II

ROBERT BROWNING.Painted by G. F. Watts.From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London.

ROBERT BROWNING.

Painted by G. F. Watts.

From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London.

The best criticisms of the poets have usually come from other poets, and often in the form of verse. Landor wrote of Browning,

“Since Chaucer was alive and haleNo man hath walked along our roads with stepSo active, so inquiring eye, or tongueSo varied in discourse.”

“Since Chaucer was alive and hale

No man hath walked along our roads with step

So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue

So varied in discourse.”

This is a thumb-nail sketch of Browning’s personality,—not complete, but very lifelike. And when we add to it Landor’s prose saying that “his is the surest foot since Chaucer’s, that has waked the echoes fromthe difficult placesof poetry and of life” we have a sufficiently plain clew to the unfolding of Browning’s genius. Unwearying activity, intense curiosity, variety of expression, and a predominant interest in the difficult places of poetry and of life,—these were the striking characteristics of his mind. In his heart a native optimism, an unconquerablehopefulness, was the ruling factor. But of that I shall not speak until later, when we come to consider his message. For the present we are looking simply for the mainspring of his immense intellectual energy.

When I say that the clew to Browning’s mind is to be found in his curiosity, I do not mean inquisitiveness, but a very much larger and nobler quality, for which we have no good word in English,—something which corresponds with the GermanWissbegier, as distinguished fromNeugier: an ardent desire to know things as they are, to penetrate as many as possible of the secrets of actual life. This, it seems to me, is the key to Browning’s intellectual disposition. He puts it into words in his first poemPauline, where he makes the nameless hero speak of his life as linked to

“a principle of restlessnessWhich would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all—This is myself; and I should thus have beenThough gifted lower than the meanest soul.”

“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.”

Paracelsusis only an expansion of this theme in the biography of a soul. InFra Lippo Lippithe painter says:

“God made it all!For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line,The mountain round it and the sky above,Much more the figures of man, woman, child,These are the frame to? What’s it all about?To be passed over, despised? Or dwelt upon,Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say.But why not do as well as say, paint theseJust as they are, careless what comes of it?God’s works—paint any one and count it crimeTo let a truth slip.... This world’s no blot for us,Nor blank; it means intensely and means good:To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”

“God made it all!

For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,

For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line,

The mountain round it and the sky above,

Much more the figures of man, woman, child,

These are the frame to? What’s it all about?

To be passed over, despised? Or dwelt upon,

Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say.

But why not do as well as say, paint these

Just as they are, careless what comes of it?

God’s works—paint any one and count it crime

To let a truth slip.

... This world’s no blot for us,

Nor blank; it means intensely and means good:

To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”

No poet was ever more interested in life than Browning, and whatever else may be said of his poetry it must be admitted that it is very interesting. He touches all sides of human activity and peers into the secret places of knowledge. He enters into the life of musicians inAbt Vogler,Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,A Toccata of Galuppi’s, andCharles Avison; into the life of painters inAndrea del Sarto,Pictor Ignotus,Fra Lippo Lippi,Old Pictures in Florence,Gerard de Lairesse,Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper, andFrancisFurini; into the life of scholars inA Grammarian’s FuneralandFust and his Friends; into the life of politicians inPrince Hohenstiel-SchwangauandGeorge Bubb Dodington; into the life of ecclesiastics in theSoliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,Bishop Blougram’s Apology,The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church, andThe Ring and the Book; and he makes excursions into all kinds of byways and crooked corners of life in such poems asMr. Sludge, the Medium,Porphyria’s Lover,Mesmerism,Johannes Agricola in Meditation,Pietro of Abano,Ned Bratts,Jochanan Hakkadosh, and so forth.

Merely to read a list of such titles is to have evidence of Browning’s insatiable curiosity. It is evident also that he has a fondness for out-of-the-way places. He wants to know, even more than he wants to enjoy. If Wordsworth is the poet of the common life, Browning is the poet of the uncommon life. Extraordinary situations and eccentric characters attract him. Even when he is looking at some familiar scene, at some commonplace character, his effort is to discover something that shall prove thatit is not familiar, not commonplace,—a singular detail, a striking feature, a mark of individuality. This gives him more pleasure than any distant vision of an abstraction or a general law.

