Part 12

Yet Browning’s poetry is not verbose. It is singularly condensed in the matter of language. He seems to have made his most arduous effort in this direction. After _Paracelsus_ had been published and pronounced “unintelligible,” he was inclined to think that there might be some fault of too great terseness in the style. But a letter from Miss Caroline Fox was shown to him, in which that lady, (then very young,) took the opposite view and asked “doth he know that Wordsworth will devote a fortnight or more to the discovery of the single word that is the one fit for his sonnet.” Browning appears to have been impressed by this criticism; but he set himself to work upon it, not so much by way of selecting words as by way of compressing them. He put _Sordello_ into a world where many of the parts of speech are lacking and all are crowded. He learned to pack the largest, possible amount of meaning into the smallest possible space, as a hasty traveller packs his portmanteau. Many small articles are crushed and crumpled out of shape. He adopted a system of elisions for the sake of brevity, and loved, as C. S. Calverley said,

“to dock the smaller parts of speech As we curtail th’ already curtailed cur.”

At the same time he seldom could resist the temptation to put in another thought, another simile, another illustration, although the poem might be already quite full. He called out, like the conductor of a street-car, “Move up in front: room for one more!” He had little tautology of expression, but much of conception. A good critic says “Browning condenses by the phrase, elaborates by the volume.”[15]

One consequence of this system of writing is that a great deal of Browning’s poetry lends itself admirably to translation,—into English. The number of prose paraphrases of his poems is great, and so constantly increasing that it seems as if there must be a real demand for them. But Coleridge, speaking of the qualities of a true poetic style, remarked: “Whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language without diminution of their significance, either in sense, or in association, or in any other feeling, are so far vicious in their diction.”

Another very notable thing in Browning’s poetry is his fertility and fluency of rhyme. He is probably the most rapid, ingenious, and unwearying rhymer among the English poets. There is a story that once, in company with Tennyson, he was challenged to produce a rhyme for “rhinoceros,” and almost instantly accomplished the task with a verse in which the unwieldy quadruped kept time and tune with the phrase “he can toss Eros.”[16] There are other _tours de force_ almost as extraordinary in his serious poems. Who but Browning would have thought of rhyming “syntax” with “tin-tacks,” or “spare-rib” with “Carib,” (_Flight of Duchess_) or “Fra Angelico’s” with “bellicose,” or “Ghirlandajo” with “heigh-ho,” (_Old Pictures in Florence_) or “expansive explosive” with “O Danaides, O Sieve!” (_Master Hugues_). Rhyme, with most poets, acts as a restraint, a brake upon speech. But with Browning it is the other way. His rhymes are like wild, frolicsome horses, leaping over the fences and carrying him into the widest digressions. Many a couplet, many a stanza would not have been written but for the impulse of a daring, suggestive rhyme.

Join to this love of somewhat reckless rhyming, his deep and powerful sense of humour, and you have the secret of his fondness for the grotesque. His poetry abounds in strange contrasts, sudden changes of mood, incongruous comparisons, and odd presentations of well-known subjects. Sometimes the whole poem is written in this manner. The _Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_, _Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_, and _Caliban upon Setebos_, are poetic gargoyles. Sometimes he begins seriously enough, as in the poem on Keats, and closes with a bit of fantastic irony:

“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?”

Sometimes the poem opens grotesquely, like _Christmas Eve_, and rises swiftly to a wonderful height of pure beauty and solemnity, dropping back into a grotesque at the end. But all this play of fancy must not be confused with the spirit of mockery or of levity. It is often characteristic of the most serious and earnest natures; it arises in fact from the restlessness of mind in the contemplation of evil, or from the perception of life’s difficulties and perplexities. Shakespeare was profoundly right in introducing the element of the grotesque into _Hamlet_, his most thoughtful tragedy. Browning is never really anything else but a serious thinker, passionately curious to solve the riddle of existence. Like his own _Sordello_ he

“Gave to familiar things a face grotesque, Only, pursuing through the mad burlesque, A grave regard.”

