Chapter 2

ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS

To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:

I

"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems and new!

II

"But you were living before that, And also you are living after; And the memory I started at-- My starting moves your laughter!

III

"I crossed a moor, with a name of its own And a certain use in the world, no doubt, Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 'Mid the blank miles round about:

IV

"For there I picked up on the heather And there I put inside my breast A moulted feather, an eagle-feather! Well, I forget the rest."

It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost worshipful admiration felt by Browning for the poet in his youth, which he had, many years before this little lyric was written, recorded in a finely appreciative passage in "Pauline."

"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever! Thou are gone from us; years go by and spring Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful, Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise, But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties, Like mighty works which tell some spirit there Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn, Till, its long task completed, it hath risen And left us, never to return, and all Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain. The air seems bright with thy past presence yet, But thou art still for me as thou hast been When I have stood with thee as on a throne With all thy dim creations gathered round Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them, And with them creatures of my own were mixed, Like things, half-lived, catching and giving life. But thou art still for me who have adored Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name Which I believed a spell to me alone, Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men! As one should worship long a sacred spring Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross, And one small tree embowers droopingly-- Joying to see some wandering insect won To live in its few rushes, or some locust To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air: And then should find it but the fountain-head, Long lost, of some great river washing towns And towers, and seeing old woods which will live But by its banks untrod of human foot, Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering In light as some thing lieth half of life Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change; Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay Its course in vain, for it does ever spread Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on, Being the pulse of some great country--so Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world! And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret That I am not what I have been to thee: Like a girl one has silently loved long In her first loneliness in some retreat, When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet To see her thus adored, but there have been Moments when all the world was in our praise, Sweeter than any pride of after hours. Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams, I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me, To see thee for a moment as thou art."

Browning was only fourteen when Shelley first came into his literary life. The story has often been told of how the young Robert, passing a bookstall one day spied in a box of second-hand volumes, a shabby little edition of Shelley advertised "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poems: very scarce." It seems almost incredible to us now that the name was an absolutely new one to him, and that only by questioning the bookseller did he learn that Shelley had written a number of volumes of poetry and that he was now dead. This accident was sufficient to inspire the incipient poet's curiosity, and he never rested until he was the owner of Shelley's works. They were hard to get hold of in those early days but the persistent searching of his mother finally unearthed them at Olliers' in Vere Street, London. She brought him also three volumes of Keats, who became a treasure second only to Shelley.

The question of Shelley's influence on Browning's art has been one often discussed. There are many traces of Shelleyan music and idea in his early poems "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Sordello," but no marked nor lasting impression was made upon Browning's development as a poet by Shelley. Upon Browning's personal development Shelley exerted a short-lived though somewhat intense influence. We see the young enthusiast professing the atheism of his idol as the liberal views of Shelley were then interpreted, and even becoming a vegetarian. As time went on the discipleship vanished, and in its place came the recognition on Browning's part of a poetic spirit akin yet different from his own. The last trace of the disciple appears in "Sordello" when the poet addresses Shelley among the audience of dead great ones he has mustered to listen to the story of Sordello:

--"Stay--thou, spirit, come not near Now--not this time desert thy cloudy place To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face! I need not fear this audience, I make free With them, but then this is no place for thee! The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown Up out of memories of Marathon, Would echo like his own sword's grinding screech Braying a Persian shield,--the silver speech Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin, Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in The Knights to tilt,--wert thou to hear!"

Shelley appears in the work of Browning once more in the prose essay on Shelley which was written to a volume of spurious letters of that poet published in 1851. In this is summed up in a masterful paragraph reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into the secret paths of the poetic mind, the characteristics of a poet of Shelley's order. The paragraph is as follows:

"We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency--the subjective poet of modern classification. He, gifted like the objective poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth,--an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees,--the _Ideas_ of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand,--it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,--preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes, to see those pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily considered in abstraction from his personality,--being indeed the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it, we apprehend him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. Both for love's and for understanding's sake we desire to know him, and, as readers of his poetry, must be readers of his biography too."

