow was bared + After thy healing, with such different eyes. + O world, as God has made it! All is beauty: + And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. + What further may be sought for or declared?" + +After the Adriatic coast was left, they hesitated as to returning to Florence, +the doctors having laid such stress on the climatic suitability of Pisa +for Mrs. Browning. But she felt so sure of herself in her new strength +that it was decided to adventure upon at least one winter in the queen-city. +They were fortunate in obtaining a residence in the old palace +called Casa Guidi, in the Via Maggiore, over against the church of San Felice, +and here, with a few brief intervals, they lived till death separated them. + +On the little terrace outside there was more noble verse +fashioned in the artist's creative silence than we can ever be aware of: +but what a sacred place it must ever be for the lover of poetry! +There, one ominous sultry eve, Browning, brooding over the story +of a bygone Roman crime, foreshadowed "The Ring and the Book", +and there, in the many years he dwelt in Casa Guidi, he wrote +some of his finer shorter poems. There, also, "Aurora Leigh" was born, +and many a lyric fresh with the dew of genius. Who has not looked +at the old sunworn house and failed to think of that night +when each square window of San Felice was aglow with festival lights, +and when the summer lightnings fell silently in broad flame +from cloud to cloud: or has failed to hear, down the narrow street, +a little child go singing, 'neath Casa Guidi windows by the church, +`O bella liberta, O bella!' + +Better even than these, for happy dwelling upon, is the poem +the two poets lived. Morning and day were full of work, study, +or that pleasurable idleness which for the artist is so often +his best inspiration. Here, on the little terrace, they used to sit together, +or walk slowly to and fro, in conversation that was only less eloquent +than silence. Here one day they received a letter from Horne. +There is nothing of particular note in Mrs. Browning's reply, +and yet there are not a few of her poems we would miss rather than +these chance words -- delicate outlines left for the reader to fill in: +"We were reading your letter, together, on our little terrace -- +walking up and down reading it -- I mean the letter to Robert -- +and then, at the end, suddenly turning, lo, just at the edge of the stones, +just between the balustrades, and already fluttering in a breath of wind +and about to fly away over San Felice's church, we caught a glimpse +of the feather of a note to E. B. B. How near we were to the loss of it, +to be sure!" + +Happier still must have been the quiet evenings in late spring and summer, +when, the one shrouded against possible chills, the other bare-headed +and with loosened coat, walked slowly to and fro in the dark, +conscious of "a busy human sense" below, but solitary on their balcony +beyond the lamplit room. + + "While in and out the terrace-plants, and round + One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned + The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower." + +An American friend has put on record his impressions of the two poets, +and their home at this time. He had been called upon by Browning, +and by him invited to take tea at Casa Guidi the same evening. +There the visitor saw, "seated at the tea-table of the great room +of the palace in which they were living, a very small, very slight woman, +with very long curls drooping forward, almost across the eyes, +hanging to the bosom, and quite concealing the pale, small face, +from which the piercing inquiring eyes looked out sensitively at the stranger. +Rising from her chair, she put out cordially the thin white hand +of an invalid, and in a few moments they were pleasantly chatting, +while the husband strode up and down the room, joining in the conversation +with a vigour, humour, eagerness, and affluence of curious lore which, +with his trenchant thought and subtle sympathy, make him +one of the most charming and inspiring of companions." + +In the autumn the same friend, joined by one or two other acquaintances, +went with the Brownings to Vallombrosa for a couple of days, +greatly to Mrs. Browning's delight, for whom the name had had +a peculiar fascination ever since she had first encountered it in Milton. + +She was conveyed up the steep way towards the monastery in a great basket, +without wheels, drawn by two oxen: though, as she tells Miss Mitford, +she did not get into the monastery after all, she and her maid +being turned away by the monks "for the sin of womanhood." +She was too much of an invalid to climb the steeper heights, +but loved to lie under the great chestnuts upon the hill-slopes +near the convent. At twilight they went to the little convent-chapel, +and there Browning sat down at the organ and played +some of those older melodies he loved so well. + +It is, strangely enough, from Americans that we have the best account +of the Brownings in their life at Casa Guidi: from R. H. Stoddart, +Bayard Taylor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Stillman Hillard, and W. W. Story. +I can find room, however, for but one excerpt: -- + +== +"Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, could hardly enter +the loved rooms now, and speak above a whisper. They who have been +so favoured, can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture +and pianoforte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour -- +the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions +of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning -- the long room filled +with plaster-casts and studies, which was Mrs. Browning's retreat -- +and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room where SHE always sat. +It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon +the iron-grey church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room +that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. +The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreary look, which was enhanced +by the tapestry-covered walls, and the old pictures of saints +that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large bookcases +constructed of specimens of Florentine carving selected by Mr. Browning +were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered +with more gaily-bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. +Dante's grave profile, a cast of Keats's face and brow taken after death, +a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon, +Mrs. Browning's good friend and relative, little paintings +of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, +and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, +and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, +were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, +and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the door. +A small table, strewn with writing materials, books, and newspapers, +was always by her side. . . . After her death, her husband +had a careful water-colour drawing made of this room, +which has been engraved more than once. It still hangs in his drawing-room, +where the mirror and one of the quaint chairs above named still are. +The low arm-chair and small table are in Browning's study -- +with his father's desk, on which he has written all his poems." +-- W. W. Story. +== + +To Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, Mr. Hillard, and Mr. Story, +in particular, we are indebted for several delightful glimpses +into the home-life of the two poets. We can see Mrs. Browning +in her "ideal chamber", neither a library nor a sitting-room, +but a happy blending of both, with the numerous old paintings +in antique Florentine frames, easy-chairs and lounges, +carved bookcases crammed with books in many languages, +bric-a-brac in any quantity, but always artistic, flowers everywhere, +and herself the frailest flower of all. + +Mr. Hillard speaks of the happiness of the Brownings' home +and their union as perfect: he, full of manly power, +she, the type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. +This much-esteemed friend was fascinated by Mrs. Browning. +Again and again he alludes to her exceeding spirituality: +"She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl:" +her frame "the transparent veil for a celestial and mortal spirit:" +and those fine words which prove that he too was of the brotherhood +of the poets, "Her tremulous voice often flutters over her words +like the flame of a dying candle over the wick." + + + + +Chapter 8. + + + +With the flower-tide of spring in 1849 came a new happiness to the two poets: +the son who was born on the 9th of March. The boy was called +Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the second name, in remembrance of Browning's +much-loved mother, having been substituted for the "Sarianna" +wherewith the child, if a girl, was to have been christened. +Thereafter their "own young Florentine" was an endless joy and pride to both: +and he was doubly loved by his father for his having brought a renewal of life +to her who bore him. + +That autumn they went to the country, to the neighbourhood of Vallombrosa, +and then to the Bagni di Lucca. There they wandered content +in chestnut-forests, and gathered grapes at the vintage. + +Early in the year Browning's "Poetical Works" were published in two volumes. +Some of the most beautiful of his shorter poems are to be found therein. +What a new note is struck throughout, what range of subject there is! +Among them all, are there any more treasurable than two of the simplest, +"Home Thoughts from Abroad" and "Night and Morning"? + + "Oh, to be in England + Now that April's there, + And whoever wakes in England + Sees, some morning, unaware, + That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf + Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, + While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough + In England -- now! + + And after April, when May follows, + And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! + Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge + Leans to the field and scatters on the clover + Blossoms and dewdrops -- at the bent spray's edge -- + That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, + Lest you should think he never could recapture + The first fine careless rapture!" + +A more significant note is struck in "Meeting at Night" +and "Parting at Morning". + + Meeting. + + I. + + The grey sea and the long black land; + And the yellow half-moon large and low; + And the startled little waves that leap + In fiery ringlets from their sleep, + As I gain the cove with pushing prow, + And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. + + II. + + Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; + Three fields to cross till a farm appears; + A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch + And blue spurt of a lighted match, + And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, + Than the two hearts beating each to each! + + Parting. + + Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, + And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: + And straight was a path of gold for him, + And the need of a world of men for me. + +The following winter, when they were again at their Florentine home, +Browning wrote his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day", that remarkable +`apologia' for Christianity, and close-reasoned presentation +of the religious thought of the time. It is, however, for this reason +that it is so widely known and admired: for it is ever easier +to attract readers by dogma than by beauty, by intellectual argument +than by the seduction of art. Coincidently, Mrs. Browning wrote +the first portion of "Casa Guidi Windows". + +In the spring of 1850 husband and wife spent a short stay in Rome. +I have been told that the poem entitled `Two in the Campagna' +was as actually personal as the already quoted "Guardian Angel". +But I do not think stress should be laid on this and kindred localisations. +Exact or not, they have no literary value. To the poet, +the dramatic poet above all, locality and actuality of experience are, +so to say, merely fortunate coigns of outlook, for the winged genius to +temporally inhabit. To the imaginative mind, truth is not simply actuality. +As for `Two in the Campagna': it is too universally true +to be merely personal. There is a gulf which not the profoundest search +can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: +the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply +who recognise most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying +isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe +in the absolute union of two spirits. If this were demonstratable, +immortality would be a palpable fiction. The moment individuality +can lapse to fusion, that moment the tide has ebbed, the wind has fallen, +the dream has been dreamed. So long as the soul remains inviolate +amid all shock of time and change, so long is it immortal. +No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and fail to be aware, +often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of this insuperable isolation +even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a kiss, +in the evanishing sigh of some one or other exquisite moment. +The poem tells us how the lovers, straying hand in hand one May day +across the Campagna, sat down among the seeding grasses, content at first +in the idle watching of a spider spinning her gossamer threads +from yellowing fennel to other vagrant weeds. All around them + + "The champaign with its endless fleece + Of feathery grasses everywhere! + Silence and passion, joy and peace, + An everlasting wash of air -- . . . + + "Such life here, through such length of hours, + Such miracles performed in play, + Such primal naked forms of flowers, + Such letting nature have her way." . . . + +Let us too be unashamed of soul, the poet-lover says, +even as earth lies bare to heaven. Nothing is to be overlooked. +But all in vain: in vain "I drink my fill at your soul's springs." + + "Just when I seemed about to learn! + Where is the thread now? off again! + The old trick! Only I discern -- + Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn." + +It was during this visit to Rome that both were gratified by the proposal +in the leading English literary weekly, that the Poet-Laureateship, +vacant by the death of Wordsworth, should be conferred upon Mrs. Browning: +though both rejoiced when they learned that the honour had devolved upon one +whom each so ardently admired as Alfred Tennyson. In 1851 a visit was paid +to England, not one very much looked forward to by Mrs. Browning, +who had never had cause to yearn for her old home in Wimpole Street, +and who could anticipate no reconciliation with her father, +who had persistently refused even to open her letters to him, +and had forbidden the mention of her name in his home circle. + +Bayard Taylor, in his travel-sketches published under the title +"At Home and Abroad", has put on record how he called upon the Brownings +one afternoon in September, at their rooms in Devonshire Street, +and found them on the eve of their return to Italy. + +In his cheerful alertness, self-possession, and genial suavity +Browning impressed him as an American rather than as an Englishman, +though there can be no question but that no more thorough Englishman +than the poet ever lived. It is a mistake, of course, +to speak of him as a typical Englishman: for typical he was not, +except in a very exclusive sense. Bayard Taylor describes him +in reportorial fashion as being apparently about seven-and-thirty +(a fairly close guess), with his dark hair already streaked with grey +about the temples: with a fair complexion, just tinged with faintest olive: +eyes large, clear, and grey, and nose strong and well-cut, +mouth full and rather broad, and chin pointed, though not prominent: +about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, but slender at the waist, +with movements expressive of a combination of vigour and elasticity. +With due allowance for the passage of five-and-thirty years, +this description would not be inaccurate of Browning the septuagenarian. + +They did not return direct to Italy after all, but wintered in Paris +with Robert Browning the elder, who had retired to a small house +in a street leading off the Champs Elysees. The pension he drew +from the Bank of England was a small one, but, with what he otherwise had, +was sufficient for him to live in comfort. The old gentleman's health +was superb to the last, for he died in 1866 without ever having known +a day's illness. + +Spring came out and found them still in Paris, Mrs. Browning +enthusiastic about Napoleon III. and interested in spiritualism: +her husband serenely sceptical concerning both. In the summer +they again went to London: but they appear to have seen more +of Kenyon and other intimate friends than to have led a busy social life. +Kenyon's friendship and good company never ceased to have a charm +for both poets. Mrs. Browning loved him almost as a brother: +her husband told Bayard Taylor, on the day when that +good poet and charming man called upon them, and after another visitor +had departed -- a man with a large rosy face and rotund body, +as Taylor describes him -- "there goes one of the most splendid men living -- +a man so noble in his friendship, so lavish in his hospitality, +so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known +all over the world as Kenyon the Magnificent." + +In the early autumn a sudden move towards Italy was again made, +and after a few weeks in Paris and on the way the Brownings found themselves +at home once more in Casa Guidi. + +But before this, probably indeed before they had left Paris for London, +Mr. Moxon had published the now notorious Shelley forgeries. +These were twenty-five spurious letters, but so cleverly manufactured +that they at first deceived many people. In the preceding November +Browning had been asked to write an introduction to them. +This he had gladly agreed to do, eager as he was for a suitable opportunity +of expressing his admiration for Shelley. When the letters reached him, +he found that, genuine or not, though he never suspected they were forgeries, +they contained nothing of particular import, nothing that afforded +a just basis for what he had intended to say. Pledged as he was, however, +to write something for Mr. Moxon's edition of the Letters, he set about +the composition of an Essay, of a general as much as of an individual nature. +This he wrote in Paris, and finished by the beginning of December. +It dealt with the objective and subjective poet; on the relation +of the latter's life to his work; and upon Shelley in the light of +his nature, art, and character. Apart from the circumstance that +it is the only independent prose writing of any length from Browning's pen, +this is an exceptionally able and interesting production. + +Dr. Furnivall deserves general gratitude for his obtaining +the author's leave to re-issue it, and for having published it +as one of the papers of the Browning Society. As that enthusiastic student +and good friend of the poet says in his "foretalk" to the reprint, +the essay is noteworthy, not merely as a signal service +to Shelley's fame and memory, but for Browning's statement of his own aim +in his own work, both as objective and subjective poet. +The same clearsightedness and impartial sympathy, which are +such distinguishing characteristics of his dramatic studies +of human thought and emotion, are obvious in Browning's Shelley essay. +"It would be idle to enquire," he writes, "of these two kinds +of poetic faculty in operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. +If the subjective might seem to be the ultimate requirement of every age, +the objective in the strictest state must still retain its original value. +For it is with this world, as starting-point and basis alike, +that we shall always have to concern ourselves; the world is not to be learned +and thrown aside, but reverted to and reclaimed." + +Of its critical subtlety -- the more remarkable as by a poet-critic +who revered Shelley the poet and loved and believed in Shelley the man -- +the best example, perhaps, is in those passages where he alludes +to the charge against the poet's moral nature -- "charges which, +if substantiated to their wide breadth, would materially disturb, +I do not deny, our reception and enjoyment of his works, however wonderful +the artistic qualities of these. For we are not sufficiently supplied +with instances of genius of his order to be able to pronounce certainly +how many of its constituent parts have been tasked and strained +to the production of a given lie, and how high and pure +a mood of the creative mind may be dramatically simulated +as the poet's habitual and exclusive one." + +The large charity, the liberal human sympathy, the keen +critical acumen of this essay, make one wish that the author +had spared us a "Sludge the Medium" or a "Pacchiarotto", +or even a "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau", and given us more +of such honourable work in "the other harmony". + +Glad as the Brownings were to be home again at Casa Guidi, +they could not enjoy the midsummer heats of Florence, +and so went to the Baths of Lucca. It was a delight for them +to ramble among