Life of Robert Browning Part 5

Browning is foreshadowed in his earliest writings, as perhaps no other poet has been to like extent. In the "Venus and Adonis," and the "Rape of Lucrece," we have but the dimmest foreview of the author of "Hamlet,"

"Oth.e.l.lo," and "Macbeth"; had Shakspere died prematurely none could have predicted, from the exquisite blossoms of his adolescence, the immortal fruit of his maturity. But, in Browning's three earliest works, we clearly discern him, as the sculptor of Melos provisioned his Venus in the rough-hewn block.

Thenceforth, to change the imagery, he developed rapidly upon the same lines, or doubled upon himself in intricate revolutions; but already his line of life, his poetic parallel, was definitely established.

In the consideration of Browning's dramas it is needful to be sure of one's vantage for judgment. The first step towards this a.s.surance is the ablation of the chronic Shaksperian comparison. Primarily, the shaping spirit of the time wrought Shakspere and Browning to radically divergent methods of expression, but each to a method in profound harmony with the dominant sentiment of the age in which he lived. Above all others, the Elizabethan era was rich in romantic adventure, of the mind as well as of the body, and above all others, save that of the Renaissance in Italy, animated by a pa.s.sionate curiosity. So, too, supremely, the Victorian era has been prolific of novel and vast t.i.tanic struggles of the human spirit to reach those Gates of Truth whose lowest steps are the scarce discernible stars and furthest suns we scan, by piling Ossas of searching speculation upon Pelions of hardly-won positive knowledge.

The highest exemplar of the former is Shakspere, Browning the profoundest interpreter of the latter. To achieve supremacy the one had to create a throbbing actuality, a world of keenest living, of acts and intervolved situations and episodes: the other to fas.h.i.+on a mentality so pa.s.sionately alive that its manifold phases should have all the reality of concrete individualities. The one reveals individual life to us by the play of circ.u.mstance, the interaction of events, the correlative eduction of personal characteristics: the other by his apprehension of that quintessential movement or mood or phase wherein the soul is transitorily visible on its lonely pinnacle of light. The elder poet reveals life to us by the sheer vividness of his own vision: the younger, by a newer, a less picturesque but more scientific abduction, compels the complex rayings of each soul-star to a singular simplicity, as by the spectrum a.n.a.lysis. The one, again, fulfils his aim by a broad synthesis based upon the vivid observance and selection of vital details: the other by an extraordinary acute psychic a.n.a.lysis. In a word, Shakspere works as with the clay of human action: Browning as with the clay of human thought.

As for the difference in value of the two methods it is useless to dogmatise. The psychic portraiture produced by either is valuable only so far as it is convincingly true.

The profoundest insight cannot reach deeper than its own possibilities of depth. The physiognomy of the soul is never visible in its entirety, barely ever even its profile. The utmost we can expect to reproduce, perhaps even to perceive in the most quintessential moment, is a partially faithful, partially deceptive silhouette. As no human being has ever seen his or her own soul, in all its rounded completeness of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of what is temporal and perishable and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect even the subtlest a.n.a.lyst to adequately depict other souls than his own. It is Browning's high distinction that he has this soul-depictive faculty--restricted as even in his instance it perforce is--to an extent unsurpa.s.sed by any other poet, ancient or modern. As a sympathetic critic has remarked, "His stage is not the visible phenomenal England (or elsewhere) of history; it is a point in the spiritual universe, where naked souls meet and wrestle, as they play the great game of life, for counters, the true value of which can only be realised in the bullion of a higher life than this." No doubt there is "a certain crudeness in the manner in which these naked souls are presented," not only in "Strafford" but elsewhere in the plays. Browning markedly has the defects of his qualities.

As part of his method, it should be noted that his real trust is upon monologue rather than upon dialogue. To one who works from within outward--in contradistinction to the Shaksperian method of striving to win from outward forms "the pa.s.sion and the life whose fountains are within"--the propriety of this dramatic means can scarce be gainsaid.

The swift complicated mental machinery can thus be exhibited infinitely more coherently and comprehensibly than by the most electric succinct dialogue. Again and again Browning has nigh foundered in the mora.s.s of monologue, but, broadly speaking, he transcends in this dramatic method.

