Chapter 6

"Of all thought, said and acted, then went homeAnd wrote it fully to our Lord the King—"

"Of all thought, said and acted, then went home

And wrote it fully to our Lord the King—"

we have, making full allowance for the imaginary dramatic circumstances, a very good likeness of a poet of Browning's order. Another poem, "Transcendentalism," is a slighter piece of humorous criticism, possibly self-criticism, addressed to one who "speaks" his thoughts instead of "singing" them. Both have a penetrating quality of beauty in familiarity.

BeforeandAfter, which mean before and after the duel, realise between them a single and striking situation.Beforeis spoken by a friend of the wronged man;Afterby the wronged man himself. The latter is not excelled by any poem of Browning's in its terrible conciseness, the intensity of its utterance of stifled passion.

"AFTER."Take the cloak from his face, and at firstLet the corpse do its worst!"How he lies in his rights of a man!Death has done all death can.And, absorbed in the new life he leads,He recks not, he heedsNor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strikeOn his senses alike,And are lost in the solemn and strangeSurprise of the change.Ha, what avails death to eraseHis offence, my disgrace?I would we were boys as of oldIn the field, by the fold:His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn,Were so easily borne!I stand here now, he lies in his place:Cover the face!"

"AFTER.

"Take the cloak from his face, and at firstLet the corpse do its worst!

"Take the cloak from his face, and at first

Let the corpse do its worst!

"How he lies in his rights of a man!Death has done all death can.And, absorbed in the new life he leads,He recks not, he heedsNor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strikeOn his senses alike,And are lost in the solemn and strangeSurprise of the change.

"How he lies in his rights of a man!

Death has done all death can.

And, absorbed in the new life he leads,

He recks not, he heeds

Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike

On his senses alike,

And are lost in the solemn and strange

Surprise of the change.

Ha, what avails death to eraseHis offence, my disgrace?I would we were boys as of oldIn the field, by the fold:His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn,Were so easily borne!I stand here now, he lies in his place:Cover the face!"

Ha, what avails death to erase

His offence, my disgrace?

I would we were boys as of old

In the field, by the fold:

His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn,

Were so easily borne!

I stand here now, he lies in his place:

Cover the face!"

I know of no piece of verse in the language which has more of the quality and hush of awe in it than this little fragment of eighteen lines.

Instans Tyrannus[34](the Threatening Tyrant) recalls by its motive, however unlike it may be as a poem, theSoliloquy of the divish Cloister. The situations are widely different, but the root of each is identical. In both is developed the mood of passive or active hate, arising from mere instinctive dislike. But while in the earlier poem the theme is treated with boisterous sardonic humour, it is here embodied in the grave figure of a stern, single-minded, relentless hater, a tyrant in both senses of the term. Another poem, representing an act of will, though here it is love, not hate, that impels, isMesmerism. The intense absorption, the breathless eagerness of the mesmerist, are rendered in a really marvellous way by the breathless and yet measured race of the verses: fifteen stanzas succeed one another without a single full-stop, or a real pause in sense or sound. The beautiful and significant little poem calledThe Patriot: an old Story, is a narrative and parable at once, and only too credible and convincing as each.Respectabilityholds in its three stanzas all that is vital and enviable in the real "Bohemia," and is the first of several poems of escape, which culminate inFifine at the Fair. Both here and in another short suggestive poem,A Light Woman(which might be called the fourth act of a tragedy), the situation is outlined like a silhouette. Equally graphic, in the more ordinary sense of the term, is the picturesque and whimsical view of town and country life taken by a frivolous Italian person of quality in the poem namedUp at a Villa—Down in the City, "a masterpiece of irony and of description," as an Italian critic has defined it.

Of the wealth of lyrics and short poems no adequate count can here be made. Yet, I cannot pass without a word, if only in a word may I indicate, the admirable craftsmanship and playful dexterity of the lines onA Pretty Woman; the pathetic feeling and the exquisite and novel music ofLove in a Life and Life in a Love; the tense emotion, the suppressed and hopeful passion, ofIn Three Days, and the sad and haunting song ofIn a Year, with its winding and liquid melody, its mournful and wondering lament over love forgotten; the rich and marvellously modulated music, the glowing colour, the vivid and passionate fancy, ofWomen and Roses; the fresh felicity of "De Gustibus," with its enthusiasm for Italy scarcely less fervid than the English enthusiasm of theHome-Thoughts; the quaint humour and pregnant simplicity of the admirable little parable ofThe Twins; the sympathetic charm and light touch ofMisconceptions, and the pretty figurative fancy ofMy Star; the strong, sad, suggestive little poem namedOne Way of Love, with its delicately-wrought companionAnother Way of Love, the former a love-lyric to be classed withThe Lost MistressandThe Last Ride Together; and, finally, theepilogue to the first volume and a late poem in the second:Memorabilia, a tribute to Shelley, full of grateful remembrance and admiring love, significant among the few personal utterances of the poet, and the not less lovely poem and only less fervent tribute to Keats, the sumptuous, gorgeous, and sardonic lines onPopularity. A careful study or even, one would think, a careless perusal, of but a few of the poems named above, should be enough to show, once and for all, the infinite richness and variety of Browning's melody, and his complete mastery over the most simple and the most intricate lyric measures. As an example of the finest artistic simplicity, rich with restrained pathos and quiet with keen tension of feeling, we may choose the following.