the chestnut-woods of the high Tuscan forests, +and to go among the grape-vines where the sunburnt vintagers were busy. +Once Browning paid a visit to that remote hill-stream and waterfall, +high up in a precipitous glen, where, more than three-score years earlier, +Shelley had been wont to amuse himself by sitting naked on a rock +in the sunlight, reading `Herodotus' while he cooled, and then plunging +into the deep pool beneath him -- to emerge, further up stream, +and then climb through the spray of the waterfall till he was like +a glittering human wraith in the middle of a dissolving rainbow. + +Those Tuscan forests, that high crown of Lucca, must always +have special associations for lovers of poetry. Here Shelley lived, +rapt in his beautiful dreams, and translated the `Symposium' +so that his wife might share something of his delight in Plato. +Here, ten years later, Heine sneered, and laughed and wept, +and sneered again -- drank tea with "la belle Irlandaise", +flirted with Francesca "la ballerina", and wrote alternately +with a feathered quill from the breast of a nightingale and with a lancet +steeped in aquafortis: and here, a quarter of a century afterward, +Robert and Elizabeth Browning also laughed and wept and "joyed i' the sun," +dreamed many dreams, and touched chords of beauty whose vibration has become +incorporated with the larger rhythm of all that is high and enduring +in our literature. + +On returning to Florence (Browning with the MS. of the greater part +of his splendid fragmentary tragedy, "In a Balcony", composed mainly +while walking alone through the forest glades), Mrs. Browning found +that the chill breath of the `tramontana' was affecting her lungs, +so a move was made to Rome, for the passing of the winter (1853-4). +In the spring their little boy, their beloved "Pen",* became ill with malaria. +This delayed their return to Florence till well on in the summer. +During this stay in Rome Mrs. Browning rapidly proceeded with "Aurora Leigh", +and Browning wrote several of his "Men and Women", including the exquisite +`Love among the Ruins', with its novel metrical music; +`Fra Lippo Lippi', where the painter, already immortalised by Landor, +has his third warrant of perpetuity; the `Epistle of Karshish' (in part); +`Memorabilia' (composed on the Campagna); `Saul', a portion of which +had been written and published ten years previously, +that noble and lofty utterance, with its trumpet-like note +of the regnant spirit; the concluding part of "In a Balcony"; +and `Holy Cross Day' -- besides, probably, one or two others. +In the late spring (April 27th) also, he wrote the short dactylic lyric, +`Ben Karshook's Wisdom'. This little poem was given to a friend +for appearance in one of the then popular `Keepsakes' -- literally given, +for Browning never contributed to magazines. The very few exceptions +to this rule were the result of a kindliness stronger than scruple: +as when (1844), at request of Lord Houghton (then Mr. Monckton Milnes), +he sent `Tokay', the `Flower's Name', and `Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis', +to "help in making up some magazine numbers for poor Hood, +then at the point of death from hemorrhage of the lungs, +occasioned by the enlargement of the heart, which had been brought on +by the wearing excitement of ceaseless and excessive literary toil." +As `Ben Karshook's Wisdom', though it has been reprinted in several quarters, +will not be found in any volume of Browning's works, and was omitted from +"Men and Women" by accident, and from further collections by forgetfulness, +it may be fitly quoted here. Karshook, it may be added, +is the Hebraic word for a thistle. + + I. + + "`Would a man 'scape the rod?' -- + Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, + `See that he turns to God + The day before his death.' + + `Ay, could a man inquire + When it shall come!' I say. + The Rabbi's eye shoots fire -- + `Then let him turn to-day!' + + II. + + Quoth a young Sadducee, -- + `Reader of many rolls, + Is it so certain we + Have, as they tell us, souls?' -- + + `Son, there is no reply!' + The Rabbi bit his beard: + `Certain, a soul have _I_ ---- + WE may have none,' he sneer'd. + + Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, + The Right-Hand Temple column, + Taught babes their grace in grammar, + And struck the simple, solemn." + +-- +* So-called, it is asserted, from his childish effort to pronounce + a difficult name (Wiedemann). But despite the good authority + for this statement, it is impossible not to credit rather + the explanation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, + affords the practically definite proof that the boy was at first, + as a term of endearment, called "Pennini", which was later abbreviated + to "Pen". The cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of "Apennino", + which was bestowed upon the boy in babyhood because he was very small, + there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called "Apennino". + + [See Mrs. Orr's "Life and Letters of Robert Browning" (now online) + for a different opinion. -- A. L., 1996.] +-- + +It was in this year (1855) that "Men and Women" was published. +It is difficult to understand how a collection comprising poems +such as "Love among the Ruins", "Evelyn Hope", "Fra Lippo Lippi", +"A Toccata of Galuppi's", "Any Wife to any Husband", +"Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha", "Andrea del Sarto", "In a Balcony", "Saul", +"A Grammarian's Funeral", to mention only ten now almost universally known, +did not at once obtain a national popularity for the author. +But lovers of literature were simply enthralled: and the two volumes +had a welcome from them which was perhaps all the more ardent +because of their disproportionate numbers. Ears alert to novel poetic music +must have thrilled to the new strain which sounded first -- +"Love among the Ruins", with its Millet-like opening -- + + "Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, + Miles and miles + On the solitary pastures where our sheep + Half asleep + Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop + As they crop -- + Was the site once of a city great and gay . . ." + +Soon after the return to Florence, which, hot as it was, was preferable +in July to Rome, Mrs. Browning wrote to her frequent correspondent +Miss Mitford, and mentioned that about four thousand lines +of "Aurora Leigh" had been written. She added a significant passage: +that her husband had not seen a single line of it up to that time -- +significant, as one of the several indications that the union +of Browning and his wife was indeed a marriage of true minds, +wherein nothing of the common bane of matrimonial life found existence. +Moreover, both were artists, and, therefore, too full of respect +for themselves and their art to bring in any way the undue influence +of each other into play. + +By the spring of 1856, however, the first six "books" were concluded: +and these, at once with humility and pride, Mrs. Browning placed +in her husband's hands. The remaining three books were written, +in the summer, in John Kenyon's London house. + +It was her best, her fullest answer to the beautiful dedicatory poem, +"One Word More", wherewith her husband, a few months earlier, +sent forth his "Men and Women", to be for ever associated with "E. B. B." + + I. + + "There they are, my fifty men and women + Naming me the fifty poems finished! + Take them, Love, the book and me together: + Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. + + . . . . . + + XVIII. + + This I say of me, but think of you, Love! + This to you -- yourself my moon of poets! + Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder, + Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you! + There, in turn I stand with them and praise you -- + Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. + But the best is when I glide from out them, + Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, + Come out on the other side, the novel + Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, + Where I hush and bless myself with silence." + +The transference from Florence to London was made in May. +In the summer "Aurora Leigh" was published, and met with +an almost unparalleled success: even Landor, most exigent of critics, +declared that he was "half drunk with it," that it had an imagination +germane to that of Shakespeare, and so forth. + +The poem was dedicated to Kenyon, and on their homeward way +the Brownings were startled and shocked to hear of his sudden death. +By the time they had arrived at Casa Guidi again they learned +that their good friend had not forgotten them in the disposition +of his large fortune. To Browning he bequeathed six thousand, +to Mrs. Browning four thousand guineas. This loss was followed +early in the ensuing year (1857) by the death of Mr. Barrett, +steadfast to the last in his refusal of reconciliation with his daughter. + +Winters and summers passed happily in Italy -- with one period +of feverish anxiety, when the little boy lay for six weeks dangerously ill, +nursed day and night by his father and mother alternately -- +with pleasant occasionings, as the companionship for a season +of Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family, or of weeks spent at Siena +with valued and lifelong friends, W. W. Story, the poet-sculptor, +and his wife. + +So early as 1858 Mrs. Hawthorne believed she saw the heralds of death +in Mrs. Browning's excessive pallor and the hectic flush upon the cheeks, +in her extreme fragility and weakness, and in her catching, fluttering breath. +Even the motion of a visitor's fan perturbed her. But "her soul was mighty, +and a great love kept her on earth a season longer. She was a seraph +in her flaming worship of heart." "She lives so ardently," +adds Mrs. Hawthorne, "that her delicate earthly vesture +must soon be burnt up and destroyed by her soul of pure fire." + +Yet, notwithstanding, she still sailed the seas of life, +like one of those fragile argonauts in their shells of foam and rainbow-mist +which will withstand the rude surge of winds and waves. +But slowly, gradually, the spirit was o'erfretting its tenement. +With the waning of her strength came back the old passionate longing for rest, +for quiescence from that "excitement from within", which had been +almost over vehement for her in the calm days of her unmarried life. + +It is significant that at this time Browning's genius +was relatively dormant. Its wings were resting for +the long-sustained flight of "The Ring and the Book", +and for earlier and shorter though not less royal aerial journeyings. +But also, no doubt, the prolonged comparatively unproductive period +of eight or nine years (1855-1864), between the publication +of "Men and Women" and "Dramatis Personae", was due in some measure +to the poet's incessant and anxious care for his wife, +to the deep sorrow of witnessing her slow but visible passing away, +and to the profound grief occasioned by her death. However, +barrenness of imaginative creative activity can be only +very relatively affirmed, even of so long a period, of years wherein +were written such memorable and treasurable poems as `James Lee's Wife', +among Browning's writings what `Maud' is among Lord Tennyson's; +`Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic'; `Dis Aliter Visum'; +`Abt Vogler', the most notable production of its kind in the language; +`A Death in the Desert', that singular and impressive study; +`Caliban upon Setebos', in its strange potency of interest +and stranger poetic note, absolutely unique; `Youth and Art'; +`Apparent Failure'; `Prospice', that noble lyrical defiance of death; +and the supremely lofty and significant series of weighty stanzas, +`Rabbi Ben Ezra', the most quintessential of all the distinctively +psychical monologues which Browning has written. It seems to me +that if these two poems only, "Prospice" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra", +were to survive to the day of Macaulay's New Zealander, the contemporaries +of that meditative traveller would have sufficient to enable them +to understand the great fame of the poet of "dim ancestral days", +as the more acute among them could discern something of the real Shelley, +though time had preserved but the three lines -- + + "Yet now despair itself is mild, + Even as the winds and waters are; + I could lie down like a tired child" . . . + +something of the real Catullus, through the mists of remote antiquity, +if there had not perished the single passionate cry -- + + "Lesbia illa, + Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam + Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes!" + +At the beginning of July (1858), the Brownings left Florence +for the summer and autumn, and by easy stages travelled to Normandy. +Here the invalid benefited considerably at first: and here, +I may add, Browning wrote his `Legend of Pornic', `Gold Hair'. +This poem of twenty-seven five-line stanzas (which differs only +from that in more recent "Collected Works", and "Selections", +in its lack of the three stanzas now numbered 21, 22, and 23) +was printed for limited private circulation, though primarily +for the purpose of securing American copyright. Browning several times +printed single poems thus, and for the same reasons -- +that is, either for transatlantic copyright, or when the verses +were not likely to be included in any volume for a prolonged period. +These leaflets or half-sheetlets of `Gold Hair' and `Prospice', +of `Cleon' and `The Statue and the Bust' -- together with +the `Two Poems by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning', +published, for benefit of a charity, in 1854 -- are among the rarest "finds" +for the collector, and are literally worth a good deal more +than their weight in gold. + +In the tumultuous year of 1859 all Italy was in a ferment. +No patriot among the Nationalists was more ardent in her hopes +than the delicate, too fragile, dying poetess, whose flame of life +burned anew with the great hopes that animated her for her adopted country. +Well indeed did she deserve, among the lines which the poet Tommaseo wrote +and the Florence municipality caused to be engraved in gold +upon a white marble slab, to be placed upon Casa Guidi, +the words `fece del suo verso aureo anello fra Italia e Inghilterra' -- +"who of her Verse made a golden link connecting England and Italy." + +The victories of Solferino and San Martino made the bitterness +of the disgraceful Treaty of Villafranca the more hard to bear. +Even had we not Mr. Story's evidence, it would be a natural conclusion +that this disastrous ending to the high hopes of the Italian patriots +accelerated Mrs. Browning's death. The withdrawal of hope +is often worse in its physical effects than any direct bodily ill. + +It was a miserable summer for both husband and wife, for more private sorrows +also pressed upon them. Not even the sweet autumnal winds blowing upon Siena +wafted away the shadow that had settled upon the invalid: +nor was there medicine for her in the air of Rome, where the winter was spent. +A temporary relief, however, was afforded by the more genial climate, +and in the spring of 1860 she was able, with Browning's help, +to see her Italian patriotic poems through the press. It goes without saying +that these "Poems before Congress" had a grudging reception from the critics, +because they dared to hint that all was not roseate-hued in England. +The true patriots are those who love despite blemishes, +not those who cherish the blemishes along with the virtues. +To hint at a flaw is "not to be an Englishman." + +The autumn brought a new sadness in the death of Miss Arabella Barrett -- +a dearly loved sister, the "Arabel" of so many affectionate letters. +Once more a winter in Rome proved temporally restorative. +But at last the day came when she wrote her last poem -- +"North and South", a gracious welcome to Hans Christian Andersen +on the occasion of his first visit to the Eternal City. + +Early in June of 1861 the Brownings were once more at Casa Guidi. +But soon after their return the invalid caught a chill. +For a few days she hovered like a tired bird -- though her friends +saw only the seemingly unquenchable light in the starry eyes, +and did not anticipate the silence that was soon to be. + +By the evening of the 28th day of the month she was in sore peril +of failing breath. All night her husband sat by her, holding her hand. +Two hours before dawn she realised that her last breath +would ere long fall upon his tear-wet face. Then, as a friend has told us, +she passed into a state of ecstasy: yet not so rapt therein +but that she could whisper many words of hope, even of joy. +With the first light of the new day, she leaned against her lover. +Awhile she lay thus in silence, and then, softly sighing "It is beautiful!" +passed like the windy fragrance of a flower. + + + + +Chapter 9. + + + +It is needless to dwell upon what followed. The world has all +that need be known. To Browning himself it was the abrupt, +the too deeply pathetic, yet not wholly unhappy ending of a lovelier poem +than any he or another should ever write, the poem of their married life. + +There is a rare serenity in the thought of death when it is known to be +the gate of life. This conviction Browning had, and so his grief +was rather that of one whose joy has westered earlier. +The sweetest music of his life had withdrawn: but there was still music +for one to whom life in itself was a happiness. He had his son, +and was not void of other solace: but even had it been otherwise +he was of the strenuous natures who never succumb, nor wish to die -- +whatever accident of mortality overcome the will and the power. + +It was in the autumn following his wife's death that he wrote +the noble poem to which allusion has already been made: "Prospice". +Who does not thrill to its close, when all of gloom or terror + + "Shall change, shall become 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." + +There are few direct allusions to his wife in Browning's poems. +Of those prior to her death the most beautiful is "One Word More", +which has been already quoted in part: of the two or three +subsequent to that event none surpasses the magic close +of the first part of "The Ring and the Book". + +Thereafter the details of his life are public property. +He all along lived in the light, partly from his possession of that serenity +which made Goethe glad to be alive and to be able to make others +share in that gladness. No poet has been more revered and more loved. +His personality will long be a stirring tradition. In the presence +of his simple manliness and wealth of all generous qualities +one is inclined to pass by as valueless, as the mere flying spray +of the welcome shower, the many honours and gratifications that befell him. +Even if these things mattered, concerning one by whose genius +we are fascinated, while undazzled by the mere accidents pertinent thereto, +their recital would be wearisome -- of how he was asked +to be Lord Rector of this University, or made a doctor of laws at that: +of how letters and tributes of all kinds came to him from every district +in our Empire, from every country in the world: and so forth. +All these things are implied in the circumstance that his life was throughout +"a noble music with a golden ending." + +In 1866 his father died in Paris, strenuous in life until the very end. +After this event Miss Sarianna Browning went to reside with her brother, +and from that time onward was his inseparable companion, +and ever one of the dearest and most helpful of friends. +In latter years brother and sister were constantly seen together, +and so regular attendants were they at such functions as the "Private Views" +at the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery, that these never seemed complete +without them. A Private View, a first appearance of Joachim or Sarasate, +a first concert of Richter or Henschel or Halle, at each of these, +almost to a certainty, the poet was sure to appear. +The chief personal happiness of his later life was in his son. +Mr. R. Barrett Browning is so well known as a painter and sculptor +that it would be superfluous for me to add anything further here, +except to state that his successes were his father's keenest pleasures. + +Two years after his father's death, that is in 1868, +the "Poetical Works of Robert Browning, M.A., Honorary Fellow +of Balliol College, Oxford", were issued in six volumes. +Here the equator of Browning's genius may be drawn. On the further side +lie the "Men and Women" of the period anterior to "The Ring and the Book": +midway is the transitional zone itself: on the hither side +are the "Men and Women" of a more temperate if not colder clime. + +The first part of "The Ring and the Book" was not published till November. +In September the poet was staying with his sister and son at Le Croisic, +a picturesque village at the mouth of the Loire, at the end of +the great salt plains which stretch down from Guerande to the Bay of Biscay. +No doubt, in lying on the sand-dunes in the golden September glow, +in looking upon the there somewhat turbid current of the Loire, +the poet brooded on those days when he saw its inland waters +with her who was with him no longer save in dreams and memories. +Here he wrote that stirring poem, "Herve Riel", founded upon +the valorous action of a French sailor who frustrated +the naval