Robert Browning

For a time during this last visit to Asolo Browning suffered some inconvenience from shortness of breath in climbing hills, but the discomfort passed away. He looked forward to an early return to England, spoke with pleasant anticipation of the soft-pedal piano which his kind friend Mrs Bronson desired to procure at Boston and place in his study in De Vere Gardens, and he dreamed of future poetical achievements. "Shall I whisper to you my ambition and my hope?" he asked his hostess. "It is to write a tragedy better than anything I have done yet. I think of it constantly." With the end of October the happy days at Asolo were at an end. On the first of November he was in Venice, "magnificently lodged," he says, "in this vast palazzo, which my son has really shown himself fit to possess, so surprising are his restorations and improvements." At Asolo he had parted from his American friend Story with the words, "More than forty years of friendship and never a break." In Venice he met an American friend of more recent years, Professor Corson, who describes him as stepping briskly, with a look that went everywhere, and as cheerfully anticipating many more years of productive work.147 Yet in truth the end was near. Dining with Mr and Mrs Curtis, where he read aloud some poems of his forthcoming volume, he met a London physician, Dr Bird. Next evening Dr Bird again dined with Browning, who expressed confident satisfaction as to his state of health, and held out his wrist that his words might be confirmed by the regularity and vigour of his pulse. The physician became at once aware that Browning's confidence was far from receiving the warrant in which he believed. Still he maintained his customary two hours' walk each day. Towards the close of November, on a day of fog, he returned from the Lido with symptoms of a bronchial cold. He dealt with the trouble as he was accustomed, and did not take to his bed. Though feeling scarcely fit to travel he planned his departure for England after the lapse of four or five days. On December 1st, an Italian physician was summoned, and immediately perceived the gravity of the case. Within a few days the bronchial trouble was subdued, but failure of the heart was apparent. Some hours before the end he said to one of his nurses, "I feel much worse. I know now that I must die." The ebbing away of life was painless. As the clocks of Venice were striking ten on the night of Thursday, December 12, 1889, Browning died.148

He had never concerned himself much about his place of burial. A lifeless body seemed to him only an old vesture that had been cast aside. "He had said to his sister in the foregoing summer," Mrs Orr tells us, "that he wished to be buried wherever he might die; if in England, with his mother; if in France, with his father; if in Italy, with his wife." The English cemetery in Florence had, however, been closed. The choice seemed to lie between Venice, which was the desire of the city, or, if the difficulties could be overcome by the intervention of Lord Dufferin, the old Florentine cemetery. The matter was decided otherwise; a grave in Westminster Abbey was proposed by Dean Bradley, and the proposal was accepted.149 A private service took place in the Palazzo Rezzonico; the coffin, in compliance with the civic requirements, was conveyed with public honours to the chapel on the island of San Michele; and from thence to the house in De Vere Gardens. On the last day of the year 1889, in presence of a great and reverent crowd, with solemn music arranged for the words of Mrs Browning's poem, "He giveth his beloved sleep," the body of Browning was laid in its resting-place in Poets' Corner.

To attempt at the present time to determine the place of Browning in the history of English poetry is perhaps premature. Yet the record of "How it strikes a contemporary" may itself have a certain historical interest. When estimates of this kind have been revised by time even their errors are sometimes instructive, or, if not instructive, are amusing. It is probable that Tennyson will remain as the chief representative in poetry of the Victorian period. Browning, who was slower in securing an audience, may be found to possess a more independent individuality. Yet in truth no great writer is independent of the influences of his age.

