Chapter III: Introduction: The Life of Browning (2)

A second charge not infrequently brought against Browning's verse is that it is harsh, and at times even ugly. This charge, like that of obscurity, cannot be wholly denied. The harshness results from incorrect rhymes, from irregular movement of the verse, or from difficult combinations of vowels and consonants. No reader of Browning's poems can fail to have been impressed by his intellectual agility in matching odd rhymes. In dash and originality his rhymes out-rank even those in Butler's _Hudibras_ and Lowell's _Fable for Critics_. We find in _Pacchiarotto_, for instance, many rhymes of the gayest, most freakish, most grotesque character--"monkey, one key," "prelude, hell-hued," "stubborn, cub-born," "_was_ hard, hazard," all occur in a single stanza. An example of exceptional facility in rhyming is found in "Through the Metidja," where, without repetition of words and without forcing of the sense thirty-six words rhyme with "ride." It cannot be denied that this remarkable facility led Browning occasionally into the use of odd rhymes in poems where no light or comic effect was intended; but a detailed study of his rhymes[7] shows that the proportion of incorrect rhymes is really small, that the grotesque rhymes are more striking than numerous, and that they are usually in places where they are dramatically appropriate. His use of harsh words and sound-blendings is also often to be justified on the ground of their appropriateness to the idea. Compare, for instance, the flowing, easy words, the musical linking of sounds, in the first stanza of "Love Among the Ruins" with the harsh words, harshly combined, in the twelfth and thirteenth stanzas of "Childe Roland." Both effects are artistic because each sort of combination is in response to the nature of the thought. It is true that sometimes, perhaps not infrequently, the verse is rugged or uncouth where the sense does not call for such form, and there are lines that not only remind us of De Quincey's dictum that certain words should be "boiled before they are eaten," but which have no metrical flow at all; they defy any sort of scansion and read like rough prose. But a poet has a right of appeal to the sum of his manifest excellencies rather than to his defects, and if we take Browning's best work we find a harmony of movement superior in musical effect to a more technically regular meter. In many poems the meter is indissolubly fused with the pictures, the ideas, the events. Take, for instance, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," where the hurry-skurry of the verse is in complete harmony with the quaint, rapid tale. The hoof-beats of galloping horses is heard all through "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." The slow march, the stately chant, are rhythmically present throughout "A Grammarian's Funeral." In "The Flight of the Duchess" the change from the rough servitor's narrative to the incantation of the gypsy-queen is as exquisitely marked in the metrical movement and in the rhymes as it is in the diction and tone of thought. Many other examples might be cited. Mr. Brinton, who has made a detailed and competent study of Browning's verse, gives his final opinion in these words: "In the volumes of Browning I maintain that we find so many instances of profound insight into verbal harmonies, such singular strength of poetic grouping, and such a marvelous grasp of the rhythmic properties of the English language that we must assign to him a rank second to no English poet of this century."[8]

A third charge brought against Browning's art is that he makes all his characters talk "Browningese"; that is, that he endows all of them with the power to use such words and sentences and thought processes as are natural to him and to him only. Mr. Stedman in emphasizing this characteristic of the poet says of _Pippa Passes_: "The usual fault is present--the characters, whether students, peasants, or soldiers, all talk like sages; Pippa reasons like a Paracelsus in pantalettes." It is, of course, obvious at the first glance that there is a lack of verisimilitude in Pippa's rich and beautiful soliloquies. Certainly no fourteen-year-old mill girl could so describe a sunrise, or play so brilliantly with a sunbeam in a water-basin, or outline so cleverly the stories of the happiest four in Asolo. The same is true of Phene's long speech to Jules; no untutored girl brought up in degradation, could present such thoughts in such words. When we analyze Browning's way of presenting a character, however, we find that the lack of verisimilitude is usually external and has to do chiefly with expression. Browning works on the fundamental assumption that he has a poetic right to make all sorts of people articulate. He lends his mind out in the service of their thoughts and feelings. He makes people reveal themselves by putting into words their elusive, dim, tangled, and even unrecognized motives and hopes and joys and despairs. He sums up in the speeches all the potentialities of the situation. All the significance latent in the type of character and environment is somehow heightened and symbolized. All this is put in his own highly individual diction. Yet it can hardly be said that he violates poetic realism in the deeper sense, for he never puts a halo around a situation, never goes counter to its potentialities. Instead he strikes fire from it. He shows what is actually in the situation, but at white heat and laid bare to its center. When this method has once been recognized, discomfort on the score of lack of verisimilitude practically disappears, and the reader yields himself to the joy of the rich, subtle, and stimulating analysis.

