An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 2

Sh.e.l.ley and Byron were fully charged with the revolutionary spirit of the time. Sh.e.l.ley, of all the poets of his generation, had the most prophetic fervor in regard to the progress of the democratic spirit. All his greatest poems are informed with this fervor, but it is especially exhibited in the 'Prometheus Unbound', which is, in the words of Todhunter, "to all other lyrical poems what the ninth symphony is to all other symphonies; and more than this, for Sh.e.l.ley has here outsoared himself more unquestionably than Beethoven in his last great orchestral work. . . . The t.i.tan Prometheus is the incarnation of the genius of humanity, chained and suffering under the tyranny of the evil principle which at present rules over the world, typified in Jupiter; the name Prometheus, FORESIGHT, connecting him with that poetic imagination which is the true prophetic power, penetrating the mystery of things, because, as Sh.e.l.ley implies, it is a kind of divine Logos incarnate in man--a creative force which dominates nature by acting in harmony with her."

It is, perhaps, more correct to say of Byron, that he was charged with the spirit of revolt rather than with the revolutionary spirit.

The revolutionary spirit was in him indefinite, inarticulate; he offered nothing to put in the place of the social and political evils against which he rebelled. There is nothing CONSTRUCTIVE in his poetry. But if his great pa.s.sion-capital, his keen spiritual susceptibility, and his great power of vigorous expression, had been brought into the service of constructive thought, he might have been a restorative power in his generation.

The greatest loss which English poetry ever sustained, was in the premature death of John Keats. What he would have done had his life been spared, we have an a.s.surance in what he has left us.

He was spiritually const.i.tuted to be one of the subtlest interpreters of the secrets of life that the whole range of English poetry exhibits.

No poet ever more deeply felt "the vital connection of beauty with truth". He realized in himself his idea of the poet expressed in his lines,--

"'Tis the man who with a man Is an equal, be he king, Or poorest of the beggar-clan, Or any other wondrous thing A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato; 'Tis the man who with a bird, Wren, or eagle, finds his way to All its instincts; he hath heard The lion's roaring, and can tell What his h.o.r.n.y throat expresseth, And to him the tiger's yell Comes articulate and presseth On his ear like mother tongue." *

-- * "We often think of Sh.e.l.ley and Keats together, and they seem to have an attraction for minds of the same cast.

They were both exposed to the same influences, those revolutionary influences in literature and religion which inaugurated a new period.

Yet there is a great contrast as well as a great similarity between them, and it is interesting to remark the different spiritual results in the case of these two different minds subjected to conditions so similar in general, though different in detail. Both felt the same need, the need of ESCAPE, desiring to escape from the actual world in which they perceived more evil than good, to some other ideal world which they had to create for themselves. This is the point of their similarity; their need and motive were the same, to escape from the limitations of the present. But they escaped in different directions, Keats into the past where he reconstructed a mythical Greek world after the designs of his own fancy, Sh.e.l.ley into a future where he sought in a new and distant era, in a new and distant world, a refuge from the present. We may compare Keats's 'Hyperion'

with Sh.e.l.ley's 'Prometheus', as both poems touch the same idea-- the dominion of elder G.o.ds usurped by younger, for Prometheus belonged to the elder generation. The impression Keats gives us is that he represents the dethroned G.o.ds in the sad vale, "far from the fiery noon", for the pleasure of moving among them himself, and creates their lonely world as a retreat for his own spirit.

Whereas in the 'Prometheus Unbound' we feel that the scenes laid in ancient days and built on Greek myths, have a direct relation to the destinies of man, and that Sh.e.l.ley went back into the past because he believed it was connected with the future, and because he could use it as an artistic setting for exhibiting an ideal world in the future.

"This problem of escape--to rescue the soul from the clutches of time, 'ineluctabile tempus',--which Keats and Sh.e.l.ley tried to resolve for themselves by creating a new world in the past and the future, met Browning too. The new way which Browning has essayed--the way in which he accepts the present and deals with it, CLOSES with time instead of trying to elude it, and discovers in the struggle that this time, 'ineluctabile tempus', is really a faithful va.s.sal of eternity, and that its limits serve and do not enslave illimitable spirit."