Browning as a poet had his origins in the romantic school of English poetry; but he came at a time when the romance of external action and adventure had exhausted itself, and when it became necessary to carry romance into the inner world where the adventures are those of the soul. On the ethical and religious side he sprang from English Puritanism. Each of these influences was modified by his own genius and by the circumstances of its development. His keen observation of facts and passionate inquisition of human character drew him in the direction of what is termed realism. This combination of realism with romance is even more strikingly seen in an elder contemporary on whose work Browning bestowed an ardent admiration, the novelist Balzac. His Puritanism received important modifications from his wide-ranging artistic instincts and sympathies, and again from the liberality of a wide-ranging intellect. He has the strenuous moral force of Puritanism, but he is wholly free from asceticism, except in the higher significance of that word—the hardy discipline of an athlete. Opinions count for less than the form and the habitual attitudes of a soul. These with Browning were always essentially Christian. He regarded our life on earth as a state of probation and of preparation; sometimes as a battle-field in which our test lies in the choice of the worse or the better side and the energy of devotion to the cause; sometimes as a school of education, in the processes of which the emotions play a larger part than the intellect. The degrees in that school are not to be taken on earth. And on the battle-field the final issue is not to be determined here, so that what appears as defeat may contain within it an assured promise of ultimate victory. The attitudes of the spirit which were most habitual with him were two—the attitude of aspiration and the attitude of submission. These he brought into harmony with each other by his conception of human life as a period of training for a higher life; we must make the most vigorous and joyous use of our schooling, and yet we must press towards what lies beyond it.

From the romantic poetry of the early years of the nineteenth century comes a cry or a sigh of limitless desire. Under the inspiration of the Revolutionary movement passion had broken the bounds of the eighteenth century ideal of balance and moderation. With the transcendental reaction against a mechanical view of the relation of God to the universe and to humanity the soul had put forth boundless claims and unmeasured aspirations. In his poetic method each writer followed the leadings of his own genius, without reference to common rules and standards; the individualism of the Revolutionary epoch asserted itself to the full. These several influences helped to determine the character of Browning's poetry. But meeting in him the ethical and religious tendencies of English Puritanism they acquired new significances and assumed new forms. The cry of desire could not turn, as it did with Byron, to cynicism; it must not waste itself, as sometimes happened with Shelley, in the air or the ether. It must be controlled by the will and turned to some spiritual uses. The transcendental feeling which Wordsworth most often attained through an impassioned contemplation of external nature must rest upon a broader basis and include among its sources or abettors all the higher passions of humanity. The Revolutionary individualism must be maintained and extended; in his methods Browning would acknowledge no master; he would please himself and compel his readers to accept his method even if strange or singular. As for the mediaeval revival, which tried to turn aside, and in part capture, the transcendental tendencies of his time, Browning rejected it, in the old temper of English Puritanism, on the side of religion; but on the side of art it opened certain avenues upon which he eagerly entered. The scientific movement of the nineteenth century influenced him partly as a force to be met and opposed by his militant transcendentalism. Yet he gives definite expression in Paracelsus to an idea of evolution both in nature and in human society, an idea of evolution which is, however, essentially theistic. "All that seems proved in Darwin's scheme," he wrote to Dr Furnivall in 1881, "was a conception familiar to me from the beginning." The positive influences of the scientific age in which he lived upon Browning's work were chiefly these—first it tended to intellectualise his instincts, compelling him to justify them by a definite theory; and secondly it co-operated with his tendency towards realism as a student of the facts of human nature; it urged him towards research in his psychology of the passions; it supported him in his curious inquisition of the phenomena of the world of mind.

Being a complete and a sane human creature, Browning could not rest content with the vicious asceticism of the intellect which calls itself scientific because it refuses to recognise any facts that are not material and tangible. Science itself, in the true sense of the word, exists and progresses by ventures of imaginative faith. And in all matters which involve good and evil, hopes and fears, in all matters which determine the conduct of life, no rational person excludes from his view the postulates of our moral nature or should exclude the final option of the will. The person whose beliefs are determined by material facts alone and by the understanding unallied with our other powers is the irrational and unscientific person. Being a complete and sane human creature, Browning was assured that the visible order of things is part of a larger order, the existence of which alone makes human life intelligible to the reason. The understanding being incapable of arriving unaided at a decision between rival theories of life, and neutrality between these being irrational and illegitimate, he rightly determined the balance with the weight of emotion, and rightly acted upon that decision with all the energy of his will. His chief intellectual error was not that he undervalued the results of the intellect, but that he imagined the existence as a part of sane human nature, of a wholly irrational intellect which in affairs of religious belief and conduct is indifferent to the promptings of the emotions and the moral nature.

