Part 11

To this fact I would trace the rise and flourishing of Browning Societies in considerable abundance, during the late Victorian Era, especially near Boston. The enterprise of reading and understanding Browning presented itself as an affair too large and difficult for the intellectual capital of any private person. Corporations were formed, stock companies of intelligence were promoted, for the purpose of working the field of his poetry. The task which daunted the solitary individual was courageously undertaken by phalanxes and cheerfully pursued in fellowship. Thus the obscurity, alleged or actual, of the poet’s writing, having been at first a hindrance, afterward became an advertisement to his fame. The charm of the enigma, the fascination of solving riddles, the pleasure of understanding something which other people at least professed to be unable to understand, entered distinctly into the growth of his popularity. A Browning cult, a Browning propaganda, came into being and toiled tremendously.

One result of the work of these clubs and societies is already evident: they have done much to remove the cause which called them into being. It is generally recognized that a considerable part of Browning’s poetry is not really so difficult after all. It can be read and enjoyed by any one whose mind is in working order. Those innocent and stupid Victorians were wrong about it. We alert and sagacious George-the-Fifthians need some tougher poetry to try our mettle. So I suppose the Browning Societies, having fulfilled their function, will gradually fade away,—or perhaps transfer their attention to some of those later writers who have put obscurity on a scientific basis and raised impenetrability to a fine art. Meantime I question whether all the claims which were made on behalf of Browning in the period of propaganda will be allowed at their face value. For example, that _The Ring and the Book_ is “the greatest work of creative imagination that has appeared since the time of Shakespeare,”[10] and that _A Grammarian’s Funeral_ is “the most powerful ode in English, the mightiest tribute ever paid to a man,”[11] and that Browning’s “style as it stands is God-made, not Browning-made,”[12] appear even now like drafts on glory which must be discounted before they are paid. Nor does it seem probable that the general proposition which was sometimes advanced by extreme Browningites, (and others,) to the effect that all great poetry _ought_ to be hard to read, and that a poem which is easy cannot be great, will stand the test of time. Milton’s _Comus_, Gray’s _Elegy_, Wordsworth’s _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_, Shelley’s _Skylark_, Keats’ _Grecian Urn_, and Tennyson’s _Guinevere_ cannot be reduced to the rank of minor verse by such a formula.

And yet it must be said that the very extravagance of the claims which were made for Browning, the audacity of enthusiasm which he inspired in his expositors, is a proof of the reality and the potency of his influence. Men are not kindled where there is no fire. Men do not keep on guessing riddles unless the answers have some interest and value. A stock company cannot create a prophet out of straw. Browning must have had something important to say to the age, and he must have succeeded in saying it in a way which was suitable, in spite of its defects, to convey his message, else we may be sure his age never would have listened to him, even by select companies, nor discussed him, even in a partisan temper, nor felt his influence, even at second-hand.

What was it, then, that he had to say, and how did he say it? What was the theme of his poetry, what the method by which he found it, what the manner in which he treated it, and what the central element of his disposition by which the development of his genius was impelled and guided? These are the questions,—questions of fact rather than of theory,—that particularly interest me in regard to Browning. And I hope it may be possible to consider them from a somewhat fresh point of view, and without entering into disturbing and unprofitable comparisons of rank with Shakespeare and the other poets.

But there is no reason why the answers to these questions should be concealed until the end of the chapter. It may be better to state them now, in order that we may be able to test them as we go on, and judge whether they are justified and how far they need to be qualified. There is a particular reason for taking this course, in the fact that Browning changed very little in the process of growth. There were alterations in his style, but there was no real alteration in the man, nor in his poetry. His first theme was his last theme. His early manner of treatment was his latest manner of treatment. What he said at the beginning he said again at the end. With the greatest possible variety of titles he had but one main topic; with the widest imaginable range of subjects, he used chiefly one method and reached but one conclusion; with a nature of almost unlimited breadth he was always under control of one central impulse and loyal to one central quality. Let me try, then, to condense the general impression into a paragraph and take up the particulars afterwards, point by point.

