Selections From The Poems And Plays Of Robert Browning Part 2

The importance of love as one of the most effective agencies in spiritual growth is stated and restated in Browning's poetry and by exceedingly diverse characters. The Queen in _In a Balcony_ turns away from her lonely splendor to exclaim,

There is no good of life but love--but love!

What else looks good is some shade flung from love; Love gilds it, gives it worth.

The d.u.c.h.ess learns from the gypsy

How love is the only good in the world.

The famous singer in "Dis Aliter Visum" knows that art, verse, music, count as naught beside "love found, gained, and kept." Browning seems to regard almost any genuine love as a means of opening out the nature to fuller self-knowledge, to wider sympathies, and to increased power of action. Hence he condemns all cautious calculation of obstacles, all dwelling upon conventional difficulties, in the path of those who have clearly seen "the love-way." Hence even love unrequited is counted of inestimable value. In _Colombe's Birthday_ Valence says,

Is the knowledge of her, naught? the memory, naught?

--Lady, should such an one have looked on you, Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world And say, love can go unrequited here!

You will have blessed him to his whole life's end-- Low pa.s.sions hindered, baser cares kept back, All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell.

But the love of man and woman is not the only sort. A part of the value of this individual relations.h.i.+p is that it may be regarded as a revelation and symbol of the spirit of all-embracing sympathy whereby mankind should be ruled. When Paracelsus a.n.a.lyzes his life he ascribes his failure to the fact that he has sought knowledge to the exclusion of all else; he finally came to see that knowledge, however profound, is of itself barren of satisfaction. He had meant to serve men by revealing truth to them, but he found that real service is based on the understanding given by love. In self condemnation he says,

In my own heart love had not been made wise To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, To know even hate is but a mask of love's.

To see a good in evil, and a hope In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies, Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts; All with a touch of n.o.bleness, despite Their error, upward tending all though weak.

Browning's conception of the function and power of love is based on his belief in its divine origin. Twice at least, in "Easter Day" and "Saul,"

his characters work out from an overpowering recognition of G.o.d's omniscience and omnipotence to a final recognition that his love is equal in scope with his power and knowledge. And he counts human service as most complete when, as in David before Saul, it reaches out to G.o.d's love and recruits its failing forces from the divine source.

Underlying Browning's doctrine of the value of love, and his doctrine of progress and aspiration, is his belief in personal immortality. When he was charged with being strongly against Darwin, with rejecting the truths of science and regretting its advance, he answered that the idea of a progressive development from senseless matter until man's appearance had been a familiar conception to him from the beginning, but he reiterated his constant faith in creative intelligence acting on matter but not resulting from it. "Soul," he said, "is not matter, nor from matter, but above." Two a.s.sumptions which though not susceptible of proof he regards as "inescapable," are the existence of creative intelligence and of "the subtle thing called spirit." When he argues out the question of the immortality of this spirit, as in _La Saisiaz_, he admits the subjective character of the evidence; but when he speaks spontaneously out of his own feeling or experience, it is with positive belief in life after death. To Mr. Sharp he said, "Death, death! It is this harping on death that I do despise so much! Why, _amico mio_, you know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is none the less alive and ever recruiting new forces of existence. Without death which is our c.r.a.pe-like church-yardy word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of what we call life.

Pshaw, it is foolish to argue upon such a thing, even. For myself, I deny death as an end of everything. Never say of me that I am dead!"

When his wife died he wrote in her Testament these words from Dante, "Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pa.s.s to another better there where that lady lives of whom my soul was enamored." This faith in life after death explains much of Browning's philosophy. The source of the pagan Cleon's profound discouragement was the fact that man should be dowered with "joy-hunger," should be given the ability to perceive and comprehend splendor and breadth of experience, but should, through the straitness of human limitations, be held back from satisfaction and achievement, and should be left to die thus dazzled, thus baffled. The secret of Browning's optimism, on the other hand, is his belief that in heaven the soul is freed from limitations, and blossoms out into capabilities of joy and of activity beyond anything suggested by the most golden dreams of earth. To him all life is a unit, beginning here and destined to unimaginable development hereafter. Earth is regarded as a place of tutelage where man may learn to set foot on some one path to heaven. And no work begun here shall ever pause for death. Even apparent failure here counts for little so the quest be not abandoned. Each of us may, as Abt Vogler, look without despair on the broken arcs of earth if his faith reveals the perfect round in heaven.

