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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 144: Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the Asolando poems. Rosny, Beatrice Signorini and Flute-Music were written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the Bad Dreams are, with less confidence, assigned to the same date. The Ponte dell' Angelo "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "White Witchcraft had been suggested in the same summer (1888) by a letter from a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there." The Cardinal and the Dog, written with the Pied Piper for Macready's son, is a poem of early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in Asolo" (Century Magazine, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889 of The Lady and the Painter.]

[Footnote 145: Mrs Orr, Life, p. 414.]

[Footnote 146: W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., Magazine of Art, 1890, p. 182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.]

[Footnote 147: "The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure Conway may also be found.]

[Footnote 148: "My father died without pain or suffering other than that of weakness or weariness"—so Mr R. Barrett Browning wrote to Mrs Bloomfield-Moore. "His death was what death ought to be, but rarely is—so said the doctor." (Quoted in an article on Browning by Mrs Bloomfield-Moore in Lippincott's Magazine—Jan.—June 1890, p. 690.)]

[Footnote 149: A grave in the Abbey was at the same time offered for the body of Browning's wife; the removal of her body from Florence would have been against both the wishes of Browning and of the people of Florence. It was therefore declined by Mr R. Barrett Browning. See his letter in Mrs Bloomfield-Moore's article in Lippincott's Magazine, vol. xiv.]

[Footnote 150: E.D. West in the first of two papers, "Browning as a Preacher," in The Dark Blue Magazine. Browning esteemed these papers highly and in what follows I appropriate, with some modifications, a passage from the first of them. The writer has consented to the use here made of the passage, and has contributed a passage towards the close.]



Index

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

Abt Vogler Adams, Sarah Flower Aeschylus (see Agamemnon) Agamemnon Alford, Lady M. Ancona Andersen, Hans Andrea del Sarto Any Wife to any Husband Apparent Failure Aristophanes' Apology Arnold, Matthew Arnould, Joseph Arran, Isle of Artemis Prologuizes Asceticism Ashburton, Lady Asolando Asolo At the Mermaid Audierne Aurora Leigh

B

Bach Bacon, Francis Bad Dreams Balaustion's Adventure Balzac, H. de Barrett, Arabella Barrett, Edward M. Barrett, Henrietta (Mrs Surtees Cook) Bayley, Miss Bean Feast Beatrice Signorini Bells and Pomegranates Benckhausen, Mr Bernard de Mandeville Biarritz Bifurcation Bird, Dr Bishop Blougram Bishop orders his Tomb Blagden, Isa Blanc, Mme. Blot in the 'Scutcheon Bottinius Bowring, Sir J. Boyd, H.S. Boyle, Miss Bradley, Dean Bridell-Fox, Mrs Bronson, Mrs A. Browning, Robert (grandfather) Browning, Robert (father) Browning, Robert, W.B. (son) Browning, Sarah Anna (mother) Browning, Sarah Anna, or Sarianna (sister) Buchanan, Robert Burne-Jones, E. By the Fireside

C

Caliban upon Setebos Cambo Cambridge Caponsacchi Carlyle, Mrs Carlyle, Thomas Casa Guidi Cavalier Tunes Cavour Cenciaja Chapman & Hall Chappell, Arthur Charles Avison Childe Roland Christmas Eve and Easter Day Christopher Smart "Clarissa" Clayton, Rev. Mr Cleon Clive Cobbe, Miss F.P. Colombe's Birthday Conway, Dr M. Cook, Captain Surtees Cook, Mrs Surtees, see Barrett, Henrietta Cornhill Magazine Count Gismond Coup d'etat Cristine Croisic Crosse, Mrs Andrew Curtis, Mr and Mrs

D

_Daniel Bartoli_ Dante Davidson, Captain _Death in the Desert_ _De Gustibus_ _Development_ De Vere Gardens Dickens, Charles _Dis Aliter Visum_ _Doctor_ —— Domett, Alfred Dominus Hyacinthus _Donald_ _Dramatic Idyls_ (First and Second Series) _Dramatic Lyrics_ _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ _Dramatis Personae_ _Dubiety_ Dufferin, Lord Duffy, C. Gavan_

E

Easter Day, see Christmas Eve and Easter Day Echetlos Eckley, Mr Egerton-Smith, Miss Elgin, Lady Eliot, George Englishman in Italy Epilogue (to "Asolando") Epilogue (to "Dramatis Personae") Epilogue (to "Pacchiarotto" volume) Epilogue (to "Two Poets of Croisic") Epistle to Karshish Etretat Evelyn Hope

F

Face, A Fano Faraday Faucit, Helen Fears and Scruples Ferishtah's Fancies Fifine at the Fair Filippo Baldinucci Fisher, W. Fitzgerald, Edward Flaubert, G. Flight of the Duchess Flower, Eliza Flower, Sarah Flush Forgiveness Forster, John Founder of the Feast Fox, Caroline Fox, W.J. Fra Lippo Lippi Francis Farini Fuller, Margaret (see Ossoli, Countess d') Furnivall, F.J.

