Robert Browning: How To Know Him

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Thou wilt remember one warm morn when winter
Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills; the blackthorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes.

Autumn has come like Spring returned to us
Won from her girlishness.

... the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl.

So, when Spring comes
With sunshine back again like an old smile.

I am to sing whilst ebbing day dies soft,
As a lean scholar dies worn o'er his book,
And in the heaven stars steal out one by one
As hunted men steal to their mountain watch.

Browning's love for the dramatic was so intense that he carried it
into every kind of poetry that he wrote. Various classes of his
works he called _Dramas, Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances,
Dramatic Idyls, Dramatis Personae_. In one of her prefaces,
Elizabeth Barrett had employed--for the first time in English
literature, I think--the term _Dramatic Lyric_. This naturally
appealed to Browning, and he gave the title in 1842 to his first
published collection of short poems. At first blush "dramatic lyric"
sounds like a contradiction in terms, like "non-mathematical algebra."
Drama is the most objective branch of poetry, and the lyric the most
subjective: but Browning was so intent upon the chronicling of all
stages of life that he carried the methods of the drama into the
lyric form, of which _Meeting at Night_ may serve as an excellent
example. Many of his short poems have the lyrical beauty of Shelley
and Heine; but they all represent the soul of some historical or
imaginary person.

At the very end of _The Ring and the Book_, Browning declared that
human testimony was false, a statement that will be supported by any
lawyer or judge of much court experience. Human testimony being
worthless, there remains but one way for the poet to tell the truth
about humanity, and that is through his art. The poet should use his
skill not primarily with the idea of creating something beautiful,
but with the main purpose of expressing the actual truth concerning
human life and character. The highest art is the highest veracity,
and this conforms to Browning's theory of poetry. This was his ideal,
and by adhering to this he hoped to save his soul. Browning believed
that by living up to our best capacity we attained unto salvation.
The man who hid his talent in the earth was really a lost soul. Like
many truly great artists, Browning felt deeply the responsibility of
his splendid endowment. In one of his letters to Miss Barrett, he
said, "I must write poetry and save my soul." In the last lines of
_The Ring and the Book_ we find this thought repeated:

So, British public, who may like me yet,
(Marry and amen!) learn one lesson hence
Of many which whatever lives should teach:
This lesson, that our human speech is naught,
Our human testimony false, our fame
And human estimation words and wind.
Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to minds like mine at least....
But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.
So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--
So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived,--
So write a book shall mean beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.
And save the soul!

From first to last Browning understood the prevailing criticism of
his poetry, directed against its so-called lack of musical rhythm.
He commented on it more than once. But he answered it always in the
same way, in _Pippa Passes_, in the last stanzas of _Pacchiarotto_,
and in the _Epilogue_ to the same volume. He insisted that what the
critics meant by melody was a childish jingle of rimes like Mother
Goose. Referring to _Sordello_, he makes the Second Student in
_Pippa Passes_ remark, "Instead of cramp couplets, each like a
knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both
classically and intelligibly.... One strip Cools your lip.... One
bottle Clears your throttle." In _Pacchiarotto_, he calls to critics:

And, what with your rattling and tinkling,
Who knows but you give me an inkling
How music sounds, thanks to the jangle
Of regular drum and triangle?
Whereby, tap-tap, chink-chink, 'tis proven
I break rule as bad as Beethoven.
"That chord now--a groan or a grunt is't?
Schumann's self was no worse contrapuntist.
No ear! or if ear, so tough-gristled--
He thought that he sung while he whistled!"

Browning felt that there was at times a certain virtue in mere
roughness: that there were ideas, which, if expressed in harsh phrase,
would make a deeper impression, and so be longer remembered. The
opening stanza of _The Twins_ was meant to emphasise this point:

Grand rough old Martin Luther
Bloomed fables--flowers on furze,
The better the uncouther:
Do roses stick like burrs?