"ONE WAY OF LOVEI.All June I bound the rose in sheaves.Now, rose by rose, I strip the leavesAnd strew them where Pauline may pass.She will not turn aside? Alas!Let them lie. Suppose they die?The chance was they might take her eye.II.How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string; fold music's wing:Suppose Pauline had bade me sing?III.My whole life long I learned to love.This hour my utmost art I proveAnd speak my passion—heaven or hell?She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!Love who may—I still can say,Those who win heaven, blest are they!"

"ONE WAY OF LOVE

All June I bound the rose in sheaves.Now, rose by rose, I strip the leavesAnd strew them where Pauline may pass.She will not turn aside? Alas!Let them lie. Suppose they die?The chance was they might take her eye.

All June I bound the rose in sheaves.

Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves

And strew them where Pauline may pass.

She will not turn aside? Alas!

Let them lie. Suppose they die?

The chance was they might take her eye.

II.

How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string; fold music's wing:Suppose Pauline had bade me sing?

How many a month I strove to suit

These stubborn fingers to the lute!

To-day I venture all I know.

She will not hear my music? So!

Break the string; fold music's wing:

Suppose Pauline had bade me sing?

III.

My whole life long I learned to love.This hour my utmost art I proveAnd speak my passion—heaven or hell?She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!Love who may—I still can say,Those who win heaven, blest are they!"

My whole life long I learned to love.

This hour my utmost art I prove

And speak my passion—heaven or hell?

She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!

Love who may—I still can say,

Those who win heaven, blest are they!"

IN A BALCONY.[35]

[Written at Bagni di Lucca, 1853; published inMen and Women, above; reprinted inPoetical Works, 1863, under a separate heading;id., 1889 (Vol. VII. pp. 1-41). Performed at the Browning Society's Third Annual Entertainment, Prince's Hall, Piccadilly, Nov. 28, 1884, and by the English Drama Society at the Victoria Hall, June 8, 1905.]

The dramatic scene ofIn a Balconyis the last of the works written in dialogue. We have seen, in tracing the course of the plays fromStraffordtoA Soul's Tragedy, how the playwright gave place to the poet; how the stage construction, the brisk and interchanged dialogue of the earlier dramas, gradually and inevitably developed into the more subtle, the more lengthy dialogue, which itself approached more and more nearly to monologue, of the later ones.In a Balcony, written eight years later thanA Soul's Tragedy, has more affinity with it, in form at least, than with any other of the plays. But while the situation there was purely intellectual and moral, it is here passionate and highly-wrought, to a degree never before reached, except in the crowning scene ofPippa Passes. We must go to the greatest among the Elizabethans to exceed that; we must turn toLe Roi s'amuseto equal this.

The situation is, in one sense, extremely subtle; in another, remarkably simple. The action takes place within a few hours, on a balcony at night. Norbert and Constance are two lovers. Norbert is in the service of a certain Queen, to whom he has, by his diplomatic skill and labour, rendered great services. His aim, all the while, though unknown, as he thinks, to her, has been the hope of winning Constance, the Queen's cousin and dependant. He is now about to claim her as his recompense; but Constance, fearing for the result, persuades him, reluctant though he is, to ask in a roundabout way, so as to flatter or touch the Queen. He over-acts his part. The Queen, a heart-starved and now ageing woman, believes that he loves her, and responds to him with the passion of a long-thwarted nature. She announces the wonderful news, with more than the ecstasy of a girl, to Constance. Constance resolves to resign her lover, for his good and the Queen's, and, when he appears, she endeavours to make him understand and enter into her plot. But he cannot and will not see it. In the presence of the Queen he declares his love for Constance, and for her alone. The Queen goes out, in white silence. The lovers embrace in new knowledge and fervour of love. Measured steps are heard within, and we know that the guard is approaching.

