Part 22

And his reward came while he was still there to appreciate and rejoice, not after death as is so often the guerdon of him who sees what is hidden from his fellows. He set up a standard of thought and feeling, and slowly but steadily he saw the public coming up to that standard, and marching onward more hopefully, more bravely, more confidently. His life story is simply told. He was born in Camberwell, and most of his education was obtained at the London University. His father was a bank clerk, who hated the routine of office work, and had a perfect passion for books. He read in season and out of season, he was a familiar figure at all the old book-stalls, he knew many languages, and had a mind literally stored with treasures of culture and learning. Robert soon showed he had inherited the same love of books, and when he was fourteen coaxed his mother till, after some difficulty, she got him copies of the poems written by Keats and Shelley. "Those two poets came to me as two nightingales," he has told us, and from henceforward his mind was practically made up. He, too, would be a poet, and as if to begin a suitable course of training, he set himself to read and master the whole of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. His father put no hindrances in his way, on the contrary he promised him every assistance, and an aunt came forward with offers of money, so firmly did she believe in the talents of her nephew. It was at her expense that his first book, "Pauline," was published anonymously, and though a very small public appreciated the work, here and there a friendly critic was found brave enough to say that the author, whoever he was, though he must not look for popularity or expect to make a sensation, was certainly a poet. "Paracelsus" followed, the story of a man who desired knowledge above all else, and who in the search for knowledge forgot to seek for love, hope, fear, and faith, those nobler qualities that give to life its true note and character; but at the time this shared the same fate as "Pauline," and was little appreciated. Then he tried his hand at dramatic writing, producing first "Stafford" and afterwards "The Blot in the Scutcheon," and though Dickens wrote enthusiastically concerning the latter, "This play has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow.... It is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound yet simple, and beautiful in its vigour," Browning contented himself with saying, "A pitfull of good-natured people applauded it." Then, with the buoyant hopefulness which was part of him, he added, "Failure will not discourage me from another effort: experience is yet to come, and earnest endeavour may yet remove many disadvantages."

And he continued to write. In 1844, being then thirty-two, he met Elizabeth Barrett, the invalid poetess with whose work he was already familiar, and from the first his heart went out to her. For some time she steadily refused to listen when he talked of marriage, on account of her ill health. But his persistence wore down her half-hearted resistance, especially as her happiness in the knowledge of his love proved a good doctor, and she showed signs of growing stronger. Her father, who seems to have objected to any of his daughters marrying, had made up his mind that Elizabeth would never leave home, and it was certain he would never have given his consent. So with some misgivings Miss Barrett consented to her lover's entreaties. They were married privately; he took her abroad, and in her newly found joy she rallied surprisingly. To the end of her life she was fragile, and it was never possible for her to stand side by side with him through all the daily ups and downs, but the sympathy between them was as complete as their love for each other was beautiful, and in spite of the many new responsibilities it laid upon him, his marriage with this rare mind brought a daily increasing happiness to the poet. From this time forward much of his time was spent in Italy, for the sake of his wife; but when in 1861, with her death, "the light of his life went out," he returned to London and lived here till the end, always working, always genial, drawn more and more into an ever-widening circle of friends, as the greatness of his mind and genius became known and appreciated. Active to the last, he died in 1889, while on a visit to Venice. But England claimed him as her own, and so strong was the feeling as to the Poets' Corner being the only place where he could be buried, that his son consented, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Browning slept under the blue skies of Italy.

It would be quite impossible now to talk of Robert Browning's poems by name; they are too many in number and too deep in thought to be lightly dealt with. But we can try to understand what it is that has made him so great a figure in English literature, why it is that he has left so powerful an influence on his age.

First of all he was a great teacher, he was a seer, as every true poet must be if his work is to live.

"To know the heart of all things was his duty; All things did speak to him to make him wise, And with a sorrowful and conquering beauty, The soul of all looked grandly from his eyes.

He gazed on all within him and without him, He watched the flowing of Time's steady tide, And shapes of glory floated all about him, And whispered to him, and he prophesied."

He looked on life as a great whole, part to be lived here, part to be lived beyond the grave, but each part belonging to the other. He believed that over all, guiding all and through all, was the Divine Power.

"God's in His Heaven: All's well in the world."

He knew that human nature must work its way upwards by struggling bravely on through the darkness, certain of victory at last, because good and not evil was the all-conquering force. And so, while he was full of hope and full of confidence, his understanding and his sympathies were boundless.

