Robert Browning: How To Know Him

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One of the most admirable things about Browning's admirable career
as poet and man is that he wrote not to please the critics, as
Tennyson often did, not to please the crowd, as the vast horde of
ephemeral writers do, but to please himself. The critics and the
crowd professed that they could not understand him; but he had no
difficulty in understanding them. He knew exactly what they wanted,
and declined to supply it. Instead of giving them what he thought
they wanted, he gave them what he thought they needed. That
illustrates the difference between the literary caterer and the
literary master. Some poets, critics, dramatists, and novelists are
born to be followers of the public taste; they have their reward.
Only a few, and one at a time, are leaders. This is entirely as it
should be, for, with followers, the more the merrier; with leaders
it is quite otherwise.

In the case of a man of original genius, the first evidence of
approaching fame is seen in the dust raised by contempt, scorn,
ridicule, and various forms of angry resistance from those who will
ultimately be converts. People resist him as they resist the Gospel.
He comes unto his own, and his own receive him not. The so-called
reading public have the stupid cruelty of schoolboys, who will not
tolerate on the part of any newcomer the slightest divergence in
dress, manners, or conversation from the established standard.
Conformity is king; for schoolboys are the most conservative mass of
inertia that can be found anywhere on earth. And they are thorough
masters of ridicule--the most powerful weapon known to humanity. But
as in schoolboy circles the ostracising laughter is sometimes a sign
that a really original boy has made his appearance, so the
unthinking opposition of the conventional army of readers is
occasionally a proof that the new man has made a powerful impression
which can not be shaken off.

[Footnote 1: Life of Sidney Lanier, by Professor Edwin Mims.]

This is what Browning did with his "lasso" style. It was suitably
adapted to his purposes, and the public behaved somewhat like the
buffalo. They writhed, kicked, struggled, plunged, and the greater
the uproar, the more evident it was that they were caught. Shortly
before his death, Professor F.J. Child, a scholar of international
fame, told me angrily that Wagner was no musician at all; that he
was a colossal fraud; that the growing enthusiasm for him was mere
affectation, which would soon pass away. He spoke with extraordinary
passion. I wondered at his rage, but I understand it now. It was the
rage of a king against the incoming and inexorable tide.

Nothing is more singular to contemplate than the variations in form
of what the public calls melody, both in notation and in language.
What delights the ears of one generation distresses or wearies the
ears of another. Elizabethan audiences listened with rapture to long
harangues in bombastic blank verse: a modern audience can not endure
this. The senses of Queen Anne Englishmen were charmed by what they
called the melody of Pope's verse--by its even regularity and steady
flow. To us Pope's verse is full of wit and cerebration, but we find
the measure intolerably monotonous. Indeed, by a curious irony of
fate, Pope, who regarded himself as a supreme poet, has since
frequently been declared to be no poet at all. Keats wrote _Endymion_
in the heroic couplet--the very measure employed by Pope. But his
use of it was so different that this poem would have seemed utterly
lacking in melody to Augustan ears--Pope would have attempted to
"versify" it. And yet we enjoy it. It seems ridiculous to say that
the man who wrote _Der fliegende Hollaender and Tannhaeuser_ could not
write melody, and yet it was almost universally said. It seems
strange that critics should have declared that the man who wrote
_Love Among the Ruins_ could not write rhythmical verse, yet such
was once almost the general opinion. Still, the rebellious instinct
of the public that condemned Wagner in music and Browning in poetry
was founded on something genuine; for Wagner was unlike other
musicians, and Browning was unlike other poets.

_Fraser's Magazine_, for December, 1833, contained a review of
Browning's first poem, _Pauline_, which had been published that year.
The critic decided that the new poet was mad: "you being, beyond all
question, as mad as Cassandra, without any of the power to prophesy
like her, or to construct a connected sentence like anybody else. We
have already had a Monomaniac; and we designate you 'The Mad Poet of
the Batch;' as being mad not in one direction only, but in all. A
little lunacy, like a little knowledge, would be a dangerous thing."

Yet it was in this despised and rejected poem that a great, original
genius in English poetry was first revealed. It is impossible to
understand Browning or even to read him intelligently without firmly
fixing in the mind his theory of poetry, and comprehending fully his
ideal and his aim. All this he set forth clearly in _Pauline_, and
though he was only twenty years old when he wrote it, he never
wavered from his primary purpose as expressed in two lines of the
poem, two lines that should never be forgotten by those who really
wish to enjoy the study of Browning:

And then thou said'st a perfect bard was one
Who chronicled the stages of all life.

