4X5t CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell university Library PR 4238.F76 Studies inthepoetry.o.Bot«r.^owr' Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tile Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013444793 STUDIES IN THE POETRY OP ROBERT BROWNING STUDIES IN THE POETRY OF ROBERT BROWNING JAMES FOTHERINGHAM LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH Sc CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE cu ' Trutl), tiTith, that's the gold ! And all the good I find in fancy is, it serves to set (Jold's inmost glint free." Tlie Two Poets of Croisic. ' What's poetry except a power that makes, And, speaking to one sense, inspires the rest, Pressing them all into its service?" / BiiLiuifion's Aiivfntnre. c PREFACE. The following chapters are an essay towards a study of the mind and art of Robert Browning. They are critical and expository. Studies of life and thought as presented by the poet, and of the poet's work as tested by these ; studies of the poet's art, and expo- sitions of the matter as well as the bearing of his work. This seems the right way to present this poet. A poet who reads the life and thought of his age has strong claims-on its deliberate attention ; and if it be too much to • say that the best poets of our own time concern most readers more than any other poets, it is the fact that they have much to give no others can give, and that without them we do not know ourselves. This kind of " criticism " is thought to be the forte and the foible of Browning. His significance in this respect I have tried to show ; I trust it has been shown on grounds proper to literature. «3 vi Preface. But it will be said that one who serves such a function ought not himself to need explanation. That will depend on other things besides the value of his work. In the present case, anyhow, the need seems to be a fact The reasons for it I have tried to explain. The great reason lies, however, in the matter and significance of the work. The poet must be read from the inside, and as a whole. To be put in a position to do that is to be put in a position to understand the poet One scarcely expects all who read good poetry to read Browning. But I would gladly commend the poet to those readers who have a genial yet serious care for poetry, and who have a serious yet genial care for life. And if one can show the beauty and worth of the poef s work, and place it rightly in the field of life and thought, more of those to whom he really belongs may read Browning. These studies were at first lectures, read to literary societies and classes during the past six years ; some of them to the Bradford Browning Society, Their use and acceptance in that form has been one reason for offering them to a wider public. But this book is not those lectures. Besides new chapters and much new matter, the whole has been worked out afresh Preface. vii with a view to the design above described, and with a sti'ong sense of the difference between the two forms. In writing these studies I have used only the poet's works and the careful Bibliography of Dr. Furnivall. But, as I have read at their dates of issue most of the best of the critical essays on Browning, it is quite likely that I owe suggestions and qualifica- tions to some of these, which I would thus acknow- ledge. All who touch the life and early writings of the poet are indebted to an essay by Mr. E. Gosse. So far as the estimate of ideas goes less has been done, except in a paper by Mrs. Orr in the Contem- porary Review, and in some of the papers of the Browning Society. I hoped when I began this book to have made it a practically complete survey of the poet's work, and especially to have given all the more important of the later poems. Those who know the many volumes of the poet's writings, and the matter they contain, will see why I have had to omit these. And it seemed better, with the space I had at command, to seek com- pleteness within my plan, and up to an important date, than to reduce exposition to analysis, and critical study to illegible condensation, in order to include all the poems intended. I am convinced that a viii Preface. mastery of the method and ideas of the poet in the poems here dealt with will afford a discipline and a clue for the later poems, while I may be permitted to say that in love for the poet, and with a desire still further to extend the study of his work, I should be glad, if opportunity offer, to include the poems now omitted. V CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Significance of Present Interest in Browning's Poetry as regards Thought and Art ... i II. Life of the Poet, and History of his Writings, "Periods" of Work, and Growth of Art 26 III. Literary Relations — The Age and its Ideas — Modern Humanism — Matter and Form of \ Browning's Poetry — His Dramatic Method and Power ... ... ... ... 43 IV. Critical Objections — Obscurity and its Causes 1 — Further Analysis of Dramatic Method, I WITH Reference to rr — Style and itsJ Qualities — Characteristics ... ... 64 V. "Paracelsus" ... ... ... ... ... 90 VI. "Bordello" ... ... ... ... 107 VII. Browning as a Dramatist ... ... ... 130 VUI. First Dramatic Lyrics (1836-1846) ... ... 150 IX. Poems of Life and Dutv, and Bkowning's " Criticism " OF Life ... ... ... 162 X. Religious Poems: "Saul," "Christmas Eve," "The Sun" ... ... ... ••• 192 XI. Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion — Leading Spiritual Ideas ... ... 215 Contents. CHAPTER ' XII. Poems on Immortality — XIII. Psychological and Casuistic Studies : ban" and "Bishop Blougram " XIV. "Mr. Sludge, the Medium" XV. Poems on Art : Painters and Painting ^ XVI. Poems on Art: chiefly Poetry ... XVII. Poems on Art: Music XVin. The Romances 'Cali- 246 283 307 329 344 358 370 REFERENCE LIST OF POEMS INCLUDED IN THE FOLLOWING STUDIES. I. First Poems— (i) " Pauline," 27, 28, 45, 48, 54 ; (2) " Paracelsus,^' 28, 48, 96, 151 ; (3) "Sordello," 29, 45, 48, 54, 113. II. Dramas, 28, 29, 54 ; " Strafford," " Pippa Passes," " King Victor and King Charles," "The Return of the Druses,'' "A Blot in the Scutcheon,'' " Colombe's Birthday," "Ljiria," "A Soul's Tragedy," "In a Balcony," 130-147. III. First Dramatic Lyrics, 29, 54, 150; "Porphyria's Lover," "Johannes Agricola,'' "Cavalier Tunes," "Count Gismond," "Incident of the French Camp,'' "In a Gondola," "Waring,'' "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop orders his Tombat St. Praxed's," 151-157. / ' IV. Poems of Life and Duty — "The Boy and the Angel," 168; "The Statue and the Bust," 170; "A Grammarian's Funeral," 174 ; " Deaf and Dumb," 177 ; " James Lee's Wife,'' pt. vi.. Under, the Cliff, 178; pt. viii.. By the Drawing-Board, 179; "The Last Ride Together," 180; "Two in the Campagna," 181; "The Patriot," 182 ; " Echetlos," 183 ; Lyric xii. in " Ferishtah's Fancies," 183 ; " Instans Tyrannus," 183 ; " Halbert and Hob," 184; "Rabbi Ben Ezra," 185; "Pisgah Sights," i., ii., 189; "Jochanan Hakkadosh,'' 190. ^ "^ i, - .^ z. "5 'i V. Studies of Religious Ideas— " Saul," 195; "Christmas Eve," 205; The Sun ia "Ferishtah's Fancies," 211; " Sordello " (part of), 213; "Epistle of Karshish" (part of), 214; "Ixion," 214. xii Reference List of Poems. VI. The Religious Ideal in Browning — "A Death in the Desert," 220; Epilogue to "Dramatis Personse," 232; "Fears and Scruples," 234 ; the Pope's meditation in " The Ring and the Book," 255. VII. Poems of the " Immortal " Life — " Paracelsus," " Sordello," "Saul," "A Grammarian's Funeral," the "Love-Poems," "Cleon," 252; "Rabbi Ben Ezra," 255; "Epistle of Karshish," 257 " Easter Day," 261 ; " La Saisiaz," 274. VIII. Studies, Psychological and Casuistic. — "Caliban upon Setebos," 286 ; " Bishop Blougram's Apology," 294 ; " Mr. Sludge, the Medium," 313. IX. Art Poems : Painting — " Old Pictures in Florence," 332 ; "Fra Lippo Lippi," 335 ; " Andrea del Sarto." ^^o : " Pictor Ignotus," 343. Poetry — "Youth and Art," "Pippa Passes" (part of), " Pictor Ignotus," 345 ; " Shop," 346 ; " Respectability," 346 ; "Popularity," 347; "How it strikes a Contemporary," 347; Digression in " Sordello," 348 ; " A Light Woman," 350 ; " Transcendentalism," 350 ; "At the Mermaid," 351 ; "Housed* 353 ; the Epilogue to " Pacchiarotto," 353 ; Epilogue to " Dra- matic Idyls," 354 ; Prologues to " Pacchiarotto " and " locoseria," Lyric in "locoseria," "Wanting is — What?" Prologue and Epilogue to the "Two Poets of Croisic," 355; " Aristophanes'f- Apology," 356. Music—" A Toccata of Galuppi," 359 ; " Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," 361 ; " Abt Vogler," 364. X. Romances— " The Flight of the Duchess," 371 ; "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came," 377. XI. The Later Poems : History, Themes, (Dualities, and Classification of, 33-38. STUDIES IN THE POETRY OF. ROBERT BROWNING. CHAPTER I. SIGNIFICANCE OF PRESENT INTEREST IN BROWN- ING'S POETRY AS REGARDS THOUGHT AND ART. It is said sometimes that our age is essentially prosaic and unspirltual, and that, being so, it has and can have little care for poetry. Newspapers, novels, and reviews are the literature most characteristic of the time and the reading of its leisure hours. These appeal to its interests and minister to its wants. But for poetry in any serious way it has neither taste nor time. , And there is truth in this, no doubt. Many cir- cumstances of the time and many things in its bias and habit are unfavourable to that art which is the pure, passionate, and disinterested expression of man's mind and life. We have abundant curiosity and 2 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. activity of mind — more, probably, than there ever was in the world before— and knowledge grows "froniil more to more ; " but these may hinder, not promote, a care for poetry. To care for poetry, indeed, a culture is needed, not always included in education or given by experience ; perceptions and powers not possessed by intelligent or by able men simply as part of their intelligence or ability. Busy men are very apt to be out of tune for poetry, and men who care for knowledge only, or for affairs only, or who, by the daily custom of their lives, restlessly seek the "uses" of things only — such men, by force of their very virtues, are but little capable of sympathy with an art that seems to serve none of their ends, and to belong to another world than that in which their lives are spent. And yet, though these and other things in the circumstances and spirit of the time may have made against a general and deliberate regard for poetic art, there have not been wanting many proofs of a real regard for poetry in our midst. And this regard has surely grown and deepened during the past decade. Other evidences besides the sale and circulation of books attest and illustrate this. The work of Robert Browning is, in fact, a capital instance and a striking illustration of it. In the recent history of English letters, no case serves so well to prove this deepened interest in poetry, to ascertain its quality, or to test its sincerity. That this is so, and why it is so, the history of Relations of Browning's Poetry to Thought and Art. 3 Browning s work will show us. For what, in this regard, is its history ? For years it remained unread or misread — read by a few only of those who read poetry, misunderstood by many of those who read it. No small part even of the critical opinion of the country was against it or puzzled by it. For nearly thirty years this was the general temper in regard to it. Since 1870, however, much of that has been changed. By that date criticism had discerned the value and recognized the power, if it had not in all cases grasped the principles, of the poet's work. His circle of readers grew, slowly at first, and only among the more educated and thoughtful, more widely after- wards, until the poet has at length won exceptional attention. A new thing in the history of letters has, in fact, happened in his case : societies have been formed during a poet's lifetime for the careful study of the poet's works. Now, these societies, a growth as they are of the present decade, may seem to the future historian of our century's literature rather curious phenomena. But whatever, as to certain points, the judgment of our future critic may be, he will at least understand this — that the rise of these societies was a landmark in the history of the poet's writings and influence ; that his work had then secured cordial acceptance in its full extent as an original and precious addition to the body of English poetry. To the poet himself this acceptance, so accom- plished, must be as grateful as it is honourable. Years ago he chose his path. He has kept to it ; he has Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. made the work that his genius inspired, that his mind approved. He did this for years with slight response and encouragement. A few friends and critics, and a very few readers, confirmed his judgment. He soon found that, far from pleasing, his work only bewildered and offended many who tried to read it. He did not wish it to be so, did not see why it was so. Some efforts to approach it he made. Mainly he tried to speak out and to speak clearly, and waited. He made his work stronger, fuller, surer, satisfied that in due time it would be accepted — knowing that this was his way to acceptance. And after a lifetime of such work, resolute and faithful, he sees himself recognized for the poet he is, his work understood and heartily valued. This is the reality of fame — that- fame which for many has been but a voice and a shadow — esteem and use rewarding the integrity and fidelity of genius. A long life has enabled the poet to do and see this. It must seem to him like the judgment of posterity, at this point of a century which began for him so long ago. Wisdom and genius have ever been "justified" of their works, yet only at times has it been given to the teacher or worker in the long and mellow evening light to see the "justification." When power, persistence, and truth are well helped by time, then may the thinker or poet find himself approved, and his work taking its place in that hierarchy of powers by which the thought and passion of man will be ruled for long years to come. Relations of Browning' s Poetry to Thought and Art. 5 To some this slow growth of regard will seem in itself an objection and proof of defect. Of all writing, they say, poetry ought to appeal most readily to those whom it concerns. And yet it has not been so, nor is it in the nature of all poetry that it should be. There are, in fact, two kinds of literature in this respect — the literature that, from a fine simplicity and generality, meets with immediate acceptance ; and that which, because more original or deeper, meets with slower and, it may be, remote acceptance. The work of many good poets has had to pass through a time of waiting. The new experience, the freer and ampler passion or thought, and the style framed to express these, must be known and mastered by help of the writings themselves. And the work that meets acceptance only after waiting is by that assured of a fuller significance. A generation has come and gone between Brown- ing's first work and his due acceptance. His work has a fulness of interest such as it had not for readers of the poet's own generation. What is the meaning of this ? Change of fashion .' Persistence of the poet ? Rise of a " party " devoted to him ? Or some coincidence of interests merely t By such phrases it is sought sometimes to explain, or rather to put aside explanation of, such facts. But the facts of literature are vital facts in the full sense of the words. The roots of all literature are to be found in life. It is originated and maintained, not merely touched and modified, by the passions and 6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. beliefs, by the principles and hopes, of men. To regard it as casual, decorative, and superfluous, and not as vital, is to take it not only superficially, but falsely. Like other vital facts, even when they seem to lie apart, and to have merely special relations, the facts of literature are in wide relations, are animated by the larger forces and borne upon the greater currents of man's work and life. And the more alive literature is with passion and thought, the more sensitive it is to every touch of man's experience, the greater must be the vital significance it carries. Of no part or kind of literature, then, can this be so true as of the greater poetry. There especially may be found, by such as can read them, those " open secrets " of the life of men which will go far to help us to understand the very spirit of that life. And so it happens that the poetry that an age, or any important section of an age, cares ior, finds really expressive and true, must tell much of the age itself. There are significant relations and correspondences between such poetry and the age for which it has vital interest — relations that explain the interest of the poetry, and throw light on the elements and con- ditions of the secular life ; that poetry is, in fact, a better clue to the emotions and beliefs, to the dominant and deeper passions and ideas, of the age than anything else in its records. Since, then, the poetry of Robert Browning has greater interest and fuller pertinence to-day than it had thirty years ago, it must be because the time and phase of life upon which we Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 7 have come have closer relations with this poet and his work than obtained between him and the earlier years of the century. That decade through which we are being borne rapidly is more responsive to, an4 puts a higher value on, the convictions and principles, on the interests and ideals, of this poetry than earlier decades of the century did. Regarded in this way, the rise of Browning Societies and the wider care for Brownings poetry acquire what may seem an un- expected, but is surely a real significance as an index of changes and movements greater and deeper than any changes of literary fashion as such. From this point of view, we must try to reach the significance and ascertain the relations of the poetry in question ; and to do this it may be best to go straight to the heart of matters. Our age has been constantly called the Age of Science, and by that has been mostly meant physical or natural science. Our greatest advances were there, our ruling ideas were determined and, in the case of many minds, exhausted by the generalizations of that science. Our whole bent of mind was fixed by scientific curiosity, our standard of belief by the methods, conceptions, and hypotheses of modern physics. Our image of the whole was formed of the matter and bounded by the scope of physical ideas. That was th.e state of things as regards the mode and measure of thought for perhaps a quarter of the century, say from 1850 to 1875. But that is no longer a fair, not to say a sufficient or complete, 8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. description of the temper and thought of our time. Many still hold, no doubt, by physical science as the ruling factor and only legitimate sovereign of the world of thought, and by them our characteristics are drawn from that point of view. They are such as these : our interest in and regard for facts ; our bias to what is real ; our demand for exactness of knowledge, for stringency of reasoning ; our distaste for hypotheses, except those of physics — these are our qualities and virtues. And as art-work and theories about art always in time take their colour and scope from the larger ideas that are governing the age — from its view of the world and life — so our art-work in its various kinds and media has reflected this ruling spirit And those who argue from the scientific basis of thought — content and even resolved to make it the measure of things every way — have set forth, in regard to art, that imagination and beauty in the old senses, and all spiritual elements, have practically gone out of art because out of belief and life, and ought even to be excluded deliberately and completely, that we may have art rest sincerely on knowledge. They would tell us that now we are to have, and in the future can only have, a literature of fact, not a literature of emotions and ideals any more. Such, then, has been the mode, and thus has it been argued by those who have been ruled by the dominant ideas of the years above mentioned, and much of it continues still. But, looking at the matter in a historic and not at all in a dogmatic way or Relations of Browning's Poetry to Thought and Art. g spirit, have we not got a little beyond that time and phase of thought ? To many of the most active and representative minds of those years, it did seem as if we had reached the final phase of human culture and belief Can that mode of thought be now regarded as an exhaustive and final philosophy of man ? Rathfer what is it we see by help of the test above given, and from that point of view — that is, by taking our higher and more vital literature as a clue to the inner life and intimate thought of the present time ? Is it not the fact, in the terms of philosophy, that a sensational and virtually physical philosophy is giving way before an idealistic and virtually spiritual philosophy ? — a mode of thought deriving from Hume and concluding on Comte or Mill is giving place to a mode of thought deriving from Kant and Hegel, and as yet without conclusion, but profoundly convinced that the only conclusions that can be agreeable to experience and adequate to the nature of man must be sought on that ground, found at that level and in that direction ? The oracle speaks there, though no philosophy has yet been able to interpret its message ; the great problems are thinkable and soluble there, though no " system " has yet resolved them. Or the matter may be put in other terms and from another side — ?';« the terms and on the grounds of literature purely. Looking at it thus, what does the records how ? We iind that our century's litera- ture began with the transcendentalism of Wordsworth and the idealism of Shelley. Neither of these, it is 10 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. true, rested on quite definite grounds of thought, on philosophic grounds. But that does not affect their value as regards our inquiry, or it may be that it adds to their value as implying a deeper grasp and a more vital impulse. But those impulses, with their ideas, seemed for a time to have been exhausted, and to have been replaced by work involving no tran- scendental ideas, carrying no ideal impulses, but resting on positive ideas and physical conceptions. Yet now is it not the fact that the idealism of the earlier years of the century is coming back into our literature — not in the old ideas, certainly, but all the more for that in a truly romantic spirit and scope? And this idealism has come upon us again, in part out of the old, old depths of spiritual thought and passion ; in part out of our science and what may be called our realistic passion, our concentration upon fact and law outside us, and our new sense of the ultimate things always come upon by man's mind, whatever line it may take. Thus it happens that the new idealism comes enlarged because informed by the results and expanded by the ideas of modern know- ledge, by its great conception of the history, order, and extent of the universe. It comes, therefore, with fresh and deeper sense of the insoluble mystery, yet certain grandeur, of the system in which we have our part. It comes also with fresh conviction that the great things of man's own mind and history, the poetry and religion of the race, nobly interpreted and spiritually affirmed, provide, if not a Relations of Browning's Poetry to Thought and Art. 1 1 key to the " great secret," yet a clue guiding us among the questions that arise at the end of all knowledge, and among the things that wait at the end of all experience. The relations of Brownings art and thought to tlie course of things thus generally described, and to the movements upon which it is set, is a matter of such importance that it must be early and frankly con- sidered in the study of his poetry. We shall find in it a reason for the interest his work has at present for so many minds. We shall see how far the work itself is interpreted by the principles of the movement. But it will be said that they do poetry a disservice who involve it in such matters, or connect it with changes in the " course of thought " at all. Poetry, which should be a transcript and almost a substantive part of life, should spring from deeper and rise to higher points. And if Browning, as many suspect, has much to do with these things, the difficulty and peculiarity of his poetry is explained. We must, and can best, meet this question at a later point, in considering the qualitj- and motive of this poetry. Here it is enough to say that a poet like Browning, dealing with human life as he does, must work on some basis of thought, must hold some positive rela- tion to the great ideas that divide and distinguish minds. And if so, then it is necessary to know this to read him well. Now, Browning's work is in real and deep sympathy, and even agreement, with the spiritual and ideal return of thought in our time ; and 1 2 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. this return has put many in tune with him who would not have been so twenty years ago. As regards the poet, this fact is as characteristic of his mind and genius as it is of his mode of thought. As regards his readers, it is in good measure the principle of that correspondence of conviction and emotion which makes both the man and his work so attractive to them. The strength, balance, and fulness of his nature, the spiritual scope of his mind, are tested and dis- closed by his position and relation here. It has often been a question with his readers in what relation Browning stood to the course of the higher thought in his time — to that great discussion always proceeding, never complete, which affects the grounds of all thought, and how he was affected by the dis- cussion. Nor has the answer to the question, when put and tried by reference to his works, seemed clear or certain. Browning has spent a long life in a century much and deeply moved by debate of great questions. There have been great changes in many minds and much movement of the mind of the age in his life- time ; and he has taken deep interest in the questions and their discussion, but scarcely, so far as appears, an interest that can be called personal. The debate does not seem to have really affected his greater convic- tions, or to have disturbed his central position. His principles, broad and deeply placed, almost from the days of " Sordello," have remained the same. A man of strong nature and strong intellect, he has shown a marked independence, and has occupied a significant Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 1 3 position amid the controversies of his time. The great points only of its debate appear in his work. The many doubts of Clough, the spiritual forlornness of Arnold, the scepticism of a dozen writers and singers, his work is clear of these — above, it may be, but somehow remote ; while at the same time he has shown, from " Paracelsus " onwards, a clear grasp and deep interest in whatever is general and permanent in the efforts men have made to harmonize experience and belief. He has kept throughout a sure and sound sympathy with essential things. Many writers. who spoke to the earlier years of his time, and who were more heard then than he was, have less pertinence now, because they have a narrower hold on life, and the modes of thought they expressed and emphasized have more or less faded into that past which so soon comes for all that is partial ; while Browning, with his freer and stronger touch both of the doubts and the beliefs, of the hopes and fears, that do not pass away, but stay with the heart of man because their sources are always present in man's life, is more heard and better understood now than he was then. The same breadth and hold upon essential things which Browning has thus shown in regard to less important controversies he has shoivn in regard to the grand controversy of our century — that controversy above described as between the realism of physical science and the idealism of faith, imagination, and philosophy. The present, we have said, may be described as an age of science tending to a deeper 14 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. thought of things, and seeking a larger interpretation of experience. Our higher poetry, to be adequate, must unite the tendencies and combine the principles of both. It is pecuharly distinctive of Browning that he combines and harmonizes those principles. He has the scientific interest, the critical observant temper and power of eye and mind, the love of facts, the respect for experience, the perfectly free search after truth which mark the faculty and make the virtues on which we have set such value of late ; and his work has those qualities and interests so strongly marked that many of its readers have been drawn to it by these powers, and are only aware of these. His habit is not to pass over facts or refine or dream them away, but most distinctly to see and grasp and interpret them within his scope. He seeks the world of facts and events, the world of men ; but it is not to remain and rest there. He seeks a way through the world of facts and experience, frankly and entirely faced and accepted, to an order and a world beyond — the world of the mind and heart at their best. From Plato he learned {cf. " Pauline ") the reality of " the world of ideas.'' By the vivid energy of his own mind he has maintained his sense of that " unseen universe." But his way of reaching and making solid to himself what- ever may be known or guessed of that " ideal world " is through the facts of man's mind, and the facts of experience exactly known. He has no belief in any simple intuition of thinker or poet. As against such thinking, and as against all vague abstractions, he is Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 1 5 scientific, inductive if you will. His humour is realistic ; his dramatic method is personal, particular. In a phrase he himself uses, he is at once objective and subjective, and both intensely. But this analysis of the poet's mind and art, apt to remain vague standing by itself, might be made more definite, and the relation of his work and thought to the great questions above indicated be made clearer, by comparison of the principles and method of certain other minds of his time with his. To take only one — and one comparison of whom with Browning may at first surprise — Herbert Spencer. Spencer is one of the ablest and most comprehensive thinkers of our time, one of the