An Introduction to the Study of Browning Part 6

The monotonous "linked sweetness long drawn out" of the verses, the admirably arranged pause, recurrence and relapse of the lines, render the sense and substance of the subject with singular appropriateness.

_The Tomb at St. Praxed's_ (now known as _The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church_), has been finally praised by Ruskin, and the whole pa.s.sage may be here quoted:--

"Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages; always vital, right, and profound; so that in the matter of art, with which we have been specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the mediaeval temper that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged lines of his.

"'As here I lie In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.

Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: --Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that s.n.a.t.c.h from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, G.o.d curse the same!

Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats.

And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.

--Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!

Draw close: that conflagration of my church --What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!

My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find ... Ah G.o.d, I know not, I!...

Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah G.o.d, of _lapis lazuli_, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast....

Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati-villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like G.o.d the Father's globe on both his hands Ye wors.h.i.+p in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!

Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?

Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-- 'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?

The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables ... but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine, Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!

Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then!

'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve My bath must needs be left behind, alas!

One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-- And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek ma.n.u.scripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?

--That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-- Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need.'

"I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit,--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance in thirty pages of the _Stones of Venice_, put into as many lines, Browning's also being the antecedent work."[24]

This poem is the third of the iambic monologues, and, but for _Artemis Prologizes_, the first in blank verse. I am not aware if it was written much later than _Pictor Ignotus_, but it belongs to a later manner.

Scarcely at his very best, scarcely in the very greatest monologues of the central series of _Men and Women_, or in these only, has Browning written a finer or a more characteristic poem. As a study in human nature it has all the concentrated truth, all the biting and imaginative realism, of a scene from Balzac's _Comedie Humaine_: it is as much a fact and a creation. It is, moreover, as Ruskin has told us, typical not only of a single individual but of a whole epoch; while, as a piece of metrical writing, it has all the originality of an innovation. If Browning can scarcely be said to have created this species of blank verse, half familiar, vivid with natural life, full of vigour and beauty, rising and falling, with the unerring motion of the sea, he has certainly adapted, perfected, and made it a new thing in his hands.

Akin to _The Tomb at St. Praxed's_ on its dramatic, though dissimilar on its lyric, side, is the picturesque and terrible little poem of _The Laboratory_[25] in which a Brinvilliers of the _Ancien Regime_ is represented buying poison for her rival; one of the very finest examples of Browning's unique power of compressing and concentrating intense emotion into a few pregnant words, each of which has its own visible gesture and audible intonation.

It is in such poems that Browning is at his best, nor is he perhaps anywhere so inimitable. The second poem under the general heading of "France and Spain," _The Confessional_, in which a girl, half-maddened by remorse and impotent rage, tells how a false priest induced her to betray the political secrets of her lover, is, though vivid and effective, not nearly so powerful and penetrating as its companion piece. _Time's Revenges_ may perhaps be cla.s.sified with these utterances of individual pa.s.sion, though in form it is more closely connected with the poems I shall touch on next. It is a bitter and affecting little poem, not unlike some of the poems written many years afterwards by a remarkable and unfortunate poet,[26] who knew, in his own experience, something of what Browning happily rendered by the instinct of the dramatist only. It is a powerful and literal rendering of a certain sordid and tragic aspect of life, and is infused with that peculiar grim humour, the laugh that chokes in a sob, which comes to men when mere lamentation is a thing foregone.

The octosyllabic couplets of _Time's Revenges_, as well as its similarly realistic treatment and striking simplicity of verse and phrase, connect it with the admirable little poem now know as _The Italian in England_.[27] This is a tale of an Italian patriot, who, after an unsuccessful rising, has taken refuge in England. It tells of his escape and of how he was saved from the Austrian pursuers by the tact and fidelity of a young peasant woman. Its chief charm lies in the simplicity and sincere directness of its telling. _The Englishman in Italy_, a poem of very different cla.s.s, written in brisk and vigorous anapaests, is a vivid and humorous picture of Italian country life. It is delightfully gay and charming and picturesque, and is the most entirely descriptive poem ever written by Browning. In _The Glove_ we have a new version, from an original and characteristic standpoint, of the familiar old story known to all in its metrical version by Leigh Hunt, and more curtly rhymed (without any very great impressiveness) by Schiller.