Browning's optimism has been erroneously ascribed to his temperament. He declared that in his personal experience the pain of life outweighed its pleasure. He remembered former pain more vividly than he remembered pleasure. His optimism was part of the vigorous sanity of his moral nature; like a reasonable man, he made the happiness which he did not find. If any person should censure the process of giving objective validity to a moral postulate, he has only to imagine some extra-human intelligence making a study of human nature; to such an intelligence our moral postulates would be objective facts and have the value of objective evidence. That whole of which our life on earth forms a part could not be conceived by Browning as rational without also being conceived as good.

All the parts of Browning's nature were vigorous, and they worked harmoniously together. His senses were keen and alert; his understanding was both penetrating and comprehensive; his passions had sudden explosive force and also steadfastness and persistency; his will supported his other powers and perhaps it had too large a share in his later creative work. His feeling for external nature was twofold; he enjoyed colour and form—but especially colour—as a feast for the eye, and returned thanks for his meal as the Pope of his poem did for the bean-feast. This was far removed from that passionate spiritual contemplation of nature of the Wordsworthian mood. But now and again for Browning external nature was, not indeed suffused as for Wordsworth, but pierced and shot through with spiritual fire. His chief interest, however, was in man. The study of passions in their directness and of the intellect in its tortuous ways were at various times almost equally attractive to him. The emotions which he chiefly cared to interpret were those connected with religion, with art, and with the relations of the sexes.

In his presentation of character Browning was far from exhibiting either the universality or the disinterestedness of Shakespeare. His sympathy with action was defective. The affections arising from hereditary or traditional relations are but slenderly represented in his poetry; the passions which elect their own objects are largely represented. Those graceful gaieties arising from a long-established form of society, which constitute so large a part of Shakespeare's comedies, are almost wholly absent from his work. His humour was robust but seldom fine or delicate. In an age of intellectual and spiritual conflict and trouble, his art was often deflected from the highest ends by his concern on behalf of ideas. He could not rest satisfied, it has been observed, with contemplating the children of his imagination, nor find the fulfilment of his aim in the fact of having given them existence.150 It seems often as if his purpose in creating them was to make them serve as questioners, objectors, and answerers in the great debate of conflicting thoughts which proceeds throughout his poems. His object in transferring his own consciousness into the consciousness of some imagined personage seems often to be that of gaining a new stand-point from which to see another and a different aspect of the questions concerning which he could not wholly satisfy himself from any single point of view. He cannot be content to leave his men and women, in Shakespeare's disinterested manner, to look in various directions according to whatever chanced to suit best the temper and disposition he had imagined for them. They are placed by him with their eyes turned in very much the same direction, gazing towards the same problems, the same ideas. And somehow Browning himself seems to be in company with them all the time, learning their different reports of the various aspects which those problems or ideas present to each of them, and choosing between the different reports in order to give credence to that which seems true. The study of no individual character would seem to him of capital value unless that character contained something which should help to throw light upon matters common to all humanity, upon the inquiries either as to what it is, or as to what are its relations to the things outside humanity. This is not quite the highest form of dramatic poetry. There is in it perhaps something of the error of seeking too quick returns of profit, and of drawing "a circle premature," to use Browning's own words, "heedless of far gain." The contents of characters so conceived can be exhausted, whereas when characters are presented with entire disinterestedness they may seem to yield us less at first, but they are inexhaustible. The fault—if it be one—lay partly in Browning's epoch, partly in the nature of his genius. Such a method of deflected dramatic characterisation as his is less appropriate to regular drama than to the monologue; and accordingly the monologue, reflective or lyrical, became the most characteristic instrument of his art.

