On the inner page is written:

'Impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T. R.—pronounced "heavy"—

'A heavy sermon!—sure the error's great, For not a word Tom uttered had its weight.'

A third letter, also undated, but post-marked March 29, 1833, refers probably to the promise or announcement of a favourable notice. A fourth conveys Mr. Browning's thanks for the notice itself:

My dear Sir,—I have just received your letter, which I am desirous of acknowledging before any further mark of your kindness reaches me;—I can only offer you my simple thanks—but they are of the sort that one can give only once or twice in a life: all things considered, I think you are almost repaid, if you imagine what I must feel—and it will have been worth while to have made a fool of myself, only to have obtained a 'case' which leaves my fine fellow Mandeville at a dead lock.

As for the book—I hope ere long to better it, and to deserve your goodness.

In the meantime I shall not forget the extent to which I am, dear sir, Your most obliged and obedient servant R. B. S. & O.'s, Conduit St., Thursday m-g.



I must intrude on your attention, my dear sir, once more than I had intended—but a notice like the one I have read will have its effect at all hazards.

I can only say that I am very proud to feel as grateful as I do, and not altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, your most generous 'coming forward'. Hazlitt wrote his essays, as he somewhere tells us, mainly to send them to some one in the country who had 'always prophesied he would be something'!—I shall never write a line without thinking of the source of my first praise, be assured. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and obliged, Robert Browning. March 31, 1833.

Mr. Fox was then editor of a periodical called the 'Monthly Repository', which, as his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writes in her graceful article on Robert Browning, in the 'Argosy' for February 1890, he was endeavouring to raise from its original denominational character into a first-class literary and political journal. The articles comprised in the volume for 1833 are certainly full of interest and variety, at once more popular and more solid than those prescribed by the present fashion of monthly magazines. He reviewed 'Pauline' favourably in its April number—that is, as soon as it had appeared; and the young poet thus received from him an introduction to what should have been, though it probably was not, a large circle of intelligent readers.

The poem was characterized by its author, five years later, in a fantastic note appended to a copy of it, as 'the only remaining crab of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise.' This name is ill bestowed upon a work which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning's genius, contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor, its faults of exaggeration and confusion; and it is of these that Mr. Browning was probably thinking when he wrote his more serious apologetic preface to its reprint in 1868. But these faults were partly due to his conception of the character which he had tried to depict; and partly to the inherent difficulty of depicting one so complex, in a succession of mental and moral states, irrespectively of the conditions of time, place, and circumstance which were involved in them. Only a very powerful imagination could have inspired such an attempt. A still more conspicuous effort of creative genius reveals itself at its close. The moment chosen for the 'Confession' has been that of a supreme moral or physical crisis. The exhaustion attendant on this is directly expressed by the person who makes it, and may also be recognized in the vivid, yet confusing, intensity of the reminiscences of which it consists. But we are left in complete doubt as to whether the crisis is that of approaching death or incipient convalescence, or which character it bears in the sufferer's mind; and the language used in the closing pages is such as to suggest, without the slightest break in poetic continuity, alternately the one conclusion and the other. This was intended by Browning to assist his anonymity; and when the writer in 'Tait's Magazine' spoke of the poem as a piece of pure bewilderment, he expressed the natural judgment of the Philistine, while proving himself such. If the notice by J. S. Mill, which this criticism excluded, was indeed—as Mr. Browning always believed—much more sympathetic, I can only record my astonishment; for there never was a large and cultivated intelligence one can imagine less in harmony than his with the poetic excesses, or even the poetic qualities, of 'Pauline'. But this is a digression.

Mr. Fox, though an accomplished critic, made very light of the artistic blemishes of the work. His admiration for it was as generous as it was genuine; and, having recognized in it the hand of a rising poet, it was more congenial to him to hail that poet's advent than to register his shortcomings.

'The poem,' he says, 'though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, has truth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius.'

But it had also, in his mind, a distinguishing characteristic, which raised it above the sphere of merely artistic criticism. The article continues:

'We have never read anything more purely confessional. The whole composition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers of thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events are transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another.'

And we learn from the context that he accepted this confessional and introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life—of the essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerest admirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Its sentiment is warmly religious; it is always, in a certain sense, spiritual; but its intellectual activities are exercised on entirely temporal ground, and this fact would generally be admitted as the negation of spirituality in the religious sense of the word. No difference, however, of opinion as to his judgment of 'Pauline' can lessen our appreciation of Mr. Fox's encouraging kindness to its author. No one who loved Mr. Browning in himself, or in his work, can read the last lines of this review without a throb of affectionate gratitude for the sympathy so ungrudgingly, and—as he wrote during his latest years—so opportunely given:

'In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselves about such matters [as a few blemishes]. Time enough for that afterwards, when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath had many particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown, but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted 'Eureka!''

Many persons have discovered Mr. Browning since he has been known to fame. One only discovered him in his obscurity.

Next to that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster among the first spontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning's genius; and his admiration was, in its own way, the more valuable for the circumstances which precluded in it all possible, even unconscious, bias of personal interest or sympathy. But this belongs to a somewhat later period of our history.

I am dwelling at some length on this first experience of Mr. Browning's literary career, because the confidence which it gave him determined its immediate future, if not its ultimate course—because, also, the poem itself is more important to the understanding of his mind than perhaps any other of his isolated works. It was the earliest of his dramatic creations; it was therefore inevitably the most instinct with himself; and we may regard the 'Confession' as to a great extent his own, without for an instant ignoring the imaginative element which necessarily and certainly entered into it. At one moment, indeed, his utterance is so emphatic that we should feel it to be direct, even if we did not know it to be true. The passage beginning, 'I am made up of an intensest life,' conveys something more than the writer's actual psychological state. The feverish desire of life became gradually modified into a more or less active intellectual and imaginative curiosity; but the sense of an individual, self-centred, and, as it presented itself to him, unconditioned existence, survived all the teachings of experience, and often indeed unconsciously imposed itself upon them.

I have already alluded to that other and more pathetic fragment of distinct autobiography which is to be found in the invocation to the 'Sun-treader'. Mr. Fox, who has quoted great part of it, justly declares that 'the fervency, the remembrance, the half-regret mingling with its exultation, are as true as its leading image is beautiful.' The 'exultation' is in the triumph of Shelley's rising fame; the regret, for the lost privilege of worshipping in solitary tenderness at an obscure shrine. The double mood would have been characteristic of any period of Mr. Browning's life.

The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the natural imagery of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy instead of the direct poetic vision of the author's later work.

'Pauline' received another and graceful tribute two months later than the review. In an article of the 'Monthly Repository', and in the course of a description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, the following passage occurs:

'Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place. . . . They are natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surely as a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. 'Probatum est.' Last autumn L——dropped a poem of Shelley's down there in the wood,* amongst the thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found a delicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with 'Pauline' hanging from its slender stalk. Unripe fruit it may be, but of pleasant flavour and promise, and a mellower produce, it may be hoped, will follow.'

* Mr. Browning's copy of 'Rosalind and Helen', which he had lent to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic. This and a bald though well-meant notice in the 'Athenaeum' exhaust its literary history for this period.*

* Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words, Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract from the 'Literary Gazette' of March 23, 1833:

'Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession', pp. 71. London, 1833. Saunders and Otley.

'Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual, and not a little unintelligible,—this is a dreamy volume, without an object, and unfit for publication.'