At the same time, none must take it for granted that the author of the "Blot on the 'Scutchcon," "Luria," "In a Balcony," is not dramatic in even the most conventional sense. Above all, indeed--as Mr. Walter Pater has said--his is the poetry of situations. In each of the _dramatis personae_, one of the leading characteristics is loyalty to a dominant ideal. In Strafford's case it is that of unswerving devotion to the King: in Mildred's and in Thorold's, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," it is that of subservience respectively to conventional morality and family pride (Lord Tresham, it may be added, is the most hopelessly monomaniacal of all Browning's "monomaniacs"): in Valence's, in "Colombe's Birthday," to chivalric love: in Charles, in "King Victor and King Charles," to kingly and filial duty: in Anael's and Djabal's, in "The Return of the Druses," respectively to religion and unscrupulous ambition modified by patriotism: in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy,"

to purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to n.o.ble steadfastness: and in Constance's, in "In a Balcony," to self-denial. Of these plays, "The Return of the Druses" seems to me the most picturesque, "Luria" the most n.o.ble and dignified, and "In a Balcony" the most potentially a great dramatic success. The last is in a sense a fragment, but, though the integer of a great unaccomplished drama, is as complete in itself as the Funeral March in Beethoven's _Eroica_ Symphony. The "Blot on the 'Scutcheon" has the radical fault characteristic of writers of sensational fiction, a too promiscuous "clearing the ground" by syncope and suicide. Another is the juvenility of Mildred:--a serious infraction of dramatic law, where the mere tampering with history, as in the circ.u.mstances of King Victor's death in the earlier play, is at least excusable by high precedent. More disastrous, poetically, is the ruinous ba.n.a.lity of Mildred's anticlimax when, after her brother reveals himself as her lover's murderer, she, like the typical young _Miss Anglaise_ of certain French novelists, betrays her incapacity for true pa.s.sion by exclaiming, in effect, "What, you've murdered my lover! Well, tell me all. Pardon? Oh, well, I pardon you: at least I _think_ I do. Thorold, my dear brother, how very wretched you must be!"

I am unaware if this anticlimax has been pointed out by any one, but surely it is one of the most appalling lapses of genius which could be indicated. Even the beautiful song in the third scene of the first act, "There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest," is, in the circ.u.mstances, nearly over the verge which divides the sublime from the ridiculous. No wonder that, on the night the play was first acted, Mertoun's song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, caused a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant auditory. It is with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint from that of d.i.c.kens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no pa.s.sion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it; who, further, at a later date, affirmed that he would rather have written this play than any work of modern times: nor with less reluctance, that I find myself at variance with Mr. Skelton, who speaks of the drama as "one of the most perfectly conceived and perfectly executed tragedies in the language." In the instance of Luria, that second Oth.e.l.lo, suicide has all the impressiveness of a plenary act of absolution: the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of lightning after the concussion of thunder-clouds. But Thorold's suicide is mere weakness, scarce a perverted courage; and Mildred's broken heart was an ill not beyond the healing of a morally robust physician.

"Colombe's Birthday" has a certain remoteness of interest, really due to the reader's more or less acute perception of the radical divergence, for all Valence's greatness of mind and spirit, between the fair young d.u.c.h.ess and her chosen lover: a circ.u.mstance which must surely stand in the way of its popularity. Though "A Soul's Tragedy" has the saving quality of humour, it is of too grim a kind to be provocative of laughter.

In each of these plays[14] the lover of Browning will recall pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage of superbly dramatic effect. But supreme in his remembrance will be the wonderful scene in "The Return of the Druses,"

where the Prefect, drawing a breath of relief, is almost simultaneously a.s.sa.s.sinated; and that where Anael, with every nerve at tension in her fierce religious resolve, with a poignant, life-surrendering cry, hails Djabal as _Hakeem_--as Divine--and therewith falls dead at his feet.

Nor will he forget that where, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," Mildred, with a dry sob in her throat, stammeringly utters--

"I--I--was so young!

Besides I loved him, Thorold--and I had No mother; G.o.d forgot me: so I fell----"

or that where, "at end of the disastrous day," Luria takes the phial of poison from his breast, muttering--

"Strange! This is all I brought from my own land To help me."

[Footnote 14: "Strafford," 1837; "King Victor and King Charles," 1842; "The Return of the Druses," and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," 1843; "Colombe's Birthday," 1844; "Luria," and "A Soul's Tragedy," 1845.]