Browning has shown elsewhere that he can tell a simple anecdote simply, but he has here seized upon the tale of the glove, not for the purpose of telling over again what Leigh Hunt had so charmingly and sufficiently told, but in order to present the old story in a new light, to show how the lady might have been right and the knight wrong, in spite of King Francis's verdict and the look of things. The tale, which is very wittily told, and contains some fine serious lines on the lion, is supposed to be related by Peter Ronsard, in the position of on-looker and moraliser; and the character of the narrator, after the poet's manner, is brought out by many cunning little touches. The poem is written almost throughout in double rhymes, in the metre and much in the manner of the _Pacchiarotto_ of thirty years later. It is worth noticing that in the lines spoken by the lady to Ronsard, and in these alone, the double rhymes are replaced by single ones, thus making a distinct severance between the earnestness of this one pa.s.sage and the cynical wit of the rest.

The easy mastery of difficult rhyming which we notice in this piece is still more marked in the strange and beautiful romance named _The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess_.[28] Not even in _Pacchiarotto_ has Browning so revelled in the most outlandish and seemingly incredible combinations of sound, double and treble rhymes of equal audacity and success. There is much dramatic appropriateness in the unconventional diction, the story being put into the mouth of a rough old huntsman. The device of linking fantasy with familiarity is very curious, and the effect is original in the extreme. The poem is a fusion of many elements, and has all the varying colour of a romantic comedy. Contrast the intensely picturesque opening landscape, the cleverly minute description of the gipsies and their trades, the humorous naturalness of the Duke's mediaeval masquerading as related by his unsympathising forester, and, in a higher key the beautiful figure of the young d.u.c.h.ess, and the serene, mystical splendour of the old gipsy's chant.

Two poems yet remain to be named, and two of the most perfect in the book. The little parable poem of _The Boy and the Angel_ is one of the most simply beautiful, yet deeply earnest, of Browning's lyrical poems.

It is a parable in which "the allegorical intent seems to be shed by the story, like a natural perfume from a flower;" and it preaches a sermon on contentment and the doing of G.o.d's will such as no theologian could better. _Saul_ (which I shall mention here, though only the first part, sections one to nine, appeared in _Dramatic Romances_, sections ten to nineteen being first published in _Men and Women_) has been by some considered almost or quite Browning's finest poem. And indeed it seems to unite almost the whole of his qualities as a poet in perfect fusion.

Music, song, the beauty of nature, the joy of life, the glory and greatness of man, the might of Love, human and divine: all these are set to an orchestral accompaniment of continuous harmony, now hushed as the wind among the woods at evening, now strong and sonorous as the storm-wind battling with the mountain-pine. _Saul_ is a vision of life, of time and of eternity, told in song as sublime as the vision is steadfast. The choral symphony of earth and all her voices with which the poem concludes is at once the easiest pa.s.sage to separate from its context, and (if we may dare, in such a matter, to choose) one, at least, of the very greatest of all.

"I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.

There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware: I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there, As a runner beset by the populace famished for news-- Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, h.e.l.l loosed with her crews; And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not, For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.

Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth-- Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth; In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills; In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe: E'en the serpent that slid away silent,--he felt the new law.

The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine bowers: And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, With their obstinate, all but hushed voices--' E'en so, it is so!'"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: _Modern Painters_, Vol. IV., pp. 377-79.]

[Footnote 25: It is interesting to remember that Rossetti's first water-colour was an ill.u.s.tration of this poem, and has for subject and t.i.tle the line, "Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?"]

[Footnote 26: James Thomson, the writer of _The City of Dreadful Night_.]

[Footnote 27: "Mr Browning is proud to remember," we are told by Mrs Orr, "that Mazzini informed him he had read this poem to certain of his fellow exiles in England to show how an Englishman could sympathise with them."--_Handbook_ 2nd ed., p. 306.]

[Footnote 28: Some curious particulars are recorded in reference to the composition of this poem. "_The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess_ took its rise from a line--'Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!' the burden of a song which the poet, when a boy, heard a woman singing on a Guy Fawkes'

day. The poem was written in two parts, of which the first was published in _Hood's Magazine_, April, 1845, and contained only nine sections. As Mr Browning was writing it, he was interrupted by the arrival of a friend on some important business, which drove all thoughts of the d.u.c.h.ess and the scheme of her story out of the poet's head. But some months after the publication of the first part, when he was staying at Bettisfield Park, in Shrops.h.i.+re, a guest, speaking of early winter, said, 'The deer had already to break the ice in the pond.' On this a fancy struck the poet, and, on returning home, he worked it up into the conclusion of _The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess_ as it now stands."--_Academy_, May 5, 1883.]

