Robert Browning: How To Know Him

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Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains--with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when--
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den!

Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,--
"Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears,
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. "_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came_."

VI

POEMS OF PARADOX

The word paradox comes from two Greek words, meaning simply,
"beyond belief." As every one ought to know, a paradox is something
that read literally is absurd, but if taken in the spirit in which
it is uttered, may contain profound truth. Paradox is simply
over-emphasis: and is therefore a favorite method of teaching. By
the employment of paradox the teacher wishes to stress forcibly some
aspect of the truth which otherwise may not be seen at all. Fine
print needs a magnifying-glass; and the deep truth hidden in a
paradox can not perhaps become clear unless enlarged by powerful
emphasis. All teachers know the value of _italics_.

Socrates was very fond of paradox: the works of Ibsen, Nietzsche,
Shaw and Chesterton are full of paradoxes: Our Lord's utterances in
the New Testament are simply one paradox after another. No wonder
His disciples were often in a maze. It requires centuries for the
truth in some paradoxes to become manifest.

"This was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it
proof."

Browning loved a paradox with all his heart. The original nature of
his mind, his fondness for taking the other side, his over-subtlety,
all drove him toward the paradox. He would have made a wonderful
criminal lawyer. He loves to put some imaginary or historical
character on the stand, and permit him to speak freely in his own
defence; and he particularly loves to do this, when the person has
received universal condemnation. Browning seems to say, "I wonder if
the world is entirely right in this judgment: what would this
individual say if given an opportunity for apologetic oratory?"
Browning is the greatest master of special pleading in all literature.
Although he detested Count Guido, he makes him present his case in
the best possible light, so that for the moment he arouses our
intellectual sympathy.

The Glove story is one of the best-known anecdotes in history;
besides its French source, it has been told in German by Schiller,
in English by Leigh Hunt, and has received thousands of allusory
comments--but always from one point of view. The hooting and
laughter that followed the Lady as she left the court, have been
echoed in all lands. Browning pondered over this story, and took the
woman's part. This may be accounted for by two causes. He is the
most chivalrous poet that ever lived, and would naturally defend the
Lady. What De Lorge ought to have done when he brought the glove back
was to remind the Lady that she had another, and permit him the
honor of retrieving that. But Browning saw also in this incident a
true paradox--the Lady was right after all! Right in throwing the
glove, right in her forecast of the event.

Like a good lawyer, he first proves that the Knight's achievement
was slight. In the pit the Lion was not at that moment dangerous,
because he was desperately homesick. He was lost in thoughts of his
wild home, in imagination driving the flocks up the mountain, and
took not the slightest notice of the glove. Then a page had leaped
into the pit simply to recover his hat; and he had done that because
he could not afford to buy a new one. No one applauded him. Think of
the man who had originally caught the lion! He went out alone and
trapped a lion, simply that his rude boys might be amused at the
spectacle. In our degenerate days, we give our children a Teddy Bear.
But in those strenuous times, the father said to his boys, "Come out
into the back yard, and see the present I've got for you!" They came
eagerly, and found a live lion. That man and his children were a
hardy family. How they would have laughed at De Lorge's so-called
heroism!

But the real truth of the matter is that De Lorge was a liar. The
Lady suspected it all the time, and was saddened to have her
judgment confirmed by the result. De Lorge had been boasting of his
love, and of his eagerness to prove it. He had begged the Lady to
test him--he would gladly die for her. Now it is important that a
woman should know before marriage rather than after whether a
lover's protestations are genuine or not--in short whether he is
sincere and reliable, or whether he is a liar. The reason why men
lie to women and not to men is because they know that a lie to a
woman can not be avenged, they can not be made to pay any penalty;
but when they lie to other men--in business affairs, for
example--the penalty is severe.

How could the Lady satisfy her mind? How could she know whether De
Lorge was sincere or not? There was no war, there was no tournament,
there was no quest. Suddenly one method presented itself. She tossed
her glove into the pit. He had to go--he could never have held up
his head otherwise. But when he returned, he dashed the glove in the
Lady's face, ostensibly to teach her that a brave man's life should
not be risked by a woman's vanity. This was even a better
gallery-play than the recovery of the glove, and succeeded splendidly.
But the Lady turned sadly away.