Before pa.s.sing on from these eight plays to Browning's most imperishable because most nearly immaculate dramatic poem, "Pippa Pa.s.ses," and to "Sordello," that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry, I should like--out of an embarra.s.sing quant.i.ty of alluring details--to remind the reader of two secondary matters of interest pertinent to the present theme. One is that the song in "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," "There's a woman like a dew-drop," written several years before the author's meeting with Elizabeth Barrett, is so closely in the style of "Lady Geraldine's Courts.h.i.+p," and other ballads by the sweet singer who afterwards became a partner in the loveliest marriage of which we have record in literary history, that, even were there nothing to substantiate the fact, it were fair to infer that Mertoun's song to Mildred was the electric touch which compelled to its metric shape one of Mrs. Browning's best-known poems.

The further interest lies in the lordly acknowledgment of the dedication to him of "Luria," which Landor sent to Browning--lines pregnant with the stateliest music of his old age:--

"Shakespeare is not our poet but the world's, Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale No man has walked along our roads with step So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse. But warmer climes Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where The Siren waits thee, singing song for song."

CHAPTER V.

In my allusion to "Pippa Pa.s.ses," towards the close of the preceding chapter, as the most imperishable because the most nearly immaculate of Browning's dramatic poems, I would not have it understood that its pre-eminence is considered from the standpoint of technical achievement, of art, merely. It seems to me, like all simple and beautiful things, profound enough for the searching plummet of the most curious explorer of the depths of life. It can be read, re-read, learned by heart, and the more it is known the wider and more alluring are the avenues of imaginative thought which it discloses. It has, more than any other long composition by its author, that quality of symmetry, that _symmetria prisca_ recorded of Leonardo da Vinci in the Latin epitaph of Platino Piatto; and, as might be expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti called fundamental brain-work, is as luminous, depth within depth, as the morning air. By its side, the more obviously "profound" poems, Bishop Blougram and the rest, are mere skilled dialectics.

The art that is most profound and most touching must ever be the simplest. Whenever aeschylus, Dante, Shakspere, Milton, are at white heat they require no exposition, but meditation only--the meditation akin to the sentiment of little children who listen, intent upon every syllable, and pa.s.sionately eager of soul, to hearth-side tragedies. The play of genius is like the movement of the sea. It has its solemn rhythm: its joy, irradiate of the sun; its melancholy, in the patient moonlight: its surge and turbulence under pa.s.sing tempests: below all, the deep oceanic music. There are, of course, many to whom the sea is but a waste of water, at best useful as a highway and as the nursery of the winds and rains. For them there is no hint "of the incommunicable dream" in the curve of the rising wave, no murmur of the oceanic undertone in the short leaping sounds, invisible things that laugh and clap their hands for joy and are no more. To them it is but a desert: obscure, imponderable, a weariness. The "profundity" of Browning, so dear a claim in the eyes of the poet's fanatical admirers, exists, in their sense, only in his inferior work. There is more profound insight in Blake's Song of Innocence, "Piping down the valleys wild," or in Wordsworth's line, "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," or in Keats'

single verse, "There is a budding morrow in midnight," or in this quatrain on Poetry, by a young living poet--

"She comes like the husht beauty of the night, But sees too deep for laughter; Her touch is a vibration and a light From worlds before and after--"

there is more "profundity" in any of these than in libraries of "Sludge the Medium" literature. Mere hard thinking does not involve profundity, any more than neurotic excitation involves spiritual ecstasy. _De profundis,_ indeed, must the poet come: there must the deep rhythm of life have electrified his "volatile essence" to a living rhythmic joy.

In this deep sense, and this only, the poet is born, not made. He may learn to fas.h.i.+on anew that which he hath seen: the depth of his insight depends upon the depth of his spiritual heritage. If wonder dwell not in his eyes and soul there can be no "far ken" for him. Here it seems apt to point out that Browning was the first writer of our day to indicate this trans.m.u.tive, this inspired and inspiring wonder-spirit, which is the deepest motor in the evolution of our modern poetry.

Characteristically, he puts his utterance into the mouth of a dreamy German student, the shadowy Schramm who is but metaphysics embodied, metaphysics finding apt expression in tobacco-smoke: "Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something to look on! Has a man done wondering at women?--there follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men?--there's G.o.d to wonder at: and the faculty of wonder may be, at the same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one."

This wonder is akin to that 'insanity' of the poet which is but impa.s.sioned sanity. Plato sums the matter when he says, "He who, having no touch of the Muse's madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of Art--he, I say, and his poetry, are not admitted."

