Robert Browning: How To Know Him

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And she--she watched the square like a book
Holding one picture and only one,
Which daily to find she undertook:

When the picture was reached the book was done,
And she turned from the picture at night to scheme
Of tearing it out for herself next sun.

So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
The glory dropped from their youth and love,
And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

Which hovered as dreams do, still above:
But who can take a dream for a truth?
Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

One day as the lady saw her youth
Depart, and the silver thread that streaked
Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth,

The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked,
And wondered who the woman was,
Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

Fronting her silent in the glass--
"Summon here," she suddenly said,
"Before the rest of my old self pass,"

"Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,
Who fashions the clay no love will change,
And fixes a beauty never to fade."

"Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange
Arrest the remains of young and fair,
And rivet them while the seasons range."

"Make me a face on the window there,
Waiting as ever, mute the while,
My love to pass below in the square!"

"And let me think that it may beguile
Dreary days which the dead must spend
Down in their darkness under the aisle,"

"To say, 'What matters it at the end?
I did no more while my heart was warm
Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.'"

"Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm--"

"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?
A lady of clay is as good, I trow."

But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine,
With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,
Was set where now is the empty shrine--

(And, leaning out of a bright blue space,
As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,
The passionate pale lady's face--

Eying ever, with earnest eye
And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,
Some one who ever is passing by--)

The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch
In Florence, "Youth--my dream escapes!
Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch

Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes--
"Can the soul, the will, die out of a man
Ere his body find the grave that gapes?"

"John of Douay shall effect my plan,
Set me on horseback here aloft,
Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,"

"In the very square I have crossed so oft:
That men may admire, when future suns
Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,"

"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze--
Admire and say, 'When he was alive
How he would take his pleasure once!'"

"And it shall go hard but I contrive
To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb
At idleness which aspires to strive."

* * * * *

So! While these wait the trump of doom,
How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
Nights and days in the narrow room?

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
What a gift life was, ages ago,
Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

Only they see not God, I know,
Nor all that chivalry of his,
The soldier-saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss--
Since, the end of life being manifest,
He had burned his way through the world to this.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best,
For their end was a crime."--Oh, a crime will do
As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through,
Sufficient to vindicate itself
And prove its worth at a moment's view!

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?
Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram
To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

The true has no value beyond the sham:
As well the counter as coin, I submit,
When your table's a hat, and your prize, a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
Venture as warily, use the same skill,
Do your best, whether winning or losing it,

If you choose to play!--is my principle.
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin:
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
You of the virtue (we issue join)
How strive you? _De te, fabula_!

The two volumes of _Dramatic Idyls_ are full of paradoxes, for
Browning became fonder and fonder of the paradox as he descended
into the vale of years. The Russian poem _Ivan Ivanovitch_ justly
condemns mothers who prefer their own safety to that of their
children. When a stranger gives up his life for another, as happens
frequently in crises of fire and shipwreck, we applaud: but when a
mother sacrifices her life for that of her child, she does the
natural and expected thing. The woman in this poem was a monster of
wickedness and did not deserve to live. She started with three
children and arrived with none. Now there are some things in life
for which no apology and no explanation suffice. What do we care
about her story? Who cares to hear her defence? What difference does
it make whether she actively threw out the children or allowed the
wolves to take them? She arrives safe and sound without them and
there is no mistaking the fact that she rejoices in her own salvation.
She does not rejoice long, however, for Ivan, who is Browning's
ideal of resolution, neatly removes her head. Practically and
literally Ivan is a murderer: but paradoxically he is God's servant,
for the woman is not fit to live, and he eliminates her.

From the practical point of view there is a difficulty ahead. The
husband is due; when he hears that the children are lost, he will
suffer horribly, and will enquire anxiously as to the fate of his
wife. When he learns that she arrived in good condition and that
then Ivan knocked her head off, he may not fully appreciate the
ethical beauty of Ivan's deed. But this detail does not affect the
moral significance of the story. Yet I can not help thinking that a
man with such strong convictions as Ivan ought not to carry an axe.