Finally, the little "Memorabilia" lyric gives a mood of cherished memory of the Sun-Treader, who beaconed him upon the heights in his youth, and has now become a molted eagle-feather held close to his heart.

Keats' lesser but assured place in the poet's affections comes out in the pugnacious lyric, "Popularity," one of the old-time bits of ammunition shot from the guns of those who found Browning "obscure." The poem is an "apology" for any unappreciated poet with the true stuff in him, but the allusion to Keats shows him to have been the fuse that fired this mild explosion against the dullards who pass by unknowing and uncaring of a genius, though he pluck with one hand thoughts from the stars, and with the other fight off want.

POPULARITY

I

Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

II

My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend That loving hand of his which leads you, Yet locks you safe from end to end Of this dark world, unless he needs you, Just saves your light to spend?

III

His clenched hand shall unclose at last, I know, and let out all the beauty: My poet holds the future fast, Accepts the coming ages' duty, Their present for this past.

IV

That day, the earth's feast-master's brow Shall clear, to God the chalice raising; "Others give best at first, but thou Forever set'st our table praising, Keep'st the good wine till now!"

V

Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand, With few or none to watch and wonder: I'll say--a fisher, on the sand By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder, A netful, brought to land.

VI

Who has not heard how Tyrian shells Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes Whereof one drop worked miracles, And colored like Astarte's eyes Raw silk the merchant sells?

VII

And each bystander of them all Could criticise, and quote tradition How depths of blue sublimed some pall --To get which, pricked a king's ambition; Worth sceptre, crown and ball.

VIII

Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh, The sea has only just o'er-whispered! Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh As if they still the water's lisp heard Thro' foam the rock-weeds thresh.

IX

Enough to furnish Solomon Such hangings for his cedar-house, That, when gold-robed he took the throne In that abyss of blue, the Spouse Might swear his presence shone

X

Most like the centre-spike of gold Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb, What time, with ardors manifold, The bee goes singing to her groom, Drunken and overbold.

XI

Mere conchs! not fit for warp or woof! Till cunning come to pound and squeeze And clarify,--refine to proof The liquor filtered by degrees, While the world stands aloof.

XII

And there's the extract, flasked and fine, And priced and salable at last! And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine To paint the future from the past, Put blue into their line.

XIII

Hobbs hints blue,--straight he turtle eats: Nobbs prints blue,--claret crowns his cup: Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,-- Both gorge. Who fished the murex up? What porridge had John Keats?

Wordsworth, it appears, was, so to speak, the inverse inspiration of the stirring lines "The Lost Leader." Browning's strong sympathies with the Liberal cause are here portrayed with an ardor which is fairly intoxicating poetically, but one feels it is scarcely just to the mild-eyed, exemplary Wordsworth, and perhaps exaggeratedly sure of Shakespeare's attitude on this point. It is only fair to Browning, to point out how he himself felt later that his artistic mood had here run away with him, whereupon he made amends honorable in a letter in reply to the question whether he had Wordsworth in mind: "I can only answer, with something of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth in my mind--but simply as a model; you know an artist takes one or two striking traits in the features of his 'model,' and uses them to start his fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good man or woman who happens to be sitting for nose and eye. I thought of the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism at an unlucky juncture, and no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But, once call my fancy-portrait _Wordsworth_--and how much more ought one to say!"

The defection of Wordsworth from liberal sympathies is one of the commonplaces of literary history. There was a time when he figured in his poetry as a patriotic leader of the people, when in clarion tones he exhorted his countrymen to "arm and combine in defense of their common birthright." But this was in the enthusiasm of his youth when he and Southey and Coleridge were metaphorically waving their red caps for the principles of the French Revolution. The unbridled actions of the French Revolutionists, quickly cooled off their ardor, and as Taine cleverly puts it, "at the end of a few years, the three, brought back into the pale of State and Church, were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist, Wordsworth, a distributor of stamps, and Southey, poet-laureate; all converted zealots, decided Anglicans, and intolerant conservatives." The "handful of silver" for which the patriot in the poem is supposed to have left the cause included besides the post of "distributor of stamps," given to him by Lord Lonsdale in 1813, a pension of three hundred pounds a year in 1842, and the poet-laureateship in 1843.