We may sum up, then, what we have to say of Browning’s method and manner by recognizing that they belong together and have a mutual fitness and inevitableness. We may wish that he had attained to more lucidity and harmony of expression, but we should probably have had some difficulty in telling him precisely how to do it, and he would have been likely to reply with good humour as he did to Tennyson, “The people must take me as they find me.” If he had been less ardent in looking for subjects for his poetry, he might have given more care to the form of his poems. If he had cut fewer blocks, he might have finished more statues. The immortality of much of his work may be discounted by its want of perfect art,—the only true preservative of man’s handiwork. But the immortality of his genius is secure. He may not be ranked finally among the great masters of the art of poetry. But he certainly will endure as a mine for poets. They may stamp the coins more clearly and fashion the ornaments more delicately. But the gold is his. He was the prospector,—the first dramatic psychologist of modern life. The very imperfections of his work, in all its splendid richness and bewildering complexity, bear witness to his favourite doctrine that life itself is more interesting than art, and more glorious, because it is not yet perfect.

V

“The Glory of the Imperfect,”—that is a phrase which I read in a pamphlet by that fine old Grecian and noble Christian philosopher, George Herbert Palmer, many years ago. It seems to me to express the central meaning of Browning’s poetry.

He is the poet of aspiration and endeavour; the prophet of a divine discontent. All things are precious to him, not in themselves, but as their defects are realized, as man uses them, and presses through them, towards something higher and better. Hope is man’s power: and the things hoped for must be as yet unseen. Struggle is man’s life; and the purpose of life is not merely education, but a kind of progressive creation of the soul.

“Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.”

The world presents itself to him, as the Germans say, _Im Werden_. It is a world of potencies, working itself out. Existence is not the mere fact of being, but the vital process of becoming. The glory of man lies in his power to realize this process in his mind and to fling himself into it with all his will. If he tries to satisfy himself with things as they are, like the world-wedded soul in _Easter Eve_, he fails. If he tries to crowd the infinite into the finite, like Paracelsus, he fails. He must make his dissatisfaction his strength. He must accept the limitations of his life, not in the sense of submitting to them, but as Jacob wrestled with the angel, in order to win, through conflict, a new power, a larger blessing. His ardent desires and longings and aspirations, yes, even his defeats and disappointments and failures, are the stuff out of which his immortal destiny is weaving itself. The one thing that life requires of him is to act with ardour, to go forward resolutely, to “burn his way through the world”; and the great lesson which it teaches him is this:

“But thou shalt painfully attain to joy While hope and love and fear shall keep thee man.”

Browning was very much needed in the Nineteenth Century as the antidote, or perhaps it would be more just to say, as the complement to Carlyle. For Carlyle’s prophecy, with all its moral earnestness, its virility, its indomitable courage, had in it a ground-tone of despair. It was the battle-cry of a forlorn hope. Man must hate shams intensely, must seek reality passionately, must do his duty desperately; but he can never tell why. The reason of things is inscrutable: the eternal Power that rules things is unknowable. Carlyle, said Mazzini, “has a constant disposition to crush the human by comparing him with God.” But Browning has an unconquerable disposition to elevate the human by joining him to God. The power that animates and governs the world is Divine; man cannot escape from it nor overcome it. But the love that stirs in man’s heart is also Divine; and if man will follow it, it shall lead him to that height where he shall see that Power is Love.

“I have faith such end shall be: From the first Power was—I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive but for closer view, Love were as plain to see.

When see? When there dawns a day If not on the homely earth, Then yonder, worlds away, Where the strange and new have birth And Power comes full in play.”[17]

Browning’s optimism is fundamental. Originally a matter of temperament, perhaps, as it is expressed in _At the Mermaid_,—

“I find earth not gray, but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy, Do I stand and stare? All’s blue——”

primarily the spontaneous tone of a healthy, happy nature, it became the chosen key-note of all his music, and he works it out through a hundred harmonies and discords. He is “sure of goodness as of life.” He does not ask “How came good into the world?” For that, after all, is the pessimistic question; it assumes that the ground of things is evil and the good is the breaking of the rule. He asks instead “How came evil into the world?” That is the optimistic question; as long as a man puts it in that form he is an optimist at heart; he takes it for granted that good is the native element and evil is the intruder; there must be a solution of the problem whether he can find it or not; the rule must be superior to, and triumphant over, the exception; the meaning and purpose of evil must somehow, some time, be proved subordinate to good.

That is Browning’s position:

“My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best, can’t end worst, Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.”

The way in which he justifies this position is characteristic of the man. His optimism is far less defensive than it is militant. He never wavers from his intuitive conviction that “the world means good.” He follows this instinct as a soldier follows his banner, into whatever difficulties and conflicts it may lead him, and fights his way out, now with the weapons of philosophy, now with the bare sword of faith.