Ivan, however, is still needed in Russia. Two or three years ago,
immediately after a wedding ceremony, the bride and groom, with the
whole wedding party, set out in sledges for the next town. The
wolves attacked them and ate every member of the party except the
four in the first sledge--husband, wife, and two men. As the wolves
drew near, these two heroes advised the husband to throw out the
bride, for if he did so, the three left might be saved, as their
haven was almost in sight. Naturally the bridegroom declined. Then
the two men threw out both bride and groom, and just managed to reach
the town in safety, the sole survivors of the whole party. I wish
that Ivan had been there to give them the proper welcome.

The poem _Clive_ is a psychological analysis of courage and fear,
two of the most interesting of human sensations. Clive seems to have
been an instrument in the hands of Destiny. When an obscure young man,
he twice tried to commit suicide, and both times the pistol missed
fire. A born gambler, he judged that he was reserved for something
great. He was: he conquered India. Then, after his life-work was
fully accomplished, his third attempt at suicide was successful.

After describing the dramatic incident at card-play, which he gave
to the old buck as the only time in his life when he felt afraid,
his companion remarked that it was enough to scare anybody to face a
loaded pistol. But here comes the paradox. Clive was intensely angry
because his friend failed to see the point. "Why, I wasn't afraid he
would shoot, I was afraid he wouldn't." Suppose the general had said
contemptuously that young Clive was not worth the powder and ball it
would take to kill him--suppose he had sent him away wholly safe and
wholly disgraced. Then Clive would have instantly killed himself.
Either the general was not clever enough to play this trump, or the
clear unwinking eyes of his victim convicted him of sin.

Clive was one of those exceedingly rare individuals who have never
known the sensation of physical fear. But I do not think he was
really so brave as those men, who, cursed with an imagination that
fills their minds with terror, nevertheless advance toward danger.
For your real hero is one who does not allow the desires of his body
to control his mind. The body, always eager for safety, comfort, and
pleasure, cries out against peril: but the mind, up in the
conning-tower of the brain, drives the protesting and shivering body
forward. Napoleon, who was a good judge of courage, called Ney the
bravest of the brave: and I admired Ney more intensely when I
learned that in battle he was in his heart always afraid.

The courage of soldiers in the mass seems sublime, but it is the
commonest thing on earth: all nations show it: it is probably an
inexplicable compound of discipline, pride, shame, and rage: but
individuals differ from one another as sharply in courage as they do
in mental ability. In sheer physical courage dive has never been
surpassed, and Browning, who loved the manly virtues, saw in this
corrupt and cruel man a great hero.

The poem _Muleykeh_, which is one of the oldest of Oriental stories,
is really an analysis of love. The mare was dearer to her owner than
life itself: yet he intentionally surrendered her to his rival
rather than have her disgraced. His friends called him an idiot and
a fool: but he replied, "You never have loved my Pearl." And indeed,
from his point of view, they did not know the meaning of love. What
is love? Simply the desire for possession, or the desire that the
beloved object should be incomparably pure and unsullied by defeat
and disgrace? The man who owned Muleykeh really loved her, since her
honor was more precious to him than his own happiness.

The short poem _Which_? published on the last day of Browning's life,
is a splendid paradox. In the Middle Ages, when house-parties
assembled, an immense amount of time was taken up by the telling of
stories and by the subsequent discussions thereupon. The stock
subject was Love, and the ideal lover was a favorite point of debate.
In this instance, the three court ladies argue, and to complete the
paradox, a Priest is chosen for referee. Perhaps he was thought to
be out of it altogether, and thus ready to judge with an
unprejudiced mind.

The Duchess declares that her lover must be a man she can respect: a
man of religion and patriotism. He must love his God, and his country;
then comes his wife, who holds the third place in his affections.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.

The Marquise insists that her lover must be a man who has done
something. He must not only be a man inspired by religious and
patriotic motives, but must have actually suffered in her service.
He has received wounds in combat, he is pointed out everywhere as
the man who has accomplished great deeds. I can not love him unless
I can be proud of his record.

