Robert Browning Part 20

There is little of repose in Browning's poetry. He feared lethargy of heart, the supine mood, more than he feared excess of pa.s.sion. Once or twice he utters a sigh for rest, but it is for rest after strife or labour. Broad s.p.a.ces of repose, of emotional tranquillity are rare, if not entirely wanting, in his poetry. It is not a high table-land, but a range, or range upon range, of sierras. In single poems there is often a point or moment in which pa.s.sion suddenly reaches its culmination. He flashes light upon the retina; he does not spread truth abroad like a mantle but plunges it downwards through the mists of earth like a searching sword-blade. And therefore he does not always distribute the poetic value of what he writes equally; one vivid moment justifies all that is preparatory to that great moment. His utterance, which is always vigorous, becomes intensely luminous at the needful points and then relapses, to its well-maintained vigour, a vigour not always accompanied by the highest poetical qualities. The music of his verse is entirely original, and so various are its kinds, so complex often are its effects that it cannot be briefly characterised. Its attack upon the ear is often by surprises, which, corresponding to the sudden turns of thought and leaps of feeling, justify themselves as right and delightful. Yet he sometimes embarra.s.ses his verse with an excess of suspensions and resolutions. Browning made many metrical experiments, some of which were unfortunate: but his failures are rather to be ascribed to temporary lapses into a misdirected ingenuity than to the absence of metrical feeling.

His chief influence, other than what is purely artistic, upon a reader is towards establis.h.i.+ng a connection between the known order of things in which we live and move and that larger order of which it is a part.

He plays upon the will, summoning it from lethargy to activity. He spiritualises the pa.s.sions by showing that they tend through what is human towards what is divine. He a.s.signs to the intellect a sufficient field for exercise, but attaches more value to its efforts than to its attainments. His faith in an unseen order of things creates a hope which persists through the apparent failures of earth. In a true sense he may be named the successor of Wordsworth, not indeed as an artist but as a teacher. Substantially the creed maintained by each was the same creed, and they were both more emphatic proclaimers of it than any other contemporary poets. But their ways of holding and of maintaining that creed were far apart. Wordsworth enunciated his doctrines as if he had never met with, and never expected to meet with, any gainsaying of them.

He discoursed as a philosopher might to a school of disciples gathered together to be taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it. He feared chiefly not a counter creed but the materialising effects of the industrial movement of his own day. Expecting no contradiction, Wordsworth did not care to quit his own standpoint in order that he might see how things appear from the opposing side. He did not argue but let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy spoken in presence of an audience but not always directly addressed to them. Browning's manner of speech was very unlike this. He seems to address it often to unsympathetic hearers of whose presence and gainsaying att.i.tude he could not lose sight. The beliefs for which he pleaded were not in his day, as they had been in Wordsworth's, part of a progressive wave of thought. He occupied the disadvantageous position of a conservative thinker. The later poet of spiritual beliefs had to make his way not with, but against, a great incoming tide of contemporary speculation. Probably on this account Browning's influence as a teacher will extend over a far shorter s.p.a.ce of time than that of Wordsworth. For Wordsworth is self-contained, and is complete without reference to the ideas which oppose his own. His work suffices for its own explanation, and will always commend itself to certain readers either as the system of a philosophic thinker or as the dream of a poet. Browning's thought where it is most significant is often more or less enigmatical if taken by itself: its energetic gestures, unless we see what they are directed against, seem aimless beating the air. His thought, as far as it is polemical, will probably cease to interest future readers. New methods of attack will call forth new methods of defence. Time will make its discreet selection from his writings. And the portion which seems most likely to survive is that which presents in true forms of art the permanent pa.s.sions of humanity and characters of enduring interest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 144: Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the _Asolando_ poems. _Rosny_, _Beatrice Signorini_ and _Flute-Music_ were written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the _Bad Dreams_ are, with less confidence, a.s.signed to the same date. The _Ponte dell'

Angelo_ "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "_White Witchcraft_ had been suggested in the same summer (1888) by a letter from a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there."

_The Cardinal and the Dog_, written with the _Pied Piper_ for Macready's son, is a poem of early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in Asolo" (_Century Magazine_, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889 of _The Lady and the Painter_.]

[Footnote 145: Mrs Orr, _Life_, p. 414.]

[Footnote 146: W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., _Magazine of Art_, 1890, p. 182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.]

[Footnote 147: "The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure Conway may also be found.]

[Footnote 148: "My father died without pain or suffering other than that of weakness or weariness"--so Mr R. Barrett Browning wrote to Mrs Bloomfield-Moore. "His death was what death ought to be, but rarely is--so said the doctor." (Quoted in an article on Browning by Mrs Bloomfield-Moore in Lippincott's Magazine--Jan.--June 1890, p. 690.)]

[Footnote 149: A grave in the Abbey was at the same time offered for the body of Browning's wife; the removal of her body from Florence would have been against both the wishes of Browning and of the people of Florence. It was therefore declined by Mr R. Barrett Browning. See his letter in Mrs Bloomfield-Moore's article in Lippincott's Magazine, vol.

xiv.]

[Footnote 150: E.D. West in the first of two papers, "Browning as a Preacher," in _The Dark Blue Magazine_. Browning esteemed these papers highly and in what follows I appropriate, with some modifications, a pa.s.sage from the first of them. The writer has consented to the use here made of the pa.s.sage, and has contributed a pa.s.sage towards the close.]