12. A SOUL'S TRAGEDY.

[Published in 1846 (with _Luria_) as No. VIII. of _Bells and Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp.

257-302). Acted by the Stage Society at the Court Theatre, March 13, 1904.]

The development of Browning's genius, as shown in his plays, has been touched on in dealing with _Colombe's Birthday_. That play, as I intimated, shows the first token of transition from the comparatively conventional dramatic style of the early plays to the completely unconventional style of the later ones, which in turn lead almost imperceptibly to the final pausing-place of the monologue. From _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ to _Colombe's Birthday_ is a step; from _Colombe's Birthday_ to _A Soul's Tragedy_ and _Luria_ another step; and in these last we are not more than another step from _Men and Women_ and its successors. In _A Soul's Tragedy_ the action is all internalized.

Outward action there is, and of a sufficiently picturesque nature; but here, considerably more than even in _Colombe's Birthday_, the interest is withdrawn from the action, as action, and concentrated on a single character, whose "soul's tragedy," not his mere worldly fortunes, strange and significant as these are, we are called on to contemplate.

Chiappino fills and possesses the scene. The other characters are carefully subordinated, and the impression we receive is not unlike that received from one of Browning's most vivid and complete monologues, with its carefully placed apparatus of sidelights.

The character of Chiappino is that of a Djabal degenerated; he is the second of Browning's delineations of the half-deceived and half-deceiving nature, the moral hybrid. Chiappino comes before us as a much-professing yet apparently little-performing person, moody and complaining, envious of his friend Luitolfo's better fortune, a soured man and a discontented patriot. But he is quite sure of his own complete probity. He declaims bitterly against his fellow-townsmen, his friend, and the woman whom he loves; all of whom, he a.s.severates, treat him unjustly, and as he never could, by any possibility, treat them. While he is thus protesting to Eulalia, his friend's betrothed, to whom for the first time he avows his own love, a trial is at hand, and nearer than he or we expect. Luitolfo rushes in. He has gone to the Provost's palace to intercede on behalf of his banished friend, and in a moment of wrath has struck and, as he thinks, killed the Provost: the guards are after him, and he is lost. Is this the moment of test? Apparently; and apparently Chiappino proves his n.o.bility. For, with truly heroic unselfishness, he exchanges dress with his friend, induces him, in a sort of stupefaction of terror, to escape, and remains in his place, "to die for him." But the harder test has yet to come. Instead of the Provost's guards, it is the enthusiastic populace that bursts in upon him, hailing him as saviour and liberator. The people have risen in revolt, the guards have fled, and the people call on the striker of the blow to be their leader. Chiappino says nothing. "Chiappino?" says Eulalia, questioning him with her eyes. "Yes, I understand," he rejoins,

"You think I should have promptlier disowned This deed with its strange unforeseen success, In favour of Luitolfo. But the peril, So far from ended, hardly seems begun.

To-morrow, rather, when a calm succeeds, We easily shall make him full amends: And meantime--if we save them as they pray, And justify the deed by its effects?

_Eu._ You would, for worlds, you had denied at once.

_Ch._ I know my own intention, be a.s.sured!

All's well. Precede us, fellow-citizens!"

Thus ends act first, "being what was called the poetry of Chiappino's life;" and act second, "its prose," opens after a supposed interval of a month.

The second act exhibits, in very humorous prose, the gradual and inevitable deterioration which the silence and the deception have brought about. Drawn on and on, upon his own lines of thought and conduct, by Ogniben, the Pope's legate, who has come to put down the revolt by diplomatic measures, Chiappino denies his political principles, finding a democratic rule not at all so necessary when the provosts.h.i.+p may perhaps fall to himself; denies his love, for his views of love are, he finds, widened; and finally, denies his friend, to the extent of arguing that the very blow which, as struck by Luitolfo, has been the factor of his fortune, was practically, because logically, his own. Ogniben now agrees to invest him with the Provost's office, making at the same time the stipulation that the actual a.s.sailant of the Provost shall suffer the proper penalty. Hereupon Luitolfo comes forward and avows the deed. Ogniben orders him to his house; Chiappino "goes aside for a time;" "and now," concludes the legate, addressing the people, "give thanks to G.o.d, the keys of the Provost's palace to me, and yourselves to profitable meditation at home."