Courage! unfailing, confident courage! is the refrain of which he never wearies. Aspire towards the highest; be your best; love for love's sake and not for reward; work your hardest; fight valiantly to the end; never listen to despair; never lessen your efforts. It is the struggle and the striving that makes life worth living, for--

"Life is probation, and this earth no goal But starting-point of men."

Nor is there such a thing as failure to those who aspire rightly.

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a Heaven for?"

And again--

"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."

The power and the love of God, the possibilities within the reach of every man, and the unalterable certainty of the life beyond, these beliefs made it impossible for Browning to sing in any but a hopeful strain, and it is for this that we owe him our deepest debt of gratitude. For he always encourages us, he always inspires us, he always sends us on our way cheered by his own strong faith.

Sometimes, it is true, his verse is rough and rugged, often he is so absorbed in the sense of what he says that he cares very little how he says it, but every poem he wrote holds so many precious things that it is worth while wading through difficult places to get at them. And as he himself once said, "With care for a man or a book, most obstacles can be overcome."

Many a poem could I give to show you that Browning could pour out sweet music when he wrote of certain subjects. Here is one of his most charming songs--"Home Thoughts from Abroad":--

"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!

And after April, when May follows, And the white-throat 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 think he never could recapture The first, fine, careless rapture!"

On the day of his death there was published the last volume of his poems, and it had been a great pleasure to him to hear with how much interest they were expected. For more than fifty years he had waited, and at last his message to his generation was being understood. He had been "ever a fighter," and now, as he stood facing that "one fight more, the best and the last," which was at hand, he had still one fine marching song to send back to his fellow-men.

"Never say of me that I am _dead_," he had asked of a friend not long before.

"No work begun shall ever pause for death! Love will be helpful to me more and more In the coming course, the new path I must tread."

So when those who loved him read the words that told how Robert Browning had died at Venice, having lived more than his threescore years and ten, they turned for their comfort to his last stirring message, and remembered him as he had wished to be remembered--

"At the midnight, in the silence of the sleep time, When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where--by death, fools think, imprisoned-- Low he lies, who once so loved you, whom you loved so. Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, hopeless, did I drivel Being who?

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong could triumph. Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake!

No, at noonday, in the bustle of men's work time, Greet the unseen with a cheer. Bid him forward, breast and back, as either should be. 'Strive and strive!' cry Speed--fight on, fare ever There as here."

Three years after Browning's death a crowd of over eleven thousand persons filled Westminster to every corner, on the day when our other great poet, Alfred Tennyson, was borne here, to remain for ever "a citizen of the Abbey." His coffin, fitly draped with the Union Jack, because some of his finest lines had been called out by the thought of Empire, Flag, and Queen, was surrounded by all the most noteworthy men of the day as it was carried slowly through the aisles, "down the avenue of those men, princes and peers by right of intellect divine." Tennyson, like Browning, had written a last message to the world, but his was not a marching song. Instead it breathes of perfect peace, of the joy which came to him, "who throughout the night had trusted all to Him that held the helm, and then saw face to face, full flushed and glorious with the new morning's glow, the Pilot whom he had trusted."

"Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar."

These thoughts of his filled the Abbey with a sense of their restfulness; then there thundered out from thousands of voices the familiar hymn--

"Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!"

and the words recalled to many a mind that Vision of which the clear-souled poet had sung, the Gleam he had so faithfully followed, until now it had surely led him right up to the presence of God.

Alfred Tennyson had been born at a country vicarage in Lincolnshire in the year 1809, and had begun to scribble verse almost as soon as he could write. When he was eight he produced such lines as--

"With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled the flood,"

which he thought "very grand" at the time; at twelve he wrote a poem of six thousand lines, and at fourteen a drama. He was not the sort of boy likely to be very happy at school, and he had, as he described it, "to shout his verses to the skies." But to his brother he was wont to say many a time, "Well, Arthur, I mean to be famous." He went to Cambridge, and when Thompson, that shrewd observer, afterwards Master of Trinity, saw him walk into the hall, "six feet high, broad-chested, strong-limbed, his face Shakespearean and with deep eyelids, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head firmly poised," he remarked, "That man must be a poet!"