The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reason why it should be. But 'Pauline' was, from the first, little known or discussed beyond the immediate circle of the poet's friends; and when, twenty years later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon it in the library of the British Museum, he could only surmise that it had been written by the author of 'Paracelsus'.

The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning's visit to Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. The Russian consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, and being sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed that he should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary. The letters written to his sister during this, as during every other absence, were full of graphic description, and would have been a mine of interest for the student of his imaginative life. They are, unfortunately, all destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscences of what they had to tell; but we know how strangely he was impressed by some of the circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endless monotony of snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companion rushed for days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, without seeming to move from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, and was fortunate enough, before his return, to witness the breaking-up of the ice on the Neva, and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremony of drinking the first glass of water from it. He was absent about three months.

The one active career which would have recommended itself to him in his earlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desired for his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post of activity and responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman. Soon after his return from Russia he applied for appointment on a mission which was to be despatched to Persia; and the careless wording of the answer which his application received made him think for a moment that it had been granted. He was much disappointed when he learned, through an interview with the 'chief', that the place was otherwise filled.

In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the 'Monthly Repository', extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. The earliest of these was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr. Browning's works, and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse's article in the 'Century Magazine', December 1881; now part of his 'Personalia'. The second, beginning 'A king lived long ago', was to be published, with alterations and additions, as one of 'Pippa's' songs. 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' were reprinted together in 'Bells and Pomegranates' under the heading of 'Madhouse Cells'. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning 'Still ailing, Wind? wilt be appeased or no?' afterwards introduced into the sixth section of 'James Lee's Wife'. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the poet's future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most essential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems.

This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction, of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning's friends; foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with Alfred Domett. The magazine was called the 'Trifler', and published in monthly numbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-money on the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it one letter, February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled 'Some strictures on a late article in the 'Trifler'.' This boyish production sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses of some obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was 'A Dissertation on Debt and Debtors', where the subject was, I imagine, treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing that indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all his sophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his life a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have preferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may be forgiven for quoting some passages from it.

For to be man is to be a debtor:—hinting but slightly at the grand and primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hard for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do with nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralists have concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed an uninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place as represented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodge most commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce,* and those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot to discharge—or, as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it—

He's most in debt who lingers out the day, Who dies betimes has less and less to pay.

So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that

Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c.

as thou pratest, 'tis plain that they have willed on the very outset to inculcate this truth on the mind of every man,—no barren and inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productive rule of life,—that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor—aye, friend, and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander,—no recreant as thou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true—remark, as did his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast 'paid the debt of nature'? Ha! I have thee 'beyond the rules', as one (a bailiff) may say!

* Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies is identical with that expressed in these words of 'Prospice',

. . . in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold.

Such performances supplied a distraction to the more serious work of writing 'Paracelsus', which was to be concluded in March 1835, and which occupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know to what extent Mr. Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; but the following letters show that the friend of 'Pauline' gave ready and efficient help in the strangely difficult task of securing a publisher for the new poem.

The first is dated April 2, 1835.

Dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter:—Sardanapalus 'could not go on multiplying kingdoms'—nor I protestations—but I thank you very much.

You will oblige me indeed by forwarding the introduction to Moxon. I merely suggested him in particular, on account of his good name and fame among author-folk, besides he has himself written—as the Americans say—'more poetry 'an you can shake a stick at.' So I hope we shall come to terms.

I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kind interest, and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you have as yet seen; indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour, for it will never do for one so distinguished by past praise to prove nobody after all—'nous verrons'. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and obliged Robt. Browning.

On April 16 he wrote again as follows:

Dear Sir,

Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no time in presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke's letter perused than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat—the Moxonian accent grew dolorous thereupon:—'Artevelde' has not paid expenses by about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson's poetry is 'popular at Cambridge', and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last, some 300 only have gone off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever venture again, &c. &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting, &c. &c.

I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, do really think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms—I shall know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine.

You will 'sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are, you must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have of your criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it, surely I am hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance bored you sufficiently: but not a particle of your article has been rejected or neglected by your observant humble servant, and very proud shall I be if my new work bear in it the marks of the influence under which it was undertaken—and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace who anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot. I purposely keep back the subject until you see my conception of its capabilities—otherwise you would be planning a vase fit to give the go-by to Evander's best crockery, which my cantharus would cut but a sorry figure beside—hardly up to the ansa.

But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive—and likely I hope to do good; and though I am rather scared at the thought of a fresh eye going over its 4,000 lines—discovering blemishes of all sorts which my one wit cannot avail to detect, fools treated as sages, obscure passages, slipshod verses, and much that worse is,—yet on the whole I am not much afraid of the issue, and I would give something to be allowed to read it some morning to you—for every rap o' the knuckles I should get a clap o' the back, I know.

I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, I conceive, but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two—so I decide on trying the question with this:—I really shall need your notice, on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms akimbo; there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift and scope are awfully radical—I am 'off' for ever with the other side, but must by all means be 'on' with yours—a position once gained, worthier works shall follow—therefore a certain writer* who meditated a notice (it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on 'Pauline' in the 'Examiner', must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose, but in no case an idle spectator of my first appearance on any stage (having previously only dabbled in private theatricals) and bawl 'Hats off!' 'Down in front!' &c., as soon as I get to the proscenium; and he may depend that tho' my 'Now is the winter of our discontent' be rather awkward, yet there shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff—that I shall warm as I get on, and finally wish 'Richmond at the bottom of the seas,' &c. in the best style imaginable.

* Mr. John Stuart Mill.

Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and

(The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph.)

Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, we understand, on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the author than on that of its intrinsic worth.

The title-page of 'Paracelsus' introduces us to one of the warmest friendships of Mr. Browning's life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a young French Royalist, one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berri on her Chouan expedition, and was then, for a few years, spending his summers in England; ostensibly for his pleasure, really—as he confessed to the Browning family—in the character of private agent of communication between the royal exiles and their friends in France. He was four years older than the poet, and of intellectual tastes which created an immediate bond of union between them. In the course of one of their conversations, he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possible subject for a poem; but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable, because it gave no room for the introduction of love: about which, he added, every young man of their age thought he had something quite new to say. Mr. Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he would write a poem on Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It was dedicated, in fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom its inspiration had been due.

The Count's visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friends did not meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome, Mr. Browning heard a voice behind him crying, 'Robert!' He turned, and there was 'Amedee'. Both were, by that time, married; the Count—then, I believe, Marquis—to an English lady, Miss Jerningham. Mrs. Browning, to whom of course he was introduced, liked him very much.*

* A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique, and in 1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle, to both of which learned bodies his friend belonged.

Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doing produced a character—at all events a history—which, according to recent judgments, approached far nearer to the reality than any conception which had until then been formed of it. He had carefully collected all the known facts of the great discoverer's life, and interpreted them with a sympathy which was no less an intuition of their truth than a reflection of his own genius upon them. We are enabled in some measure to judge of this by a paper entitled 'Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine', written by Dr. Edward Berdoe for the Browning Society, and read at its October meeting in 1888; and in the difficulty which exists for most of us of verifying the historical data of Mr. Browning's poem, it becomes a valuable guide to, as well as an interesting comment upon it.

Dr. Berdoe reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in the poem. The passage is a definition of divine magic, which is apparently another term for alchemy; and lays down the great doctrine of all mediaeval occultism, as of all modern theosophy—of a soul-power equally operative in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in the consciousness of man.