We may now turn to a consideration of the subject-matter and the main ideas of Browning's poetry. From whatever point of view we regard his work, we find that ultimately the emphasis rests on the same great central fact, the supremacy of his interest in human nature. This dominating interest is shown, for instance, by a study of his treatment of physical nature. To be sure, no one can read his poems without recognizing the truth that his use of natural facts is distinctive in kind and very stimulating. A mere reference to the pictures of the sky in _Pippa Passes_, the vivid descriptions of fruits and flowers in "An Englishman in Italy," the remarkable studies of small animal life in "Saul" and "Caliban upon Setebos," of birds in "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad," of insects in the first part of _Paracelsus_ and in many later poems, suffices to show that in mature life he did not lose the keenness of observation and interest characteristic of his youth. Yet it is also evident that his use of nature by way of direct description, or even as illustrative material, is far less in amount than that of other notable nineteenth century poets. He cares much less for "the river's line, the mountains round it and the sky above" than for the "figures of man, woman, and child these are frame to." Where nature is drawn upon, it is almost invariably in complete subordination to some human interest, and its literary form is almost always that of casual mention, background, or similitude, and the first of these is the most frequent. Furthermore, nearly all these passages are a mere statement of observed fact without comment or interpretation. There is one great passage in _Paracelsus_ where the joy of God in the act of creation is depicted; there are occasional references to the delight of man in the external world; and now and then, as in "By the Fireside," man and nature are intimately fused; but such conceptions rarely occur. In Browning's poetry the boundary lines between man and nature are clearly marked. In _Paracelsus_ he definitely protests against man's way of reading his own moods into nature, and of attributing to her his own qualities and emotions. He also always accounts man, if he has truly entered into his spiritual heritage, as consciously superior to nature. The troubadour Eglamour, in _Sordello_, says that man shrinks to naught if matched with a quiet sea or sky, but Browning calls that Eglamour's "false thought." To Browning, nature was to be studied, enjoyed, and used, but it was not as to Keats a realm of enchantment; or as to Wordsworth the realm where alone the divine and the human could pass the boundaries of sense and meet; or as to Matthew Arnold a refuge from pain and disillusionment. Browning regards the world about him more in the sane, unsentimental, straightforward, intelligible way of Chaucer or of Shakespeare. The mystical elements in Wordsworth's feeling for nature were foreign to Browning's mind. An instructive comparison might be made between Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" and Browning's "Prologue to Asolando." The poems have the same starting point. Each one attributes sadness to the poet's old age, and each gives as a cause of the sadness the inevitable fading of the glory with which all nature was invested to the eye of his youth. But here the resemblance ends. Wordsworth believes that the youthful vision was a divine revelation to be regained when the round of existence should be completed by a return to his immortal home, and on the memory of that vision he founded his faith in a future life. But Browning welcomed the loss of the vision. Objects had been to him "palpably fire-clothed"; but with the loss of "flame" there was a gain in reality. The vision had enthralled and subjugated him; but with the sight of "a naked world" he had become conscious of things as they are, and he rejoiced in a justness of perception that declared what were to him the two great facts of life, the power and beauty of God, and the glory of the human soul. On these, not on nature, he put his stress.

Browning's paramount interest in human nature is further illustrated by his poems on the various arts. Of music, painting, and sculpture he has written with the intimate and minute knowledge of a specialist in each art. He is familiar with implements and materials, with the tricks of the trade, the talk of the studios; but, after all, the art as an art is of much less interest to him than is the worker. The process and even the completed product are in Browning's view important only in so far as they reveal or affect the artist, the musician, the sculptor, or some phase of life. In such poems as "Abt Vogler," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," we are conscious not so much of music and pictures as of the secret springs of failure, the divine despairs and discontents, the aspirations, the creative ecstasies, of the men who wrought in these realms. Andrea del Sarto's art is not the real theme of the poem bearing his name. It is, rather, his character, of which his art is an expression. The central fact of the poem is the recognition that a soul morally impoverished cannot, even with well-nigh perfect technique, produce great work, while, even with faulty technique, a setting of the soul to grand issues will secure transcendent meanings. So, too, with Abt Vogler. His music is not of the greatest, but our concern is with the musician who, through the completeness of his spiritual absorption in music, is conducted into a realm of experience beyond that of speech or even of articulate thought.