In that same wood beyond Dulwich to which allusion has already been made, the germinal motive of "Pippa Pa.s.ses" flashed upon the poet. No wonder this resort was for long one of his sacred places, and that he lamented its disappearance as fervently as Ruskin bewailed the encroachment of the ocean of bricks and mortar upon the wooded privacies of Denmark Hill.

Save for a couple of brief visits abroad, Browning spent the years, between his first appearance as a dramatic writer and his marriage, in London and the neighbourhood. Occasionally he took long walks into the country. One particular pleasure was to lie beside a hedge, or deep in meadow-gra.s.ses, or under a tree, as circ.u.mstances and the mood concurred, and there to give himself up so absolutely to the life of the moment that even the shy birds would alight close by, and sometimes venturesomely poise themselves on suspicious wings for a brief s.p.a.ce upon his rec.u.mbent body. I have heard him say that his faculty of observation at that time would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole or an Iroquois: he saw and watched everything, the bird on the wing, the snail dragging its sh.e.l.l up the pendulous woodbine, the bee adding to his golden treasure as he swung in the bells of the campanula, the green fly darting hither and thither like an animated seedling, the spider weaving her gossamer from twig to twig, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r heedfully scrutinising the lichen on the gnarled oak-hole, the pa.s.sage of the wind through leaves or across gra.s.s, the motions and shadows of the clouds, and so forth. These were his golden holidays. Much of the rest of his time, when not pa.s.sed in his room in his father's house, where he wrote his dramas and early poems, and studied for hours daily, was spent in the Library of the British Museum, in an endless curiosity into the more or less unbeaten tracks of literature. These London experiences were varied by whole days spent at the National Gallery, and in communion with kindred spirits. At one time he had rooms, or rather a room, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Strand, whither he could go when he wished to be in town continuously for a time, or when he had any social or theatrical engagement.

Browning's life at this period was distraught by more than one episode of the heart. It would be strange were it otherwise. He had in no ordinary degree a rich and sensuous nature, and his responsiveness was so quick that the barriers of prudence were apt to be as shadowy to him as to the author of "The Witch of Atlas." But he was the earnest student for the most part, and, above all, the poet. His other pleasure, in his happy vagrant days, was to join company with any tramps, gipsies, or other wayfarers, and in good fellows.h.i.+p gain much knowledge of life that was useful at a later time. Rustic entertainments, particularly peripatetic "Theatres Royal," had a singular fascination for him, as for that matter had rustic oratory, whether of the alehouse or the pulpit.

At one period he took the keenest interest in sectaries of all kinds: and often he incurred a gentle reproof from his mother because of his nomad propensities in search of "_pastors_ new." There was even a time when he seriously deliberated whether he should not combine literature and religious ministry, as Faraday combined evangelical fervour with scientific enthusiasm. "'Twas a girl with eyes like two dreams of night"

that saved him from himself, and defrauded the Church Independent of a stalwart orator.

It was, as already stated, while he strolled through Dulwich Wood one day that the thought occurred to him which was to find development and expression in "Pippa Pa.s.ses." "The image flashed upon him," writes his intimate friend, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her pa.s.sage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo, Felippa or Pippa."

It has always seemed to me a radical mistake to include "Pippa Pa.s.ses"

among Browning's dramas. Not only is it absolutely unactable, but essentially undramatic in the conventional sense. True dramatic writing concerns itself fundamentally with the apt conjunction of events, and the more nearly it approximates to the verity of life the more likely is it to be of immediate appeal. There is a _vraie verite_ which only the poet, evolving from dramatic concepts rather than attempting to concentrate these in a quick, moving verisimilitude, can attempt. The pa.s.sing hither and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate, a wandering chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a lower world, changing the circ.u.mstances and even the natures of certain more or less heedless listeners by the wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence, is of this _vraie verite_. It is so obviously true, spiritually, that it is unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life. Its very effectiveness is too apt for the dramatist, who can ill afford to tamper further with the indifferent ba.n.a.lities of actual existence. The poet, unhampered by the exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely, and artistically, achieve an equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude, by means which are, or should be, beyond adoption by the dramatist proper.