The same clue will guide us, as no other can, through what is apparently conflicting in the aims and methods, anomalous in the moral experience, of the Paracelsus of the poem. His feverish pursuit, among the things of Nature, of an ultimate of knowledge, not contained, even in fragments, in her isolated truths; the sense of failure which haunts his most valuable attainments; his tampering with the lower or diabolic magic, when the divine has failed; the ascetic exaltation in which he begins his career; the sudden awakening to the spiritual sterility which has been consequent on it; all these find their place, if not always their counterpart, in the real life.

The language of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, his attitude towards himself and the world, are not, however, quite consonant with the alleged facts. They are more appropriate to an ardent explorer of the world of abstract thought than to a mystical scientist pursuing the secret of existence. He preserves, in all his mental vicissitudes, a loftiness of tone and a unity of intention, difficult to connect, even in fancy, with the real man, in whom the inherited superstitions and the prognostics of true science must often have clashed with each other. Dr. Berdoe's picture of the 'Reformer' drawn more directly from history, conveys this double impression. Mr. Browning has rendered him more simple by, as it were, recasting him in the atmosphere of a more modern time, and of his own intellectual life. This poem still, therefore, belongs to the same group as 'Pauline', though, as an effort of dramatic creation, superior to it.

We find the Poet with still less of dramatic disguise in the deathbed revelation which forms so beautiful a close to the story. It supplies a fitter comment to the errors of the dramatic Paracelsus, than to those of the historical, whether or not its utterance was within the compass of historical probability, as Dr. Berdoe believes. In any case it was the direct product of Mr. Browning's mind, and expressed what was to be his permanent conviction. It might then have been an echo of German pantheistic philosophies. From the point of view of science—of modern science at least—it was prophetic; although the prophecy of one for whom evolution could never mean less or more than a divine creation operating on this progressive plan.

The more striking, perhaps, for its personal quality are the evidences of imaginative sympathy, even direct human insight, in which the poem abounds. Festus is, indeed, an essentially human creature: the man—it might have been the woman—of unambitious intellect and large intelligence of the heart, in whom so many among us have found comfort and help. We often feel, in reading 'Pauline', that the poet in it was older than the man. The impression is more strongly and more definitely conveyed by this second work, which has none of the intellectual crudeness of 'Pauline', though it still belongs to an early phase of the author's intellectual life. Not only its mental, but its moral maturity, seems so much in advance of his uncompleted twenty-third year.

To the first edition of 'Paracelsus' was affixed a preface, now long discarded, but which acquires fresh interest in a retrospect of the author's completed work; for it lays down the constant principle of dramatic creation by which that work was to be inspired. It also anticipates probable criticism of the artistic form which on this, and so many subsequent occasions, he selected for it.

'I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very outset—mistaking my performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in common—judge it by principles on which it was never moulded, and subject it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. I therefore anticipate his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably more novel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted by writers whose aim it is to set forth any phenomenon of the mind or the passions, by the operation of persons and events; and that, instead of having recourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency by which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether excluded: and this for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, not a drama: the canons of the drama are well known, and I cannot but think that, inasmuch as they have immediate regard to stage representation, the peculiar advantages they hold out are really such only so long as the purpose for which they were at first instituted is kept in view. I do not very well understand what is called a Dramatic Poem, wherein all those restrictions only submitted to on account of compensating good in the original scheme are scrupulously retained, as though for some special fitness in themselves—and all new facilities placed at an author's disposal by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously rejected. . . .'

Mr. Fox reviewed this also in the 'Monthly Repository'. The article might be obtained through the kindness of Mrs. Bridell-Fox; but it will be sufficient for my purpose to refer to its closing paragraph, as given by her in the 'Argosy' of February 1890. It was a final expression of what the writer regarded as the fitting intellectual attitude towards a rising poet, whose aims and methods lay so far beyond the range of the conventional rules of poetry. The great event in the history of 'Paracelsus' was John Forster's article on it in the 'Examiner'. Mr. Forster had recently come to town. He could barely have heard Mr. Browning's name, and, as he afterwards told him, was perplexed in reading the poem by the question of whether its author was an old or a young man; but he knew that a writer in the 'Athenaeum' had called it rubbish, and he had taken it up as a probable subject for a piece of slashing criticism. What he did write can scarcely be defined as praise. It was the simple, ungrudging admission of the unequivocal power, as well as brilliant promise, which he recognized in the work. This mutual experience was the introduction to a long and, certainly on Mr. Browning's part, a sincere friendship.



Chapter 6

1835-1838

Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars—Renewed Intercourse with the second Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather—Reuben Browning—William Shergold Browning—Visitors at Hatcham—Thomas Carlyle—Social Life—New Friends and Acquaintance—Introduction to Macready—New Year's Eve at Elm Place—Introduction to John Forster—Miss Fanny Haworth—Miss Martineau—Serjeant Talfourd—The 'Ion' Supper—'Strafford'—Relations with Macready—Performance of 'Strafford'—Letters concerning it from Mr. Browning and Miss Flower—Personal Glimpses of Robert Browning—Rival Forms of Dramatic Inspiration—Relation of 'Strafford' to 'Sordello'—Mr. Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'.



It was soon after this time, though the exact date cannot be recalled, that the Browning family moved from Camberwell to Hatcham. Some such change had long been in contemplation, for their house was now too small; and the finding one more suitable, in the latter place, had decided the question. The new home possessed great attractions. The long, low rooms of its upper storey supplied abundant accommodation for the elder Mr. Browning's six thousand books. Mrs. Browning was suffering greatly from her chronic ailment, neuralgia; and the large garden, opening on to the Surrey hills, promised her all the benefits of country air. There were a coach-house and stable, which, by a curious, probably old-fashioned, arrangement, formed part of the house, and were accessible from it. Here the 'good horse', York, was eventually put up; and near this, in the garden, the poet soon had another though humbler friend in the person of a toad, which became so much attached to him that it would follow him as he walked. He visited it daily, where it burrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself by a pinch of gravel dropped into its hole; and the creature would crawl forth, allow its head to be gently tickled, and reward the act with that loving glance of the soft full eyes which Mr. Browning has recalled in one of the poems of 'Asolando'.

This change of residence brought the grandfather's second family, for the first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first. Mr. Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms with his stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded for this forbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselves and two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apart for frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, and, in order to be near her relations, she also came to Hatcham, and established herself there in close neighbourhood to them. She had then with her only a son and a daughter, those known to the poet's friends as Uncle Reuben and Aunt Jemima; respectively nine years, and one year, older than he. 'Aunt Jemima' married not long afterwards, and is chiefly remembered as having been very amiable, and, in early youth, to use her nephew's words, 'as beautiful as the day;' but kindly, merry 'Uncle Reuben', then clerk in the Rothschilds' London bank,* became a conspicuous member of the family circle. This does not mean that the poet was ever indebted to him for pecuniary help; and it is desirable that this should be understood, since it has been confidently asserted that he was so. So long as he was dependent at all, he depended exclusively on his father. Even the use of his uncle's horse, which might have been accepted as a friendly concession on Mr. Reuben's part, did not really represent one. The animal stood, as I have said, in Mr. Browning's stable, and it was groomed by his gardener. The promise of these conveniences had induced Reuben Browning to buy a horse instead of continuing to hire one. He could only ride it on a few days of the week, and it was rather a gain than a loss to him that so good a horseman as his nephew should exercise it during the interval.

* This uncle's name, and his business relations with the great Jewish firm, have contributed to the mistaken theory of the poet's descent.