The Comtesse says that her ideal lover must love her first: he must
love her more than he loves God, more than he loves his country,
more than he loves his life--yes, more than he loves his own honor.
He must be willing, if necessary, not only to sacrifice his health
and life in her behalf, indeed, any true knight would do that: he
must be willing to sacrifice his good name, be false to his religion
and a traitor to his country. What do I care whether he be a coward,
a craven, a scoundrel, a hissing and a byword, so long as he loves
me most of all?

This is a difficult position for the Abbe, the man of God: but he
does not flinch. His decision is that the third lover is the one of
whom Almighty God would approve.

One thing is certain: the third man really loved his Lady. We do not
know whether the other two loved or not. When a man talks a great
deal about his honor, his self-respect, it is just possible that he
loves himself more than he loves any one else. But the man who would
go through hell to win a woman really loves that woman. Browning
abhors selfishness. He detests a man who is kept from a certain
course of action by thoughts of its possible results to his
reputation. Ibsen has given us the standard example of what the
first and second lover in this poem might sink to in a real moral
crisis. In _A Doll's House_, the husband curses his wife because she
has committed forgery, and his good name will suffer. She replied
that she committed the crime to save his life--her motive was Love:
and she had hoped that when the truth came out the miracle would
happen: her husband would step forward and take the blame all on
himself. "What fools you women are," said he, angrily: "you know
nothing of business. I would work my fingers to the bone for you: I
would give up my life for you: but you can't expect a man to
sacrifice his _honor_ for a woman." Her retort is one of the
greatest in literature. "Millions of women have done it."

WHICH?

1889

So, the three Court-ladies began
Their trial of who judged best
In esteeming the love of a man:
Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessed
Boy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and cager;
An Abbe crossed legs to decide on the wager.

First the Duchesse: "Mine for me--
Who were it but God's for Him,
And the King's for--who but he?
Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall brim
His cup with perfection: a lady's true lover,
He holds--save his God and his king--none above her."

"I require"--outspoke the Marquise--
"Pure thoughts, ay, but also fine deeds:
Play the paladin must he, to please
My whim, and--to prove my knight's service exceeds
Your saint's and your loyalist's praying and kneeling--
Show wounds, each wide mouth to my mercy appealing."

Then the Comtesse: "My choice be a wretch,
Mere losel in body and soul,
Thrice accurst! What care I, so he stretch
Arms to me his sole saviour, love's ultimate goal,
Out of earth and men's noise--names of 'infidel,' 'traitor,'
Cast up at him? Crown me, crown's adjudicator!"

And the Abbe uncrossed his legs,
Took snuff, a reflective pinch,
Broke silence: "The question begs
Much pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I flinch?
The love which to one and one only has reference
Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference."

VII

BROWNING'S OPTIMISM

Among all modern thinkers and writers, Browning is the foremost
optimist. He has left not the slightest doubt on this point; his
belief is stated over and over again, running like a vein of gold
through all his poems from _Pauline_ to _Asolando_. The shattered
man in _Pauline_ cries at the very last,

I believe in God and Truth and Love.

This staunch affirmation, "I believe!" is the common chord in
Browning's music. His optimism is in striking contrast to the
attitude of his contemporaries, for the general tone of nineteenth
century literature is pessimistic. Amidst the wails and lamentations
of the poets, the clear, triumphant voice of Browning is refreshing
even to those who are not convinced.

Browning suffered for his optimism. It is generally thought that the
optimist must be shallow and superficial; whilst pessimism is
associated with profound and sincere thinking. Browning felt this
criticism, and replied to it with a scriptural insult in his poem
_At the Mermaid_. I cannot possibly be a great poet, he said
sneeringly, because I have never said I longed for death; I have
enjoyed life and loved it, and have never assumed a peevish attitude.
In another poem he declared that pessimists were liars, because they
really loved life while pretending it was all suffering.