“All that I knowOf a certain starIs, it can throw(Like the angled spar)Now a dart of red,Now a dart of blue;Till my friends have saidThey would fain see, too,My star that dartles the red and the blue!Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled;They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.What matter to me if their star is a world?Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.”

“All that I know

Of a certain star

Is, it can throw

(Like the angled spar)

Now a dart of red,

Now a dart of blue;

Till my friends have said

They would fain see, too,

My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled;

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.

What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.”

One consequence of this penetrating, personal quality of mind is that Browning’s pages teem with portraits of men and women, which are like sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance. They are more individual than they are typical. There is a peculiarity about each one of them which almost makes us forget to ask whether they have any general relation and value. The presentations are sosharp and vivid that their representative quality is lost.

If Wordsworth is the Millet of poetry, Browning is the Holbein or the Denner. He never misses the mole, the wrinkle, the twist of the eyebrow, which makes the face stand out alone, the sudden touch of self-revelation which individualizes the character. Thus we find in Browning’s poetry few types of humanity, but plenty of men.

Yet he seldom, if ever, allows us to forget the background of society. His figures are far more individual than Wordsworth’s, but far less solitary. Behind each of them we feel the world out of which they have come and to which they belong. There is a sense of crowded life surging through his poetry. The city, with all that it means, is not often completely out of view. “Shelley’s characters,” says a thoughtful essayist, “are creatures of wave and sky; Wordsworth’s of green English fields; Browning’s move in the house, the palace, the street.”[13]In many of them, even when they are soliloquizing, there is a curious consciousness of opposition, ofconflict. They seem to be defending themselves against unseen adversaries, justifying their course against the judgment of absent critics. Thus Bishop Blougram while he talks over the walnuts and the wine to Mr. Gigadibs, the sceptical hack-writer, has a worldful of religious conservatives and radicals in his eye and makes his half-cynical, wholly militant, apology for agnostic orthodoxy to them. The old huntsman, inThe Flight of the Duchess, is maintaining the honour of his fugitive mistress against the dried-up, stiff, conventional society from which she has eloped with the Gypsies. Andrea del Sarto, looking at the soulless fatal beauty of his Lucrezia, and meditating on the splendid failure of his art, cries out to Rafael and Michelangelo and all his compeers to understand and judge him.

Even when Browning writes of romantic love, (one of his two favourite subjects), he almost always heightens its effect by putting it in relief against the ignorance, the indifference, the busyness, or the hostility of the great world. InCristinaandEvelyn Hopehalf the charm of the passion lies in the feeling that it means everything to the lover though noone else in the world may know of its existence.Porphyria’s Lover, in a fit of madness, kills his mistress to keep her from going back to the world which would divide them. The sweet searching melody ofIn a Gondolaplays itself athwart a sullen distant accompaniment of Venetian tyranny and ends with a swift stroke of vengeance from the secret Three.

Take, for an example of Browning’s way of enhancing love by contrast, that most exquisite and subtle lyric calledLove Among the Ruins.

“Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smilesMiles and milesOn the solitary pastures where our sheepHalf asleepTinkle homeward through the twilight, stay or stopAs they crop—Was the site once of a city great and gay(So they say)Of our country’s very capital, its princeAges sinceHeld his court in, gathered councils, wielding farPeace or war.And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eveSmiles to leaveTo their folding, all our many-tinkling fleeceIn such peace,And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grayMelt away—That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hairWaits me thereIn the turret whence the charioteers caught soulFor the goal,When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumbTill I come....In one year they sent a million fighters forthSouth and North,And they built their gods a brazen pillar highAs the sky,Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—Gold of course.Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!Earth’s returnsFor whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!Shut them in,With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!Love is best.”

“Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles

Miles and miles

On the solitary pastures where our sheep

Half asleep

Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stay or stop

As they crop—

Was the site once of a city great and gay

(So they say)

Of our country’s very capital, its prince

Ages since

Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far

Peace or war.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eveSmiles to leaveTo their folding, all our many-tinkling fleeceIn such peace,And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grayMelt away—That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hairWaits me thereIn the turret whence the charioteers caught soulFor the goal,When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumbTill I come.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve

Smiles to leave

To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece

In such peace,

And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray

Melt away—

That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair

Waits me there

In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul

For the goal,

When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb

Till I come.

...

In one year they sent a million fighters forthSouth and North,And they built their gods a brazen pillar highAs the sky,Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—Gold of course.Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!Earth’s returnsFor whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!Shut them in,With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!Love is best.”

In one year they sent a million fighters forth

South and North,

And they built their gods a brazen pillar high

As the sky,

Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—

Gold of course.

Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!

Earth’s returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

Love is best.”

“Love is best!” That is one of the cardinal points of Browning’s creed. He repeats it in a hundred ways: tragically inA Blot in the ’Scutcheon; sentimentally inA Lover’s Quarrel,Two in the Campagna,The Last Ride Together; heroically inColombe’s Birthday; in the form of a paradox inThe Statue and the Bust; as a personal experience inBy the Fireside,One Word More, and at the end of the prelude toThe Ring and the Book.

“For life, with all it yields of joy and woeAnd hope and fear, ...Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.”

“For life, with all it yields of joy and woe

And hope and fear, ...

Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.”

But it must be confessed that he does not often say it as clearly, as quietly, as beautifully as inLove Among the Ruins. For his chosen method is dramatic and his natural manner is psychological. So ardently does he follow this method, so entirely does he give himself up to this manner that his style

“is subduedTo what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”

“is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”

In the dedicatory note toSordello, written in 1863, he says “My stress lay in the incidents in the development of asoul; little else is worth study.” He felt intensely

“How the world is made for each of us!How all we perceive and know in itTends to some moment’s product thus,When a soul declares itself—to wit,By its fruit, the thing it does!”

“How the world is made for each of us!

How all we perceive and know in it

Tends to some moment’s product thus,

When a soul declares itself—to wit,

By its fruit, the thing it does!”

InOne Word Morehe describes his own poetry with keen insight:

“Love, you saw me gather men and women,Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,Enter each and all and use their service,Speak from every mouth,—the speech a poem.”

“Love, you saw me gather men and women,

Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,

Enter each and all and use their service,

Speak from every mouth,—the speech a poem.”

It is a mistake to say that Browning is a metaphysical poet: he is a psychological poet. His interest does not lie in the abstract problems of time and space, mind and matter, divinity and humanity. It lies in the concrete problems of opportunity and crisis, flesh and spirit, man the individual and God the person. He is an anatomist of souls.

“Take the least man of all mankind, as I;Look at his head and heart, find how and whyHe differs from his fellows utterly.”[14]

“Take the least man of all mankind, as I;

Look at his head and heart, find how and why

He differs from his fellows utterly.”[14]

But his way of finding out this personal equation is not by observation and reflection. It is by throwing himself into the character and making it revealitself by intricate self-analysis or by impulsive action. What his poetry lacks is the temperate zone. He has the arctic circle of intellect and the tropics of passion. But he seldom enters the intermediate region of sentiment, reflection, sympathy, equable and prolonged feeling. Therefore it is that few of his poems have the power of “sinking inward from thought to thought” as Wordsworth’s do. They surprise us, rouse us, stimulate us, more than they rest us. He does not penetrate with a mild and steady light through the portals of the human heart, making them transparent. He flings them wide open suddenly, and often the gates creak on their hinges. He is forever tying Gordian knots in the skein of human life and cutting them with the sword of swift action or intense passion. His psychological curiosity creates the difficulties, his intuitive optimism solves them.

The results of this preoccupation with such subjects and of this manner of dealing with them may be recognized very easily in Browning’s work.