most comprehensive of English thinkers. He for this reason represents effectively and exhaustively some of the principles and tendencies of the age better than any other writer. Now, what is his philosophy, and whence comes its significance? It is mainly an elaborate and ingenious construction of things on the basis and by the means of physical science. Spencer, better than any other, exemplifies the immense stimulus physics has given to the modern mind — the immense and absorbing impression made by this knowledge on the modern mind. But though this is obvious at every point of his writings, Spencer knows, if Comte did not, that, this cannot be the whole of philosophy. He is aware of the great part played in the course of human thought by the metaphysical and spiritual view of things. He knows that such "'views," per- 1 6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. sisting through some of the best minds, must in some sense and at some points really rest on the mind ; and he knows that no system of thought can stand which does not regard experience in its whole extent, and interpret the full consciousness of man. So he seeks a reconciliation of physics and metaphysics, of realism and idealism, and this reconciliation he entitles by one of his suggestive phrases — "trans- figured realism." Now, there can be no doubt that this necessity, old as the birth of all genuine thought, was never so necessary as now, whether in the pro- vince of thought, in the sphere of belief, or in the very spirit of life itself Does Mr. Spencer, then, accomplish the transfiguration? Are the worlds of thought and reality reconciled by him ? Surely not ; for what he offers as such reconciliation comes only to this, after all — an interpretation of consciousness from the standpoint and in the terms of physics, with a substratum of Unknowable Force as the ultimate spring and explanation of all phenomena of mind and matter. And so neither at the point where the phrase quoted is used to describe what we seek, nor at other critical points, is the reconciliation of realism and idealism, of science and philosophy, achieved by this excellent and valorous thinker. He fails to account for or to place the distinctive elements of self-consciousness ; he misconceives the evolution and significance of thought ; he leaves matter and mind, nature and thought, over against each other without vital relation, without explanation, and with- Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 17 out a clue to their relation to that Unknowable Something in which they somehow combine, and which somehow animates and explains them both. The "real-world" is thus left as and where it was. It has not been transfigured in and by help of such a principle as should suggest, if it cannot reach, that unity of the world and of the mind which we are impelled to seek, and which it is certainly the business of philosophy to guide us towards, to make credible to us, even though the problem should remain for ever beyond the grasp of thought. All minds large enough to do so share in the greater tendencies and higher aims of their age, and reflect these from their different standpoints and through the differing media of their work. The dominant " scientific consciousness " of the past thirty years has led Spencer to construct his philosophy from that standpoint of those elements. They fill his field of vision. His realism remains scientific — is not idealized. But in his failure he affirms two great ideas — that the " transfiguration " is necessary to the higher knowledge ; that the higher knowledge must be sought by the transfiguration of the body of real knowledge. Now, Browning and Spencer are in very different spheres of thought, and they are very different men, men of very different minds — so different, it may seem, that they can offer nothing but contrasted interests, methods, and ideas. The differences are obvious, but the more significant for that reason will c 1 8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. be the agreements, if there are such, and the agree- ments will give greater interest and fuller value, on one side or the other, to the final differences about great matters. What, then, is the attitude and rela- tion of the poet to the central problem dealt with in his own sphere and terms by the philosopher? Browning, we have seen, is by nature and sympathy a realist. He has a strong hold on fact, a resolute aversion from fancies and illusions, however arising, from whatever part of man's nature they spring, by whatever interests encouraged ; keen and hardy thought and care for reality are constant elements of his work. His energetic curiosity has in it something of Bacon ; his vigorous research and intellectual exploration something of Aristotle. Science, in its. large and thorough sensCj though no " pursuit " of his, is in complete sympathy with the habit and operation of his mind. But with this quality and these powers he is also a thinker, and, above all, a poet. He is, there- fore, not mastered by his practical bent nor by the world of facts, and he is certainly not absorbed or over-impressed by recent aspects of knowledge, or by the results of modern science. He knows how " mere facts " neither exhaust the world nor satisfy the mind He knows the "infinite significances" that facts have for thought, and how this significance comes of the mind's own laws and depths. He is, in a word, an idealist in the last resort. Behind the energetic realism and strong grip on facts is a "visionary power " and sense of ideas — convictions and passions Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 19 that claim and affirm a world more real because ideal. Every fact — and the body of experience is seen upon this ground — is illumined and transfigured by this principle. He has the poet's " ulterior, intellectual perception," the artist's sense of the reality of the ideal, the thinker's conviction of its spirituality. Aware of both sides of experience, and keenly aware of its real side, he yet seeks on its ideal side the clue to experience and to the unknowable elements of man's own nature. And of all worlds to him the most real is the world of man's thought and passion ; the world of man's mind and spirit has far greater interest for him than any world of things and forces. The beliefs and emotions, the characters and actions, of men, the expression of man through religion and art, the revelation of man in literature and history — here indeed is a realm of facts of most curious and profound interest, facts requiring and rewarding inter- pretation more than any other facts, and throwing more light on all that is of most value for us to know than the whole body of physical knowledge. With the strongly positive quality of nature that has been described. Browning has bent his mind upon those facts above all others, and in his study and command of them gives assurance of both solidity and depth. In an age of science mainly physical, he has main- tained and illustrated the supreme interest and most real significance of man, not only to himself and with reference to everj' " use " of life, but with reference to knowledge too. To this ground he has kept; from 20 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. this standpoint and with this outlook all his work has been made. And yet it must not be supposed that the poet is a theorist or a dogmatist at all, either as respects philosophy or religion. Dealing with life and the grand facts that concern both religion and thought, he must involve results touching both, but as a poet. No formal conclusions may stand between him and life. According to a famous phrase, all formulas must be set aside that life may be seen truly, that the poet may use his qualifications for the mastery, frankly and totally, of all facts that concern him. With this freedom, and with his powers, the poet becomes a spiritual thinker of high value and pertinence at present. By sight of a clear, strong mind, by energy and depth of nature, he affirms the truths of man's mind in its integrity — the actual significance and scope of man as life and consciousness present him. And now, having considered the question before us as it regards the mind of the poet and certain principles of his work, let us consider it rather as it touches his readers, that we may see more closely the things that make this poetry so significant to them, putting them in tune with it and with its ideas. On the side of philosophy, we have found what has been called an " idealistic reaction " in progress among us ; and that, as respects both thought and religion, is a good key to most other things and tendencies of the time present. The life and passion of a people are fairly one. And what is known as philosophy, though a Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 21 matter strictly or explicitly concerning a few, yet gives the drift and sense of all the more earnest and distinctive thought of the time. And so it is here. After some years, during which a certain restricted creed, type of culture, and mode of life had on the whole its way with us — with many of us, at leasts we have come to feel the whole thing too narrow for us. We have become aware of elements ignored, of powers unsatisfied. We have felt the need, in other terms, for some transfiguration of the world of real knowledge and real interests ; for some great expan- sion and idealization of life. Old conceptions and interpretations were no more available. They had become dreams or incredibilities. We were then as pilgrims out in search of new shrines and homes. For a time we had thought that the " higher ideas " of physical and cosmical knowledge would serve us. They seemed for a time capable of that development and application which should satisfy all our reasonable wants, reconcile the soul to experience, the mind to "the burden of an unintelligible world," and the heart to the sorrows and limits of life. But for not a few that does not appear any longer possible. The glow of the dawn has " faded " into the light of day, the " common day" of real life, and many things are seen more truly within as without. And so many, sanguine or resigned once, now seek the escape of some larger solution of questions. They seek to breathe again " the larger, the diviner air " of the great and faithful spirits of the past. They seek the power that made 22 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. these great and generous. They see that such power flows from great convictions, and from the free and sublime afifirmations of the " soul." There is a higher thoughtfulness, a finer earnestness, and greater breadth of nature. Deeper interest is taken in the history and problems of man's mind ; far deeper interest in the great questions arising out of man's beliefs. The old troublesome " questions and longings," hopes and fears, are seen to be part of the nature, not part only of the delusions and superstitions, of man. Culture and the heart have become more spiritual. And so, whether it be in philosophy or art, the history or the poetry of man's life, what we seek is a vital affirmative interpretation of the mind and the world. The new appreciation of Hegel, and the increased and continued interest in Browning, both spring from the same causes and point in the same direction. We are no more satisfied with a negative philosophy, with critical studies. We seek a truth that shall sincerely justify and carry forward the whole thought and passion and power of man as they come to us out of the past ; as we find them around us in the faith and work and art of the past ; as we carry them within us in that present which is not only the memory but the soul of the past. From that external nature which was over- ruling, from that cosmical nature which was over- powering, us we turn again to human nature and the full free mind. We see again that the realities of mind have a substance and significance all their own. Man's own mind must be true. Man's proper nature Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 23 must be our best guide to the higher truth. The higher truths — ^that is, true views of the highest matters — must be spiritual views. And our highest truth, that reasonable ideal which must give the test of belief, the measure of hope, the direction of effort, and the symbol of faith, that must be built not only on natural knowledge, but on man's spirit, must be not only a scientific but a philosophic truth. It must be not real only, but even more ideal. It must give credible interpretation of the world, but even more it must interpret man to himself. And it now seems possible to do this only at the height and on the ground of some great spiritual philosophy. After what has above been said, it is hardly necessary now to say that with the spirit and ideas of this movement, of this religious reaction, as it might be called, the temper and work of Browning are in generous and frank agreement. No work of the time is more so. Just when many minds suspect or have proved the inadequacy of a certain type of culture and view of life, and are looking for a freer and fuller ideal, his poetry has gained wider attention and new interest During the years when physical science and philosophical " scepticism " were the ruling belief and fashion, another poetry and another poetic ideal had their way with the representative minds of the time. A poetry deriving from Keats, not from Shelley or Wordsworth, was the mode — a poetry delightful and beautiful in many ways, and, as art, worthy of the praise some good critics have given 24 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. it, but without the substance and vital power of the greater work, because without the beliefs and ideals of that work. That poetry has less hold now, Brown- ing more, and the two facts should be seen to appreciate the change. Browning's intense and pro- found humanity, his larger thoughtfulness, his reality and regard for facts, his spiritual quality and depth, his regard for ideas and the great principles of man's nature — these qualities, indifferent or objectionable before, are felt now to offer the notes of the fuller ideal that is desired. He kept his own course, and made work of his own kind, through years that were out of sympathy with him. By bent of genius, as by force and breadth of nature, he had hold of a surer ground and a larger thought than other writers of his time. While these accepted the secular basis of thought, he took life and history, the nature and spirit of man in its whole scope, as his field and ground. With frank acceptance and confidence, nay,, with a positive delight, in whatever is real in man, and with the most entire freedom as to all doctrines about these realities, his test of faith has been what best agrees with man as we know man — above all, what best unfolds every sincere passion and power of man's mind and will. The soul is the sovereign fact ; and the true ideal, resting vitally on that, and respecting experience and knowledge, must trans- figure both in a spiritual sense, and carry the life and mind of man onward to those things that the spirit of man has always been aware of, but the fulness of Relations of Brownings Poetry to Thought and Art. 25 which is beyond the grasp and even beyond the imagination of man. The pertinence and import of our poet's work, in this aspect, and in these relations of it, have now, I trust, become clear on the broad ground above taken. In the present state of things, with much futile belief and futile doubt, and much unreality in both kinds, with that shift in the centre of thought, and that re-construction of belief, which are in process in our midst, it is good to have the grand moral facts and their human bearings made clear by one who has kept just and equal hold on the mind and spirit of man,, and who regards the matters in question in the ways above described. For thus in the light of a large and free interpretation of life we regain the depth and sincerity of the mind ; we recover through hfe and the soul those truths that many have not yet recovered through thought ; and see that the great truths, though they change in form, abide in their substance for ever, and grow for man with, man's growth. ( 26 ) CHAPTER II. LIFE OF THE POET, AND HISTORY OF HIS WRITINGS, " PERIODS " OF WORK, AND GROWTH OF ART. It is matter of commonplace that the life of a man of letters is to be found in the history of his writings rather than in the events of his life ; and yet the facts of a writer's life are helpful always, often essential, in the study of his writings. If the inward experience > be more than all outward circumstances, yet those circumstances have relations often close, always sug- gestive, to that experience. In the case of Robert Browning, the " facts " ofthe life are "neither numerous nor striking." Rather may it be said, looking to what is known of the poet's life, that if quiet events and a settled yet free way of life make happiness, then Browning has had such. Born May 7, 1812, in London, the year of "Childe Harold," the year before " Queen Mab," he was being educated, for the most part privately, during those years when Byron, Shelley, and Keats were making their best work, and closing those careers that in each Life and Literary History. 27 case ended so early. When our poet was in his seventh year, " Don Juan " and " The Cenci " were published, and in his ninth year the " Adonais " was printed at Pisa. Keats died in 1820, Shelley in 1822, and Byron in 1 824, so that by the time Browning was twelve, these poets of our century's first years had all passed away. The poet, it would seem, showed very early a bent towards literature — had " a volume of verses " made in the year of Byron's death, and under influence of Byron ; so Mr. Gosse has told us. Next year he came on part of Shelley, and was so struck by what he had found, that he sought out the poet's publisher and got the rest of his works. Keats was also got, at the suggestion of. Mr. Oilier, and it was a true test of the poetic sensibility of young Browning that he felt the genius and charm of these poets long before they had taken their place in English poetry. He appears soon to have chosen his career in life. The strong bent of his mind fixed that career, and his circumstances left him free to follow it. He had wealth enough from his father to live for poetry, without hope of living by it, and to poetry he has given his life. His first schemes were characteristic. Ambitious with that ambition which is the promise of accomplish- ment because it is the instinct of power, he planned a series of mgnodramas about 1831-2, whose object was to depict certain leading types of men and women. His scheme does not seem to have got much beyond conception and outlines, and only a 28 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. fragment of it remains in " Pauline," printed early in 1833, and reprinted in 1868. The poem keeps its place among his works, not for the value he sets on it, but simply because he could not keep it from being published ; and yet it shows more than his bias and leading interest. One critic felt the poet in it, and spoke rightly of its vivid, spiritual power ; and, as John Mill valued and Dante G. Rossetti copied it, the poem is certified of a degree of power and beauty. "Paracelsus," published in the spring of 1835, was his next poem. It was printed at his father's cost, and its reception justified the caution of the publishers, though it could not settle the merits of the work. Its energy and abundance of style and thought and passion, and the splendour of many of its passages, ought to have made readers aware of the poet and glad of his power. But it found few readers, though Forster and Macready saw its worth. The author is still moving on the lines of monodrama, but his aim is more definite, and his resources are far greater than they were in "Pauline." The work, we are told, is "a poem, not a drama," and "not a dramatic poem." The author is not sure of the form, but it is clear that he is seeking some sort of dramatic expression. Macready saw this, and suggested a play. The result was " Strafford," given at Covent Garden, May, 1837, the chief parts being taken by Miss Faucit and Macready. In the preface to " Strafford," the poet speaks of other work with which he was busy, and from which Life and Literary History. 29 the drama was a pleasant escape. That other work was " Sordello," with which, we infer, the poet was occupied from 1837-1840, when it was published by Moxon. Few read, very few understood, and perhaps none approved. Into it the poet had poured, without stint or flagging, the wealth of thought, of self-obser- vation, of experience, of poetic study so far gained, as if to prove himself, and compel attention by the fit, however few. He counted on more sympathy than he found. It was natural that, dedicating the poem twenty-three years later to his friend, M. Milsand, the poet should acknowledge disappointment ; and very natural that the public failed to read. With readers, so far, it is clear he had made very' little way. " Strafford " had been his most successful work in that respect, and as by that he had found a " pit audience " from the boards of Covent Garden, he now sought a "pit audience" through the press. Moxon suggested short works in a cheap style. The poet agreed, and the plan was carried out. His poems were issued in pamphlet form, yellow paper covers, double columns, at prices varying from 6d. to 2s. 6d. That was the series known as "Bells and Pomegranates." There were eight parts, the first issued in 1841, the last in 1846 ; the first began with " Pippa Passes," the last had " Luria " and a " Soul's Tragedy." In. these were issued the dramas, except the first, the " Dramatic Lyrics," and the " Dramatic Romances "—the first work by which the poet became known to the wider public The name of the series 30 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. was explained in part viii. — " Bells " to denote the music, " Pomegranates " to signify the matter it was meant should go with the music ; " sound with sense, poetry with thought," was the aim of the series and the meaning of the title. These quaint little books had one great result. They drew the attention of the gifted and gentle lady, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. In her " Lady Geraldine's Courtship," she speaks of their author as among the poets read to the Lady Geraldine. "Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle. Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." The phrase was happy and true, and showed that finest sympathy which touches the heart of a poet through his work. The lady had proved her powers in works of her own, and by culture, as by genius;' she was well qualified for a noble and perfect response to the poet. A correspondence came of the recognition, friend- ship and love followed. The lady, in spite of keen and happy activities of mind, seemed an almost hope- less invalid ; but in her marriage, which took place September 12, 1846, she found new life. Her own words are that she was " Caught up into love, and taught the whole of life in a new rhythm." And her " Sonnets from the Portuguese," the vital record of her love, so intense and frank and beautiful, so full of sweet surprise and passion and joy at the strong love that had come to her when Death seemed Life and Literary History. 31 the likelier visitant — these sonnets are perhaps the most perfect of all her works, and one of the finest series of love-poems in the literature of the world. After their marriage they lived mostly in Italy, and their home at Florence, where a son was born in 1 849, of whom the mother sings in " Casa Guidi Windows," must have been ideally fit and beautiful. They had had fifteen years' life and work together, when Mrs. Browning died in 1861. Fragile and angelic in appearance, she had a nature full of vivid and subtle energy, and threw herself, with a fire and enjoyment that her works of this period help us to measure, into her life and tasks. Her love of Italy was that of an Italian patriot, and all the beauties and memories of the land were a delight and stimulus to her. There are several pictures of their Florentine home, with its gracious happiness^the poet robust, active, friendly ; and the wife with slight figure, pale face, large brow and dark hair, and deep eyes, " half angel and half bird," yet cordially human and brave. The influence of his marriage on Browning's work, though it must have been real, is not very definite, and yet in the work done between 1849 and 1864 there are qualities coming from it, one feels sure. The work of that time is by some readers still specially valued. It was, perhaps, partly owing to his wife, that in pre- paring an edition of his poems in 1849, containing the " Bells and Pomegranates " and " Paracelsus," he " revised with a view to remove obscurities." And the new poems of the next years, " Christmas Eve and 32 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Easter Day," in 1850, and "Men and Women," 1855, speak of the interests of the life in Florence, and possibly of the influence of that " Audience of One " beside whom the work was made. " Men and Women " is a series which, for clearness and balance of matter and style, it would be impossible to surpass in the list of his poems, whether it was owing to the period of his mind then reached, or to circumstances. But the years of fellowship passed, and the love which delayed death rose above it, spiritual and con- summate. Browning is lyrical whenever he touches this theme, and, whether in the dedication of " Men and Women," or in the invocation of " The Ring and the Book," the poet sings with keenest passion — looking still, " despite the distance and the dark," to her whose presence, though unseen, is unwithdrawn, and whose power to help is greater and more essential than ever now. Since Mrs. Browning's death, June 29, 1 861, the poet has given himself more actively to that song which he regards as " his due to God, who best taught song by gift" of his wife. Since 1861 he has certainly been productive, nineteen volumes having been his gift to his readers. Between 1855 and 1864 is the poet's longest interval of silence, only in 1863 came a new and collected edition of his works, giving " Sordello," which had not been given before. This edition was dedicated to John Forster; and, with that fine cordiality which Browning often uses, he expresses himself Life and Literary History. 33 " glad and grateful " that he who, thirty years ago, had been so " prompt and staunch a helper," should seem " even nearer now " than then. In " Dramatis Personse " (1864) he gave new work, sustaining the strength, subtlety, and passion of his best, and dis- covering new phases of his power as a poet dealing with the mind, conscience, and spirit of man. Growth of argumentative and psychological subtlety and rapidity, a deepening of spiritual thought, a mellow, vital wisdom, and in some of the work a tender, meditative tone, — these are the notes of his first volume published after the death of his wife. He had now drawn a good degree of attention to his work ; this volume confirmed it. Critical opinion, which in the best minds had long discerned his genius, was now in other cases also clearer as to his powers. The sense of these things, or evidences still more tangible, led to the issue, in 1868, of that edition of his works in six volumes, which, containing all published up to date, has remained the leading edition. (It is surely time that an edition, cheap, uniform, and complete, should be issued.) In the same year was published the first part of " The Ring and the Book," completed next year (1869). In the first section of that work the poet is still aware of a " British public that likes him not." He bears it no grudge for this, but hopes it may yet like and understand. "The Ring and the Book" scarcely seems the kind of work to win the public, which will hardly read four consecutive pages of 34 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. serious poetry, not to speak of four volumes. Long poems, whether Spenser's, Milton's, or Browning's, are seldom read as wholes ; and there was a joke at the time that only the poet, the reader for the press, and a learned bishop, who read everything, read " The Ring and the Book " through. Yet the poem is in many points and most parts readable — more so than many that preceded, and some that have followed. And this is clear — that " The Ring and the Book," as it proved the vigour and fulness of the poet's mind, finally established his position. The poem was re- ceived as the poet's masterpiece, and as possibly the greatest poetical work of our time. Its fame and acceptance certainly initiate, though they did not for some years bring, that wide interest which is the last period in the history of the poet's writings. His subsequent works have been among the literary events of their years of issue, and some of them have gone through several editions. And since 1 870 Browning has continued to provide his readers with new works, with a fertility and con- stancy that are noteworthy — at times yearly, and sometimes two in one year. But, having followed the history up to the time of the poet's fullest work, and the time when his genius met with secure recogni- tion, we need only, as to the later works, notice the direction they have taken, and any new elements or interests they discover. There is one new group, beginning with " Balaus- tion's Adventure" (1871), going on to "Aristophanes' Life and Literary History. 