might of England, and claimed nothing as a reward +save permission to have a holiday on land to spend a few hours with his wife, +"la belle Aurore". "Herve Riel" (which has been translated into French, +and is often recited, particularly in the maritime towns, +and is always evocative of enthusiastic applause) is one of Browning's +finest action-lyrics, and is assured of the same immortality +as "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix", +or the "Pied Piper" himself. + +In 1872 there was practical proof of the poet's growing popularity. +Baron Tauchnitz issued two volumes of excellently selected poems, +comprising some of the best of "Men and Women", "Dramatis Personae", +and "Dramatic Romances", besides the longer "Soul's Tragedy", +"Luria", "In a Balcony", and "Christmas Eve and Easter Day" -- +the most Christian poem of the century, according to one eminent cleric, +the heterodox self-sophistication of a free-thinker, according to another: +really, the reflex of a great crisis, that of the first movement +of the tide of religious thought to a practically limitless freedom. +This edition also contained "Bishop Blougram", then much discussed, +apart from its poetic and intellectual worth, on account of +its supposed verisimilitude in portraiture of Cardinal Wiseman. +This composition, one of Browning's most characteristic, is so clever +that it is scarcely a poem. Poetry and Cleverness do not well agree, +the muse being already united in perfect marriage to Imagination. +In his Essay on Truth, Bacon says that one of the Fathers +called poetry `Vinum Daemonum', because it filleth the imagination. +Certainly if it be not `vinum daemonum' it is not Poetry. + +In this year also appeared the first series of "Selections" +by the poet's latest publishers: "Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson. +In Poetry -- illustrious and consummate: In Friendship -- noble and sincere." +It was in his preface to this selection that he wrote the often-quoted words: +"Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, +unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh." At or about +the date of these "Selections" the poet wrote to a friend, +on this very point of obscurity, "I can have little doubt that my writing +has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased +to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, +as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, +I never pretended to offer such literature as should be +a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. +So perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and something over -- +not a crowd, but a few I value more." + +In 1877 Browning, ever restless for pastures new, went with his sister +to spend the autumn at La Saisiaz (Savoyard for "the sun"), +a villa among the mountains near Geneva; this time with the additional company +of Miss Anne Egerton Smith, an intimate and valued friend. +But there was an unhappy close to the holiday. Miss Smith died +on the night of the fourteenth of September, from heart complaint. +"La Saisiaz" is the direct outcome of this incident, +and is one of the most beautiful of Browning's later poems. +Its trochaics move with a tide-like sound. + +At the close, there is a line which might stand as epitaph for the poet -- + + "He, at least, believed in Soul, was very sure of God." + +In the following year "La Saisiaz" was published along with +"The Two Poets of Croisic", which was begun and partly written +at the little French village ten years previously. +There is nothing of the eight-score stanzas of the "Two Poets" +to equal its delightful epilogue, or the exquisite prefatory lyric, +beginning + + "Such a starved bank of moss + Till that May-morn + Blue ran the flash across: + Violets were born." + +Extremely interesting -- and for myself I cannot find +"The Two Poets of Croisic" to be anything more than "interesting" -- +it is as a poem distinctly inferior to "La Saisiaz". +Although detached lines are often far from truly indicative +of the real poetic status of a long poem, where proportion and harmony +are of more importance than casual exfoliations of beauty, +yet to a certain extent they do serve as musical keys +that give the fundamental tone. One certainly would have to search in vain +to find in the Croisic poem such lines as + + "Five short days, scarce enough to + Bronze the clustered wilding apple, redden ripe the mountain ash." + +Or these of Mont Blanc, seen at sunset, towering over +icy pinnacles and teeth-like peaks, + + "Blanc, supreme above his earth-brood, needles red and white and green, + Horns of silver, fangs of crystal set on edge in his demesne." + +Or, again, this of the sun swinging himself above the dark shoulder of Jura -- + + "Gay he hails her, and magnific, thrilled her black length burns to gold." + +Or, finally, this sounding verse -- + + "Past the city's congregated peace of homes and pomp of spires." + +The other poems later than "The Ring and the Book" are, broadly speaking, +of two kinds. On the one side may be ranged the groups which really cohere +with "Men and Women". These are "The Inn Album", the miscellaneous poems +of the "Pacchiarotto" volume, the "Dramatic Idyls", some of "Jocoseria", +and some of "Asolando". "Ferishtah's Fancies" and "Parleyings" are not, +collectively, dramatic poems, but poems of illuminative insight guided by +a dramatic imagination.* They, and the classical poems and translations +(renderings, rather, by one whose own individuality dominates them +to the exclusion of that NEARNESS of the original author, +which it should be the primary aim of the translator to evoke), +the beautiful "Balaustion's Adventure", "Aristophanes' Apology", +and "The Agamemnon of Aeschylus", and the third group, +which comprises "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau", "Red Cotton Nightcap Country", +and "Fifine at the Fair" -- these three groups are of the second kind. + +-- +* In a letter to a friend, Browning wrote: -- "I hope and believe + that one or two careful readings of the Poem [Ferishtah's Fancies] + will make its sense clear enough. Above all, pray allow + for the Poet's inventiveness in any case, and do not suppose + there is more than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions. + There was no such person as Ferishtah -- the stories are all inventions. + . . . The Hebrew quotations are put in for a purpose, + as a direct acknowledgment that certain doctrines may be found + in the Old Book, which the Concocters of Novel Schemes of Morality + put forth as discoveries of their own." +-- + +Remarkable as are the three last-named productions, it is extremely doubtful +if the first and second will be read for pleasure by readers born +after the close of this century. As it is impossible, in my narrow limits, +to go into any detail about poems which personally I do not regard +as essential to the truest understanding of Browning, the truest because +on the highest level, that of poetry -- as distinct from dogma, +or intellectual suasion of any kind that might, for all its aesthetic charm, +be in prose -- it would be presumptuous to assert anything derogatory of them +without attempting adequate substantiation. I can, therefore, +merely state my own opinion. To reiterate, it is that, for different reasons, +these three long poems are foredoomed to oblivion -- not, of course, +to be lost to the student of our literature and of our age, +a more wonderful one even than that of the Renaissance, +but to lapse from the general regard. That each will for a long time find +appreciative readers is certain. They have a fascination for alert minds, +and they have not infrequent ramifications which are worth pursuing +for the glimpses afforded into an always evanishing Promised Land. +"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau" (the name, by the way, +is not purely fanciful, being formed from Hohen Schwangau, +one of the castles of the late King of Bavaria) is Browning's complement +to his wife's "Ode to Napoleon III." "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" +is a true story, the narrative of the circumstances pertinent to +the tragic death of one Antonio Mellerio, a Paris jeweller, +which occurred in 1870 at St. Aubin in Normandy, where, indeed, +the poet first heard of it in all its details. It is a story which, +if the method of poetry and the method of prose could for a moment +be accepted as equivalent, might be said to be of the school +of a light and humorously grotesque Zola. It has the fundamental weakness +of "The Ring and the Book" -- the weakness of an inadequate ethical basis. +It is, indeed, to that great work what a second-rate novelette is +to a masterpiece of fiction. + +"Fifine at the Fair", on the other hand, is so powerful +and often so beautiful a poem that one would be rash indeed were he, +with the blithe critical assurance which is so generally snuffed out +like a useless candle by a later generation, to prognosticate +its inevitable seclusion from the high place it at present occupies +in the estimate of the poet's most uncompromising admirers. +But surely equally rash is the assertion that it will be +the "poem of the future". However, our concern is not +with problematical estimates, but with the poem as it appears to US. +It is one of the most characteristic of Browning's productions. +It would be impossible for the most indolent reader or critic to attribute it, +even if anonymous, to another parentage. Coleridge alludes somewhere +to certain verses of Wordsworth's, with the declaration that if he +had met them howling in the desert he would have recognised their authorship. +"Fifine" would not even have to howl. + +Browning was visiting Pornic one autumn, when he saw the gipsy +who was the original of "Fifine". In the words of Mrs. Orr, +"his fancy was evidently set roaming by the gipsy's audacity, her strength -- +the contrast which she presented to the more spiritual types of womanhood; +and this contrast eventually found expression in a pathetic theory of life, +in which these opposite types and their corresponding modes of attraction +became the necessary complement of each other. As he laid down the theory, +Mr. Browning would be speaking in his own person. But he would turn +into some one else in the act of working it out -- for it insensibly +carried with it a plea for yielding to those opposite attractions, +not only successively, but at the same time; and a modified Don Juan +would grow up under his pen." + +One drawback to an unconditional enjoyment of Balzac +is that every now and again the student of the `Comedie Humaine' +resents the too obvious display of the forces that propel the effect -- +a lesser phase of the weariness which ensues upon much reading +of the mere "human documents" of the Goncourt school of novelists. +In the same way, we too often see Browning working up +the electrical qualities, so that, when the fulmination comes, +we understand "just how it was produced," and, as illogically as children +before a too elaborate conjurer, conclude that there is not so much +in this particular poetic feat as in others which, like Herrick's maids, +continually do deceive. To me this is affirmable of "Fifine at the Fair". +The poet seems to know so very well what he is doing. +If he did not take the reader so much into his confidence, +if he would rely more upon the liberal grace of his earlier verse +and less upon the trained subtlety of his athletic intellect, +the charm would be the greater. The poem would have +a surer duration as one of the author's greater achievements, +if there were more frequent and more prolonged insistence +on the note struck in the lines (Section 73) about the hill-stream, +infant of mist and dew, falling over the ledge of the fissured cliff +to find its fate in smoke below, as it disappears into the deep, +"embittered evermore, to make the sea one drop more big thereby:" +or in the cloudy splendour of the description of nightfall (Section 106): +or in the windy spring freshness of + + "Hence, when the earth began afresh its life in May, + And fruit-trees bloomed, and waves would wanton, and the bay + Ruffle its wealth of weed, and stranger-birds arrive, + And beasts take each a mate." . . . + +But its chief fault seems to me to be its lack of that transmutive +glow of rhythmic emotion without which no poem can endure. +This rhythmic energy is, inherently, a distinct thing +from intellectual emotion. Metric music may be alien +to the adequate expression of the latter, whereas rhythmic emotion +can have no other appropriate issue. Of course, in a sense, +all creative art is rhythmic in kind: but here I am speaking +only of that creative energy which evolves the germinal idea +through the medium of language. The energy of the intellect +under creative stimulus may produce lordly issues in prose: +but poetry of a high intellectual order can be the outcome +only of an intellect fused to white heat, of intellectual emotion on fire -- +as, in the fine saying of George Meredith, passion is noble strength on fire. +Innumerable examples could be taken from any part of the poem, +but as it would not be just to select the most obviously defective passages, +here are two which are certainly fairly representative of the general level -- + + "And I became aware, scarcely the word escaped my lips, + that swift ensued in silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude, + a formidable change of the amphitheatre which held the Carnival; + ALTHOUGH THE HUMAN STIR CONTINUED JUST THE SAME + AMID THAT SHIFT OF SCENE." (No. 105) + + "And where i' the world is all this wonder, you detail so trippingly, + espied? My mirror would reflect a tall, thin, pale, deep-eyed personage, + pretty once, it may be, doubtless still loving -- a certain grace + yet lingers if you will -- but all this wonder, where?" (No. 40) + +Here, and in a hundred other such passages, we have the rhythm, +if not of the best prose, at least not that of poetry. +Will "Fifine" and poems of its kind stand re-reading, +re-perusal over and over? That is one of the most definite tests. +In the pressure of life can we afford much time to anything but the very best +-- nay, to the vast mass even of that which closely impinges thereupon? + +For myself, in the instance of "Fifine", I admit that if re-perusal +be controlled by pleasure I am content (always excepting +a few scattered noble passages) with the Prologue and Epilogue. +A little volume of those Summaries of Browning's -- how stimulating +a companion it would be in those hours when the mind +would fain breathe a more liberal air! + +As for "Jocoseria",* it seems to me the poorest of Browning's works, +and I cannot help thinking that ultimately the only gold grain discoverable +therein will be "Ixion", the beautiful penultimate poem beginning -- + + "Never the time and the place + And the loved one altogether;" + +and the thrush-like overture, closing -- + + "What of the leafage, what of the flower? + Roses embowering with nought they embower! + Come then! complete incompletion, O comer, + Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer! + Breathe but one breath + Rose-beauty above, + And all that was death + Grows life, grows love, + Grows love!" + +-- +* In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of this book, + Browning stated that "the title is taken from the work + of Melander (`Schwartzmann'), reviewed, by a curious coincidence, + in the `Blackwood' of this month. I referred to it + in a note to `Paracelsus'. The two Hebrew quotations + (put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun and invention) + being translated amount to (1) `A Collection of Many Lies': + and (2), an old saying, `From Moses to Moses arose none like Moses' . . . ." +-- + +In 1881 the "Browning Society" was established. It is easy to ridicule +any institution of the kind -- much easier than to be considerate of +other people's earnest convictions and aims, or to be helpful to their object. +There is always a ridiculous side to excessive enthusiasm, +particularly obvious to persons incapable of enthusiasm of any kind. +With some mistakes, and not a few more or less grotesque absurdities, +the members of the various English and American Browning Societies are yet +to be congratulated on the good work they have, collectively, accomplished. +Their publications are most interesting and suggestive: +ultimately they will be invaluable. The members have also done a good work +in causing some of Browning's plays to be produced again on the stage, +and in Miss Alma Murray and others have found sympathetic and able exponents +of some of the poet's most attractive `dramatis personae'. +There can be no question as to the powerful impetus given by the Society +to Browning's steadily-increasing popularity. Nothing shows +his judicious good sense more than the letter he wrote, privately, +to Mr. Edmund Yates, at the time of the Society's foundation. + +== +"The Browning Society, I need not say, as well as Browning himself, +are fair game for criticism. I had no more to do with the founding it +than the babe unborn; and, as Wilkes was no Wilkeite, I am quite other +than a Browningite. But I cannot wish harm to a society of, +with a few exceptions, names unknown to me, who are busied about my books +so disinterestedly. The exaggerations probably come of the fifty-years'-long +charge of unintelligibility against my books; such reactions are possible, +though I never looked for the beginning of one so soon. +That there is a grotesque side to the thing is certain; +but I have been surprised and touched by what cannot but have been +well intentioned, I think. Anyhow, as I never felt inconvenienced +by hard words, you will not expect me to wax bumptious +because of undue compliment: so enough of `Browning', -- +except that he is yours very truly, `while this machine is to him.'" +== + +The latter years of the poet were full of varied interest for himself, +but present little of particular significance for specification in a monograph +so concise as this must perforce be. Every year he went abroad, +to France or to Italy, and once or twice on a yachting trip +in the Mediterranean.* At home -- for many years, at 19 Warwick Crescent, +in what some one has called the dreary Mesopotamia of Paddington, +and for the last three or four years of his life at 29 De Vere Gardens, +Kensington Gore -- his avocations were so manifold that it is difficult +to understand where he had leisure for his vocation. Everybody wished him +to come to dine; and he did his utmost to gratify Everybody. +He saw everything; read all the notable books; kept himself acquainted +with the leading contents of the journals and magazines; +conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German, +and Italian books of mark; read and translated Euripides and Aeschylus; +knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, salons, and the studios; +was a frequenter of afternoon-tea parties; and then, over and above it, +he was Browning: the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself +in poetry since Shakespeare. His personal grace and charm of manner +never failed. Whether he was dedicating "Balaustion's Adventure" +in terms of gracious courtesy, or handing a flower from some jar of roses, +or lilies, or his favourite daffodils, with a bright smile or merry glance, +to the lady of his regard, or when sending a copy of a new book of poetry +with an accompanying letter expressed with rare felicity, +or when generously prophesying for a young poet the only true success +if he will but listen and act upon "the inner voice", -- he was in all these, +and in all things, the ideal gentleman. There is so charming +and characteristic a touch in the following note to a girl-friend, +that I must find room for it: -- + +-- +* It was on his first experience of this kind, more than + a quarter of a century earlier, that he wrote the nobly patriotic lines + of "Home Thoughts from the Sea", and that flawless strain of bird-music, + "Home Thoughts from Abroad": then, also, that he composed + "How they brought the Good News". Concerning the last, he wrote, in 1881 + (see `The Academy', April 2nd), "There is no sort of historical foundation + about [this poem]. I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel + off the African coast, after I had been at it long enough to appreciate + even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse, `York', + then in my stable at home. It was written in pencil + on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's `Simboli', I remember." +-- + +== + 29 De Vere Gardens, W., + 6th July 1889. + +My beloved Alma, -- I had the honour yesterday of dining with the Shah, +whereupon the following dialogue: -- + +"Vous e^tes poe"te?" + +"On s'est permis de me le dire quelquefois." + +"Et vous avez fait des livres?" + +"Trop de livres." + +"Voulez-vous m'en donner un, afin que je puisse me ressouvenir de vous?" + +"Avec plaisir." + +I have been accordingly this morning to town, where the thing is procurable, +and as I chose a volume of which I judged the binding might take +the imperial eye, I said to myself, "Here do I present my poetry +to a personage for whom I do not care three straws; why should I not venture +to do as much for a young lady I love dearly, who, for the author's sake, +will not impossibly care rather for the inside than the outside +of the volume?" So I was bold enough to take one and offer it +for your kind acceptance, begging you to remember in days to come +that the author, whether a good poet or no, was always, my Alma, +your affectionate friend, + Robert Browning. +== + +His look was a continual and serene gleam. Lamartine, who remarks this +of Bossuet in his youth, adds a phrase which, as observant acquaintances +of the poet will agree, might be written of Browning -- +"His lips quivered often without utterance, as if with the wind +of an internal speech." + +Except for the touching and beautiful letter which he wrote from Asolo +about two months before his death, to Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, +about a young writer to whom the latter wished to draw +the poet's kindly attention -- a letter which has a peculiar pathos +in the words, "I shall soon depart for Venice, on my way homeward" -- +except for this letter there is none so well worth repetition here +as his last word to the Poet-Laureate. The friendship between +these two great poets has in itself the fragrance of genius. +The letter was written just before Browning left London. + +== + 29 De Vere Gardens, W., + August 5th, 1889. + +My dear Tennyson, -- To-morrow is your birthday -- indeed, a memorable one. +Let me say I associate myself with the universal pride of our country +in your glory, and in its hope that for many and many a year +we may have your very self among us -- secure that your poetry +will be a wonder and delight to all those appointed to come after. +And for my own part, let me further say, I have loved you dearly. +May God bless you and yours. + +At no moment from first to last of my acquaintance with your works, +or friendship with yourself, have I had any other feeling, +expressed or kept silent, than this which an opportunity +allows me to utter -- that I am and ever shall be, my dear Tennyson, +admiringly and affectionately yours, + Robert Browning. +== + +Shortly after this he was at Asolo once more, the little hill-town +in the Veneto, which he had visited in his youth, and where he heard again +the echo of Pippa's song -- + + "God's in His heaven, + All's right with the world!" + +Mr. W. W. Story writes to me that he spent three days with the poet +at this time, and that the latter seemed, except for a slight asthma, +to be as vigorous in mind and body as ever. Thence, later in the autumn, +he went to Venice, to join his son and daughter-in-law +at the home where he was "to have a corner for his old age," +the beautiful Palazzo Rezzonico, on the Grand Canal. He was never happier, +more sanguine, more joyous, than here. He worked for three or four hours +each morning, walked daily for about two hours, crossed occasionally +to the Lido with his sister, and in the evenings visited friends +or went to the opera. But for some time past, his heart -- +always phenomenally slow in its action, and of late ominously intermittent -- +had been noticeably weaker. As he suffered no pain and little inconvenience, +he paid no particular attention to the matter. Browning had +as little fear of death as doubt in God. In a controlling Providence +he did indeed profoundly believe. He felt, with Joubert, +that "it is not difficult to believe in God, if one does not worry oneself +to define Him."