Another distinctly human aspect of art interests Browning, and that is its power to represent and so to recall a vanished civilization. Greek statues, the devotional pictures of the early Florentines, the work of the later Italian realists, stand, in "Old Pictures in Florence," as representatives of the life and thought that produced them. In "A Toccata of Galuppi's" the music revivifies the superficial gaiety, the undertone of fear, in the life of eighteenth century Venice. Highly significant in this connection are the poems in which he traces the evolution of art. Running through "Old Pictures in Florence" and "Fra Lippo Lippi" we find an ordered statement of the chief changes in the ideals of art as Browning saw them. The Greeks, we are told, had produced in sculpture the most beautiful representations of the human body. But if their successors had been content merely to admire this perfect achievement, they would have purchased satisfaction at the price of their own arrested development. Progress came only when, in the dawn of Italian art, men turned from Greek perfection, from the supremely beautiful but limited representations of the human body, to an attempt to paint the invisible, the spiritual side of man's nature. The work of these artists was great because it was not imitative and because it stretched toward an unending and ideal future. But the idealistic and aspiring temper of early Tuscan art had the defects of its qualities. Its spiritual ecstasy once conventionalized and reduced to a formula led to unreality, and, if not to untruth, at least to an unwholesome ignoring of a part of truth. There was, therefore, an inevitable reaction to the naturalism described with such verve and gusto by Fra Lippo Lippi. But this is, after all, social history in terms of art, and to Browning what has happened in painting is of value chiefly as showing concretely what has happened in the mind of man.

From the instances already cited it is apparent that Browning's interest centered, not in abstract or theoretical discussions of human problems, but in the individuals who face the problems. In this point Browning is sharply distinguished from his poetic contemporaries as a class. They felt deeply "all the weary weight of this unintelligible world," so deeply that while they gave much thought to ideals of social amelioration, few of them presented individuals with any dramatic distinctness. Browning stands practically by himself in the nineteenth century as the poet who gives us both the "doubter and the doubt," who is able to join with an impressive statement of the hopes and fears of man, an equally impressive sequence of individual men and women. In this he harks back to the broad inclusiveness of the Elizabethan dramatists. In contemporary literature, his nearest congeners are in fiction, not in poetry.

The great number and variety of Browning's characters can be illustrated in different ways. We might, for instance, note how many nationalities are represented. The personages in "Stafford" and the "Cavalier Tunes" are Englishmen from the time of the Civil War. "Clive" is a true story of the Indian Empire. We have from Italian life the numerous characters in _Sordello_, "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Pictor Ignotus," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," "My Last Duchess," _The Ring and the Book_, "A Grammarian's Funeral," "Up at a Villa--Down in the City," "In a Gondola," and many more. "Count Gismond" and "Hervé Riel" are French stories. _Paracelsus_ and "Abt Vogler" are of German origin. _Balaustion's Adventure_, _Aristophanes' Apology_, "Pheidippides," and "Echetlos" celebrate Greek thought and adventure. Very important poems such as "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," have to do with Jewish life. And unlike Shakespeare, who is not concerned with making Julius Cæsar a Roman or Duke Theseus a Greek, Browning brings to the creation of each of these widely divergent characters, a detailed knowledge of the special habits of life and thought of the nation or race concerned. He represents also many kinds of human interest. We find in his poems seekers after knowledge such as Paracelsus, who takes all thought and fact as his domain; or such as the Grammarian, who found Greek particles too wide a realm; or such as the pedant Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, whose learned rubbish cumbers the land. There are likewise those who grope after the truths of religion from Caliban on his island to the learned physician Karshish and the highly cultured Cleon; those who have the full vision from John to Rabbi Ben Ezra; those who juggle with terms and creeds as does Bishop Blougram; and out and out frauds like Sludge the Medium. The church is represented by many men dissimilar in endowments, tastes, spiritual experiences, and aims. There are Italian prelates of every sort, from the worldly-minded Bishop of St. Praxed's, occupied in death with vain thoughts of lapis-lazuli and pure Latin, to the "soldier-saint," Caponsacchi, who saved Pompilia, and the wise old Pope who pronounced Guido's doom; from the unworthy priest in the Spanish Cloister to the very human, kindly Pope in "The Bean Feast." And from all these it is far down the ages to the evangelical parish priest of _The Inn Album_, that "purblind honest drudge," who, the deeper to impress his flock, painted heaven dimly but "made hell distinct." There are many artists, many musicians. There are poets from Aprile in _Paracelsus_, and the troubadours Eglamour and Sordello, to Keats and Shelley. The extremes of social life are given. There are the street-girls in _Pippa Passes_ and there are kings and queens with royal retinues. There are statesmen, and warriors, and seekers after romantic adventure. There are haughty aristocrats of cold and cruel natures, and there are obscure but high-hearted doers of heroic deeds. Browning's dictum, "Study man, man, whatever the issue," led him into a world wider than that known by any other poet of his time, and akin, as has been pointed out, to that of the great writers of fiction. As an observer of human life he was not unlike his poor poet of Valladolid who, with his "scrutinizing hat," went about the streets, absorbed in watching all kinds of people, all sorts of occupations, "scenting the world, looking it full in the face." He chose to set forth "the wants and ways" of actual life. He summed up his work in the "Epilogue to Pacchiarotto":

Man's thoughts and loves and hates!
Earth is my vineyard, these grew there:
From grape of the ground I made or marred
My vintage.