Uncle Reuben was not a great appreciator of poetry—at all events of his nephew's; and an irreverent remark on 'Sordello', imputed to a more eminent contemporary, proceeded, under cover of a friend's name, from him. But he had his share of mental endowments. We are told that he was a good linguist, and that he wrote on finance under an assumed name. He was also, apparently, an accomplished classic. Lord Beaconsfield is said to have declared that the inscription on a silver inkstand, presented to the daughter of Lionel Rothschild on her marriage, by the clerks at New Court, 'was the most appropriate thing he had ever come across;' and that whoever had selected it must be one of the first Latin scholars of the day. It was Mr. Reuben Browning.

Another favourite uncle was William Shergold Browning, though less intimate with his nephew and niece than he would have become if he had not married while they were still children, and settled in Paris, where his father's interest had placed him in the Rothschild house. He is known by his 'History of the Huguenots', a work, we are told, 'full of research, with a reference to contemporary literature for almost every occurrence mentioned or referred to.' He also wrote the 'Provost of Paris', and 'Hoel Morven', historical novels, and 'Leisure Hours', a collection of miscellanies; and was a contributor for some years to the 'Gentleman's Magazine'. It was chiefly from this uncle that Miss Browning and her brother heard the now often-repeated stories of their probable ancestors, Micaiah Browning, who distinguished himself at the siege of Derry, and that commander of the ship 'Holy Ghost' who conveyed Henry V. to France before the battle of Agincourt, and received the coat-of-arms, with its emblematic waves, in reward for his service. Robert Browning was also indebted to him for the acquaintance of M. de Ripert-Monclar; for he was on friendly terms with the uncle of the young count, the Marquis de Fortia, a learned man and member of the Institut, and gave a letter of introduction—actually, I believe, to his brother Reuben—at the Marquis's request.*

* A grandson of William Shergold, Robert Jardine Browning, graduated at Lincoln College, was called to the Bar, and is now Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales; where his name first gave rise to a report that he was Mr. Browning's son, while the announcement of his marriage was, for a moment, connected with Mr. Browning himself. He was also intimate with the poet and his sister, who liked him very much.

The friendly relations with Carlyle, which resulted in his high estimate of the poet's mother, also began at Hatcham. On one occasion he took his brother, the doctor, with him to dine there. An earlier and much attached friend of the family was Captain Pritchard, cousin to the noted physician Dr. Blundell. He enabled the young Robert, whom he knew from the age of sixteen, to attend some of Dr. Blundell's lectures; and this aroused in him a considerable interest in the sciences connected with medicine, though, as I shall have occasion to show, no knowledge of either disease or its treatment ever seems to have penetrated into his life. A Captain Lloyd is indirectly associated with 'The Flight of the Duchess'. That poem was not completed according to its original plan; and it was the always welcome occurrence of a visit from this gentleman which arrested its completion. Mr. Browning vividly remembered how the click of the garden gate, and the sight of the familiar figure advancing towards the house, had broken in upon his work and dispelled its first inspiration.

The appearance of 'Paracelsus' did not give the young poet his just place in popular judgment and public esteem. A generation was to pass before this was conceded to him. But it compelled his recognition by the leading or rising literary men of the day; and a fuller and more varied social life now opened before him. The names of Serjeant Talfourd, Horne, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall (Procter), Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Eliot Warburton, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Walter Savage Landor, represent, with that of Forster, some of the acquaintances made, or the friendships begun, at this period. Prominent among the friends that were to be, was also Archer Gurney, well known in later life as the Rev. Archer Gurney, and chaplain to the British embassy in Paris. His sympathies were at present largely absorbed by politics. He was contesting the representation of some county, on the Conservative side; but he took a very vivid interest in Mr. Browning's poems; and this perhaps fixes the beginning of the intimacy at a somewhat later date; since a pretty story by which it was illustrated connects itself with the publication of 'Bells and Pomegranates'. He himself wrote dramas and poems. Sir John, afterwards Lord, Hanmer was also much attracted by the young poet, who spent a pleasant week with him at Bettisfield Park. He was the author of a volume entitled 'Fra Cipollo and other Poems', from which the motto of 'Colombe's Birthday' was subsequently taken.

The friends, old and new, met in the informal manner of those days, at afternoon dinners, or later suppers, at the houses of Mr. Fox, Serjeant Talfourd, and, as we shall see, Mr. Macready; and Mr. Fox's daughter, then only a little girl, but intelligent and observant for her years, well remembers the pleasant gatherings at which she was allowed to assist, when first performances of plays, or first readings of plays and poems, had brought some of the younger and more ardent spirits together. Miss Flower, also, takes her place in the literary group. Her sister had married in 1834, and left her free to live for her own pursuits and her own friends; and Mr. Browning must have seen more of her then than was possible in his boyish days.

None, however, of these intimacies were, at the time, so important to him as that formed with the great actor Macready. They were introduced to each other by Mr. Fox early in the winter of 1835-6; the meeting is thus chronicled in Macready's diary, November 27.*

* 'Macready's Reminiscences', edited by Sir Frederick Pollock; 1875.

'Went from chambers to dine with Rev. William Fox, Bayswater. . . . Mr. Robert Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus', came in after dinner; I was very much pleased to meet him. His face is full of intelligence. . . . I took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed to improve my acquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by the proposal, wished to send me his book; we exchanged cards and parted.'

On December 7 he writes:

'Read 'Paracelsus', a work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure; the writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. . . .'

He invited Mr. Browning to his country house, Elm Place, Elstree, for the last evening of the year; and again refers to him under date of December 31.

'. . . Our other guests were Miss Henney, Forster, Cattermole, Browning, and Mr. Munro. Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party; his simple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention, and won opinions from all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw.'

This New-Year's-Eve visit brought Browning and Forster together for the first time. The journey to Elstree was then performed by coach, and the two young men met at the 'Blue Posts', where, with one or more of Mr. Macready's other guests, they waited for the coach to start. They eyed each other with interest, both being striking in their way, and neither knowing who the other was. When the introduction took place at Macready's house, Mr. Forster supplemented it by saying: 'Did you see a little notice of you I wrote in the 'Examiner'?' The two names will now be constantly associated in Macready's diary, which, except for Mr. Browning's own casual utterances, is almost our only record of his literary and social life during the next two years.

It was at Elm Place that Mr. Browning first met Miss Euphrasia Fanny Haworth, then a neighbour of Mr. Macready, residing with her mother at Barham Lodge. Miss Haworth was still a young woman, but her love and talent for art and literature made her a fitting member of the genial circle to which Mr. Browning belonged; and she and the poet soon became fast friends. Her first name appears as 'Eyebright' in 'Sordello'. His letters to her, returned after her death by her brother, Mr. Frederick Haworth, supply valuable records of his experiences and of his feelings at one very interesting, and one deeply sorrowful, period of his history. She was a thoroughly kindly, as well as gifted woman, and much appreciated by those of the poet's friends who knew her as a resident in London during her last years. A portrait which she took of him in 1874 is considered by some persons very good.

At about this time also, and probably through Miss Haworth, he became acquainted with Miss Martineau.

Soon after his introduction to Macready, if not before, Mr. Browning became busy with the thought of writing for the stage. The diary has this entry for February 16, 1836:

'Forster and Browning called, and talked over the plot of a tragedy, which Browning had begun to think of: the subject, Narses. He said that I had bit him by my performance of Othello, and I told him I hoped I should make the blood come. It would indeed be some recompense for the miseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts which I have endured in my profession, if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spirit of poetry whose influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degraded drama. May it be!'