Each of the three characters is admirably delineated. Norbert is a fine, strong, solid, noble character, without subtlety or mixture of motives. He loves Constance: he knows that his love is returned: he is resolved to win her hand. From first to last he is himself, honest, straightforward, single-minded, passionate; presentingthe strongest contrast to Constance's feminine over-subtlety. Constance is more, very much more, of a problem: "a character," as Mr. Wedmore has admirably said, "peculiarly wily for goodness, curiously rich in resource for unalloyed and inexperienced virtue." Does her proposal to relinquish Norbert in favour of the Queen show her to have been lacking in love for him? It has been said, on the one hand, that her act was "noble and magnanimous," on the other hand, that the act proved her nature to be "radically insincere and inconstant." Probably the truth lies between these two extremes. Her love, we cannot doubt, was true and intense up to the measure of her capacity; but her nature was, instinctively, less outspoken and truthful than Norbert's, more subtle, more reasoning. At the critical moment she is seized by a whirl of emotions, and, with very feminine but singularly unloverlike instinct, she resolves, as she would phrase it, to sacrificeherself, not seeing that she is insulting her lover by the very notion of his accepting such a sacrifice. Her character has not the pure and steadfast nobility of Norbert's, but it has the capacity of devotion, and it is genuinely human. The Queen, unlike Constance, but like Norbert, is simple and single in nature. She is a tragic and intense figure, at once pathetic and terrible. I am not aware that the peculiarly pregnant motive: the hidden longing for love in a starved and stunted nature, clogged with restrictions of state and ceremony, harassed and hampered by circumstances and by the weight of advancing years; the passionate longing suddenly met, as it seems, with reward, and breaking out into a great flame of love and ardour, only to be rudely and finally quenched: Iam not aware that this motive has ever elsewhere been worked out in dramatic poetry. As here developed, it is among the great situations in literature.

The verse in which this little tragedy is written has, perhaps, more flexibility than that of any of the formal dramas. It has a strong and fine harmony, a weight and measure, and above all that pungent naturalness which belongs to the period ofAndrea del Sartoand the other great monologues.

FOOTNOTES:

[29]

The picture which Lippo promises to paint (ll. 347-389) is an exact description of hisCoronation of the Virgin, in the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Florence.

[30]

Mrs Foster's translation (Bohn).

[31]

Baldassarre Galuppi, surnamed Buranello (1706-1785), was a Venetian composer of some distinction. "He was an immensely prolific composer," says Vernon Lee, "and abounded in melody, tender, pathetic, brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally rose to the highest beauty."—Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, p. 101.

[32]

Handbook, p. 266. The poem was written at Paris, January 3, 1852.

[33]

Mrs Orr,Handbook, p. 201.

[34]

The poem was suggested by the opening of the third ode of the third Book of Horace: "Justum et tenacem propositi virum."

[35]

It will be more convenient to treatIn a Balconyin a separate section than under the general heading ofMen and Women, for it is, to all intents and purposes, an independent work of another order.

16. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

[Published in 1864 (Poetical Works, 1889, Vol. VII., pp. 43-255).]

Dramatis Personæ, likeMen and Women(which it followed after an interval of nine years) is a collection of dramatic monologues, in each of which it is attempted to delineate a single character or a single mood by setting the "imaginary person" in some revealing situation. Of the two possible methods, speech and soliloquy, Browning for the most part prefers the former. InDramatis Personæ, however, he recurs, rather more frequently than usual, to the latter; and the situations imaged are usually suggestive rather than explicit, more incomplete and indirect than those in theMen and Women. As an ingenious critic said, shortly after the volume was published, "Mr Browning lets us overhear a part of the drama, generally a soliloquy, and we must infer the rest. Had he to give the story ofHamlet, he would probably embody it in three stanzas, the first beginning, 'O that this too too solid flesh would melt!' the second 'To be or not to be, that is the question;' and the third, 'Lookhere upon this picture, and on that!' From these disjointed utterances the reader would have to construct the story." Here our critic's clever ingenuity carries him a little too far; but there is some truth in his definition or description of the special manner which characterises such poems asToo Late, orThe Worst of It. But not merely the manner of presentment, the substance, and also the style and versification, have undergone a change during the long-silent years which lie betweenMen and WomenandDramatis Personæ. The first note of change, of the change which makes us speak of earlier and later work, is here sounded. From 1833 up to 1855 forms a single period of steady development, of gradual and unswerving ascent.Dramatis Personæstands on the border line between this period and another, the "later period," which more decisively begins withThe Ring and the Book. Still, the first note of divergence is certainly sounded here. I might point to the profound intellectual depth of certain pieces as its characteristic, or, equally, to the traces here and there of an apparent carelessness of workmanship; or, yet again, to the new and very marked partiality for scenes and situations of English and modern rather than of mediæval and foreign life.