The first of these offices was received so long after the cooling of Wordsworth's "Revolution" ardors which the events of 1793 had brought about that it can scarcely be said to have influenced his change of mind.

It was during Wordsworth's residence in France, from November 1791 to December 1792, that his enthusiasm for the French Revolution reached white heat. How the change was wrought in his feelings is shown with much penetration and sympathy by Edward Dowden in his "French Revolution and English Literature." "When war between France and England was declared Wordsworth's nature underwent the most violent strain it had ever experienced. He loved his native land yet he could wish for nothing but disaster to her arms. As the days passed he found it more and more difficult to sustain his faith in the Revolution. First, he abandoned belief in the leaders but he still trusted to the people, then the people seemed to have grown insane with the intoxication of blood. He was driven back from his defense of the Revolution, in its historical development, to a bare faith in the abstract idea. He clung to theories, the free and joyous movement of his sympathies ceased; opinions stifled the spontaneous life of the spirit, these opinions were tested and retested by the intellect, till, in the end, exhausted by inward debate, he yielded up moral questions in despair ... by process of the understanding alone Wordsworth could attain no vital body of truth. Rather he felt that things of far more worth than political opinions--natural instincts, sympathies, passions, intuitions--were being disintegrated or denaturalized. Wordsworth began to suspect the analytic intellect as a source of moral wisdom. In place of humanitarian dreams came a deep interest in the joys and sorrows of individual men and women; through his interest in this he was led back to a study of the mind of man and those laws which connect the work of the creative imagination with the play of the passions. He had begun again to think nobly of the world and human life." He was, in fact, a more thorough Democrat socially than any but Burns of the band of poets mentioned in Browning's gallant company, not even excepting Browning himself.

THE LOST LEADER

I

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat-- Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others, she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freeman, --He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

II

We shall march prospering,--not thro' his presence Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight, Never glad confident morning again! Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly, Menace our hearts ere we master his own; Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!

Whether an artist is justified in taking the most doubtful feature of his model's physiognomy and building up from it a repellent portrait is question for debate, especially when he admits its incompleteness. But we may balance against this incompleteness, the fine fire of enthusiasm for the "cause" in the poem, and the fact that Wordsworth has not been at all harmed by it. The worst that has happened is the raising in our minds of a question touching Browning's good taste.

Just here it will be interesting to speak of a bit of purely personal expression on the subject of Browning's known liberal standpoint, written by him in answer to the question propounded to a number of English men of letters and printed together with other replies in a volume edited by Andrew Reid in 1885.

"Why I am a Liberal."

"'Why?' Because all I haply can and do, All that I am now, all I hope to be,-- Whence comes it save from fortune setting free Body and soul the purpose to pursue, God traced for both? If fetters, not a few, Of prejudice, convention, fall from me, These shall I bid men--each in his degree Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?

"But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved thro' Liberty. Who then dares hold, emancipated thus, His fellow shall continue bound? Not I, Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"

Enthusiasm for liberal views comes out again and again in the poetry of Browning.

His fullest treatment of the cause of political liberty is in "Strafford," to be considered in the third chapter, but many are the hints strewn about his verse that bring home with no uncertain touch the fact that Browning lived man's "lover" and never man's "hater." Take as an example "The Englishman in Italy," where the sarcastic turn he gives to the last stanza shows clearly where his sympathies lie:

--"Such trifles!" you say? Fort˘, in my England at home, Men meet gravely to-day And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws Be righteous and wise! --If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish In black from the skies!