Besides Chiappino, there are three other characters, who serve to set off the main figure. Eulalia is an observer, Luitolfo a foil, Ogniben a touchstone. Eulalia and Luitolfo, though sufficiently worked out for their several purposes, are only sketches, the latter perhaps more distinctly outlined than the former, and serving admirably as a contrast to Chiappino. But Ogniben, who does so much of the talking in the second act, is a really memorable figure. His portrait is painted with more prominent effect, for his part in the play is to draw Chiappino out, and to confound him with his own weapons: "I help men," as he says, "to carry out their own principles; if they please to say two and two make five, I a.s.sent, so they will but go on and say, four and four make ten."

His shrewd Socratic prose is delightfully wise and witty. This prose, the only dramatic prose written by Browning, with the exception of that in _Pippa Pa.s.ses_, is, in its way, almost as good as the poetry: keen, vivacious, full-thoughted, picturesque, and singularly original. For instance, Chiappino is expressing his longing for a woman who could understand, as he says, the whole of him, to whom he could reveal alike his strength and weakness.

"Ah, my friend," rejoins Ogniben, "wish for nothing so foolis.h.!.+ Wors.h.i.+p your love, give her the best of you to see; be to her like the western lands (they bring us such strange news of) to the Spanish Court; send her only your lumps of gold, fans of feathers, your spirit-like birds, and fruits and gems. So shall you, what is unseen of you, be supposed altogether a paradise by her,--as these western lands by Spain: though I warrant there is filth, red baboons, ugly reptiles and squalor enough, which they bring Spain as few samples of as possible."

There is in all this prose, lengthy as it is, the true dramatic note, a recognisable tone of talk. But _A Soul's Tragedy_ is for the study, not the stage.

13. LURIA: A Tragedy in Five Acts.

[Published in 1846 (with _A Soul's Tragedy_) as No. VIII of _Bells and Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. VI.

pp. 205-289). The action takes place from morning to night of one day].

The action and interest in _Luria_ are somewhat less internalised than in _A Soul's Tragedy_, but the drama is in form a still nearer approach to monologue. Many of the speeches are so long as to be almost monologues in themselves; and the whole play is manifestly written (unlike the other plays, except its immediate predecessor, or rather its contemporary) with no thought of the stage. The poet is retreating farther and farther from the glare of the footlights; he is writing after his own fancy, and not as his audience or his manager would wish him to write. None of Browning's plays is so full of large heroic speech, of deep philosophy, of choice ill.u.s.tration; seldom has he written n.o.bler poetry. There is not the intense and throbbing humanity of _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_; the characters are not so simply and so surely living men and women; but in the grave and lofty speech and idealised characters of _Luria_ we have something new, and something great as well.

The central figure is Luria himself; but the other characters are not so carefully and completely subordinated to him as are those in _A Soul's Tragedy_ to Chiappino. Luria is one of the n.o.blest and most heroic figures in Browning's works. A Moor, with the instincts of the East and the culture of the West, he presents a racial problem which is very subtly handled; while his natural n.o.bility and confidence are no less subtly set off against the Italian craft of his surroundings. The spectacle he presents is impressive and pathetic. An alien, with no bond to Florence save that of his inalienable love, he has led her forces against the Pisans, and saved her. Looking for no reward but the grateful love of the people he has saved, he meets instead with the basest ingrat.i.tude. While he is fighting and conquering for her, Florence, at home, is trying him for his life on a charge of treachery: a charge which has no foundation but in the base natures of his accusers, who know that he might, and therefore suspect that he will, turn to evil purpose his military successes and the power which they have gained him over the army. Generals of their own blood have betrayed them: how much more will this barbarian? Luria learns of the treachery of his allies in time to take revenge, he is urged to take revenge, and the means are placed in his hands, but his n.o.bler nature conquers, and the punishment he deals on Florence is the punishment of his own voluntary death. The strength of love which restrains him from punis.h.i.+ng the ungrateful city forbids him to live when his only love has proved false, his only link to life has gone. But before he dies he has the satisfaction of seeing the late repentance and regret of every enemy, whether secret schemer or open foe.

"Luria goes not poorly forth.

If we could wait! The only fault's with time; All men become good creatures: but so slow!"