* + +-- +* "Browning's `orthodoxy' brought him into many a combat + with his rationalistic friends, some of whom could hardly believe + that he took his doctrine seriously. Such was the fact, however; + indeed, I have heard that he once stopped near an open-air assembly + which an atheist was haranguing, and, in the freedom of his `incognito', + gave strenuous battle to the opinions uttered. To one who had spoken + of an expected `Judgment Day' as a superstition, I heard him say: + `I don't see that. Why should there not be a settling day in the universe, + as when a master settles with his workmen at the end of the week?' + There was something in his tone and manner which suggested his + dramatic conception of religious ideas and ideals." -- Moncure D. Conway. +-- + +"How should externals satisfy my soul?" was his cry in "Sordello", +and it was the fundamental strain of all his poetry, +as the fundamental motive is expressible in + + "-- a loving worm within its sod + Were diviner than a loveless god + Amid his worlds" -- + +love being with him the golden key wherewith to unlock the world +of the universe, of the soul, of all nature. He is as convinced +of the two absolute facts of God and Soul as Cardinal Newman +in writing of "Two and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, +myself and my Creator." Most fervently he believes that + + "Haply for us the ideal dawn shall break . . . + And set our pulse in tune with moods divine" -- + +though, co-equally, in the necessity of "making man sole sponsor of himself." +Ever and again, of course, he was betrayed by the bewildering and defiant +puzzle of life: seeing in the face of the child the seed of sorrow, +"in the green tree an ambushed flame, in Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night." +Yet never of him could be written that thrilling saying +which Sainte-Beuve uttered of Pascal, "That lost traveller +who yearns for home, who, strayed without a guide in a dark forest, +takes many times the wrong road, goes, returns upon his steps, +is discouraged, sits down at a crossing of the roads, +utters cries to which no one responds, resumes his march with frenzy and pain, +throws himself upon the ground and wants to die, and reaches home at last +only after all sorts of anxieties and after sweating blood." No darkness, +no tempest, no gloom, long confused his vision of `the ideal dawn'. +As the carrier-dove is often baffled, yet ere long surely finds her way +through smoke and fog and din to her far country home, so he too, +however distraught, soon or late soared to untroubled ether. +He had that profound inquietude, which the great French critic says +`attests a moral nature of a high rank, and a mental nature +stamped with the seal of the archangel.' But, unlike Pascal -- +who in Sainte-Beuve's words exposes in the human mind itself two abysses, +"on one side an elevation toward God, toward the morally beautiful, +a return movement toward an illustrious origin, and on the other side +an abasement in the direction of evil" -- Browning sees, believes in, +holds to nothing short of the return movement, for one and all, +toward an illustrious origin. + +The crowning happiness of a happy life was his death in the city he loved +so well, in the arms of his dear ones, in the light of a world-wide fame. +The silence to which the most eloquent of us must all one day lapse +came upon him like the sudden seductive twilight of the Tropics, +and just when he had bequeathed to us one of his finest utterances. + +It seems but a day or two ago that the present writer +heard from the lips of the dead poet a mockery of death's vanity -- +a brave assertion of the glory of life. "Death, death! +It is this harping on death I despise so much," he remarked +with emphasis of gesture as well as of speech -- the inclined head and body, +the right hand lightly placed upon the listener's knee, the abrupt change +in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him -- +"this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! +Why should we not change like everything else? In fiction, in poetry, +in so much of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, +in American art and literature, the shadow of death -- call it what you will, +despair, negation, indifference -- is upon us. But what fools who talk thus! +Why, `amico mio', you know as well as I that death is life, +just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is none the less alive +and ever recruiting new forces of existence. Without death, +which is our crapelike churchyardy word for change, for growth, +there could be no prolongation of that which we call life. +Pshaw! it is foolish to argue upon such a thing even. For myself, +I deny death as an end of everything. Never say of me that I am dead!" + +On the evening of Thursday, the 12th of December (1889), he was in bed, +with exceeding weakness. In the centre of the lofty ceiling +of the room in which he lay, and where it had been his wont to work, +there is a painting by his son. It depicts an eagle +struggling with a serpent, and is illustrative of a superb passage +in Shelley's "Revolt of Islam". What memories, what deep thoughts, +it must have suggested; how significant, to us, the circumstance! +But weak as the poet was, he yet did not see the shadow +which had begun to chill the hearts of the watchers. +Shortly before the great bell of San Marco struck ten, +he turned and asked if any news had come concerning "Asolando", +published that day. His son read him a telegram from the publishers, +telling how great the demand was and how favourable were the advance-articles +in the leading papers. The dying poet smiled and muttered, "How gratifying!" +When the last toll of St. Mark's had left a deeper stillness than before, +those by the bedside saw a yet profounder silence on the face of him +whom they loved. + + -------- + +It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt and expressed for +the irreparable loss. The magnificent closing lines of Shelley's "Alastor" +must have occurred to many a mourner; for gone, indeed, +was "a surpassing Spirit". The superb pomp of the Venetian funeral, +the solemn grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey, do not seem +worth recording: so insignificant are all these accidents of death made +by the supreme fact itself. Yet it is fitting to know that Venice +has never in modern times afforded a more impressive sight, than those +craped processional gondolas following the high flower-strewn funeral-barge +through the thronged waterways and out across the lagoon +to the desolate Isle of the Dead: that London has rarely seen +aught more solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces, +echoing at first with the slow tramp of the pall-bearers, +and then with the sweet aerial music swaying upward +the loved familiar words of the `Lyric Voice' hushed so long before. +Yet the poet was as much honoured by those humble friends, +Lambeth artisans and a few poor working-women, who threw sprays of laurel +before the hearse -- by that desolate, starving, woe-weary gentleman, +shivering in his threadbare clothes, who seemed transfixed with +a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere he hurriedly drew from his sleeve +a large white chrysanthemum, and throwing it beneath the coffin +as it was lifted inward, disappeared in the crowd, which closed again +like the sea upon this lost wandering wave. + +Who would not honour this mighty dead? All who could be present were there, +somewhere in the ancient Abbey. One of the greatest, +loved and admired by the dead poet, had already put the mourning of many +into the lofty dignity of his verse: -- + + "Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak, + And voiceless hands the world beside his bier, + Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear: + We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. + We see a spirit on Earth's loftiest peak + Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: + See a great Tree of Life that never sere + Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak: + Such ending is not Death: such living shows + What wide illumination brightness sheds + From one big heart -- to conquer man's old foes: + The coward, and the tyrant, and the force + Of all those weedy monsters raising heads + When Song is murk from springs of turbid source."* + +-- +* George Meredith. +-- + +One word more of "light and fleeting shadow". In the greatness of his nature +he must be ranked with Milton, Defoe, and Scott. His very shortcomings, +such as they were, were never baneful growths, but mere weeds, +with a certain pleasant though pungent savour moreover, +growing upon a rich, an exuberant soil. Pluck one of the least lovely -- +rather call it the unworthy arrow shot at the body of a dead comrade, +so innocent of ill intent: yet it too has a beauty of its own, +for the shaft was aflame from the fulness of a heart whose love had withstood +the chill passage of the years. + + -------- + +On the night of Browning's death a new star suddenly appeared in Orion.* +The coincidence is suggestive if we like to indulge in the fancy +that in that constellation -- + + "No more subjected to the change or chance + Of the unsteady planets ----" + +gleam those other "abodes where the Immortals are." Certainly, +a wandering fire has passed away from us. Whither has it gone? +To that new star in Orion: or whirled to remote silences +in the trail of lost meteors? Whence, and for how long, +will its rays reach our storm and gloom-beleaguered earth? + +-- +* Mrs. Orr disputes this statement. -- A. L., 1996. + + "The alleged fact is disproved by the statement of the Astronomer Royal, + to whom it has been submitted; but it would have been + a beautiful symbol of translation, such as affectionate fancy + might gladly cherish if it were true." -- Mrs. Sutherland Orr, + "Life and Letters of Robert Browning" (1891). +-- + +Such questions cannot meanwhile be solved. Our eyes are still confused +with the light, with that ardent flame, as we knew it here. +But this we know, it was indeed "a central fire descending upon many altars." +These, though touched with but a spark of the immortal principle, +bear enduring testimony. And what testimony! How heartfelt: +happily also how widespread, how electrically stimulative! + +But the time must come when the poet's personality will have +the remoteness of tradition: when our perplexed judgments +will be as a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing. +It is impossible for any student of literature, for any interested reader, +not to indulge in some forecast as to what rank in the poetic hierarchy +Robert Browning will ultimately occupy. The commonplace as to +the impossibility of prognosticating the ultimate slow decadence, +or slower rise, or, it may be, sustained suspension, of a poet's fame, +is often insincere, and but an excuse of indolence. +To dogmatise were the height of presumption as well as of folly: +but to forego speculation, based upon complete present knowledge, +for an idle contentment with narrow horizons, were perhaps foolisher still. +But assuredly each must perforce be content with his own prevision. +None can answer yet for the generality, whose decisive franchise +will elect a fit arbiter in due time. + +So, for myself, let me summarise what I have already written +in several sections of this book, and particularly in the closing pages +of Chapter 6. There, it will be remembered -- after having found +that Browning's highest achievement is in his second period -- +emphasis was laid on the primary importance of his life-work in its having +compelled us to the assumption of a fresh critical standpoint involving +the construction of a new definition. In the light of this new definition +I think Browning will ultimately be judged. As the sculptor in "Pippa Passes" +was the predestinated novel thinker in marble, so Browning himself +appears as the predestinated novel thinker in verse; the novel thinker, +however, in degree, not in kind. But I do not for a moment believe +that his greatness is in his status as a thinker: even less, +that the poet and the thinker are indissociable. Many years ago +Sainte-Beuve destroyed this shallow artifice of pseudo-criticism: +"Venir nous dire que tout poe"te de talent est, par essence, +un grand PENSEUR, et que tout vrai PENSEUR est ne/cessairement +artiste et poe"te, c'est une pre/tention insoutenable et que de/ment +a\ chaque instant la re/alite/." + +When Browning's enormous influence upon the spiritual and mental life +of our day -- an influence ever shaping itself to wise and beautiful issues -- +shall have lost much of its immediate import, there will still surely be +discerned in his work a formative energy whose resultant is pure poetic gain. +It is as the poet he will live: not merely as the "novel thinker in verse". +Logically, his attitude as `thinker' is unimpressive. It is the attitude, +as I think some one has pointed out, of acquiescence with codified morality. +In one of his `Causeries', the keen French critic quoted above +has a remark upon the great Bossuet, which may with singular aptness +be repeated of Browning: -- "His is the Hebrew genius extended, +fecundated by Christianity, and open to all the acquisitions +of the understanding, but retaining some degree of sovereign interdiction, +and closing its vast horizon precisely where its light ceases." +Browning cannot, or will not, face the problem of the future +except from the basis of assured continuity of individual existence. +He is so much in love with life, for life's sake, that he cannot even credit +the possibility of incontinuity; his assurance of eternity in another world +is at least in part due to his despair at not being eternal in this. +He is so sure, that the intellectually scrupulous detect +the odours of hypotheses amid the sweet savour of indestructible assurance. +Schopenhauer says, in one of those recently-found Annotations of his +which are so characteristic and so acute, "that which is called +`mathematical certainty' is the cane of a blind man without a dog, +or equilibrium in darkness." Browning would sometimes have us accept +the evidence of his `cane' as all-sufficient. He does not entrench himself +among conventions: for he already finds himself within the fortified lines +of convention, and remains there. Thus is true what Mr. Mortimer says +in a recent admirable critique -- "His position in regard +to the thought of the age is paradoxical, if not inconsistent. +He is in advance of it in every respect but one, the most important of all, +the matter of fundamental principles; in these he is behind it. +His processes of thought are often scientific in their precision of analysis; +the sudden conclusion which he imposes upon them is transcendental and inept." +Browning's conclusions, which harmonise so well with +our haphazard previsionings, are sometimes so disastrously facile +that they exercise an insurrectionary influence. They occasionally suggest +that wisdom of Gotham which is ever ready to postulate +the certainty of a fulfilment because of the existence of a desire. +It is this that vitiates so much of his poetic reasoning. +Truth may ring regnant in the lines of Abt Vogler -- + + "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence + For the fulness of the days?" -- + +but, unfortunately, the conclusion is, in itself, illogical. + +We are all familiar with, and in this book I have dwelt more than once upon, +Browning's habitual attitude towards Death. It is not a novel one. +The frontage is not so much that of the daring pioneer, +as the sedate assurance of `the oldest inhabitant'. It is of good hap, +of welcome significance: none the less there is an aspect of our mortality +of which the poet's evasion is uncompromising and absolute. +I cannot do better than quote Mr. Mortimer's noteworthy words hereupon, +in connection, moreover, with Browning's artistic relation to Sex, +that other great Protagonist in the relentless duel of Humanity +with Circumstance. "The final inductive hazard he declines for himself; +his readers may take it if they will. It is part of the insistent +and perverse ingenuity which we display in masking with illusion +the more disturbing elements of life. Veil after veil is torn down, +but seldom before another has been slipped behind it, +until we acquiesce without a murmur in the concealment +that we ourselves have made. Two facts thus carefully shrouded +from full vision by elaborate illusion conspicuously round in our lives -- +the life-giving and life-destroying elements, Sex and Death. +We are compelled to occasional physiologic and economic discussion of the one, +but we shrink from recognising the full extent to which it bases +the whole social fabric, carefully concealing its insurrections, +and ignoring or misreading their lessons. The other, in certain aspects, +we are compelled to face, but to do it we tipple on illusions, +from our cradle upwards, in dread of the coming grave, +purchasing a drug for our poltroonery at the expense of our sanity. +We uphold our wayward steps with the promises and the commandments +for crutches, but on either side of us trudge the shadow Death +and the bacchanal Sex, and we mumble prayers against the one, +while we scourge ourselves for leering at the other. +On one only of these can Browning be said to have spoken with novel force -- +the relations of sex, which he has treated with a subtlety and freedom, +and often with a beauty, unapproached since Goethe. On the problem of Death, +except in masquerade of robes and wings, his eupeptic temperament +never allowed him to dwell. He sentimentalised where Shakespeare thought." +Browning's whole attitude to the Hereafter is different from that of Tennyson +only in that the latter `faintly', while he strenuously, +"trusts the larger hope." To him all credit, that, standing upon +the frontiers of the Past, he can implicitly trust the Future. + + "High-hearted surely he; + But bolder they who first off-cast + Their moorings from the habitable Past." + +The teacher may be forgotten, the prophet may be hearkened to no more, +but a great poet's utterance is never temporal, having that in it +which conserves it against the antagonism of time, and the ebb and flow +of literary ideals. What range, what extent of genius! +As Mr. Frederick Wedmore has well said, `Browning is not a book -- +he is a literature.' + +But that he will "stand out gigantic" in MASS of imperishable work, +in that far-off day, I for one cannot credit. His poetic shortcomings +seem too essential to permit of this. That fatal excess of cold +over emotive thought, of thought that, however profound, incisive, +or scrupulously clear, is not yet impassioned, is a fundamental defect of his. +It is the very impetuosity of this mental energy to which is due +the miscalled obscurity of much of Browning's work -- miscalled, +because, however remote in his allusions, however pedantic even, +he is never obscure in his thought. His is that "palace infinite +which darkens with excess of light." But mere excess in itself +is nothing more than symptomatic. Browning has suffered more +from intellectual exploitation than any writer. It is a ruinous process -- +for the poet. "He so well repays intelligent study." +That is it, unfortunately. There are many, like the old Scotch lady +who attempted to read Carlyle's `French Revolution', +who think they have become "daft" when they encounter a passage such as, +for example, + + "Rivals, who . . . + Tuned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms, + To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with, + `As knops that stud some almug to the pith + Pricked for gum, wry thence, and crinkled worse + Than pursed eyelids of a river-horse + Sunning himself o' the slime when whirrs the breeze -- + GAD-FLY, that is.'" + +The old lady persevered with Carlyle, and, after a few days, +found "she was nae sae daft, but that she had tackled +a varra dee-fee-cult author." What would even that indomitable student +have said to the above quotation, and to the poem whence it comes? +To many it is not the poetry, but the difficulties, that are the attraction. +They rejoice, after long and frequent dippings, to find their plummet, +almost lost in remote depths, touch bottom. Enough `meaning' +has been educed from `Childe Roland', to cite but one instance, +to start a School of Philosophy with: though it so happens +that the poem is an imaginative fantasy, written in one day. +Worse still, it was not inspired by the mystery of existence, +but by `a red horse with a glaring eye standing behind a dun one +on a piece of tapestry that used to hang in the poet's drawing-room.'