More the ordinary note of patriotism is struck in "Home-thoughts, from the Sea," wherein the scenes of England's victories as they come before the poet arouse pride in her military achievements.

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray; "Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

In two instances Browning celebrates English friends in his poetry. The poems are "Waring" and "May and Death."

Waring, who stands for Alfred Domett, is an interesting figure in Colonial history as well as a minor light among poets. But it is highly probable that he would not have been put into verse by Browning any more than many other of the poet's warm friends if it had not been for the incident described in the poem which actually took place, and made a strong enough impression to inspire a creative if not exactly an exalted mood on Browning's part. The incident is recorded in Thomas Powell's "Living Authors of England," who writes of Domett, "We have a vivid recollection of the last time we saw him. It was at an evening party a few days before he sailed from England; his intimate friend, Mr. Browning, was also present. It happened that the latter was introduced that evening for the first time to a young author who had just then appeared in the literary world [Powell, himself]. This, consequently, prevented the two friends from conversation, and they parted from each other without the slightest idea on Mr. Browning's part that he was seeing his old friend Domett for the last time. Some days after when he found that Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the writer of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having preferred the conversation of a stranger to that of his old associate."

This happened in 1842, when with no good-bys, Domett sailed for New Zealand where he lived for thirty years, and held during that time many important official posts. Upon his return to England, Browning and he met again, and in his poem "Ranolf and Amohia," published the year after, he wrote the often quoted line so aptly appreciative of Browning's genius,--"Subtlest assertor of the soul in song."

The poem belongs to the _vers de sociÈtÈ_ order, albeit the lightness is of a somewhat ponderous variety. It, however, has much interest as a character sketch from the life, and is said by those who had the opportunity of knowing to be a capital portrait.

WARING

I

I

What's become of Waring Since he gave us all the slip, Chose land-travel or seafaring, Boots and chest or staff and scrip, Rather than pace up and down Any longer London town?

II

Who'd have guessed it from his lip Or his brow's accustomed bearing, On the night he thus took ship Or started landward?--little caring For us, it seems, who supped together (Friends of his too, I remember) And walked home thro' the merry weather, The snowiest in all December. I left his arm that night myself For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet Who wrote the book there, on the shelf-- How, forsooth, was I to know it If Waring meant to glide away Like a ghost at break of day? Never looked he half so gay!

III

He was prouder than the devil: How he must have cursed our revel! Ay and many other meetings, Indoor visits, outdoor greetings, As up and down he paced this London, With no work done, but great works undone, Where scarce twenty knew his name. Why not, then, have earlier spoken, Written, bustled? Who's to blame If your silence kept unbroken? "True, but there were sundry jottings, Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings, Certain first steps were achieved Already which"--(is that your meaning?) "Had well borne out whoe'er believed In more to come!" But who goes gleaning Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening Pride alone, puts forth such claims O'er the day's distinguished names.

IV

Meantime, how much I loved him, I find out now I've lost him. I who cared not if I moved him, Who could so carelessly accost him, Henceforth never shall get free Of his ghostly company, His eyes that just a little wink As deep I go into the merit Of this and that distinguished spirit-- His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic Penman's latest piece of graphic. Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm. E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, Some lost lady of old years With her beauteous vain endeavor And goodness unrepaid as ever; The face, accustomed to refusings, We, puppies that we were.... Oh never Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled Being aught like false, forsooth, to? Telling aught but honest truth to? What a sin, had we centupled Its possessor's grace and sweetness! No! she heard in its completeness Truth, for truth's a weighty matter, And truth, at issue, we can't flatter! Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt From damning us thro' such a sally; And so she glides, as down a valley, Taking up with her contempt, Past our reach; and in, the flowers Shut her unregarded hours.