35 Apology " (187s), and the "Agamemnon " of ^schylus in 1877. These represent the learning of the poet, his care for Greek art, and his pains to reproduce finely one Greek dramatist at least. They were also suggested by the scholarship, and quickened by the memory and by the work of his wife {cf. close of " Balaustion "). In "Balaustion" he has given a " transcript " of the '' Alcestis ; " and in " Aristophanes' Apology," of the " Heracles " of Euripides ; and in the " Agamemnon," a literal and not very legible version of that drama of ^schylus. This is not the place to enter into the merits of " transcription " versus " poetic translation," nor into the soundness of his estimates of the Greek dramatists. He prefers Euripides, and if that poet be read in his versions or from his point of view, the reader will no doubt agree with him. In another group we may take " Prince Hohenstiel- Schwangau " (1871), harsh and hard as its name, many readers think ; " Fifine at the Fair" (1872) ; and the original parts of " Aristophanes' Apology "(1875). The first deals with the career of Louis Napoleon, and presents what may have been the motives and ideas of that singular " saviour of society." The second, through imaginary circumstance and argument of a dramatic kind, deals with love's uses, rights, and duties ; the use of love, as of all experience, in giving life, motion, and development to the soul. The third deals with the dispute between tragedy of a thought- ful, rational, and moral kind, and a comedy which accepts life and the social order for use and enjoy- 36 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. ment. There is casuistic subtlety, breadth, and im- partiedity, and there is dramatic appreciation ; but these poems are " hard reading."' They are full, ingenious, argumentative to excess, and their dramatic method complicates and obscures the argument In another group we may put " Red-cotton Night- cap Country" (iS73\ and "The Inn Album " (1875). These poems rest on two stories, presenting and inter- preting them by the poet's special method. They were a surprise to some readers, and not a pleasure. There is more " story " in these poems. They use facts of that kind more, and are painful, not to say ■■ sensational," in themes. They show course and freedom in exploring man's deeds and heart Do they also show a pathological rather than an artistic curiosity and development ? "The Two Poets of Croisic" (1S7S) belongs to the same class, in so far as it tells and construes in telling the stories of two lives that had interested the poet, and set him thinking over those secrets of feeling and character that would enact and so explain them. And the "Dramatic Idyls" (ist and 2nd series, 1S79, 1880) and "Jocoseria " (iSS 3) follow the same method as those poems that rest on and reconstruct stories. In such cases the poet draws more on actual life. The work is simpler in materials and problems than earlier works, more rapid and objective. But his treatment of these stories is most characteristic They show a curious interest in all facts that throw light on human nature and the problems of passion l/ Life and Literary History. 37 or will, and they show what may be called his ] " criticism '' of fact. They bring out the " use " of facts / for this poet. " A story for the story's sake " is not | ^ his way. He thinks very simple stories may be very | y wrongly told — all the " facts " given, and yet the / meaning missed, the essential fact left out. Nothing is so misleading as the facts of human life to those who are without a clue to their meaning ; nothing more suggestive than those facts rightly seen and vitally placed. And our dramatist of the soul uses his genius and his method upon facts so as to suggest truths that go much beyond any mere narration of them. It is not merely to give them animation that he tells his stories dramatically ; it is the better to get at their life and vital meaning, at their sources and substance^ It is a new application of his method, and yet with the old interest and purpose — the " study of the souls " of men through the matter of these stories ; very different work from " Paracelsus " and " Sor- dello," yet animated by the same purpose that guided those works forty-five years before. " Ferishtah's Fancies " (1885) and '' Parleyings with Certain People" (1887) are didactic and meditative. In dramatic form, they " discuss '' certain themes of life and art ; " Ferishtah " being wholly occupied with the " criticism of life," while the latest volume is more occupied with certain questions of art about which the poet has never spoken so forcibly. Both volumes are notable, especially at this point in our poet's life — the first for mellow wisdom ; the second for intellectual 38 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. vigour, descriptive power, and a freshness and energy that recall those of earlier periods. This poet, it seems is never to grow old, and his intellectual activity is matched by poetic freshness. And so we raise the questions of the sequence and changes of Brownings work, the growth of his mind and art, the periods of his work. Between " Paracelsus,'' in 183s, and the " Parleyings," in 1887 — an interval of fifty-two years — what changes do we find .' and has there been growth of mind and art as shown in the list of works ? Can Browning's works be divided into periods, and, if so, what are their characteristics ? The classification of a poefs work on this principle has been imich in fashion of late, and is certainly helpful where it really generalizes the facts of a poet's career ; useful when it even approximates such generalization of the order of a poet's works and the growth of his mind. Can we do anything of the kind exactly or even approximately for the works and for the art of Browning .'' The first impression of most readers will almost certainly be that it can't be done in his case. Browning has been very much the man and the poet his readers know throughout his career, only, according to subjects, varying in difficulty and obscurity, not in vital characteristics or in the qualities and force of his genius. And there is so much truth in this view that one of the poet's ablest critics has expressed her judgment as to the uniformity and equality of the poet's work without qualification. " As a poet he has had no visible growth ; he shows no Growth of the Poet's Art. 39 divisions into youth, manhood, and age ; no phases particularly marked by the predominance of an aim, a manner, or a conviction." His genius is thought to have "reached its zenith in 'The Ring and the Book ' only because that gives the largest illustration of it ; " but, according to this critic, no reason can be given for his writing it in 1868-9 rather than in 1 840, except the external cause that led to its produc- tion then ; and " Fifine " might change places with " Paracelsus " without any discoverable incongruity. Now, there must be a fairly good case for such a view when so careful a reader as Mrs. Orr not only thinks thus, but is so clear about it. And yet this is not likely to he the whole truth about the mind, the man, or the work. That it can even seem true proves exceptional balance and early fulness of growth ; but a mind that did not grow, that was not enriched or changed by experience, and an artist who learned nothing from the practice of his art, would be above or against all laws. And, indeed, the work, when closely considered, shows that what is probable is also ■ more or less actual. It is not easy to fix the lines of change or define the elements of it, to mark dates, separate works, and specify characteristics, and we may allow that in no case can that be done upon " hard and fast lines " such as are used at times. The division at best can only be made general and sug- gestive. Let us try what in that sense we can make of it. , I take first, then, a time of youth and prelude 40 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. (1832-1840), the time of " Pauline," " Paracelsus," and " Sordello." During this time the poet was ascertain- ing the nature and compass of his theme, the true discipline of his genius, and his resources, and he tried for expression, monodramatic, subdramatic, and nar- rative forms. I take, secondly, the time of early manhood (1841- 1846), the time of the dramas and early dramatic lyrics. During this time he was finding, if not seek- ing, his standpoint and method as a poet — the way in which he could deal best with his theme and his genius. All the dramas (except " Strafford ") belong to this time, and those poems called dramatic lyrics and dramatic romances, made at first of more lyrical, afterwards of more dramatic, quality. I take, thirdly, a time of maturity, of manhood and married hfe (i 846-1 869), when, having found stand- point and method, he made strong and distinctive work — work with fulness of dramatic and argumenta- tive expression and delineation. This is the time of " Christmas Eve," of " Men and Women," of" Dramatis Personae," of " The Ring and the Book." At first the argumentative power is prominent, then the dramatic, next a lyrical and argumentative force and ethical interest,, and then the dramatic and argumentative powers reach their fullest. The work of the days at Florence shows a poetic quality and a happy dramatic energy, and you find a more serious, and then a fuller but more intellectual an^ strenuous power. And I take, after this, a time of later maturity Growth of the Poefs Art. 41 (1870- 1 878), a fourth period, during which the argu- mentative and casuistic power and interest is, on the whole, most prominent, more pronounced than the dramatic, and in which the special style developed for dramatic-argumentative uses seems too strong both for the poetic and dramatic energies. It is the time of his " hardest " and " least poetic " work, when he is most idiosyncratic in matter and style — the time of " Hohenstiel-Schwangau," etc., of " Red-cotton Nightcap Country," etc. It is, of course, true that the elements of these poems had long been present in the poet's work ; but if you will compare " Hohenstiel- Schwangau " with " Bishop Blougram ;" "A Death in the Desert " with " Fifine," or " Easter Day " with " La Saisiaz," you will see the differences. And there is, I think, z. fifth period — the time of the latest works, of the " Dramatic Idyls," etc. (1879, and onwards). The work is, on the whole, simpler and more outward, even where it is " criticism " of life, art, or thought ; and the lyrics in " Ferishtah " and passages of the " Parleyings " have a fine poetic keenness and beauty. Now, what conclusions are to be drawn from this survey as to the mind and art of the poet ? As to the poet's mind, there has been less of change than is usually found, and the change has been in the balance and maturity rather than in the number or energy of qualities — in a greater clearness and fuller hold on experience ; much the same mind and the same ideals, only a fuller mastery of resources and a surer grasp 42 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of life in relation to both. But the art of the poet has varied more than the poets mind. The elements of interest have varied and unfolded as above described, and there have been changes of method and growth of art such as have been indicated and will be after- wards more fully illustrated. Our survey of the work as a whole suggests also the question of classification of the poems, and one or two ingenious schemes have been drawn. The matter is always difficult, and neither a poet nor his critics usually succeed. I offer only the arrangement made in the groups that follow. ( 43 ) CHAPTER III. LITERARY RELATIONS— THE AGE AND ITS IDEAS — MODERN HUMANISM — MATTER AND FORM OF BROWNING'S POETRY — HIS DRAMATIC METHOD AND POWER. With the facts of the poet's life and literary course before us, we now come upon certain questions of much interest in regard to the poet and the work, especially as we look at both in relation to the time through which the poet has lived. We have spoken of his long waiting and the slow acceptance of his work ; a recent critic speaks as if that acceptance were still to come. During nearly forty years the poet, in the strength and fidelity of genius, kept his aim and maintained his work. The qualities of the man, as of the artist, are in that ; self-reliance and conviction are in every line of his work ; the assurance and sincerity of genius and of truth. But, with such independence, what have been the poefs relations to his predecessors and contemporaries 44 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. in literature? Under what influences did his mind ripen and his art take form? Who have been his teachers ? and whence have his impulses come ? On the face of matters, it may seem as if he stood alone, with an energy that required no outside influences, and an individuality that resisted them ; so bent on speaking his own mind in his own way that he has stood apart from his contemporaries in their interests and forms of art. It seems impossible to place him among them, or to classify his work with theirs. And the intense way in which he has set himself on matter rather than form ; his emphatic care for primary and direct expression ; — these also make his relations less apparent. But there are such relations, though they are not only less apparent, but freer and slighter than in the case of others. Let us trace the chief of them. Mr. Gosse has told us two things on this matter — that the poet's first models were some of his father's favourites in eighteenth-century literature, and that early com- positions of the poet were Byronic. It goes without saying that Byron soon passed. As soon as the sentiment, the intellectual and moral basis, of the Byronic poetry were felt, they must by this poet have been put aside. But some things in Byron possibly made a stronger impression. His energy and flow, his general force and courage of nature, and his manliness may have stimulated like qualities in the younger poet, who has them on his own account. But he soon found other work more to his mind, Browning's Literary Relations. 45 at once in its inspiration and its style. This work, we have seen, was that of Shelley and of Keats, work of memorable interest to him. Many traces of his care for these poets are found in his own works. Naturally Shelley made the deeper impression, and of him we find most. He is the " sun-treader " of " Pauline," whose renown, like sunlight, is to visit all the world, and he has three pages of fine admiration in that poem. Aprile in "Paracelsus" is a reminiscence of Shelley, and depicts the defect and weakness easily arising in that type. In the opening of " Sordello," we find Shelley as chief among those to whom our poet looks as he begins his high task, though he feels Shelley's " pure face " fit rather for Athens than for mediaeval Italy. And the " Memorabilia " speaks the honour of Shelley ; while his " Essay " on Shelley is the critical but cordial statement of Browning's thoughts as to the place of that poet in modern poetry, and his principles and aims, his work being esteemed as a "sublime though fragmentary effort towards a presentment of the correspondency of the universe to Deity," of the natural to the spiritual, of the actual to the ideal. It is characteristic that to Keats the references are fewer. His care for Keats is less, but he is aware of the genius and pure value of the poet. " Popularity " recognizes these. These references notwithstanding, it may seem that neither Shelley nor Keats throws light on the matter or the manner of Browning's work. The music of the one and the,, beauty of the other, 46 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. the lyrical intensity and ideal passion of the first and the artistic sense and joy of the second, do not seem Browning's way. Yet he has learned from both, and been quickened in the very spirit of his mind by Shelley. Browning regards Shelley as the poet of the real-ideal ; that is the effort and goal of his poetry, the meaning of every fact, and of all passion, all life, and beauty is in that. And this, we have seen, is the spirit of Browning, and the goal of his art. It is true that the real is more apparent in the one, and the ideal in the other ; the dramatic in the one, the typical in the other ; but the principle is the same in both — what a critic and friend of Browning described as the power to "see in everything an epitome of creation," the power to see and feel the ideality of the real. And so in style, in a quality of natural, intense, and immediate expression, he is in sympathy with Shelley. He has rarely, if ever, Shelley's melody, never his spontaneity and divine freedom of utterance ; but he seeks, as Shelley did, the truest statement within his reach without ulterior cares. To Shelley poetfy was life rather than art, and that fine fire and singleness of soul which blent truth and beauty and duty into one, and made song its voice and minister — that is the high and real meaning of poetry to Browning, and he first found such song in Shelley. But Keats? what affinities are there between Browning and Keats ? Tennyson and others derive from Keats clearly, but not Browning ? But Keats Browning's Literary Relations. 47 had impulses for Browning. The care for beauty, the love of things Greek and the power to enter into them, the sympathy with Mediaeval and Renaissance things, and a keen passion for art, — these he shares with Keats ; and if they have long since taken the quality of his own mind, he found them first in the poetry of Keats. Wordsworth, one of the great poetic influences of our century, and one of the most original of poetic minds, however limited, was slowly growing into fame and influence during Browning's early poetic years, and, in spite of great differences of temper and poetic scope, some of Wordsworth's principles are part of Browning's mind. The radical humanity, the belief in simple things and duties, the high purpose and spiritual basis of his poetry, bring him into im- portant agreement with the great idealist of nature and of natural life. There are other poets one can trace — Shakspere, of course — yet not without need to be named. That idea of man, and curiosity about human nature, and power to put the mind at so many points of view, which make the dramatic conception — these come to every modern mind through Shakspere. And Dante has given inwardness and intensity to this conception. It is clear from "Sordello" {cf. p. 16) that the austere nature and thought of Dante, with its heart and crown of passion and tenderness, early made impression on Browning, and that his profound delineation of the " soul," and sense of the grandeur 48 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of spiritual results in man, gave direction and quality to the modern poet's studies. And if we seek farther afield for sources of Browning's work, we find two fields wide enough — Greek literature alnd a field of much curious learning, Greek has been a lifelong interest. As early as " Pauline " are proofs of this knowledge and insight- passages that speak of the power of Keats. There are references to Plato as one who, " calm as beauty," held "the key of life" {cf. pp. 17, 18, 19), and the fine description of Agamemnon (pp. 23, 24) and the passage (pp. 14, 15) that speaks in fit words of the impression made on him by the classic stories in youth. And his Greek translations are accepted by Greek scholars as vital and true. The other field, fields rather, of curious learning — rabbinical, mediaeval, mystical, artistic — in which he has gathered, it is only possible to name. The interest of these has been for facts or stories throwing light, often quaint and curious, on the passions and beliefs of men. " Pauline " was prefaced by an extract from a book of Cornelius Agrippa on the "Occult Philosophy." "Paracelsus" and "Sordello" both show the fields in which the young poet was roam- ing, and a hundred poems since show , the same learning. There is an inference suggested by this reading, and the use to which it is put, that, if accurate, is noteworthy — it is that the poet has cared more for the literature of fact than of form ; more for the The Age and its Ideas. 49 curious and suggestive, because vital, records of man's mind than for " letters " as such. What has now been said of Browning's culture may seem to imply that it has been remote from his own time, and it has been so in part, and not without bearing on his work. But his work and ideas are to be understood in important points only in relation to his age with its principles and motives — motives and principles that gave new depth and direction, new interests and ideals, to English life and letters between 1830 and 1850. Keats, Shelley, and Byron all died early, and the period and movement they interpreted closed with their work. The new period, with the literature that should express it, thus had the ground to itself This new period dates from 1832-3. From that time we find a literature more or less distinctly marked by the new interests and ideas arising. Be- tween 181 5 and 1824 we find the free and fervid impulses of the modern spirit and the ideas of the great Revolution in the works of Byron and Shelley. Between 1824 and 1833 there was almost no poetry of value ; it was the time of Moore and Montgomery. But in 1833 the new time made its voices heard ; Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning had all spoken by that date. And what, as we now see them, and as they grew during the years following, embodied in action and expressed in literature — what were the characteristics and distinctive ideas of this period ? We might answer the question by simply bringing into view, in E 50 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. their order, the books of the years from 1 830-1860 — works of Carlyle, Faraday, Newman, Mill, Ruskin, Tennyson, Clough, Arnold, Strauss, Froude, Mansel, and Darwin ; and the mere list of names, with the works they suggest, indicates the mental history and interests of those years, social and political, religious and scientific. The life of the time was deeply and fruitfully moved on all these great lines ; the"impulses| and ideas of the great Revolution were developed and applied in political and social reform, in science, and in belief. The political discussion and social advance have been, perhaps, the greatest in our history, resulting in what has been justly described as our greatest revolution- — the enfranchisement of the people. The growth of science in knowledge, method, and ideas has been so great that many sciences seem new- made, and man's image of the physical universe and its order appears largely a product of the past fifty years, while the historical sciences have made in important parts as great advances ; and the religious 5 discussion has had, in the spheres both of history and doctrine, as great and critical an influence on the matter and spirit of belief, and on the ideal of religion itself The age has been earnest, rational, humane. It has been much occupied with the deeper questions! arising out of society, and out of human life. It has, in fact, set itself more frankly to these questions, and to all problems of knowledge and of faith, than any former time, and if its curiosity has been largely Modern Humanism. 5 1 physical, it has also directed much thoughtful in- vestigation upon the nature and history of man. And its treatment of human nature, like its sense of social justice, has been truer and better considered than at any past time. Now, some of these movements and ideas have not, so far as his work shows, been much to Browning. Of political and social interests there is slight trace. His interest has been in man's nature and history, and in the great points of belief; and in these respects, though even here he has been less affected by the secular changes than many, his work is historically intelligible only amid the influences of such an age as has been described. The great theme of his poetry, indeed, implies this relation, though it is not governed by it. His conception of that theme, his breadth and freedom, his curious impartiality and research in exploring and presenting it, are in real agreement with the deeper spirit of the century, though not with certain sections or years of it, and with certain great spiritual ideas that it is the effort of modern thought to unfold. And so we come here closely upon a question of much importance in the study of modern literature, and nowhere of greater point than in the study of Browning — the question as to the source and factors of the modern interest in human nature. It is a large question, on which a good deal has yet to be said. We take it here chiefly as it bears on Browning. A care for and sympathy with man as man is one of 52 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. the vital ideas of modern literature. In its modern sense this care and sympathy became explicit and deliberate in the writers that in France preceded and promoted the Revolution. It is true that a spirit of this kind, and sentiments involving it, are found im- plicitly before the Revolution. They were precipitated and applied by that, and though the failure of the Revolution and the wars following arrested the growth of the new principles, that was only for a time. They soon began to act through literature and upon life. In England, where there had been much fear of the Revolution, this took place most and best. Between 1820 and 1845 this is plainly seen. Polity, law, govern- ment, and society were reformed by those ideas and in their spirit ; a new conscience and a new humanity began to act, and before long with great results. We had, in fact, come upon the era of humanity, and were coming to realized democracy ; this was the meaning and this the result of our reforms. And intellectual as much as social movements gave a new importance to man, not only by giving greater scope and impor- tance to reason, but by a vast extension of our know- ledge of and interest in man's history. The revival of religious earnestness, followed by the rise of criticism, also gave in time a deeper interest to man's mind, and to every question of man's life. While, as new questions arose in the life of the time, and deeper questions both of knowledge and faith were pressed home, and as the desire for justice and for truth grew the humanity itself gained in character Poets Theme and Form of Art. 53 and depth, as our literature between 1840 and i860 proves almost painfully at times. Two great interests, it has been said, have been given to modern literature by the growth of modern life and knowledge — nature and man. Browning has taken man as his part of "nature's infinite book of secrecyj" and this bent and interest has been singularly clear and strong in his mind from the very beginning of his work. His first plan was a bold scheme in this field, and his first poems are studies of this kind. In the preface to " Sordello " he says, " The stress of the poem lay in the incidents in the development of a soul ; little else is worth study. I always thought so." The words are strong and narrow, it may seem ; but they are not so strong as our poet's conviction of their truth, nor so emphatic as his devotion to their view of the poet's work. These words give the aim and theme of all his work. There is growth of know- ledge, power, and means in the work, but the interest is essentially the same. From the first he has aimed at the spiritual study and expression of man throtigh the medium of his art. But if the poet's subject has remained essentially the same, how about his method and the form of his work? There has been change and development in his choice of form and method. After a time of some uncertainty, if not experiment, he found his right point of view, his proper method as a poet whose aim was to present certain great views of man. Reviewing his career as an artist, and the forms he has used, let 54 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. us see how this stands. He began with monologue in "Pauline;" then subdramatic poetry in "Paracelsus;" then the epic of a soul in " Sordello," where the poet himself speaks, because he thinks in that way to find freer expression for all he has to say of Sordello. He felt his theme and aims to be unsuitable for drama, where he must simply present and watch the play, no whit more in the secret of it than if a listener only ; that is, no more free to express his mind about those secrets. But as a form of art, fitted to its theme and legible, that poem is very unsatisfactory. It has been less read than any of his works, and its form is a good part of the reason. He then made drama, and after that he put forth a little book of " dramatic pieces ; " that is, poems lyrical in form, but dramatic in principle. Then came three more dramas, and next another little book of poems, lyrical and dramatic. In 1846 he returned to drama, and gave " Luria '' and " A Soul's Tragedy." Now, the question being, Which of these works is most adequate to the poet and his subjects ? there can be no doubt as to the answer — the dramatic lyrics are most vivid and sufficient. And the poet thought so himself clearly, for after 1846 this is the form he uses, whether for argument or narrative, or for more strictly dramatic purposes ; whether in " Christmas Eve," " Men and Women," or "The Ring and the Book," that being the fullest instance and capital test of his method of presentation as a poet. Clearly, then, this poet, in the expression of what-- Dramatic Quality and Method. 5 5 ever he knows about man, has tended to some dramatic form, to some dramatic or subdramatic method — for a time to set drama, but always to some kind of dramatic expression. The bent of his mind, whether from its own qualities or from its interest, is towards dramatic statement, whatever be the exact principle of his work in this kind. And so no question in the criticism of this poetry is more necessary /^«« the question. What kind of dramatic work does this poet m.ake, and what kind of dramatic power has hef Is it really dramatic, or only akin to the dramatic .■' and if his proper form of art be, as was said, the " dramatic lyric," what exactly is that, and is it a legitimate and accurate form of art ? There is much difference and some confusion as to the right answers to these questions, but, as they involve the core of the whole question of Browning's character and power as a poet, and as his poetry cannot be read fairly until his standpoint is reached and his method understood, we must make as clear as we can our answers to these questions regarding his art. It has been shown that Browning's bent is to dramatic conception and statement. Even in " Sor- dello," where the form is least dramatic, this tendency comes clearly out. Browning made so many plays that it is plain he had a liking for drama, and, it is said, he gave^ up drama and contented himself with dramatic lyrics because circumstances were unfavour- able. But that is not the fact, nor is it really to the point. It was not circumstances that discouraged $6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. drama, but the consciousness of his own powers that led to the discovery and adoption of a better form. " Proper drama " did not give the scope or the expression he required. The best part of what he saw in man he could not set forth in drama for the stage, so another form came into use, giving the scope and allowing the utterance he sought. All his best work is in that form. Now, what is this form which has approved itself by use ever since "My Last Duchess" in 1842? What is the principle and method of it as dramatic poetry ? The poet throws himself, intellect, feehng, and imagination, into the circumstances and experi- ence, into the very mind, of some person. By help of all he knows of them, as well as by insight of his own genius and general knowledge of men, he thinks in and for each. He presents them and their case from the inside, not so much as they might have seen it, still less as they might have stated it, but as it is, as the poet would see and state it for them, as they would see and know it with his power to animate them. And this is dramatically presented. It is not set forth in any abstract or general way ; it is embodied, individualized. It is not only put from the special point of view, but worked out through the qualities and circumstances and in the terms of the life in question. The " person " is before you, not a mere notion or image. He lives and moves, and lets you into the secret of life and motives. But he has the stage all to himself. And what is Dramatic Method. 