VI

It might seem at first as if it were unfair to attempt any estimate of the philosophic and religious teaching of a poet like Browning, whose method we have already recognized as dramatic. Can we ascribe to the poet himself the opinions which he puts into the mouths of his characters? Can we hold him responsible for the sentiments which are expressed by the actors on his stage?

Certainly this objection must be admitted as a restraint in the interpretation of his poetry. We are not to take all that his characters say, literally and directly, as his own belief, any more than we are to read the speeches of Satan, and Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar, in the Book of Job, as utterances of the spirit of inspiration. But just as that great dramatic Scripture, dealing with the problems of evil and suffering and sovereignty, does contain a doctrine and convey a lesson, so the poetry of Browning, taken as a whole, utters a distinct and positive prophetic message.

In the first place, many of the poems are evidently subjective, written without disguise in the first person. Among these we may consider _My Star_; _By the Fireside_; _One Word More_; the Epilogues to _Dramatis Personæ_ and _Pachiarrotto_ and _Ferishtah’s Fancies_; the introduction and the close of _The Ring and the Book_; _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day_; the ending of the poem called _Gold Hair_, and of _A Death in the Desert_, and of _Bishop Blougram’s Apology_; _Prospice_ and _Reverie_. In the second place we must remember Goethe’s dictum: “Every author in some degree, pourtrays himself in his works, even be it against his will.” Even when Browning is writing dramatically, he cannot conceal his sympathy. The masks are thin. His eyes shine through. “His own personality,” says Mr. Stedman, “is manifest in the speech and movement of almost every character of each piece. His spirit is infused as if by metempsychosis, within them all, and forces each to assume a strange Pentecostal tone, which we discover to be that of the poet himself.” Thus it is not impossible, nor even difficult, to reach a fair estimate of his ethical and religious teaching and discover its principal elements.

1. First among these I would put a great confidence in God. Browning is the most theological of modern poets. The epithet which was applied to Spinoza might well be transferred to him. He is a “God-intoxicated” man. But in a very different sense, for whereas the philosopher felt God as an idea, the poet feels Him intensely as a person. The song which he puts into the lips of the unconscious heroine in _Pippa Passes_,—

“God’s in his heaven All’s right with the world,——”

is the recurrent theme of his poetry. He cries with Paracelsus,

“God thou art Love, I build my faith on that.”

Even when his music is broken and interrupted by discords, when it seems to dissolve and fade away as all human work, in its outward form, dissolves and fades, he turns, as Abt Vogler turns from his silent organ, to God;

“Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?”

In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ he takes up the ancient figure of the potter and the clay and uses it to express his boundless trust in God.

The characteristic mark of Browning’s view of God is that it is always taken from the side of humanity. The Perfect Glory is the correlative of the glory of the imperfect. The Divine Love is the answer to the human longing. God is, because man needs Him. From this point of view it almost seems, as a brilliant essayist has said, as if “In Browning, God is adjective to man.”[18]

But it may be said in answer, that, at least for man, this is the only point of view that is accessible. We can never leave our own needs behind us, however high we may try to climb. Certainly if we succeed in forgetting them for a moment, in that very moment we have passed out of the region of poetry, which is the impassioned interpretation of man’s heart.

2. The second element of power in Browning’s poetry is that he sees in the personal Christ the very revelation of God that man’s heart most needs and welcomes. Nowhere else in all the range of modern poetry has this vision been expressed with such spiritual ardour, with such poignant joy. We must turn back to the pages of Isaiah to find anything to equal the Messianic rapture of the minstrel in _Saul_.

“He who did most shall bear most: the strongest shall stand the most weak. ’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be, A Face like my face that receives thee; a man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! see the Christ stand!”

We must look into the Christ-filled letters of St. Paul to find the attractions of the Crucified One uttered as powerfully as they are in the _Epistle of Karshish_.

“The very God! think Abib; dost thou think? So, the All-great, were the All-Loving too— So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee!’”

It is idle to assert that these are only dramatic presentations of the Christian faith. No poet could have imagined such utterances without feeling their significance; and the piercing splendour of their expression discloses his sympathy. He reveals it yet more unmistakably in _Christmas Eve_, (strophe XVII) and in _Easter Day_, (strophe XXX.) In the Epilogue to _Dramatis Personæ_ it flashes out clearly. The second speaker, as Renan, has bewailed the vanishing of the face of Christ from the sorrowful vision of the race. The third speaker, the poet himself, answers:

“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose Become my universe that feels and knows!”

