Part 9

It is this perfectly passive attitude toward the powers that command her heart and her soul--a passivity which by its completeness assumes the misguiding semblance of a deliberate determination of life--that makes her to me the purest expression in English of the feminine genius. I know that many would think this pre-eminence belongs to Mrs. Browning. They would point out the narrowness of Christina Rossetti's range, and the larger aspects of woman's nature, neglected by her, which inspire some of her rival's best-known poems. To me, on the contrary, it is the very scope attempted by Mrs. Browning that prevents her from holding the place I would give to Christina Rossetti. So much of Mrs. Browning--her political ideas, her passion for reform, her scholarship--simply carries her into the sphere of the masculine poets, where she suffers by an unfair comparison. She would be a better and less irritating writer without these excursions into a field for which she was not entirely fitted. The uncouthness that so often mars her language is partly due to an unreconciled feud between her intellect and her heart. She had neither a woman's wise passivity nor a man's controlling will. Even within the range of strictly feminine powers her genius is not simple and typical. And here I must take refuge in a paradox which is like enough to carry but little conviction. Nevertheless, it is the truth. I mean to say that probably most women will regard Mrs. Browning as the better type of their sex, whereas to men the honour will seem to belong to Miss Rossetti; and that the judgment of a man in this matter is more conclusive than a woman's. This is a paradox, I admit, yet its solution is simple. Women will judge a poetess by her inclusion of the larger human nature, and will resent the limiting of her range to the qualities that we look upon as peculiarly feminine. The passion of Mrs. Browning, her attempt to control her inspiration to the demands of a shaping intellect, her questioning and answering, her larger aims, in a word her effort to create,--all these will be set down to her credit by women who are as appreciative of such qualities as men, and who will not be annoyed by the false tone running through them. Men, on the contrary, are apt, in accepting a woman's work or in creating a female character, to be interested more in the traits and limitations which distinguish her from her masculine complement. They care more for the _idea_ of woman, and less for woman as merely a human being. Thus, for example, I should not hesitate to say that in this ideal aspect Thackeray's heroines are more womanly than George Eliot's,--though I am aware of the ridicule to which such an opinion lays me open; and for the same reason I hold that Christina Rossetti is a more complete exemplar of feminine genius, and, as being more perfect in her own sphere, a better poet than Mrs. Browning. That disconcerting sneer of Edward FitzGerald's, which so enraged Robert Browning, would never have occurred to him, I think, in the case of Miss Rossetti.

There is a curious comment on this contrast in the introduction to Christina Rossetti's _Monna Innominata_, a sonnet-sequence in which she tells her own story in the supposed person of an early Italian lady. "Had the great poetess of our own day and nation," she says, "only been unhappy instead of happy, her circumstances would have invited her to bequeath to us, in lieu of the _Portuguese Sonnets_, an inimitable 'donna innominata' drawn not from fancy, but from feeling, and worthy to occupy, a niche beside Beatrice and Laura." Now this sonnet-sequence of Miss Rossetti's is far from her best work, and holds a lower rank in every way than that passionate self-revelation of Mrs. Browning's; yet to read these confessions of the two poets together is a good way to get at the division between their spirits. In Miss Rossetti's sonnets all those feminine traits I have dwelt on are present to a marked, almost an exaggerated, degree. They are harmonious within themselves, and filled with a quiet ease; only the higher inspiration is lacking to them in comparison with her _Passing Away_, and other great lyrics. In Mrs. Browning, on the contrary, one cannot but feel a disturbing element. The very tortuousness of her language, the straining to render her emotion in terms of the intellect, introduces a quality which is out of harmony with the ground theme of feminine surrender. More than that, this submission to love, if looked at more closely, is itself in large part such as might proceed from a man as well as from a woman, so that there results an annoying confusion of masculine and feminine passion. Take, for instance, the twenty-second of the _Portuguese Sonnets_, one of the most perfect in the series:

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, drawing nigher and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvèd point,--What bitter wrong Can earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, The angels would press on us, and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Beloved,--where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

That is noble verse, undoubtedly. The point is that it might just as well have been written by a man to a woman as the contrary; it would, for example, fit perfectly well into Dante Gabriel Rossetti's _House of Life_. There is here no passivity of soul; the passion is not that of acquiescence, but of determination to press to the quick of love. Only, perhaps, a certain falsetto in the tone (if the meaning of that word may be so extended) shows that, after all, it was written by a woman, who in adopting the masculine pitch loses something of fineness and exquisiteness.