It is further apparent that Browning's characters are never merely types, but must always be reckoned with as individuals. It was his belief that no two beings were ever made similar in head and heart; hence, even where there are external similarities the essential elements are strongly differentiated. Take, for instance, three poems in which the situations are not unlike. In "My Last Duchess," "The Flight of the Duchess," and _The Ring and the Book_, we have a portrayal of three men of high lineage, but cold, egotistic, cruel, who have married very young and lovely women over whom the custom of the times gives them absolute power. But there the likeness ends. We cannot for a moment class together the polished, aesthetic, well-bred aristocrat of the first poem, the absurd little popinjay of the second, and the "tiger-cat" of the third. Less strongly, but as clearly are the wives differentiated. To the innocent gaiety of heart, the bright, sweet friendliness of the hapless lady in "My Last Duchess" must be added for the lady in "The Flight of the Duchess" a native force of character which, when roused by the call of the gypsy-queen, enables her to break the yoke imposed on her by the Duke and his mother and go forth into a life of adventure, freedom, and love. The delicate, flower-like Pompilia in _The Ring and the Book_ has also power to initiate and carry through a plan of escape, but her incentive is no call to romantic freedom. Her passive endurance changes to active revolt only when motive and energy are supplied by her love for her child. Or take Pippa and Phene in _Pippa Passes_, two beautiful young girls brought up in dangerous and evil surroundings, but both innately pure. In character and experience they are, however, as unlike as two girls could be. Phene, undeveloped in mind and heart, the easily duped agent of a cruel trick, appeals to us by her slow, incredulous, but eager response to goodness and aspiration, the tremulous opening of her soul to love. But Pippa, with her observant love of nature, her gay, sportive, winsome fancies, her imaginative sympathy with the lives of others, her knowledge of good and evil, her poise, her bright steadiness of soul, carries us into a different and much more highly evolved world of thought and feeling. So we might go through the great assemblage of Browning's characters to find that each one stands out by himself as a person with his own qualities, possibilities, and problems.

In all this portrayal of individuals the emphasis is on things of the mind and heart. In these realms Browning found nothing alien or uninteresting. From point to point his poetry illustrates what he said in his comment on _Sordello_, "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a human soul; little else is worth study." In all his poetry environment is of importance only in so far as it is the stuff on which the soul works. It is "the subtle thing called spirit," it is "the soul's world" to which he devotes himself.

It is only from a study of Browning's many characters that we may arrive at a statement of some of the distinguishing features of his philosophy of life. And any such statements must be made with extreme caution because of his dramatic method. He utters this caution himself when he says of his poems, "Their contents are always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary people." Yet it is possible, by taking the general trend and scope of his work, to make justifiable deductions concerning the dominant ideas in the rich field of his poetry and drama.

In Browning's philosophy of life, words of especial significance are "growth" and "progress." Domizia in _Luria_ says:

How inexhaustibly the spirit grows!
One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach
With her whole energies and die content--
So like a wall at the world's edge is stood,
With naught beyond to live for--is that reached?--
Already are new undreamed energies
Outgrowing under, and extending farther
To a new object.

So, too, John in "A Death in the Desert" sums up his belief in the line,

I say that man was made to grow, not stop.

Growth here and growth hereafter are the essential elements of Browning's creed. And there is no other poet in whom all kinds of thinking and doing are so uniformly tested by their outcome in the growth of the soul. Does joy stimulate to fuller life; does suffering bring out moral qualities; do obstacles develop energy; do sharp temptations become a source of strength and assured soldiership; does knowledge of evil lead to a new exaltation of good; does sin lead to self-knowledge and so to regeneration? Then all these are ministers of grace, for through them the soul has reached greater heights and fuller life. Whatever bids the soul "nor stand nor sit, but go" is to be welcomed. The cost of this growth may be great, but the advances of spirit are represented as worth any sacrifice. The lady in "The Flight of the Duchess" goes from splendor and ease to hardship and obscurity, but she wins freedom of thought and of act and the opportunity to test the qualities of her soul. In _Pippa Passes_ Sebald might have had love and wealth, Jules might have attained fame along the conventional path marked out for him by the Monsignor, Luigi had the prospect of an easy life and happy love, the Monsignor might have had enhanced honor from the church into whose coffers he could have turned great revenues. But instead each responds in turn to Pippa's songs; Sebald gains a true view of sin, Jules gets a new conception of service and attainment, Luigi's wavering purpose of self-sacrifice for his country's good is strengthened, the Monsignor is held back from connivance at a crime. In all these cases the external loss is as nothing compared to the gain in spiritual knowledge and energy.