First of all they turned him aside from becominga great Nature-poet, though he was well fitted to be one. It is not that he loves Nature’s slow and solemn pageant less, but that he loves man’s quick and varied drama more. His landscapes are like scenery for the stage. They accompany the unfolding of the plot and change with it, but they do not influence it. His observation is as keen, as accurate as Wordsworth’s or Tennyson’s, but it is less steady, less patient, less familiar. It is the observation of one who passes through the country but does not stay to grow intimate with it. The forms of nature do not print themselves on his mind; they flash vividly before him, and come and go. Usually it is some intense human feeling that makes the details of the landscape stand out so sharply. InPippa Passes, it is in the ecstasy of love that Ottima and Sebald notice

“The garden’s silence: even the single beePersisting in his toil, suddenly stopped,And where he hid you only could surmiseBy some campanula chalice set a-swing.”

“The garden’s silence: even the single bee

Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped,

And where he hid you only could surmise

By some campanula chalice set a-swing.”

It is the sense of guilty passion that makes the lightning-flashes, burning through the pine-forest, seem like dagger-strokes,—

“As if God’s messenger through the closed wood screenPlunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture,Feeling for guilty thee and me.”

“As if God’s messenger through the closed wood screen

Plunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture,

Feeling for guilty thee and me.”

InHome Thoughts from Abroad, it is the exile’s deep homesickness that brings the quick, delicate vision before his eyes:

“Oh, to be in EnglandNow that April’s there,And whoever wakes in EnglandSees, some morning, unaware,That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheafRound the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,While the chaffinch sings on the orchard boughIn England—now!”

“Oh, to be in England

Now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!”

But Browning’s touches of nature are not always as happy as this. Often he crowds the details too closely, and fails to blend them with the ground of the picture, so that the tonality is destroyed and the effect is distracting. The foreground is too vivid: the aerial perspective vanishes. There is an impressionism that obscures the reality. As Amiel says: “Under pretense that we want to study it more in detail, we pulverize the statue.”

Browning is at his best as a Nature-poet in sky-scapes,like the description of daybreak inPippa Passes, the lunar rainbow inChristmas Eve, and the Northern Lights inEaster Day; and also in a kind of work which might be called symbolic landscape, where the imaginative vision of nature is made to represent a human experience. A striking example of this work is the scenery ofChilde Roland, reflecting as in a glass the grotesque horrors of spiritual desolation. There is a passage inSordellowhich makes a fertile landscape, sketched in a few swift lines, the symbol of Sordello’s luxuriant nature; and another in Norbert’s speech, inIn a Balcony, which uses the calm self-abandonment of the world in the tranquil evening light as the type of the sincerity of the heart giving itself up to love. But perhaps as good an illustration as we can find of Browning’s quality as a Nature-poet, is a little bit of mystery calledMeeting at Night.

“The gray sea and the long black land;And the yellow half-moon, large and low;And the startled little waves that leapIn fiery ringlets from their sleep,As I gain the cove with pushing prow,And quench its speed in the slushy sand.Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;Three fields to cross till a farm appears;A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratchAnd the blue spirt of a lighted match,And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,Than the two hearts beating each to each!”

“The gray sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon, large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

And the blue spirt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each!”

This is the landscape of the drama.

A second result of Browning’s preoccupation with dramatic psychology is the close concentration and “alleged obscurity” of his style. Here again I evade the critical question whether the obscurity is real, or whether it is only a natural and admirable profundity to which an indolent reviewer has given a bad name. That is a question which Posterity must answer. But for us the fact remains that some of his poetry is hard to read; it demands close attention and strenuous effort; and when we find a piece of it that goes very easily, likeThe Pied Piper of Hamelin,How They brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,Hervé Riel, or the stirringCavalier Tunes, we are conscious of missing the sense of strain which we have learned to associate with the reading of Browning.