Such a theory may help to explain the powerful line in _Rabbi Ben
Ezra_:

Irks care the cropfull bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Of course Browning's theory of poetry does not justify or explain
all the unmusical passages in his works. He felt, as every poet must,
the difficulty of articulation--the disparity between his ideas and
the verbal form he was able to give them. Browning had his trials in
composition, and he placed in the mouth of the Pope his own ardent
hope that in the next world there will be some means of communication
better than language:

Expect nor question nor reply
At what we figure as God's judgment bar!
None of this vile way by the barren words
Which, more than any deed, characterise
Man as made subject to a curse: no speech.

Over and over again, however, Browning declared that poetry should
not be all sweetness. Flowers growing naturally here and there in a
pasture are much more attractive than cut and gathered into a nosegay.
As Luther's long disquisitions are adorned with pretty fables, that
bloom like flowers on furze, so, in the _Epilogue to Pacchiarotto_,
Browning insisted that the wide fields of his verse are not without
cowslips:

And, friends, beyond dispute
I too have the cowslips dewy and dear.
Punctual as Springtide forth peep they:
But I ought to pluck and impound them, eh?
Not let them alone, but deftly shear
And shred and reduce to--what may suit
Children, beyond dispute?

Now, there are many law-abiding and transparently honest persons who
prefer anthologies to "works," who love to read tiny volumes prettily
bound, called "Beauties of Ruskin," and who have substituted for the
out-of-fashion "Daily Food" books, painted bits of cardboard with
sweet sayings culled from popular idols of the day, with which they
embellish the walls of their offices and bedrooms, in the hope that
they may hoist themselves into a more hallowed frame of mind. This
is the class--always with us, though more prosperous than the
poor--who prefer a cut bouquet to the natural flowers in wood and
meadow, and for whose comfort and convenience Browning declined to
work. His poetry is too stiff for these readers, partly because they
start with a preconceived notion of the function of poetry. Instead
of being charmed, their first sensation is a shock. They honestly
believe that the attitude of the mind in apprehending poetry should
be passive, not active: is not the poet a public entertainer? Did we
not buy the book with the expectation of receiving immediate pleasure?
The anticipated delight of many persons when they open a volume of
poems is almost physical, as it is when they settle themselves to
hear certain kinds of music. They feel presumably as a comfortable
cat does when her fur is fittingly stroked. The torture that many
listeners suffered when they heard Wagner for the first time was not
imaginary, it was real; "Oh, if somebody would only play a tune!" Yet
Wagner converted thousands of these quondam sufferers, and conquered
them without making any compromises. He simply enlarged their
conception of what opera-music might mean. He gave them new sources
of happiness without robbing them of the old. For my part, although
I prefer Wagner's to all other operas, I keenly enjoy Mozart's
_Don Giovanni_, Charpentier's _Louise_, Gounod's _Faust_, Strauss's
_Salome_, Verdi's _Aida_, and I never miss an opportunity to hear
Gilbert and Sullivan. Almost all famous operas have something good
in them except the works of Meyerbeer.

We all have moods when the mind wishes to be lulled, soothed, charmed,
hypnotised with agreeable melody, and in English literature we
fortunately have many great poets who can perform this service.

That strain again! it had a dying fall.

Tennyson was a veritable magician, who charmed with his genius
hundreds and thousands of people. No arduous mental effort is
necessary for the enjoyment of his verse, which is one reason why he
is and will remain a popular poet. Browning can not be taken in just
that way, any more than a man completely exhausted with the day's
work can enjoy _Siegfried_ or _Hedda Gabler_. Active, constant
cerebration on the part of the listener or the reader is essential.
This excludes at once a considerable number to whom the effort of
real thinking is as strange as it is oppressive. Browning is a
stimulus, not a sedative; his poetry is like an electric current
which naturally fails to affect those who are non-conductors of
poetry. As one of my undergraduate students tersely expressed it,
"Tennyson soothes our senses: Browning stimulates our thoughts."
Poetry is in some ways like medicine. Tennyson quiets the nerves:
Browning is a tonic: some have found Thomson's _Seasons_ invaluable
for insomnia: the poetry of Swift is an excellent emetic.