Contact with magnetic and superior personalities is a way of growth particularly noted by Browning. There are men, he says, who bring new feeling fresh from God, and whose life "reteaches us what life should be, what faith is, loyalty and simpleness." Pompilia says of Caponsacchi:

Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of his light
For us i' the dark to rise by.

The highest souls are "seers" in the noblest sense and they "impart the gift of seeing to the rest." But the helpful personality need not be great in knowledge or rank. In Pippa Browning emphasizes the power of unconscious goodness in clarifying the spiritual vision of others and in thus stimulating to right action. And in David he shows the power of poetic charm, innocence, and eager love to drive away from another heart a mood of black despair.

But outside influences are, after all, says Browning, of secondary importance. They can, at best, do no more than stimulate and guide. When Andrea del Sarto attributes his general lowering of ideals and power to the influence of Lucrezia, he evades the real issue. Incentives must come from the soul's self. Growth is dependent on personal struggle. Man is, by his very nature,

forced to try and make, else fail to grow--
Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain
The good beyond him--which attempt is growth.

So, also, is it better that youth

should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made.

It is in the independence and originality of such striving that the soul discovers and frees its innate potentialities.

An inevitable corollary of this idea of progress is the emphasis put upon aspiration as a habit of the mind. The pursuit of an ideal, a divine discontent with present accomplishment, are enjoined upon man. The gleams of heaven on earth are not meant to be permanent or satisfying, but only to sting man into hunger for full light. When a human being has achieved to the full extent of his perceptions or aspirations, he has, thinks Browning, met with the greatest possible disaster, that of arrested development. Man's powers should ever climb new heights. For his soul's health he should always see "a flying point of bliss remote, a happiness in store afar, a sphere of distant glory." "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" According to this ideal, man's conception of good is ever changing and ever widening and hence never in this life to be fully attained; yet the condition of growth is that he have an unmeasured thirst for good and that he pursue it with unquenchable ardor.

The importance of love as one of the most effective agencies in spiritual growth is stated and restated in Browning's poetry and by exceedingly diverse characters. The Queen in _In a Balcony_ turns away from her lonely splendor to exclaim,

There is no good of life but love--but love!
What else looks good is some shade flung from love;
Love gilds it, gives it worth.

The Duchess learns from the gypsy

How love is the only good in the world.

The famous singer in "Dis Aliter Visum" knows that art, verse, music, count as naught beside "love found, gained, and kept." Browning seems to regard almost any genuine love as a means of opening out the nature to fuller self-knowledge, to wider sympathies, and to increased power of action. Hence he condemns all cautious calculation of obstacles, all dwelling upon conventional difficulties, in the path of those who have clearly seen "the love-way." Hence even love unrequited is counted of inestimable value. In _Colombe's Birthday_ Valence says,

Is the knowledge of her, naught? the memory, naught?
--Lady, should such an one have looked on you,
Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world
And say, love can go unrequited here!
You will have blessed him to his whole life's end--
Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,
All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell.

But the love of man and woman is not the only sort. A part of the value of this individual relationship is that it may be regarded as a revelation and symbol of the spirit of all-embracing sympathy whereby mankind should be ruled. When Paracelsus analyzes his life he ascribes his failure to the fact that he has sought knowledge to the exclusion of all else; he finally came to see that knowledge, however profound, is of itself barren of satisfaction. He had meant to serve men by revealing truth to them, but he found that real service is based on the understanding given by love. In self condemnation he says,

In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind,
To know even hate is but a mask of love's.
To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak.

Browning's conception of the function and power of love is based on his belief in its divine origin. Twice at least, in "Easter Day" and "Saul," his characters work out from an overpowering recognition of God's omniscience and omnipotence to a final recognition that his love is equal in scope with his power and knowledge. And he counts human service as most complete when, as in David before Saul, it reaches out to God's love and recruits its failing forces from the divine source.