In 1829 he won the University Prize Poem on the not very inspiring subject of Timbuctoo, and soon afterwards published a volume of short poems, which was warmly welcomed and admired by his friends, one of whom, Arthur Hallam, remarked, "Tennyson will be the greatest poet of our generation." But the general public cared little for poetry, and preferred novels, so that Tennyson was thought to have scored quite a success when three hundred copies of his book had been sold.

In 1833 there fell on him a stunning blow. Arthur Hallam, the friend whom he had loved with an intense love, who was so full of exceptional promise that every one with whom he came in contact believed the greatest future was in store for him, died quite suddenly, and to Tennyson it seemed as if from henceforth the very light of his life had been snatched from him. Dark were the years that followed, rendered more so by the fact that the young poet was very poor and saw no chance of being able to marry the woman he loved. But gradually, as he "faced the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life" (to use his own words), a fuller understanding and a wider view opened out before him. Sorrow and work together led him out of the valley. He produced several volumes of short poems, each one showing more certainly his great poetic sense, his gift of using musical and beautiful language, and each one, too, making it clear from the subjects he chose, and his way of dealing with them, that he himself, like the poet of whom he wrote--

"Saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill, ... Thro' his own soul, The marvel of the Everlasting Will An open scroll, Before him lay."

Then came "The Princess," a longer work and a most delightful one, in which Tennyson, many years in advance of public opinion, pleaded the cause of women's education, and showed that "Woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink together;" and though "distinct in individualities," they must be "self-reverent each, and reverencing each," if they would in all their powers dispense the harvest, "sowing the To-be."

In 1850 he published his greatest work, "In Memoriam," the poem which came straight from his own heart, and went as straight to the hearts of all who ached under some crushing, desolating blow. It told of his love for his dead friend, and how this very love led him onwards and upwards, away from his own selfish sorrow, away from despair and darkness, till with this larger hope there came faith in God and faith in man; the certainty that good must be the final goal of ill; the conviction that Love was the great power working in all and through all, destined in the end to conquer all. "In Memoriam" has been rightly called "the triumph of a great love." The work brought him fame if not fortune, and at last he was able to marry her "who brought into his life," he said, "the peace of God." A year later he was made Poet Laureate, and settled down to a quiet country life at Farringford. "Maud," and some of his war poems, "The Ode to the Duke of Wellington," and "The Charge of the Light Brigade," were included in his work of the next few years, and then came what he considered the most ambitious thing he had attempted, "The Idylls of the King." The old mysterious story of King Arthur and his knights had fascinated many a poet before him, and the romance of it all laid full hold on his imagination. Nay, more than this, for he saw beyond the fragmentary story, and each one of the characters, under his hand, stands out in a new light. Arthur, Galahad, Percival, Bedivere, Lancelot, Guinevere, Enid, and Elaine--how real they all become to us! How intensely vivid are the scenes unfolded before our eyes, how great and noble are the ideals of the true chivalry as distinguished from the false, towards which Tennyson leads us, reverence for conscience, faithfulness to duty, pure-heartedness, love of truth, fear of sin, courtesy, gentleness, courage, pity, and forgiveness.

"A poet must teach, but not preach," Tennyson once said, and I think it is in these legendary stories of "The Idylls," told in the beautiful language of which he was master, that the poet has given some of his greatest lessons, and has held up his loftiest ideals to the age in which he lived. After "The Idylls" came some dramas, and many short poems, "Enoch Arden," perhaps, being the one best liked by the large public Tennyson could now command. But even to touch on the short poems is impossible here, so many and so varied are they; some, soul-stirring and patriotic, as "The Defence of Lucknow" or "The Revenge;" some, poems of nature; some, coloured with the quaint, north-country humour he knew so well; some, exquisite little word-pictures. His last volume of all was published in 1889, and it included "Merlin and the Gleam," an allegory of the ideals he had set before himself as a poet. He, as the old man, talks to the young mariners just about to set out. He tells of the Gleam which shines for every one who will see it; which calls, which beckons on through wilderness, desolate hollows, and wraiths of the mountain; past warbles of water and cataract music of falling torrents; by rolling of dragons and over the level of pasture and ploughland. Onwards, ever onwards, it leads. To follow it is to live, to die in the search for it is happiness, for the Gleam can never fail.

"Through the magic Of Him that is mighty, Who taught me in childhood, There on the border Of boundless Ocean And all but in Heaven Hovers the Gleam."