The larger part of the volume consists of dramatic monologues. Three only are in blank verse; the greater number in varied lyric measures. The first of these, and the longest,James Lee, as it was first called,James Lee's Wife[36]as it is now more appropriately named, isaLieder Kreis, or cycle of songs, nine in number, which reveal, in "tragic hints," not by means of a connected narrative, the history of an unhappy marriage. There is nothing in it of heroic action or suffering; it is one of those old stories always new which are always tragic to one at least of the actors in them, and which may be tragic or trivial in record, according as the artist is able to mould his material. Each of the sections shows us a mood, signalized by some slight link of circumstance which may the better enable us to grasp it. The development of disillusion, the melancholy progress of change, is finely indicated in the successive stages of this lyric sequence, from the first clear strain of believing love (shaken already by a faint tremor of fear), through gradual alienation and inevitable severance, to the final resolved parting. This poem is worthy of notice as the only one in which Browning has employed the sequence form; almost the only instance, indeed, in which he has structurally varied his metre in the course of a poem.

James Lee's Wifeis written in the form of soliloquy, or reflection. In two other poems, closely allied to it in sentiment,The Worst of itandToo Late, intense feeling expresses itself, though in solitude, as if the object of emotion were present; each is, in great part, a mental appeal to some one loved and lost. InJames Lee's Wifea woman was the speaker, and the burden of her lament was mere estrangement.The Worst of itandToo Lateare both spoken by men. The former is the utterance of a man whose wife has been false to him; the latter of a man whose loved one is dead. But in each case the situation is further complicated. Thewoman over whose loss of virtue her forsaken husband mourns with passionate anguish and unavailing bitterness of regret, has been to him, whom she now leaves for another, an image of purity: her love and influence have lifted him from the mire, and "the Worst of it," the last pang which he cannot nerve himself to endure, is the knowledge that she had saved him, and, partly at least through him, ruined herself. The poem is one of the most passionate and direct of Browning's dramatic lyrics: it is thrillingly intense and alive; and the swift force and tremulous eagerness of its very original rhythm and metre translate its sense into sound with perfect fitness. Similar in cadence, though different in arrangement, is the measure ofToo Late, with its singularly constructed stanza of two quatrains, followed respectively by two couplets, which together made another quatrain. It is worth noticing how admirably and uniformly Browning contrives to connect, in sound, the two halves of the broken quatrains, placing them so as to complete each other, and relieve our ear of the sense of distance. The poem is spoken by a lover who was neither rejected nor accepted: like the lover of Evelyn Hope, he never told his love. His Edith married another, a heartless and soulless lay-figure of a poet (or so at least his rival regards him), and now she is dead. His vague but vivid hopes of some future chance to love her and be loved; the dull rebellion of rashly reasoning sorrow; the remembrance, the repentance, the regret; are all poured out with pathetic naturalness.

These three poems are soliloquies;Dîs aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours, a poem closely akin in sentiment and style, recurs to the more frequent and perhapspreferable manner of speech to an imagined listener. It is written in that favourite stanza of five lines, on which Browning has played so many variations: here, perhaps, in the internal rhyme so oddly placed, the newest and most ingenious of all. The sentiment and situation are the exact complement or contrast of those expressed inBy the Fireside. There, fate and nature have brought to a crisis the latent love of two persons: the opportunity is seized, and the crown of life obtained. Here, in circumstances singularly similar, the vital moment is let slip, the tide isnottaken at the turn. And ten years afterwards, when the famous poet and the girl whom he all but let himself love, meet in a Paris drawing-room, and one of them tells the old tale over for the instruction of both, she can point out, with bitter earnestness and irony (and a perfect little touch of feminine nature) his fatal mistake.

Youth and Artis a slighter and more humorous sketch, with a somewhat similar moral. It has wise humour, sharp characterisation, and ballad-like simplicity. Still more perfect a poem, still more subtle, still more Heinesque, if it were not better than Heine, is the little piece calledConfessions. The pathetic, humorous, rambling snatch of final memory in the dying man, addressed, by a delightful irony, to the attendant clergyman, has a sort of grim ecstasy, and the end is one of the most triumphant things in this kind of poetry.