Underlying Browning's doctrine of the value of love, and his doctrine of progress and aspiration, is his belief in personal immortality. When he was charged with being strongly against Darwin, with rejecting the truths of science and regretting its advance, he answered that the idea of a progressive development from senseless matter until man's appearance had been a familiar conception to him from the beginning, but he reiterated his constant faith in creative intelligence acting on matter but not resulting from it. "Soul," he said, "is not matter, nor from matter, but above." Two assumptions which though not susceptible of proof he regards as "inescapable," are the existence of creative intelligence and of "the subtle thing called spirit." When he argues out the question of the immortality of this spirit, as in _La Saisiaz_, he admits the subjective character of the evidence; but when he speaks spontaneously out of his own feeling or experience, it is with positive belief in life after death. To Mr. Sharp he said, "Death, death! It is this harping on death that I do despise so much! 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 crape-like church-yardy word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of what 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!" When his wife died he wrote in her Testament these words from Dante, "Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pass to another better there where that lady lives of whom my soul was enamored." This faith in life after death explains much of Browning's philosophy. The source of the pagan Cleon's profound discouragement was the fact that man should be dowered with "joy-hunger," should be given the ability to perceive and comprehend splendor and breadth of experience, but should, through the straitness of human limitations, be held back from satisfaction and achievement, and should be left to die thus dazzled, thus baffled. The secret of Browning's optimism, on the other hand, is his belief that in heaven the soul is freed from limitations, and blossoms out into capabilities of joy and of activity beyond anything suggested by the most golden dreams of earth. To him all life is a unit, beginning here and destined to unimaginable development hereafter. Earth is regarded as a place of tutelage where man may learn to set foot on some one path to heaven. And no work begun here shall ever pause for death. Even apparent failure here counts for little so the quest be not abandoned. Each of us may, as Abt Vogler, look without despair on the broken arcs of earth if his faith reveals the perfect round in heaven.

From any prolonged study of Browning's poetry we become conscious of certain dominant qualities of style that may be thought of quite apart from his themes or message. That his style has the defect of its qualities has already been pointed out. Here we may appropriately indicate those qualities as positive elements of his power. His diction, rich alike in the most learned words and the most colloquial, is responsive to all demands. His power of phrasing runs the whole gamut from the most pellucid simplicity to the most triumphant originality. His figures of speech, drawn from all realms, are penetrating in quality, of startling aptness. Equally characteristic is his versification, varying as it does from passages of melodic smoothness and grace to lines as strident, broken, and harsh as the thought they dramatically reflect. In narration, whether in the brilliant rapidity and ease of a short poem like "Hervé Riel" or in the sustained flow of a long story like that of Pompilia, we find unusual skill. In disquisition, in the presentation of complicated and elusive intellectual processes, there is a quite unmatched agility and dexterity. Probably no two forms of poetry contain more of Browning's most noteworthy work than the lyric, especially the reflective love lyric, and that form which is distinctively his own, the dramatic monologue. In his best poems in this last form he has no competitor. It is in the presentation of character through the medium of dramatic monologue that he most fully reveals the unerring precision of his analysis, his lightning glance into the heart of a mystery, the ease with which he tracks a motive or mood or thought to its last hiding place, and his consequent passion and fire of sympathy or scorn.

Finally, whether we consider Browning's style or subject matter or philosophy of life, we become growingly conscious of his force. The "clear Virgilian line" of Tennyson is the outcome of a nature instinctively aristocratic and aloof. Browning is out in the thick of the fight and almost vociferously demands a hearing. Whatever makes his thought clear, vivid, active, forcible, seems to him, however prosaic it may appear at first glance, proper poetic material. The immediate effect of his verse is the rousing of the mind to great issues. His tremendous sincerity results in a dispelling of mists, a stripping off of husks. His demand for the truth is a trumpet note of challenge to our doubt or fear or indifference. His penetrating study of human problems leads to an inevitable widening of the horizon of comprehension and sympathy on the part of his readers. And his courage and optimism constitute an inspiration and stimulus of an uncommonly virile sort.

It has been said that Browning is "not a poet, but a literature," and in work so vast and varied that it can be thus characterized there must be wide extremes of value. It is almost certain that portions of his work cannot live. They are too difficult, too unliterary. But in the portions where great thought finds adequate form, the product is a priceless gift and one not equaled by any other poet of his age.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _The Century_, December, 1881, Vol. XXIII, pp. 189-200.]

[Footnote 2: See the article by Mr. F. J. Furnivall in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ for April, 1890.]