--From a Paper by John B. Bury, B.A., Trin. Coll., Dublin, on Browning's 'Aristophanes' Apology', read at 38th meeting of the Browning Soc., Jan. 29, 1886.

Wordsworth, and the other poets I have named, Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, and Coleridge, made such a protest against authority in poetry as had been made in the 16th century against authority in religion; and for this authority were subst.i.tuted the soul-experiences of the individual poet, who set his verse to the song that was within him, and chose such subjects as would best embody and articulate that song.

But by the end of the first quarter of the present century, the great poetical billow, which was not indeed caused by, but received an impulse from, the great political billow, the French Revolution (for they were cognate or co-radical movements), had quite spent itself, and English poetry was at a comparatively low ebb. The Poetical Revolution had done its work.

A poetical interregnum of a few years' duration followed, in which there appeared to be a great reduction of the spiritual life of which poetry is the outgrowth.

Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, in his article 'On the Early Writings of Robert Browning', in the 'Century' for December, 1881, has characterized this interregnum a little too contemptuously, perhaps. There was, indeed, a great fall in the spiritual tide; but it was not such a dead-low tide as Mr. Gosse would make it.

At length, in 1830, appeared a volume of poems by a young man, then but twenty-one years of age, which distinctly marked the setting in of a new order of things. It bore the following t.i.tle: 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical. By Alfred Tennyson, London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830.' pp. 154.

The volume comprised fifty-three poems, among which were 'The Poet'

and 'The Poet's Mind'. These two poems were emphatically indicative of the high ideal of poetry which had been attained, and to the development of which the band of poets of the preceding generation had largely contributed.

A review of the volume, by John Stuart Mill, then a young man not yet twenty-five years of age, was published in 'The Westminster'

for January, 1831. It bears testimony to the writer's fine insight and sure foresight; and it bears testimony, too, to his high estimate of the function of poetry in this world--an estimate, too, in kind and in degree, not older than this present century.

The review is as important a landmark in the development of poetical criticism, as are the two poems I have mentioned, in the development of poetical ideals, in the nineteenth century.

In the concluding paragraph of the review, Mill says: "A genuine poet has deep responsibilities to his country and the world, to the present and future generations, to earth and heaven. He, of all men, should have distinct and worthy objects before him, and consecrate himself to their promotion. It is thus that he best consults the glory of his art, and his own lasting fame. . . .

Mr. Tennyson knows that "the poet's mind is holy ground"; he knows that the poet's portion is to be

"Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love";

he has shown, in the lines from which we quote, his own just conception of the grandeur of a poet's destiny; and we look to him for its fulfilment. . . . If our estimate of Mr. Tennyson be correct, he too is a poet; and many years hence may be read his juvenile description of that character with the proud consciousness that it has become the description and history of his own works."

Two years later, that is, in 1832 (the volume, however, is antedated 1833), appeared 'Poems by Alfred Tennyson', pp. 163.

In it were contained 'The Lady of Shalott', and the unt.i.tled poems, known by their first lines, 'You ask me why, tho' ill at ease', 'Of old sat Freedom on the Heights', and 'Love thou thy Land, with Love far brought'.

In 'The Lady of Shalott' is mystically shadowed forth the relation which poetic genius should sustain to the world for whose spiritual redemption it labors, and the fatal consequences of its being seduced by the world's temptations, the l.u.s.t of the flesh, and the l.u.s.t of the eyes, and the pride of life.

The other poems, 'You ask me why', 'Of old sat Freedom', and 'Love thou thy land', are important as exponents of what may be called the poet's inst.i.tutional creed. A careful study of his subsequent poetry will show that in these early poems he accurately and distinctly revealed the att.i.tude toward outside things which he has since maintained. He is a good deal of an inst.i.tutional poet, and, as compared with Browning, a STRONGLY inst.i.tutional poet. Browning's supreme and all-absorbing interest is in individual souls. He cares but little, evidently, about inst.i.tutions. At any rate, he gives them little or no place in his poetry. Tennyson is a very decided reactionary product of the revolutionary spirit which inspired some of his poetical predecessors of the previous generation.