I do not quite understand the intense anger of many critics and
readers over the eternal question of Browning's obscurity. They have
been harping on this theme for eighty years and show no more sign of
exhaustion than a dog barking in the night. Why do the heathen rage?
Why do they not let Browning alone, and read somebody they can
understand? Browning is still gravely rebuked by many critics for
having written _Sordello_. Over and over again we have been informed
that the publication of this poem shattered his reputation for
twenty-five years. Well, what of it? what difference does it make now?
He seems to have successfully survived it. This huge work, which
William Sharp called "that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry,"
is destined to have an immortality all its own. From one point of
view, we ought to be grateful for its publication. It has aroused
inextinguishable laughter among the blessed gods. It is not witty in
itself, but it is the cause of wit in many. Douglas Jerrold and
Carlyle commented delightfully on it; even Tennyson succeeded for
once in saying something funny. One critic called it a fine house in
which the architect had forgotten to put any stairs. Another called
it a huge boil in which all the impurities in Browning's system came
to an impressive head, after which the patient, pure from poison,
succeeded in writing the clear and beautiful _Pippa Passes_. Besides
innumerable parodies that have been forgotten, Browning's obscurity
was the impenetrable flint that struck two mental flashes that
belong to literature, Calverley's _Cock and the Bull_, and
Swinburne's _John Jones_, a brilliant exposition of the perversities
in that tedious poem, _James Lee's Wife_. Not long ago, a young man
sat by the lamplight, studying a thick volume with evident discomfort.
To the friend who asked what he was doing, he replied, "I'm studying
Browning."

"Why, no, you idiot, that isn't Browning: you are reading the index
of first lines to the works of Wordsworth."

"By Jove! you're right! But it sounds just like Browning."

Browning's place in English literature is not with the great
verse-sculptors, not with the masters of imperishable beauty of form;
he does not belong to the glorious company where reign supreme Milton,
Keats, and Tennyson; his place is rather with the Interpreters of
Life, with the poets who use their art to express the shine and
shade of life's tragicomedy--to whom the base, the trivial, the
frivolous, the grotesque, the absurd seem worth reporting along with
the pure, the noble, and the sublime, since all these elements are
alike human. In this wide field of art, with the exception of
Shakespeare, who is the exception to everything, the first-born and
the last-born of all the great English poets know no equal in the
five centuries that rolled between them. The first person to say
this publicly was himself a poet and a devoted student of
Form--Walter Savage Landor. When he said it, people thought it was
mere hyperbole, the stressed language of compliment; but we know now
that Landor's words are as true as they are beautiful:

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walk'd along our roads with step
So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse.

Many critics who are now dead, and some that are yet alive, have
predicted the speedy death of Browning's reputation. This prediction
seems to afford a certain class of critics a calm and holy joy. Some
years ago, Mr. James Douglas, of London, solemnly announced the
approaching demise. Browning will die, said he, even as Donne is dead,
and for the same reason. But Donne is not quite dead.

I must survive a thing ere know it dead.

I think Donne will survive all our contemporary criticisms about him.
Ben Jonson said that Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved
hanging. But Donne, though he forgot to keep step with the procession
of poets, has survived many poets who tripped a regular measure. He
has survived even Pope's "versification" of his poems, one of the
most unconsciously humorous things in English literature. Accent
alone will not keep a man alive. Which poet of these latter days
stands the better chance to remain, Francis Thompson, whose
spiritual flame occasionally burned up accent, or Alfred Austin, who
studied to preserve accent through a long life? Accent is indeed
important; but raiment is of little value unless it clothes a living
body. Does Browning's best poetry smell of mortality? Nearly every
new novel I read in English has quotations from Browning without the
marks, sure evidence that the author has read him and assumes that
the readers of the novel have a like acquaintance. When Maeterlinck
wrote his famous play, _Monna Vanna_, he took one of the scenes
directly from Browning's _Luria_: he said that he had been inspired
by Browning: that Browning is one of the greatest poets that England
has ever produced: that to take a scene from him is a kind of public
homage, such as we pay to Homer, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare.