The clew to Browning’s mind, it seems to me, is vivid and inexhaustible curiosity, dominated by a strangely steady optimism. His topic is not the soul, in the abstract, but souls in the concrete. His chosen method is that of spiritual drama, and for the most part, monodrama. His manner is the intense, subtle, passionate style of psychological realism. His message, uttered through the lips of a hundred imaginary characters, but always with his own accent,—his message is “the Glory of the Imperfect.”

II

The best criticisms of the poets have usually come from other poets, and often in the form of verse. Landor wrote of Browning,

“Since Chaucer was alive and hale No man hath walked along our roads with step So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse.”

This is a thumb-nail sketch of Browning’s personality,—not complete, but very lifelike. And when we add to it Landor’s prose saying that “his is the surest foot since Chaucer’s, that has waked the echoes from _the difficult places_ of poetry and of life” we have a sufficiently plain clew to the unfolding of Browning’s genius. Unwearying activity, intense curiosity, variety of expression, and a predominant interest in the difficult places of poetry and of life,—these were the striking characteristics of his mind. In his heart a native optimism, an unconquerable hopefulness, was the ruling factor. But of that I shall not speak until later, when we come to consider his message. For the present we are looking simply for the mainspring of his immense intellectual energy.

When I say that the clew to Browning’s mind is to be found in his curiosity, I do not mean inquisitiveness, but a very much larger and nobler quality, for which we have no good word in English,—something which corresponds with the German _Wissbegier_, as distinguished from _Neugier_: an ardent desire to know things as they are, to penetrate as many as possible of the secrets of actual life. This, it seems to me, is the key to Browning’s intellectual disposition. He puts it into words in his first poem _Pauline_, where he makes the nameless hero speak of his life as linked 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.”

_Paracelsus_ is only an expansion of this theme in the biography of a soul. In _Fra Lippo Lippi_ the painter says:

“God made it all! For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no, For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line, The mountain round it and the sky above, Much more the figures of man, woman, child, These are the frame to? What’s it all about? To be passed over, despised? Or dwelt upon, Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say. But why not do as well as say, paint these Just as they are, careless what comes of it? God’s works—paint any one and count it crime To let a truth slip. ... This world’s no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”

No poet was ever more interested in life than Browning, and whatever else may be said of his poetry it must be admitted that it is very interesting. He touches all sides of human activity and peers into the secret places of knowledge. He enters into the life of musicians in _Abt Vogler_, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_, and _Charles Avison_; into the life of painters in _Andrea del Sarto_, _Pictor Ignotus_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, _Old Pictures in Florence_, _Gerard de Lairesse_, _Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper_, and _Francis Furini_; into the life of scholars in _A Grammarian’s Funeral_ and _Fust and his Friends_; into the life of politicians in _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ and _George Bubb Dodington_; into the life of ecclesiastics in the _Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister_, _Bishop Blougram’s Apology_, _The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church_, and _The Ring and the Book_; and he makes excursions into all kinds of byways and crooked corners of life in such poems as _Mr. Sludge, the Medium_, _Porphyria’s Lover_, _Mesmerism_, _Johannes Agricola in Meditation_, _Pietro of Abano_, _Ned Bratts_, _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, and so forth.

Merely to read a list of such titles is to have evidence of Browning’s insatiable curiosity. It is evident also that he has a fondness for out-of-the-way places. He wants to know, even more than he wants to enjoy. If Wordsworth is the poet of the common life, Browning is the poet of the uncommon life. Extraordinary situations and eccentric characters attract him. Even when he is looking at some familiar scene, at some commonplace character, his effort is to discover something that shall prove that it is not familiar, not commonplace,—a singular detail, a striking feature, a mark of individuality. This gives him more pleasure than any distant vision of an abstraction or a general law.

“All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled; They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.”

One consequence of this penetrating, personal quality of mind is that Browning’s pages teem with portraits of men and women, which are like sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance. They are more individual than they are typical. There is a peculiarity about each one of them which almost makes us forget to ask whether they have any general relation and value. The presentations are so sharp and vivid that their representative quality is lost.

If Wordsworth is the Millet of poetry, Browning is the Holbein or the Denner. He never misses the mole, the wrinkle, the twist of the eyebrow, which makes the face stand out alone, the sudden touch of self-revelation which individualizes the character. Thus we find in Browning’s poetry few types of humanity, but plenty of men.