It is only fair to Browning to remember that his optimism has a
philosophical basis, and is the logical result of a firmly-held view
of the universe. Many unthinking persons declare that Browning, with
his jaunty good spirits, gets on their nerves; he dodges or leaps
over the real obstacles in life, and thinks he has solved
difficulties when he has only forgotten them. They miss in Browning
the note of sorrow, of internal struggle, of despair; and insist
that he has never accurately portrayed the real bitterness of the
heart's sufferings. These critics have never read attentively
Browning's first poem.

The poem _Pauline_ shows that Browning had his _Sturm und Drang_, in
common with all thoughtful young men. Keats' immortal preface to
_Endymion_ would be equally applicable to this youthful work.
"The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of
a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the
soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life
uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness,
and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must
necessarily taste in going over the following pages." The
astonishing thing is, that Browning emerged from the slough of
despond at just the time when most young men are entering it. He not
only climbed out, but set his face resolutely toward the Celestial
City.

The poem _Pauline_ shows that young Browning passed through
skepticism, atheism, pessimism, cynicism, and that particularly dark
state when the mind reacts on itself; when enthusiasms, high hopes,
and true faith seem childish; when wit and mockery take the place of
zeal, this diabolical substitution seeming for the moment to be an
intellectual advance. But although he suffered from all these
diseases of the soul, he quickly became convalescent and _Paracelsus_
proves that his cure was complete.

Browning's optimism is not based on any discount of the sufferings
of life, nor any attempt to overlook such gross realities as sin and
pain. No pessimist has realised these facts more keenly than he. The
Pope, who is the poet's mouthpiece, calls the world a dread
machinery of sin and sorrow. The world is full of sin and sorrow,
but it is machinery--and machinery is meant to make something; in
this instance the product is human character, which can not be made
without obstacles, struggles, and torment. In _Reverie_, Browning
goes even farther than this in his description of terrestrial
existence.

Head praises, but heart refrains
From loving's acknowledgment
Whole losses outweigh half-gains:
Earth's good is with evil blent:
Good struggles but evil reigns.

Such an appraisal of life can hardly be called a blind and jaunty
optimism.

Browning declares repeatedly that the world shows clearly two
attributes of God: immense force and immense intelligence. We can
not worship God, however, merely because He is strong and wise; He
must be better than we are to win our respect and homage. The third
necessary attribute, Love, is not at all clear in the spectacle
furnished by science and history. Where then shall we seek it? His
answer is, in the revelation of God's love through Jesus Christ.

What lacks then of perfection fit for God
But just the instance which this tale supplies
Of love without a limit?

Browning's philosophy therefore is purely Christian. The love of God
revealed in the Incarnation and in our own ethical natures--our
imperfect souls containing here and now the possibilities of
infinite development--makes Browning believe that this is God's
world and we are God's children. He conceives of our life as an
eternal one, our existence here being merely probation. No one has
ever believed more rationally and more steadfastly in the future
life than our poet; and his optimism is based solidly on this faith.
The man who believes in the future life, he seems to say, may enjoy
whole-heartedly and enthusiastically the positive pleasures of this
world, and may endure with a firm mind its evils and its terrible
sufferings. Take Christianity out of Browning, and his whole
philosophy, with its cheerful outlook, falls to the ground. Of all
true English poets, he is the most definitely Christian, the most
sure of his ground. He wrote out his own evangelical creed in
_Christmas-Eve_ and _Easter Day_; but even if we did not have
these definite assurances, poems like _A Death in the Desert_ and
_Gold Hair_ would be sufficient.

Sequels are usually failures: the sequel to _Saul_ is a notable
exception to the rule. The first part of the poem, including the
first nine stanzas, was published among the _Dramatic Romances_ in
1845: in 1855, among the _Men and Women_, appeared the whole work,
containing ten additional stanzas. This sequel is fully up to the
standard of the original in artistic beauty, and contains a quite
new climax, of even greater intensity. The ninth stanza closes with
the cry "King Saul!"--he represents the last word of physical manhood,
the finest specimen on earth of the athlete. The eighteenth stanza
closes with the cry "See the Christ stand!"--He represents the climax
of all human history, the appearance on earth of God in man. The
first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from
heaven. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also
bear the image of the heavenly.