But over and above any 'nice discrimination,' "Pippa Pa.s.ses" is simply a poem, a lyrical masque with interspersed dramatic episodes, and subsidiary interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that it should be acted is a wholly errant one. The finest part of it is unrepresentable. The rest would consist merely of a series of tableaux, with conversational accompaniment.

The opening scene, "the large mean airy chamber," where Pippa, the little silk-winder from the mills at Asolo, springs from bed, on her New Year's Day _festa_, and soliloquises as she dresses, is as true as it is lovely when viewed through the rainbow glow of the poetic atmosphere: but how could it succeed on the stage? It is not merely that the monologue is too long: it is too inapt, in its poetic richness, for its purpose. It is the poet, not Pippa, who evokes this sweet sunrise-music, this strain of the "long blue solemn hours serenely flowing." The dramatic poet may occupy himself with that deeper insight, and the wider expression of it, which is properly altogether beyond the scope of the playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme with the light that never was on sea or land, nor will he thereby sacrifice aught of essential truth: but his comrade must see to it that he is content with the wide liberal air of the common day. The poetic alchemist may turn a sword into pure gold: the playwright will concern himself with the due usage of the weapon as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent value, no miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake, painting Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies, while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously s.h.i.+ne, is impermissible to the portrait-painter or the landscapist, who has to idealise actuality to the point only of artistic realism, and not to trans.m.u.te it at the outset from happily-perceived concrete facts to a glorified abstract concept.

In this opening monologue the much-admired song, "All service ranks the same with G.o.d," is no song at all, properly, but simply a beautiful short poem. From the dramatist's point of view, could anything be more shaped for disaster than the second of the two stanzas?--

"Say not 'a small event!' Why 'small'?

Costs it more pain than this, ye call A 'great event,' should come to pa.s.s, Than that? Untwine me from the ma.s.s Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!"

The whole of this lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet, not of a poet writing a drama. On the other hand, I cannot agree with what I read somewhere recently--that Sebald's song, at the opening of the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian literature, is, in the circ.u.mstances, wholly inappropriate. It seems to me entirely consistent with the character of Ottima's reckless lover. He is akin to the gallant in one of Dumas' romances, who lingered atop of the wall of the prison whence he was escaping in order to whistle the concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom. What is, dramatically, disastrous in the instance of Mertoun singing "There's a woman like a dewdrop," when he ought to be seeking Mildred's presence in profound stealth and silence, is, dramatically, electrically startling in the mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums of the shuttered shrub-house, where he has pa.s.sed the night with Ottima, while her murdered husband lies stark in the adjoining room.

It must, however, be borne in mind that this thrilling dramatic effect is fully experienced only in retrospection, or when there is knowledge of what is to follow.

A conclusive objection to the drama as an actable play is that three of the four main episodes are fragmentary. We know nothing of the fate of Luigi: we can but surmise the future of Jules and Phene: we know not how or when Monsignor will see Pippa righted. Ottima and Sebald reach a higher level in voluntary death than they ever could have done in life.

It is quite unnecessary, here, to dwell upon this exquisite flower of genius in detail. Every one who knows Browning at all knows "Pippa Pa.s.ses." Its lyrics have been unsurpa.s.sed, for birdlike spontaneity and a rare high music, by any other Victorian poet: its poetic insight is such as no other poet than the author of "The Ring and the Book" and "The Inn Alb.u.m" can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb. From the outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima and Sebald, there is a note of tragic power which is almost overwhelming. Who has not known what Jakob Boehme calls "the shudder of a divine excitement" when Luca's murderer replies to his paramour,

"morning?

It seems to me a night with a sun added."

How deep a note, again, is touched when Sebald exclaims, in allusion to his murder of Luca, that he was so "wrought upon," though here, it may be, there is an unconscious reminiscence of the tenser and more culminative cry of Oth.e.l.lo, "but being wrought, perplext in the extreme." Still more profound a touch is that where Ottima, daring her lover to the "one thing that must be done; you know what thing: Come in and help to carry," says, with affected lightsomeness, "This dusty pane might serve for looking-gla.s.s," and simultaneously exclaims, as she throws them rejectingly from her nervous fingers, "Three, four--four grey hairs!" then with an almost sublime coquetry of horror turns abruptly to Sebald, saying with a voice striving vainly to be blithe--

"Is it so you said A plait of hair should wave across my neck?

No--this way."

Who has not been moved by the tragic grandeur of the verse, as well as by the dramatic intensity of the episode of the lovers' "crowning night"?