Yet he seldom, if ever, allows us to forget the background of society. His figures are far more individual than Wordsworth’s, but far less solitary. Behind each of them we feel the world out of which they have come and to which they belong. There is a sense of crowded life surging through his poetry. The city, with all that it means, is not often completely out of view. “Shelley’s characters,” says a thoughtful essayist, “are creatures of wave and sky; Wordsworth’s of green English fields; Browning’s move in the house, the palace, the street.”[13] In many of them, even when they are soliloquizing, there is a curious consciousness of opposition, of conflict. They seem to be defending themselves against unseen adversaries, justifying their course against the judgment of absent critics. Thus Bishop Blougram while he talks over the walnuts and the wine to Mr. Gigadibs, the sceptical hack-writer, has a worldful of religious conservatives and radicals in his eye and makes his half-cynical, wholly militant, apology for agnostic orthodoxy to them. The old huntsman, in _The Flight of the Duchess_, is maintaining the honour of his fugitive mistress against the dried-up, stiff, conventional society from which she has eloped with the Gypsies. Andrea del Sarto, looking at the soulless fatal beauty of his Lucrezia, and meditating on the splendid failure of his art, cries out to Rafael and Michelangelo and all his compeers to understand and judge him.

Even when Browning writes of romantic love, (one of his two favourite subjects), he almost always heightens its effect by putting it in relief against the ignorance, the indifference, the busyness, or the hostility of the great world. In _Cristina_ and _Evelyn Hope_ half the charm of the passion lies in the feeling that it means everything to the lover though no one else in the world may know of its existence. _Porphyria’s Lover_, in a fit of madness, kills his mistress to keep her from going back to the world which would divide them. The sweet searching melody of _In a Gondola_ plays itself athwart a sullen distant accompaniment of Venetian tyranny and ends with a swift stroke of vengeance from the secret Three.

Take, for an example of Browning’s way of enhancing love by contrast, that most exquisite and subtle lyric called _Love Among the Ruins_.

“Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half asleep Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stay or stop As they crop— Was the site once of a city great and gay (So they say) Of our country’s very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come.

...

In one year they sent a million fighters forth South and North, And they built their gods a brazen pillar high As the sky, Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force— Gold of course. Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth’s returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best.”

III

“Love is best!” That is one of the cardinal points of Browning’s creed. He repeats it in a hundred ways: tragically in _A Blot in the ’Scutcheon_; sentimentally in _A Lover’s Quarrel_, _Two in the Campagna_, _The Last Ride Together_; heroically in _Colombe’s Birthday_; in the form of a paradox in _The Statue and the Bust_; as a personal experience in _By the Fireside_, _One Word More_, and at the end of the prelude to _The Ring and the Book_.

“For life, with all it yields of joy and woe And hope and fear, ... Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.”

But it must be confessed that he does not often say it as clearly, as quietly, as beautifully as in _Love Among the Ruins_. For his chosen method is dramatic and his natural manner is psychological. So ardently does he follow this method, so entirely does he give himself up to this manner that his style

“is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”

In the dedicatory note to _Sordello_, written in 1863, he says “My stress lay in the incidents in the development of a _soul_; little else is worth study.” He felt intensely

“How the world is made for each of us! How all we perceive and know in it Tends to some moment’s product thus, When a soul declares itself—to wit, By its fruit, the thing it does!”

In _One Word More_ he describes his own poetry with keen insight:

“Love, you saw me gather men and women, Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, Enter each and all and use their service, Speak from every mouth,—the speech a poem.”

It is a mistake to say that Browning is a metaphysical poet: he is a psychological poet. His interest does not lie in the abstract problems of time and space, mind and matter, divinity and humanity. It lies in the concrete problems of opportunity and crisis, flesh and spirit, man the individual and God the person. He is an anatomist of souls.

“Take the least man of all mankind, as I; Look at his head and heart, find how and why He differs from his fellows utterly.”[14]

But his way of finding out this personal equation is not by observation and reflection. It is by throwing himself into the character and making it reveal itself by intricate self-analysis or by impulsive action. What his poetry lacks is the temperate zone. He has the arctic circle of intellect and the tropics of passion. But he seldom enters the intermediate region of sentiment, reflection, sympathy, equable and prolonged feeling. Therefore it is that few of his poems have the power of “sinking inward from thought to thought” as Wordsworth’s do. They surprise us, rouse us, stimulate us, more than they rest us. He does not penetrate with a mild and steady light through the portals of the human heart, making them transparent. He flings them wide open suddenly, and often the gates creak on their hinges. He is forever tying Gordian knots in the skein of human life and cutting them with the sword of swift action or intense passion. His psychological curiosity creates the difficulties, his intuitive optimism solves them.