57 the stage? and where is it? and who is the actor ? and what have you had in the play ? It is when we examine these points that the want of clearness in critical estimates of this poetry becomes plain. Such poetry, it is said, is not drama, nor is it really dramatic. And if the essence of all dramatic expression be action and strictly objective statement, this must be allowed. But is not that too narrow a conception ? Is not the very principle of dramatic expression in such work .? For, to put the matter in phrases of the poet's own, not " action in character " only, but also " character in action," must be held dramatic. But where is the " action " ? it may be said. When the soul is in question, expression is action. It is think- ing and feeling made objective ; it is the character in motion and presenting itself. Inward and outward facts are combined, but only to present the " soul." Its relations to other lives are involved in the play of the lyric, but only to define itself. Of this drama the " soul " is the stage, and the soul the single or lead- ing dramatis persona. Other persons and facts come in, but only through it, and the whole world is seen for the time from its point of view. The man and the life are seen as related to and lighted up by some- thing that shows the very principle and quality of both. And this has been called "dramatic thinking" or " dramatic apology" as if the primary and final interest were intellectual, or as if the poems were only cases of " special pleading," only thought, stating itself in terms 58 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and combinations of life, or argument so vivid that it has dramatic force and a voice like the voice of life,- though the work all the same is intellectual, not vital ; abstract, not concrete. And I admit that some of the lyrics have that look, and some of them that quality mainly. But almost everywhere the work has true dramatic quality, and involves the person, not the mind only ; character, not "thoughts about maa and life " only. The conception is dramatic, the statement vital, and even in work where the leading matter is argument there is a body of dramatic detail and suggestion that gives you the man or the type as a dramatic image. / In the old sense, then. Brownings work is not dramatic ; in the above sense it is distinctly so. Action and active relations are not its sphere, but the mind itself. Its aim is to represent the man, not merely what he did or would do in given circumstances, nor merely what he said or wQuld have said in active life. Its scope is thought and passion, not speech and conduct. Its field is the soul and its forces, not the world and its actions. And this is its charm and its worth for us. The new dramatic poetry cannot be as the old drama. A new spirit and view of man and a new aim animate and command it — a more subtle and searching spirit; a deeper curiosity, a fuller effort. The art that deals with man in our time must, in fact, express the modern interest and thought. You may, of course, prefer a simpler, a more unconscious and outward presentation^ The Neix) Dramatic Poetry. 59 of life ; but at this time, and amid its science and philosophy and spiritual debate, you are not likely to get it, except, it may be, by forcible suppression or by languor and weakness. The same thoughtful and inward quality is in all our work dealing with human life — in George Eliot as in Robert Browning. The great novelist, in her interest and in her way of looking at men and human life, shows the same tendency and presents similar results. As compared with earlier novelists, there is the same kind of difference between their work and hers that there is between the older drama and Browning's poetry, while George Meredith shows still closer affinities of aim and result. In fact, such art is the fit exponent of the modern spirit in its human interests and insights, and even Shakspere, in whom all things of the modern world of man seem to be expressed or implicit, made "Hamlet" and "Lear." Still, granting the dramatic quality of the poetry and its relation to modern Ilk, are these poems a proper form of art, and what is it we get by their method? Is it possible to represent the " souls " of men ? The phrase is easily spoken, and it pleases certain minds, but has it any solid meaning, and can its claim be made good ? To do what Shakspere did asked genius enough, but this seems a higher claim and a harder task. Let it, then, be frankly said that we make no deep ^ystery of the matter. If it be done, it is done within the laws and by the means of art. And how .? It is done from the new point of view and with the new field of vision, as Shakspere did his 6o Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. work from the older standpoint. Through his own humanity and resources of nature and knowledge, through vital sympathy and identifying imagination, the poet takes his stand within his dramatis persona, and feels with and thinks for them. He animates and moves them so that they present themselves. He takes some critical moment or situation, and from that point the character is set in action, that keenest action of the mind within and on itself, and so the man is given with an intimacy and truth no drama dare use or could reach by its proper means. We have said the "man " is presented. But, looking closely at many of these dramatic lyrics, is it so ? The poet speaks of the " soul," but that, you will say, is only part of the man ; and in dramatic art, which must be audible, if not visible, it is a smaller part of the man in action than some appear to think. And again, you say, many of these poems are strictly " lyrical," dealing with purely imaginary persons and situations, and only conceived to express some part of the poet's own mind ; while many of the poems are even worse, regarded from our present point of view, for they are simply meditations in character, or arguments from an assumed dramatic standpoint And all you can have in such work, it may be thought, is dramatic form without dramatic truth or reaUty. It is only the poet's mind, and his view of what may be said of and for certain " persons." His soul animates and overflows the men and women presented. And as in part proof of this, it is urged that you can't Browning's Characterization. 6i imagine any one save Browning talking as all his men and women talk. The poet is not only behind them ; he is through them and before them. And yet the men and women are there in some sense, and their " cases " are put with vital fulness. That seems to be the fact ; but for greater clearness on an important matter let us meet the points just stated. The men given us in these poems would not, and in many cases could not, have said the things here said for them ; but were such things in them, do such things express them, even if consciousness and thought must have been raised to higher powers ere they could have uttered them — for if these things and this speech of our poet rightly interpret them in that inner sense, then his method is justified and its results are vital. But around all the personcB and in all the style you are aware of the poet — his mind runs through and qualifies all ; or, in other words, his dramatic ex- • pression is not purely objective. You have the men and women always plus Browning. It is so. But is not that part of the charm and value, and part of the means, is it not the necessary medium, of such work? You could not have such dramatic studies without this. The men and women and the questions of their lives are seen in the light and amid the spaces of the poet's mind. It is not easy to say what it is you have in this matter, what this " subjective medium " quite exactly is. It is not a " judgment " passed on the " persons," nor a deliverance of the " opinions " or " preferences " 62 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of the poet. It is the sense of a large free mind and personahty identified in feeling and thought for the time with the " person " presented, and working through them, but clear of their bias and free of their limits. But, further, it is said that, allowing for this quality of characterisation, what is it you have in Browning' f^ personiB? Not men in Shakspere's -or Scott's sense? It is not so clear what that sense exactly is, while the nature of personality and its relations to those more general as well as universal elements that belong to all minds are very far from being clear. But Brown- ing certainly gives types and generalizations in some of his studies, and it results from his more spiritual and inward dramatic poetry that his " persons " should be less definite than those of Shakspere or Scott. But, subject to the conditions and design of his art, he is a master of dramatic detail, and has the quickest eye for essential circumstance or quality. To require the same embodiment of character from Browning that you have in great drama or novels, is to forget the difference both of means and of design. The poet would violate his principle to give it. But he has known how to define and embody with a vital precision on the whole adequate to his kind of "drama." And if I do not maintain the "critical perfection " and " aesthetic purity '' of Browning's work considered as dramatic art ; if I allow it to be in the nature of his mind, as of his purpose, that his work should involve much of himself, and that the spiritual Browning' s Characterization. 63 should shadow the dramatic interest ; — I hold it not only clear that his power is dramatic, but his poetry- is alive with the evidence and energy of it, and his very thought works itself out in that way, not in abstractions, but in terms of character and life. ( 64 ) CHAPTER IV. CRITICAL OBJECTIONS — OBSCURITY AND ITS CAUSES — FURTHER ANALYSIS OF DRAMATIC METHOD, WITH REFERENCE TO IT — STYLE AND ITS QUALITIES — CHARACTERISTICS. We have seen Browning's theme, his conception of his subject, and his [method in the development and expression of that subject. It remains to consider the characteristics of the genius with which he has illus- trated his theme, and certain qualities and ideas that have helped him to unfold his subject with the power, he has shown. Nor would our purposes of introduc- tion be served if nothing were said of the poefs style, and of that obscurity which is often supposed to be its chief note and a leading reason for the objections many take to his work, and for the difficulties they find in so much of it. It may be best to take the last points first. The objectigns to Browning on the part of good and care- ful readers of poetry are understood to be numerous and reasonable. By some they are thought to spring Criticism and its Relations to Art. 65 from the nature of poetry, and certainly from the theory and practice of the art as always hitherto understood ; while all their difficulties are thought to arise from the faults of the poet, and his obscurity is assumed to be not in the nature of his subjects, but only in his way of treating them, and most of all in his way of setting forth whatever he has to say of them. It is still worth while to correct these mistakes, not only in justice to the poet, but in the hope of pre- paring a way of approach to him on the part of some who could read him if they would, and who, since they might, certainly ought, and lose by not doing so. The work of Browning is still received by some with a smile, and those who read him are expected to offer to culture and good taste some account of their peculiarity, if not some apology for their conduct. It is a pity people are often proud of their narrowness — that they emphasize their limits, and keep themselves from the larger experience and the true judgment by presuppositions that fall to the ground as soon as they grasp the facts and give their minds fair play in their appreciation. And what are the pre-judgments that have kept good readers from Browning's poetry ? We said that some of them arise from what is thought to be the nature of poetry and its primary laws as an art. Art, like other parts of the progressive life of man, has often suffered from two causes. People like what they have got used to, and erect their taste and the works of the past into laws to govern, and not into F 66 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. impulses and principles to stimulate and guide the works of the future, which is what they ought to do. So the standard • of pleasure and the restraints of theory have operated to conventionalize art. But in proportion as it is strong and sincere art is vital, and should follow its own principles and instincts in the last resort. And so, if new work should require a revision of theories before it can be understood or classified, then it may be the worse for the theories, not for the work. If Browning's work should require a fresh consideration of the laws of poetic art, there is nothing to complain of We really gain by en- largement of art and its ideal. For what is the function of criticism in regard to original work in art ? To judge and control art by some abstract and fixed standard ? To test the creations of genius by some absolute theory of beauty and expression ? To deliver decisions according to " law and precedent " and induction of " all previous instances," and so settle what is valuable and ought to be enjoyed ? Is this the right relation of criticism to art ? Or is its proper task simpler and greater — to follow, note, and generalize the facts of art, and so interpret its works freely and vitally ; not to legislate for art, but to learn and understand and test art by frank appeal to the facts of experience and of the mind in its relation to art ? That is, in truth, the right and fruitful task of criticisniv, For is not every work of genius, pure and distinct, in a real sense a work of nature, a product of the " free spirit," yet also a complex result of natural qualities Critical Objections, their Grounds and Value. 67 and forces working to rational issues under natural laws ? And so wisdom, not modesty alone, requires us, in dealing with the works of the freest and strongest minds, to know, enjoy, and explain rather than pass "judgment." But, allowing these principles in regard to the rights of readers and the business of critics, we may seem no nearer agreement in regard to poetry like Browning's. It will still be said, " Poetry should re- spect form — this does not ; verse should have beauty, and often this has none. Art, having to do with beauty, should give pleasure ; this has other effects. In its themes and in its handling of them, this poetry constantly mistakes art's province. This poetry is intellectual and abstruse at the cost of readers and of art. It expresses the mind and humour of its author with a disregard of principle, not of convenience only." Now, though none of these objections are exact or quite pertinent, they represent common impressions and have apparent truth, and we shall do well to get at the right point of view as to the matters they touch. It is many years since Carlyle insisted with his emphasis that poetry has a right to as much attention as any other serious work. But still many seem far from clear about the matter, and some of Browning's advocates have made things worse by talking as if poetry might be anything as to form if only its matter were valuable and noble ; as if the only thing to be asked of a poet, as of a thinker, were that he should have thought, and get it well out. 68 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Now, poetry has a right to give that degree and kind of thought that is adequate to the mastery and treat- ment of its proper themes, and it has a right to require that amount of thought on the reader's part that shall be adequate to their full comprehension. And the poet must be a thinker as well as a poet, if his themes have weight and greatness. Every poet of high significance, every great poet certainly, is so, and much of his truth and value must depend on his quality and power as a thinker. And yet the poet, as a poet, is not a thinker. His great qualities are depth, energy, sensibility of the heart, and vivid force of mind, power to see and to say, power of realization, and power of song — that, seeing and feeling, he may make others feel and see. If these be wanting, the man is not a poet, whatever other force and grasp of mind he may have. In other words, though intel- lectual quality and power in the highest degree will serve the poet, and the highest degree of poetic power is impossible without rich and strong intellectual power, yet of itself such power makes no man a poet and no work poetic. The poet must be a poet first and last, if not also midst and without end. If, then, it be said that Browning is a thinker, and that very much of his value depends on that, it is not meant that that makes him a poet, or that thought is to be taken in place of poetry. The method, medium, and aim of the thinker all differ from those of the poet, though results reached by thought and authen- ticated by passion may be incorporated by the poet, Relations of the Poet and the Thinker. 6g With the endowment of the poet, and through the medium proper to poetry, he may give the results of keen, sagacious, and powerful thinking — the vital pro- cess of it even through " character in action." And Browning shows a greater activity and prominence of intellectual faculty and result than is usually shown by men of high and distinct poetic power, in part from his method, in part from his personal qualities and his frank expression of them. At times there may even be a preponderance of these in his work ; but in most of his work, and certainly in his best, he is poet first and thinker second, and the body of thought is given in an element of passion and imagi- nation, and with a force and fitness of utterance that are strongly poetic ; and, looking at it from the dramatic point of view, which is nearly always the poet's, the thinking is dramatic and vital. Still, the poet is not to be read lightly or fluently, and if the thought be vital and poetic it is there, and requires serious and sustained attention ■; and it may be that the dramatic point and energy of the thinking is often an element in the difficulty. Is it not, then, a mistake to ask so much attention .-' and a still greater mistake to leave many parts such that, after the best attention many readers can give, they remain obscure ? As to the attention asked, there are, one judges, two questions about that — whether, having given due attention, you are repaid for your trouble ; whether, of all arts and studies, poetry only may not ask pains to master it.' When frankly put, these 70 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. questions imply their own answers. And then, it may be, the objection is shifted, and is put, perhaps, thus: Art that is truly such and rightly made ought to give and will give pleasure. It will, but to whom, and when t To those capable of understanding it when they have given the pains necessary to do so. Its pleasure is not simple and immediate. Enjoyment of true and deep art does not precede, it may not accompany, it results from and follows, real study of it. For, however much trouble the artist may save you by the vivid power of his work with reference to the field or subject in its original state, he can never save you the trouble requisite to master the theme as it stands in his work, or to comprehend his treatment of it. And then the objection to this poetry is put in another way. It is said that the trouble it gives arises from its want of form, its disregard of beauty and harmony. As to the technical point of form, we leave that so far as it regards verse, and meet what is really the objection on other grounds. The "form'' of Browning's work, by which readers are often ofTended, springs from and expresses its dramatic individualism, and its want of beauty — by which is often meant merely melody and repose — from its dramatic realism. The form and tone of the work ought to express the mood and mind of the person thinking or speaking for the time being, and so such work cannot have the harmony and ought not to have the uniformity of typical or epic work. And as Browning's Dramatic Realism. 7 r to the question of beauty and the frequent want of it in Browning's work — a fact no good reader would deny-^-that question goes much deeper than any ma:tter of forms or sounds only. It turns, I said, on the poet's dramatic realism, and that is, perhaps, the right way to meet the objection. It rests on the poet's vision of life — what he sees of life and how truly he sees all within his view. If he, as a dramatic poet and thinker, hold that his work, ought to give his sincere impression, ought to agree with his perception of the world, then he will put only so much beauty into his work as he sees life and the world to warrant, or only so much as shall be true from the successive standpoints chosen. But that may seem to reduce art to a measured or even prosaic reproduction of life. Yet it is not so, for it is the world not of common minds or of literal and simple fact, but the world as a poet of large mind and generous imagination sees and interprets it, that should be the " real- world " of art. And the true question of realism is, whether the poet who essays a dramatic expression of life should make his work, in the aspect of it called beauty, agree with his own total impression of men and the world of experience, or should set and shape it to some conventional and pleasing standard of things ; whether it should chime with the laws and issues of the world as he sees them, or should seek agreement with certain images and preconceptions of art. Browning, anyhow, has held by the former prin- ciple, and it explains the matter as well as the aesthetic 72 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. features of his work. The principle itself would by some be contested, though scarcely, I think, on a true judgment of what the principle is to a poet and thinker like Browning. For to him his view of art results from his view of the world. His " creed " as thinker and his governing conception as poet are the same — real idealism. No man holds more deeply, and no poet has given more forcible expression to a conviction of the higher issues of life — to the belief in the reality of a life and order more perfect and more beautiful than the actual world. But the way to it is through the realities of this world, not through dreams and fine sentiments, " vain opinions, false valuations, and imaginations, as one would." The light and beauty come as the facts of the world and the soul are seen truly and transfigured on the ground and by the vision of that reasonable ideal which is the poet's truest dream and the thinker's surest result. But, so much being allowed as explanation of the " form " of this poetry, and of what some consider its want of beauty, it may then be urged that its difficulty and obscurity are neither justified nor removed. For so many readers complain of this obscurity that its reality must be frankly admitted — I mean, in the sense that there is something of exceptional difficulty in this poetry. I will even allow that there are parts more difficult than they need have been, and parts where the " darkness may be felt." And then I affirm that a great part of the alleged difficulty and obscurity arise from its mere merits, are natural to its Browning's Obscurity and its Causes. 73 subjects and its method. Let us, then, see how this can be shown, and, in giving reasons for the obscurity that is often felt, we may suggest to some a way of getting over and beyond its causes. And first of the reasons I give for the obscurity of the poet is this — that his writing is often, perhaps usually, immediate, lying close to the facts as he sees them, and certainly to the matter in his mind. There often seems a vital transference of thought and of its motives and process in the mind supposed. The poetry is the frank and direct expression of the man thinking. Of Emerson's lectures it was said that they were not so much speech as thought made audible ; and of Browning's dramatic poetry you might say that it is not so much verse as the thought and passion of the poet embodied, vitally conveyed. From the point of view of style, this is open to criticism ; yet it not only results from, it conveys, the dramatic energy of the poet's mind. It is, therefore, most suitable to his method, and it gives a fine quality to his style. And this suggests the second reason to be given for Browning's obscurity — that is, the method and quality of his art. Nearly all his writing, we have seen, is from a dramatic standpoint. Even his lyrics are so many dramatic utterances. The poet takes his stand inside the personality and experience of some person, imaginary or historic, and he speaks for them or he makes them speak. Their character and circum- stances are all assumed, and that without prelude or 74 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. explanation. You are carried at once into the midst of these things and thoughts ; you listen, you make the best of your way through them, and keep on until you know the " person " speaking and his circum- stances ; and then, possibly, having grasped both, you read the poem again, and thus see the whole vividly, and most of all the "person" in the foreground. The matter takes time and patience, but you get "your own out of it." Things are not plain all at once. But no one is to blame, and certainly not the poet ; it belongs, in fact, to his method. Then, what we may call his covtplex use of his dramatic method increases the difficulty. It is not, as he uses it, " speech " you have, nor is the scene out- side. The " case " is not made clear as for some " third party," and the " stage " is really the soul, and what you have is the man's intimate utterance — thought very often. And very often you have not one person only on the stage, but another or others. It is not soliloquy you have ; it is a kind of intense " debate " carried on with reference to several persons, or a kind of drama played through a single soul, where the necessity the poet is under to work the whole situation and its details in from the one point of view, and to adapt the utterance to the other "persons," involves difficulty. Nor is the point of view the simple dramatic, even allowing for the interior standpoint. It is not simply the " person " the poet gives you, animated and kept in spiritual action so that he may reveal himself Further Analysis of Dramatic Method. 75 through and in his utterance ; there is a modern thoughtfulness and curiosity, searching and explain- ing, rising from facts to their meaning, and from phenomena to their sources. The poems are not dramatic lyrics only ; they are dramatic studies also. This again is part of the complexity of conception and design in the poet's use of his method-^his wish and aim to be " objective and subjective " too. And this complexity of dramatic interest and expression may suggest another reason for his obscurity, and that is a reason it is not, perhaps, easy to get over and impossible to get rid of — that is, his swift- ness of movcTnent, his energy and rapidity of thought, his quick, restless perceptions and transitions, his swift and subtle qualifications, his strong grip and eager march of mind both among facts and thoughts. There is in Browning, indeed, that quality of energy and abundance ; that sense of a mind conscious of its own strength and movement, and rejoicing in it ; that fulness of flow both of matter and utterance, which Marlowe and Jonson, and above all Shakspere, have. It is not easy to follow such writing, but it is a noble virtue, and the stimulus of it is excellent, and no poet of our time has given it in the same degree as the author of " The Ring and the Book." And when mental energy is named, that is only part of the matter. This poet is keen, alert, and ready with his other powers. His senses are quick and strong — eye and ear, sense of form and colour and beauty. He is active and observant, and of well- 76 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. developed physical endowment. You find something of the external abundance of the great poets, in spite of themes and a method that hardly encourage this kind of wealth. The complexity of dramatic interest and expres- sion has been noted, but there are further points of that kind that add much to the interest and some- thing to the difficulty of this poetry. The situations and moments of life and character chosen are pregnant and complex ; the persons presented are far from being simple, and you find them in moments of dis- turbance and debate when the passion and thought of years is brought to bear on some matter of the soul or the life. Such hours are those of intense action, congenial to the poet's mind, and best for his method of dramatic revelation ; but they are situations re- quiring energy on the reader's as on the poet's part. ( And if the poet's choice of subjects and dramatic treatment of them means trouble, he adds to it hy the casuistic and speculative activity which he often keeps up alongside the dramatic activity. It is not only that his dramatic poems are dramatic studies of spiritual quality and depth, nor only that they are studies of complex characters and situations, but the dramatic and argumentative threads are often so worked together that it is at times impossible to keep them clear, or to know if the poet meant you to do so. And to complicate matters further from the point of view of art, and to add to the interest and depth from that of thought, the poet contrives, or is driven by Complex Use of Dramatic Method. TJ Interest of his own mind in the facts and problems contained within the dramatic development, to suggest the largest aspects of thought in its bearing on these matters of human life — to suggest the uncertainty and incompleteness of art and of thought in dealing with the complex drama even of single souls in situations that involve their lives and their resources.