The blow a glove gives is but weak:
Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?
But when the heart suffers a blow,
Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?

What was the pain in her heart? Her wounded vanity, her anguish at
the Court's ostracism? Not in the least. It was her pain at finding
her opinion of De Lorge justified. He was then, just as she thought,
a liar; he never meant to be taken at his word. All his
protestations of love and service were mere phrases. His anger at
the first test of his boasting proves this. The pain in her heart is
the pain we all feel at reading of some cowardly or disloyal act;
one more man unfaithful, one more man selfish, one more who lowers
the level of human nature.

The paradox teaches us the very simple lesson that if we boast of
our prowess, we must not be angry when some one insists that we
prove it.

THE GLOVE

1845

(PETER RONSARD _loquitur_)

"Heigho!" yawned one day King Francis,
"Distance all value enhances!
When a man's busy, why, leisure
Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:
'Faith, and at leisure once is he?
Straightway he wants to be busy.
Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm
Caught thinking war the true pastime.
Is there a reason in metre?
Give us your speech, master Peter!"
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne'er am at loss with my Naso,
"Sire," I replied, "joys prove cloudlets:
Men are the merest Ixions"--
Here the King whistled aloud, "Let's
--Heigho--go look at our lions!"
Such are the sorrowful chances
If you talk fine to King Francis.

And so, to the courtyard proceeding,
Our company, Francis was leading,
Increased by new followers tenfold
Before he arrived at the penfold;
Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen
At sunset the western horizon.
And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremost
With the dame he professed to adore most.
Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed
Her, and the horrible pitside;
For the penfold surrounded a hollow
Which led where the eye scarce dared follow,
And shelved to the chamber secluded
Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.
The King hailed his keeper, an Arab
As glossy and black as a scarab,
And bade him make sport and at once stir
Up and out of his den the old monster.
They opened a hole in the wire-work
Across it, and dropped there a firework,
And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled;
A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled,
The blackness and silence so utter,
By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter;
Then earth in a sudden contortion
Gave out to our gaze her abortion.
Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot
(Whose experience of nature's but narrow,
And whose faculties move in no small mist
When he versifies David the Psalmist)
I should study that brute to describe you
_Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu._
One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy
To see the black mane, vast and heapy,
The tail in the air stiff and straining,
The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning,
As over the barrier which bounded
His platform, and us who surrounded
The barrier, they reached and they rested
On space that might stand him in best stead:
For who knew, he thought, what the amazement,
The eruption of clatter and blaze meant,
And if, in this minute of wonder,
No outlet, 'mid lightning and thunder,
Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered,
The lion at last was delivered?
Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead!

And you saw by the flash on his forehead,
By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,
He was leagues in the desert already,
Driving the flocks up the mountain,
Or catlike couched hard by the fountain
To waylay the date-gathering negress:
So guarded he entrance or egress.
"How he stands!" quoth the King: "we may well swear,
(No novice, we've won our spurs elsewhere
And so can afford the confession,)
We exercise wholesome discretion
In keeping aloof from his threshold;
Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold,
Their first would too pleasantly purloin
The visitor's brisket or sirloin:
But who's he would prove so fool-hardy?
Not the best man of Marignan, pardie!"

The sentence no sooner was uttered,
Than over the rails a glove fluttered,
Fell close to the lion, and rested:
The dame 'twas, who flung it and jested
With life so, De Lorge had been wooing
For months past; he sat there pursuing
His suit, weighing out with nonchalance
Fine speeches like gold from a balance.

Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier!
De Lorge made one leap at the barrier,
Walked straight to the glove,--while the lion
Ne'er moved, kept his far-reaching eye on
The palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire,
And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir,--
Picked it up, and as calmly retreated,
Leaped back where the lady was seated,
And full in the face of its owner
Flung the glove.