But Narses was abandoned, and the more serious inspiration and more definite motive were to come later. They connect themselves with one of the pleasant social occurrences which must have lived in the young poet's memory. On May 26 'Ion' had been performed for the first time and with great success, Mr. Macready sustaining the principal part; and the great actor and a number of their common friends had met at supper at Serjeant Talfourd's house to celebrate the occasion. The party included Wordsworth and Landor, both of whom Mr. Browning then met for the first time. Toasts flew right and left. Mr. Browning's health was proposed by Serjeant Talfourd as that of the youngest poet of England, and Wordsworth responded to the appeal with very kindly courtesy. The conversation afterwards turned upon plays, and Macready, who had ignored a half-joking question of Miss Mitford, whether, if she wrote one, he would act in it, overtook Browning as they were leaving the house, and said, 'Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America.' The reply was, 'Shall it be historical and English; what do you say to a drama on Strafford?'

This ready response on the poet's part showed that Strafford, as a dramatic subject, had been occupying his thoughts. The subject was in the air, because Forster was then bringing out a life of that statesman, with others belonging to the same period. It was more than in the air, so far as Browning was concerned, because his friend had been disabled, either through sickness or sorrow, from finishing this volume by the appointed time, and he, as well he might, had largely helped him in its completion. It was, however, not till August 3 that Macready wrote in his diary:

'Forster told me that Browning had fixed on Strafford for the subject of a tragedy; he could not have hit upon one that I could have more readily concurred in.'

A previous entry of May 30, the occasion of which is only implied, shows with how high an estimate of Mr. Browning's intellectual importance Macready's professional relations to him began.

'Arriving at chambers, I found a note from Browning. What can I say upon it? It was a tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and cares of years: it was one of the very highest, may I not say the highest, honour I have through life received.'

The estimate maintained itself in reference to the value of Mr. Browning's work, since he wrote on March 13, 1837:

'Read before dinner a few pages of 'Paracelsus', which raises my wonder the more I read it. . . . Looked over two plays, which it was not possible to read, hardly as I tried. . . . Read some scenes in 'Strafford', which restore one to the world of sense and feeling once again.'

But as the day of the performance drew near, he became at once more anxious and more critical. An entry of April 28 comments somewhat sharply on the dramatic faults of 'Strafford', besides declaring the writer's belief that the only chance for it is in the acting, which, 'by possibility, might carry it to the end without disapprobation,' though he dares not hope without opposition. It is quite conceivable that his first complete study of the play, and first rehearsal of it, brought to light deficiencies which had previously escaped him; but so complete a change of sentiment points also to private causes of uneasiness and irritation; and, perhaps, to the knowledge that its being saved by collective good acting was out of the question.

'Strafford' was performed at Covent Garden Theatre on May 1. Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Fox after one of the last rehearsals:

May Day, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Dear Sir,—All my endeavours to procure a copy before this morning have been fruitless. I send the first book of the first bundle. Pray look over it—the alterations to-night will be considerable. The complexion of the piece is, I grieve to say, 'perfect gallows' just now—our King, Mr. Dale, being . . . but you'll see him, and, I fear, not much applaud. Your unworthy son, in things literary, Robert Browning.

P.S. (in pencil).—A most unnecessary desire, but urged on me by Messrs. Longman: no notice on Str. in to-night's True Sun,* lest the other papers be jealous!!!

* Mr. Fox reviewed 'Strafford' in the 'True Sun'.

A second letter, undated, but evidently written a day or two later, refers to the promised notice, which had then appeared.

Tuesday Night.

No words can express my feelings: I happen to be much annoyed and unwell—but your most generous notice has almost made 'my soul well and happy now.'

I thank you, my most kind, most constant friend, from my heart for your goodness—which is brave enough, just now. I am ever and increasingly yours, Robert Browning.

You will be glad to see me on the earliest occasion, will you not? I shall certainly come.

A letter from Miss Flower to Miss Sarah Fox (sister to the Rev. William Fox), at Norwich, contains the following passage, which evidently continues a chapter of London news:

'Then 'Strafford'; were you not pleased to hear of the success of one you must, I think, remember a very little boy, years ago. If not, you have often heard us speak of Robert Browning: and it is a great deal to have accomplished a successful tragedy, although he seems a good deal annoyed at the go of things behind the scenes, and declares he will never write a play again, as long as he lives. You have no idea of the ignorance and obstinacy of the whole set, with here and there an exception; think of his having to write out the meaning of the word 'impeachment', as some of them thought it meant 'poaching'.'

On the first night, indeed, the fate of 'Strafford' hung in the balance; it was saved by Macready and Miss Helen Faucit. After this they must have been better supported, as it was received on the second night with enthusiasm by a full house. The catastrophe came after the fifth performance, with the desertion of the actor who had sustained the part of Pym. We cannot now judge whether, even under favourable circumstances, the play would have had as long a run as was intended; but the casting vote in favour of this view is given by the conduct of Mr. Osbaldistone, the manager, when it was submitted to him. The diary says, March 30, that he caught at it with avidity, and agreed to produce it without delay. The terms he offered to the author must also have been considered favourable in those days.

The play was published in April by Longman, this time not at the author's expense; but it brought no return either to him or to his publisher. It was dedicated 'in all affectionate admiration' to William C. Macready.

We gain some personal glimpses of the Browning of 1835-6; one especially through Mrs. Bridell-Fox, who thus describes her first meeting with him:

'I remember . . . when Mr. Browning entered the drawing-room, with a quick light step; and on hearing from me that my father was out, and in fact that nobody was at home but myself, he said: "It's my birthday to-day; I'll wait till they come in," and sitting down to the piano, he added: "If it won't disturb you, I'll play till they do." And as he turned to the instrument, the bells of some neighbouring church suddenly burst out with a frantic merry peal. It seemed, to my childish fancy, as if in response to the remark that it was his birthday. He was then slim and dark, and very handsome; and—may I hint it—just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid-gloves and such things: quite "the glass of fashion and the mould of form." But full of ambition, eager for success, eager for fame, and, what's more, determined to conquer fame and to achieve success.'

I do not think his memory ever taxed him with foppishness, though he may have had the innocent personal vanity of an attractive young man at his first period of much seeing and being seen; but all we know of him at that time bears out the impression Mrs. Fox conveys, of a joyous, artless confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, but quickly reasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experiences had freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. The self-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on this side it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude for kindness, and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of other men. His powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended themselves in this way. He was very attractive to women and, as we have seen, warmly loved by very various types of men; but, except in its poetic sense, his emotional nature was by no means then in the ascendant: a fact difficult to realize when we remember the passion of his childhood's love for mother and home, and the new and deep capabilities of affection to be developed in future days. The poet's soul in him was feeling its wings; the realities of life had not yet begun to weight them.

We see him again at the 'Ion' supper, in the grace and modesty with which he received the honours then adjudged to him. The testimony has been said to come from Miss Mitford, but may easily have been supplied by Miss Haworth, who was also present on this occasion.

Mr. Browning's impulse towards play-writing had not, as we have seen, begun with 'Strafford'. It was still very far from being exhausted. And though he had struck out for himself another line of dramatic activity, his love for the higher theatrical life, and the legitimate inducements of the more lucrative and not necessarily less noble form of composition, might ultimately in some degree have prevailed with him if circumstances had been such as to educate his theatrical capabilities, and to reward them. His first acted drama was, however, an interlude to the production of the important group of poems which was to be completed by 'Sordello'; and he alludes to this later work in an also discarded preface to 'Strafford', as one on which he had for some time been engaged. He even characterizes the Tragedy as an attempt 'to freshen a jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand epoch.' 'Sordello' again occupied him during the remainder of 1837 and the beginning of 1838; and by the spring of this year he must have been thankful to vary the scene and mode of his labours by means of a first visit to Italy. He announces his impending journey, with its immediate plan and purpose, in the following note:

To John Robertson, Esq.