^ And the fact is broadly that Browning does not and cannot use his dramatic power simply as a poet or merely as a dramatist. He has the power to present poetry dramatic and accurate in his kind of work. He is not, as some think, a critic of life who uses poetry as the medium of his criticism, or a thinker who uses dramatic forms to state in the terms of life his conclusions about life. He is a dramatist of true power, and his poetry as such is vitally clear and right. But behind and about all you have the thinker. It is not necessary here to settle which interest of the poet is the stronger, the poetic or the speculative — and in some of the poems it is impossible to settle it — but, without seeking to determine that question for the poet's mind, it is clear thatQie regards dramatic poetry as a medium vital, and therefore most valuable, for presenting the problems of the soul, and of life, and unless this be regarded in his work he must often bewilderj Enough, liowever, of reasons arising from this side of the poetry. Many will deem that a reason more on the surface has much to answer for. I refer to the style of the poet. If that had been other and clearer. 78 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. the business of reading had been easier/ Browning's style is distinct and individual. Its merits and faults are mainly his own. His utterance is the energetic reflex of the man and his thought. As such it must be known ; and it is swift and abrupt like the thought, and condensed often as the thought is concentrated. Thought and fact are primary, and language must bend to the intense thinking. His elisions are often puzzling, his clauses numerous, his qualifications tire- some ; his similes, often happy, are strange at times ; and his metaphors sometimes run away with him, and become a thing apart and grotesque. There are parts that look as if they had been thrown off with a profuse energy and indifference to finish — parts that look like full and vigorous notes for work rather than the complete work. Beauty of expression seems of small account compared with distinct and forcible statement, and his own keenness and energy of mind have led to his thinking too little of other minds. All that may be said of Browning's style, and yet this poet is really great in point of style, original and powerful in this as in matter. Casual, harsh, and capricious as he seems at times, reckless and grotesque as he seems, he is in his best work masterly and sufficient. He is Shaksperian in fulness, rapidity, and mastery of utterance. His style is, perhaps, the most vital and natural of recent poets — the fit medium and counterpart of his matter ; with great simplicity often, great vivacity, with muscular quality and grasp, and with nothing rhetorical or obtrusive about it. Poefs Style and its Qualities. 79 To compare Browning and Tennyson in the matter of style, is to find a measure of their merits and differences. Beauty, finish, musical and emotional charm, care for every verse and line and for the parts as parts, and care for verse and phrase as things of beauty and pleasure in themselves— these are Tenny- son's qualities, not Browning's j' but in Browning power and mastery of matter and word, tense grasp and alert speech, force, animation, trenchant and decisive bearing on the main purpose. There is manliness and sincerity, an upright and masculine temper, even in his speech, the pertinence and free- dom of animated and competent talk ; and such style fits his method, and lies close to his thoughts. It is laid to his charge that he- is never lyrical and poetic in the sense some have got to regard as the whole of poetry. His tone and colour are too low. Plain in word, and almost prosaic in pitch, he offends some. But that is to miss his standpoint and design. His style is framed to his purpose, and in its qualities, and what some think its defects, it may be regarded as the reflex both of his mode of thought and his view of his whole subject. Its quality and tints are realistic. Its discords and grotesqueness of phrase and line belong to its dramatic humour, and give the key of the writer's thought. But the results are not art, it may be said. They are not classic, but Gothic art — a more natural and complete art, because more sufficient as an image of life. And our great dramatic thinker and poet sees so forcibly the quality 8o Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of life, its incompleteness, its moral infinity ; he sees how all character is manifold, intricate, never to be seized or expressed in its exact truth ; he is set on the "soul," and, as language can at its best but indicate the life of that, he is satisfied that his style should be the shadow and consequence of his " criticism " of life and of art's just relation to it. As to verse, and his powers in that matter. In the opinion of some he has been indifferent here. But he is really capable of great metrical skill, as many poems show in all parts and periods of his work. So fine a judge as Mr. Watts speaks of such passages, " hundreds in which the music is quite new, quite his own, and entirely beautiful," though ■ the critic thinks the poet often " led astray by his quest for new movements." His use of rhyme is a trying point to some, part of his humour often ; but his blank verse is fluent and masterly, no doubt because it is the most suitable to his mode of art and his theme — the verse that is nearest to speech, as has been said. It has now become clear that, on whatever side Browning's work is regarded, you can understand it only as you discern and allow for its dramatic quality and design. He is the modern poet of man, positive, comprehensive, and spiritual, and he has the largest qualification for the work of any recent English poet. The characteristics of his work, the way in which he touches and illustrates human life and man's nature, the body of thought and character through Qualities as a Dramatic Poet. 8 r which it is done, the genius and personality that inspire and vitalize it, the outcome of it, and the impression made by the whole work as a view of the life of man, — these questions arise when we come to regard the work in its whole extent, and to estimate it with reference to its great subject. Some of these matters we shall consider along with the groups of poems that illustrate them. It will be well here to mark certain general principles and features of the work and of the poet. And, first, looking at the poetry as characterization of the lives of men, what wealth and variety of character it contains, through so many types, times, and races, — Greek, Eastern, Mediaeval, Renaissance, Modern ! And the freedom of moral scope is as great as the variety of type. It passes from Caliban to Aben Ezra. The readiness and versatility of mind this implies are only part of what it involves. The wide research and frank curiosity are matched by the moral breadth and impartiality of nature. To really present not the actions, but the minds and feelings of so many " persons ; " to identify the mind with them so far as to give the being and body of their experience ; — this means a rare width and freedom of spirit, a rare power to enter into the thoughts of men. Nor is it intellectual comprehension only, large and subtle as that is. There ^is free emotion. There is sympathy, and frank regard, which throws itself into the par- ticular case for the time, making it real, giving not only the process of thought, but the play of G 82 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. passion and habit, so far as it belongs to his dramatic art. And this is part, of course, of that vitality and energy which gives so strong a fascination to Brown- ing's dramatic work. The fascination that vital energy has in every form is here in its finest form as energy of will and spirit. He seems alive at every point, at every moment, and he animates every person of his drama and every line of his work. And this not only with a keen, alert intelligence, but with the touch of a well-strung nature. Mr. Bagehot called attention to the tenseness and alertness of Shakspere's mind, so that his plays have the excitement and activity of the playhouse ; Browning's work has a similar quality and power. And what courage, and frankness of judgment, and interest ! What health and naturalness of speech and feeling ! He is not afraid to give men and women in the bold lines and simple truth of their souls and lives. He understands the passion and trial of men. He knows " the joy of life, the mere living." He has a Shaksperian cordiality and humanity ; is open and hearty towards man and life. And, being the man and thinker we have described, his characterization is inclusive and actual, not ex- clusive or abstract. He has an eye for all significant facts, and is quick to catch their meaning. As an artist, he knows the worth of expressive detail ; as a dramatist, he has a care for whatever throws light on his persons ; as a thinker, he is resolute to grasp the Principle of Selection. 83 whole problem in all its elements, and seeks no vain simplicity, but the complex relations and subtle balance of forces that belong to life and fact. These are some of the qualities of Browning's characterisation, and out of them arise two questions. What is the principle of selection, what the ground of interest, that has led the poet to this gallery of men and women, so curious and original ? It seems difficult to define his dramatic motive. Not beauty or pleasure or morality, or any simple motive of poetic invention, will account for these dramatic works. What then, is the point of attraction and of interest? No English poet of recent years has grasped so much of the lives of men, has gone so far through the field of man's history, or made such wide observation of its facts. Others have kept a narrow range, and have offered familiar types ; this poet has put before us, in the intimate passion and truth of their souls, men of exceptional and various characters. And his clue has been the human interest and significance of his themes. A wide and dis- interested curiosity — nay, love and care for the things of human spirits — is one leading note of this poetry. At a time when a great general idea of science has given such interest and value to the simplest facts bearing on the history of life, and a new and grand unity to all research illustrating that history, Brown- ing has felt a similar interest, has given something of the same unity and value to all facts bearing on the interior life and its laws. 84 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. But Browning's interest in the facts of human life, though wide and disinterested in the sense just stated, is not so universal or free as Shakspere's. All kinds of characters and situations do not interest him. Many of Shakspere's people would not answer his purpose. The stimulus of interest and expression in his poetry is not, as in the " objective drama," action or what bears on action, but the "soul," and what moves or reveals it. /And so his critics have noted that the crises and situations that do this are of special interest to him — the times that throw the soul off its habits and on to its deeper forces, that make clear the drift and power of those forces ; the energies that are usually quiet, but that take or make their hour by laws deeper than ethics grasp^^ From this comes another point of his work — that his dramatis persona are such as afford these crises and the forces that generate them or respond to them. As tragic situations belong to the drama of actioiii and test and develop the will, so tragical moments and decisions belong to the inward drama, and test and develop the soul ; and the souls that give scope for these crises are the deep and passionate peoj^e who have the elements of disturbance in them. From the first it is these people who have interested him. Even lives that are wrecked by the conflict are his element, for they unveil the human spirit— lives in which there is a large composition and unstable- equilibrium of forces. And then, looking at the drift of the above criti;- Essential Interest of the Modern Dramatist. 85 cism, and at the list of " persons," we come more fully upon a question touched before — What is Browning's essential interest ? Is it poetic or scientific ? curiosity or human regards ? Browning is human and cordial to the core, and his poetry is so too. But the question is one raised by his poetry and method far more than by Shakspere's. What is the " end " of all this curi- osity about, this depiction of, human life ? What is its higher interest ? " Man is of perennial interest to man," and of deeper interest to the dramatist than to any. Is it, then, only the animation and play of his puppets that he regards ; or does he watch the parts and the play with an eye to the larger play of life itself, that he may find clues to the plan and issues of that ? Shakspere, it has been thought, gave it up, and threw his " book " away, and laid aside his powers to return to the common duties with a sense of its mystery and goodness, but nothing more. Browning is of another age and the poet of another drama, and, as was said above in speaking of the complexity of his method, his work involves the interest of the thinker as well as the poet. His interest in the facts of the play goes with an interest in the laws and issues of the greater drama of life itself. Some find much fault with the poet because this is so, and some seek to "defend" him by maintaining that he writes only and always as a dramatist. But the defence is not valid, and there may surely be an activity of the thinker without prejudice to that of the poet. And this reference to the thinker and his survey 86 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of his own drama from that standpoint reminds us of one great characteristic of his poetry — I mean the way in which you have over and through it all the suggestion, and even the expression, of the poefs person- ality, the free mind of the poet. Browning is not, and for many reasons could not be, as Shakspere is thought to have been in this. His mind and per- sonality are impressed upon his work, and conveyed through it to his readers who can read. And after all talk about the duty to hide and suppress personality ; in poetic work, vital contact with a true and strong poet is surely one of the most stimulating and precious things poetry can give you. But will not this inter- fere with the truth and balance of the work ? That will, of course, depend on how it is done, and it must in no case be primary or obtrusive ; but the dramatic presentation may surely be made, though you have about and beyond that the mind of the poet: and what is the dramatic element when most vital but some part of the mind of the poet ? In any case, careful readers of Browning admit that in most parts of his work, and these the most animated and striking parts, you find the poet himself suggested or expressed. We do not mean his opinions, but something more and deeper — the man and his mind. You feel a rich and strong nature, a fresh and vigorous spirit ; you have stimulative energy of feeling, thought, and will. This is why some find him "hard." He is too active and aggressive for them. But it is a reason why others read him in Personality of the Poet in his Work. 87 spite of objection to subjects and style. They feel in his work an ardent and potent mind. They get from him the impression of greatness. Even in poems they do not care about as a whole, they get the impulse of vital power ; they feel the depths of thought and passion ; they get a sense of mastery, force, and reality. And this though it may be said that the personality of the poet is an unknown quantity, reserved, subtle, and elusive, " always self-asserting, yet never defined ; probably as mysterious to the poet as to his readers," as Mrs. Orr finely wrote in the Contemporary Review. But this is not because the poet is not present in his work, or is withdrawn from his readers. It is because the man and his genius make a complex body of powers in very stable equilibrium. His nature is full, and it is well balanced — intellectual and passionate ; idealistic, yet concrete and accurate ; spiritual, but shrewd ; a " seer " and a " mystic," but also a humorist and a " man of the world ; " capable of intense medi- tation, and also of keen activity and enjoyment ; resolute of will and compact of soul, yet tender and brotherly. Nor is it possible to say ^ how you get all this and more ; and another good critic, touching this point, speaks of it as quite inexplicable, comparing our poet, in this matter of personal communication and influence through his work, with Cardinal Newman, a great part of whose influence has been of this kind. But communication of the living-'' spirit, of "the incom- 88 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. municable qualities and secrets of the soul," is only partly explicable in any striking case of it. Poetic work is more finely adapted than any work for this expression and suggestion ; and poetry like Browning's, everywhere in touch with men and with life, must be more living than most, conveying much of the poet through themes and tone, through what is said and what is reserved. The poet is there, anyhow, to qualify and animate the work,, and to give in subtle ways intercourse with his nature. And it is seldom in literature or in life that you find such substance and strength, warmed with such passion and kindled by such fire. And this, which is part of the power, is also part of the worth of this poetry. Its masculine quality, its intellectual force, its impartiality, its irony, yet spiritual tenderness and depth, reflect the mind and the poet. And this poets sense of personality is exceptionally strong, and has been so ever since he made himself known through literature. It is so m " Pauline." And this is not merely an aspect of his energy of will and force of brain ; it is not always found with these : it is a principle of his mind and of his genius, so intens? that it seems a central idea, and has given his dramatic work its keen individualism. So marked and pervasive is this principle that some take it as the chief idea and quality of the work. All his "per- sons" have something of the intense personality of the poet ; the greater figures among them have it in a degree that ' makes them unique in modern poetry, Personality as a Dramatic Principle. 89 The depth and power with which they realize them- selves, with which they live and " illustrate " life, is extraordinary. And this principle, as it gives anima- tion to his poetry, and enables the poet to give his persons in the full scope of passion and consciousness, is in striking agreement with his spiritual ideas. And if it be said that this intense consciousness and spiritual energy is so rare that Browning's art is untrue in this as in its tense passion and strong speech, the objection is met by reminding the critic that the persons are chosen in those moments and situations when, if ever, they throw themselves into keen self-expression,, and realize themselves to the full. ( 96 ) CHAPTER V. " PARACELSUS." A poets early work, whatever other value it may have, has much value with reference to the poet. His first ambitions and interests are in such work, the points at which he began in the freshness of his powers and early grasp of life. And this is part of the interest of "Paracelsus!' The themes that drew Browning, the questions his mind was busy with in 1835, his early affinities of thought, his first quality in the study of man, are written at large in this poem. His faults and bias also, some would wish to add. Now, as to these latter points, let me say at once I do not take " Paracelsus " because I defend the scheme and the manner of the poem. It has faults of structure and of style, and these are on the surface. Its merits are more involved, and require tolerance and study. It is easier to set it aside and give reasons for doing so than to read it with reason, The poem is long and often diffuse ; the speeches " Paracelsus^ ' 91 have a wonderful fluency and abundance, but they are too numerous and lengthy. Yet the merits of the poem are solid. It has so much poetry and thought, and leaves so many passages in the memory, that it is not only of ijiterest in our study of the poet's art, but in itself " Paracelsus " was the first work by which the poet was at all known. He was only twenty-three years of age when it was published, and when that is borne in mind, the merits and general power of the poem, its fulness and strength of thought and utterance, its moral breadth and wisdom, may well seem remarkable. The poet of " Paracelsus " might not win many readers, but his value and force were declared. And in "Paracelsus" the poet found his theme, though not his form. He entered the province he was to make his own ; for " Paracelsus " is " a study of a soul." It is the development of a life through inward growth and outward experience. It elicits and presents the crises, the factors, the results, of a life through the mind of the man who lived it. But the interest of the "soul" in this sense may be questioned. In other words, it may be matter of doubt how far this way of inward research brings out accurately the life of man. As thinker and as poet Browning has always affirmed its interest and value for him, and his poetry is his " apology." But let us be quite clear what is meant. Many of us appear to think that conduct and outward 92 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. relations are the whole of life. It is vain, or it may be morbid, to regard the inward order or spirit. If the outward be right, all will be. And much can be said for that. The court being set up amid the ways of practical life, and the judge being common- sense, the " case " can be made to look complete. And even in the court of conscience it can be made to look so. But it is not so. The inner order, the springs and play of life within, are of essential account, The centre and basis of life's drama are there. You must find the man there to know him ; you must test matters by their results in the soul. Harmony with " self," and not with the out-nature only, is our higher law. But such words may be taken too narrowly. The very use of the word " soul " may seem to involve > things earnest men are not agreed about. It is the word Browning always uses, in its freer and also fuller sense, for the man within in all his vital elements,' and what is meant is that the interior facts and laws are of first-rate interest in the study of man, as they are of first-rate value in culture and well-being. Such being the design and sphere of the poem, how about its form ? In what sense is it dramatic? A drama it is not, and the author rejects " dramatic poem " as its description. He explains (in a forcible preface to the edition of 1835, which I am sorry he has not retained in its place) that his design was to display, not the external things that led to the internal results, but to show the mind and passions in " Paracelsus!' 93 such way as to suggest the incidents leading to them, or even to exclude the incidents and depict only the mood and mind. He feels that it is dramatic in purpose, and so far dramatic in form, while yet, by its omissions as well as by its scope, it must depend for its success on "the intelligence and sympathy of its readers." Is its form, then, justified by its success ? Only, I think, very partially. Drama makes use of an external machinery of persons and events in its effort to develop its story and present its characters, and this method has its advantages but also its restrictions. Is there a method and form of dramatic art that, while keeping outward things in the background, shall be able to give the story and circumstances so far as necessary, and at the same time and far more to give the history and action of the soul itself? This problem " Paracelsus " does not solve, certainly. The author felt the need for a medium and statement that should have dramatic quality, and so took this form. And he gives a series of scenes, conversations, and monologues whose one aim and result are to unfold the motives, passions, and thoughts of Paracelsus. Apart from him there is little character or interest in the piece. He is pre- sented with dramatic power. But in what sense "presented" f In the historic- dramatic way, or some freer way? The poem is no story or picture of the life and deeds of Paracelsus, no scrupulous reconstruction of facts so far as they have come down to us. Browning, indeed, says that 94 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. the poem might be put within the leaves of any good " life " of Paracelsus as an interpretation of the man and his aims. And, in a sense, we may allow that true. But it is, perhaps, a larger part of the truth to say that the story of Paracelsus, as it has come dowfl to, us, would not have suggested the inner story here told to any one but Browning in the year 1835. The poem is not, in other words, so much the actual man as a poetic spiritual interpretation of his ideas and motives seen from the poet's standpoint and through the poet's mind. Not a " true story," then, do you ■ say, but " only an imagination " ? But are not the sincere " creations " of a poet's mind truer than " true stories " — ^truer to the heart of man ? Paracelsus was born in 1493, the year after the discovery of America, and died in 1541, two years before Copernicus. He won fame and honour, also dubious reputation and dishonour, as a physician and chemist. In both lines his services and ideas were critical and valuable. He felt deeply and boldly pror claimed the absurdity of the medical notions and practice of his time. He led a revolt against authority and tradition, appealed to experience broadly, and set himself to seek facts. He sought, however, crudely to put medicine on the ways of knowledge. He brought physic into some relation to chemistry. He had a right idea of the nature of diseases, and insisted on the need to study them in their course and growth. He introduced some valuable medicines, in all such points getting sight at least of a new era in medical art Paracelsus" 95 And the man was ambitious and original. His desires outwent the desires of ordinary men, as his ideas in important points surpassed the science or the . ignorance of his time. But he was not scientific. He came too soon for that, and he had not the temper for it. He came in the transition time, when the dim dawn of scientific ideas and method was begin- ning to touch the horizon of the mind. He is rather a mystic, with a leaning to magic as well as to observa- tion. It was a natural position for " students of nature " in his time. But he had an impatience and audacity and vanity making it specially dangerous for him. And the age was transitional in other great matters, and well fitted to bring out the strength and weakness of such a man. It was the age of Luther and Erasmus — of the Reformation and the Renaissance ; the age of Columbus; the age when feudalism and scholasticism, and Catholicism had broken down in the social, mental, and moral orders, and when the first great period of modern life began. It was a time of expansive thought and desire, and Paracelsus shared its spirit. In medicine he was something of a Luther, using something of Luther's methods — " burning their books," as Luther the papal bull, and, with fiery tongue, denouncing their errors, that he might free the bodies of men, as Luther their souls. He provoked bitter opposition, of course. Unfor- tunately, his aims and methods were not pure and high. He was something of a quack as well as a dreamer, and so laid himself open to disaster. 96 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. The poem is an attempt to present vitally and explain the course and aims of such a man, keeping closely by the circumstances of his life so far, but construing the inner life more freely. The man, the age, the failure, and the results of his mind and his life are so construed as to disclose their inner truth and significant relation to human experience. The poem is presented in five scenes, marking the crises in the course and trial of Paracelsus ; and Paracelsus himself is made to express what at those times passed through his mind — ^his " moods in their rise and progress." These scenes are taken from his life, and turn on events of his life. Along with him, a very few other " persons " are brought in. They give occasion for his speeches, and their lives and tempers make his more distinct by contrast. They also give an element of beauty and interest to his career by " touches of nature " and strains of human kindness. You, are the more disposed to take interest in and have patience with Paracelsus in his singular and solitary career when you see the kindness Festus and Michal had for him. And their careers, their gentle passions, and simple satisfied love not only plant you on the earth, but make more distinct the so different life of the bold and restless thinker. In the first scene Paracelsus and his friends are found in a quiet garden at Wiirtzburg, in the autumn of 1 5 12. Paracelsus explains the passion and purpose of his life. He sees that new knowledge is needed. He believes it can be won, and he devotes his life to " Paracelsus^ 97 win it. His friends plead against his scheme, and try to draw him from his way of seeking his end ; but the glowing speech, the energy, and radiant impulse, of Paracelsus overcome them. They fall in with his hopes, and declare their faith in him and his greatness. The large, restless search of the man's mind, his vague hopes and ambition, his intellectual assurance and courage, his fateful desire urging him on — these grow stronger through the scene, until, in his closing words, they touch their climax. The man has high aims and a scorn of common aims. His passion is to know, and no partial know- ledge can ever seem to him enough. His desire is to know " the secret of the world, of man, of man's true purpose, path, and fate." But how reach such know- ledge ; for he is sure God impels him to seek and will guide him to gain it? Not by the common ways, or at the usual sources. Results have shown these vain. His way must be one apart — a way of genius and daring. But surely it is wise to use the past and its gains ? No ! The cureless ills of life prove its failure, and impress the urgent need of a better art and a deeper knowledge. To serve man by winning that knowledge is his ambition. "To serve man," but apart, in a temper of proud isolation and conscious greatness. Here is one peril. Man needs .the en- circling love and help of his fellows even in great tasks. Humility and sympathy are needed for the soul and for the work,; pride brings failure and disaster. H pS Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. So his friends remind him ; but his ambition and passion for knowledge fill his soul for the time, and he bears down their fears in a great speech, telling the knowledge he seeks. The true knowledge, light in its fulness, is within. It is near to all. Set the soul free fro^m flesh and custom and ignorance, mis- named knowledge, and it will be found. And it has been found partly by those who have touched its sacred " springs.'' He goes to gather it so. This is prescientific mysticism and divination of Nature's secrets. And here is another danger. We next find Paracelsus, after an interval of nine years, at Constantinople, in a conjuror's house. Both situation and mood tell what has happened since he made his " plunge " to - find the pearl of " sacred knowledge." In eager passion and vague effort he has wearied himself in vain, and the dangers of his method, as of his mood, have grown clear. The great secret is unreached, and life is going. He must mend or end matters and his search, if it be by help of the conjuror. He is not the man he was. Inner ruin threatens, he feels. And though he has given all for knowledge, even youth and life, he has not won it And, worst of all for him, he seems to be losing the power and freshness of the mind itself But " God, who is the Master Mind," surely values mind too much to let this happen to him. At this point Aprile, a poet, is heard singing a song of those who have failed and are "lost." Aprile comes in. He is one of those who have failed, and " Paracelsus." 