One reason for this is the predominance ofcuriosity over harmony in his disposition. He tries to express the inexpressible, to write the unwritable. As Dr. Johnson said of Cowley, he has the habit “of pursuing his thoughts to the last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality.” Another reason is the fluency, the fertility, the haste of his genius, and his reluctance, or inability, to put the brakes on his own productiveness.

It seems probable that if Browning had been able to write more slowly and carefully he might have written with more lucidity. There was a time when he made a point of turning off a poem a day. It is doubtful whether the story ofThe Ring and the Bookgains in clearness by being told by eleven different persons, all of them inclined to volubility.

Yet Browning’s poetry is not verbose. It is singularly condensed in the matter of language. He seems to have made his most arduous effort in this direction. AfterParacelsushad been published and pronounced “unintelligible,” he was inclined to think that there might be some fault of too great terseness in the style. But a letter from Miss Caroline Fox was shown to him, in which that lady, (thenvery young,) took the opposite view and asked “doth he know that Wordsworth will devote a fortnight or more to the discovery of the single word that is the one fit for his sonnet.” Browning appears to have been impressed by this criticism; but he set himself to work upon it, not so much by way of selecting words as by way of compressing them. He putSordellointo a world where many of the parts of speech are lacking and all are crowded. He learned to pack the largest, possible amount of meaning into the smallest possible space, as a hasty traveller packs his portmanteau. Many small articles are crushed and crumpled out of shape. He adopted a system of elisions for the sake of brevity, and loved, as C. S. Calverley said,

“to dock the smaller parts of speechAs we curtail th’ already curtailed cur.”

“to dock the smaller parts of speech

As we curtail th’ already curtailed cur.”

At the same time he seldom could resist the temptation to put in another thought, another simile, another illustration, although the poem might be already quite full. He called out, like the conductor of a street-car, “Move up in front: room for one more!” He had little tautology of expression, butmuch of conception. A good critic says “Browning condenses by the phrase, elaborates by the volume.”[15]

One consequence of this system of writing is that a great deal of Browning’s poetry lends itself admirably to translation,—into English. The number of prose paraphrases of his poems is great, and so constantly increasing that it seems as if there must be a real demand for them. But Coleridge, speaking of the qualities of a true poetic style, remarked: “Whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language without diminution of their significance, either in sense, or in association, or in any other feeling, are so far vicious in their diction.”

Another very notable thing in Browning’s poetry is his fertility and fluency of rhyme. He is probably the most rapid, ingenious, and unwearying rhymer among the English poets. There is a story that once, in company with Tennyson, he was challenged to produce a rhyme for “rhinoceros,” and almost instantly accomplished the task with a verse inwhich the unwieldy quadruped kept time and tune with the phrase “he can toss Eros.”[16]There are othertours de forcealmost as extraordinary in his serious poems. Who but Browning would have thought of rhyming “syntax” with “tin-tacks,” or “spare-rib” with “Carib,” (Flight of Duchess) or “Fra Angelico’s” with “bellicose,” or “Ghirlandajo” with “heigh-ho,” (Old Pictures in Florence) or “expansive explosive” with “O Danaides, O Sieve!” (Master Hugues). Rhyme, with most poets, acts as a restraint, a brake upon speech. But with Browning it is the other way. His rhymes are like wild, frolicsome horses, leaping over the fences and carrying him into the widest digressions. Many a couplet, many a stanza would not have been written but for the impulse of a daring, suggestive rhyme.

Join to this love of somewhat reckless rhyming, his deep and powerful sense of humour, and you have the secret of his fondness for the grotesque. His poetry abounds in strange contrasts, sudden changes of mood, incongruous comparisons, and odd presentations of well-known subjects. Sometimesthe whole poem is written in this manner. TheSoliloquy in a Spanish Cloister,Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, andCaliban upon Setebos, are poetic gargoyles. Sometimes he begins seriously enough, as in the poem on Keats, and closes with a bit of fantastic irony:

“Hobbs hints blue,—straight he turtle eats:Nobbs prints blue,—claret crowns his cup:Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats—Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?What porridge had John Keats?”