Good Friday, 1838.

Dear Sir,—I was not fortunate enough to find you the day before yesterday—and must tell you very hurriedly that I sail this morning for Venice—intending to finish my poem among the scenes it describes. I shall have your good wishes I know. Believe me, in return, Dear sir, Yours faithfully and obliged, Robert Browning.

Mr. John Robertson had influence with the 'Westminster Review', either as editor, or member of its staff. He had been introduced to Mr. Browning by Miss Martineau; and, being a great admirer of 'Paracelsus', had promised careful attention for 'Sordello'; but, when the time approached, he made conditions of early reading, &c., which Mr. Browning thought so unfair towards other magazines that he refused to fulfil them. He lost his review, and the goodwill of its intending writer; and even Miss Martineau was ever afterwards cooler towards him, though his attitude in the matter had been in some degree prompted by a chivalrous partisanship for her.



Chapter 7

1838-1841

First Italian Journey—Letters to Miss Haworth—Mr. John Kenyon—'Sordello'—Letter to Miss Flower—'Pippa Passes'—'Bells and Pomegranates'.



Mr. Browning sailed from London with Captain Davidson of the 'Norham Castle', a merchant vessel bound for Trieste, on which he found himself the only passenger. A striking experience of the voyage, and some characteristic personal details, are given in the following letter to Miss Haworth. It is dated 1838, and was probably written before that year's summer had closed.

Tuesday Evening.

Dear Miss Haworth,—Do look at a fuchsia in full bloom and notice the clear little honey-drop depending from every flower. I have just found it out to my no small satisfaction,—a bee's breakfast. I only answer for the long-blossomed sort, though,—indeed, for this plant in my room. Taste and be Titania; you can, that is. All this while I forget that you will perhaps never guess the good of the discovery: I have, you are to know, such a love for flowers and leaves—some leaves—that I every now and then, in an impatience at being able to possess myself of them thoroughly, to see them quite, satiate myself with their scent,—bite them to bits—so there will be some sense in that. How I remember the flowers—even grasses—of places I have seen! Some one flower or weed, I should say, that gets some strangehow connected with them.

Snowdrops and Tilsit in Prussia go together; cowslips and Windsor Park, for instance; flowering palm and some place or other in Holland.

Now to answer what can be answered in the letter I was happy to receive last week. I am quite well. I did not expect you would write,—for none of your written reasons, however. You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, if the fagging fit holds. I did not write six lines while absent (except a scene in a play, jotted down as we sailed thro' the Straits of Gibraltar)—but I did hammer out some four, two of which are addressed to you, two to the Queen*—the whole to go in Book III—perhaps. I called you 'Eyebright'—meaning a simple and sad sort of translation of "Euphrasia" into my own language: folks would know who Euphrasia, or Fanny, was—and I should not know Ianthe or Clemanthe. Not that there is anything in them to care for, good or bad. Shall I say 'Eyebright'?

* I know no lines directly addressed to the Queen.

I was disappointed in one thing, Canova.

What companions should I have?

The story of the ship must have reached you 'with a difference' as Ophelia says; my sister told it to a Mr. Dow, who delivered it to Forster, I suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over &c., &c., &c.—As short as I can tell, this way it happened: the captain woke me one bright Sunday morning to say there was a ship floating keel uppermost half a mile off; they lowered a boat, made ropes fast to some floating canvas, and towed her towards our vessel. Both met halfway, and the little air that had risen an hour or two before, sank at once. Our men made the wreck fast in high glee at having 'new trousers out of the sails,' and quite sure she was a French boat, broken from her moorings at Algiers, close by. Ropes were next hove (hang this sea-talk!) round her stanchions, and after a quarter of an hour's pushing at the capstan, the vessel righted suddenly, one dead body floating out; five more were in the forecastle, and had probably been there a month under a blazing African sun—don't imagine the wretched state of things. They were, these six, the 'watch below'—(I give you the result of the day's observation)—the rest, some eight or ten, had been washed overboard at first. One or two were Algerines, the rest Spaniards. The vessel was a smuggler bound for Gibraltar; there were two stupidly disproportionate guns, taking up the whole deck, which was convex and—nay, look you! (a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the different parts of the wreck is here introduced) these are the gun-rings, and the black square the place where the bodies lay. (All the 'bulwarks' or sides of the top, carried away by the waves.) Well, the sailors covered up the hatchway, broke up the aft-deck, hauled up tobacco and cigars, such heaps of them, and then bale after bale of prints and chintz, don't you call it, till the captain was half-frightened—he would get at the ship's papers, he said; so these poor fellows were pulled up, piecemeal, and pitched into the sea, the very sailors calling to each other to 'cover the faces',—no papers of importance were found, however, but fifteen swords, powder and ball enough for a dozen such boats, and bundles of cotton, &c., that would have taken a day to get out, but the captain vowed that after five o'clock she should be cut adrift: accordingly she was cast loose, not a third of her cargo having been touched; and you hardly can conceive the strange sight when the battered hulk turned round, actually, and looked at us, and then reeled off, like a mutilated creature from some scoundrel French surgeon's lecture-table, into the most gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world: there; only thank me for not taking you at your word, and giving you the whole 'story'.—'What I did?' I went to Trieste, then Venice—then through Treviso and Bassano to the mountains, delicious Asolo, all my places and castles, you will see. Then to Vicenza, Padua, and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (the Tyrol), Munich, Salzburg in Franconia, Frankfort and Mayence; down the Rhine to Cologne, then to Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege and Antwerp—then home. Shall you come to town, anywhere near town, soon? I shall be off again as soon as my book is out, whenever that will be.

I never read that book of Miss Martineau's, so can't understand what you mean. Macready is looking well; I just saw him the other day for a minute after the play; his Kitely was Kitely—superb from his flat cap down to his shining shoes. I saw very few Italians, 'to know', that is. Those I did see I liked. Your friend Pepoli has been lecturing here, has he not?

I shall be vexed if you don't write soon, a long Elstree letter. What are you doing, writing—drawing? Ever yours truly R. B. To Miss Haworth, Barham Lodge, Elstree.

Miss Browning's account of this experience, supplied from memory of her brother's letters and conversations, contains some vivid supplementary details. The drifting away of the wreck put probably no effective distance between it and the ship; hence the necessity of 'sailing away' from it.

'Of the dead pirates, one had his hands clasped as if praying; another, a severe gash in his head. The captain burnt disinfectants and blew gunpowder, before venturing on board, but even then, he, a powerful man, turned very sick with the smell and sight. They stayed one whole day by the side, but the sailors, in spite of orders, began to plunder the cigars, &c. The captain said privately to Robert, "I cannot restrain my men, and they will bring the plague into our ship, so I mean quietly in the night to sail away." Robert took two cutlasses and a dagger; they were of the coarsest workmanship, intended for use. At the end of one of the sheaths was a heavy bullet, so that it could be used as a sling. The day after, to their great relief, a heavy rain fell and cleansed the ship. Captain Davidson reported the sight of the wreck and its condition as soon as he arrived at Trieste.'

