Robert Browning: How to Know Him Part 5

"By Jove! you're right! But it sounds just like Browning."

Browning's place in English literature is not with the great verse-sculptors, not with the masters of imperishable beauty of form; he does not belong to the glorious company where reign supreme Milton, Keats, and Tennyson; his place is rather with the Interpreters of Life, with the poets who use their art to express the s.h.i.+ne and shade of life's tragicomedy--to whom the base, the trivial, the frivolous, the grotesque, the absurd seem worth reporting along with the pure, the n.o.ble, and the sublime, since all these elements are alike human. In this wide field of art, with the exception of Shakespeare, who is the exception to everything, the first-born and the last-born of all the great English poets know no equal in the five centuries that rolled between them. The first person to say this publicly was himself a poet and a devoted student of Form--Walter Savage Landor. When he said it, people thought it was mere hyperbole, the stressed language of compliment; but we know now that Landor's words are as true as they are beautiful:

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, No man hath walk'd along our roads with step So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse.

Many critics who are now dead, and some that are yet alive, have predicted the speedy death of Browning's reputation. This prediction seems to afford a certain cla.s.s of critics a calm and holy joy. Some years ago, Mr. James Douglas, of London, solemnly announced the approaching demise. Browning will die, said he, even as Donne is dead, and for the same reason. But Donne is not quite dead.

I must survive a thing ere know it dead.

I think Donne will survive all our contemporary criticisms about him.

Ben Jonson said that Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging. But Donne, though he forgot to keep step with the procession of poets, has survived many poets who tripped a regular measure. He has survived even Pope's "versification" of his poems, one of the most unconsciously humorous things in English literature. Accent alone will not keep a man alive. Which poet of these latter days stands the better chance to remain, Francis Thompson, whose spiritual flame occasionally burned up accent, or Alfred Austin, who studied to preserve accent through a long life? Accent is indeed important; but raiment is of little value unless it clothes a living body. Does Browning's best poetry smell of mortality? Nearly every new novel I read in English has quotations from Browning without the marks, sure evidence that the author has read him and a.s.sumes that the readers of the novel have a like acquaintance. When Maeterlinck wrote his famous play, _Monna Vanna_, he took one of the scenes directly from Browning's _Luria_: he said that he had been inspired by Browning: that Browning is one of the greatest poets that England has ever produced: that to take a scene from him is a kind of public homage, such as we pay to Homer, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare.

With the exception of Shakespeare, any other English poet could now be spared more easily than Browning. For, owing to his aim in poetry, and his success in attaining it, he gave us much vital truth and beauty that we should seek elsewhere in vain; and, as he said in the _Epilogue_ to _Pacchiarotio_, the strong, heady wine of his verse may become sweet in process of time.

III

LYRICS

A pure lyric, as distinguished from other kinds of poetry, narrative, descriptive, epic, dramatic, should have three characteristic qualities, immediately evident on the first reading: it should be short, it should be melodious, it should express only one mood. A very long lyrical poem has never been written, and probably could not be: a lyric without fluent melody is unthinkable: and a poem representing a great variety of moods would more properly be cla.s.sed as descriptive or dramatic than lyrical. Examples of the perfect lyric in nineteenth century English poetry are Sh.e.l.ley's _I Arise From Dreams of Thee_; Keats's _Bright Star_; Byron's _She Walks in Beauty_; Tennyson's _Break, Break, Break_. In each one of these notable ill.u.s.trations the poem is a brief song of pa.s.sion, representing the mood of the singer at that moment.

There are innumerable _lyrical_ pa.s.sages in Browning's long poems, and in his dramatic monologues; there are splendid outbursts of melody. He could not be ranked among the greatest English poets if he had not been one of our greatest singers. But we do not go to Browning primarily for song. He is not one of our greatest lyrical poets. It is certain, however, that he could have been had he chosen to be. He wrote a sufficient number of pure lyrics to prove his quality and capacity. But he was so much more deeply interested in the study of the soul than in the mere expression of beauty--he was so essentially, from _Pauline_ to _Asolando_--a dramatic poet, that his great contribution to literature is seen in profound and subtle interpretations of the human heart. It is fortunate that he made the soul his specialty, because English literature is wonderfully rich in song: there are many poets who can thrill us with music: but there is only one Browning, and there is no group of writers in any literature among which he can be cla.s.sed.

Browning's dramatic lyrics differ from Tennyson's short poems as the lyrics of Donne differed from those of Campion; but Browning occasionally tried his hand at the composition of a pure lyric, as if to say, "You see I can write like this when I choose." Therein lies his real superiority to almost all other English poets: he could do their work, but they could not do his. It is significant that his first poem, _Pauline_, should have deeply impressed two men of precisely opposite types of mind. These two were John Stuart Mill and Dante Gabriel Rossetti--their very names ill.u.s.trating beautifully the difference in their mental tastes and powers. Carlyle called Mill a "logic-chopping engine," because his intellectual processes were so methodical, systematic, hard-headed: Rossetti was a master of color and harmony. Yet Mill found in _Pauline_ the workings of a powerful mind: and Rossetti's sensitive temperament was charmed with the wonderful pictures and lovely melodies it contained.