What is most remarkable about this definition of poetry is what it
omits. The average man regards poetry as being primarily concerned
with the creation of beauty. Not a word is said about beauty in
Browning's theory. The average man regards poetry as being
necessarily melodious, rhythmical, tuneful, above all, pleasing to
the senses; but Browning makes no allusion here to rime or rhythm,
nor to melody or music of any sort. To him the bard is a Reporter of
Life, an accurate Historian of the Soul, one who observes human
nature in its various manifestations, and gives a faithful record.
Sound, rhythm, beauty are important, because they are a part of life;
and they are to be found in Browning's works like wild flowers in a
field; but they are not in themselves the main things. The main
thing is human life in its totality. Exactly in proportion to the
poet's power of portraying life, is the poet great; if he correctly
describes a wide range of life, he is greater than if he has
succeeded only in a narrow stretch; and the Perfect Bard would be the
one who had chronicled the stages of all life. Shakespeare is the
supreme poet because he has approached nearer to this ideal than any
one else--he has actually chronicled most phases of humanity, and
has truthfully painted a wide variety of character. Browning
therefore says of him in _Christmas-Eve_--

As I declare our Poet, him
Whose insight makes all others dim:
A thousand poets pried at life,
And only one amid the strife
Rose to be Shakespeare.

Browning's poetry, as he elsewhere expresses it, was always dramatic
in principle, always an attempt to interpret human life. With that
large number of highly respectable and useful persons who do not
care whether they understand him or not, I have here no concern: but
to those who really wish to learn his secret, I insist that his main
intention must ever be kept in mind. Much of his so-called obscurity,
harshness, and uncouthness falls immediately into its proper place,
is indeed necessary. The proof of his true greatness not as a
philosopher, thinker, psychologist, but as a poet, lies in the
simple fact that when the subject-matter he handles is beautiful or
sublime, his style is usually adequate to the situation. Browning
had no difficulty in writing melodiously when he placed the posy in
the Ring,

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,

although just a moment before, when he was joking about his lack of
readers, he was anything but musical. _The Ring and the Book_ is
full of exquisite beauty, amazing felicity of expression, fluent
rhythm and melody; full also of crudities, jolts, harshness, pedantry,
wretched witticisms, and coarseness. Why these contrasts? Because it
is a study of human testimony. The lawyers in this work speak no
radiant or spiritual poetry; they talk like tiresome, conceited
pedants because they were tiresome, conceited pedants; Pompilia's
dying speech of adoring passion for Caponsacchi is sublime music,
because she was a spiritual woman in a glow of exaltation. Guido
speaks at first with calm, smiling irony, and later rages like a
wild beast caught in a spring-trap; in both cases the verse fits his
mood. If Pompilia's tribute to Caponsacchi had been expressed in
language as dull and flat as the pleas of the lawyers, then we
should be quite sure that Browning, whatever he was, was no poet.
For it would indicate that he could not create the right diction for
the right situation and character. Now, his picture of the triple
light of sunset in _The Last Ride Together_ is almost intolerably
beautiful, because such a scene fairly overwhelms the senses. I hear
the common and unintelligent comment, "Ah, if he had only always
written like that!" He would have done so, if he had been interested
in only the beautiful aspects of this world. "How could the man who
wrote such lovely music as that have also written such harsh stuff
as _Mr. Sludge, the Medium_"? The answer is that in the former he
was chronicling a stage of life that in its very essence was beauty:
in the latter, something exactly the opposite. Life has its
trivialities and its ugliness, as well as its sublime aspirations.
In Browning's poetry, whenever the thought rises, the style
automatically rises with it,

Compare the diction of _Holy Cross Day_ with that in _Love Among the
Ruins_. Cleon is an old Greek poet, and he speaks noble, serene verse:
Bishop Blougram is a subtle dialectician, a formidable antagonist in
a joint debate, and he has the appropriate manner and language.
Would you have him talk like the lover in _Evelyn Hope_?

Browning was a great artist, and the grotesque is an organic part of
his structures. To find fault with the grotesque excrescences in
Browning's poetry is exactly like condemning a cathedral because it
has gargoyles. How could the architect that dreamed those wonderful
columns and arches have made those hideous gargoyles? Did he flatter
himself they were beautiful? When _Macbeth_ was translated into
German, the translator was aghast at the coarse language of the
drunken porter. How could the great Shakespeare, who had proved so
often his capacity as an artist, have made such an appalling blunder?
So the translator struck out the offensive words, and made the
porter sing a sweet hymn to the dawn.