"CONFESSIONS.I.What is he buzzing in my ears?'Now that I come to die.Do I view the world as a vale of tears?'Ah, reverend sir, not I!II.What I viewed there once, what I view againWhere the physic bottles standOn the table's edge,—is a suburb lane,With a wall to my bedside hand.III.That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,From a house you could descryO'er the garden wall; is the curtain blueOr green to a healthy eye?IV.To mine, it serves for the old June weatherBlue above lane and wall;And that farthest bottle labelled 'Ether'Is the house o'er-topping all.V.At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper,There watched for me, one June,A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,My poor mind's out of tune.VI.Only, there was a way ... you creptClose by the side, to dodgeEyes in the house, two eyes except:They styled their house 'The Lodge.'VII.What right had a lounger up their lane?But, by creeping very close,With the good wall's help,—their eyes might strainAnd stretch themselves to Oes,VIII.Yet never catch her and me together,As she left the attic, there,By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,'And stole from stair to stair,IX.And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,We loved, sir,—used to meet:How sad and bad and mad it was—But then, how it was sweet!"

"CONFESSIONS.

What is he buzzing in my ears?'Now that I come to die.Do I view the world as a vale of tears?'Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What is he buzzing in my ears?

'Now that I come to die.

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?'

Ah, reverend sir, not I!

II.

What I viewed there once, what I view againWhere the physic bottles standOn the table's edge,—is a suburb lane,With a wall to my bedside hand.

What I viewed there once, what I view again

Where the physic bottles stand

On the table's edge,—is a suburb lane,

With a wall to my bedside hand.

III.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,From a house you could descryO'er the garden wall; is the curtain blueOr green to a healthy eye?

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,

From a house you could descry

O'er the garden wall; is the curtain blue

Or green to a healthy eye?

IV.

To mine, it serves for the old June weatherBlue above lane and wall;And that farthest bottle labelled 'Ether'Is the house o'er-topping all.

To mine, it serves for the old June weather

Blue above lane and wall;

And that farthest bottle labelled 'Ether'

Is the house o'er-topping all.

At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper,There watched for me, one June,A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,My poor mind's out of tune.

At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper,

There watched for me, one June,

A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,

My poor mind's out of tune.

VI.

Only, there was a way ... you creptClose by the side, to dodgeEyes in the house, two eyes except:They styled their house 'The Lodge.'

Only, there was a way ... you crept

Close by the side, to dodge

Eyes in the house, two eyes except:

They styled their house 'The Lodge.'

VII.

What right had a lounger up their lane?But, by creeping very close,With the good wall's help,—their eyes might strainAnd stretch themselves to Oes,

What right had a lounger up their lane?

But, by creeping very close,

With the good wall's help,—their eyes might strain

And stretch themselves to Oes,

VIII.

Yet never catch her and me together,As she left the attic, there,By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,'And stole from stair to stair,

Yet never catch her and me together,

As she left the attic, there,

By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,'

And stole from stair to stair,

IX.

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,We loved, sir,—used to meet:How sad and bad and mad it was—But then, how it was sweet!"

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,

We loved, sir,—used to meet:

How sad and bad and mad it was—

But then, how it was sweet!"

A Likenessforms a third, and a good third, to these two fine and subtle studies of modern English life. It is one of those poems which, because they seem simple and superficial, and can be galloped off the tongue in a racing jingle, we are apt to underrate or overlook. Yet it would be difficult to find a more vivid bit ofgenrepainting than the three-panelled picture in this single frame.

The three blank verse poems which complete the series of purely dramatic pieces,A Death in the Desert, Caliban upon SetebosandMr. Sludge, "The Medium"are more elaborate than any yet named. They follow, to a considerable extent, the form of the blank verse monologues which are the glory ofMen and Women. Alike in their qualities and defects they represent a further step in development. The next step will lead to the elaborate and extended monologues which comprise the greater part of Browning's later works.

ADeath in the Desertis an argument in a dramatic frame-work. The situation imaged is that of the mysterious death of St. John in extreme old age. The background to the last utterance of the apostle is painted withmarvellous brilliance and tenderness: every circumstance is conceived and represented in that pictorial style, in which a word is equal to a touch of the brush of a great painter. But, delicately as the circumstances and surroundings are indicated, it is as an argument that the poem is mainly left to exist. The bearing of this argument on contemporary theories may to some appear a merit, to others a blemish. To make the dying John refute Strauss or Renan, handling their propositions with admirable dialectical skill, is certainly, on the face of it, somewhat hazardous. But I can see no real incongruity in imputing to the seer of Patmos a prophetic insight into the future, no real inconsequence in imagining the opponent of Cerinthus spending his last breath in the defence of Christian truth against a foreseen scepticism. In style, the poem a little recallsCleon; with less of harmonious grace and clear classic outline, it possesses a certain stilled sweetness, a meditative tenderness, all its own, and certainly appropriate to the utterance of the "beloved disciple."