“That face,” said Browning to a friend, “that face is the face of Christ: that is how I feel Him.”

Surely this is the religious message that the world most needs to-day. More and more everything in Christianity hangs upon the truth of the Incarnation. The alternative declares itself. Either no God whom we can know and love at all, or God personally manifest in Christ!

3. The third religious element in Browning’s poetry is his faith that this life is a probation, a discipline for the future. He says, again and again,

“I count life just a stuff To try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.”

The glory of the imperfect lies in the power of progress, “man’s distinctive mark.” And progress comes by conflict; conflict with falsehood and ignorance,—

“Living here means nescience simply; ’tis next life that helps to learn—”

and conflict with evil,—

“Why comes temptation but for man to meet, And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestalled in triumph?”

The poet is always calling us to be glad we are engaged in such a noble strife.

“Rejoice we are allied To that which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.

Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”

Now this is fine doctrine, lofty, strenuous, stimulating. It appeals to the will, which is man’s central power. It proclaims the truth that virtue must be active in its essence though it may also be passive in its education, positive in its spirit and negative only by contrast.

But it is in the working out of this doctrine into an ethical system that Browning enters upon dangerous ground, and arrives at results which seem to obscure the clearness, and to threaten the stability of the moral order, by which alone, if the world’s greatest teachers have been right, the ultimate good of humanity can be attained. Here, it seems to me, his teaching, especially in its latter utterances, is often confused, turbulent, misleading. His light is mixed with darkness. He seems almost to say that it matters little which way we go, provided only we go.

He overlooks the deep truth that there is an activity of the soul in self-restraint as well as in self-assertion. It takes as much courage to dare not to do evil as it does to dare to do good. The hero is sometimes the man who stands still. Virtue is noblest when it is joined to virility. But virility alone is not virtue nor does it always lead to moral victory. Sometimes it leads straight towards moral paralysis, death, extinction. Browning fails to see this, because his method is dramatic and because he dramatizes through himself. He puts himself into this or the other character, and works himself out through it, preserving still in himself, though all unconsciously, the soul of something good. Thus he does not touch that peculiar deadening of spiritual power which is one result of the unrestrained following of impulse and passion. It is this defect in his vision of life that leads to the dubious and interrogatory moral of such a poem as _The Statue and the Bust_.

Browning values the individual so much that he lays all his emphasis upon the development of stronger passions and aspirations, the unfolding of a more vivid and intense personality, and has comparatively little stress to lay upon the larger thought of the progress of mankind in harmony and order. Indeed he poetizes so vigorously against the conventional judgments of society that he often seems to set himself against the moral sentiments on which those conventional judgments, however warped, ultimately rest. “Over and over again in Browning’s poetry,” says a penetrating critic, “we meet with this insistence on the value of moments of high excitement, of intense living, of full experience of pleasure, even though such moments be of the essence of evil and fruitful in all dark consequences.”

Take for example his treatment of love. He is right in saying “Love is best.” But is he right in admitting, even by inference, that love has a right to take its own way of realizing itself? Can love be at its best unless it is obedient to law? Does it not make its truest music when it keeps its place in the harmony of purity and peace and good living? Surely the wild and reckless view of love as its own law which seems to glimmer through the unconsumed smoke of Browning’s later poems, such as _Fifine at the Fair_, _The Inn Album_, and _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, needs correction by a true flash of insight like that which we find in two lines of _One Word More_:

“_Dante, who loved well because he hated,_ _Hated wickedness that hinders loving._”

Browning was at times misled by a perilous philosophy into a position where the vital distinction between good and evil dissolved away in a cloud of unreality. In _Ferishtah’s Fancies_ and _Parleyings with Certain People of Importance_, any one who has the patience to read them will find himself in a nebulous moral world. The supposed necessity of showing that evil is always a means to good tempts to the assertion that it has no other reality. Perhaps it is altogether an illusion, needed to sting us into conflict, but really non-existent. Perhaps it is only the shadow cast by the good,—or “the silence implying sound.” Perhaps it is good in disguise, not yet developed from the crawling worm into the creature with wings. After this fashion the whimsical dervish Ferishtah strews his beans upon the table.

“This bean was white, this—black, Set by itself,—but see if good and bad Each following other in companionship, Black have not grown less black and white less white, Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish,—gray, And the whole line turns—well, or black to thee Or white alike to me—no matter which.”