V

Oh, could I have him back once more, This Waring, but one half-day more! Back, with the quiet face of yore, So hungry for acknowledgment Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent. Feed, should not he, to heart's content? I'd say, "to only have conceived, Planned your great works, apart from progress, Surpasses little works achieved!" I'd lie so, I should be believed. I'd make such havoc of the claims Of the day's distinguished names To feast him with, as feasts an ogress Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child! Or as one feasts a creature rarely Captured here, unreconciled To capture; and completely gives Its pettish humors license, barely Requiring that it lives.

VI

Ichabod, Ichabod, The glory is departed! Travels Waring East away? Who, of knowledge, by hearsay, Reports a man upstarted Somewhere as a god, Hordes grown European-hearted, Millions of the wild made tame On a sudden at his fame? In Vishnu-land what Avatar? Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar, With the demurest of footfalls Over the Kremlin's pavement bright With serpentine and syenite, Steps, with five other Generals That simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough And kerchiefwise unfold his sash Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff To hold fast where a steel chain snaps, And leave the grand white neck no gash? Waring in Moscow, to those rough Cold northern natures born perhaps, Like the lambwhite maiden dear From the circle of mute kings Unable to repress the tear, Each as his sceptre down he flings, To Dian's fane at Taurica, Where now a captive priestess, she alway Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter! In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid Its stiff gold blazing pall From some black coffin-lid. Or, best of all, I love to think The leaving us was just a feint; Back here to London did he slink, And now works on without a wink Of sleep, and we are on the brink Of something great in fresco-paint: Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor, Up and down and o'er and o'er He splashes, as none splashed before Since great Caldara Polidore. Or Music means this land of ours Some favor yet, to pity won By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,-- "Give me my so-long promised son, Let Waring end what I begun!" Then down he creeps and out he steals Only when the night conceals His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time, Or hops are picking: or at prime Of March he wanders as, too happy, Years ago when he was young, Some mild eve when woods grew sappy And the early moths had sprung To life from many a trembling sheath Woven the warm boughs beneath; While small birds said to themselves What should soon be actual song, And young gnats, by tens and twelves, Made as if they were the throng That crowd around and carry aloft The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure, Out of a myriad noises soft, Into a tone that can endure Amid the noise of a July noon When all God's creatures crave their boon, All at once and all in tune, And get it, happy as Waring then, Having first within his ken What a man might do with men: And far too glad, in the even-glow, To mix with the world he meant to take Into his hand, he told you, so-- And out of it his world to make, To contract and to expand As he shut or oped his hand. Oh Waring, what's to really be? A clear stage and a crowd to see! Some Garrick, say, out shall not he The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck? Or, where most unclean beasts are rife, Some Junius--am I right?--shall tuck His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife! Some Chatterton shall have the luck Of calling Rowley into life! Some one shall somehow run a muck With this old world for want of strife Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive? Our men scarce seem in earnest now. Distinguished names!--but 'tis, somehow, As if they played at being names Still more distinguished, like the games Of children. Turn our sport to earnest With a visage of the sternest! Bring the real times back, confessed Still better than our very best!

II

I

"When I last saw Waring...." (How all turned to him who spoke! You saw Waring? Truth or joke? In land-travel or sea-faring?)

II

"We were sailing by Triest Where a day or two we harbored: A sunset was in the West, When, looking over the vessel's side, One of our company espied A sudden speck to larboard. And as a sea-duck flies and swims At once, so came the light craft up, With its sole lateen sail that trims And turns (the water round its rims Dancing, as round a sinking cup) And by us like a fish it curled, And drew itself up close beside, Its great sail on the instant furled, And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried, (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's) 'Buy wine of us, you English Brig? Or fruit, tobacco and cigars? A pilot for you to Triest? Without one, look you ne'er so big, They'll never let you up the bay! We natives should know best.' I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,' Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