Caliban upon Setebos; or,Natural Theology In the Island,[37]is more of a creation, and a much greater poem, thanA Death in the Desert. It is sometimes forgotten that the grotesque has its own region in art. The region of the grotesque has been well defined, in connection with this poem, in a paper read by Mr. Cotter Morison before the Browning Society. "Its proper province," he writes, "would seem to be the exhibition of fanciful power by the artist; not beauty or truth in the literal sense at all, but inventive affluence of unreal yet absurdly comic forms,with just a flavour of the terrible added, to give a grim dignity, and save from the triviality of caricature."[38]With the exception ofThe Heretic's Tragedy,Caliban upon Setebosis probably the finest piece of grotesque art in the language. Browning's Caliban, unlike Shakespeare's, has no active part to play: if he has ever seen Stephano and Trinculo, he has forgotten it. He simply sprawls on the ground "now that the heat of day is best," and expounds for himself, for his own edification, his system of Natural Theology. I think Huxley has said that the poem is a truly scientific representation of the development of religious ideas in primitive man. It needed the subtlest of poets to apprehend and interpret the undeveloped ideas and sensations of a rudimentary and transitionally human creature like Caliban, to turn his dumb stirrings of quaint fancies into words, and to do all this without a discord. The finest poetical effect is in the close: it is indeed one of the finest effects, climaxes,surprises, in literature. Caliban has been venturing to talk rather disrespectfully of his God; believing himself overlooked, he has allowed himself to speak out his mind on religious questions. He chuckles to himself in safe self-complacency. All at once—

"What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes,There scuds His raven that hath told Him all!It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The windShoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,And fast invading fires begin! White blaze—A tree's head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there,His thunder follows! Fool to jibe at Him!Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,Will let those quails fly, will not eat this monthOne little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!"

"What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!

Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes,

There scuds His raven that hath told Him all!

It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind

Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,

And fast invading fires begin! White blaze—

A tree's head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there,

His thunder follows! Fool to jibe at Him!

Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!

'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,

Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month

One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!"

Mr. Sludge, "The Medium"is equally remote from both the other poems in blank verse. It is a humorous and realistic tale of modern spiritualism, suggested, it is said, by the life and adventures of the American medium, Home. LikeBishop Blougram, it is at once an exposure and an apologia. As a piece of analytic portraiture it would be difficult to surpass; and it is certainly a fault on the right side if the poet has endowed his precious blackguard with a dialectical head hardly to be expected on such shoulders; if, in short, he has made him nearly as clever as himself. When the critics complain that the characters of a novelist are too witty, the characters of a poet too profound, one cannot but feel thankful that it is once in a while possible for such strictures to be made. The style ofMr. Sludgeis the very acme of colloquialism. It is not "what is commonly understood by poetry," certainly: but is it not poetry, all the same? If such a character as Sludge should be introduced into poetry at all, it is certain that no more characteristic expression could have been found for him. But should he be dealt with? We limit our poetry nowadays, to the length of our own tether; if we are unable to bring beauty out of every living thing, merely because it is alive, and because nature is beautiful in every movement, is it our own fault or nature's? Shakespeare and his age trusted nature, and were justified; in our own age only Browning has wholly trusted nature.

Scarcely second in importance to the dramatic group, comes the group of lyrical poems, some of which areindeed, formally dramatic, that is, the "utterance of so many imaginary persons," but still in general tone and effect lyrical and even personal.Abt Voglerfor instance, andRabbi ben Ezra, might no doubt be considered instances of "vicarious thinking" on behalf of the modern German composer and the mediæval Jewish philosopher. But in neither case is there any distinct dramatic intention. The one is a deep personal utterance on music, the other a philosophy of life. But before I touch on these, which, withProspice, are the most important and impressive of the remaining poems, I should name the two or three lesser pieces, the exquisite and pregnant little elegy of love and mourning,May and Death; A Face, with its perfect clearness and fineness of suggestive portraiture, as lovely as the vignettes of Palma inSordello, or as a real picture of the "Tuscan's early art"; the two octaves (not in the first edition) on Woolner's group of Constance and Arthur (Deaf and Dumb) and Sir Frederick Leighton's picture ofEurydice and Orpheus; and the two semi-narrative poems,Gold Hair: a Story of Pornic, andApparent Failure, the former a vivid rendering of the strange story told in Brittany of a beautiful girl-miser, the latter a record and its stinging and consoling moral ("Poor men, God made, and all for that!") of a visit that Browning paid in 1850 to the Morgue.