From any prolonged study of Browning's poetry we become conscious of certain dominant qualities of style that may be thought of quite apart from his themes or message. That his style has the defect of its qualities has already been pointed out. Here we may appropriately indicate those qualities as positive elements of his power. His diction, rich alike in the most learned words and the most colloquial, is responsive to all demands. His power of phrasing runs the whole gamut from the most pellucid simplicity to the most triumphant originality.

His figures of speech, drawn from all realms, are penetrating in quality, of startling aptness. Equally characteristic is his versification, varying as it does from pa.s.sages of melodic smoothness and grace to lines as strident, broken, and harsh as the thought they dramatically reflect. In narration, whether in the brilliant rapidity and ease of a short poem like "Herve Riel" or in the sustained flow of a long story like that of Pompilia, we find unusual skill. In disquisition, in the presentation of complicated and elusive intellectual processes, there is a quite unmatched agility and dexterity. Probably no two forms of poetry contain more of Browning's most noteworthy work than the lyric, especially the reflective love lyric, and that form which is distinctively his own, the dramatic monologue. In his best poems in this last form he has no compet.i.tor. It is in the presentation of character through the medium of dramatic monologue that he most fully reveals the unerring precision of his a.n.a.lysis, his lightning glance into the heart of a mystery, the ease with which he tracks a motive or mood or thought to its last hiding place, and his consequent pa.s.sion and fire of sympathy or scorn.

Finally, whether we consider Browning's style or subject matter or philosophy of life, we become growingly conscious of his force. The "clear Virgilian line" of Tennyson is the outcome of a nature instinctively aristocratic and aloof. Browning is out in the thick of the fight and almost vociferously demands a hearing. Whatever makes his thought clear, vivid, active, forcible, seems to him, however prosaic it may appear at first glance, proper poetic material. The immediate effect of his verse is the rousing of the mind to great issues. His tremendous sincerity results in a dispelling of mists, a stripping off of husks.

His demand for the truth is a trumpet note of challenge to our doubt or fear or indifference. His penetrating study of human problems leads to an inevitable widening of the horizon of comprehension and sympathy on the part of his readers. And his courage and optimism const.i.tute an inspiration and stimulus of an uncommonly virile sort.

It has been said that Browning is "not a poet, but a literature," and in work so vast and varied that it can be thus characterized there must be wide extremes of value. It is almost certain that portions of his work cannot live. They are too difficult, too unliterary. But in the portions where great thought finds adequate form, the product is a priceless gift and one not equaled by any other poet of his age.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _The Century_, December, 1881, Vol. XXIII, pp. 189-200.]

[Footnote 2: See the article by Mr. F. J. Furnivall in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ for April, 1890.]

[Footnote 3: The first production of _Pippa Pa.s.ses_ was given in Copley Hall, Boston, in 1899, with an arrangement in six scenes by Miss Helen A. Clarke. _The Return of the Druses_ was arranged and presented by Miss Charlotte Porter in 1902 and was a dramatic success. _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ was brought out by Macready, with Phelps in the chief part and with Miss Helen Faucit as Mildred. It was played to crowded houses and received much applause. It was revived by Phelps at Sadler's Wells in 1848; and by the Browning Society in 1885 at St. George's Hall, London. In the winter of that year the play was given in Was.h.i.+ngton by Lawrence Barrett. It has also within a few years been admirably presented by Mrs. Lemoyne in New York and elsewhere. _Colombe's Birthday_, which was published in 1844, was not put upon the stage till 1853, when it was performed at the Haymarket Theater in London with Lady Martin (Helen Faucit) as Colombe. It was performed in Boston in 1854 and enthusiastically received. It was revived in 1885 with Miss Alma Murray as Colombe, when it was commented on as being "charming on the boards, clearer, more direct in action, more picturesque, more full of delicate surprises than one imagines it in print." It was also successfully produced at McVicker's Theater, Chicago, in November, 1894, with Miss Marlowe as Colombe.]