“Hobbs hints blue,—straight he turtle eats:

Nobbs prints blue,—claret crowns his cup:

Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats—

Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?

What porridge had John Keats?”

Sometimes the poem opens grotesquely, likeChristmas Eve, and rises swiftly to a wonderful height of pure beauty and solemnity, dropping back into a grotesque at the end. But all this play of fancy must not be confused with the spirit of mockery or of levity. It is often characteristic of the most serious and earnest natures; it arises in fact from the restlessness of mind in the contemplation of evil, or from the perception of life’s difficulties and perplexities. Shakespeare was profoundly right in introducing the element of the grotesque intoHamlet, his most thoughtful tragedy. Browning is neverreally anything else but a serious thinker, passionately curious to solve the riddle of existence. Like his ownSordellohe

“Gave to familiar things a face grotesque,Only, pursuing through the mad burlesque,A grave regard.”

“Gave to familiar things a face grotesque,

Only, pursuing through the mad burlesque,

A grave regard.”

We may sum up, then, what we have to say of Browning’s method and manner by recognizing that they belong together and have a mutual fitness and inevitableness. We may wish that he had attained to more lucidity and harmony of expression, but we should probably have had some difficulty in telling him precisely how to do it, and he would have been likely to reply with good humour as he did to Tennyson, “The people must take me as they find me.” If he had been less ardent in looking for subjects for his poetry, he might have given more care to the form of his poems. If he had cut fewer blocks, he might have finished more statues. The immortality of much of his work may be discounted by its want of perfect art,—the only true preservative of man’s handiwork. But the immortalityof his genius is secure. He may not be ranked finally among the great masters of the art of poetry. But he certainly will endure as a mine for poets. They may stamp the coins more clearly and fashion the ornaments more delicately. But the gold is his. He was the prospector,—the first dramatic psychologist of modern life. The very imperfections of his work, in all its splendid richness and bewildering complexity, bear witness to his favourite doctrine that life itself is more interesting than art, and more glorious, because it is not yet perfect.

“The Glory of the Imperfect,”—that is a phrase which I read in a pamphlet by that fine old Grecian and noble Christian philosopher, George Herbert Palmer, many years ago. It seems to me to express the central meaning of Browning’s poetry.

He is the poet of aspiration and endeavour; the prophet of a divine discontent. All things are precious to him, not in themselves, but as their defects are realized, as man uses them, and presses through them, towards something higher and better. Hope is man’s power: and the things hoped for must beas yet unseen. Struggle is man’s life; and the purpose of life is not merely education, but a kind of progressive creation of the soul.

“Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.”

The world presents itself to him, as the Germans say,Im Werden. It is a world of potencies, working itself out. Existence is not the mere fact of being, but the vital process of becoming. The glory of man lies in his power to realize this process in his mind and to fling himself into it with all his will. If he tries to satisfy himself with things as they are, like the world-wedded soul inEaster Eve, he fails. If he tries to crowd the infinite into the finite, like Paracelsus, he fails. He must make his dissatisfaction his strength. He must accept the limitations of his life, not in the sense of submitting to them, but as Jacob wrestled with the angel, in order to win, through conflict, a new power, a larger blessing. His ardent desires and longings and aspirations, yes, even his defeats and disappointments and failures, are the stuff out of which his immortal destiny is weaving itself. The one thing that liferequires of him is to act with ardour, to go forward resolutely, to “burn his way through the world”; and the great lesson which it teaches him is this:

“But thou shalt painfully attain to joyWhile hope and love and fear shall keep thee man.”

“But thou shalt painfully attain to joy

While hope and love and fear shall keep thee man.”