"Your heart's queen, you dethrone her?"
"So should I!"--cried the King--"'twas mere vanity,
Not love, set that task to humanity!"
Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing
From such a proved wolf in sheep's clothing.

Not so, I; for I caught an expression
In her brow's undisturbed self-possession
Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment,--
As if from no pleasing experiment
She rose, yet of pain not much heedful
So long as the process was needful,--
As if she had tried in a crucible,
To what "speeches like gold" were reducible,
And, finding the finest prove copper,
Felt the smoke in her face was but proper;
To know what she had _not_ to trust to,
Was worth all the ashes and dust too.
She went out 'mid hooting and laughter;
Clement Marot stayed; I followed after,
And asked, as a grace, what it all meant?
If she wished not the rash deed's recalment?
"For I"--so I spoke--"am a poet:
Human nature,--behoves that I know it!"

She told me, "Too long had I heard
Of the deed proved alone by the word:
For my love--what De Lorge would not dare!
With my scorn--what De Lorge could compare!
And the endless descriptions of death
He would brave when my lip formed a breath,
I must reckon as braved, or, of course,
Doubt his word--and moreover, perforce,
For such gifts as no lady could spurn,
Must offer my love in return.
When I looked on your lion, it brought
All the dangers at once to my thought,
Encountered by all sorts of men,
Before he was lodged in his den,--
From the poor slave whose club or bare hands
Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,
With no King and no Court to applaud,
By no shame, should he shrink, overawed,
Yet to capture the creature made shift,
That his rude boys might laugh at the gift,
--To the page who last leaped o'er the fence
Of the pit, on no greater pretence
Than to get back the bonnet he dropped,
Lest his pay for a week should be stopped.
So, wiser I judged it to make
One trial what 'death for my sake'
Really meant, while the power was yet mine,
Than to wait until time should define
Such a phrase not so simply as I,
Who took it to mean just 'to die.'
The blow a glove gives is but weak:
Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?
But when the heart suffers a blow,
Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?"

I looked, as away she was sweeping,
And saw a youth eagerly keeping
As close as he dared to the doorway.
No doubt that a noble should more weigh
His life than befits a plebeian;
And yet, had our brute been Nemean--
(I judge by a certain calm fervour
The youth stepped with, forward to serve her)
--He'd have scarce thought you did him the worst turn
If you whispered "Friend, what you'd get, first earn!"
And when, shortly after, she carried
Her shame from the Court, and they married,
To that marriage some happiness, maugre
The voice of the Court, I dared augur.

For De Lorge, he made women with men vie,
Those in wonder and praise, these in envy;
And in short stood so plain a head taller
That he wooed and won ... how do you call her?
The beauty, that rose in the sequel
To the King's love, who loved her a week well.
And 'twas noticed he never would honour
De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her)
With the easy commission of stretching
His legs in the service, and fetching
His wife, from her chamber, those straying
Sad gloves she was always mislaying,
While the King took the closet to chat in,--
But of course this adventure came pat in.
And never the King told the story,
How bringing a glove brought such glory,
But the wife smiled--"His nerves are grown firmer:
Mine he brings now and utters no murmur."

_Venienti occurrite morbo!_
With which moral I drop my theorbo.

Browning wrote two poems on pedantry; the former, in _Garden Fancies_,
takes the conventional view. How can a man with any blood in him pore
over miserable books, when life is so sweet? The other, _A
Grammarian's Funeral_, is the apotheosis of the scholar. The paradox
here is that Browning has made a hero out of what seems at first
blush impossible material. It is easy to make a hero out of a noble
character; it is equally easy to make a hero out of a thorough
scoundrel, a train-robber, or a murderer. Milton made a splendid
hero out of the Devil, But a hero out of a nincompoop? A hero out of
a dull, sexless pedant?

But this is exactly what Browning has done, nay, he has made this
grammarian exactly the same kind of hero as a dashing cavalry
officer leading a forlorn hope.