99 his failure becomes the means of a warning and a lesson to Paracelsus, just when the shadow of failure has fallen on his life and aims. Aprile has loved with eager and endless passion all things in the world and the life of man, and has sought to grasp all things and give them to men, that men might love him for the new sense given them of the joy and beauty of life. But he lost himself in the egoism of sensation and passion, and in the vague sense of loveliness he knew not how to express. His life and powers have thus been wasted. Love and joy were right, but the artist must know as well as love, must " make " and not only enjoy, must submit to the limits and master the means of the art through which he is to give men what he sees and feels. Paracelsus sees this as the life of Aprile is put beside his own. He has ignored love and put aside enjoyment, caring only for knowledge. Let Aprile know and Paracelsus love, and their tasks may yet be done. As to the poet, it cannot be. He is spent and dies, seeing as he dies that the true poet is he who, without thought of self, has power to create and give his creations to men, not because of enjoyment only, but from love. In the lesson thus learned Para- celsus seems to himself to have, "attained," the lesson being to use the knowledge he has won in love for men, and not to postpone service or life at the bidding of a vague ideal passion. In the third scene Paracelsus is at Bdle, in 1526. It is the mid-point of his life. Famous now, and a lOO Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. professor, he is using the knowledge gathered, and seems to have got that opportunity of serving science and his kind which is regarded as the right sphere for such men. How does it seem to Paracelsus ? Is he satisfied ? Is this success ? He pours forth his mockery and discontent to Festus, who is proud of his "success." He feels himself no better than a zany in a show, the chief fool helped by other fools in a farce. Both knowledge and opportunity seem fragmentary and trivial beside the mind's ideal and the soul's passion, and those about him, with their ignorance, prejudices, and vulgar aims, make things small and hopeless ; and " truth is far away as ever." But it may be God's will men should not reach that knowledge Paracelsus desires, and, if so, our duty is to give our best and do what we can, since we cannot do what we would. It may be so, but he cannot rest there. Neither his pride nor his hunger for knowledge will let him, and, besides, he is at war with his duties and circumstances. He has no faith in either, or in men, or in himself in relation to his tasks and circum- stances. He foresees failure, partly from faults of his own, and more from faults of others. His aims are the same as ever. He has the same scorn of common aims. He cannot love and enjoy and rest in the good of thing-s, and wait for the slow progress of the world. Life is sinking into compromise, and the hypocrisy of custom and contentment. He must maintain his search, give a wider range to thought, destroy error, " Paracelsus'' loi and build up the true knowledge. Why not do this through the press, then, where his qualities need not involve their defects? The whole of his work could not be done that way any more than Luther's could have been in his sphere. The " false gods " must be thrown down visibly, with scorn and denunciation. They have talked the night out, and as the dawn comes, Festus, puzzled and feeling that this life is not likely to prove satisfactory to his friend, speaks of another. Paracelsus is fretted for a moment by the thought, for it seems to make this life a " makeshift ; " and then he reflects that for man a life that gives scope for " love and hope and fear and faith " is after all best, though he, acting as if man were mind only, has ignored these essential qualities. In the fourth scene he is at Colmar, in 1528, driven from BMe. He has sent for Festus, and tells him how the episode at Bile went and ended. The affair of Leichtenfels (the patient whom Paracelsus cured, and who, refusing him his fees, was backed by the authorities in doing so) was only an incident of it, the deeper cause being aversion to his aims and ideas. He is bitter and unstrung. And what is his plan now ? " To know and enjoy at once," he says ; and the words seem wise, but not the mood, or the life he is living. He has neither mastered life nor self, and his pursuit of knowledge seems more a thing of passion than of purpose ; for even while he speaks of toil to gain it, he says, " Mind is disease, and natural health is ignorance." And his labours are now I02 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. desperate, and, though he will not admit that his aims are mistaken, his life proves that they are. It is in this spirit that he sings the song of the men who " clung to their first fault and withered in their pride." Will he be like them, and cling to his first scheme, having proved its mistake, or must he change ? He can't. He must keep on in the hope that that way will bring him to his end. And Festus thinks there must be for such natures another law than for most men, and a hope that will not fail. This he is the more encouraged to think because, if Paracelsus has sinned, he has also loved ; and the scene ends with proof of his love, for the heart of Paracelsus is touched when he learns the death of his friend's wife, and he forgets for the time his own troubles to comfort Festus. The last scene is in the hospital at Salzburg, thirteen years after. Paracelsus is dying, and Festus watches beside him in love and prayer. He is slowly returning to consciousness, and dreams of Aprile. He has heard the poet, now full of music, chanting soft melodies all night, and in the pardon of the poet he feels his own. Wild words follow about his own life, and then, as he dreams of Michal and Aprile to- gether, he seeks to keep by them and love. Then he longs for the old power, for full attainment and divine approval, only to see that this world is not for such things, and that, as it is not, there must be another. Then he wanders again, and when Festus steadies him on the present, he sums up his whole " Paracelsus" 103 "attainment," the results and lessons of his life, impartially as a mere "spectator" might do, and with the breadth and seriousness of one standing on the verge of " the boundless life." He has sinned, and he has failed, but God's praise has not missed, and he gains the high end of life now in seeing God's will as to man's scope and duty. A searching and impetuous soul, he felt himself made for some great task. Though not free from doubt, he had that inner sense and hold of things which made "the secret of the world" his — which made him, in a way thought could not explore, aware of what God is, what men and life are. And he reviews the plan of life as he sees it, and man's place in it — the ascent of life up to man ; the ascent of man through the higher minds towards God ; the task of the greater spirits being to antici- pate and help the spiritual progress of all. His task was of this order, and his design was man's service. Yet he failed in this service. Why ? Because of his pride of power and knowledge, and because he did not understand the gradual divine order of the world, or the vital uses and necessities of that order ; would have made an order of his own. He thus made his task monstrous and impossible, and brought himself to despair. He then learned the place and power of love in man's life, and sought to serve men. Driven again to despair by his failure at Bile, he then came to see that he had a further and harder lesson to learn — a lesson without which such work as his could never be done : love in his heart had to be made wise 1 04 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and pure to discern the dim beginnings of love in the minds of men. He had to learn trust, tolerance, hope ; to see that hate even may be a mask of love, and error a stage of truth. Such is the career of Paracelsus as the poet understood it in 1835; such the problem of the poem as he then presented and solved it. It is, I said, a study of a man of genius, the type being intellectual, aggressive, self-confident. The man has to measure himself against a great task to learn humility and the limits of man's power. Self-fulfilment, and not service, was long his whole aim. He began with and clung to a fatal misconception of the moral order. Only as one's aims are in line with that can they be carried out. Able and even good men often set themselves ends of their own and cling to them. But all our ends must be cidjusted to the order in and through which we have to work. A difficult form of self-sacrifice for earnest minds often lies in the sur- render they have to make of what seems to them high aims. To seek knowledge for itself may be a subtle kind of self-indulgence ; to seek it for the power it gives is only a form of ambition. Knowledge finds its finest use as a means of helping others. Love of men and care for human good is the best motive in its acquisition, and the finest test of its worth. And what is the point of the contrast between Aprile and Paracelsus in their ideas of life ? They both seek ideal ends absolutely, with defective views "Paracelsus!' 105 of duty, and with partial views of man's scope as of man's power. The " infinite " through feeling, in beauty and joy — that is Aprile ; the infinite through the mind, in knowledge and power — that is Paracelsus. The infinite is not to. be reached either way, or in truth any way, by man, and yet man must seek it ; both passion and thought impel him to do so. How, then, is this .' We bring the full question of such lives and spirits as those of Paracelsus to their hardest yet most vital point here, I judge ; and what is the answer ? That there is no final, no intel- lectual solution of the problem. This is why all solutions are apt to seem only a compromise, in which you are started on a high level, and are left depressed and disappointed at a lower one. It is the lesson of life that we can only find a moral solution of the problem when raised in its full extent. And what is that ? Some " doctrine, simple, ancient, true " — so true and old that it leaves us where men have always stood ; or some great idea which makes "all things new," which has been the spiritual desire of many of us? Love and service, union with man in work, progress and eternal hope, — on that line only men can find both scope and rest — rest from the burden of insoluble problems, and impulse for all labour and endurance. And this question is essentially a modern question. How far the poet is justified in carrying it into the Reformation era and the life of Paracelsus is matter of criticism. There is fair warrant for it, certainly. The intellectual excitement and vague aspiration of io6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. the story of Paracelsus and the legend of Faust belong to the same moods and the same period ; and these have in many respects been repeated on a larger scale and with clearer consciousness in our era. This Goethe felt in selecting the Faust legend to depict through it the modern spirit, and so Browning pro-' bably felt in taking this theme. Intense individualism and restless aspiration belong to many of us more than to Paracelsus ; and to this spirit, full of the passion for knowledge, and haunted by great questions, a moral solution of the problem of life has sometimes seemed an impertinence. Yet it was all the solution Goethe had to give. It was also the solution Comte offered from a different point of view. And though ' Browning has thought the question out more maturely in later work, it is the very spirit of his thought that no other solution is possible. ( I07 ) CHAPTER VI. " SORDELLO.'' "SORDELLO" was Browning's next work, and remained, until the publication of " The Ring and the Book," his most elaborate poem. Still more strongly than " Paracelsus," it marks the matters that were of interest to him in his early years- of poetic work, his intellectual power and high purpose. It is harder reading than " Paracelsus ; " it even remains, with perhaps two exceptions, the most illegible, the least read, of all the poet's works. Most of his readers, and many of his critics, put it aside in impatience or despair. Some admit they have not read it, and don't mean to ; others declare tha^t they have tried and failed — and life, they think, is too valuable and too busy to be spent laboriously over the mysteries of the career of a dreamer who did nothing, and whose inward achievement seems a blank or a puzzle. And the poem is hard reading iov the best practised ; nor is it, save in parts, pleasant for the most devoted. io8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Now, why is this ? Is it the weight of matter or the depth and subtlety of ideas in the poem ? I can't think so, and those are not the reasons why some have broken down with it. It appears to me that its ideas are capable of such statement- as should bring them within range of readers of the poet's other works. What, then, is it that makes the poem so great a trial of patience, and even of wits ? Is it the theme, the structure, or the style ? All three have to do with the matter. As. to the subject, the poet said long after that it had roused but little interest. The structure of the poem is seldom satisfactory and often unsuitable ; and the style has many faults- undue condensation, strange ellipses, abrupt transi- tions, long parentheses, an original and unpleasant use of inverted commas, and many things brought in that add to the substance, but do not conduce to the clearness of the poem. The poet thought of re-writing the poem {vide dedication to edition of 1863), and one fears that is the only cure for its faults. But it was not possible, of course. He might have made another poem on the same theme; he could not remake the " Sordello'' of 1840. So all he did was to put that analysis of the poem which you find in the form of headlines to the pages — brief lines that are often useful and often useless. But for all its faults " Sordello " is well wortii study. It has fine thought and poetry to reward its mastery. In every such poem there is part of a " Sordello" 109 poet's mind expressed that he does not again express ; and great matters both of life and art are here. And so, without attempting exposition in detail, it may be enough to explain the source and theme of the poem, its plan and course of thought, and the poetical and vital questions it throws light on. " Sordello " is a study similar in theme to " Para- celsus," though different in method and in the type and career chosen. In Paracelsus you have the student and thinker; in Sordello the type is poetic. He is more like Aprile than Paracelsus, though there are marked differences. Then in " Sordello " the whole " story " of a poet's life and growth are told, and told through the mind and with commentary of the author himself. The structure of the poem results from this. In its form it is narrative ; but the story is so told, and so much broken by reflection and dramatic statement (brought in by help of inverted commas), that the form proves unfit for the matter, and is one of the causes of difficulty of the poem. Browning calls the attempt made in " Sordello " quixotic, and describes its design as a " study of in- cidents in the development of a soul." And the poem is one of the first examples on a large scale of that kind of study. But "Sordello" has much matter that hardly comes within that design. The " story " of Sordello in its historical circumstances, the poetic function with its duties and perils, and the spiritual problems illustrated by the life and failure of Sordello, are the matter of the poem, and from elaboration of I lo Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. those three lines of interest comes part of its difficulty. The poet was thinking of his own art, and of a special type of experience in relation to its higher- tasks. He was thinking of the poet in contrast with the man of action, and in relation to the duties of the world. The career of Sordello interested him, because it gave scope for that theme, and led up to still larger spiritual problems. The subject was suggested in part by^ the special position of the Mantuan poet Sordello in early Italian literature. Sordello was a troubadour, born in 1194, who wrote under Provencal influence and in that dialect. He is the most distinguished of Italian troubadours, and his service lay in what he did towards the rise of modern literature in Italy ; the help he gave in rousing the Italian mind to, and preparing the Italian language for, the expression of poetic thought. Sismondi speaks of " the harmony and sensibility of his verses," and of the " pure and delicate style " of some of his songs, which have been collected. Yet his fame afterwards came less from what he did as a poet than from what he was said to have done as a knight. Sismondi quotes him as the most striking instance of the way in which the trou- badour was invested with chivalric glories, and became the hero of romantic adventures. But the conception and theme came ratJier out of the " Purgatorio " than out of the history or the legends about Sordello, for Dante's words about him, and not his own verses or fame, have kept his name alive. " Sordello." 1 1 1 Dante treats him with respect. He recognizes his place ; he ascribes dignity and chivalry to him, com- posure and disdain — " the manner of the couchant lion." And in the cordial greetings of Virgil and Sordello we have the meeting, not merely of two Mantuan poets, but of the classical and modern literatures of Italy {cf. " Purgatorio," cantos vi., vii.). Dante calls the poet " the good Sordello ; '' but he .places him at the entrance of " Purgatoiy " alone, yet among those who are expiating failure, and far from the Paradise of God. And the Mantuan troubadour singing, in the best verse he could make, the praises of love is in Dante a graver and more serious figure. I am not aware that the facts of Sordello's career warrant the notion that he had the ideas and oppor- tunity of Dante, and missed his chance through lack of power. But there is enough in the " Purgatorio " to suggest that the great poet who founded modern Italian literature condemned the poet who came only a few years before himself, for not having done more than he did, both for the language and the literature of his country. Browning credits Sordello with a perception of tasks and ideas that were neither conceived nor undertaken before Dante, and his poem becomes a study of the failure of a poet who had seen these things, but had not the power to realize them through his art. And his poem takes a still wider scope ; for he not only attributes to Sordello impulses and ideas that belong to Dante, but thoughts and passions that 1 1 2 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. are more modern, and so boldly makes his poem, with all its burden of Italian history, a study of poetic culture and the proper service of the poet. The Sordello of our poem, then, is, in the process and matter of it, largely a creation of Browning, but it is presented against a background of Italian history, and amid the circumstances of the life of the actual poet. There are forcible pictures of the doings and condition of Italy in that thirteenth century, when Guelf and Ghibelin were struggling so cruelly with each other in its cities, and these pictures help us to understand the difficulties, as they excuse the failure, of Sordello. As Sismondi says, the age was one of brilliant chivalric virtues and atrocious crimes— an age of heroes and monsters, among whom the figure of Sordello seems strange and out of place. But it is in the nature of the problem, as of the method, of the poem that these things bear on its leading interest only in a general way, and the poet takes these things freely. Sordello is said to have taken passionately the side of the pope ; but Dante was Ghibelin, and saw in the empire the best security for right government in Italy and Europe. And Sordello, living in Lombardy, took the same side. There are other points at which the poem departs from the history. The Mantuan poet remained, as I have implied, merely a troubadour, and did not, as Brown- ing's Sordello, leave that stage behind him, moving on to the ampler scope and higher aims of the later books of the poem. Sordello." 1 1 3 But this is much as it ought to be, and readers "suffer" rather from the industry of the poet in working up " all the chronicles of that period of Italian history" than from his "inventions." The figure and story of the Italian Sordello are dim, and without such importance as to engage or repay attention now. The theme as Browning conceives it, and the career as he construes it, have that importance. This kind of " romances," based on the suggestions rather than the facts of history, and attaching historic names to figures so different from the people who' bore them, is open to criticism certainly, and " pure invention " would have advantages ; but we must take what has stimulated a poet's mind, and regard the poetic and spiritual results as our proper gain. And so with " Sordello " we follow the outlines of the story only to make those results clear. Sordello was born at Goitto, near Mantua, where his mother died immediately after his birth, and his early years were spent there in perfect seclusion. He was, in fact, retained at the Castle of GoJto, by Adelaide, wife of Eccelino da Romano, who, because she feared he might prove a rival to her own son if his birth and parentage were known, kept both a secret, and gave out that he was the child of an archer named Elcorte. At Goifto he was left almost wholly to his own thoughts and wanderings, and grew up a dreamer and a poet. The place was fitted to nourish the dreamer, if not to develop the poet. The gloomy castle and the lonely woods, the great font I 1 14 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. with its marble figures, the arras with its mysterious forms, all appeal to his fancy. A slender youth, his calm brow and restless lip make plain his temper-- one framed to receive delight at every sense ; of rich and refined sensibility, apt to invest all things with the colour and life of his own nature, and quickened/ by a mystic sense of joy and beauty in the world. But with such sensibility there are two classes of minds. There are those who, blending their lives with outer things, and aware only of their beauty, depend on the external charm of things. They have need to belong to what they worship. And there are who are roused by outer things to a fuller self-con- sciousness, and who turn inwards the homage others direct outwards. So lived Sordello, pleased with his life and with his active fancy ; the real world kept out, without task or duty, alone, moral sense and social sympathy dormant. But he awakes ; he becomes aware that his paradise is not complete. Judgment and a sense of the need of others are born in him. Has he learned pity, sympathy? or is it only an egoistic craving for a crowd in whose eyes to live his life and show his powers .' Vanity, is it? Anyhow, not finding " a world," he makes one- giving his own life to each figure or name in it In this world, and no longer in the world of flower and tree, he now lives. Boy as he is, he cannot act and be those folks ; he can only fancy their deeds done — can only appropriate their powers and be in imagination what they have been in fact. And this ''Sordello." 115 he will do. He will gather all their qualities into one and be spiritually that one, and so more than the best of them. So he imagines himself a poet-emperor. He is Apollo, in fact, with Daphne for lover. Nor can he doubt that for such endowment as his this must happen some day. But when ? All has been only dream so far. Yet his dreams touch reality as one evening he sees Palma with her golden tresses. All that he hears of her fixes his fancy on her ; but time fleets, and he does not yet see when or how he can escape from Golto and meet the lady of his visions or the world of men. That time comes, however. Adelaide is at Mantua, and Sordello has his freedom. It is the spring, and he wanders forth, ripe, as he thinks, for life, dreaming most of Palma. He gets out of the woods and comes to Mantua, and beyond hope he finds Palma. She is there, holding a court of love under the city's walls. A minstrel is singing of Apollo. Sordello listens. The song of Eglamor is left incomplete ; Sordello takes up the song, seizes and finishes the theme with fuller passion and surer insight. He carries the crowd with him, wins the prize, and is chosen Palma's minstrel. This triumph, so new and strange on his first contact with the world, and this act of Palma, sent such surprise and delight through him, that, coming on the excitement of the song, he swooned. He was carried, still unconscious, by a troop of jongleurs back to the Castle of Gofto, where he lived the whole over and over again, trying to understand 1 1 6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. it, and he sees how he surpassed Eglamor, and sees, as he thinks, the poet's relation to the people. It is the part of song, made in joy of that it sings, to set free the fancy of others — to rouse them to see and feel the good of things. And what of Eglamor ? He sees and accepts his defeat irankly. Sordello's is the fuller song, and as his own art has been everything to him, as he has loved it and identified himself with it — finding in it the purpose and the good of his life — so now that that is lost life is without use. He dies, and is brought by a company of those among whom he had been chief minstrel, to sleep among the pine woods. Eglamor is the typical troubadour who loves art for its own sake, who is more aware of his song than of the things about which he sings, or of the soul whose passion song should express, and to whom art becomes the whole of life and an end in itself Thus life has begun for Sordello — the very life for which he seems to have been waiting — and now he finds out a story of his birth, and the reasons why he is at Goito. Apollo, as he thinks himself, he is only the child of Elcorte. What can such as he do ? Dream himself "Monarch of the world," but only through song ? Be all, but only in consciousness and imagination } Still through song and its power he may do much of what he wishes. Only what is it he wishes ? Not the perfection and triumph of his song, but the triumph of the man through the song ; self- assertion and the consideration he thinks his due. "Sordello." n; Through his work he would claim and win his place among the great men of the world, holding that the power to express and depict is the power to be and to do. But will the world take him at this estimate, or even from this point of view ? He returns to Mantua with this ambition and with these thoughts, and very soon finds that, having looked to art for ends outside art, he must use and so degrade his art to obtain these ends. Having begun, he must go on. He does so, and pleases so far. But why not himself enjoy this life, these passions, he expresses } He is tempted to do so, only he sees that to live the life of narrow and momentary joys would be to sink the poet to please the man. The poet must grasp the soul of joy, not simple joys — " each joy he must abjure even for love of it ; " to lose himself in it is to lose the power to express it. But then comes the thought that these abstractions, these " essential " passions, are not men. He will try to give men, the very stuff of life. He tries, and finds the language an obstruction. He works the language to his ends, " welding words into the crude mass from the new speech round him,'' and then seeks to present an action with its actors, real and alive. But language fashioned by thought will not answer to such vital expression. Perception may be one and whole. Thought can only be partial, abstract, and speech is its instrument It is " as hard to obtain a muse as to become Apollo.'' Still, if he cannot reach his aim and satisfy his sense of things, let him satisfy the 1 1 8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. crowd of admirers in Mantua. He sings Montfort and his exploits, but only to find that Montfort is all and the singer nothing. No one dreams that the singer could do what he sings. He turns on them with angry declaration" that their praise is worthless. Thus, the man at strife with the poet, and the poet with his own ideal, all goes wrong, with him. He is depressed and weakened by the double discord, and, out of harmony with himself, he gets more and more out of sympathy with his circumstances. Art and life become a compromise, which naturally he can neither accomplish nor accept. He discovers a want of readiness and tact, of the shallow plausibilities that are necessary to the business. He speaks too late, and much beyond the occasion, and is easily beaten by conventional wits and minds of merely practical scope. The result is that his just confidence is de- stroyed. He takes his opinion and style from others, and loses himself and his proper power, and grows contemptuous towards work and audience. In this mood, of course, no one is pleased. Naddo — your conventional and altogether " practical " person — tells him why he is failing. Let him limit his aims and keep close to life, and use common sense and speak to the " healthy heart.'' These things he cannot do, at least not Naddo's way, and their criticism only makes matters worse. Having lost the right ground and light within, he is swayed by every one, and his uncertainty becomes hopeless. With matters at their worst, he is set free by " Sordello." ,119 events. Adelaide dies, Eccelino retires ; Salinguerra, the leading soldier of the Ghibelin party, is coming to Mantua in consequence. The minstrel must prepare a song in his honour. The minstrel. tries, but cannot ; the power of song seems dea'd." So he returns to Golto to get out of it all, and from those places of his youth reviewing his Mantuan time, all seems a mistake and failure. Why had our troubadour, start- ing with that first success, failed thus 1 Was the will itself at fault .