[Footnote 4: An interesting corroboration of Mrs. Browning's words is found in the fact that the 1868 edition of Browning's works, by Smith Elder and Co., was reprinted as Numbers 1-19 of the _Official Guide of the Chicago and Alton R. R., and Monthly Reprint and Advertiser_, edited by Mr. James Charlton. A copy is in the British Museum. The reprint appeared in 1872-1874. See Mrs. Orr's bibliography.]

[Footnote 5: A particularly interesting dramatic event was Mrs.

Lemoyne's presentation of _In a Balcony_ at Wallack's Theater, New York, in the autumn of 1900. Mrs. Lemoyne was the Queen, Otis Skinner was Norbet, and Eleanor Robson was Constance. See _The Bookman_, 12, 387.]

[Footnote 6: Mrs. Bronson has given a vivid picture of the Brownings at Asolo and at Venice in the _Century Magazine_ for 1900 and 1902.]

[Footnote 7: See Miss E. M. Clark in _Poet-Lore_, Volume II. page 480 (1890).]

[Footnote 8: _Poet-Lore_, Volume II. page 246 (1890).]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The great number of books and articles on Browning and his work is shown by the Bibliography of Biography and Criticism prepared by John P.

Anderson of the British Museum and printed in William Sharp's _Life of Robert Browning_. The selection to be given here can hardly more than suggest this large amount of material.

The 1888-9 edition of Browning's _Works_ by Smith, Elder and Company incorporates Browning's last revisions and his own punctuation. The Macmillan edition in nine volumes in 1894 reproduces this text.

For biographical material important books are:

_The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett 1845-1846_, two volumes, 1902, Harper Brothers.

_The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Edited with Biographical Additions by Frederic G. Kenyon._ Macmillan, 1897. (Two volumes in one, 1899.)

_The Life and Letters of Robert Browning_ by Mrs. A. Sutherland Orr in 1891. A new edition, revised and in part rewritten by Mr. Frederick G.

Kenyon, was brought out by Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1908. Mrs.

Orr and Mr. Kenyon were both friends of Browning and could speak with authority on many details of his life.

_Robert Browning, Personalia_, by Edmund Gosse. Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1890. This book consists of a reprint of two articles, one from _The Century Magazine_ on "The Early Career of Robert Browning," and one from _The New Review_ ent.i.tled "Personal Impressions." These articles are of exceptional interest because Mr. Gosse lived near Mr. Browning at Warwick Crescent and they were on terms of close friends.h.i.+p. In _Critical Kit-Kats_, 1896, Mr. Gosse gives the story of _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.

_Robert Browning._ In _Bookman Biographies_, edited by W. Robertson Nicholl. Hodder and Stoughton, London. Many interesting ill.u.s.trations.

_The Century Magazine_ for 1900 and 1902 gives Mrs. Bronson's account of Browning at Asolo and at Venice.

For general handbooks see:

_The Browning Cyclopaedia._ Edward Berdoe, Macmillan, 1902. Elaborate a.n.a.lysis of each poem. Many textual notes. Interpretations often involved and far-fetched to the point of being untenable.

_Handbook of Robert Browning's Works._ Mrs. A. Sutherland Orr. First edition, 1885; sixth edition, 1891. Republished by Bell and Sons, London, 1902. Explanatory a.n.a.lysis of each poem. Edition of 1902 contains complete bibliography of Browning's works. Written at the request of the London Browning Society.

For criticism see, as books varying widely in point of view and scope, but each of distinct interest:

_An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry._ Hiram Corson. Boston, 1886.

_An Introduction to the Study of Browning._ Arthur Symons. London, Ca.s.sell and Company, 1886.

_Life of Robert Browning._ William Sharp. Walter Scott and Company, London, 1897.

_The Poetry of Robert Browning._ Stopford A. Brooke. Crowell and Company, 1902.

_Robert Browning._ G. K. Chesterton. Macmillan, 1903.

_Robert Browning._ C. H. Herford. Dodd, Mead and Company, 1905.