IV

The results of this preoccupation with such subjects and of this manner of dealing with them may be recognized very easily in Browning’s work.

First of all they turned him aside from becoming a great Nature-poet, though he was well fitted to be one. It is not that he loves Nature’s slow and solemn pageant less, but that he loves man’s quick and varied drama more. His landscapes are like scenery for the stage. They accompany the unfolding of the plot and change with it, but they do not influence it. His observation is as keen, as accurate as Wordsworth’s or Tennyson’s, but it is less steady, less patient, less familiar. It is the observation of one who passes through the country but does not stay to grow intimate with it. The forms of nature do not print themselves on his mind; they flash vividly before him, and come and go. Usually it is some intense human feeling that makes the details of the landscape stand out so sharply. In _Pippa Passes_, it is in the ecstasy of love that Ottima and Sebald notice

“The garden’s silence: even the single bee Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped, And where he hid you only could surmise By some campanula chalice set a-swing.”

It is the sense of guilty passion that makes the lightning-flashes, burning through the pine-forest, seem like dagger-strokes,—

“As if God’s messenger through the closed wood screen Plunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture, Feeling for guilty thee and me.”

In _Home Thoughts from Abroad_, it is the exile’s deep homesickness that brings the quick, delicate vision before his eyes:

“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 brush-wood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now!”

But Browning’s touches of nature are not always as happy as this. Often he crowds the details too closely, and fails to blend them with the ground of the picture, so that the tonality is destroyed and the effect is distracting. The foreground is too vivid: the aerial perspective vanishes. There is an impressionism that obscures the reality. As Amiel says: “Under pretense that we want to study it more in detail, we pulverize the statue.”

Browning is at his best as a Nature-poet in sky-scapes, like the description of daybreak in _Pippa Passes_, the lunar rainbow in _Christmas Eve_, and the Northern Lights in _Easter Day_; and also in a kind of work which might be called symbolic landscape, where the imaginative vision of nature is made to represent a human experience. A striking example of this work is the scenery of _Childe Roland_, reflecting as in a glass the grotesque horrors of spiritual desolation. There is a passage in _Sordello_ which makes a fertile landscape, sketched in a few swift lines, the symbol of Sordello’s luxuriant nature; and another in Norbert’s speech, in _In a Balcony_, which uses the calm self-abandonment of the world in the tranquil evening light as the type of the sincerity of the heart giving itself up to love. But perhaps as good an illustration as we can find of Browning’s quality as a Nature-poet, is a little bit of mystery called _Meeting at Night_.

“The gray sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon, large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed in the slushy sand. Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And the blue spirt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each!”

This is the landscape of the drama.

A second result of Browning’s preoccupation with dramatic psychology is the close concentration and “alleged obscurity” of his style. Here again I evade the critical question whether the obscurity is real, or whether it is only a natural and admirable profundity to which an indolent reviewer has given a bad name. That is a question which Posterity must answer. But for us the fact remains that some of his poetry is hard to read; it demands close attention and strenuous effort; and when we find a piece of it that goes very easily, like _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_, _How They brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_, _Hervé Riel_, or the stirring _Cavalier Tunes_, we are conscious of missing the sense of strain which we have learned to associate with the reading of Browning.

One reason for this is the predominance of curiosity over harmony in his disposition. He tries to express the inexpressible, to write the unwritable. As Dr. Johnson said of Cowley, he has the habit “of pursuing his thoughts to the last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality.” Another reason is the fluency, the fertility, the haste of his genius, and his reluctance, or inability, to put the brakes on his own productiveness.

It seems probable that if Browning had been able to write more slowly and carefully he might have written with more lucidity. There was a time when he made a point of turning off a poem a day. It is doubtful whether the story of _The Ring and the Book_ gains in clearness by being told by eleven different persons, all of them inclined to volubility.