■" Possibly so. And yet he resolves he "will be king again," as he drops his poet's crown into the font. How .■■ The months go past at Goito oiwe more. The troubadour episode is left behind, and his reflections bring him to a new point. He sees that life has yet to start for him — real life and positive experience, and this with the years going and youth gone. Nature can change and recover ; man has but one life. He has become aware of powers he ought to use, and through whose use he will gain not enjoyment only, but life. So far he has been renouncing life to live in his art. His intense self-consciousness, seeking to assert and complete itself, has put actual things aside. But his art has failed to achieve his end, and his renunciation seems now only a path of despair. How is he to escape the dilemma thus arising? A way opens — not that of the minstrel, but quite another. ^ Palma sends for him, and he goes to see her at Verona, in the autumn of 1224. Her father, who has with- drawn from public life, and made peace with the 1 20 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. party of the pope, has promised her to the Guelf Count Richard of San Bonifacio. She has no mind to marry him, and with the help of Salinguerra she means to put it off, and even to set it aside. She tells Sordello of her love for him, and hints what they may do together, with the help of Salinguerra. For years she has aspired for his sake, seeing in him that " out-soul " who should help and complete her own soul, and now her hopes may be made good, and she explains that they are to meet the great imperialist at Ferrara, and learn the rest from him. Browning now introduces a long digression (pp. 94-1 11), having come to the crisis of Sordello's life. He is at Venice, and tells how there the impulse to set forth the story of Sordello came to him, and defends the kind of poetry he has made in the poem. The digression is of much interest, and expresses ideas important in their bearing on Browning's aims and work, but belongs less to the argument of " Sor- dello," and so may be omitted for the present. In the Fourth Book we find account of the suffer- ings of Italy from both parties, leading up to a graphic picture of the man who has spent all his life in action — the strong, decisive soldier, Salinguerra. He makes a complete contrast every way to Sordello, physically and morally. But, leaving his story (pp. 126-143), we must follow the career of Sordello. What is he to make of his chance of a great practical life?— that is for him the question now awaiting answer. So far his thoughts have been of himself, even when he "Sordello." 121 thought of art. Now he comes to Ferrara to make a grand discovery — to find a world of men not made for ends he has hitherto imagined, but requiring service and manifold help ; and he is anxious to help the masses of men. But how can he ? He sees that Guelfs and Ghibelins are equally selfish and injurious — that the people suffer terribly from both. Is there, then, a cause distinct from both, and higher, purer, than either ; a cause through which mankind may triumph } He is pondering this question by a dying watch-fire, full of pain at what he has seen in Ferrara, when a sentinel bids him sing of the Roman Tribune Crescentius. This gives his mind a fresh impulse, a new idea. He dreams a dream of a New Rome — the Mother City, whose upbuilding should bring new life and a just order to mankind. But can the good of man be realized in and through this shining city, after all? Almost as soon as he imagined it,' great shadows of doubt fell upon it. Such work must take ages. The life of man, the social order, is a slow, manifold, and practically infinite evolution. One man, one age, can only add a little to such a task. We may imagine the whole ; we can never see it in fact ; and our only way to realize it is to do the task of the day. But all this may help, and the work of each lives in the life of all, and the work varies as the ages do. There are ages of power and ages of knowledge, and workers who help through knowledge and workers who help by strength. The new age and order must be built up spiritually ; 122 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. it must work through the Church and wisdom. The empire must help it, and as the best of what he can do he will persuade Salinguerra — the soldier who has spent his years in fighting the Guelfs — to turn Guelf. Only Sordello could dream such a thing. But he throws himself into it with his new zeal for mankind, and puts forth all his passion and all his eloquence in the effort to induce the Ghibelin soldier " assist the pope, fill the scope o' the Church, thus based on all, by all, for all." At first he stumbles and hesitates ; but, roused at length to his best, he essays to prove the spiritual power of the poet even over the great men of action. The poet is the highest, most en- lightened, most energetic spiritual nature. By affirm- ing the higher being, the higher truth, he is royal, and rules. In virtue of this he stands for man, and lays the behests of mankind on those who have the practical power of the world at their command. He fails, of course. But Salinguerra is moved. He sees the love of Palma for Sordello. It is in his power to make any one whom he shall choose Prefect of Northern Italy under the emperor. He throws the badge that elects to the office over Sordello's neck, and thus makes for him a fresh opportunity or a great temptation. He has pleaded for the Guelphic cause ; will he, after all, for personal reasons, take the imperial side and marry Palma? It is then Palma tells the story of Sordello's birth, and makes his decision more difficult. He is the son of Salinguerra, not of Elcorte. The soldier is both surprised and "Sordello.'' 123 delighted ; Sordello is surprised and confused. To give him time to grasp the situation, Palma draws Salinguerra away, and Sordello is left alone, with the badge, about his neck, to make his final choice. It is the day's close — ^his life's close too, as it proves — and our poet, looking into the sunset, thinks the matter out. Many arguments urge him to close with the offer for Palma's sake, for his own, and many plausible arguments arise in his mind of wider bearing ; but in the end, after a severe struggle, he plucks the badge from his neck and stamps it underfoot. Palma and Salinguerra hear the stamp, and return, to find the badge on the floor and Sordello dying. "A triumph lingered in his eyes," and his heart stilLbeat as Palma " pressed in one great kiss her lips upon his breast." Suck is the story and such the close of Browning's " Sordello ; " but we can hardly leave the matter here, since it will be said that certain questions raised by the poem have not been answered. It is more or less clear why Sordello failed as a minstrel, but it is not so clear why he failed in the second half of his career, or, it may be said, whether he failed at all, since spiritual attainment is success, though not a complete success, and the last act of Sordello's life shows nobility and purity of nature of a rare kind. True, he breaks down under the strain, showing that neither in body nor in will was he strong enough for the tasks imposed on him ; but his will made at least the higher choice. As Browning puts matters, Sordello came within 1 24 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. sight of high tasks, both literary and moral. He had a high conception of art and a noble idea of the public good. But he found no way of achieving either. He did not make poems expressing his thought ; he did not define and fix his ideal in life, or among social forces. But could he have done so? Salinguerra yawns immeasurably at the futility of the notion, so far as politics go. The soldier is a very imperfect judge, we know, but his practical instincts were right here. Neither through the Guelfs nor the Ghibelins could Sordello have realized his ideal. What, then, could he have done? What Dante did, shall we say ? He could have done the day's task to the measure of his power, and he could have given noble expression to his ideas through his own art. He did neither. Why did he fail? This question is answered in the poem, though Dean Church has recently said that it is far from clear what the answer is. At an early point in the poem it is indicated that Sordello is an idealist, and one of those who, for good or evil, can never rest in his art. The dangers arising to such are threefold — to think life and work small beside the ideal, and so scarcely worth troubling about by comparison ; to attempt the impossible task of forcing the ideal within the circumstances and tasks of life ; or regarding art as a means only in the service of man, and of the spirit, to care lessTor it than is due and necessary, and so either to seek some other way of more immediate service, or to bend art forcibly to the service of ideas. " Sordello." 125 Sordello suffered from these tendencies and from the circumstances of his life. X,His youth was visionary, tending to develop an undue self- consciousness. When he failed and lapsed again into dreamy isola- tion and discouragement, he was delivered more by events than by principles.J He did not know life or mankind then, nor had he had that opportunity of learning the due relation of his ideas to the affairs and possibilities of the world, and to the minds of men, which is so important a part of the discipline of every man who is to help and tell on his fellows in any way. The defect of his first work is its want of heart and sympathy, its want of spiritual quality, as well as his failure to master the materials and prin- ciples of his art And he suffers loss of power by his "failure." Soul and will answer less readily than they ought to, but he keeps, nay, he has deepened, the ideal purpose. He will not sing songs of merely pleasant trifling ; to serve and give truth as he may, he declares to be his aim : and if he hesitates before Salinguerra, he rises at length with fervour to a very high view of the poet's task. But he has spent him- self in reaching the vision ; he has been dreamy, not creative, kingly, and his life has disqualified for that highest power — spiritual will. It is, however, at the close, when he has to decide on the offer of Salinguerra, that }-ou find the fullest statement of reasons for his failure, and the largest review of his life. To condense those is to give a very adequate answer to Dean Church's question. 1 26 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. He reviews his own life, and what does he see ? He considers arguments, and what does he think ? He has been sensitive, many-sided ; he wanted unity, central passion, great conviction, a great love, or a great aim — power of some kind to lift and support his power. For years he met with nothing of this kind ; so others of less ability and poorer nature found a task while he found none. And this sensi- bility and dispersion is not all. He is an idealist, impelled to seek the sum of all he admires and loves in some perfect form. But the " best " such spirits seek, passing beyond the good, never is actual. Nature seems full of hints, of promises even, of the wealth of it ; yet it is never found. Perhaps there is no such power or object. All is within, and man must be a law to his own sphere. Can, then, the necessary power be found within the human sphere ? Can the service and love of men prove such? But that includes himself. And how serve men ? Can he make clear the value and greatness of such service as rendered to " the people " ? He can't. Yet it is plain they need it." Only how little can be done ! Let one proclaim his truth and do his part, and it will be years and years before it be accepted and used, and there is probably all the truth needed or likely to be used in the world at any given time. But here is a clear point — if it be hard to serve men to much purpose, you can at least keep from oppressing them, and show your sympathy and sin- cerity that way. This will do some good. But is " Sordello." 127 that so certain ? When he thinks it over in the full survey, it seems far from clear to him how much of the ill in man's lot can be removed, or even whether it ought to be. Good and ill seem so bound up with each other ; the " ill " seems so often the basis and occasion of so much of the " good." Take it away, and where were the occasion for much of what is most excellent in man's life — for help and pity ? In fact, in regard to the large question, it does seem that if you give men the " whole," you take away all use in the " parts." And just as the gain of the people by his refusal seems doubtful, so his own gain by accepting Palma and the office seems great. All that men could gain by it they will gain in due time and by other means, while he loses all. But if he do lose, there is the life to come, it may be said. There may be ; but life is now, and he craves life — the little stream certain and near rather than the rocky fount on far-off heights. Yet this cup of life he makes so much of in the debate has been easily dashed aside many a time. Yes, by those who had the faith or the hope that mastered life. Let him find such power, and he will renounce too, he thinks. But much of this debate, we are to conclude, has been on the surface. Sordello now passed into a mood touching the deeper thoughts of the past. He sank through all secondary states, and seemed to get to the core of principle and passion within — to lay hold of the essential truth. He saw how all our 128 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. notions, even good and ill, might be but modes of time, and how in other spheres things might prove quite distinct. But a sense of this had put him out of time ; had given him a tendency to force eternity upon time, the soul on the body. If you look at matters of life from that point of view, that seems right. And yet such a course neglects the conditions of this life, and puts it quite out of place ; to insist on the soul's absoluteness is to destroy the body and miss life. So it had been with Sordello ; his spiritual vision had been won by the " flesh-half s break-up," and had resulted in his showing himself inadequate for life. The problem was to have kept these in their due relations, and take life on its proper conditions. Yet how many do that .■" Most men brutalize the soul — the opposite mistake. Who shall find power to solve the problem and conciliate both elements of man's life ? Who shall find wisdom through love to "see the great before and after, the small now," and, seeing both, do the duty that is at hand ? Plainly some power or principle Sordello did not find is . needed for this. And the poet, speaking for Sordello, says that what is required is some power above man's nature and sphere — some divine power, both infinite and loving — revealed within man's sphere and nature, and giving its transcendent yet clear and practical sanction to duty. Idealists like Sordello need such a law as this, divine and human, resting on the eternal, yet touching close the tasks of life, and giving these a large relation without loss of practical point and fitness. " Sordellor 129 But it may be that, after all, you look on the whole problem as the creation of a poet's dreams. No one, you think, ever made so " sorry a farce " of his life as this Sordello. So mad an idealist never went at large. Never, it may be, one so consistent and complete, for circumstances leave few men free for such consistency ; but the strife of principle is very common, and perhaps no earnest mind has kept quite clear of compromise in the conflict. Browning, we may judge, felt the strife in his own mind, and with regard to his work, and he had to adjust the relation of principles in both, as the growth of his art proves. " Paracelsus " and " Sordello " both speak of the ideality of Shelley and the so-ceilled " meta- physical " bentof iBrowning's mind. His dramatic art was his " escape " from the dangers of his first poetry, while the double quality of his mind became clearer and better balanced as his genius matured. But the leading question of " Sordello " we shall find him touching again and again, and it is, perhaps, best to hand over from this early poem the solution' of it as it comes within his poetry. Yet I may suggest how,(by force of his perception of life, and by pressure of his own thoughts. Browning was grappling a question upon which the whole drift of Hegel's thought bore, whether as interpretation of mind, of life, or of religion ; and the solution of the problem offered by him is found in his doctrine of ,the im- manence of God, the unity of the divine and human, and the ideal significance of thought and dutyTI ( I30 ) CHAPTER VII. BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST. Browning's plays are, I fancy, little read, in part because they have been thrown into the shade by later work, but their place in his work, in the growth of his art, and in the expression of his genius, give them interest besides the interest they-have in themselves ; for, in a century that • has • produced very few dramas of true value, the author of Pippa and Colombe and Mildred Tresham, of Valence and Ogniben and Luria, has added to our stock of dramatic figures and con- ceptions. Browning began with " Strafford " in 1837. It was given at Covent Garden on May i, Macready and Miss Faucit taking leading parts, " with all the evi- dences of distinct success," but was of greater promise than achievement, as Forster felt in reviewing it. The character of Strafford is well conceived, though not effectively realized through the play, and as a whole it lacks the proper energy and interest of acting drama. The next of the dramas was " Pippa Passes," in Browning as a Dramatist. 131 1841. It is not a play, but a series of dramatic scenes bound by a lyrical thread, and shaped to express a poetic idea. That idea is the way in which all lives, even lonely and lowly lives, have a world of lives about them upon whom their influence is greater than they know ; and also how we each judge partially, or it may be quite wrongly, of the lives and happiness of others. The design of " Pippa " was to present these truths in dramatic form, and it has been done. It is New-Year's Day at Asolo, and Pippa, who works in the silk-mills of the place, is thinking, as the day dawns, what she must do with her one holiday. For one day she will be happy, if only in dreams, with the happiness of the happiest four in Asolo. She will be Ottima, lover of Sebald. Yet no ; that is a mad, bad love. Phene, then, the Greek girl, who has come to be married to Jules the sculptor. Yet again no ; that love is new and uncertain. The love of the mother for her child is deeper and surer ; she will be the gentle mother watching over her son. And then she thinks there is a higher love still — ^" God's love." She will be the Bishop who is to be at the duomo that evening. And yet it occurs to her that even as Pippa she has God's love, and there is, perhaps, less need than seems to change places. For what says her hymn ? — " All service ranks the same with God." So with that idea in her mind, she goes forth to her holiday, to pass these people and see their happiness, and test the hymn's truth. 132 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. She passes them, and we see their lives in scenes of true dramatic power, made more expressive by their contrast with Pippa. First Ottima and Sebald,, who, to be free in their guilty love, have murdered the lady's husband in the night. Day breaks here, restless and " ablaze with eyes ; " and, though they recall passionately past hours of pleasure, and resolve to bury all remorse in love, as he is in the act of crowning her his queen, more proudly for their sin, the words of Pippa's song fall on his ear — " God's in His heaven ; All's well with the world ; " and conscience awakes. Sin is horrible, and the strong, just, divine order rules, calm and mighty. Sebald kills himself in his remorse, and Ottima shows the nobler side of passion in possible self-sacrifice. In her dewy freshness of soul, Pippa goes next where Jules and Phene return from their marriage. Through the talk of his fellow-students we learn that the sculptor has been entrapped into marrying a Greek girl who has acted as an artist's model. He finds it out. What can he do ? Give her all he has and leave her ? But the girl loves him and has found life in her love. As he is anxiously deciding what to do, Pippa's song of the queen who loved the page is heard, raising the pointed question. Why should we in love be always page and never queen, getting rather than givlng| Here, for instance, is a soul with need of help, and to whom his mere touch has given life. He will take Browning as a Dramatist. 133 her and go to some isle of the Greek sea, with silence all about it, and begin life and art in a new spirit and with vital aims. Next Pippa passes to the turret where Luigi and his mother are in talk about his schemes as one of the Carbonari. The mother pleads against her son's purpose, and tries to draw him from it. He wavers, when the song of Pippa, about the good king who lived in the morning of the world, by its contrast with Austrian tyranny, rouses his patriotism. He goes, and so escapes the police, who were on the watch for him. And, lastly, Pippa passes the house of the Bishop's brother, lately dead. There is talk there between the Bishop and a steward over the dead brother's affairs, and through this we learn that Pippa is that brother's child, with claims to his wealth. The ruffian of a steward designs her ruin, that her wealth may go to others. The Bishop listens and is tempted, when the song of Pippa, with its note of faith and innocence, touches the Bishop's better nature, and reminds him how God has care for such lives. He revolts from the scheme, and has Maffeo gagged and arrested. It is evening now, and Pippa goes home, her holiday spent, her songs and " fooling " done. What is she now .' The mill-girl only, who, if she touch these people at all, can only do it through the silk she winds. So it seems to her, and the day sets in cloudy gloom, the truth of her hymn not clear to her. Yet the poet has made it clear. She has, in fact, touched 1 34 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. every one of those lives for good, and is happier than they. The next of the dramas was " King Victor and King Charles," in 1842. It depicts and interprets a dramatic situation, rather than a dramatic action. Victor II. of Sardinia, having ruled with energy for fifty-four years, abdicated in 1730 in favour of his son Charles, whom he had neglected and despised. It was a surprise to all, to the son most of all. What was the motive and object of it .■' That he wished to declare a marriage he had privately made, and spend his closing years quietly ? or that he had certain designs he thought he could carry out best through his son, whom he expected to control .' The latter. Browning thinks, and in working out the effects of the situation on the characters of father and son is the interest of the theme for him. The son, who had been thought weak and pliable, was, in fact, strong, and meant to rule now that he was king. He rules well for a year, when his father, not finding himself able to carry out his scheme, plots to recover the crown, even by force. The plot is found out, and the father is brought a prisoner before his son. Charles, resolute so far, shrinks from so strange a strife, and places the crown on his father's head, who dies from the excitement, and so cuts the knot of a difficult situation. " The Return of the Druses " (1843) was the next of the plays. It is a romantic theme, tragical and uncommon, with more "plot" than is usual with Browning. Certain Druses, driven from their home Browning as a Dramatist. 1 35 by the Turks in the fifteenth century, settle on an island near Rhodes, under the Knights of St. John. They are governed by a bad Prefect, who kills their leaders. Only one boy, Djabal, son of an emir, escapes and goes to Europe. He there gains help of a Breton noble, and of the Venetians, in a scheme to free the Druses, and returns to carry it out. At home he falls in love with Anael, who has vowed to give herself only to her tribe's deliverer ; so the passion of love unites with patriotism to urge him on. But how is it to be done } His people think God only can free them within the due time by means of the Hakeem, a divine manifestation. To rouse them, he claims to be Hakeem, is able to satisfy his tribe of his claim, and for a time " believes " it himself. A day is fixed for deliverance, and they wait. But before it comes his " faith " wanes. What is he to do .? He tries to be true in the strange situation, but is forced on by circumstances and events. Anael, afraid of the love she feels for the man, wishes to prove herself worthy of the divine Caliph ; while he, thinking her love depends on her delusion, is afraid to make known the fact. She slays the Prefect, a deed he meant to do, and so forces the crisis. He tells her now the truth. She will not have it so, and when she believes him she holds by her love. Seeing this, he resolves to keep his secret. But on the discovery of the Prefect's murder, Anael, in reaction, denounces Djabal. He admits the justice of her denunciation, but declares his utter love for her. She accepts her 1 36 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. lover, and in strange excitement dies with the cry of Hakeem on her lips. The cry is taken up by the Druses, and before Djabal can <:onfess the Venetians come, and his task is practically accomplished. He puts on two friends the duty of leading his tribe home, then kills himself. So did these two, by their love and death, restore the Druses to their home ; so did they become " divine " to their tribe, and prove that "all great works in this world spring from the ruins of greater " plans and ideas : men " design Babels and build Babylons." " A Blot on the Scutcheon " is a tragedy of simpler and more human interest. It was given at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, February 11, 1843. Miss Faucit played Gwendolen, Mrs. Stirling Mildred, and Mr. Phelps Lord Tresham. The play was given again by Mr. Phelps at Sadler's Wells, in 1848. It was not quite a " success " either time. The public thought the subject unpleasant. It is tragical certainly, but, as the poet gives it, human and touching. The leading figure is Lord Tresham, whose strength and weakness meet in his pride and honour — pride and a long line and a family name without stain. And he finds, as he thinks, the family scutcheon hopelessly stained by a sister's weakness. He does not know how or by whom the dishonour has fallen. He has one feeling — wounded pride, and one thought — vengeance on the man who has done the wrong. He is too proud and too angry to take thought for anything save his name, because it is his. So he slays his sister's lover, Browning as a Dramatist. 137 and then finds how partial and arrogant he has been. He has murdered Lord Mertoun, on whose behalf he supposed himself acting — has killed the man whom his sister passionately loved, and whom he wished her to marry. His sister dies broken-hearted. He poisons himself in his despair, and hands on his name and home to those whom he warns to remember his pride and avoid his haste. Self-consideration, veiled by a passion of honour, has been his motive, leading to worse wrong than Mertoun's. The figure of Mildred is tender, but too pitiful ; and that of Mertoun boyish and touching. Gwendolen has fine sense and womanly feeling. But the play leaves an impression of slightness in character, de- ficiency of action and vital detail. There is a lyrical pathos and beauty of tone and style in it. The sad- ness of the high-minded, proud Lord Tresham, over a deed he sees unjustifiable and irreparable, is well given. When he had slain Mertoun he saw the narrowness of his judgment and view of life, and "thro' all the troubled surface a depth of purity immovable " in his sister's heart. This drama raises a question in the criticism of art, and one that has been pressed by the poet's critics. Life is often pitiful, and we have to take it as it is, but these, tragedies that sadden us are a mistake, it is said, and they are a mistake unless they suggest those higher powers and fuller issues into which the sorrow passes, when nobly borne or expiated, unless they purify the heart and leave it more heroic. It is 138 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. a world of many mistakes, in which the nobler hearts often malce the mistakes, and in which sensible and ordinary folks escape the sorrows and get the good things of life ; yet is the world made better and richer by the pains of these hearts, and they envy not "the common lot." " Colombe's Birthday " was the next of the plays, and is in most respects the finest. Made in 1844, it was produced at the Haymarket in 1853, Miss Faucit, who took a special interest in Browning's heroines, playing the part of Colombe, the most subtle and difficult of his women. The play is localized and dated, but I know of no historic basis ; nor is it, as here given, of any special age or place — whenever the heart, tempted to make a lower, is upheld to make the higher choice, there the essential action of the drama has taken place. The interest and develop- ment of the drama lies in the play of feeling and in the transformation or definition of character. Colombe of Ravenstein has been Duchess of Cleves and Juliers for a year. Her father contrived she should succeed, but by the Salic law, which rules the succession, she has no title to the duchy. It really belongs to her cousin Berthold, and he comes to claim his rights. He has sent a message to advise Colombe of his purpose, which is given the lady through an advocate who has come to plead the cause of Cleves. This advocate is the hero of the play. A total contrast to the courtiers, he brings the Duchess the breath and power of a world where words are real, goodness true, Browning as a Dramatist. 