III

"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back; And one, half-hidden by his side Under the furled sail, soon I spied, With great grass hat and kerchief black, Who looked up with his kingly throat, Said somewhat, while the other shook His hair back from his eyes to look Their longest at us; then the boat, I know not how, turned sharply round, Laying her whole side on the sea As a leaping fish does; from the lee Into the weather, cut somehow Her sparkling path beneath our bow, And so went off, as with a bound, Into the rosy and golden half O' the sky, to overtake the sun And reach the shore, like the sea-calf Its singing cave; yet I caught one Glance ere away the boat quite passed, And neither time nor toil could mar Those features: so I saw the last Of Waring!"--You? Oh, never star Was lost here but it rose afar! Look East, where whole new thousands are! In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

"May and Death" is perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of Browning's appreciation of English Nature than for its expression of grief for the death of a friend.

MAY AND DEATH

I

I wish that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of spring's delightful things; Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.

II

A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps! There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

III

So, for their sake, be May still May! Let their new time, as mine of old, Do all it did for me: I bid Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.

IV

Only, one little sight, one plant, Woods have in May, that starts up green Save a sole streak which, so to speak, Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,--

V

That, they might spare; a certain wood Might miss the plant; their loss were small: But I,--whene'er the leaf grows there, Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.

The poet's one truly enthusiastic outburst in connection with English Nature he sings out in his longing for an English spring in the incomparable little lyric "Home-thoughts, from Abroad."

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

I

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now!

II

And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

After this it seems hardly possible that Browning, himself speaks in "De Gustibus," yet long and happy living away from England doubtless dimmed his sense of the beauty of English landscape. "De Gustibus" was published ten years later than "Home-Thoughts from Abroad," when Italy and he had indeed become "lovers old." A deeper reason than mere delight in its scenery is also reflected in the poem; the sympathy shared with Mrs. Browning, for the cause of Italian independence.

"DE GUSTIBUS----"

I

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain) In an English lane, By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. Hark, those two in the hazel coppice-- A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, Making love, say,-- The happier they! Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the bean-flower's boon, And the blackbird's tune, And May, and June!

II

What I love best in all the world Is a castle, precipice-encurled, In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine. Or look for me, old fellow of mine, (If I get my head from out the mouth O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands, And come again to the land of lands)-- In a sea-side house to the farther South, Where the baked cicala dies of drouth, And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands, By the many hundred years red-rusted, Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted, My sentinel to guard the sands To the water's edge. For, what expands Before the house, but the great opaque Blue breadth of sea without a break? While, in the house, for ever crumbles Some fragment of the frescoed walls, From blisters where a scorpion sprawls. A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons, And says there's news to-day--the king Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing, Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling: --She hopes they have not caught the felons. Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me-- (When fortune's malice Lost her--Calais)-- Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, "Italy." Such lovers old are I and she: So it always was, so shall ever be!

Two or three English artists called forth appreciation in verse from Browning. There is the exquisite bit called "Deaf and Dumb," after a group of statuary by Woolner, of Constance and Arthur--the deaf and dumb children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.

DEAF AND DUMB

A GROUP BY WOOLNER.

Only the prism's obstruction shows aright The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light Into the jewelled bow from blankest white; So may a glory from defect arise: Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek, Only by Dumbness adequately speak As favored mouth could never, through the eyes.

There is also the beautiful description in "Balaustion's Adventure" of the Alkestis by Sir Frederick Leighton.

The flagrant anachronism of making a Greek girl at the time of the Fall of Athens describe an English picture cannot but be forgiven, since the artistic effect gained is so fine. The poet quite convinces the reader that Sir Frederick Leighton ought to have been a Kaunian painter, if he was not, and that Balaustion or no one was qualified to appreciate his picture at its full worth.