The theory of poetry originally stated in _Pauline_ Browning not
only endeavored to exemplify in his work; he often distinctly
repeated it. In _The Glove_, all the courtiers, hide-bound by
conventional ideas, unite in derisive insults howled at the lady. She
goes out 'mid hooting and laughter. Only two men follow her: one,
because he loves her; the other, for purely professional reasons.
To-day, he would of course be a society reporter. "I beg your pardon,
Madam, but would you kindly grant me an interview? I represent the
_New York Flash_, and we shall be glad to present your side of this
story in our next Sunday issue." With equal professional zeal, Peter
Ronsard is keenly interested in discovering the motives that
underlay the lady's action. He simply must know, and in defense of
his importunity, he presents his credentials. He is a poet, and
therefore the strange scene that has just been enacted comes within
his special domain.

I followed after,
And asked, as a grace, what it all meant?
If she wished not the rash deed's recallment?
"For I"--so I spoke--"am a poet:
Human nature,--behoves that I know it!"

In _Transcendentalism_, a poem which is commonly misunderstood,
Browning informs us that the true poet must deal, not with abstract
thought, but with concrete things. A young poet informs an elder
colleague that he has just launched a huge philosophical poem,
called _Transcendentalism: a Poem in Twelve Books_. His wiser critic
tells him that he is on the wrong track altogether; what he has
written is prose, not poetry. Poetry is not a discussion of abstract
ideas, but the creation of individual things. Transcendentalism is
not a fit subject for poetry, because it deals with metaphysical
thought, instead of discussing men and women. To illustrate his point,
he makes a comparison between botany and roses. Which is the more
interesting, to read a heavy treatise on botany, or to behold roses?
A few pedants may like botany better, but ordinary humanity is quite
right in preferring flowers. Browning indicates that the poet should
not compose abstract treatises, but should create individual works
of art, like the stout Mage of Halberstadt,

John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about.
He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes,
And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
Over us, under, round us every side,
Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs
And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,--
Buries us with a glory, young once more,
Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

Many have failed to understand this poem, because they think that
Browning himself is constantly guilty of the sin specifically
condemned here. Browning has indeed often been called a thinker, a
philosopher: but a moment's serious reflection will prove that of all
English poetry outside of the drama, Browning's is the least
abstract and the most concrete. Poetry is not condemned because it
arouses thought, but only when it is abstract in method. Browning
often deals with profound ideas, but always by concrete illustrations.
For example, he discusses the doctrine of predestination by giving
us the individual figure of Johannes-Agricola in meditation: the
royalist point of view in the seventeenth century by cavaliers
singing three songs: the damnation of indecision by two Laodicaean
lovers in _The Statue and the Bust_. When Browning is interested in
any doctrine, idea, or system of thought, he creates a person to
illustrate it.

Browning's theory of poetry is further reenforced by his poem
_How It Strikes a Contemporary_, which, in the final rearrangement
of his works, he placed directly after _Transcendentalism_, as though
to drive his doctrine home. Here is a picture of a real poet. Where
does he live, whence does he get his sources of inspiration, and how
does he pass his time? The poem answers these questions in a most
instructive manner, if only we keep in mind the original definition
given in _Pauline_. It is conventionally believed that the country
is more poetic than the city: that an ideal residence for a poet
would be in lonely, lovely, romantic scenery; and that in splendid
solitude and isolation he should clothe his thoughts in forms of
beauty. Now Browning's own life and methods of work were in exact
contrast to these popular ideas; because his theory of poetry
requires the poet to live in the very midst of human activities, and
to draw his inspiration not from a mountain or the stars, but from
all sorts and conditions of men. Thus, in the poem, _How It Strikes
a Contemporary_, the poet lives in a noisy city, spends his time
walking the streets, and instead of being lost in a trance, he is
intensely aware of everything that happens in the town. The poet is
an observer, not a dreamer. Indeed, the citizens think this old poet
is a royal spy, because he notices people and events with such sharp
attention. Browning would seem to say that the mistake is a quite
natural one; the poet ought to act like a spy, for, if he be a true
poet, he is a spy--a spy on human life. He takes upon himself the
mystery of things, as if he were God's spy.

He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,
Scenting the world, looking it full in face....
He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,
And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string,
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
He took such cognizance of men and things,
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note.

This is an exact description of the way Robert Browning walked the
streets of Florence. Only a few years after this poem was printed,
he was glancing o'er the books on stalls in the square of San Lorenzo,
and found the old yellow volume which he turned into an epic of
humanity. The true poet "scents" the world, smells it out, as a dog
locates game. A still stronger expression is used in _Christmas-Eve_,
where the poets "pried" at life, turned up its surface in order to
disclose all its hidden treasures of meaning.

"TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS"

1855

Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak?
'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
Instead of draping them in sights and sounds.
--True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!
But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast, at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings?
Stark-naked thought is in request enough:
Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears!
The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,
Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp--
Exchange our harp for that,--who hinders you?

But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think;
Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse.
Boys seek for images and melody,
Men must have reason--so, you aim at men.
Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true;
We see and hear and do not wonder much:
If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!
As German Boehme never cared for plants
Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,
He noticed all at once that plants could speak,
Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him.
That day the daisy had an eye indeed--
Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes!
We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose.
But by the time youth slips a stage or two
While reading prose in that tough book he wrote
(Collating and emendating the same
And settling on the sense most to our mind),
We shut the clasps and find life's summer past.
Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss--
Another Boehme with a tougher book
And subtler meanings of what roses say,--
Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt,
John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about?
He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes,
And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
Over us, under, round us every side,
Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs
And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,--
Buries us with a glory, young once more,
Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

So come, the harp back to your heart again!
You are a poem, though your poem's naught.
The best of all you showed before, believe,
Was your own boy-face o'er the finer chords
Bent, following the cherub at the top
That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.

HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY

1855

I only knew one poet in my life:
And this, or something like it, was his way.

You saw go up and down Valladolid,
A man of mark, to know next time you saw.
His very serviceable suit of black
Was courtly once and conscientious still,
And many might have worn it, though none did:
The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads,
Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.
He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,
Scenting the world, looking it full in face,
An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.
They turned up, now, the alley by the church,
That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves
On the main promenade just at the wrong time:
You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat,
Making a peaked shade blacker than itself
Against the single window spared some house
Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,--
Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick
Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks
Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.
He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,
The man who slices lemons into drink,
The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys
That volunteer to help him turn its winch.
He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,
And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string,
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
He took such cognizance of men and things,
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note;
Yet stared at nobody,--you stared at him,
And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,
He seemed to know you and expect as much.
So, next time that a neighbour's tongue was loosed,
It marked the shameful and notorious fact,
We had among us, not so much a spy,
As a recording chief-inquisitor,
The town's true master if the town but knew!
We merely kept a governor for form,
While this man walked about and took account
Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,
And wrote it fully to our Lord the King
Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,
And reads them in his bedroom of a night.
Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch,
A tang of ... well, it was not wholly ease
As back into your mind the man's look came.
Stricken in years a little,--such a brow
His eyes had to live under!--clear as flint
On either side the formidable nose
Curved, cut and coloured like an eagle's claw.
Had he to do with A.'s surprising fate?
When altogether old B. disappeared
And young C. got his mistress,--was't our friend,
His letter to the King, that did it all?
What paid the bloodless man for so much pains?
Our Lord the King has favourites manifold,
And shifts his ministry some once a month;
Our city gets new governors at whiles,--
But never word or sign, that I could hear,
Notified to this man about the streets
The King's approval of those letters conned
The last thing duly at the dead of night.
Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,
Exhorting when none heard--"Beseech me not!
Too far above my people,--beneath me!
I set the watch,--how should the people know?
Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!"
Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

I found no truth in one report at least--
That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes
Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,
You found he ate his supper in a room
Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,
And twenty naked girls to change his plate!
Poor man, he lived another kind of life
In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,
Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise!
The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat,
Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back,
Playing a decent cribbage with his maid
(Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese
And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,
Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,
Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

My father, like the man of sense he was,
Would point him out to me a dozen times;
"'St--'St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!"
I had been used to think that personage
Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,
And feathers like a forest in his hat,
Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,
Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,
And memorized the miracle in vogue!
He had a great observance from us boys;
We were in error; that was not the man.

I'd like now, yet had haply been afraid,
To have just looked, when this man came to die,
And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides
And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,
With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.
Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,
Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death,
Doing the King's work all the dim day long,
In his old coat and up to knees in mud,
Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,--
And, now the day was won, relieved at once!
No further show or need for that old coat,
You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while
How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!
A second, and the angels alter that.
Well, I could never write a verse,--could you?
Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.

In common with all English poets--there is no exception--Browning
loved nature. But he loved human nature so much more that when he
contemplates natural objects he thinks of them _in terms of humanity_.
This is exactly contrary to the conventional method. Most poets and
novelists describe human faces in terms of outdoor nature: the
heroine has "stormy eyes," "rainy eyes," her face is swept by
"gusts of passion," and so on, _ad infinitum_. I do not say that
Browning's is the better way; I say it is his way, because he was
obsessed by humanity. To take instances only from his first poem:

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