Miss Browning also relates that the weather was stormy in the Bay of Biscay, and for the first fortnight her brother suffered terribly. The captain supported him on to the deck as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, that he might not lose the sight. He recovered, as we know, sufficiently to write 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'; but we can imagine in what revulsion of feeling towards firm land and healthy motion this dream of a headlong gallop was born in him. The poem was pencilled on the cover of Bartoli's "De' Simboli trasportati al Morale", a favourite book and constant companion of his; and, in spite of perfect effacement as far as the sense goes, the pencil dints are still visible. The little poem 'Home Thoughts from the Sea' was written at the same time, and in the same manner.

By the time they reached Trieste, the captain, a rough north-countryman, had become so attached to Mr. Browning that he offered him a free passage to Constantinople; and after they had parted, carefully preserved, by way of remembrance, a pair of very old gloves worn by him on deck. Mr. Browning might, on such an occasion, have dispensed with gloves altogether; but it was one of his peculiarities that he could never endure to be out of doors with uncovered hands. The captain also showed his friendly feeling on his return to England by bringing to Miss Browning, whom he had heard of through her brother, a present of six bottles of attar of roses.

The inspirations of Asolo and Venice appear in 'Pippa Passes' and 'In a Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's subsequent vexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; and the magnetism which Asolo was to exercise upon him, only fully asserted itself at a much later time.

A second letter to Miss Haworth is undated, but may have been written at any period of this or the ensuing year.

I have received, a couple of weeks since, a present—an album large and gaping, and as Cibber's Richard says of the 'fair Elizabeth': 'My heart is empty—she shall fill it'—so say I (impudently?) of my grand trouble-table, which holds a sketch or two by my fine fellow Monclar, one lithograph—his own face of faces,—'all the rest was amethyst.' F. H. everywhere! not a soul beside 'in the chrystal silence there,' and it locks, this album; now, don't shower drawings on M., who has so many advantages over me as it is: or at least don't bid me of all others say what he is to have.

The 'Master' is somebody you don't know, W. J. Fox, a magnificent and poetical nature, who used to write in reviews when I was a boy, and to whom my verses, a bookful, written at the ripe age of twelve and thirteen, were shown: which verses he praised not a little; which praise comforted me not a little. Then I lost sight of him for years and years; then I published anonymously a little poem—which he, to my inexpressible delight, praised and expounded in a gallant article in a magazine of which he was the editor; then I found him out again; he got a publisher for 'Paracelsus' (I read it to him in manuscript) and is in short 'my literary father'. Pretty nearly the same thing did he for Miss Martineau, as she has said somewhere. God knows I forget what the 'talk', table-talk was about—I think she must have told you the results of the whole day we spent tete-a-tete at Ascot, and that day's, the dinner-day's morning at Elstree and St. Albans. She is to give me advice about my worldly concerns, and not before I need it!

I cannot say or sing the pleasure your way of writing gives me—do go on, and tell me all sorts of things, 'the story' for a beginning; but your moralisings on 'your age' and the rest, are—now what are they? not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about: they are 'Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia), for teaching me that word.

I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him; he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he has taken!) and very like he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . .

Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M——to help you! I am going to begin the finishing 'Sordello'—and to begin thinking a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms on 'Strafford') and I want to have another tragedy in prospect, I write best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I learned that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded on my story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw it up. I want a subject of the most wild and passionate love, to contrast with the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have many half-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thorough self-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus, or a man? What circumstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling? . . .

The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and 'The Return of the Druses'.

This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work; it is also very significant of the small place which love had hitherto occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's 'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, even imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. The experience was still distant from him in point of time. In circumstance he was nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquainted with Mr. Kenyon.

When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted by a pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, asked leave to address to him a few questions: 'Was his father's name Robert? had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, and was he still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers, he went on to say that Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school, and though they had lost sight of each other in after-life, he had never forgotten his old playmate, but even alluded to him in a little book which he had published a few years before.*

* The volume is entitled 'Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833), and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays, and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted.

The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered a schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, 'Certainly! This is his face,' and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, in a letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: 'He was one of the best of human beings, with a general sympathy for excellence of every kind. He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth, of Southey, of Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with most of my contemporaries of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house that the poet saw most of Wordsworth, who always stayed there when he came to town.

In 1840 'Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, by far the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems. This seemed, indeed, a condition of its peculiar character. It had lain much deeper in the author's mind than the various slighter works which were thrown off in the course of its inception. We know from the preface to 'Strafford' that it must have been begun soon after 'Paracelsus'. Its plan may have belonged to a still earlier date; for it connects itself with 'Pauline' as the history of a poetic soul; with both the earlier poems, as the manifestation of the self-conscious spiritual ambitions which were involved in that history. This first imaginative mood was also outgrowing itself in the very act of self-expression; for the tragedies written before the conclusion of 'Sordello' impress us as the product of a different mental state—as the work of a more balanced imagination and a more mature mind.

It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Browning's typical poet became embodied in this mediaeval form: whether the half-mythical character of the real Sordello presented him as a fitting subject for imaginative psychological treatment, or whether the circumstances among which he moved seemed the best adapted to the development of the intended type. The inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and his testimony to the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue. That period of Italian history must also have assumed, if it did not already possess, a great charm for Mr. Browning's fancy, since he studied no less than thirty works upon it, which were to contribute little more to his dramatic picture than what he calls 'decoration', or 'background'. But the one guide which he has given us to the reading of the poem is his assertion that its historical circumstance is only to be regarded as background; and the extent to which he identified himself with the figure of Sordello has been proved by his continued belief that its prominence was throughout maintained. He could still declare, so late as 1863, in his preface to the reprint of the work, that his 'stress' in writing it had lain 'on the incidents in the development of a soul, little else' being to his mind 'worth study'. I cannot therefore help thinking that recent investigations of the life and character of the actual poet, however in themselves praiseworthy and interesting, have been often in some degree a mistake; because, directly or indirectly, they referred Mr. Browning's Sordello to an historical reality, which his author had grasped, as far as was then possible, but to which he was never intended to conform.

Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather, the sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of other men—the sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower into the larger self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; and this takes place in accordance with Mr. Browning's here expressed belief that poetry is the appointed vehicle for all lasting truths; that the true poet must be their exponent. The work is thus obviously, in point of moral utterance, an advance on 'Pauline'. Its metaphysics are, also, more distinctly formulated than those of either 'Pauline' or 'Paracelsus'; and the frequent use of the term Will in its metaphysical sense so strongly points to German associations that it is difficult to realize their absence, then and always, from Mr. Browning's mind. But he was emphatic in his assurance that he knew neither the German philosophers nor their reflection in Coleridge, who would have seemed a likely medium between them and him. Miss Martineau once said to him that he had no need to study German thought, since his mind was German enough—by which she possibly meant too German—already.

The poem also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* the picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps for this very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr. Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it could not preclude the consciousness of the many imaginative beauties which its unpopular character had served to conceal; and he was glad to find, some years ago, that 'Sordello' was represented in a collection of descriptive passages which a friend of his was proposing to make. 'There is a great deal of that in it,' he said, 'and it has always been overlooked.'

* The term Gothic has been applied to Mr. Browning's work, I believe, by Mr. James Thomson, in writing of 'The Ring and the Book', and I do not like to use it without saying so. But it is one of those which must have spontaneously suggested themselves to many other of Mr. Browning's readers.