A single phrase of the sonnet, that "deep, dear silence," links it in my mind with one of Christina Rossetti's not found in the _Monna Innominata_, but expressing the same spirit of resignation. It is entitled simply _Rest_:

O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies, Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth Of all that irked her from the hour of birth; _With stillness that is almost Paradise. Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her, Silence more musical than any song;_ Even her very heart has ceased to stir: Until the morning of Eternity Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be; And when she wakes she will not think it long.

Am I misguided in thinking that in this stillness, this silence more musical than any song, the feminine heart speaks with a simplicity and consummate purity such as I quite fail to hear in the _Portuguese Sonnets_, admired as those sonnets are? Nor could one, perhaps, find in all Christina Rossetti's poems a single line that better expresses the character of her genius than these magical words: "With stillness that is almost Paradise." That is the mood which, with the passing away of love, never leaves her; that is her religion; her acquiescent Yea, to the world and the soul and to God. Into that region of rapt stillness it seems almost a sacrilege to penetrate with inquisitive, critical mind; it is like tearing away the veil of modesty. I will not attempt to bring out the beauty of her mood by comparing it with that of the more masculine quietists, who reach out and take the kingdom of Heaven by storm, and whose prayer is, in the words of Tennyson:

Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.

It will be better to quote one other poem, perhaps her most perfect work artistically, and to pass on:

UP-HILL

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.

The culmination of her pathetic weariness is always this cry for rest, a cry for supreme acquiescence in the will of Heaven, troubled by no personal volition, no desire, no emotion, save only love that waits for blessed absorption. Her latter years became what St. Teresa called a long "prayer of quiet"; and her brother's record of her secluded life in the refuge of his home, and later in her own house on Torrington Square, reads like the saintly story of a cloistered nun. It might be said of her, as of one of the fathers, that she needed not to pray, for her life was an unbroken communion with God. And yet that is not all. It is a sign of her utter womanliness that envy for the common affections of life was never quite crushed in her heart. Now and then through this monotony of resignation there wells up a sob of complaint, a note not easy, indeed, to distinguish from that _amari aliquid_ of jealousy, which Thackeray, cynically, as some think, always left at the bottom of his gentlest feminine characters. The fullest expression of this feeling is in one of her longer poems, _The Lowest Room_, which contrasts the life of two sisters, one of whom chooses the ordinary lot of woman with home and husband and children, while the other learns, year after tedious year, the consolation of lonely patience. The spirit of the poem is not entirely pleasant. The resurgence of personal envy is a little disconcerting; and the only comfort to be derived from it is the proof that under different circumstances Christina Rossetti might have given expression to the more ordinary lot of contented womanhood as perfectly as she sings the pathos and hope of the cloistered life. Had that first voice, which led her "where the bluest water flows," suffered her also to quench the thirst of her heart, had not that second voice summoned her to follow, this might have been. But literature, I think, would have lost in her gain. As it is, we must recognise that the vision of fulfilled affection and of quiet home joys still troubled her, in her darker hours, with a feeling of embittered regret. Two or three of the stanzas of _The Lowest Room_ even evoke a reminiscence of that scene in Thomson's _City of Dreadful Night_, where the "shrill and lamentable cry" breaks through the silence of the shadowy congregation:

In all eternity I had one chance, One few years' term of gracious human life, The splendours of the intellect's advance, The sweetness of the home with babes and wife.

But if occasionally this residue of bitterness in Christina Rossetti recalls the more acrid genius of James Thomson, yet a comparison of the two poets (and such a comparison is not fantastic, however unexpected it may appear) would set the feminine character of our subject in a peculiarly vivid light. Both were profoundly moved by the evanescence of life, by the deceitfulness of pleasure, while both at times, Thomson almost continually, were troubled by the apparent content of those who rested in these joys of the world. Both looked forward longingly to the consummation of peace. In his call to _Our Lady of Oblivion_ Thomson might seem to be speaking for both, only in a more deliberately metaphorical style:

Take me, and lull me into perfect sleep; Down, down, far hidden in thy duskiest cave; While all the clamorous years above me sweep Unheard, or, like the voice of seas that rave On far-off coasts, but murmuring o'er my trance, A dim vast monotone, that shall enhance The restful rapture of the inviolate grave.