Abt Vogler[39]("after he has been extemporizing uponthe musical instrument of his invention") is an utterance on music which perhaps goes further than any attempt which has ever been made in verse to set forth the secret of the most sacred and illusive of the arts. Only the wonderful lines in theMerchant of Venicecome anywhere near it. The wonder and beauty of it grow on one, as the wonder and beauty of a sky, of a sea, of a landscape, beautiful indeed and wonderful from the first, become momentarily more evident, intense and absorbing. Life, religion and music, theGanzen, Guten, Schönenof existence, are combined in threefold unity, apprehended and interpreted in their essential spirit.

"Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same!Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor powerWhose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodistWhen eternity affirms the conception of an hour.The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-by.And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidenceFor the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?Why rushed the discord in, but that harmony should be prized?Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."

"Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?

Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same!

Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor powerWhose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodistWhen eternity affirms the conception of an hour.The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-by.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidenceFor the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?Why rushed the discord in, but that harmony should be prized?Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence

For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discord in, but that harmony should be prized?

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:

But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."

InRabbi ben EzraBrowning has crystallized his religious philosophy into a shape of abiding beauty. It has been called, not rashly, the noblest of modern religious poems. Alike in substance and in form it belongs to the highest order of meditative poetry; and it has, in Browning's work, an almost unique quality of grave beauty, of severe restraint, of earnest and measured enthusiasm. What thePsalm of Lifeis to the people who do not think,Rabbi ben Ezramight and should be to those who do: a light through the darkness, a lantern of guidance and a beacon of hope, to the wanderers lost and weary in theselva selvaggia. It is one of those poems that mould character. I can give only one or two of its most characteristic verses.

"Not on the vulgar massCalled 'work' must sentence pass,Things done, that took the eye and had the price;O'er which, from level stand,The low world laid its hand,Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:But all, the world's coarse thumbAnd finger failed to plumb,So passed in making up the main account;All instincts immature,All purposes unsure,That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:Thoughts hardly to be packedInto a narrow act,Fancies that broke through language and escaped;All I could never be,All, men ignored in me.This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.So, take and use Thy work:Amend what flaws may lurk,What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!My times be in Thy hand!Perfect the cup as planned!Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"

"Not on the vulgar mass

Called 'work' must sentence pass,

Things done, that took the eye and had the price;

O'er which, from level stand,

The low world laid its hand,

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumbAnd finger failed to plumb,So passed in making up the main account;All instincts immature,All purposes unsure,That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

But all, the world's coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb,

So passed in making up the main account;

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packedInto a narrow act,Fancies that broke through language and escaped;All I could never be,All, men ignored in me.This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

All I could never be,

All, men ignored in me.

This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

So, take and use Thy work:Amend what flaws may lurk,What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!My times be in Thy hand!Perfect the cup as planned!Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"

So, take and use Thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"

The emotion and the measure ofRabbi ben Ezrahave the chastened, sweet gravity of wise old age.Prospicehas all the impetuous blood and fierce lyric fire of militant manhood. It is a cry of passionate exultation and exaltation in the very face of death: a war-cry of triumph over the last of foes. I would like to connect it with the quotation from Dante which Browning, in a published letter, tells us that he wrote in his wife's Testament after her death: "Thus I believe, thus Iaffirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pass to another better, there, where that lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured." IfRabbi ben Ezrahas been excelled as a Song of Life, thenProspicemay have been excelled as a Hymn of Death.

"PROSPICE.Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,The mist in my face,When the snows begin, and the blasts denoteI am nearing the place,The power of the night, the press of the storm,The post of the foe;Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,Yet the strong man must go;For the journey is done and the summit attained,And the barriers fall,Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,The reward of it all.I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,The best and the last!I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,And bade me creep past.No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peersThe heroes of old,Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrearsOf pain, darkness and cold.For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,The black minute's at end,And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,Shall dwindle, shall blend,Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,Then a light, then thy breast,O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,And with God be the rest!"

"PROSPICE.

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,The mist in my face,When the snows begin, and the blasts denoteI am nearing the place,The power of the night, the press of the storm,The post of the foe;Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,Yet the strong man must go;For the journey is done and the summit attained,And the barriers fall,Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,The reward of it all.I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,The best and the last!I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,And bade me creep past.No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peersThe heroes of old,Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrearsOf pain, darkness and cold.For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,The black minute's at end,And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,Shall dwindle, shall blend,Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,Then a light, then thy breast,O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,And with God be the rest!"

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

Yet the strong man must go;

For the journey is done and the summit attained,

And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,

The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,

The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,

And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

Of pain, darkness and cold.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,

The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,

Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be the rest!"