It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have added themselves on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and the reason of it is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made some comments on the wording of 'Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, then quite a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth, who, in her turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, but without making quite clear to him the source from which they sprang. He took the criticism much more seriously than it deserved, and condensed the language of this his next important publication into what was nearly its present form.

In leaving 'Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage of Mr. Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic in the sense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be. 'Festus' and 'Salinguerra' have already given promise of the world of 'Men and Women' into which he will now conduct us. They will be inspired by every variety of conscious motive, but never again by the old (real or imagined) self-centred, self-directing Will. We have, indeed, already lost the sense of disparity between the man and the poet; for the Browning of 'Sordello' was growing older, while the defects of the poem were in many respects those of youth. In 'Pippa Passes', published one year later, the poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each has entered on the inheritance of the other.

Neither the imagination nor the passion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly calls this 'lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; but the quality of humour is displayed in it for the first time; as also a strongly marked philosophy of life—or more properly, of association—from which its idea and development are derived. In spite, however, of these evidences of general maturity, Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyish in personal intercourse, if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flower written at about the same time.

* These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from Mr. Gosse's 'Personalia'.

Monday night, March 9 (? 1841).

My dear Miss Flower,—I have this moment received your very kind note—of course, I understand your objections. How else? But they are somewhat lightened already (confess—nay 'confess' is vile—you will be rejoiced to holla from the house-top)—will go on, or rather go off, lightening, and will be—oh, where will they be half a dozen years hence?

Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, you and Mr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects—mean to song-write, play-write forthwith,—and, believe me, dear Miss Flower, Yours ever faithfully, Robert Browning.

By the way, you speak of 'Pippa'—could we not make some arrangement about it? The lyrics want your music—five or six in all—how say you? When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode—but 'all goeth by God's Will.'

The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem, inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. I give its first two verses:

On a Certain Critique on 'Pippa Passes'.

(Query—Passes what?—the critic's comprehension.)

Ho! everyone that by the nose is led, Automatons of which the world is full, Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, A mighty truth now wondrously displayed.

A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size, Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as any mountain there.

The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; but these lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation which must have made them a welcome tribute to friendship.

There seems to have been little respectful criticism of 'Pippa Passes'; it is less surprising that there should have been very little of 'Sordello'. Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number of earnest appreciators, foremost of whom was the writer of an admirable notice of these two works, quoted from an 'Eclectic Review' of 1847, in Dr. Furnivall's 'Bibliography'. I am also told that the series of poems which was next to appear was enthusiastically greeted by some poets and painters of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering on a period of general neglect, which covered nearly twenty years of his life, and much that has since become most deservedly popular in his work.

'Pippa Passes' had appeared as the first instalment of 'Bells and Pomegranates', the history of which I give in Mr. Gosse's words. This poem, and the two tragedies, 'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The Return of the Druses'—first christened 'Mansoor, the Hierophant'—were lying idle in Mr. Browning's desk. He had not found, perhaps not very vigorously sought, a publisher for them.

'One day, as the poet was discussing the matter with Mr. Edward Moxon, the publisher, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing out some editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively cheap form, and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems as pamphlets, using this cheap type, the expense would be very inconsiderable. The poet jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that each poem should form a separate brochure of just one sheet—sixteen pages in double columns—the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or fifteen pounds. In this fashion began the celebrated series of 'Bells and Pomegranates', eight numbers of which, a perfect treasury of fine poetry, came out successively between 1841 and 1846. 'Pippa Passes' led the way, and was priced first at sixpence; then, the sale being inconsiderable, at a shilling, which greatly encouraged the sale; and so, slowly, up to half-a-crown, at which the price of each number finally rested.'

Mr. Browning's hopes and intentions with respect to this series are announced in the following preface to 'Pippa Passes', of which, in later editions, only the dedicatory words appear:

'Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter I care to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full of good-natured people applauded it:—ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in the same way that should better reward their attention. What follows I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at intervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which they appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. Of course, such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; and to provide against a certain and but too possible contingency, let me hasten to say now—what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say circumstantially enough at the close—that I dedicate my best intentions most admiringly to the author of "Ion"—most affectionately to Serjeant Talfourd.'

A necessary explanation of the general title was reserved for the last number: and does something towards justifying the popular impression that Mr. Browning exacted a large measure of literary insight from his readers.

'Here ends my first series of "Bells and Pomegranates": and I take the opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic) acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authority alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would sufficiently convey the desired meaning. "Faith and good works" is another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: yet Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and Raffaelle crowned his Theology (in the 'Camera della Segnatura') with blossoms of the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come after, and explain that it was merely "simbolo delle buone opere—il qual Pomogranato fu pero usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gli Ebrei."'

The Dramas and Poems contained in the eight numbers of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were:

I. Pippa Passes. 1841. II. King Victor and King Charles. 1842. III. Dramatic Lyrics. 1842. Cavalier Tunes; I. Marching Along; II. Give a Rouse; III. My Wife Gertrude. ['Boot and Saddle'.] Italy and France; I. Italy; II. France. Camp and Cloister; I. Camp (French); II. Cloister (Spanish). In a Gondola. Artemis Prologuizes. Waring; I.; II. Queen Worship; I. Rudel and The Lady of Tripoli; II. Cristina. Madhouse Cells; I. [Johannes Agricola.]; II. [Porphyria.] Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 1842. The Pied Piper of Hamelin; a Child's Story. IV. The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy, in Five Acts. 1843. V. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy, in Three Acts. 1843. [Second Edition, same year.] VI. Colombe's Birthday. A Play, in Five Acts. 1844. VII. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 1845. 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. (16—.)' Pictor Ignotus. (Florence, 15—.) Italy in England. England in Italy. (Piano di Sorrento.) The Lost Leader. The Lost Mistress. Home Thoughts, from Abroad. The Tomb at St. Praxed's: (Rome, 15—.) Garden Fancies; I. The Flower's Name; II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. France and Spain; I. The Laboratory (Ancien Regime); II. Spain—The Confessional. The Flight of the Duchess. Earth's Immortalities. Song. ('Nay but you, who do not love her.') The Boy and the Angel. Night and Morning; I. Night; II. Morning. Claret and Tokay. Saul. (Part I.) Time's Revenges. The Glove. (Peter Ronsard loquitur.) VIII. and last. Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy. 1846.

This publication has seemed entitled to a detailed notice, because it is practically extinct, and because its nature and circumstance confer on it a biographical interest not possessed by any subsequent issue of Mr. Browning's works. The dramas and poems of which it is composed belong to that more mature period of the author's life, in which the analysis of his work ceases to form a necessary part of his history. Some few of them, however, are significant to it; and this is notably the case with 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'.



Chapter 8

1841-1844

'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'—Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; Lady Martin—Charles Dickens—Other Dramas and Minor Poems—Letters to Miss Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower—Second Italian Journey; Naples—E. J. Trelawney—Stendhal.



'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' was written for Macready, who meant to perform the principal part; and we may conclude that the appeal for it was urgent, since it was composed in the space of four or five days. Macready's journals must have contained a fuller reference to both the play and its performance (at Drury Lane, February 1843) than appears in published form; but considerable irritation had arisen between him and Mr. Browning, and he possibly wrote something which his editor, Sir Frederick Pollock, as the friend of both, thought it best to omit. What occurred on this occasion has been told in some detail by Mr. Gosse, and would not need repeating if the question were only of re-telling it on the same authority, in another person's words; but, through the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hill, I am able to give Mr. Browning's direct statement of the case, as also his expressed judgment upon it. The statement was made more than forty years later than the events to which it refers, but will, nevertheless, be best given in its direct connection with them.