Browning was very much needed in the Nineteenth Century as the antidote, or perhaps it would be more just to say, as the complement to Carlyle. For Carlyle’s prophecy, with all its moral earnestness, its virility, its indomitable courage, had in it a ground-tone of despair. It was the battle-cry of a forlorn hope. Man must hate shams intensely, must seek reality passionately, must do his duty desperately; but he can never tell why. The reason of things is inscrutable: the eternal Power that rules things is unknowable. Carlyle, said Mazzini, “has a constant disposition to crush the human by comparing him with God.” But Browning has an unconquerable disposition to elevate the human by joining him to God. The power that animates and governs the world is Divine; man cannot escape from it nor overcome it. But the love that stirs in man’s heart is also Divine; and if man will followit, it shall lead him to that height where he shall see that Power is Love.

“I have faith such end shall be:From the first Power was—I knew.Life has made clear to meThat, strive but for closer view,Love were as plain to see.When see? When there dawns a dayIf not on the homely earth,Then yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birthAnd Power comes full in play.”[17]

“I have faith such end shall be:From the first Power was—I knew.Life has made clear to meThat, strive but for closer view,Love were as plain to see.

“I have faith such end shall be:

From the first Power was—I knew.

Life has made clear to me

That, strive but for closer view,

Love were as plain to see.

When see? When there dawns a dayIf not on the homely earth,Then yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birthAnd Power comes full in play.”[17]

When see? When there dawns a day

If not on the homely earth,

Then yonder, worlds away,

Where the strange and new have birth

And Power comes full in play.”[17]

Browning’s optimism is fundamental. Originally a matter of temperament, perhaps, as it is expressed inAt the Mermaid,—

“I find earth not gray, but rosy,Heaven not grim but fair of hue.Do I stoop? I pluck a posy,Do I stand and stare? All’s blue——”

“I find earth not gray, but rosy,

Heaven not grim but fair of hue.

Do I stoop? I pluck a posy,

Do I stand and stare? All’s blue——”

primarily the spontaneous tone of a healthy, happy nature, it became the chosen key-note of all his music, and he works it out through a hundred harmonies and discords. He is “sure of goodness as of life.” He does not ask “How came good intothe world?” For that, after all, is the pessimistic question; it assumes that the ground of things is evil and the good is the breaking of the rule. He asks instead “How came evil into the world?” That is the optimistic question; as long as a man puts it in that form he is an optimist at heart; he takes it for granted that good is the native element and evil is the intruder; there must be a solution of the problem whether he can find it or not; the rule must be superior to, and triumphant over, the exception; the meaning and purpose of evil must somehow, some time, be proved subordinate to good.

That is Browning’s position:

“My own hope is, a sun will pierceThe thickest cloud earth ever stretched;That, after Last, returns the First,Though a wide compass round be fetched;That what began best, can’t end worst,Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.”

“My own hope is, a sun will pierce

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;

That, after Last, returns the First,

Though a wide compass round be fetched;

That what began best, can’t end worst,

Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.”

The way in which he justifies this position is characteristic of the man. His optimism is far less defensive than it is militant. He never wavers from his intuitive conviction that “the world meansgood.” He follows this instinct as a soldier follows his banner, into whatever difficulties and conflicts it may lead him, and fights his way out, now with the weapons of philosophy, now with the bare sword of faith.

It might seem at first as if it were unfair to attempt any estimate of the philosophic and religious teaching of a poet like Browning, whose method we have already recognized as dramatic. Can we ascribe to the poet himself the opinions which he puts into the mouths of his characters? Can we hold him responsible for the sentiments which are expressed by the actors on his stage?

Certainly this objection must be admitted as a restraint in the interpretation of his poetry. We are not to take all that his characters say, literally and directly, as his own belief, any more than we are to read the speeches of Satan, and Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar, in the Book of Job, as utterances of the spirit of inspiration. But just as that great dramatic Scripture, dealing with the problemsof evil and suffering and sovereignty, does contain a doctrine and convey a lesson, so the poetry of Browning, taken as a whole, utters a distinct and positive prophetic message.