Last of all comes the final word, the summary or conclusion of the whole matter, in the threefold speech oftheEpilogue, a comprehensive and suggestive vision of the religious life of humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[36]

The first six stanzas of the sixth section of this poem, the splendid song of the wind, were published in a magazine, asLines, in 1836. Parts II. & III., of Section VIII. (except the last two lines) were added to the poem in 1868.

[37]

The poem was originally preceded by the text, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (Ps.1. 21).

[38]

Browning Society's Papers, Part V., p. 493.

[39]

The Abt or Abbé George Joseph Vogler (born at Würzburg, Bavaria, in 1749, died at Darmstadt, 1824) was a composer, professor, kapelmeister and writer on music. Among his pupils were Weber and Meyerbeer. The "musical instrument of his invention" was called an orchestrion. "It was," says Sir G. Grove, "a very compact organ, in which four keyboards of five octaves each, and a pedal board of thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a cube of nine feet."—(See Miss Marx's "Account of Abbé Vogler," in theBrowning Society's Papers, Part III., p. 339).

17. THE RING AND THE BOOK.

[Published, in 4 vols., in 1868-9: Vol. I., November, 1868; Vol. II., December, 1868; Vol. III., January, 1869; Vol. IV., February, 1869. In 12 Books: 1., The Ring and the Book; II., Half-Rome; III., The Other Half-Rome; IV., Tertium Quid; V., Count Guido Franceschini; VI., Giuseppe Caponsacchi; VII., Pompilia; VIII., Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum Procurator; IX., Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus; X., The Pope; XI., Guido; XII., The Book and the Ring. (Poetical Works, 1889; Vols. VIII.-X.)]

The Ring and the Bookis at once the largest and the greatest of Browning's works, the culmination of his dramatic method, and the turning-point, more decisively thanDramatis Personæ, of his style. It consists of twelve books, the first and last being of the nature of Preface and Appendix. It embodies a single story, told ten times, each time from an individual standpoint, by nine different persons (one of them speaking twice), besides a summary of the story by the poet in the first book, and some additional particulars in the last. The method thus adopted is at once absolutely original and supremely difficult. To tell the same story, without mere repetition, no less than ten times over, to make each telling at once the same and new, a record of the same facts but of independent impressions, to convey by means of each monologue a sense of the speaker not less vivid and life-like than by the ordinary dramatic method, with a yet more profound measure of analytic and psychologicaltruth, and finally to group all these figures with unerring effect of prominence and subordination, to fuse and mould all these parts into one living whole is, as atour de force, unique, and it is not only atour de force.The Ring and the Book, besides being the longest poetical work of the century, must be ranked among the greatest poems in our literature: it has a spiritual insight, human science, dramatic and intellectual and moral force, a strength and grip, a subtlety, a range and variety of genius and of knowledge, hardly to be paralleled outside Shakespeare.

It has sometimes been said that the style of Browning is essentially undramatic, that Pompilia, Guido, and the lawyers all talk in the same way, that is, like Browning. As a matter of fact nothing is more remarkable than the variety of style, the cunning adjustment of language and of rhythm to the requirements of every speaker. From the general construction of the rhythm to the mere similies and figures of speech employed in passing, each monologue is absolutely individual, and, though each monologue contains a highly finished portrait of the character whose name it bears, these portraits, so far from being disconnected or independent, are linked together in as close an interdependence as the personages of a regularly constructed drama. The effect of the reiterated story, told in some new fashion by each new teller of it, has been compared with that of a great fugue, blending, with the threads of its crossing and recrossing voices, a single web of harmony. The "theme" is Pompilia; around her the whole action circles. As, inPippa Passes, the mere passing of an innocent child, her unconscious influence on those on whom her songbreaks in at a moment of crisis, draws together the threads of many stories, so Pompilia, with hardly more consciousness of herself, makes and unmakes the lives and characters of those about her. The same sweet rectitude and purity of nature serve to call out the latent malignity of Guido and the slumbering chivalry of Caponsacchi. Without her, the one might have remained a "petit mâitrepriestling;" the other merely a soured, cross-grained, impecunious country squire: Rome would have had no tragedy to talk about, nor we this book to read. It is in Pompilia that all the threads of action meet: she is the heroine, as neither Guido nor Caponsacchi can be called the hero.

The story ofThe Ring and the Book, like those of so many of the greatest works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, comes to us from Italy. Unlike Shakespeare's, however, but like one at least of Webster's two masterpieces, it is no legend, but the true story of a Roman murder-case, found (in all its main facts and outlines) in a square old yellow book, small-quarto size, part print, part manuscript, which Browning picked up for eightpence on a second-hand stall in the Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence, one day in June, 1865. The book was entitled (in Latin which Browning thus translates):—

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