But the roads by which the two would reach this "silence more musical than any song" were utterly different. With an intellect at once mathematical and constructive, Thomson built out of his personal bitterness and despair a universe corresponding to his own mood, a philosophy of atheistic revolt. Like Lucretius, "he denied divinely the divine." In that tremendous conversation on the river-walk he represents one soul as protesting to another that not for all his misery would he carry the guilt of creating such a world; whereto the second replies, and it is the poet himself who speaks:

The world rolls round forever as a mill; It grinds out death and life and good and ill; It has no purpose, heart or mind or will....

Man might know one thing were his sight less dim; That it whirls not to suit his petty whim, That it is quite indifferent to him.

There is the voluntary ecstasy of the saints, there is also this stern and self-willed rebellion, and, contrasted with them both, as woman is contrasted with man, there is the acquiescence of Christina Rossetti and of the little group of writers whom she leads in spirit:

Passing away, saith the World, passing away.... Then I answered: Yea.

WHY IS BROWNING POPULAR?

It has come to be a matter of course that some new book on Browning shall appear with every season. Already the number of these manuals has grown so large that any one interested in critical literature finds he must devote a whole corner of his library to them--where, the cynical may add, they are better lodged than in his brain. To name only a few of the more recent publications: there was Stopford Brooke's volume, which partitioned the poet's philosophy into convenient compartments, labelled nature, human life, art, love, etc. Then came Mr. Chesterton, with his biting paradoxes and his bold justification of Browning's work, not as it ought to be, but as it is. Professor Dowden followed with what is, on the whole, the best _vade mecum_ for those who wish to preserve their enthusiasm with a little salt of common sense; and, latest of all, we have now a critical study[7] by Prof. C. H. Herford, of the University of Manchester, which once more unrolls in all its gleaming aspects the poet's "joy in soul." Two things would seem to be clear from this succession of commentaries: Browning must need a deal of exegesis, and he must be a subject of wide curiosity. Now obscurity and popularity do not commonly go together, and I fail to remember that any of the critics named has paused long enough in his own admiration to explain just why Browning has caught the breath of favour; in a word, to answer the question: Why is Browning popular?

There is, indeed, one response to such a question, so obvious and so simple that it might well be taken for granted. It would hardly seem worth while to say that despite his difficulty Browning is esteemed because he has written great poetry; and in the most primitive and unequivocal manner this is to a certain extent true. At intervals the staccato of his lines, like the drilling of a woodpecker, is interrupted by a burst of pure and liquid music, as if that vigorous and exploring bird were suddenly gifted with the melodious throat of the lark. It is not necessary to hunt curiously for examples of this power; they are fairly frequent and the best known are the most striking. Consider the first lines that sing themselves in the memory:

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

there needs no cunning exegete to point out the beauty of these. Their rhythm is of the singing, traditional kind that is familiar to us in all the true poets of the language; the harmony of the vowel sounds and of the consonants, the very trick of alliteration, are obvious to the least critical; yet withal there is that miraculous suggestion in their charm which may be felt but cannot be converted into a prosaic equivalent. They stand out from the lines that precede and follow them in _The Ring and the Book_, as differing not so much in degree as in kind; they are lyrical, poetical, in the midst of a passage which is neither lyrical nor, precisely speaking, poetical. Elsewhere the surprise may be on the lower plane of mere description. So, throughout the peroration of _Paracelsus_, despite the glory and eloquence of the dying scholar's vision, one feels continually an alien element which just prevents a complete acquiescence in their magic, some residue of clogging analysis which has not quite been subdued to poetry--and then suddenly, as if some discordant instrument were silenced in an orchestra and unvexed music floated to the ear, the manner changes, thus:

The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts, A secret they assemble to discuss When the sun drops behind their trunks which glare Like grates of hell.

And, take his works throughout, there is a good deal of this writing which has the ordinary, direct appeal to the emotions. Yet it is scattered, accidental so to speak; nor is it any pabulum of the soul as simple as this which converts the lover of poetry into the Browningite. Even his common-sense admirers are probably held by something more recondite than this occasional charm.