* +Of all his faults, however, the worst is that jugglery, +that inferior legerdemain, with the elements of the beautiful in verse: +most obvious in "Sordello", in portions of "The Ring and the Book", +and in so many of the later poems. These inexcusable violations +are like the larvae within certain vegetable growths: soon or late +they will destroy their environment before they perish themselves. +Though possessive above all others of that science of the percipient +in the allied arts of painting and music, wherein he found +the unconventional Shelley so missuaded by convention, +he seemed ever more alert to the substance than to the manner of poetry. +In a letter of Mrs. Browning's she alludes to a friend's "melodious feeling" +for poetry. Possibly the phrase was accidental, but it is significant. +To inhale the vital air of poetry we must love it, not merely +find it "interesting", "suggestive", "soothing", "stimulative": in a word, +we must have a "melodious feeling" for poetry before we can deeply enjoy it. +Browning, who has so often educed from his lyre melodies and harmonies +of transcendent, though novel, beauty, was too frequently, during composition, +without this melodious feeling of which his wife speaks. +The distinction between literary types such as Browning or Balzac +on the one hand, and Keats or Gustave Flaubert on the other, +is that with the former there exists a reverence for the vocation +and a relative indifference to the means, in themselves -- +and, with the latter, a scrupulous respect for the mere means +as well as for that to which they conduce. The poet who does not love words +for themselves, as an artist loves any chance colour upon his palette, +or as the musician any vagrant tone evoked by a sudden touch +in idleness or reverie, has not entered into the full inheritance +of the sons of Apollo. The writer cannot aim at beauty, +that which makes literature and art, without this heed -- +without, rather, this creative anxiety: for it is certainly not enough, +as some one has said, that language should be used merely +for the transportation of intelligence, as a wheelbarrow carries brick. +Of course, Browning is not persistently neglectful of this +fundamental necessity for the literary artist. He is often +as masterly in this as in other respects. But he is not always, +not often enough, alive to the paramount need. He writes with +"the verse being as the mood it paints:" but, unfortunately, +the mood is often poetically unformative. He had no passion +for the quest for seductive forms. Too much of his poetry +has been born prematurely. Too much of it, indeed, has not died +and been born again -- for all immortal verse is a poetic resurrection. +Perfect poetry is the deathless part of mortal beauty. +The great artists never perpetuate gross actualities, +though they are the supreme realists. It is Schiller, I think, +who says in effect, that to live again in the serene beauty of art, +it is needful that things should first die in reality. +Thus Browning's dramatic method, even, is sometimes disastrous in its untruth, +as in Caliban's analytical reasoning -- an initial absurdity, +as Mr. Berdoe has pointed out, adding epigrammatically, +`Caliban is a savage, with the introspective powers of a Hamlet, +and the theology of an evangelical Churchman.' Not only Caliban, +but several other of Browning's personages (Aprile, Eglamour, etc.) +are what Goethe calls `schwankende Gestalten', mere "wavering images". + +-- +* One account says `Childe Roland' was written in three days; + another, that it was composed in one. Browning's rapidity in composition + was extraordinary. "The Return of the Druses" was written in five days, + an act a day; so, also, was "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon". +-- + +Montaigne, in one of his essays, says that to stop gracefully +is sure proof of high race in a horse: certainly to stop in time +is imperative upon the poet. Of Browning may be said +what Poe wrote of another, that his genius was too impetuous +for the minuter technicalities of that elaborate ART +so needful in the building up of monuments for immortality. +But has not a greater than Poe declared that "what distinguishes the artist +from the amateur is `architectonike' in the highest sense; +that power of execution which creates, forms, and constitutes: +not the profoundness of single thoughts, not the richness of imagery, +not the abundance of illustration." Assuredly, no "new definition" +can be an effective one which conflicts with Goethe's incontrovertible dictum. + +But this much having been admitted, I am only too willing to protest +against the uncritical outcry against Browning's musical incapacity. + +A deficiency is not incapacity, otherwise Coleridge, at his highest +the most perfect of our poets, would be lowly estimated. + + "Bid shine what would, dismiss into the shade + What should not be -- and there triumphs the paramount + Surprise o' the master." . . . + +Browning's music is oftener harmonic than melodic: and musicians know +how the general ear, charmed with immediately appellant melodies, +resents, wearies of, or is deaf to the harmonies of a more remote, +a more complex, and above all a more novel creative method. +He is, among poets, what Wagner is among musicians; +as Shakespeare may be likened to Beethoven, or Shelley to Chopin. +The common assertion as to his incapacity for metric music +is on the level of those affirmations as to his not being +widely accepted of the people, when the people have the chance; +or as to the indifference of the public to poetry generally -- +and this in an age when poetry has never been so widely understood, +loved, and valued, and wherein it is yearly growing +more acceptable and more potent! + +A great writer is to be adjudged by his triumphs, not by his failures: +as, to take up Montaigne's simile again, a famous race-horse +is remembered for its successes and not for the races which it lost. +The tendency with certain critics is to reverse the process. +Instead of saying with the archbishop in Horne's "Gregory VII.", +"He owes it all to his Memnonian voice! He has no genius:" +or of declaring, as Prospero says of Caliban in "The Tempest", +"He is as disproportioned in his manners as in his shape:" +how much better to affirm of him what Ben Jonson wrote of Shakespeare, +"Hee redeemed his vices with his vertues: there was ever more in him +to bee praysed than to bee pardoned." In the balance of triumphs +and failures, however, is to be sought the relative measure of genius -- +whose equipoise should be the first matter of ascertainment +in comparative criticism. + +For those who would discriminate between what Mr. Traill +succinctly terms his GENERIC greatness as thinker and man of letters, +and his SPECIFIC power as poet, it is necessary to disabuse the mind +of Browning's "message". The question is not one of weighty message, +but of artistic presentation. To praise a poem because of its optimism +is like commending a peach because it loves the sunshine, +rather than because of its distinguishing bloom and savour. +The primary concern of the artist must be with his vehicle of expression. +In the instance of a poet, this vehicle is language emotioned +to the white-heat of rhythmic music by impassioned thought or sensation. +Schopenhauer declares it is all a question of style now with poetry; +that everything has been sung, that everything has been duly cursed, +that there is nothing left for poetry but to be the glowing forge of words. +He forgets that in quintessential art there is nothing of the past, +nothing old: even the future has part therein only in that +the present is always encroaching upon, becoming, the future. +The famous pessimistic philosopher has, in common with other critics, +made, in effect, the same remark -- that Style exhales the odour of the soul: +yet he himself has indicated that the strength of Shakespeare +lay in the fact that `he had no taste,' that `he was not a man of letters.' +Whenever genius has displayed epic force it has established a new order. +In the general disintegration and reconstruction of literary ideals +thus involved, it is easier to be confused by the novel flashing +of strange lights than to discern the central vivifying altar-flame. +It may prove that what seem to us the regrettable accidents +of Browning's genius are no malfortunate flaws, but as germane thereto +as his Herculean ruggednesses are to Shakespeare, as the laboured inversions +of his blank verse are to Milton, as his austere concision is to Dante. +Meanwhile, to the more exigent among us at any rate, the flaws seem flaws, +and in nowise essential. + +But when we find weighty message and noble utterance in union, +as we do in the magnificent remainder after even the severest ablation +of the poor and mediocre portion of Browning's life-work, +how beneficent seem the generous gods! Of this remainder +most aptly may be quoted these lines from "The Ring and the Book", + + "Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore; + Prime nature with an added artistry." + +How gladly, in this dubious hour -- when, as an eminent writer has phrased it, +a colossal Hand, which some call the hand of Destiny and others +that of Humanity, is putting out the lights of Heaven one by one, +like candles after a feast -- how gladly we listen to this poet +with his serene faith in God, and immortal life, and the soul's +unending development! "Hope hard in the subtle thing that's Spirit," +he cries in the Prologue to "Pacchiarotto": and this, in manifold phrasing, +is his `leit-motif', his fundamental idea, in unbroken line from +the "Pauline" of his twenty-first to the "Asolando" of his seventy-sixth year. +This superb phalanx of faith -- what shall prevail against it? + +How winsome it is, moreover: this, and the humanity of his song. +Profoundly he realised that there is no more significant study than +the human heart. "The development of a soul: little else is worth study," +he wrote in his preface to "Sordello": so in his old age, +in his last "Reverie" -- + + "As the record from youth to age + Of my own, the single soul -- + So the world's wide book: one page + Deciphered explains the whole + Of our common heritage." + +He had faith also that "the record from youth to age" of his own soul +would outlast any present indifference or neglect -- that whatever tide +might bear him away from our regard for a time would ere long flow again. +The reaction must come: it is, indeed, already at hand. +But one almost fancies one can hear the gathering of the remote waters +once more. We may, with Strafford, + + "feel sure + That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend + All the fantastic day's caprice, consign + To the low ground once more the ignoble Term, + And raise the Genius on his orb again, -- + That Time will do me right." . . . + +Indeed, Browning has the grand manner, for all it is more that +of the Scandinavian Jarl than of the Italian count or Spanish grandee. + +And ever, below all the stress and failure, below all the triumph of his toil, +is the beauty of his dream. It was "a surpassing Spirit" +that went from out our midst. + + "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, + Never doubted clouds would break, + Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, + Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, + Sleep to wake." + +"Speed, fight on, fare ever There as here!" are the last words of this +brave soul. In truth, "the air seems bright with his past presence yet." + + "Sun-treader -- life and light be thine for ever; + Thou art gone from us -- years go by -- and spring + Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful, + Yet thy songs come not -- other bards arise, + But none like thee -- they stand -- thy majesties, + Like mighty works which tell some Spirit there + Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn, + Till, its long task completed, it hath risen + And left us, never to return." + + + + + -------- + + + + + +Index. + +[This index is included to allow the reader to browse the main subjects +included in this book. The numbers in brackets are the number of mentions +in the original index -- as each mention may be long or short, +these numbers should be used only as a general indication.] + + + +"Abt Vogler" [3] +"After" [1] +"Agamemnon of Aeschylus" [1] +Alma ----, Letter to [1] +"Amphibian" [1] +Ancona [1] +"Andrea del Sarto" [2] +"Andromeda" [1] +"Another way of Love" [1] +"Any Wife to any Husband" [2] +"Apparent Failure" [2] +"Appearances" [1] +Appearance, Browning's personal [2] +Aprile [3] +"Aristophanes' Apology" [1] +"Ask not one least word of praise" [1] +"Asolando" [8] +Asolo [2] +`The Athenaeum' [1] +"Aurora Leigh" [5] + +Bagni di Lucca [2] +Bailey's "Festus" [1] +"Balaustion's Adventure" [2] +Balzac [6] +Barrett, Arabella [2] +Barrett, Edward [1] +Barrett, Mr. [3] +"Beatrice Signorini" [1] +Beautiful in Verse, the [1] +Beethoven [1] +"Before" [1] +"Bells and Pomegranates" [3] +"Ben Karshook's Wisdom" [1] +Berdoe, E. [3] +"Bifurcations" [1] +"Bishop Blougram" [2] +Blake, William [1] +"A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" [6] +Bossuet and Browning [1] +Browning, Clara [1] +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: Browning's early influence on [1]; + born March 4, 1809 (really 1806) [1]; her girlhood and early work [1]; + death of brother [1]; residence in London [1]; + "The Cry of the Children" [1]; friendships with Horne and Kenyon [1]; + her appreciation of Browning's poems [1]; correspondence with him [1]; + engagement [1]; acquaintance with Mrs. Jameson [1]; marriage [1]; + Mr. Barrett's resentment [1]; journey to Paris [1]; thence to Pisa [1]; + Browning's love for his wife [1]; "Sonnets from the Portuguese" [1]; + in spring to Florence [1]; to Ancona, via Ravenna, in June [1]; + winter at Casa Guidi [1]; "Aurora Leigh" [1]; description of poetess [2]; + birth of son in 1849 [1]; "Casa Guidi Windows" [1]; + 1850, spring in Rome [1]; proposal to confer poet-laureateship + on Mrs. Browning [2]; 1851, visits England [1]; winter in Paris [1]; + she is enthusiastic about Napoleon III. and interested in Spiritualism [1]; + summer in London [1]; autumn at Casa Guidi [1]; winter 1853-4 in Rome, + 1856 "Aurora Leigh", death of Kenyon, legacies [1]; + 1857, death of Mr. Barrett [1]; 1858, delicacy of Mrs. Browning [1]; + July 1858, Brownings travel to Normandy; "Two Poems by Elizabeth Barrett + and Robert Browning", 1854 [1]; 1860, "Poems before Congress", + and death of Arabella Barrett [1]; "North and South" [1]; + return to Casa Guidi, and death on 28th June 1861 [2]. +Browning, Reuben [3] +Browning, Robert: born in London in 1812 [3]; his literary and artistic + antecedents and contemporaries [1]; his parentage and ancestry [2]; + concerning traces of Semitic origin [1]; his sisters [1]; his father [1]; + his mother [2]; his uncle, Reuben Browning [1]; the Camberwell home [1]; + his childhood [1]; early poems [1]; translation of the odes of Horace [1]; + goes to school at Peckham [1]; his holiday afternoons [1]; + "Death of Harold" [1]; criticisms of Miss Flower and Mr. Fox [1]; + he reads Shelley's and Keats's poems [2]; he has a tutor [1]; + attends Gower Street University College [1]; he decides to be a poet [1]; + writes "Pauline", 1832 [1]; it is published in 1833 [1]; + "Pauline" [1]; criticisms thereon [1]; Rossetti and "Pauline", + studies at British Museum [2]; travels in 1833 to Russia [1]; + to Italy [1]; return to Camberwell, 1834 [1]; and begins "Paracelsus", + sonnet signed "Z", 1834 [1]; love for Venice [1]; "Paracelsus" [2]; + criticisms thereon [2]; he meets Macready [1]; "Narses" [1]; + he meets Talfourd, Wordsworth, Landor [1]; "Strafford" [1]; + his dramas [1]; his love of the country [1]; "Pippa Passes" [2]; + "Sordello" [1]; origin of "The Ring and the Book", 1865 [1]; + "The Ring and the Book" [1]; "The Inn Album" [1]; "Men and Women" [1]; + proposed "Transcripts from Life" [1]; "Flower o' the Vine" [1]; + correspondence between him and Miss Barrett [1]; meeting in 1846 [1]; + engagement [1]; marriage, 12th September 1846 [1]; sojourn in Pisa [1]; + they go to Florence [1]; to Ancona, via Ravenna [1]; + "The Guardian Angel" [1]; Casa Guidi [1]; birth of son, March 9th, 1849 [1]; + they go to Vallombrosa and Bagni di Lucca for the autumn, + and winter at Casa Guidi [1]; spring of 1850 in Rome [1]; + "Two in the Campagna" [1]; 1851, they visit England [1]; + description of Browning [1]; winter 1851-2 in Paris with Robert Browning, + senior [1]; Browning writes Prefatory Essay to Moxon's edition + of Shelley's Letters [1]; midsummer, Baths of Lucca [1]; in Florence [1]; + "In a Balcony" [1]; winter in Rome, 1853-4 [1]; the work written there [1]; + "Ben Karshook's Wisdom" [1]; "Men and Women" published [1]; Kenyon's death, + and legacies to the Brownings [1]; poems written between 1855-64 [1]; + July 1858, Brownings go to Normandy [1]; "Legend of Pornic", + "Gold Hair" [1]; autumn of 1859 in Sienna [1]; winter 1860-61 in Rome [1]; + death of Mrs. Browning, June 1861 [1]; "Prospice" [1]; + 1866, Browning loses his father; Miss Sarianna resides with Browning [1]; + his ways of life [1]; first collected edition of his works, 1868 [1]; + first part of "The Ring and the Book" published [1]; "Herve Riel" [1]; + Tauchnitz edition, 1872 [1]; "Bishop Blougram" [1]; "Selections" [1]; + "La Saisiaz", 1877 [1]; "The Two Poets of Croisic" [1]; + later works [1]; "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau", + "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" [2]; "Fifine at the Fair" [3]; + "Jocoseria" [1]; 1881, Browning Society established [1]; + his latter years [1]; revisits Asolo [1]; Palazzo Rezzonico [1]; + religious belief [1]; death, December 12th, 1889 [2]; + funeral [1]; to be estimated by a new definition [1]; + as poet, rather than as thinker [1]; his love of life [1]; + his, like Bossuet's, a Hebrew genius fecundated by Christianity [1]; + his artistic relations to Death and Sex [1]; where, in standpoint, + he differs from Tennyson [1]; as to quality of his MASS of work [1]; + intellectually exploited [1]; his difficulties, and their attraction + to many [1]; his attitude to the future, influence, and significance [1]; + summary of his life-work [1]. +Browning, Robert Wiedemann Barrett [5] +Browning, Robert (senior) [8] +Browning, Sarianna (Mrs.) [4] +Browning, Sarianna (Miss) [3] +Browning Society, the [2] +Browning, William Shergold [1] +Byron [1] +"By the Fireside" [1] + +"Caliban upon Setebos" [3] +Camberwell [7] +Carlyle, Thomas [6] +Casa Guidi [6] +"Cavalier Tunes" [1] +"Childe Roland" [2] +Chopin [1] +"Christmas Eve and Easter Day" [2] +"Cleon" [1] +Coleridge [1] +"Colombe's Birthday" [1] +"The Confessional" [1] +"Confessions" [1] +Contemporaries, literary and artistic, of Browning [1] +Conway, Moncure [2] +"Cristina" [1] +"Cristina and Manaldeschi" [1] +Cunningham, Allan [2] + +Dante [4] +Death, Browning on [3] +"Death of Harold" [1] +"A Death in the Desert" [2] +Defoe [1] +"De Gustibus" [3] +Dickens, Charles [2] +"Dis Aliter Visum" [2] <Di^s> +Domett, Alfred (Waring) [1] +Dramas, Browning's [1] +"Dramatic Idyls" [2] +"Dramatic Romances" [2] +"Dramatis Personae" [3] +Dulwich Wood [4] + +"Earth's Immortalities" [1] +"Echetlos" [1] +Epics, series of monodramatic [1] +Equator of Browning's genius, the [1] +"Evelyn Hope" [2] + +"A Face" [1] +Faucit, Miss Helen [1] +"Ferishtah's Fancies" [1] +"Fifine at the Fair" [4] +Flaubert, Gustave [1] +"Flight of the Duchess" [2] +"The Flower's Name" [2] +Flower o' the Vine [1] +Flower, Miss Sarah (afterwards Adams) [2] +"A Forgiveness" [1] +Form, Artistic [1] +Forster, John [3] +Fox, Mrs. Bridell- [1] +Fox, Rev. William Johnson [6] +"Fra Lippo Lippi" [3] +Furnivall, Dr. [2] +Future, Browning and the [1] + +Goethe [4] +"Gold Hair" [2] +Gordon, General [1] +Gosse, E. W. [1] +"A Grammarian's Funeral" [2] +"The Guardian Angel" [2] + +"Halburt and Hob" [1] +Hawthorne, Nathaniel [2] +"Heap Cassia", etc. [1] +Heine [2] +"The Heretic's Tragedy" [1] +"Herve Riel" [2] <Herve/> +Hillard, G. S. [1] +"Holy Cross Day" [1] +"Home Thoughts from Abroad" [4] +"Home Thoughts from the Sea" [3] +Hood, Thomas [1] +Horne, R. H. [6] +Houghton, Lord [1] +"How they brought the Good News", etc. [3] +Hugo, Victor [2] + +"Imperante Augusto" [1] +"In a Balcony" [5] +"In a Gondola" [1] +"Inapprehensiveness" [1] +"In a Year" [1] +"The Inn Album" [5] +"Instans Tyrannus" [1] +"The Italian in England" [1] +Italian Art, Music, etc. -- Influence of, on Browning [1] +Italy, first visit to [1] +"Ivan Ivanovitch" [2] <Iva\n Iva\novitch> +"Ixion" [1] + +Jameson, Mrs. [1] +"James Lee's Wife" [3] +Jerrold, Douglas [1] +"Jocoseria" [3] +"Johannes Agricola" [1] +Joubert [1] + +"Karshish, Epistle to" [2] +Keats [6] +Kenyon, John [3] +"King Victor and King Charles" [2] + +"The Lady and the Painter" [1] +Lamartine on Bossuet [1] +Landor, Walter Savage [2] +"La Saisiaz" [2] +"The Last Ride Together" [1] +Le Croisic [1] +Lehmann's, Rudolf, portrait of Browning [2] +`Leit-Motif', Browning's [1] +Letter to a Girl Friend [1] +"Life in a Love" [1] +"A Light Woman" [1] +"A Likeness" [1] +"The Lost Leader" [2] +"Love among the Ruins" [3] +"Love in a Life" [1] +"A Lover's Quarrel" [1] +Lowell, James Russell [1] +"Luria" [3] + +Macpherson, Mrs. [1] +Macready [1] +"Magical Nature" [1] +Manner, Browning's [1] +Marlowe [1] +"Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli" [1] +"Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" [2] +"May and Death" [1] +Mazzini [1] +"Meeting at Night" [2] +"Memorabilia" [2] +"Men and Women" [8] +Meredith, George [4] +Meynell, Wilfrid [1] +Montaigne [1] +Mortimer [1] +Motive, Browning's fundamental poetic [1] +Mill, John Stuart [1] +Milsand, J. [1] +Milton [4] +"Misconceptions" [1] +Mitford, Mary [1] +"Muleykeh" [1] <Mule/ykeh> +Murray, Alma [1] +Music of Browning's verse [1] +"My Last Duchess" [1] +"My Star" [1] + +"Narses" [1] +"Natural Magic" [1] +Nature, Browning's observation of [1] +Nettleship, J. [2] +"Never the Time and the Place" [2] +Newman, Cardinal [1] +`New Spirit of the Age' [1] +Normandy, the Brownings in [1] +"Now" [1] +"Numpholeptos" [1] + +Obscurity, Browning's [2] +"Old Pictures in Florence" [1] +"O Lyric Love" [3] +"One Way of Love" [1] +"One Word More" [2] +Optimism, Browning's [1] (and see Summary) +Orion, new star in [1] +Orr, Mrs. Sutherland [4] +Orthodoxy, Browning's [1] +"Over the seas our galleys went" [1] + +"Pacchiarotto" [5] +Palazzo Rezzonico [1] +"Pan and Luna" [1] +"Paracelsus" [6] +Paris, the Brownings in [1] +"Parleyings" [1] +"Parting at Morning" [1] +Pater, Walter [1] +"Pauline" [9] +"A Pearl" [1] +"Pheidippides" [1] +"Pictor Ignotus" [1] +"Pied Piper of Hamelin" [3] +"Pippa Passes" [9] +Pisa [1] +"Pisgah Sights" [1] +Plato [1] +Poe, Edgar Allan [1] +Poems, Early [5] +"Poetical Works" [1] +"Poetics" [1] +Pompilia [2] +"The Pope" [1] +"Popularity" [1] +"Porphyria" [2] +Portraits of Browning [3] +"A Pretty Woman" [1] +Primary importance, Browning's [1] +"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau" [3] +Profundity, Browning's [1] +"Prospice" [3] + +Rabbi Ben Ezra [2] +Rawdon Brown, Sonnet to [1] +"Red Cotton Nightcap Country" [2] +Religious Opinions [1+] +"Rephan" [1] +"The Return of the Druses" [3] +"Reverie" [3] +Richmond [1] +"The Ring and the Book" [8] +Romance, Browning and [1] +Rome, the Brownings in [2] +Roscoe, W. C. [1] +"Rosny" [1] +Rossetti, Dante Gabriel [3] +"The Round of Day" [1] +Ruskin, J. [2] +Russia, Visit to [1] + +Sainte-Beuve [2] +"Saul" [3] +Schiller [1] +School, Peckham [2] +Schopenhauer [2] +Shortcomings, Browning's artistic [1] +Science, Browning and [1] +Scott, David [1] +Scott, Sir W. [1] +"Serenade at the Villa" [1] +Sex, Browning's artistic relation to [1] +Shakespeare [8] +Shelley [11] +Shelley Letters, the [1] +"Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis" [2] +Skelton, John [1] +"Sludge the Medium" [2] +Songs -- "Nay but you" [1]; "Round us the wild creatures" [1]; + "Once I saw" [1]; "Man I am" [1]; "You groped your way" [1]; + "Wish me no wish unspoken" [1]. +Sonnets, Browning's [1] +"Sonnets from the Portuguese" [2] +"Sordello" [12] +Soul, Browning and the [1] +"A Soul's Tragedy" [3] +"Speculative" [1] +Spiritual influence, Browning's [1] +"The Statue and the Bust" [1] +"St. Martin's Summer" [1] +Story, W. W. [3] +"Strafford" [5] +Summary of Criticism [1] +Swinburne, A. C. [1] + +Talfourd [2] +Tauchnitz edition [1] +Taylor, Bayard [1] +Tennyson, Lord [6] +"There's a woman like a dew-drop" [3] +Thinker, Browning as [1] +"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr" [1] +"A Toccata of Galuppi's" [2] +"Tokay" [1] +"The Tomb at St. Praxed's" [2] +"Too Late" [1] +"Touch him ne'er so lightly" [1] +Tour-de-force, Poetry and [1] +Transcripts from Life [1] +Traill, H. D. [1] +"Two in the Campagna" [3] +"Two Poets of Croisic" [2] + +University College [1] + +Venice [3] +"Verse-making" [1] + +Wagner [1] +Wedmore, F. [1] +Westminster Abbey [1] +"What of the Leafage", etc. [1] +"Why from the World" [1] +Wiedemann, Mr. [1] +"A Woman's Last Word" [1] +Women, Browning's [1] +"Women and Roses" [1] +Wonder Spirit, Browning and the [1] +Wordsworth [4] +Work, Browning's mass of [1] + +Yates, E., Letter from Browning to [1] +York, the horse [2] +"Youth and Art" [2] + +"Z" signed Sonnet [1] + + + + + + +Bibliography. + +by John P. Anderson (British Museum). + + ======== + + I. Works. + II. Single Works. +III. Contributions to Magazines. + IV. Printed Letters. + V. Selections. + VI. Appendix -- + Biography, Criticism, etc. + Magazine Articles. +VII. Chronological List of Works. + + + -------- + + + I. Works. + + +Poems. 2 vols. A new edition. London, 1849, 16mo. + Vol. 1: Paracelsus; Pippa Passes, a Drama; King Victor and King Charles, + a Tragedy; Colombe's Birthday, a Play. + Vol. 2: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, a Tragedy; The Return of the Druses, + a Tragedy; Luria, a Tragedy; A Soul's Tragedy; Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Third edition. 3 vols. +London, 1863, 8vo. + Vol. 1: Lyrics; Romances; Men and Women. + Vol. 2: Tragedies and other Plays. + Vol. 3: Paracelsus; Christmas Eve and Easter Day; Sordello. + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. 6 vols. London, 1868, 8vo. + Vol. 1: Pauline; Paracelsus; Strafford. + Vol. 2: Sordello; Pippa Passes. + Vol. 3: King Victor and King Charles; Dramatic Lyrics; + The Return of the Druses. + Vol. 4: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; Colombe's Birthday; Dramatic Romances. + Vol. 5: A Soul's Tragedy; Luria; Christmas Eve and Easter Day; + Men and Women. + Vol. 6: In a Balcony; Dramatis Personae. + +Complete Works of Robert Browning. A reprint from the latest English edition. +Chicago, 1872-74, 8vo. + Nos. 1-19 of the "Official Guide of the Chicago and Alton R. R. + and Monthly Reprint and Advertiser." + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1872, 8vo. + Vols. 1197, 1198 of the "Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors". + +The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. 16 vols. London, 1888-9, 8vo. + Vol. 1: Pauline; Sordello. + Vol. 2: Paracelsus; Strafford. + Vol. 3: Pippa Passes; King Victor and King Charles; + The Return of the Druses; A Soul's Tragedy. + Vol. 4: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; Colombe's Birthday; Men and Women. + Vol. 5: Dramatic Romances; Christmas Eve and Easter Day. + Vol. 6: Dramatic Lyrics; Luria. + Vol. 7: In a Balcony; Dramatis Personae. + Vols. 8-10: The Ring and the Book, 3 vols. + Vol. 11: Balaustion's Adventure; Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau; + Fifine at the Fair. + Vol. 12: Red Cotton Nightcap Country; The Inn Album. + Vol. 13: Aristophanes' Apology; The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. + Vol. 14: Pacchiarotto and how he worked in Distemper, with other Poems. + Vol. 15: Dramatic Idyls; Jocoseria. + Vol. 16: Ferishtah's Fancies; Parleyings with Certain People. + + + + II. Single Works. + + +The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, transcribed by Robert Browning. +London, 1877, 8vo. + +Aristophanes' Apology, including a transcript from Euripides, +being the Last Adventure of Balaustion. London, 1875, 8vo. + +Asolando: Fancies and Facts. London, 1890 [1889], 8vo. + Now in seventh edition. + +Balaustion's Adventure; including a transcript from Euripides +[i.e., a translation of the "Alcestis"]. London, 1871, 8vo. + Now in third edition. + +Bells and Pomegranates. 8 Nos. London, 1841-1846, 8vo. + No. 1: Pippa Passes. 1841. + No. 2: King Victor and King Charles. 1842. + No. 3: Dramatic Lyrics. 1842. + No. 4: The Return of the Druses. 1843. + No. 5: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. 1843. + No. 6: Colombe's Birthday. 1844. + No. 7: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 1845. + No. 8: Luria; A Soul's Tragedy. 1846. + +Christmas Eve and Easter Day. A poem. London, 1850, 16mo. + +Cleon. Moxon: London, 1855, 8vo. + Reprinted in `Men and Women'. + +Dramatic Idyls. 2 series. London, 1879-80, 8vo. + The First Series now in 2nd edition. + +Dramatis Personae. London, 1864, 8vo. + Three poems in this book were reprinted from advance copies + in the Atlantic Monthly in vol. 13, 1864, viz. `Gold Hair', pp. 596-599; + `Prospice', p. 694; `Under the Cliff', pp. 737, 738. + +---- Second edition. London, 1864, 8vo. + +Ferishtah's Fancies. London, 1884, 8vo. + Now in third edition. + +Fifine at the Fair. London, 1872, 8vo. + +Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic. [London], 1864, 8vo. + Reprinted in `Dramatis Personae'. `Gold Hair' appeared + in the Atlantic Monthly, May 1864, and `Dramatis Personae' + was published on May 28, 1864. + +The Inn Album. London, 1875, 8vo. + +Jocoseria. London, 1883, 8vo. + Now in third edition. + +La Saisiaz. The Two Poets of Croisic. London, 1878, 8vo. + +Men and Women. 2 vols. London, 1855, 8vo. + +Pacchiarotto and how he worked in distemper: with other poems. +London, 1876, 8vo. + +Paracelsus. London, 1835, 8vo. + +Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day. +Introduced by a Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates, etc. +London, 1887, 8vo. + +Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession. London, 1833, 8vo. + There are only five known copies extant, two of which + are in the British Museum. + +---- A reprint of the original edition of 1833. Edited by T. J. Wise. +London, 1886, 12mo. + Four copies were printed on vellum. + +The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with 35 illustrations by Kate Greenaway. +London [1889], 4to. + Appeared originally in `Dramatic Lyrics' (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 3), + 1842. + +Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau: Saviour of Society. London, 1871, 8vo. + +Red Cotton Nightcap Country; or Turf and Towers. London, 1873, 8vo. + +The Ring and the Book. 4 vols. London, 1868-69, 8vo. + Now in second edition. + +Sordello. London, 1840, 8vo. + +The Statue and the Bust. Moxon: London, 1855, 8vo. + Reprinted in `Men and Women'. + +Strafford: an historical tragedy. London, 1837, 8vo. + +---- [Acting edition for the use of the North London Collegiate School +for Girls.] [London, 1882.] 8vo. + +---- Another edition. With notes and preface by E. H. Hickey, +and an introduction by S. R. Gardiner. London, 1884, 8vo. + +Two Poems. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. +London, 1854, 8vo. + These two poems, "A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London", + by Elizabeth B. Browning, and "The Twins", by Robert Browning, + were printed by Miss Arabella Barrett, for a bazaar in aid of + a "Refuge for Young Destitute Girls". "The Twins" was reprinted + in "Men and Women", in 1855. + + + +III. Contributions to Magazines. + + +Sonnet. -- "Eyes, calm beside thee, (Lady couldst thou know!)" +Dated August 17, 1834; signed "Z". (`Monthly Repository', vol. 8 N.S., +1834, p. 712.) + +The King. -- "A King lived long ago." Signed "Z". (`Monthly Repository', +vol. 9 N.S., 1835, pp. 707, 708.) + Reprinted with six fresh lines and revised throughout, + in `Pippa Passes' (1841). + +Porphyria. -- "The rain set early in to-night." Signed "Z". +(`Monthly Repository', vol. 10 N.S., 1836, pp. 43, 44.) + +Johannes Agricola. -- "There's Heaven above; and night by night." +Signed "Z". (`Monthly Repository', vol. 10 N.S., 1836, pp. 45, 46.) + `Porphyria' and `Johannes Agricola' were reprinted + in "Bells and Pomegranates", No. 3, with the title `Madhouse Cells'. + +Lines. -- "Still ailing, wind? Wilt be appeased or no?" Signed "Z". +(`Monthly Repository', vol. 10 N.S., 1836, pp. 270, 271.) + Reprinted revised, in `Dramatis Personae', 1864, + as the first six stanzas of VI. of "James Lee". + +The Laboratory (Ancient Regime). (`Hood's Magazine', +vol. 1, 1844, pp. 513, 514.) + Reprinted in `Dramatic Romances and Lyrics' (1845), + as the first of two poems called "France and England". + +Claret and Tokay. (`Hood's Magazine', vol. 1, 1844, p. 525.) + Reprinted in `Dramatic Romances and Lyrics' (1845). + +Garden Fancies. I. The Flower's Name; II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. +(`Hood's Magazine', vol. 2, 1844, pp. 45-48.) + Reprinted in `Dramatic Romances and Lyrics' (1845). + +The Boy and the Angel. (`Hood's Magazine', vol. 2, 1844, pp. 140-142.) + Reprinted revised, and with five fresh couplets, + in `Dramatic Romances and Lyrics' (1845). + +The Tomb at St. Praxed's (Rome 15--). (`Hood's Magazine', +vol. 3, 1845, pp. 237-239.) + Reprinted in `Dramatic Romances and Lyrics' (1845). + +The Flight of the Duchess. (`Hood's Magazine', vol. 3, 1845, pp. 313-318.) + Reprinted in `Dramatic Romances and Lyrics' (1845). + +Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. [A fabrication.] +With an introductory essay, by Robert Browning. London, 1852, 8vo. + +---- On the poet, objective and subjective; on the latter's aim; +on Shelley as man and poet. [Being a reprint of the Introductory Essay +to "Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley".] London, 1881, 8vo. + Published for the Browning Society. + +---- A reprint of the Introductory Essay prefixed to the volume +of Letters of Shelley. Edited by W. Tyas Harden. London, 1888, 8vo. + +Ben Karshook's Wisdom. (`The Keepsake', 1856, p. 16.) + +May and Death. (`The Keepsake', 1857, p. 164.) + Reprinted in `Dramatis Personae' (1864). + +Orpheus and Eurydice. F. Leighton. 8 lines. (`Royal Academy +Exhibition Catalogue' 1864, p. 13.) + Reprinted in `Poetical Works', 1868, where it is included + in `Dramatis Personae'. + +Gold Hair. See note to `Dramatis Personae'. + +Prospice. See note to `Dramatis Personae'. + +Under the Cliff. See note to `Dramatis Personae'. + +A selection from the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. +[First series edited by Robert Browning.] 2 series. London, 1866-80, 8vo. + +Herve Riel. (`Cornhill Magazine', vol. 23, 1871, pp. 257-260.) + Reprinted in `Pacchiarotto and other Poems', 1876. + +"Oh Love, Love": the Lyric of Euripides in his Hippolytus. +(`Euripides'. By J. P. Mahaffy, p. 116.) London, 1879, 12mo. + +"The Blind Man to the Maiden said." (`The Hour will Come, +by Wilhelmine von Hillern. From the German by Clara Bell', vol. 2, p. 174.) +London [1879], 8vo. + Printed anonymously; quoted with statement of authorship + in the `Whitehall Review', March 1, 1883. Reprinted in + `Browning Society's Papers', Pt. 4, p. 410. + +Ten new lines to "Touch him ne'er so lightly". (`Dramatic Idyls', 2nd ser., +1880, p. 149.) Lines written in an autograph album, Oct. 14, 1880. +(`Century Magazine', vol. 25, 1882, pp. 159, 160.) + Printed without Mr. Browning's consent. Reprinted in + the `Browning Society's Papers', Pt. 3, p. 48. + +Sonnet on Goldoni (dated "Venice, Nov. 27, 1883"). +Written for the Album of the Committee of the Goldoni Monument at Venice, +and inserted on the first page. (`Pall Mall Gazette', Dec. 8, 1883.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, p. 98*. + +Sonnet on Rawdon Brown (dated Nov. 28, 1883). (`Century Magazine', +vol. 27, 1884, p. 640.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, p. 132*. + +Paraphrase from Horace. Four lines, written impromptu +for Mr. Felix Moscheles. (`Pall Mall Gazette', Dec. 13, 1883, p. 6.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, p. 99*. + +Helen's Tower: Sonnet, dated "April 26, 1870." Written for +the Earl of Dufferin, who built a tower in memory of his mother, +Helen, Countess of Gifford, on his estate at Clandeboye. +(`Pall Mall Gazette', Dec. 28, 1883, p. 2.) + Reprinted in `Sonnets of this Century', edited by William Sharp, 1886, + and in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, p. 97*. + +The Founder of the Feast: Sonnet. (Dated "April 5, 1884.") +Inscribed by Mr. Browning in the Album presented to Mr. Arthur Chappell, +director of the St. James's Hall Concerts, etc. +(`The World', April 16, 1884.) + Reprinted in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 7, p. 18*. + +"The Names". Sonnet on Shakespeare. Contributed to +the "Shaksperian Show-Book" of the Shaksperian Show, held at the Albert Hall, +on May 29-31, 1884. + Reprinted in the `Pall Mall Gazette', May 29, and in + the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, p. 105*. + +The Divine Order and other Sermons and Addresses, by the late Thomas Jones. +Edited by Brynmor Jones. With a short introduction by Robert Browning. +London, 1884, 8vo. + +Why I am a Liberal: Sonnet. (`Why I am a Liberal', edited by Andrew Reid. +London, 1885, p. 11.) + Reprinted in `Sonnets of this Century', edited by William Sharp, 1886, + and in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, p. 92*. + +Prefatory Note to the `Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning', 1889, +dated "Dec. 10, 1887." + +To Edward Fitzgerald. "I chanced upon a new book yesterday." +12 lines, dated "July 8, 1889" (`Athenaeum', July 13, 1889, p. 64). + + + + IV. Printed Letters. + + +Letter to Laman Blanchard [? April, 1841], dated "Craven Cottage, Saturday." +(`Poetical Works of Laman Blanchard', pp. 6-8.) London, 1876, 8vo. + +Letters to Henry Fothergill Chorley on his novels Pomfret (1845) +and Roccabella (1860). (`Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters +of Henry Fothergill Chorley', vol. 2, pp. 25, 26, 169-174.) + +Letter to R. H. Horne, dated Pisa, Dec. 4 [1846]. Another dated London, +Sept. 24 [1851], signed Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. +(`Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to R. H. Horne, 1877, +vol. 2, pp. 182-3, 194-5.) London, 1877, 8vo. + +Letter to William Etty, R.A., dated "Bagni di Lucca, Sept. 21, 1849." +(`Life of William Etty, R.A.' By Alexander Gilchrist, vol. 2, pp. 280-81.) +London, 1855, 8vo. + +Letter to Leigh Hunt (dated "Bagni di Lucca, 6th Oct., 1857"). +(`Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, edited by his eldest son', +vol. 2, pp. 264-267.) London, 1862, 8vo. + +Letter to the Editor of `The Daily News', dated "19 Warwick Crescent, W., +Feb. 9," stating that his contribution to the French Relief Fund +was his publishers' payment for a lyrical poem (Herve Riel). +(`Daily News', Feb. 10, 1871.) + +Letter to the Editor of `The Daily News', dated "Nov. 20." +On line 131, "Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De" of the poem, +`A Grammarian's Funeral'. (`Daily News', Nov. 21, 1874.) + +Letter to the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, on the Poem of `The Lost Leader' +and `Wordsworth', dated "19 Warwick Crescent, Feb. 24, 1875." +(`The Prose Works of William Wordsworth'. Edited by the Rev. A. B. Grosart, +vol. 1, p. xxxvii.) London, 1876, 8vo. + +The Lord Rectorship of St. Andrew's. Letter to the Editor of `The Times', +dated "19 Warwick Crescent, Nov. 19." (`Times', Nov. 20, 1877.) + +Letter to F. J. Furnivall. (`Academy', Dec. 20, 1878.) + +Letter to Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, and printed by the latter in 1881. + +Letter to Mr. Charles Kent, dated "29 De Vere Gardens, W., +28 August, 1889." Accompanied by a presentation copy +of the 3rd vol. of the new collective edition of "Poems". +(`Athenaeum', Dec. 21, 1889, p. 860). + +In Berdoe's "Browning's Message to his Time", etc., London, 1890, +there are a number of letters from Browning. + +In the new edition of Kingsland's "Robert Browning", London, 1890, +there are several letters from Browning. + +[Mrs. Sutherland Orr's "Life and Letters of Robert Browning", London, 1891, +includes a number of his letters, and a few fugitive poems. -- A. L., 1996.] + + + + V. Selections. + + +Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning. +[Edited by J. Forster and B. W. Procter.] London, 1863 [1862], 16mo. + +Moxon's Miniature Poets. A Selection from the Works of Robert Browning. +London, 1865, 8vo. + +Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning. 2 series. +London, 1872-80, 8vo. + +Favourite Poems. Illustrated. Boston, 1877, 16mo. + +A Selection from the Works of Robert Browning. With a memoir of the author, +and explanatory notes. Edited by F. H. Ahn. Berlin, 1882, 8vo. + Vol. 8 of Ahn's "Collection of British and American Standard Authors." + +Stories from Robert Browning. By F. M. Holland. With an introduction +by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. London, 1882, 8vo. + +Lyrical and Dramatic Poems selected from the works of Robert Browning. +With an extract from Stedman's "Victorian Poets". Edited by E. T. Mason. +New York, 1883, 8vo. + +Selections from the Poetry of Robert Browning. With an introduction +by R. G. White. New York [1883], 8vo. + +Pomegranates from an English Garden: a selection from the poems +of Robert Browning. With introduction and notes by J. M. Gibson. +New York, 1885, 8vo. + +Select Poems of Robert Browning. Edited, with notes, +by William J. Rolfe and Heloise E. Hersey. New York, 1886, 8vo. + +Lyrics, Idyls, and Romances from the poetic and dramatic works +of Robert Browning. Boston, 1887, 8vo. + +Good and True Thoughts from Robert Browning. Selected by Amy Cross. +New York, 1888, 4to. + Printed in blue ink, and on one side of the leaf. + +The Browning Reciter: Poems for Recitation, by Robert Browning +and other writers. Edited by A. H. Miles. London, 1889, 8vo. + Part of the "Platform Series". + + + + VI. Appendix -- + + + Biography, Criticism, etc. + +Alexander, William John. -- An Introduction to the poetry of Robert Browning. +Boston, 1889, 8vo. + +Austin, Alfred. -- The Poetry of the Period. London, 1870, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 38-76. Appeared originally in `Temple Bar', + vol. 26, 1869, pp. 316-333. + +Bagehot, Walter. -- Literary Studies. 