"I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong As Herakles, though rosy with a robe Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength: And he has made a picture of it all. There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun, She longed to look her last upon, beside The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us To come trip over its white waste of waves, And try escape from earth, and fleet as free. Behind the body, I suppose there bends Old Pheres in his hoary impotence; And women-wailers, in a corner crouch --Four, beautiful as you four--yes, indeed!-- Close, each to other, agonizing all, As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy, To two contending opposite. There strains The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match, --Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like The envenomed substance that exudes some dew Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood Will fester up and run to ruin straight, Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome The poisonous impalpability That simulates a form beneath the flow Of those grey garments; I pronounce that piece Worthy to set up in our PoikilÈ!

"And all came,--glory of the golden verse, And passion of the picture, and that fine Frank outgush of the human gratitude Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,-- Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps Away from you, friends, while I told my tale, --It all came of this play that gained no prize! Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"

Once before had Sir Frederick Leighton inspired the poet in the exquisite lines on Eurydice.

EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS

A PICTURE BY LEIGHTON

But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow! Let them once more absorb me! One look now Will lap me round for ever, not to pass Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond: Hold me but safe again within the bond Of one immortal look! All woe that was, Forgotten, and all terror that may be, Defied,--no past is mine, no future: look at me!

Beautiful as these lines are, they do not impress me as fully interpreting Leighton's picture. The expression of Eurydice is rather one of unthinking confiding affection--as if she were really unconscious or ignorant of the danger; while that of Orpheus is one of passionate agony as he tries to hold her off.

Though English art could not fascinate the poet as Italian art did, for the fully sufficient reason that it does not stand for a great epoch of intellectual awakening, yet with what fair alchemy he has touched those few artists he has chosen to honor. Notwithstanding his avowed devotion to Italy, expressed in "De Gustibus," one cannot help feeling that in the poems mentioned in this chapter, there is that ecstasy of sympathy which goes only to the most potent influences in the formation of character. Something of what I mean is expressed in one of his latest poems, "Development." In this we certainly get a real peep at young Robert Browning, led by his wise father into the delights of Homer, by slow degrees, where all is truth at first, to end up with the devastating criticism of Wolf. In spite of it all the dream stays and is the reality. Nothing can obliterate the magic of a strong early enthusiasm, as "fact still held" "Spite of new Knowledge," in his "heart of hearts."

DEVELOPMENT

My Father was a scholar and knew Greek. When I was five years old, I asked him once "What do you read about?" "The siege of Troy." "What is a siege and what is Troy?" Whereat He piled up chairs and tables for a town, Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat --Helen, enticed away from home (he said) By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close Under the footstool, being cowardly, But whom--since she was worth the pains, poor puss-- Towzer and Tray,--our dogs, the Atreidai,--sought By taking Troy to get possession of --Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk, (My pony in the stable)--forth would prance And put to flight Hector--our page-boy's self. This taught me who was who and what was what: So far I rightly understood the case At five years old: a huge delight it proved And still proves--thanks to that instructor sage My Father, who knew better than turn straight Learning's full flare on weak-eyed ignorance, Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand-blind, Content with darkness and vacuity.

It happened, two or three years afterward, That--I and playmates playing at Troy's Siege-- My Father came upon our make-believe. "How would you like to read yourself the tale Properly told, of which I gave you first Merely such notion as a boy could bear? Pope, now, would give you the precise account Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship, You'll hear--who knows?--from Homer's very mouth. Learn Greek by all means, read the 'Blind Old Man, Sweetest of Singers'--_tuphlos_ which means 'blind,' _Hedistos_ which means 'sweetest.' Time enough! Try, anyhow, to master him some day; Until when, take what serves for substitute, Read Pope, by all means!" So I ran through Pope, Enjoyed the tale--what history so true? Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged, Grew fitter thus for what was promised next-- The very thing itself, the actual words, When I could turn--say, Buttmann to account.

Time passed, I ripened somewhat: one fine day, "Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less? There's Heine, where the big books block the shelf: Don't skip a word, thumb well the Lexicon!"