There is little of repose in Browning's poetry. He feared lethargy of heart, the supine mood, more than he feared excess of passion. Once or twice he utters a sigh for rest, but it is for rest after strife or labour. Broad spaces of repose, of emotional tranquillity are rare, if not entirely wanting, in his poetry. It is not a high table-land, but a range, or range upon range, of sierras. In single poems there is often a point or moment in which passion suddenly reaches its culmination. He flashes light upon the retina; he does not spread truth abroad like a mantle but plunges it downwards through the mists of earth like a searching sword-blade. And therefore he does not always distribute the poetic value of what he writes equally; one vivid moment justifies all that is preparatory to that great moment. His utterance, which is always vigorous, becomes intensely luminous at the needful points and then relapses, to its well-maintained vigour, a vigour not always accompanied by the highest poetical qualities. The music of his verse is entirely original, and so various are its kinds, so complex often are its effects that it cannot be briefly characterised. Its attack upon the ear is often by surprises, which, corresponding to the sudden turns of thought and leaps of feeling, justify themselves as right and delightful. Yet he sometimes embarrasses his verse with an excess of suspensions and resolutions. Browning made many metrical experiments, some of which were unfortunate: but his failures are rather to be ascribed to temporary lapses into a misdirected ingenuity than to the absence of metrical feeling.

His chief influence, other than what is purely artistic, upon a reader is towards establishing a connection between the known order of things in which we live and move and that larger order of which it is a part. He plays upon the will, summoning it from lethargy to activity. He spiritualises the passions by showing that they tend through what is human towards what is divine. He assigns to the intellect a sufficient field for exercise, but attaches more value to its efforts than to its attainments. His faith in an unseen order of things creates a hope which persists through the apparent failures of earth. In a true sense he may be named the successor of Wordsworth, not indeed as an artist but as a teacher. Substantially the creed maintained by each was the same creed, and they were both more emphatic proclaimers of it than any other contemporary poets. But their ways of holding and of maintaining that creed were far apart. Wordsworth enunciated his doctrines as if he had never met with, and never expected to meet with, any gainsaying of them. He discoursed as a philosopher might to a school of disciples gathered together to be taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it. He feared chiefly not a counter creed but the materialising effects of the industrial movement of his own day. Expecting no contradiction, Wordsworth did not care to quit his own standpoint in order that he might see how things appear from the opposing side. He did not argue but let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy spoken in presence of an audience but not always directly addressed to them. Browning's manner of speech was very unlike this. He seems to address it often to unsympathetic hearers of whose presence and gainsaying attitude he could not lose sight. The beliefs for which he pleaded were not in his day, as they had been in Wordsworth's, part of a progressive wave of thought. He occupied the disadvantageous position of a conservative thinker. The later poet of spiritual beliefs had to make his way not with, but against, a great incoming tide of contemporary speculation. Probably on this account Browning's influence as a teacher will extend over a far shorter space of time than that of Wordsworth. For Wordsworth is self-contained, and is complete without reference to the ideas which oppose his own. His work suffices for its own explanation, and will always commend itself to certain readers either as the system of a philosophic thinker or as the dream of a poet. Browning's thought where it is most significant is often more or less enigmatical if taken by itself: its energetic gestures, unless we see what they are directed against, seem aimless beating the air. His thought, as far as it is polemical, will probably cease to interest future readers. New methods of attack will call forth new methods of defence. Time will make its discreet selection from his writings. And the portion which seems most likely to survive is that which presents in true forms of art the permanent passions of humanity and characters of enduring interest.

Index

[The names of Robert Browning, the subject of this volume, and of Elizabeth Barrett Browning are not included in the Index.]