G

Gagarin, Prince Garden Fancy Gerard de Lairesse Gibson, J. Gladstone, W.E. Glove Gold Hair Goldoni Gosse, E. Grammarian's Funeral Greek Christian Poets Gresonowsky, Dr Gressoney Grove, Mr Guardian Angel Guido Franceschini

H

Halbert and Hob Hatcham Havre Hawthorne, N. "Helen's Tower" Herakles Heretic's Tragedy Herve Riel Hickey, Miss E.H. Hillard, G.S. Hippolytus and Aricia Holy Cross Day Home, D.D. Hosmer, Harriet House How it strikes a Contemporary How they brought the Good News Hugo, Victor Hunt, Leigh

I

Imperante Augusta natus est In a Balcony In a Gondola Inapprehensiveness In a Year Inn Album Ion Italian in England Ivan Ivanovitch Ixion

J

James, Henry James Lee's Wife Jameson, Anna Jochanan Hakkadosh, Jocoseria Johannes Agricola Jones, Thomas Jowett, Benjamin

K

Kean, Charles Kemble, Fanny Kenyon, F.G. Kenyon, John Kingsley, Charles King Victor and King Charles Kirkup, Seymour

L

"La Dame aux Camelias" Lamartine La Mura Landor, W.S. La Saisiaz Last Poems Last Ride Lehmann, R. Leighton, F. Lever, Charles Lido Life in a Love Likeness Llangollen, Vale of Lockhart, J.G. Long, Professor Lost Leader Lounsbury, Professor Love among the Ruins Love in a Life Lover s Quarrel Lucca, Baths of Luria Lytton, Robert

M

Maclise, Daniel Macready, W.C. "Madame Bovary" Magical Nature Mansoor the Hierophant Marston, Westland Martin, Lady (see also Faucit, Helen) Martin, Sir T. Martin Relph Master Hugues "Maud" (Tennyson's) May and Death Mazzini Mellerio, A. Memorabilia Men and Women Merrifield, Mr and Mrs Mers Mignet Milsand, Joseph Mill, J.S. Milnes, Monckton Milton Mitford, Miss Monclar, A. de Ripert Monodrama Montecuccoli, Marchese Moore, Mrs Bloomfield Moxon, E. Mr Sludge the Medium Muleykeh Musset, A. de My Last Duchess

N

Names Napoleon, Louis Narses Natural Magic Ned Bratts Nightingale, Florence "Nobly, nobly Cape St Vincent" Numpholeptos

O

Ogle, Miss Old Pictures in Florence One Way of Love Only a Player-Girl Orr, Mrs Ossian, Macpherson's Ossoli, Countess d'

P

Pacchiarotto Page, Mr Paget, Sir James Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati Palazzo Manzoni Palazzo Rezzonico Palgrave, F.T. Paracelsus Paris Parker, Theodore Parleyings with Certain People Patmore, Emily Patriot Pauline Pheidippides Phelps Pictor Ignotus Pied Piper Pietro of Abano Pio Nono Pippa Passes Pippa's Tower Pisgah Sights Pisa Plutarch Poems before Congress Pompilia Pope (in "Ring and Book") Pope and the Net Popularity Pornic Porphyria's Lover Portraits Powers, H. Pretty Woman Primiero Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau Prinsep, V. Procter ("Barry Cornwall") Prologue (to "La Saisiaz") Prospice Protus Prout, Father "Puseyism"

R

Rabbi ben Ezra Ready, Rev. T. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country Rephan Respectability Return of the Druses Reverie Rhyming Ring and the Book Ristori Ritchie, Mrs A. Thackeray Rome Rossetti, D.G. Rossetti, W.M. Rudel Ruskin, John

S

Saint-Aubin Saint-Enogat St Martin's Summer St Moritz St Pierre de Chartreuse Sainte-Marie Saint-Victor, Paul de Saleve Salvini Sand, George Sartoris, Adelaide Saul Selections (from Browning) Serenade at the Villa Shah, the Shakespeare Sharp, William Shelley, P.B. Shop Siena Silverthorne, James Smith, Mr Society, The Browning Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister Solomon and Balkis Sonnets from the Portuguese Sordello Soul's Tragedy Speculative Spiritualism Stanhope, Lord Statue and the Bust Stead, Mr F.H. Stephen, Sir L. Sterling, John Stillmann, W.J. Story, W.W. Stowe, Harriet B. Strafford Swanwick Swedenborg

T

Talfourd Taylor, Bayard Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Frederick Tennyson, Hallam Thackeray, Miss, see Ritchie, Mrs Thackeray, W.M. The Worst of It Toccata of Galuppi's Too Late Transcendentalism Trelawny, E.J. Trollope, Mrs Trollope, T.A. Twins Two in the Campagna Two Poems by E.B.B. and R. B. Two Poets of Croisic

U

Up at a Villa

V

Vallombrosa Venice, 47, 137, 334, 335, 339, 386-388 Villers

W

Waring Warwick Crescent White, Rev. E. White Witchcraft Whitman, Walt Why am I a Liberal? Wiedemann, William Wilson (Mrs Browning's maid) Wise, T.J. Wiseman, Cardinal Woman's Last Word Wordsworth, W.

Y

Yates, Edmund "York" (a horse) York Street Chapels Youth and Art

THE END