So to the young mariners, he, the old magician, gives his parting word of counsel--

"Down to the haven, Launch your vessel And crowd your canvas, And, ere it vanishes Over the margin, After it, follow it, Follow the Gleam."

"I want to go down to posterity," Tennyson once said, "as a poet who uttered nothing base." And the criticism which he declared was "the best and tenderest praise that came to cheer his old age," was the remark of a girl who said, "When I read his poems, I always rise determined to be better."

Much might be said about the perfect music of his poetry; the richness of his imagination; the faultless ear he had for words; the crystal clearness of his style; his power to see beauty and, having seen it, to shape it; his sympathy, his sensitive understanding, and his lofty ideals. His claim to greatness is based on all that and still more. Out of the depths of his pure soul he gazed on all things lovely, just, true, pure, and of good report; and translating these into language easy to be understood, he led those who listened to him along the Road Beautiful, till they too stood with him on

"The heights of life, with a glimpse of a height that is higher."

*CHAPTER XXII*

*A LAST WANDER AROUND*

There are still many monuments and memorials in the Abbey which do not come in under the broad headings we have made, and to some few of these I must take you in this our last wander round the aisles and chapels.

As we come in by the great north entrance and pass between the row of statesmen, we must stop for a moment by the Canning group and notice the monument to the "loyall Duke of Newcastle," who lost a large fortune and became an exile from England on account of his devoted faithfulness to Charles I. The Duchess, who came of a family in which "all the brothers were valiant and all the sisters virtuous," was, in the Duke's eyes at least, a very "wise, witty, and learned lady," though every one did not deem her so. Pepys, when he made her acquaintance, wrote: "She is a good, comely woman, but her dress is so antick, and her deportment so ordinary, that I did not like her at all. Nor did I hear her say anything that was worth hearing." It was curiosity, I suppose, that caused Pepys to stay at home one day "to read the history of my Lord of Newcastle, written by his wife." Certainly his criticisms were not favourable. "It shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman," he said. "And he is an ass to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him."

Perhaps the "loyall Duke" found his learned lady not always quite easy to restrain, for he is reported once to have declared to a friend, "Sir, a very wise woman may be a very foolish thing."

But she had better claims than her wit or wisdom to his love, as the inscription on her monument tells, for she proved herself to be "a louvinge carefull wife, who was with her lord all the time of his banishment and miseries, and when he came home, never parted from him in all his solitary retirements."

Round the west door, and underneath the statue of the younger Pitt, are a number of memorial monuments to men, many of whom lived and laboured in our own times. There is Lord John Russell, the great statesman, who throughout his life was true to the emblem and the motto of his house, which you will see on the pedestal--a mountain goat wending its way through dangerous precipices, but never losing its footing. And there is General Gordon, true type of the happy warrior, who lived for the poor, the needy, and the oppressed, and who fell at his post in far Khartoum, faithful unto death. On the one side is a spot sometimes called the Little Poets' Corner, and here, under a window given by an American to the memory of George Herbert and Cowper, "both Westminster scholars, and both religious poets," we find statues or busts of Wordsworth; of the two Arnolds, Dr. Arnold, the schoolmaster, and his son Matthew Arnold, the poet, whose beautiful verses about his father, telling of his radiant vigour, his buoyant cheerfulness, his strong soul, have inspired many a one struggling to be a leader, not a laggard, in the march of life. Here also is Keble, another religious poet, some of whose hymns, "Sun of my Soul" and "New every morning is the Love," are as well known to all of us as any poems in our language; and close by we find Maurice, the teacher and preacher who influenced so many young men to become knights of their own day; to war against all that was mean, or base, or false; to fight in the foremost rank for the wronged or the oppressed; to champion the unpopular cause, and defend the truth well-nigh forgotten. By those who loved him he was called the Prophet, because he stood, as it were, between God and man, because he looked beyond the present and the things that are seen, right into the hidden glories of the things eternal. Kingsley, too, lies here, the most famous of Maurice's disciples--the man who was scholar, poet, novelist, thinker, teacher, enthusiast, and leader all in one; who roused his listeners to a sense of the duty that lay at their door; who taught them to love the beautiful things in nature even as they loved nature's God; who made them enthusiastic for all that was chivalrous and soul-stirring; who himself so loved all humanity that round his grave the highest in the land, gipsies from the country lanes, and white-faced, sweated toilers from the great cities, mourned side by side, this their great-hearted friend.