I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I learned Who was who, what was what, from Homer's tongue, And there an end of learning. Had you asked The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old, "Who was it wrote the Iliad?"--what a laugh! "Why, Homer, all the world knows: of his life Doubtless some facts exist: it's everywhere: We have not settled, though, his place of birth: He begged, for certain, and was blind beside: Seven cites claimed him--Scio, with best right, Thinks Byron. What he wrote? Those Hymns we have. Then there's the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice,' That's all--unless they dig 'Margites' up (I'd like that) nothing more remains to know."

Thus did youth spend a comfortable time; Until--"What's this the Germans say is fact That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant work Their chop and change, unsettling one's belief: All the same, while we live, we learn, that's sure." So, I bent brow o'er _Prolegomena_. And, after Wolf, a dozen of his like Proved there was never any Troy at all, Neither Besiegers nor Besieged,--nay, worse,-- No actual Homer, no authentic text, No warrant for the fiction I, as fact, Had treasured in my heart and soul so long-- Ay, mark you! and as fact held still, still hold, Spite of new knowledge, in my heart of hearts And soul of souls, fact's essence freed and fixed From accidental fancy's guardian sheath. Assuredly thenceforward--thank my stars!-- However it got there, deprive who could-- Wring from the shrine my precious tenantry, Helen, Ulysses, Hector and his Spouse, Achilles and his Friend?--though Wolf--ah, Wolf! Why must he needs come doubting, spoil a dream?

But then "No dream's worth waking"--Browning says: And here's the reason why I tell thus much I, now mature man, you anticipate, May blame my Father justifiably For letting me dream out my nonage thus, And only by such slow and sure degrees Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff, Get truth and falsehood known and named as such. Why did he ever let me dream at all, Not bid me taste the story in its strength? Suppose my childhood was scarce qualified To rightly understand mythology, Silence at least was in his power to keep: I might have--somehow--correspondingly-- Well, who knows by what method, gained my gains, Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings, My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus's son, A lie as Hell's Gate, love my wedded wife, Like Hector, and so on with all the rest. Could not I have excogitated this Without believing such men really were? That is--he might have put into my hand The "Ethics"? In translation, if you please, Exact, no pretty lying that improves, To suit the modern taste: no more, no less-- The "Ethics": 'tis a treatise I find hard To read aright now that my hair is grey, And I can manage the original. At five years old--how ill had fared its leaves! Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite, At least I soil no page with bread and milk, Nor crumple, dogsear and deface--boys' way.

This chapter would not be complete without Browning's tribute to dog Tray, whose traits may not be peculiar to English dogs but whose name is proverbially English. Besides it touches a subject upon which the poet had strong feelings. Vivisection he abhorred, and in the controversies which were tearing the scientific and philanthropic world asunder in the last years of his life, no one was a more determined opponent of vivisection than he.

TRAY

Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst Of soul, ye bards! Quoth Bard the first: "Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don His helm and eke his habergeon...." Sir Olaf and his bard----!

"That sin-scathed brow" (quoth Bard the second), "That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned My hero to some steep, beneath Which precipice smiled tempting death...." You too without your host have reckoned!

"A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!) "Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird Sang to herself at careless play, 'And fell into the stream. Dismay! Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.

"Bystanders reason, think of wives And children ere they risk their lives. Over the balustrade has bounced A mere instinctive dog, and pounced Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!

"'Up he comes with the child, see, tight In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite A depth of ten feet--twelve, I bet! Good dog! What, off again? There's yet Another child to save? All right!

"'How strange we saw no other fall! It's instinct in the animal. Good dog! But he's a long while under: If he got drowned I should not wonder-- Strong current, that against the wall!

"'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time --What may the thing be? Well, that's prime! Now, did you ever? Reason reigns In man alone, since all Tray's pains Have fished--the child's doll from the slime!'

"And so, amid the laughter gay, Trotted my hero off,--old Tray,-- Till somebody, prerogatived With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived, His brain would show us, I should say.

"'John, go and catch--or, if needs be, Purchase--that animal for me! By vivisection, at expense Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence, How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"