In the first place, many of the poems are evidently subjective, written without disguise in the first person. Among these we may considerMy Star;By the Fireside;One Word More; the Epilogues toDramatis PersonæandPachiarrottoandFerishtah’s Fancies; the introduction and the close ofThe Ring and the Book;Christmas EveandEaster Day; the ending of the poem calledGold Hair, and ofA Death in the Desert, and ofBishop Blougram’s Apology;ProspiceandReverie. In the second place we must remember Goethe’s dictum: “Every author in some degree, pourtrays himself in his works, even be it against his will.” Even when Browning is writing dramatically, he cannot conceal his sympathy. The masks are thin. His eyes shine through. “His own personality,” says Mr. Stedman, “is manifest in the speech and movement of almost every character of each piece. His spirit is infused as if by metempsychosis, within them all,and forces each to assume a strange Pentecostal tone, which we discover to be that of the poet himself.” Thus it is not impossible, nor even difficult, to reach a fair estimate of his ethical and religious teaching and discover its principal elements.

1. First among these I would put a great confidence in God. Browning is the most theological of modern poets. The epithet which was applied to Spinoza might well be transferred to him. He is a “God-intoxicated” man. But in a very different sense, for whereas the philosopher felt God as an idea, the poet feels Him intensely as a person. The song which he puts into the lips of the unconscious heroine inPippa Passes,—

“God’s in his heavenAll’s right with the world,——”

“God’s in his heaven

All’s right with the world,——”

is the recurrent theme of his poetry. He cries with Paracelsus,

“God thou art Love, I build my faith on that.”

Even when his music is broken and interrupted by discords, when it seems to dissolve and fade away as all human work, in its outward form, dissolvesand fades, he turns, as Abt Vogler turns from his silent organ, to God;

“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?”

“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?”

InRabbi Ben Ezrahe takes up the ancient figure of the potter and the clay and uses it to express his boundless trust in God.

The characteristic mark of Browning’s view of God is that it is always taken from the side of humanity. The Perfect Glory is the correlative of the glory of the imperfect. The Divine Love is the answer to the human longing. God is, because man needs Him. From this point of view it almost seems, as a brilliant essayist has said, as if “In Browning, God is adjective to man.”[18]

But it may be said in answer, that, at least for man, this is the only point of view that is accessible.We can never leave our own needs behind us, however high we may try to climb. Certainly if we succeed in forgetting them for a moment, in that very moment we have passed out of the region of poetry, which is the impassioned interpretation of man’s heart.

2. The second element of power in Browning’s poetry is that he sees in the personal Christ the very revelation of God that man’s heart most needs and welcomes. Nowhere else in all the range of modern poetry has this vision been expressed with such spiritual ardour, with such poignant joy. We must turn back to the pages of Isaiah to find anything to equal the Messianic rapture of the minstrel inSaul.

“He who did most shall bear most: the strongest shall stand the most weak.’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seekIn the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be,A Face like my face that receives thee; a man like to me,Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this handShall throw open the gates of new life to thee! see the Christ stand!”

“He who did most shall bear most: the strongest shall stand the most weak.

’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek

In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be,

A Face like my face that receives thee; a man like to me,

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! see the Christ stand!”

We must look into the Christ-filled letters of St. Paul to find the attractions of the Crucified One uttered as powerfully as they are in theEpistle of Karshish.

“The very God! think Abib; dost thou think?So, the All-great, were the All-Loving too—So, through the thunder comes a human voiceSaying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here!Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of mine,But love I gave thee, with myself to love,And thou must love me who have died for thee!’”

“The very God! think Abib; dost thou think?

So, the All-great, were the All-Loving too—

So, through the thunder comes a human voice

Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here!

Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!

Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of mine,

But love I gave thee, with myself to love,

And thou must love me who have died for thee!’”

It is idle to assert that these are only dramatic presentations of the Christian faith. No poet could have imagined such utterances without feeling their significance; and the piercing splendour of their expression discloses his sympathy. He reveals it yet more unmistakably inChristmas Eve, (strophe XVII) and inEaster Day, (strophe XXX.) In the Epilogue toDramatis Personæit flashes out clearly. The second speaker, as Renan, has bewailed the vanishing of the face of Christ from the sorrowfulvision of the race. The third speaker, the poet himself, answers:

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