He has a horror of the revolutionary. To him, the French Revolution was "the blind hysterics of the Celt", {'In Memoriam', cix.}, and "the red fool-fury of the Seine" {'I. M.', cxxvii.}.

He attaches great importance to the outside arrangements of society for upholding and advancing the individual. He would "make Knowledge circle with the winds", but "her herald, Reverence", must

"fly Before her to whatever sky Bear seed of men and growth of minds."

He has a great regard for precedents, almost AS precedents.

He is emphatically the poet of law and order. All his sympathies are decidedly, but not narrowly, conservative. He is, in short, a choice product of nineteenth century ENGLISH civilization; and his poetry may be said to be the most distinct expression of the refinements of English culture--refinements, rather than the ruder but more vital forms of English strength and power.

All his ideals of inst.i.tutions and the general machinery of life, are derived from England. She is

"the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land where, girt with friends or foes, A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of SETTLED GOVERNMENT, A LAND OF JUST AND OLD RENOWN, WHERE FREEDOM BROADENS SLOWLY DOWN FROM PRECEDENT TO PRECEDENT:

Where faction seldom gathers head, But by degrees to fullness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and s.p.a.ce to work and spread."

But the anti-revolutionary and the inst.i.tutional features of Tennyson's poetry are not those of the higher ground of his poetry.

They are features which, though primarily due, it may be, to the poet's temperament, are indirectly due to the particular form of civilization in which he has lived, and moved, and had his culture, and which he reflects more than any of his poetical contemporaries.

The most emphasized and most vitalized idea, the idea which glints forth everywhere in his poetry, which has the most important bearing on man's higher life, and which marks the height of the spiritual tide reached in his poetry, is, that the highest order of manhood is a well-poised, harmoniously operating duality of the active or intellectual or discursive, and the pa.s.sive or spiritually sensitive. This is the idea which INFORMS his poem of 'The Princess'. It is prominent in 'In Memoriam' and in 'The Idylls of the King'. In 'The Princess', the Prince, speaking of the relations of the s.e.xes, says:--

"in the long years liker must they grow; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto n.o.ble words; And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, Self-reverent each and reverencing each, Distinct in individualities, But like each other ev'n as those who love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men: Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm: Then springs the crowning race of humankind."

To state briefly the cardinal Tennysonian idea, man must realize a WOMANLY MANLINESS, and woman a MANLY WOMANLINESS.

Tennyson presents to us his ideal man in the 109th section of 'In Memoriam'. It is descriptive of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. All that is most characteristic of Tennyson, even his Englishness, is gathered up in this poem of six stanzas.

It is interesting to meet with such a representative and comprehensive bit in a great poet.

"HEART-AFFLUENCE in discursive talk From household fountains never dry; The CRITIC CLEARNESS of an eye, That saw through all the Muses' walk;

SERAPHIC INTELLECT AND FORCE TO SEIZE AND THROW THE DOUBTS OF MAN; IMPa.s.sIONED LOGIC, which outran The bearer in its fiery course;

HIGH NATURE AMOROUS OF THE GOOD, BUT TOUCH'D WITH NO ASCETIC GLOOM; And pa.s.sions pure in snowy bloom Through all the years of April blood."

The first two verses of this stanza also characterize the King Arthur of the 'Idylls of the King'. *1* In the next stanza we have the poet's inst.i.tutional Englishness:--

"A love of freedom rarely felt, Of freedom in her regal seat Of England; not the school-boy heat, The blind hysterics of the Celt;

And MANHOOD FUSED WITH FEMALE GRACE *2*

In such a sort, the child would twine A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face;

All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have look'd on; if they look'd in vain, My shame is greater who remain, Nor let thy wisdom make me wise."

-- *1* See 'The Holy Grail', the concluding thirty-two verses, beginning: "And spake I not too truly, O my Knights", and ending "ye have seen that ye have seen".

*2* The idea of 'The Princess'.