[Footnote 3: The first production of _Pippa Passes_ was given in Copley Hall, Boston, in 1899, with an arrangement in six scenes by Miss Helen A. Clarke. _The Return of the Druses_ was arranged and presented by Miss Charlotte Porter in 1902 and was a dramatic success. _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ was brought out by Macready, with Phelps in the chief part and with Miss Helen Faucit as Mildred. It was played to crowded houses and received much applause. It was revived by Phelps at Sadler's Wells in 1848; and by the Browning Society in 1885 at St. George's Hall, London. In the winter of that year the play was given in Washington by Lawrence Barrett. It has also within a few years been admirably presented by Mrs. Lemoyne in New York and elsewhere. _Colombe's Birthday_, which was published in 1844, was not put upon the stage till 1853, when it was performed at the Haymarket Theater in London with Lady Martin (Helen Faucit) as Colombe. It was performed in Boston in 1854 and enthusiastically received. It was revived in 1885 with Miss Alma Murray as Colombe, when it was commented on as being "charming on the boards, clearer, more direct in action, more picturesque, more full of delicate surprises than one imagines it in print." It was also successfully produced at McVicker's Theater, Chicago, in November, 1894, with Miss Marlowe as Colombe.]

[Footnote 4: An interesting corroboration of Mrs. Browning's words is found in the fact that the 1868 edition of Browning's works, by Smith Elder and Co., was reprinted as Numbers 1-19 of the _Official Guide of the Chicago and Alton R. R., and Monthly Reprint and Advertiser_, edited by Mr. James Charlton. A copy is in the British Museum. The reprint appeared in 1872-1874. See Mrs. Orr's bibliography.]

[Footnote 5: A particularly interesting dramatic event was Mrs. Lemoyne's presentation of _In a Balcony_ at Wallack's Theater, New York, in the autumn of 1900. Mrs. Lemoyne was the Queen, Otis Skinner was Norbet, and Eleanor Robson was Constance. See _The Bookman_, 12, 387.]

[Footnote 6: Mrs. Bronson has given a vivid picture of the Brownings at Asolo and at Venice in the _Century Magazine_ for 1900 and 1902.]

[Footnote 7: See Miss E. M. Clark in _Poet-Lore_, Volume II. page 480 (1890).]

[Footnote 8: _Poet-Lore_, Volume II. page 246 (1890).]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The great number of books and articles on Browning and his work is shown by the Bibliography of Biography and Criticism prepared by John P. Anderson of the British Museum and printed in William Sharp's _Life of Robert Browning_. The selection to be given here can hardly more than suggest this large amount of material.

The 1888-9 edition of Browning's _Works_ by Smith, Elder and Company incorporates Browning's last revisions and his own punctuation. The Macmillan edition in nine volumes in 1894 reproduces this text.

For biographical material important books are:

_The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett 1845-1846_, two volumes, 1902, Harper Brothers.

_The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Edited with Biographical Additions by Frederic G. Kenyon._ Macmillan, 1897. (Two volumes in one, 1899.)

_The Life and Letters of Robert Browning_ by Mrs. A. Sutherland Orr in 1891. A new edition, revised and in part rewritten by Mr. Frederick G. Kenyon, was brought out by Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1908. Mrs. Orr and Mr. Kenyon were both friends of Browning and could speak with authority on many details of his life.

_Robert Browning, Personalia_, by Edmund Gosse. Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1890. This book consists of a reprint of two articles, one from _The Century Magazine_ on "The Early Career of Robert Browning," and one from _The New Review_ entitled "Personal Impressions." These articles are of exceptional interest because Mr. Gosse lived near Mr. Browning at Warwick Crescent and they were on terms of close friendship. In _Critical Kit-Kats_, 1896, Mr. Gosse gives the story of _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.

_Robert Browning._ In _Bookman Biographies_, edited by W. Robertson Nicholl. Hodder and Stoughton, London. Many interesting illustrations.

_The Century Magazine_ for 1900 and 1902 gives Mrs. Bronson's account of Browning at Asolo and at Venice.

For general handbooks see:

_The Browning Cyclopædia._ Edward Berdoe, Macmillan, 1902. Elaborate analysis of each poem. Many textual notes. Interpretations often involved and far-fetched to the point of being untenable.

_Handbook of Robert Browning's Works._ Mrs. A. Sutherland Orr. First edition, 1885; sixth edition, 1891. Republished by Bell and Sons, London, 1902. Explanatory analysis of each poem. Edition of 1902 contains complete bibliography of Browning's works. Written at the request of the London Browning Society.

For criticism see, as books varying widely in point of view and scope, but each of distinct interest:

_An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry._ Hiram Corson. Boston, 1886.

_An Introduction to the Study of Browning._ Arthur Symons. London, Cassell and Company, 1886.

_Life of Robert Browning._ William Sharp. Walter Scott and Company, London, 1897.

_The Poetry of Robert Browning._ Stopford A. Brooke. Crowell and Company, 1902.

_Robert Browning._ G. K. Chesterton. Macmillan, 1903.