Abt Vogler, 135, 235, 236

Adams, Sarah Flower, 9

Aeschylus (see Agamemnon), 274

Agamemnon, 279, 293, 294

Alford, Lady M., 217

Ancona, 120

Andersen, Hans, 223, 224n

Andrea del Sarto, 191

Any Wife to any Husband, 182

Apparent Failure, 238

Aristophanes' Apology, 277, 279, 288-293

Arnold, Matthew, 125, 128, 130, 145

Arnould, Joseph, 9

Arran, Isle of, 278

Artemis Prologuizes, 74

Asceticism, 132, 134

Ashburton, Lady, 272

Asolando, 375-379

Asolo, 47, 334, 335, 381-385

At the Mermaid, 317

Audierne, 250

Aurora Leigh, 124, 155, 203, 205, 211

B

Bach, 329

Bacon, Francis, 296

Bad Dreams, 377

Balaustion's Adventure, 279, 280-288, 346

Balzac, H. de, 113, 125

Barrett, Arabella, 90, 93, 96, 139, 170, 172, 174, 204, 210, 225, 227, 228, 250

Barrett, Edward M., 89, 90, 99, 106, 119, 139, 204, 206

Barrett, Henrietta (Mrs Surtees Cook), 93, 99, 119, 139, 172, 204, 220

Bayley, Miss, 98

Bean Feast, 378

Beatrice Signorini, 378

Bells and Pomegranates, 49

Benckhausen, Mr, 21

Bernard de Mandeville, 371

Biarritz, 230

Bifurcation, 318

Bird, Dr, 386

Bishop Blougram, 177, 199-202

Bishop orders his Tomb, 79, 80

Blagden, Isa, 206, 207, 208, 220, 225, 226, 229, 231, 276, 297

Blanc, Mme., 272, 273

Blot in the 'Scutcheon, 49, 50, 51, 52, 64, 68

Bottinius, 259

Bowring, Sir J., 221

Boyd, H.S., 101

Boyle, Miss, 117

Bradley, Dean, 387

Bridell-Fox, Mrs, 43-47

Bronson, Mrs A., 66, 334, 335, 336, 339, 341, 342, 343, 380, 381, 382, 383, 385

Browning, Robert (grandfather), 1

Browning, Robert (father), 1-4, 12, 141, 209, 249

Browning, Robert, W.B. (son), 117, 118, 138, 140, 153, 159, 204, 205, 206, 207, 221, 225, 227, 344, 387n

Browning, Sarah Anna (mother), 2, 5, 6, 118

Browning, Sarah Anna, or Sarianna (sister), 2, 50, 81, 106, 174, 209, 249, 336, 343

Buchanan, Robert, 243n, 329n

Burne-Jones, E., 217

By the Fireside, 167, 183, 187

C

Caliban upon Setebos, 243, 244, 360

Cambo, 230

Cambridge, 380

Caponsacchi, 257, 264-266

Carlyle, Mrs, 152

Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 42, 83, 103, 140, 141, 254

Casa Guidi, 115

Cavalier Tunes, 75

Cavour, 204, 212, 224

Cenciaja, 319

Chapman & Hall, 114

Chappell, Arthur, 276

Charles Avison, 371

Childe Roland, 180

Christmas Eve and Easter Day, 114, 123-137

Christopher Smart, 371, 373

"Clarissa," 255, 260

Clayton, Rev. Mr, 6

Cleon, 195

Clive, 355

Cobbe, Miss F.P., 165n

Colombe's Birthday, 49, 52, 58, 67, 155

Conway, Dr M., 2, 42, 326

Cook, Captain Surtees, 93, 94

Cook, Mrs Surtees, see Barrett, Henrietta

Cornhill Magazine, 228, 275

Count Gismond, 77

Coup d'état, 141, 142

Cristine, 77

Croisic, 249, 250

Crosse, Mrs Andrew, 191n

Curtis, Mr and Mrs, 386

D

Daniel Bartoli, 232, 370

Dante, 34, 40, 83, 114

Davidson, Captain, 46

Death in the Desert, 233, 239, 240

De Gustibus, 180

Development, 377

De Vere Gardens, 342, 379, 387

Dickens, Charles, 42, 50

Dîs Aliter Visum, 234, 245

Doctor——, 350

Domett, Alfred, 9

Dominus Hyacinthus, 259

Donald, 334

Dramatic Idyls (First and Second Series), 348

Dramatic Lyrics, 49, 72

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 49, 72

Dramatis Personae, 175, 233-247

Dubiety, 377

Dufferin, Lord, 275

Duffy, C. Gavan, 199n

E

Easter Day, see Christmas Eve and Easter Day

Echetlos, 351, 352

Eckley, Mr, 210, 211

Egerton-Smith, Miss, 276, 277, 321, 327