You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack; Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands! Our interest 's on the dangerous edge of things--

says Bishop Blougram, and the attraction of Browning to many is just watching what may be called his acrobatic psychology. Consider this same _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, in some respects the most characteristic, as it is certainly not the least prodigious, of his poems. "Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour Sylvester Blougram"--talked and smiled to a silent listener concerning the strange mixture of doubt and faith which lie snugly side by side in the mind of an ecclesiastic who is at once a hypocrite and a sincere believer in the Church. The mental attitude of the speaker is subtile enough in itself to be fascinating, but the real suspense does not lie there. The very balancing of the priest's argument may at first work a kind of deception, but read more attentively and it begins to grow clear that no man in the wily bishop's predicament ever talked in this way over his wine or anywhere else. And here lies the real piquancy of the situation. His words are something more than a confession; they are this and at the same time the poet's, or if you will the bishop's own, comment to himself on that confession. He who talks is never quite in the privacy of solitude, nor is he ever quite conscious of his listener, who as a matter of fact is not so much a person as some half-personified opinion of the world or abstract notion set against the character of the speaker. And this is Browning's regular procedure not only in those wonderful dramatic monologues, _Men and Women_, that form the heart of his work, but in _Paracelsus_, in _The Ring and the Book_, even in the songs and the formal dramas.

Perhaps the most remarkable and most obvious example of this suspended psychology is to be found in _The Ring and the Book_. Take the canto in which Giuseppe Caponsacchi relates to the judges his share in the tangled story. It is clear that the interest here is not primarily in the event itself, nor does it lie in that phase of the speaker's character which would be revealed by his confession before such a court as he is supposed to confront. The fact is, that Caponsacchi's language is not such as under the circumstances he could possibly be conceived to use. As the situation forms itself in my mind, he might be in his cell awaiting the summons to appear. In that solitude and uncertainty he goes over in memory the days in Arezzo, when the temptation first came to him, and once more takes the perilous ride with Pompilia to Rome. He lives again through the great crisis, dissecting all his motives, balancing the pros and cons of each step; yet all the time he has in mind the opinion of the world as personified in the judges he is to face. The psychology is suspended dexterously between self-examination and open confession, and the reader who accepts the actual dramatic situation as suggested by Browning loses the finest and subtlest savour of the speech. In many places it would be simply preposterous to suppose we are listening to words really uttered by the priest.

We did go on all night; but at its close She was troubled, restless, moaned low, talked at whiles To herself, her brow on quiver with the dream: Once, wide awake, she menaced, at arms' length Waved away something--"Never again with you! My soul is mine, my body is my soul's: You and I are divided ever more In soul and body: get you gone!" Then I-- "Why, in my whole life I have never prayed! Oh, if the God, that only can, would help! Am I his priest with power to cast out fiends? Let God arise and all his enemies Be scattered!" By morn, there was peace, no sigh Out of the deep sleep--

no, those words were never spoken in the ears of a sceptical, worldly tribunal; they belong to the most sacred recesses of memory; yet at the same time that memory is coloured by a consciousness of the world's clumsy judgment.

It would be exaggeration to say that all Browning's greater poems proceed in this involved manner, yet the method is so constant as to be the most significant feature of his work. And it bestows on him the honour of having created a new genre which follows neither the fashion of lyric on the one hand nor that of drama or narrative on the other, but is a curious and illusive hybrid of the two. The passions are not uttered directly as having validity and meaning in the heart of the speaker alone, nor are they revealed through action and reaction upon the emotions of another. His dramas, if read attentively, will be found really to fall into the same mixed genre as his monologues. And a comparison of his _Sordello_ with such a poem as Goethe's _Tasso_ (which is more the dialogue of a narrative poem than a true drama) will show how far he fails to make a character move visibly amid opposing circumstances. In both poems we have a contrast of the poetical temperament with the practical world. In Browning it is difficult to distinguish the poet's own thought from the words of the hero; the narrative is in reality a long confession of Sordello to himself who is conscious of a hostile power without. In Goethe this hostile power stands out as distinctly as Tasso himself, and they act side by side each to his own end.

There is even a certain significance in what is perhaps the most immediately personal poem Browning ever wrote, that _One Word More_ which he appended to his _Men and Women_. Did he himself quite understand this lament for Raphael's lost sonnets and Dante's interrupted angel, this desire to find his love a language,

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient-- Using nature that's an art to others, Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature?

It would seem rather the uneasiness of his own mind when brought face to face with strong feeling where no escape remains into his oblique mode of expression. And the man Browning of real life, with his training in a dissenting Camberwell home and later his somewhat dapper acceptance of the London social season, accords with such a view of the writer. It is, too, worthy of note that almost invariably he impressed those who first met him as being a successful merchant, a banker, a diplomat--anything but a poet. There was passion enough below the surface, as his outburst of rage against FitzGerald and other incidents of the kind declare; but the direct exhibition of it was painful if not grotesque.