I like to think that Mill read, paused, re-read and meditated on this pa.s.sage:

I am made up of an intensest life, Of a most clear idea of consciousness Of self, distinct from all its qualities, From all affections, pa.s.sions, feelings, powers; And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all: But linked, in me, to self-supremacy Existing as a centre to all things, Most potent to create and rule and call Upon all things to minister to it; And to a principle of restlessness Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all-- This is myself; and I should thus have been Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.

I like to think that Rossetti was thrilled with this picture of Andromeda:

Andromeda!

And she is with me: years roll, I shall change, But change can touch her not--so beautiful With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze, And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven, Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair, As she awaits the snake on the wet beach By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some G.o.d To save will come in thunder from the stars.

It is rather singular, in view of the great vogue of the sonnet in the nineteenth century, that neither Tennyson nor Browning should have succeeded in this form. The two men wrote very few sonnets--Browning fewer than Tennyson--and neither ever wrote a great one. Longfellow, so inferior in most respects to his two great English contemporaries, was an incomparably superior sonnetteer.

Tennyson's sonnets are all mediocre: Browning did not publish a single sonnet in the final complete edition of his works. He did however print a very few on special occasions, and when he was twenty-two years old, between the composition of _Pauline_ and _Paracelsus_, there appeared in the _Monthly Repository_ a sonnet beginning

Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!)

which is the best example from his pen that has been preserved.

Although he did not think much of it in later years, it has been frequently reprinted, and is worth keeping; both for the ardor of its pa.s.sion, and because it is extraordinary that he should have begun so very early in his career a form of verse that he practically abandoned. This sonnet may have been addressed to a purely imaginary ideal; but it is possible that the young man had in mind Eliza Flower, for whom he certainly had a boyish love, and who was probably the original of Pauline. She and her sister, Sarah Flower, the author of _Nearer, My G.o.d, to Thee_, were both older than Browning, and both his intimate friends during the period of his adolescence.

SONNET

1834

Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!) May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears: I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low Their pa.s.sionate praises reach thee--my cheek wears Alone no wonder when thou pa.s.sest by; Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply To the irrepressible homage which doth glow On every lip but mine: if in thine ears Their accents linger--and thou dost recall Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale, Beside each votarist whose lighted brow Wore wors.h.i.+p like an aureole, "O'er them all My beauty," thou wilt murmur, "did prevail Save that one only:"--Lady, could'st thou know!

It is perhaps characteristic of Browning that this early sonnet should be so irregular in its rime-scheme.

The songs in _Paracelsus_ (1835) prove that Browning was a genuine lyrical poet: the best of them, _Over the Sea Our Galleys Went_, is more properly a dramatic monologue: but the song in the second act, by Aprile (who I think stands for Keats) is a pure lyric, and so are the two stanzas sung by Paracelsus in the fourth act. There are lines here which suggest something of the drowsy music of Tennyson's _Lotos-Eaters_, published in 1832:

.... such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain.

SONGS FROM PARACELSUS

1835

(Aprile sings)

I hear a voice, perchance I heard Long ago, but all too low, So that scarce a care it stirred If the voice were real or no: I heard it in my youth when first The waters of my life outburst: But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear That voice, still low, but fatal-clear-- As if all poets, G.o.d ever meant Should save the world, and therefore lent Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused To do his work, or lightly used Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour, So, mourn cast off by him for ever,-- As if these leaned in airy ring To take me; this the song they sing.

"Lost, lost! yet come, With our wan troop make thy home.

Come, come! for we Will not breathe, so much as breathe Reproach to thee, Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.

So sank we in those old years, We who bid thee, come! thou last Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.

And altogether we, thy peers, Will pardon crave for thee, the last Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast With those who watch but work no more, Who gaze on life but live no more.

Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak The message which our lips, too weak, Refused to utter,--shouldst redeem Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!

Yet we chose thee a birthplace Where the richness ran to flowers: Couldst not sing one song for grace?

Not make one blossom man's and ours?

Must one more recreant to his race Die with unexerted powers, And join us, leaving as he found The world, he was to loosen, bound?

Anguis.h.!.+ ever and for ever; Still beginning, ending never.

Yet, lost and last one, come!

How couldst understand, alas, What our pale ghosts strove to say, As their shades did glance and pa.s.s Before thee night and day?

Thou wast blind as we were dumb: Once more, therefore, come, O come!

How should we clothe, how arm the spirit Shall next thy post of life inherit-- How guard him from thy speedy ruin?

Tell us of thy sad undoing Here, where we sit, ever pursuing Our weary task, ever renewing Sharp sorrow, far from G.o.d who gave Our powers, and man they could not save!"

(Paracelsus sings) Heap ca.s.sia, sandal-buds and stripes Of labdanum, and aloe-b.a.l.l.s, Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes From out her hair: such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain.

And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, long dead, was young.

(Song by Festus)

Thus the Mayne glideth Where my Love abideth.

Sleep's no softer: it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate'er befall, Meandering and musical, Though the n.i.g.g.ard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving gra.s.ses To view the river as it pa.s.ses, Save here and there a scanty patch Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee.

And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, Glad the shelving banks to shun, Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they: Nought disturbs its quiet way, Save some lazy stork that springs, Trailing it with legs and wings, Whom the shy fox from the hill Rouses, creep he ne'er so still.