With the exception of Shakespeare, any other English poet could now
be spared more easily than Browning. For, owing to his aim in poetry,
and his success in attaining it, he gave us much vital truth and
beauty that we should seek elsewhere in vain; and, as he said in the
_Epilogue_ to _Pacchiarotio_, the strong, heady wine of his verse
may become sweet in process of time.

III

LYRICS

A pure lyric, as distinguished from other kinds of poetry, narrative,
descriptive, epic, dramatic, should have three characteristic
qualities, immediately evident on the first reading: it should be
short, it should be melodious, it should express only one mood. A
very long lyrical poem has never been written, and probably could
not be: a lyric without fluent melody is unthinkable: and a poem
representing a great variety of moods would more properly be classed
as descriptive or dramatic than lyrical. Examples of the perfect
lyric in nineteenth century English poetry are Shelley's _I Arise
From Dreams of Thee_; Keats's _Bright Star_; Byron's _She Walks in
Beauty_; Tennyson's _Break, Break, Break_. In each one of these
notable illustrations the poem is a brief song of passion,
representing the mood of the singer at that moment.

There are innumerable _lyrical_ passages in Browning's long poems,
and in his dramatic monologues; there are splendid outbursts of
melody. He could not be ranked among the greatest English poets if
he had not been one of our greatest singers. But we do not go to
Browning primarily for song. He is not one of our greatest lyrical
poets. It is certain, however, that he could have been had he chosen
to be. He wrote a sufficient number of pure lyrics to prove his
quality and capacity. But he was so much more deeply interested in
the study of the soul than in the mere expression of beauty--he was
so essentially, from _Pauline_ to _Asolando_--a dramatic poet, that
his great contribution to literature is seen in profound and subtle
interpretations of the human heart. It is fortunate that he made the
soul his specialty, because English literature is wonderfully rich
in song: there are many poets who can thrill us with music: but
there is only one Browning, and there is no group of writers in any
literature among which he can be classed.

Browning's dramatic lyrics differ from Tennyson's short poems as the
lyrics of Donne differed from those of Campion; but Browning
occasionally tried his hand at the composition of a pure lyric, as
if to say, "You see I can write like this when I choose." Therein
lies his real superiority to almost all other English poets: he
could do their work, but they could not do his. It is significant
that his first poem, _Pauline_, should have deeply impressed two men
of precisely opposite types of mind. These two were John Stuart Mill
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti--their very names illustrating
beautifully the difference in their mental tastes and powers. Carlyle
called Mill a "logic-chopping engine," because his intellectual
processes were so methodical, systematic, hard-headed: Rossetti was
a master of color and harmony. Yet Mill found in _Pauline_ the
workings of a powerful mind: and Rossetti's sensitive temperament
was charmed with the wonderful pictures and lovely melodies it
contained.

I like to think that Mill read, paused, re-read and meditated on
this passage:

I am made up of an intensest life,
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:
But linked, in me, to self-supremacy
Existing as a centre to all things,
Most potent to create and rule and call
Upon all things to minister to it;
And to a principle of restlessness
Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all--
This is myself; and I should thus have been
Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.

I like to think that Rossetti was thrilled with this picture of
Andromeda:

Andromeda!
And she is with me: years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her not--so beautiful
With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair
Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze,
And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,
Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair,
As she awaits the snake on the wet beach
By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking
At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing
I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god
To save will come in thunder from the stars.