No modern Pagan has ever sung the joy of life with more gusto than
Browning trolls it out in the ninth stanza. The glorious play of the
muscles, the rapture of the chase, the delight of the plunge into
cold water, the delicious taste of food and wine, the unique
sweetness of deep sleep. No shame attaches to earthly delights: let
us rejoice in our health and strength, in exercise, recreation,
eating and sleeping. Saul was a cowboy before he was a King; and
young David in his music takes the great monarch back to the happy
carefree days on the pasture, before the responsibilities of the
crown had given him melancholia. The effect of music on patients
suffering from nervous depression is as well known now as it was in
Saul's day; Shakespeare knew something about it. His physicians are
sometimes admirable; the great nervous specialist called in on Lady
Macbeth's case is a model of wisdom and discretion: the specialist
that Queen Cordelia summoned to prescribe for her father, after
giving him trional, or something of that nature, was careful to have
his return to consciousness accompanied by suitable music. Such
terrible fits of melancholy as afflicted Saul were called in the Old
Testament the visitations of an evil spirit; and there is no better
diagnosis today. The Russian novelist Turgenev suffered exactly in
the manner in which Browning describes Saul's sickness of heart: for
several days he would remain in an absolute lethargy, like the
king-serpent in his winter sleep. And, as in the case of Saul, music
helped him more than medicine.

When David had carried the music to its fullest extent, the spirit
of prophecy came upon him, as in the Messianic Psalms, and in the
eighteenth stanza, he joyfully infers from the combination of man's
love and man's weakness, that God's love is equal to God's power.
Man's will is powerless to change the world of atoms: from God's
will stream the stars. Yet if man's will were equal in power to his
benevolence, how quickly would I, David, restore Saul to happiness!
The fact that I love my King with such intensity, whilst I am
powerless to change his condition, makes me believe in the coming of
Him who shall have my wish to help humanity with the accompanying
power. Man is contemptible in his strength, but divine in his ideals.
'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!

The last stanza of the poem has been thought by some critics to be a
mistake, worse than superfluous. For my part, I am very glad that
Browning added it. Up to this point, we have had exhibited the
effect of the music on Saul: now we see the effect on the man who
produced it, David. While it is of course impossible even to imagine
how a genius must feel immediately after releasing some immortal work
that has swollen his heart, we can not help making conjectures. If
we are so affected by _hearing_ the Ninth Symphony, what must have
been the sensations of Beethoven at its birth? When Haendel wrote the
Hallelujah Chorus, he declared that he saw the heavens opened, and
the Son of God sitting in glory, and I think he spoke the truth.
After Thackeray had written a certain passage in _Vanity Fair_, he
rushed wildly about the room, shouting "That's Genius!"

Now no man in the history of literature has been more reticent than
Browning in describing his emotions after virtue had passed out of
him. He never talked about his poetry if he could help it; and the
hundreds of people who met him casually met a fluent and pleasant
conversationalist, who gave not the slightest sign of ever having
been on the heights. We know, for example, that on the third day of
January, 1852, Browning wrote in his Paris lodgings to the
accompaniment of street omnibuses the wonderful poem _Childe Roland_:
what a marvellous day that must have been in his spiritual life! In
what a frenzy of poetic passion must have passed the hours when he
saw those astounding visions, and heard the blast of the horn in the
horrible sunset! He must have been inspired by the very demon of
poetry. And yet, so far as we know, he never told any one about that
day, nor left any written record either of that or any other of the
great moments in his life. In _The Ring and the Book_, he tells us
of the passion, mystery and wonder that filled his soul on the night
of the day when he had found the old yellow volume: but he has said
nothing of his sensations when he wrote the speech of Pompilia.

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