Observe that Browning has purposely made his task as difficult as
possible. Had the scholar been a great discoverer in science, a
great master in philosophical thought, a great interpreter in
literature--then we might all take off our hats: but this hero was a
grammarian. He spent his life not on Greek drama or Greek philosophy,
but on Greek Grammar. He is dead: his pupils carry his body up the
mountain, as the native disciples of Stevenson carried their beloved
Tusitala to the summit of the island peak. These students are not
weeping; they sing and shout as they march, for they are carrying
their idol on their shoulders. His life and his death were
magnificent, an inspiration to all humanity. Hurrah! Hurrah!

The swinging movement of the young men is in exact accord with the
splendid advance of the thought. They tell us the history of their
Teacher from his youth to his last breath:

This is our master, famous calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.

It is a common error to suppose that missionaries, nuns, and
scholars follow their chosen callings because they are unfit for
anything else. The judgment of the wise world is not always correct.
It assumes that these strange folk never hear the call of the blood.
When John C. Calhoun was a student at Yale, his comrades, returning
at midnight from a wild time, found him at his books. "Why don't you
come out, John, and be a man? You'll never be young again."
"I regard my work as more important," said John quietly. Milton's
bitter cry

Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?

shows that it was not the absence of temptation, but a tremendously
powerful will, that kept him at his desk. When a spineless milksop
becomes a missionary, when a gawk sticks to his books, when an ugly
woman becomes a nun, the world makes no objection; but when a
socially prominent man goes in for missions or scholarship, when a
lovely girl takes the veil, the wise world says, "Ah, what a pity!"

Browning's Grammarian did not take up scholarship as a last resort.
He could have done anything he liked.

He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo!

He might have been an athlete, a social leader, a man of pleasure.
He chose Greek Grammar. In the pursuit of this prize, he squandered
his time and youth and health as recklessly as men squander these
treasures on wine and women. When a young man throws away his youth
and health in gambling, drink, and debauchery, the world expresses
no surprise; he is known as a "splendid fellow," and is often much
admired. But when a man spends all his gifts in scholarship,
scientific discovery, or altruistic aims, he is regarded as an
eccentric, lacking both blood and judgment.

I say that Browning has given his Grammarian not only courage and
heroism, but the reckless, dashing, magnificent bravery of a cavalry
leader. In the march for learning, this man lost his youth and health,
and acquired painful diseases. Finally he comes to the end. When an
officer in battle falls, and his friends bend over him to catch his
last breath, he does not say, "I commend my soul to God," or
"Give my love to my wife,"--he says, "_Did we win_?" and we applaud
this passion in the last agony. So our Grammarian, full of diseases,
paralysed from the waist down, the death rattle in his throat--what
does he say to the faithful watchers? What are his last words?
_He dictates Greek Grammar_.

The solitary student may be a paragon of courage, headstrong,
reckless, tenacious as a bulldog, with a resolution entirely beyond
the range of the children of this world.

* * * * *

SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS

1844

Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,
Printed on paper and bound in leather,
Last month in the white of a matin-prime,
Just when the birds sang all together.

Into the garden I brought it to read,
And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,
As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;
Added up the mortal amount;
And then proceeded to my revenge.

Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice
An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the Middle Age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
When he'd be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady's chamber:
Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

Splash, went he, as under he ducked,
--At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate;
Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked
To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;
Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;
Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,
And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
And, _de profundis, accentibus laetis,
Cantate_! quoth I, as I got a rake;
And up I fished his delectable treatise.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,
With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O'er the page so beautifully yellow:
Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!
Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?
Here's one stuck in his chapter six!

How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
Came in, each one, for his right of trover?
--When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
Made of her eggs the stately deposit,
And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface
As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?

All that life and fun and romping,
All that frisking and twisting and coupling,
While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping
And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!
As if you had carried sour John Knox
To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,
Fastened him into a front-row box,
And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?
Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.
Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, _sufficit_!
See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!
A's book shall prop you up, B's shall cover you,
Here's C to be grave with, or D to be gay,
And with E on each side, and F right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!

* * * * *

A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL

SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE

1855

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture!
Air the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
Clouds overcome it;
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
'Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.

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