_Robert Browning._ C. H. Herford. Dodd, Mead and Company, 1905.

_Interpretations of Poetry and Religion_, by George Santayana, Scribners, 1900, contains an interesting presentation of Browning's work in a chapter entitled "The Poetry of Barbarism."

_Browning Study Programmes_ by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, Crowell and Company, 1900, is a series of studies on separate poems or on groups of poems. Often very suggestive and helpful. In _Poet-Lore_, edited by Miss Clarke and Miss Porter, are, _passim_, many other valuable studies and notes on Browning. The Camberwell edition of Browning's poems, edited by Miss Clarke and Miss Porter with excellent annotations, was published by Crowell and Company in 1898.

_The London Browning Society's Papers_ and _The Boston Browning Society's Papers_ contain much valuable material on separate poems or on various phases of Browning's life and work.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

May 7, 1812. Robert Browning born in Camberwell, London.
1824. _Incondita_ ready for publication.
1825. Shelley and Keats read.
1826. Left Mr. Ready's school.
1833. _Pauline_ published anonymously.
1833-4. Travels in Russia and Italy.
1835. _Paracelsus._
1837. _Strafford._ Acted May 1, 1837, Covent Garden.
1840. _Sordello._
1841-6. _Bells and Pomegranates._
1841. No. I. _Pippa Passes._
1842. No. II. _King Victor and King Charles._
1842. No. III. _Dramatic Lyrics._
1843. No. IV. _The Return of the Druses._
1843. No. V. _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon._ Acted Feb.
11, 1843, Drury Lane.
1844. No. VI. _Colombe's Birthday._ Acted April 25,
1853, Haymarket.
1845. No. VII. _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics._
1846. No. VIII. _Luria_ and _A Soul's Tragedy_.
Jan. 10, 1845. Correspondence between Mr. Browning and Miss
Barrett begun.
May 20, 1845. Their first meeting.
Sept. 12, 1846. Their marriage at Marylebone Church, London.
Oct. 1846. to April, 1847. In Pisa.
April 20, 1847. Arrival at Florence.
May 1848. Settled in permanent home at Casa Guidi.
1849. _Poems by Robert Browning._ Two volumes.
March 9, 1849. Birth of Wiedemann (or "Penini") Browning.
March 1849. Death of Browning's mother.
1850. _Christmas Eve and Easter Day._
June 1851. Mrs. Browning's _Casa Guidi Windows_.
1852. _Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ With an
introductory essay by Robert Browning.
1855. _Men and Women._ In two volumes.
Oct. 1856. Mrs. Browning's _Aurora Leigh_.
June 1860. Browning found the "Yellow Book."
June 29, 1861. Mrs. Browning died. She was buried in Florence.
July 1861. Browning left Florence.
1862. Established himself at 19 Warwick Crescent, London,
where he lived twenty-five years.
1863. _The Poetical Works of Robert Browning._ In three
volumes. Chapman and Hall.
1863. _Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert
Browning._ [Editors, B.W. Proctor and John
Forster.]
1864. _Dramatis Personæ._
1866. Browning's father died and Sarianna came to live
with her brother.
1868. _The Poetical Works of Robert Browning._ In six
volumes. Smith, Elder and Company.
1868-9. _The Ring and the Book._ In four volumes.
1871. _Balaustion's Adventure._
1871. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society._
1872. _Fifine at the Fair._
1873. _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country._
1875. _Aristophanes' Apology._
1875. _The Inn Album._
July 1876. _Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper._
1877. _The Agamemnon of Æschylus translated._
1878. _La Saisiaz; The Two Poets of Croisic._
Aug. 1878. Browning first revisited Italy.
1879. _Dramatic Idyls._
1880. _Dramatic Idyls._ Second Series.
1881. The London Browning Society established.
1883. _Jocoseria._
1884. _Ferishtah's Fancies._
1887. Browning moved to De Vere Gardens.
1887. _Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning._
Riverside edition: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
1888-9. _The Poetical Works of Robert Browning._ In
sixteen volumes. Smith, Elder and Company. [All
the works collected by the author except
_Asolando_.]
Dec. 12, 1889. _Asolando._
Dec. 12, 1889. Robert Browning died in the Palazzo Rezzonica, his
son's home in Venice.
Dec. 31, 1889. Buried in Westminster Abbey.

SELECTIONS

FROM THE

POEMS AND PLAYS

OF

ROBERT BROWNING

SONGS FROM PARACELSUS

I

"HEAP CASSIA, SANDAL-BUDS, AND STRIPES"

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, 5
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 10
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,
Moldering her lute and books among, 15
As when a queen, long dead, was young.