2 vols. London, 1879, 8vo. + Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or, Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art + in English Poetry, vol. 2, pp. 338-390. Appeared originally + in the `National Review', vol. 19, 1864, pp. 27-67. + +Barnett, Professor. -- Browning's Jews and Shakespeare's Jew. +Read at the 54th meeting of the Browning Society, Nov. 25th, 1887. +London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 10, pp. 207-220. + +Beale, Dorothea. -- The Religious Teaching of Browning. +(Read at the 10th meeting of the Browning Society, Oct. 27th, 1882.) +London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 3, pp. 323-338. + +Berdoe, Edward. -- Browning as a Scientific Poet. +(Read at the meeting of the Browning Society, April 24th, 1885.) +London, 1885, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 7, pp. 33-54. + +---- Browning's Estimate of Life. (Read at the meeting of the Society, +Oct. 28, 1887.) London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 10, pp. 200-206. + +---- Browning's Message to his Time: His Religion, Philosophy, and Science. +[With facsimile letters of Browning and portrait.] London, 1890, 8vo. + +Birrell, Augustine. -- Obiter Dicta. London, 1884, 8vo. + On the alleged obscurity of Mr. Browning's poetry, pp. 55-95. + +Browning, Robert. -- Robert Browning's Poetry. Outline Studies +published for the Chicago Browning Society. Chicago, 1886, 8vo. + +Browning Society. -- The Browning Society's Papers. In progress. +London, 1881, etc., 8vo. + +Buchanan, Robert. -- Master-Spirits. London, 1873, 8vo. + Browning's Masterpiece, pp. 89-109. A revised reprint + of the Athenaeum reviews of "The Ring and the Book" + in December and March 1870. + +Bulkeley, Rev. J. H. -- James Lee's Wife. (Read at the 16th meeting +of the Browning Society, May 25, 1883.) London, 1883, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 4, pp. 455-468. + +---- The Reasonable Rhythm of some of Browning's poems. +Read at the 42nd meeting of the Browning Society, May 28, 1886. +London, 1886, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, pp. 119-131. + +Burt, Mary E. -- Browning's Women, etc. Chicago, 1887, 8vo. + +Bury, John B. -- Browning's Philosophy. (Read at the 6th meeting +of the Browning Society, April 28, 1882.) London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 3, pp. 259-277. + +---- On "Aristophanes' Apology". Read at the 38th meeting +of the Browning Society, Jan. 29, 1886. London, 1886, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, pp. 79-86. + +C. C. S., i.e., C. S. Calverley. -- Fly Leaves. Cambridge, 1872, 8vo. + "The Cock and the Bull", a Parody on `The Ring and the Book', pp. 113-120. + +Cooke, Bancroft. -- An Introduction to Robert Browning. +A criticism of the purpose and method of his earlier works. +London [1883], 8vo. + +Cooke, George Willis. -- Poets and Problems. London [1886], 8vo. + Browning, pp. 269-388. + +Cooper, Thompson. -- Men of Mark, etc., London, 1881, 4to. + Robert Browning, with photograph. Fifth Series, No. 17. + +Corson, Hiram. -- The Idea of Personality, as embodied in +Robert Browning's Poetry. (Read at the 8th meeting of the Browning Society, +June 23, 1882.) London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 3, pp. 293-321. + [Also included in:] + +---- An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. +Boston, 1886, 8vo. + [3rd ed. is now online.] + +Courtney, W. L. -- Studies New and Old. London, 1888, 8vo. + Robert Browning, Writer of Plays, pp. 100-123. + +Devey, J. -- A Comparative Estimate of Modern English Poets. +London, 1873, 8vo. + Browning, pp. 376-421. + +Dowden, Edward. -- Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning. (`The Afternoon Lectures +on Literature and Art delivered in . . . Dublin, 1867 and 1868', pp. 141-179.) +Dublin, 1869, 8vo. + Reprinted in E. Dowden's "Studies in Literature", 1878, pp. 191-239. + +---- Studies in Literature, 1789-1877. London, 1878, 8vo. + Mr. Browning's place in recent literature, pp. 80-84; + Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning, pp. 191-239. + +---- Transcripts and Studies. London, 1888, 8vo. + Mr. Browning's "Sordello", pp. 474-525. + +Eyles, F. A. H. -- Popular Poets of the Period, etc. +London, 1888, etc., 8vo. + Robert Browning, by Alexander H. Japp, No. 7, pp. 193-199. + +Fleming, Albert. -- Andrea del Sarto. Read at the 39th meeting +of the Browning Society, Feb. 26, 1886. London, 1886, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, pp. 95-102. + +Forman, H. Buxton. -- Our Living Poets. London, 1871, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 103-152. + +Fotheringham, James. -- Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. +London, 1887, 8vo. + +---- Second edition, revised and enlarged. London, 1888, 8vo. + +Friswell, J. Hain. -- Modern Men of Letters honestly criticised. +London, 1870, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 119-131. + +Fuller, S. Margaret. -- Papers on Literature and Art. 2 parts. +London, 1846, 8vo. + Browning's Poems, pt. 2, pp. 31-45. + +Furnivall, Frederick J. -- A Bibliography of Robert Browning, from 1833-81. +London, 1881-82, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, 1881-4, Pts. 1 and 2. + +---- How the Browning Society came into being. With some words +on the characteristics and contrasts of Browning's early and late work. +London, 1884, 8vo. + +---- A grammatical analysis of "O Lyric Love". Read at the 48th meeting +of the Browning Society, Feb. 25, 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 9, pp. 165-168. + +Galton, Arthur. -- Urbana Scripta. Studies of five living poets, etc. +London, 1885, 8vo. + Mr. Browning, pp. 59-76. + +Gannon, Nicholas J. -- An Essay on the characteristic errors +of our most distinguished living poets. Dublin, 1853, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 25-32. + +Glazebrook, Mrs. M. G. -- "A Death in the Desert". Read at the 48th meeting +of the Browning Society, Feb. 25, 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 9, pp. 153-164. + +Halliwell-Phillipps, James O. -- Copy of Correspondence +[between J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps and Robert Browning, +concerning expressions respecting Halliwell-Phillipps, used by F. J. Furnivall +in the preface to a facsimile of the second edition of Hamlet, +published in 1880]. [Brighton? 1881] fol. + +Hamilton, Walter. -- Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors. +London, 1889, 8vo. + Robert Browning, vol. 6, pp. 46-55. + +Haweis, Rev. H. R. -- Poets in the Pulpit. London, 1880, 8vo. + Robert Browning. New Year's Eve, pp. 117-143. + +Herford, C. H. -- Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. London, 1886, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, pp. 133-145. + +Hodgkins, Louise Manning. -- Nineteenth Century Authors. Robert Browning. +Boston [1889], 8vo. + +Holland, F. May. -- Sordello. A Story from Robert Browning. +New York, 1881, 8vo. + Very scarce. + +Horne, R. H. -- A New Spirit of the Age. 2 vols. London, 1844, 8vo. + Robert Browning (with a portrait engraved by J. C. Armytage) + and J. W. Marston, vol. 2, pp. 153-186. + +Hutton, Richard Holt. -- Essays, Theological and Literary. 2 vols. +London, 1871, 8vo. + Mr. Browning, vol. 2, pp. 190-247. + +Johnson, Rev. Prof. Edwin. -- On "Bishop Blougram's Apology". +(Read at the 7th meeting of the Browning Society, May 26, 1882.) +London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 3, pp. 279-292. + +---- Conscience and Art in Browning. London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 3, pp. 345-379. + +---- On "Mr. Sludge the Medium". Read at the 31st meeting +of the Browning Society, March 27, 1885. London, 1885, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 7, pp. 13-32. + +Kingsland, William G. -- Robert Browning: chief poet of the age. +An essay addressed primarily to beginners in the study of Browning's poems. +London, 1887, 8vo. + +---- New edition, with biographical and other additions. London, 1890, 8vo. + +Landor, Walter Savage. -- The Works of Walter Savage Landor. 2 vols. +London, 1846, 8vo. + Poem "To Robert Browning", vol. 2, p. 673. + +M`Cormick, William S. -- Three Lectures on English Literature. +Paisley, 1889, 8vo. + The poetry of Robert Browning, pp. 125-184. + +Macdonald, George. -- Orts. London, 1882, 8vo. + Browning's "Christmas Eve", pp. 195-217. + +---- The Imagination and other Essays. Boston [1883], 8vo. + Browning's "Christmas Eve", pp. 195-217. + +McNicoll, Thomas. -- Essays on English Literature. London, 1861, 8vo. + New Poems of Browning and Landor (1856), pp. 298-314. + +McCrie, George. -- The Religion of our Literature. Essays upon +Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, etc. London, 1875, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 69-109. + +Macready, William Charles. -- Macready's Reminiscences +and Selections from his diaries and letters. 2 vols. London, 1875, 8vo. + Numerous references to Browning. + +Mayor, Joseph B. -- Chapters on English Metre. London, 1886, 8vo. + Tennyson and Browning, Chap. 12, pp. 184-196. + +Morison, J. Cotter. -- "Caliban upon Setebos", with some notes +on Browning's Subtlety and Humour. (Read at the 24th Meeting +of the Browning Society, April 25, 1884.) London, 1884, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, pp. 489-498. + +Morrison, Jeanie. -- Sordello. An outline analysis of Mr. Browning's Poem. +London, 1889, 8vo. + +Nettleship, John T. -- Essays on Robert Browning's Poetry. +London, 1868, 8vo. + +---- New edition. New York, 1890, 8vo. + +---- On Browning's "Fifine at the Fair". To be read at +the 4th Meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 24, 1882. London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 2, pp. 199-230. + +---- Classification of Browning's Works. London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 2, pp. 231-234. + +---- Browning's Intuition, specially in regard of music and the Plastic Arts. +(Read at the 13th meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 23, 1883.) +London, 1883, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 4, pp. 381-396. + +---- On the development of Browning's Genius in his capacity as poet or maker. +Read at the 35th Meeting of the Browning Society, Oct. 30, 1885. +London, 1886, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, pp. 55-77. + +Noel, Hon. Roden. -- Essays on Poetry and Poets. London, 1886, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 256-282; Robert Browning's Poetry, pp. 283-303. + +Notes and Queries. -- Notes and Queries. 7 Series. London, 1849-1889, 4to. + Numerous references to Browning. + +O'Byrne, George. -- Robert Browning. In Memoriam. An Epicedium. +Nottingham [1890], 8vo. + +O'Conor, William Anderson. -- Essays in Literature and Ethics. +Manchester, 1889, 8vo. + Browning's "Childe Roland", pp. 1-24. + +Ormerod, Helen J. -- Some Notes on Browning's Poems referring to Music. +Read at the 51st Meeting of the Browning Society, May 27, 1887. +London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 9, pp. 180-195. + +---- Abt Vogler, the Man. Read at the 55th Meeting of the Browning Society, +Jan. 27th, 1888. London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 10, pp. 221-236. + +Orr, Mrs. Sutherland. -- A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning. +London, 1885, 8vo. + +---- Second edition, revised. London, 1886, 8vo. + +---- Classification of Browning's Poems. London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 2, pp. 235-238. + +[Orr, Mrs. Sutherland. -- Life and Letters of Robert Browning. 2nd ed. +Smith, Elder, & Co.: London, 1891, 8vo. Now online. -- A. L., 1996.] + +Outram, Leonard S. -- Love's Value. Colombe's Birthday. Act IV. +(The Avowal of Valence.) Read at the 38th Meeting of the Browning Society, +Jan. 29, 1886. London, 1886, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, pp. 87-94. + +Pearson, Howard S. -- On Browning as a Landscape Painter. +Read at the 41st Meeting of the Browning Society, April 30, 1886. +London, 1886, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 8, pp. 103-118. + +Pollock, Frederick. -- Leading cases done into English. +By an Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn [Frederick Pollock]. Second edition. +London, 1876, 8vo. + IV. "Scott v. Shepherd (1 Sm. L. C. 477.), Any Pleader to any Student", + pp. 15-19. A Parody on Browning. + +Portrait. -- The Portrait. Vol. 1. London, 1877, 4to. + Robert Browning, by G. Barnett Smith, 4 pages. + The portrait is from a photograph by Elliott & Fry. + +Portrait Gallery. -- National Portrait Gallery. London [1877], 4to. + Robert Browning (with portrait), 4th Series, pp. 73-80. + +Powell, Thomas. -- The Living Authors of England. New York, 1849, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 71-85. + +---- Pictures of the Living Authors of Britain. London, 1851, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 61-75. + +Radford, Ernest. -- Illustrations to Browning's Poems; +with a notice of the artists and the pictures, by E. Radford. 2 pts. +London, 1882-3, fol. + Published for the Browning Society. + +Raleigh, W. A. -- On some prominent points in Browning's Teaching. +(Read at the 22nd Meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 22, 1884.) +London, 1884, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, pp. 477-488. + +Reeve, Lovell. -- Portraits of Men of Eminence in Literature, +Science, and Art, with biographical memoirs, etc. 6 vols. +London, 1863-67, 8vo. + Robert Browning, vol. 1, pp. 109-112. + +Revell, William F. -- Browning's Poems on God and Immortality +as bearing on life here. (Read at the 14th Meeting of the Browning Society, +March 30, 1883.) London, 1883, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 4, pp. 435-454. + +---- Browning's Views of Life. Address on Oct. 28, 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 10, pp. 197-199. + +Sharp, William. -- Browning and the Arts. London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 3, pp. 34*-40*. + +Sharpe, Rev. John. -- On "Pietro of Abano" and the leading ideas +of "Dramatic Idyls". Second series, 1880. (Read at the 2nd Meeting +of the Browning Society, Nov. 25, 1881.) London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 2, pp. 191-197. + +---- Jocoseria. (Read at the 20th Meeting of the Browning Society, +Nov. 23, 1883.) London, 1884, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, pp. 93*-97*. + +Shirley, (pseud.) [i.e., John Skelton]. -- A Campaigner at Home. +London, 1865, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 247-283. Appeared originally in Fraser's Magazine, + vol. 67, 1863, pp. 240-256. + +Stedman, Edmund Clarence. -- Victorian Poets. Boston, 1876, 8vo. + Robert Browning, pp. 293-341. + +---- Another edition. Boston, 1887, 8vo. + +Stoddart, Anna M. -- "Saul". Read at the 59th Meeting +of the Browning Society, May 25, 1888. London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 10, pp. 264-274. + +Swinburne, Algernon C. -- The Works of George Chapman: +Poems and Minor Translations. London, 1875, 8vo. + On Browning, pp. xiv-xix of the "Essay on George Chapman's + poetical and dramatic works." + +---- Specimens of Modern Poets. The Heptalogia, or the Seven against Sense, +etc. London, 1880, 8vo. + John Jones, pp. 9-39. A parody on James Lee. + +Symons, Arthur. -- Is Browning Dramatic? (Read at the 29th Meeting +of the Browning Society, Jan. 30, 1885.) London, 1885, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 7, pp. 1-12. + +---- An Introduction to the Study of Browning. London, 1886, 8vo. + +---- Some Notes on Mr. Browning's last volume. (On Parleyings +with Certain People.) Read at the 50th Meeting of the Browning Society, +April 29, 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 9, pp. 169-179. + +Thomson, James. -- Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning. +(Read at the 3rd Meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 27, 1882.) +London, 1882, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 2, pp. 239-250. + +Todhunter, Dr. John. -- "The Ring and the Book". (Read at the 19th Meeting +of the Browning Society, Oct. 26, 1883.) London, 1884, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, pp. 85*-92*. + +---- "Strafford" at the Strand Theatre, Dec. 21, 1886. +Read at the 47th Meeting of the Browning Society, Jan. 28, 1887. +London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 9, pp. 147-152. + +Turnbull, Mrs. -- Abt Vogler. (Read at the 17th Meeting +of the Browning Society, June 22, 1883.) London, 1883, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 4, pp. 469-476. + +---- In a Balcony. (Read at the Annual Meeting of the Browning Society, +July 4, 1884.) London, 1884, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 5, pp. 499-502. + +Wall, Annie. -- Sordello's Story retold in prose. Boston, 1886, 8vo. + +West, E. D. -- One aspect of Browning's Villains. (Read at the 15th Meeting +of the Browning Society, April 27, 1883.) London, 1883, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 4, pp. 411-434. + +Westcott, B. F. -- On some points in Browning's View of Life. +A paper read before the Cambridge Browning Society, November, 1882. +Cambridge, 1883, 8vo. + Printed also in the Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 4, pp. 397-410. + +Whitehead, Miss C. M. -- Browning as a Teacher of the Nineteenth Century. +Read at the 58th Meeting of the Browning Society, April 27, 1888. +London, 1888, 8vo. + The Browning Society's Papers, Pt. 10, pp. 237-263. + + + Magazine Articles. + +Browning, Robert. +-- Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, pp. 60-62, 122-127. +-- Revue des Deux Mondes, by J. Milsand, 15 Aug. 1851, pp. 661-689. +-- London Quarterly Review, vol. 6, 1856, pp. 493-501, vol. 22, p. 30, etc. +-- Revue Contemporaine, by J. Milsand, vol. 27, 1856, pp. 511-546. +-- Fraser's Magazine, by J. Skelton, vol. 67, 1863, pp. 240-256; +reprinted in "A Campaigner at Home", 1865. +-- Victoria Magazine, by M. D. Conway, vol. 2, 1864, pp. 298-316. +-- Contemporary Review, vol. 4, 1867, pp. 1-15, 133-148; +same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 5 N.S., pp. 314-323, 501-513. +-- Revue des Deux Mondes, by Louis Etienne, tom. 85, 1870, pp. 704-735. +-- Appleton's Journal (with portrait), by R. H. Stoddard, +vol. 6, 1871, pp. 533-536. +-- Once a Week, vol. 9 N.S., 1872, pp. 164-167. +-- Scribner's Monthly, by E. C. Stedman, vol. 9, 1874, pp. 167-183. +-- Galaxy, by J. H. Browne, vol. 19, 1875, pp. 764-774. +-- St. James's Magazine, by T. Bayne, vol. 32, 1877, pp. 153-164. +-- Dublin University Magazine (with portrait), vol. 3 N.S., 1878, +pp. 322-335, 416-443. +-- Gentleman's Magazine, by A. N. McNicoll, vol. 244, 1879, pp. 54-67. +-- Congregationalist, vol. 8, 1879, pp. 915-922. +-- International Review, by G. Barnett Smith, vol. 6, 1879, pp. 176-194. +-- Literary World (Boston), by F. J. Furnivall, H. E. Scudder, etc., +vol. 13, 1882, pp. 76-81. +-- Critic, by J. H. Morse, vol. 3, 1883, pp. 263, 264. +-- Contemporary Review, by Hon. Roden Noel, vol. 44, 1883, pp. 701-718; +same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 159, pp. 771-781. +-- British Quarterly Review, vol. 80, 1884, pp. 1-28. +-- Family Friend, by J. Fuller Higgs, vol. 18, 1887, pp. 10-13. +-- Graphic, with portrait, Jan. 15, 1887. +-- Athenaeum, Dec. 21, 1889, pp. 