It is rather singular, in view of the great vogue of the sonnet in
the nineteenth century, that neither Tennyson nor Browning should
have succeeded in this form. The two men wrote very few
sonnets--Browning fewer than Tennyson--and neither ever wrote a
great one. Longfellow, so inferior in most respects to his two great
English contemporaries, was an incomparably superior sonnetteer.
Tennyson's sonnets are all mediocre: Browning did not publish a
single sonnet in the final complete edition of his works. He did
however print a very few on special occasions, and when he was
twenty-two years old, between the composition of _Pauline_ and
_Paracelsus_, there appeared in the _Monthly Repository_ a sonnet
beginning

Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!)

which is the best example from his pen that has been preserved.
Although he did not think much of it in later years, it has been
frequently reprinted, and is worth keeping; both for the ardor of
its passion, and because it is extraordinary that he should have
begun so very early in his career a form of verse that he
practically abandoned. This sonnet may have been addressed to a
purely imaginary ideal; but it is possible that the young man had in
mind Eliza Flower, for whom he certainly had a boyish love, and who
was probably the original of Pauline. She and her sister, Sarah
Flower, the author of _Nearer, My God, to Thee_, were both older
than Browning, and both his intimate friends during the period of
his adolescence.

SONNET

1834

Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!)
May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears:
I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low
Their passionate praises reach thee--my cheek wears
Alone no wonder when thou passest by;
Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply
To the irrepressible homage which doth glow
On every lip but mine: if in thine ears
Their accents linger--and thou dost recall
Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale,
Beside each votarist whose lighted brow
Wore worship like an aureole, "O'er them all
My beauty," thou wilt murmur, "did prevail
Save that one only:"--Lady, could'st thou know!

It is perhaps characteristic of Browning that this early sonnet
should be so irregular in its rime-scheme.

The songs in _Paracelsus_ (1835) prove that Browning was a genuine
lyrical poet: the best of them, _Over the Sea Our Galleys Went_, is
more properly a dramatic monologue: but the song in the second act,
by Aprile (who I think stands for Keats) is a pure lyric, and so are
the two stanzas sung by Paracelsus in the fourth act. There are
lines here which suggest something of the drowsy music of Tennyson's
_Lotos-Eaters_, published in 1832:

.... such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.

SONGS FROM PARACELSUS

1835

(Aprile sings)

I hear a voice, perchance I heard
Long ago, but all too low,
So that scarce a care it stirred
If the voice were real or no:
I heard it in my youth when first
The waters of my life outburst:
But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
That voice, still low, but fatal-clear--
As if all poets, God ever meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
To do his work, or lightly used
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
So, mourn cast off by him for ever,--
As if these leaned in airy ring
To take me; this the song they sing.

"Lost, lost! yet come,
With our wan troop make thy home.
Come, come! for we
Will not breathe, so much as breathe
Reproach to thee,
Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.
So sank we in those old years,
We who bid thee, come! thou last
Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
And altogether we, thy peers,
Will pardon crave for thee, the last
Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast
With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more.
Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak
The message which our lips, too weak,
Refused to utter,--shouldst redeem
Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
Yet we chose thee a birthplace
Where the richness ran to flowers:
Couldst not sing one song for grace?
Not make one blossom man's and ours?
Must one more recreant to his race
Die with unexerted powers,
And join us, leaving as he found
The world, he was to loosen, bound?
Anguish! ever and for ever;
Still beginning, ending never.
Yet, lost and last one, come!
How couldst understand, alas,
What our pale ghosts strove to say,
As their shades did glance and pass
Before thee night and day?
Thou wast blind as we were dumb:
Once more, therefore, come, O come!
How should we clothe, how arm the spirit
Shall next thy post of life inherit--
How guard him from thy speedy ruin?
Tell us of thy sad undoing
Here, where we sit, ever pursuing
Our weary task, ever renewing
Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave
Our powers, and man they could not save!"

(Paracelsus sings)
Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.

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