858-860. +-- Atalanta, by Edmund Gosse, Feb. 1889, pp. 361-364. +-- Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1890, pp. 243-248. +-- Contemporary Review, by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Jan. 1890, +pp. 141-152. +-- Universal Review, by Gabriel Sarrazin, Feb. 1890, pp. 230-246. +-- Art and Literature, with portrait, Feb. 1890, pp. 17-19. +-- Congregational Review, by Ruth J. Pitt, Jan. 1890, pp. 57-66. +-- Expository Times, by the Rev. Professor Salmond, Feb. 1890, pp. 110, 111. +-- The Speaker, by Augustine Birrell, Jan. 4, 1890, pp. 16, 17. +-- National Review, by H. D. Traill, Jan. 1890, pp. 592-597. +-- Scots Magazine, Jan. 1890, pp. 131-136. +-- Argosy, by E. F. Bridell-Fox, Feb. 1890, pp. 108-114. +-- New Church Magazine, by C. E. Rowe, Feb. 1890, pp. 49-58. + +---- `Agamemnon'. +-- Edinburgh Review, vol. 147, 1878, pp. 409-436. +-- Athenaeum, Oct. 27, 1877, pp. 525-527. +-- Academy, by J. A. Symonds, Nov. 3, 1877, pp. 419, 420. +-- Literary World (Boston), vol. 13, 1882, p. 419. + +---- and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. +-- Leisure Hour (with portraits), 1883, pp. 396-404. +-- Manhattan, by K. M. Rowland, June 1884, pp. 553-562. + +---- and the Edinburgh Review. +-- Reader, by Gerald Massey, Nov. 26, 1864, pp. 674, 675. + +---- and the Epic of Psychology. +-- London Quarterly Review, vol. 32, 1869, pp. 325-357. + +---- and the Greek Drama. +-- Manchester Quarterly, by A. S. Wilkins, vol. 2, 1883, pp. 377-390. + +---- and James Russell Lowell. +-- New Englander, vol. 29, 1870, pp. 125-136. + +---- and Tennyson. +-- Eclectic Review, vol. 7 N.S., 1864, pp. 361-389. +-- Leisure Hour, Feb. 1890, pp. 231-234. + +---- `Another Way of Love'. +-- Critic (New York), by F. L. Turnbull, Sept. 26, 1885, pp. 151, 152. + +---- `Aristophanes' Apology'. +-- London Quarterly Review, vol. 44, 1875, pp. 354-376. +-- Academy, by J. A. Symonds, April 17, 1875, pp. 389, 390. +-- Athenaeum, April 17, 1875, pp. 513, 514. + +---- as a Preacher. +-- Dark Blue, by E. D. West, vol. 2, 1872, pp. 171-184, 305-319; +same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 3, pp. 707-723. + +---- as a Religious Teacher. +-- Month, by the Rev. John Rickaby, Feb. 1890, pp. 173-190. +-- Good Words, by R. H. Hutton, Feb. 1890, pp. 87-93. + +---- as a Teacher. In Memoriam. +-- Gentleman's Magazine, by Mrs. Alexander Ireland, Feb. 1890, pp. 177-184. + +---- as Theologian. +-- Time, by H. W. Massingham, Jan. 1890, pp. 90-96. + +---- as a Writer of Plays. +-- Fortnightly Review, by W. L. Courtney, vol. 33 N.S., 1883, pp. 888-900; +same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 38 N.S., pp. 358-366. + +---- `Balaustion's Adventure'. +-- Contemporary Review, by Matthew Browne, vol. 18, 1871, pp. 284-296. +-- Nation, by J. R. Dennett, vol. 13, 1871, pp. 178, 179. +-- Fortnightly Review, by Sidney Colvin, vol. 10 N.S., 1871, pp. 478-490. +-- Edinburgh Review, vol. 135, 1872, pp. 221-249. +-- London Quarterly Review, vol. 37, 1871, pp. 346-368. +-- Athenaeum, Aug. 12, 1871, pp. 199, 200. +-- Penn Monthly, by R. E. Thompson, vol. 6, 1875, pp. 928-940. +-- St. Paul's Magazine, by E. J. Hasell, vol. 12, 1873, pp. 680-699; +vol. 13, pp. 49-66. +-- Pioneer, Oct. 1887, pp. 159-162. + +---- `Bells and Pomegranates'. +-- Christian Remembrancer, vol. 11 N.S., 1846, pp. 316-330. +-- People's Journal, by H. F. Chorley, vol. 2, 1847, pp. 38-40, 104-106. + +---- Browning Society. +-- Saturday Review, vol. 53, 1882, pp. 12, 13; vol. 58, 1884, pp. 721, 722. + +---- `Childe Roland'. +-- Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, by the Rev. W. A. O'Conor, +vol. 3, 1877, pp. 12-25. +-- Critic (New York), by J. E. Cooke, vol. 8, 1886, pp. 201, 202, +and by A. Bates, pp. 231, 232. + +---- ---- `Childe Roland', `Childe Harold', and the `Sangrail'. +-- Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, by John Mortimer, +vol. 3, 1877, pp. 26-31. + +---- `Christmas Eve and Easter Day'. +-- Prospective Review, vol. 6, 1850, pp. 267-279. +-- Littell's Living Age (from the Examiner), vol. 25, pp. 403-409. +-- The Germ, No. 4, by W. M. Rossetti, pp. 187-192. +-- Day of Rest, by George MacDonald, vol. 1, 1873, pp. 34-36, 55, 56. + +---- Clubs in the United States. +-- Literary World (Boston), by H. Corson, vol. 14, 1883, p. 127. + +---- Day with the Brownings at Pratolino. +-- Scribner's Monthly, by E. C. Kinney, vol. 1, 1870, pp. 185-188. + +---- `Dead in Venice'. (Verses.) +-- Athenaeum, Dec. 21, 1889, p. 860. + +---- The "Detachment" of. +-- Athenaeum, Jan. 4, 1890, pp. 18, 19. + +---- `Dramatic Idyls'. +-- Fortnightly Review, by Grant Allen, vol. 26 N.S., 1879, pp. 149-154. +-- Contemporary Review, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, vol. 35, 1879, pp. 289-302. +-- Saturday Review, June 21, 1879, pp. 774, 775. +-- Fraser's Magazine, vol. 20 N.S., 1879, pp. 103-124. +-- St. James's Magazine, by T. Bayne, vol. 8, fourth series, 1880, +pp. 108-118. +-- Athenaeum, May 10, 1879, pp. 593-595. +-- Academy, by Frank Wedmore, May 10, 1879, pp. 403, 404. +-- Athenaeum, July 10, 1880, pp. 39-41. +-- Literary World, July 23, 1880, pp. 49-51. + +---- `Dramatis Personae'. +-- St. James's Magazine, by R. Bell, vol. 10, 1864, pp. 477-491. +-- New Monthly Magazine, by T. F. Wedmore, vol. 133, 1865, pp. 186-194. +-- Dublin University Magazine, vol. 64, 1864, pp. 573-579. +-- Eclectic Review, by E. Paxton Hood, vol. 7 N.S., 1864, pp. 62-72. + +---- Early Writings of. +-- Century, by E. W. Gosse, vol. 23, 1881, pp. 189-200. + +---- `Ferishtah's Fancies'. +-- Athenaeum, Dec. 6, 1884, pp. 725-727. +-- Saturday Review, vol. 58, 1884, pp. 727, 728. +-- Spectator, Dec. 6, 1884, pp. 1614-1616. +-- Academy, by H. C. Beeching, Dec. 13, 1884, pp. 385, 386. +-- Critic (New York), Dec. 13, 1884, p. 279. +-- Oxford Magazine, vol. 3, 1885, pp. 161, 162. + +---- `Fifine at the Fair'. +-- Old and New, by C. C. Everett, vol. 6, 1872, pp. 609-615. +-- Canadian Monthly, by Goldwin Smith, vol. 2, 1872, pp. 285-287. +-- Temple Bar, vol. 37, 1873, pp. 315-328. +-- Literary World, July 12, 1872, pp. 17, 18, and July 19, pp. 42, 43. +-- Fortnightly Review, by Sidney Colvin, vol. 12 N.S., 1872, pp. 118-120. +-- Saturday Review, vol. 34, 1872, pp. 220, 221. + +---- First Poem of. +-- St. James's Magazine, vol. 7 N.S., 1871, pp. 485-496. + +---- Funeral of. +-- Scots Magazine, by Elizabeth R. Chapman, Feb. 1890, pp. 216-223. + +---- Handbook to the Works of, Orr's. +-- Academy, by J. T. Nettleship, vol. 27, 1885, pp. 429-431. +-- Athenaeum, Sept. 26, 1885, pp. 396, 397. + +---- in 1869. +-- Cornhill Magazine, vol. 19, 1869, pp. 249-256. + +---- `In a Balcony'. +-- Theatre, by B. L. Mosely, May 1, 1885, pp. 225-230. + +---- In Memoriam. +-- New Review, by Edmund W. Gosse, Jan. 1890, pp. 91-96. + +---- `Inn Album'. +-- Macmillan's Magazine, by A. C. Bradley, vol. 33, 1876, pp. 347-354. +-- Nation, by Henry James, junr., vol. 22, 1876, pp. 49, 50. +-- International Review, by Bayard Taylor, vol. 3, 1876, pp. 402-404. +-- Athenaeum, Nov. 27, 1875, pp. 701, 702. +-- Academy, by J. A. Symonds, Nov. 27, 1875, pp. 543, 544. +-- Spectator, December 11, 1875, pp. 1555-1557. +-- Examiner, Dec. 11, 1875, pp. 1389-1390. + +---- in Westminster Abbey. +-- Speaker, by Henry James, Jan. 4, 1890, pp. 10-12. + +---- `Jocoseria'. +-- National Review, by W. J. Courthope, vol. 1, 1883, pp. 548-561. +-- Atlantic Monthly, vol. 51, 1883, pp. 840-845. +-- Cambridge Review, vol. 4, 1883, pp. 352, 353. +-- Gentleman's Magazine, by R. H. Shepherd, vol. 254, 1883, pp. 624-630. +-- Academy, by J. A. Symonds, vol. 23, 1883, pp. 213, 214. +-- Athenaeum, March 24, 1883, pp. 367, 368. +-- Saturday Review, vol. 55, 1883, pp. 376, 377. +-- Spectator, March 17, 1883, pp. 351-353. + +---- Kingsland's. +-- Literary Opinion, May 1, 1887. + +---- `La Saisiaz'. `The Two Poets of Croisic'. +-- Academy, by G. A. Simcox, vol. 13, 1878, pp. 478-480. +-- Athenaeum, May 25, 1878, pp. 661-664. +-- Saturday Review, June 15, 1878, pp. 759, 760. + +---- Love Poems of. +-- Journal of Education, by Arthur Sidgwick, May 1, 1882, pp. 139-143. + +---- Lyrical and Dramatic Poems. +-- Literary World (Boston), Feb. 24, 1883, p. 58. + +---- `Men and Women'. +-- Bentley's Miscellany, vol. 39, 1856, pp. 64-70. +-- British Quarterly Review, vol. 23, 1856, pp. 151-180. +-- Rambler, vol. 5 N.S., 1856, pp. 55-71. +-- Christian Remembrancer, vol. 31 N.S., 1856, pp. 281-294; +vol. 34 N.S., 1857, pp. 361-390. +-- Dublin University Magazine, vol. 47, 1856, pp. 673-675. +-- Fraser's Magazine, by G. Brimley, vol. 53, 1856, pp. 105-116. +-- Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 6, 1856, pp. 21-28. +-- Westminster Review, vol. 9 N.S., 1856, pp. 290-296. + +---- Note on. +-- Art Review, by W. Mortimer, Jan. 1890, pp. 28-32. + +---- `One Way of Love'. +-- Literary World (Boston), by C. R. Corson, July 26, 1884, pp. 250, 251. + +---- `Pacchiarotto'. +-- Academy, by Edward Dowden, July 29, 1876, pp. 99, 100. +-- Athenaeum, July 22, 1876, pp. 101, 102. + +---- `Paracelsus'. +-- New Monthly Magazine, by John Forster, vol. 46, 1836, pp. 289-308. +-- Examiner, by John Forster, Sept. 6, 1835, pp. 563-565. +-- Theologian, vol. 2, 1845, pp. 276-282. +-- Monthly Repository, by W. J. Fox, vol. 9 N.S., 1835, pp. 716-727. +-- Fraser's Magazine, by J. Heraud, vol. 13, 1836, pp. 363-374. +-- Leigh Hunt's Journal, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 405-408. +-- Revue des Deux Mondes, by Philarete Chasles, tom. 22, 1840, pp. 127-133. + +---- `Parleyings with Certain People'. +-- Literary Opinion, March 1, 1887. + +---- `Pauline'. +-- Monthly Repository, by W. J. Fox, vol. 7 N.S., 1833, pp. 252-262. +-- Athenaeum, April 6, 1833, p. 216. + +---- Place of, in Literature. +-- Contemporary Review, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, vol. 23, 1874, pp. 934-965; +same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 122, pp. 67-85. + +---- Plays and Poems. +-- North American Review, by J. R. Lowell, vol. 66, 1848, pp. 357-400. + +---- Poems. +-- British Quarterly Review, vol. 6, 1847, pp. 490-509. +-- Eclectic Review, vol. 26 N.S., 1849, pp. 203-214. +-- Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18, 1849, pp. 453-469. +-- Christian Examiner, by C. C. Everett, vol. 48, 1850, pp. 361-372. +-- Massachusetts Quarterly Review, vol. 3, 1850, pp. 347-385. +-- Fraser's Magazine, vol. 43, 1851, pp. 170-182. +-- Putnam's Monthly Magazine, vol. 7, 1856, pp. 372-381. +-- North British Review, vol. 34, 1861, pp. 350-374. +-- Chambers's Journal, vol. 19, 1863, pp. 91-95; vol. 20, pp. 39-41. +-- National Review, vol. 17, 1863, pp. 417-446. +-- Eclectic Review, by E. P. Hood, vol. 4 N.S., 1863, pp. 436-454; +vol. 7 N.S., 1864, pp. 62-72. +-- Edinburgh Review, vol. 120, 1864, pp. 537-565. +-- Christian Examiner, by C. C. Everett, vol. 77, 1864, pp. 51-64. +-- Quarterly Review, vol. 118, 1865, pp. 77-105. +-- Nuova Antologia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, by Enrico Nencioni, +July 1867, pp. 468-481. +-- North British Review, by J. Hutchinson Stirling, +vol. 49, 1868, pp. 353-408. +-- Temple Bar, by Alfred Austin, vol. 26, 1869, pp. 316-333; +vol. 27, pp. 170-186; vol. 28, pp. 33-48. +-- British Quarterly Review, vol. 49, 1869, pp. 435-459. +-- Saint Paul's Magazine, by E. J. Hasell, vol. 7, 1871, pp. 257-276; +same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 13 N.S., pp. 267-279, +and in Littell's Living Age, vol. 108, pp. 155-166. +-- Church Quarterly Review, by the Hon. and Rev. Arthur Lyttleton, +vol. 7, 1878, pp. 65-92. +-- Cambridge Review, vol. 3, 1881, pp. 126, 127. +-- Scottish Review, vol. 2, 1883, pp. 349-358. +-- London Quarterly Review, vol. 65, 1886, pp. 238-250. + +---- `Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'. +-- New Englander, by J. S. Sewall, vol. 33, 1874, pp. 493-505. +-- Examiner, Dec. 23, 1871, pp. 1267, 1268. +-- Academy, by G. A. Simcox, Jan. 15, 1872, pp. 24-26. +-- Literary World, Jan. 5, 1872, pp. 8, 9. + +---- `Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. +-- Nation, by J. R. Dennett, vol. 17, 1873, pp. 116-118. +-- Contemporary Review, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, vol. 22, 1873, pp. 87-106. +-- Penn Monthly Magazine, vol. 4, 1873, pp. 657-661. +-- Athenaeum, May 10, 1873, pp. 593, 594. + +---- `Ring and the Book'. +-- Athenaeum, Dec. 26, 1868, pp. 875, 876; March 20, 1869, pp. 399, 400. +-- Edinburgh Review, vol. 130, 1869, pp. 164-186. +-- Dublin Review, vol. 13 N.S., 1869, pp. 48-62. +-- Chambers's Journal, July 24, 1869, pp. 473-476. +-- Fortnightly Review, by John Morley, vol. 5 N.S., 1869, pp. 331-343. +-- Macmillan's Magazine, by J. A. Symonds, vol. 19, 1869, pp. 258-262, +and by J. R. Mozley, pp. 544-552. +-- North American Review, by E. J. Cutler, vol. 109, 1869, pp. 279-283. +-- Nation, by J. R. Dennett, vol. 8, 1869, pp. 135, 136. +-- Tinsley's Magazine, vol. 3, 1869, pp. 665-674. +-- Christian Examiner, by J. W. Chadwick, vol. 86, 1869, pp. 295-315. +-- Gentleman's Magazine, by James Thomson, vol. 251, 1881, pp. 682-695. +-- St. James's Magazine, vol. 2 N.S., 1869, pp. 460-464. +-- Saint Paul's, vol. 7, 1871, pp. 377-397; same article, Eclectic Magazine, +vol. 13 N.S., pp. 400-412, and in Littell's Living Age, vol. 108, pp. 771-783. +-- North British Review, vol. 51, 1870, pp. 97-126. +-- Quarterly Review, vol. 126, 1869, pp. 328-359. + +---- ---- Some of the Teachings of "The Ring and the Book". +-- Poet-Lore, by F. B. Hornbrooke, July 1889, pp. 314-320. + +---- Science of. +-- Poet-Lore, by Edward Berdoe, Aug. 15, 1889, pp. 353-362. + +---- Selections from. +-- London Quarterly Review, by Frank T. Marzials, vol. 20, 1863, pp. 527-532. +-- Literary World, May 19, 1883, p. 157. + +---- Sequence of Sonnets on death of. +-- Fortnightly Review, by Algernon C. Swinburne, Jan. 1890, pp. 1-4. + +---- Some Thoughts on. +-- Macmillan's Magazine, by M. A. Lewis, vol. 46, 1882, pp. 205-219; +same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 154, pp. 238-246. + +---- Sonnets to. +-- Macmillan's Magazine, by Aubrey de Vere, Feb. 1890, p. 258. +-- Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, by Sir Theodore Martin, Jan. 1890, p. 112. +-- Household Words, vol. 4, 1852, p. 213. + +---- Sonnets of. +-- Manchester Quarterly, by Benjamin Sagar, vol. 6, 1887, pp. 148-159. + +---- `Sordello'. +-- Fraser's Magazine, by E. Dowden, vol. 76, pp. 518-530. +-- Macmillan's Magazine, by R. W. Church, vol. 55, 1887, pp. 241-253. + +---- ---- `Sordello' at the East End. +-- Journal of Education, July 1, 1885, pp. 281-283. + +---- Stories from, Holland's. +-- Academy, by J. A. Blaikie, vol. 22, 1882, pp. 287, 288. + +---- `Strafford: a Tragedy'. +-- Edinburgh Review, vol. 65, 1837, pp. 132-151. + +---- Study of. +-- Overland Monthly, by Caroline Le Conte, vol. 3, 2nd series, +1884, pp. 645-651. +-- Literary World (Boston), vol. 17, 1886, p. 44. + +---- Two Sonnets to. +-- New Monthly Magazine, vol. 48, 1836, p. 48. + +---- Types of Womanhood. +-- Woman's World, by Annie E. Ireland, Nov. 1889, pp. 47-50. + +---- Verses on. +-- Art Review (with portrait), by William Sharp, Feb. 1890, pp. 33-36. +-- Murray's Magazine, by Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, Feb. 1890, pp. 145-150. +-- Belford's Magazine (poem of 20 six-line stanzas), by William Sharp, +March 1890. + +---- Wordsworth and Tennyson. +-- National Review, by Walter Bagehot, vol. 19, 1864, pp. 27-67; +reprinted in "Literary Studies", 1879; same article, Eclectic Magazine, +vol. 1 N.S., pp. 273-284, 415-427, and in Littell's Living Age, +vol. 84, pp. 3-24. + + + +VII. Chronological List of Works. + + + 1833 + +Pauline + + + 1835 + +Paracelsus + + + 1837 + +Strafford + + + 1840 + +Sordello + + + 1841 + +Pippa Passes. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 1) + + + 1842 + +King Victor and King Charles. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 2) + +Dramatic Lyrics. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 3) + Cavalier Tunes. + I. Marching Along. + II. Give a Rouse. + III. My Wife Gertrude. + Italy and France. + I. Italy. + II. France. + Camp and Cloister. + I. Camp (French). + II. Cloister (Spanish). + In a Gondola. + Artemis Prologuizes. + Waring. + Queen Worship. + I. Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli. + II. Cristina. + Madhouse Cells. + I. Johannes Agricola. + II. Porphyria. + Through the Metidja. + The Pied Piper of Hamelin. + + + 1843 + +The Return of the Druses. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 4) + +A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 5) + + + 1844 + +Colombe's Birthday. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 6) + + + 1845 + +Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 7) + How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. + Pictor Ignotus. + Italy in England. + England in Italy. + The Lost Leader. + The Lost Mistress. + Home Thoughts from Abroad. + The Tomb at St. Praxed's. + Garden Fancies. + I. The Flower's Name. + II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. + France and Spain. + I. The Laboratory. + II. The Confessional. + The Flight of the Duchess. + Earth's Immortalities. + Song. + The Boy and the Angel. + Night and Morning. + Claret and Tokay. + Saul. (Part 1) + Time's Revenges. + The Glove. + + + 1846 + +Luria. + & +A Soul's Tragedy. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 8) + + + 1850 + +Christmas Eve and Easter Day. + + + 1852 + +Introductory Essay to Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. + + + 1855 + +Men and Women. + + Vol. 1. + Love among the Ruins. + A Lover's 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 of Karshish. + 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. + Love in a Life. + Life in a Love. + How it strikes a Contemporary. + The Last Ride Together. + The Patriot. + Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. + Bishop Blougram's Apology. + Memorabilia. + + Vol. 2. + Andrea del Sarto. + Before. + After. + In Three Days. + In a Year. + Old Pictures in Florence. + In a Balcony. + Saul. + "De Gustibus ----" + Women and Roses. + Protus. + Holy-Cross Day. + The Guardian Angel. + Cleon. + The Twins. + Popularity. + The Heretic's Tragedy. + Two in the Campagna. + A Grammarian's Funeral. + One Way of Love. + Another Way of Love. + "Transcendentalism". + Misconceptions. + One Word More. + + + 1864 + +Dramatis Personae. + James Lee's Wife. + Gold Hair. + The Worst of It. + Dis Aliter Visum. + Too Late. + Abt Vogler. + Rabbi Ben Ezra. + A Death in the Desert. + Caliban upon Setebos. + Confessions. + May and Death. + Prospice. + Youth and Art. + A Face. + A Likeness. + Mr. Sludge the Medium. + Apparent Failure. + Epilogue. + + + 1868-69 + +The Ring and the Book. + + + 1871 + +Balaustion's Adventure. + +Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. + + + 1872 + +Fifine at the Fair. + + + 1873 + +Red Cotton Nightcap Country. + + + 1875 + +Aristophanes' Apology. + +The Inn Album. + + + 1876 + +Pacchiarotto, and other Poems. + Prologue. + Of Pacchiarotto. + At the "Mermaid". + House. + Shop. + Pisgah Sights, I. and II. + Fears and Scruples. + Natural Magic. + Magical Nature. + Bifurcation. + Numpholeptos. + Appearances. + St. Martin's Summer. + Herve Riel. (Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine, March 1871.) + A Forgiveness. + Cenciaja. + Filippo Baldinucci. + Epilogue. + + + 1877 + +The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. + + + 1878 + +La Saisiaz. + & +The Two Poets of Croisic. + + + 1879-80 + +Dramatic Idyls. + + Series 1. + Martin Relph. + Pheidippides. + Halbert and Hob. + Ivan Ivanovitch. + Tray. + Ned Bratts. + + Series 2. + Proem. + Echetlos. + Clive. + Muleykeh. + Pietro of Abano. + Doctor ----. + Pan and Luna. + Epilogue. + + + 1883 + +Jocoseria. + Wanting is -- What? + Donald. + Solomon and Balkis. + Cristina and Monaldeschi. + Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli. + Adam, Lilith, and Eve. + Ixion. + Jochanan Hakkadosh. + Never the Time and the Place. + Pambo. + + + 1884 + +Ferishtah's Fancies. + Prologue. + Ferishtah's Fancies: + 1. The Eagle. + 2. Melon-Seller. + 3. Shah Abbas. + 4. The Family. + 5. The Sun. + 6. Mihrab Shah. + 7. A Camel-Driver. + 8. Two Camels. + 9. Cherries. + 10. Plot-Culture. + 11. A Pillar at Sebzevah. + 12. A Bean-stripe; also + Apple-Eating. + Epilogue. + + + 1887 + +Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day. + Apollo and the Fates -- a Prologue. + I. With Bernard de Mandeville. + II. With Daniel Bartoli. + III. With Christopher Smart. + IV. With George Bubb Dodington. + V. With Francis Furini. + VI. With Gerard de Lairesse. + VII. With Charles Avison. + John Fust and his Friends -- an Epilogue. + + + 1890 + +Asolando. + Prologue. + Rosny. + Dubiety. + Now. + Humility. + Poetics. + Summum Bonum. + A Pearl, a Girl. + Speculative. + White Witchcraft. + Bad Dreams. + Inapprehensiveness. + Which? + The Cardinal and the Dog. + The Pope and the Net. + The Bean-Feast. + Muckle-mouth Meg. + Arcades Ambo. + The Lady and the Painter. + Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. + Beatrice Signorini. + Flute-music, with an Accompaniment. + "Imperante Augusto natus est ----" + Development. + Rephan. + Reverie. + Epilogue. + + + + + + + -------- +Printed by Walter Scott, Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne + + + + + + +End of this etext of Life of Browning by William Sharp + Binary files differdiff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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