139 and loyalty sincere and unselfish. He had seen her a year ago, and had been struck by the nobleness of the woman, while the Duchess put her far above him. He now finds, as the duchy is lost, that the woman is nobler than he had imagined her. Though Colombe had known of Berthold's claim, his message was a shock to her ; in part for the loss of the duchy, but more because it made clear to her the hollowness of the basis on which she had rested — the court and its vanities. She will resign and give all to Prince Berthold. But on reflection she cannot, for in Valence, the advocate, she has one subject at least, and he has made her aware of duties. She will try the question on its merits. And the Prince comes — a large practical man, easy and confident, making his claim quietly, as aware of its strength, and counting it a small thing on his way to far greater. His maxim is, that if there be little real difference between the objects and satisfactions of men's lives, " mere largeness " is something, and he holds that in this world we must go by size, and settle about kind in the next ; a deliberate and principled worldliness and unspiritual irony is his temper. On the arrival of Berthold, it proves harder than she had thought to leave her father's halls. She appoints Valence to speak for her. He declares how every true suj)ject will stand by his lady. Alone she may seem ; but in loneliness men come to reality and power. The court and its fictions gone, the Duchess will fall back on the people. The dominion 140 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. that rests on force only is a name, and the good will of her people no force can take from her. Berthold, who goes by the size and forms of things, is struck by the man and his spirit. But he feels the justice of Valence, and he puts the whole case in his hands. The advocate knows it is a question of law, and will decide and advise on that ground. He is to consider the papers before the evening. As he goes to do so, Colombe retains him to make him aware that she has grown to true clearness and power of spirit, and can accept justice. It has been to her a birthday for heart and soul, doing in her the work of years, and the power has been mainly his. So she helps him to his duty. But as she goes she makes clear a fact that may bias and perplex his decision. She loves him. In that matter there is more hope for him in her ceasing to be Duchess ; so he calls Cleves and its woes to help him to be true. The matter is, indeed, easy. The claims of Berthold are clear. But now comes the hardest of all questions for him to settle. Berthold offers marriage to Colombe, not on the ground of love, but on every other honourable and convenient ground ; and Valence presents the whole question on its merits. She is not duchess in law, but may be so in fact by accepting a man who is in many ways worthy of her — a man of power and purpose, so definite and so strong through his very limitations that he gathers " earth's whole good into his arms," and stands forth the type of earthly success. The lady avows she had looked Browning as a Dramatist. 141 for such a man as the advocate's generous words tell of to complete her life, but wonders if he loves. Valence says no. But how can he tell ? He knows love's way, and the Prince has not a tone of it. He knows through love ; then, whom does Valence love ? Colombe follows up the question, until she forces from him the confession of his love. And yet she puts it aside for a time, as if to test both. He appeals to her to prove that love is best, and vindicate the pure and simple nobleness of life. But for the moment she feels as if his loyalty were less great. She will see Berthold. The Prince is advised to play the lover and the man, but does not care enough for the part to feign ; and when the lady asks, " You love me, then ? " he admits frankly it is not in his heart or his plan. There is no need, he says, for such fiction. He offers all that matters to sense or to ambition. Before such cold alienation from all rights of the heart she draws back, and he puts the matter bluntly, as a choice between taking the empire and giving up the duchy. And then Valence is put to a last test, his integrity proving equal to it. Melchior, a friend of Berthold, assures him that the lady is only kept from accepting the Prince by an impression that the services of Valence claim her hand. Valence leaves her free to make her choice. This decision Berthold deems heroic, and asks what " reward " there must be for thus " yielding up love's right." And Valence, in his noblest tone, asks who thought of reward ? And yet 142 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. only to have known Colombe, and been helped by her to all that is good, is the true reward. He now gives her the requisition. She subscribes it, and asks him what on her birthday, which is to be her wedding-day, he wishes from her. One thing only he asks — that the wrongs of Cleves be set right. Berthold grants this. And then Valence, thinking Colombe has taken the Prince, is about to leave her, when she asks him to read what she has written on the Prince's summons — " I take him ; give up Juliers and the world. This is my birthday." Berthold, seeing now the full quality of the lady, knows that she was too fine for his ends. " Any garish plume will do to deck a barren helm ; " this " costly flower " is for rarer uses. And he admires, though he does not envy, and could not imitate the choice. This play, as a presentation of its theme, is beau- tiful and effective. Whether for acting drama the theme be really fit, is another question. The characters of Colombe, Valence, and Berthold are vital and vigorous, though it may be Berthold is rather a type than a person. He is the embodiment of secular ability and " sense ; " of the success resulting from indifference to every principle and feeling that does not help his ambition. He knows there is a thing called " heart," and he has heard of " spirit " and a " life beyond," but the first he regards as in the way of life's business, and the other as not pertinent to it. Some one has spoken of Berthold as our poet's ideal. There are elements in Berthold the poet has strong Browning as a Dramatist. 143 sympathy with — efficient ability, realism, and sheer will ; but his defects are so great, his range so narrow, that he cannot be regarded as ideal. He is the opposite of Sordelloi and for many "uses" of life better than the " mad poet ; " but the single and capable judgment, the heroic unselfishness, the steady regard for " general ends " of Valence, bring him nearer what may be called an ideal. And the two are not so much contrasted as compared. Valence does justice to Berthold, and on his practical and in- tellectual sides admires him. And he does so because he has all of his virtue and much of his power, only qualified by principles Berthold does not regard. The test of Colombe is in her choice between these two — a choice heightened by the fact that the duchy goes with the one, and a simple life with the other. She likes the energy and practical scope and manly quality of Berthold. But she must have heart as well as brain, self-denial as well as self-reliance ; and in her and her decision the drama depicts a pure and generous womanly ideal. Life should rest on reality, not on forms ; on love and truth and humanity, not on gold and rank and name. She might have found " reasons " for taking Berthold, and only a conviction that the heart has its rights that go to the core, not only of the happiness, but of the Tightness, of life would have leji her to choose Valence. People take such decisions at their peril, but those who can main- tain them alone know the proper worth of life. "Luria" (1846) was the next play, romantic and 144 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. tragical. Luria was a Moor in the service of Florence, proud of and devoted to the Republic, but distrusted by her as an alien. It is the eve of a great battle between Pisa and Florence, and it is feared at Florence that, if Luria wins, he will use his victory for ends of his own. Braccio, the organ of these suspicions, is with Luria, collecting what is thought " evidence" for a trial of Luria then going on, and to be completed on his victory. They mean to use him, and then destroy him. Tiburzio, the Pisan general, who gets to know the scheme, comes te tell Luria of it, and draw him away from Florence. But the Moor will not hear of betrayal, will not open the intercepted letters. It is a pain to him to lose faith in Florence. He clings to it ; joins battle, and beats Pisa. Then he demands of Braccio the facts, which the commis- sary has to admit. Urged again to punish Florence at the head of the Pisan army, he will not, though he does punish a city unworthy of such souls in his own way. He poisons himself, and dies just as news of his entire acquittal is brought from the city. Luria is a fine conception, a heroic figure, bringing "new feeling fresh from God, teaching what life should be, what faith is, and loyalty and simpleness " — the passion and depth of the East in contact with the thought and purpose of the West ; feeling its greatness, baffled by its duplicity, but keeping its own heroism and greatness of soul ; the despair of a great heart that has loved the power and brilliance, and then learns the selfishness and baseness, of Renaissance Browning as a Dramatist. 145 Italy. But the play is poetic rather than acting drama. Its long speeches and developments of passion rather than action, and the want of other characters beside Luria, are against its representa- tion. There remain two dramatic fragments of much power and interest — "A Soul's Tragedy" (1846) and "In a Balcony" (1853). "A Soul's Tragedy " is) in two parts, one giving the poetry of dream and pro- mise ; the other the prose of fact, as tested by opportunity, in the life of one Chiappino. He is a confident and effusive man who would, in his own opinion, quickly put the world right, if only he had the chance. The chance offers, and he finds himself without purpose or principle — a creature of plausibility and expediency and self-interest. He has denounced the rule of the ProVost of Faenza, and been sentenced to exile. Luitolfo, a friend, a quieter but surer and better man, has gone to get the sentence revised. In his absence Chiappino gives himself the airs of a hero in talk with the lady his friend is going to marry. He loves this lady too, and grudges his friend his better fortune. While he is abusing his friend, Luitolfo knocks. Chiappino mocks the fright in which he supposes him to have fled from the Provost, but finds that the quiet friend, failing in his suit, has struck the Pro^jost, and thinks he has killed him. He flees, followed, as he thinks, by a hostile crowd. Chiappino helps him to escape, and then goes out to find the crowd friendly. So he takes over the whole L 146 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. benefit of his friend's act, and plays the part of the hero of revolt. In the second part we find the results of the false start thus made, and of the man's want of solidity and sincerity. It is a month after, so that things have had time to grow. And here the true hero of the piece comes on the stage — Ogniben, the Pope's legate. He comes just as our hero of the revolt is giving " reasons " for being in no hurry to realize his visions of a perfect state, or even common obligations. Now, the legate is every way the man to detect his conceit and expose his weakness, his want of grasp and con- viction. He is a typical Italian ecclesiastic — human, humorous, with much knowledge of men and life, subtle and able, knowing too well man's weakness and the irony of life. His part is that of critic and humourist. His convictions, if he has any, are well in reserve. He finds these people with ideas and schemes interesting and not dangerous. Their own weakness and the extreme difficulty of moving the world keep them harmless. And his way with them is to feign agreement, and carry their notions on to conclusions that show their futility and the shallow- ness of the minds in which they arise. He has really a deep scepticism, and likes to show, as matter of satire as well as argument, how the intellect can always be got to argue on behalf of what men wish. In his opinion, one of the best uses of that very fallible organ is to find ways of making the best of things as they are. He does not think well of men's motives Browtiing as a Dramatist. I47 generally, does not pretend much that way for him- self, -and knows that self-interest, active in all, is specially acute in leaders of revolts. He has seen twenty-three of these, and knows too much to take them seriously. He easily shows the vanity of Chiappino's fine words ; exposes him to the people as one who has been trading on another's deed ; and, with words of light mockery, dismisses him to profit by the " fall " his pride has had, and by his experience of " affairs." The piece is not a play, but is forcibly dramatic. Ogniben is the most vivid impersonation in the dramas. The interest is in the characters ; the de- velopment and catastrophe are in the soul, not in events, and the incidents are clearly invented to present this. " In a Balcony " is a fine fragment, characteristic in its dramatic quality and in its bearing on life. It takes us into the heart of the situation, and presents the crises of the soul. Norbert loves Constance, and has served the Queen that he may win her. His success may claim her now ; but the lady, knowing the Queen, advises him to put his suit as if his love were, in fact, for the Queen, and only took her kins- woman as a next and possible best. The Queen, with womanly hunger for such love, takes the fiction for fact, and comes eagerly to grasp the life it seems to offer. She tells Constance all she means to do to take Norbert's love. Constance tells Norbert, and protests her entire love for him, but sees he has other objects. 148 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. The Queen finds them thus. Norbert declares his love in her presence. Constance, having decided, if that prove best, to give him up to the Queen, tries to turn all his words away from herself and upon the Queen. He counterworks this design, and in the end makes it clear that his love is for Constance. This discovery is painful to the Queen, and the drama ends in gloom and peril, but in clear and certain love. We have now before us Browning's whole dramatic work, and two questions arise : What is the quality of the dramas he made f Was drama his proper medium ? His own decision and course appear to answer the latter question. He has made no plays, we may say, since 1 846. It has been said that that is an accident — a serious one if the poet's genius were really for drama ? Let us look, then, at our first question. Active development and expression are the sphere of drama, and characterization must be through these. How do the above plays answer these tests? The themes the poet chooses, and his treatment of them both, I judge, show that his interest and sphere are not the older dramatic. There is a want of active development, of graphic and characteristic conversa- tion, of outward interest and detail, and there is interest and matter of another kind. Their main and growing power and scope are such as do not fit the theatre. These dramas, as they are made, are in- adequate to the dramatic interest and bias at work in them. In their power and their defects they show that for the poet's genius another form was necessary. Browning as a Dramatist. 14Q There is dramatic power, but it is power trammelled, not expressed, by the forms and restrictions of drama. The poet's intellectual and spiritual interests in man's nature and life are, in fact, too strong for that free contemplation of action and active relations required in drama. ( ISO ) CHAPTER VIII. FIRST DRAMATIC LYRICS (1836-1846). The history of a poet's art has more than a technical interest, for the growth of his art is in degree the growth of his mind and of his subject It indicates his grasp of his matter, of his own powers in relation to that, and the right means of expressing matter and mind. And as to the last point, mastery of matter and form in some sphere of art, genius is more subject to growth than is often thought to be the fact. These early dramatic lyrics of Browning are an instance of that law of choice and growth to which genius is subject. When the first of these lyrics was made, the poet had not inade sure of his method- had not found that form which he felt to be the best for the expression of his mind. By the time the last of these lyrics was made he had become| sure of both. Between the two is a period of ten years. Part of the work of that time we have taken in the dramas. The poems now to be taken will help to fix better the value of the dramas, and will First Dramatic Lyrics. iSr\ enable us to test in early and simple instances that form and method of dramatic work which the poet has used since 1846 as his most congenial and adequate form of expression. The history of his work as it bears on this point makes clear, we have seen, the accuracy of what has just been stated. " Pauline " was monodramatic ; " Paracelsus " was dramatic in spirit and design, but in a form more freely adapted, as the poet thought, than drama for the expression of the mind and passions in their vital action. The form did not answer his aim, but such was his aim. " Sordello " was narrative, discursive, but with dramatic interest and statement breaking through it. In 1 841-2 the poet made drama, and also in 1 842 he put forth the " Dramatic Lyrics,'' explaining in a brief preface what they were — " lyrical in form," but " dramatic in principle." These poems were issued in 1842, but some of them had been composed as early as 1836. The first poem of the kind made by the poet, and given in the little book, was " Porphyria's Lover " (iv. 299). It was at first entitled " A Madhouse Cell." In 1863 it was put among the "Romances ; " and in the edition of 1868 you will find it beside "Childe Roland," as akin in matter and principle. A strange poem, it may seem. It is the lover of Porphyria who talks in an intense dream. He is alone ; a rainy night and a sullen wind outside ; his one thought Porphyria. He sees her 1 52' Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. come in, and at once all is changed. She has come from a feast, through the rain and the wind, to sit with him. She puts his head on her shoulder, spreads over all her yellow hair, and tells her love. He sees the truth of her heart, the weakness of her will — she loves, but will never break through circumstance, and be his. But her true life is in her love, and to make this moment eternal were best for love and for the soul. To free her from earth is the only way to that, and so he strangles her with her yellow hair, and sees her pass without pain to the freedom and goodness of the after-life. And they sit the night through in a peace that seems God's approval of the deed. But what a theme I And did it happen? It is a romance of passion. It took place only among the wild motions of a lover's brain. Dwelling on his love, and seeing no way of hope for love but this way, he affirms so passionately that death is better than the vanity of false life that he sees this happen — sees death set love free and keep it pure. But it is, then, a study of madness, and ought to have kept its title, you think. Why remove it? Because the man in whose brain it shaped itself so vividly might never have done it in fact. There is much mania that never gets beyond the brain, and moods there are trenching on madness that never cross the line. Another poem published in 1836, and also called " A Madhouse Cell " in 1842, was " Johannes Agricola" (v. 229). It is a case of fanaticism, of religious self- First Dramatic Lyrics. i S 3 love, so complete as to be a kind of moral insanity. Any strong passion or great idea may in certain natures result in such mania, and the madness is never pure and simple, because great errors are usually the perversion of great truths. John Agricola was a Predestinarian, so far gone as to have become Anti- nomian- — so far, that is, as to have set aside moral law. " Elect of God " from eternity, he could do no ill, and nothing could do him ill — that is, bring his soul into any danger. Every act and detail of his life was part of God's plan, for and through him. This plan and the Divine Will are above all criticism of the reason, and even of the conscience of man. The necessities of the divine nature are absolute — neither moral nor immoral. Of this will the soul is the special object ; beyond all else the souls of the elect are dear to God. It is impossible to assign a reason for this divine regard ; no virtue or goodness makes any difference. The only " reason " is in the elective Will of God, and in God it is all a necessity — the last mystery of the divine nature. The divine need of certain souls to love is the secret of " salvation," and the inscrutable ground of all hope. " Elect," sin's worst poison leaves you " safe ; " non-elect, your best virtues turn to sin. It is strange ? It is very strange, but the last ecstasy of faith in it comes from its mystery, and Jthe absolutely free grace of God thus involved. But again you ask. Why depict such a niindf The passion of belief makes the meditation lyrical, as the 1 54 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. man in his exaltation thrusts aside the whole physical j universe to get to God — -God and the love of God " all in all " to him. This is his interest, that he realizes so madly a curious and profound idea of the human soul — the soul in God, and God in the soul, as all that has finally any value or meaning. ' The place given the poem in the latest edition of the poet's works must mean that he attaches real psy- chological interest to it. He puts it among " Men and Women," and beside the " Epistle of Karshish." The problem there is the effect it would have on human conduct were one to die and be brought back again to life. The balance of life, it is inferred, would be so lost, its centre so shifted, that life would be no longer practicable. And in this poem, what is it? The idea of God and of the Divine Will may be so held as to destroy all will and all morality, and reduce life to a meaningless necessity. And yet this " God- hunger," this passion of the soul, which in coarse natures has such ugly results, has refined higher natures to an unearthly beauty, and in both the instinct has a deep meaning. Agricola and St. Agnes are far apart, but St. Agnes's dream of the " Heavenly Bridegroom," and the " Sabbaths of Eternity," and Agricola's idea of " God's breast " as " his own abode," are the same cry for a God of the soul whom physical splendours hide rather than reveal. The " Cavalier Tunes " are also lyrics of this kind- spirited songs imagined for certain cavaliers ; and what might be called "Ballads," such as "Count First Dramatic Lyrics. 1 55^ Gismond " and an " Incident of the French Camp," were among these lyrics. In them you have a story told dramatically. In the ballad, lyrical and dramatic elements are in this way often present, and the life of the narrative is gained by the effort of the imagina- tion to see and put all from some dramatic stand- point. Rossetti's work has the most brilliant modern examples of this. " In a Gondola" (iv. 196) is a series of these lyrics, a love-song in the form of a dialogue lyrically con- ducted between the lovers, and giving vividly their feelings, the situation, and the story. Their love is secret, their meetings stolen at risk of the lover's life ; but danger and death only heighten their passion, and as they glide through Venice in the gondola, the life of the city seems the dream, their life the reality. He is found and stabbed as they part, but cares not ; for, having lived, he can afford to die. Placed next is " Waring " (iv. 206), also of 1 842. It is a " romance," suggested by fact. A friend of the poet, a man lovable and of much promise, rich in feeling, but proud and shy, wanting self-confidence, has suddenly left London and gone to " the far end of the world." And the poem depicts the man, expresses all the surprise and regret, the thoughts and hopes, that came into the poet's mind because of the departure of Waring. He wishes him back if only to tell his esteem, while he is aware of his defects. He knew and loved good work and true praise, and should have put himself frankly forth in a world that J-56 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. goes, and must go, by what a man has done rather than by what it is in him to do. But there is power and hope of most things in Waring, given scope and stimulus, and the second part of the poem sets these forth, on occasion of meeting some one who has caught a glimpse of Waring in the East. But for dramatic point and animation none of the poems of 1842 are equal to that named in later editions " My Last Duchess " (iv. 1 50). Its humour, its rapid delineation and suggestion of the speaker's own character, and also of his wife's, show well the poet's power and the capability of this form of dramatic expression. The speaker is the duke. He is showing a portrait of his last duchess to one with whom he is arranging for another. The dead lady has become one of his art-treasures, kept for himself, and as they look at it he supposes a question as to the depth and passion of her glance. There was her offence. Her quick, impulsive nature, easily roused and pleased, offended his proud, cold nature. The glow was in place when given to him, but when given to every one and everything as freely as to him and his "nine-hundred-years-old name," it hurt him. It was not a thing to speak of, nor to be put up with. In his proud, hard way he took means to stop it. He stopped it, and it killed the lady. Is he sorry? Was it overdone ? Not the least. He will exact just the same devotion and reserve of the next that he did of the last duchess. She is dead, but she is there, and his in her beauty still. He is satisfied with that, First Dramatic Lyrics. IS7 and goes on to the question of the dowry and the next duchess and his other works of art as if all had one use only — ^to be his and please him. Later, and better even, among these early lyrics is "The Bishop's Tomb at St. Praxed's " (v. 257). It was published in Hood's Magazine in 1845, ^"^ republished among the " Romances and Lyrics " in that year, and now put with the poet's Renaissance studies. The scene is the death-bed of a Roman bishop of the sixteenth century. It is the bishop who speaks. He is dying, and has accepted the fact so completely that he sees himself dead and buried, and lying through the years on his tomb in St. Praxed's Church. His one thought now is to arrange for, and, if he can, make all sure and clear about, a tomb such as shall fit his value and his taste, and he has called his sons round his bed to talk to them at large of this matter. He describes the tomb and his whole wish regarding it, so that his life and soul are disclosed. He has had, by his confession, his share of life's pleasures ; he means to have his share of death's honours, since life, unhappily, can't go on. Both may be " vanity," but both are the world's way and good to man. With his sons about him, he recalls their " mother " and his gay life many years ago. Sorry, is he ? Not at all. It was good while it lasted. It is past and gone, and vain regrets are a bad kind of folly. And the woman is dead, and now it is his turn for that which comes to all. Looking back, he wonders what man's 1 58 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. life is, and what death may be which ends it. He doesn't know and hardly cares, yet often as he lies in the long still night all seems a dream, and he hardly knows whether he is dead or alive. But it will be death soon for him, and so about his tomb. He has been done out of the best place in the church, but he will have the best tomb — one that will move the envy of his rival even in the grave. He has worked out the design for it, and enjoys the triumph of it as much as if it already stood in St. Praxed's. The tomb is to be of jasper, the slab antique black basalt, the columns peach-blossom marble, the frieze bronze, and a ball of lapis-lazuli betweeri the knees of the effigy. And whence came this precious ball ? He stole it from a burning church, and hid it for this very use. But will his sons give it him, or steal it from him, as he from the church ? He has fears, but he bribes them with all he can offer, and goes on to finish the frieze, with its Pans and Nymphs, and Christ and Moses. And he is exigent as to the epitaph. It must be pure Latin, Cicero's every word ; not Gandolph's bad Latin. Such is his plan. Will the sons carry it out? They get tired of his talk, and, he fears, will take his property and give him a beggar's tomb. He begs them, more than he would for his soul, not to do so, and tries to hope as he dwells on his plan, until he hears the Mass and feels the incense, and tells how often in the night he seems to turn to a piece of sculpture as he lies on his bed. But now he is tired, and wanders, and ends by admitting that his scheme First Dramatic Lyrics. i59 has no chance of being carried out. His first impulse is to punish his sons, but he does not. He sends them away kindly, with some sense, perhaps, of retribution in their selfishness. That the poem has fine dramatic points and true characterization is thus clear. And there are still points of exegesis it may be well to glance at as bearing on the bishop and his age. 1. The bishop has a few "serious" phrases, but no serious beliefs. His survey of life, his concern with death, both prove it. " The world's a dream," he says, though for him it has been and is still the only reality. Yet there is sincerity in his phrase. It looks and feels so to him now because it is remote, its pleasures gone, only memories left, no inward gains. So when he speaks of his life as " brief and evil," he reminds us of what Martial said — that " though many of us have too much, none of us ever have enough." Life had been " good," but it had gone too fast. There is wrong in the fact that it should go at all, and death is the last wrong to those for whom the flight of the years is never a process of gain, but always of loss. 2. And how little difference death makes to him ! It is not great and solemn to the bishop. He is the same man. The rivalries, the care for artistic show, and all the vanity and worldliness of the man you find beyond death and on the tomb. And that is the fact of life. To the frivolous death is trivial. For what does the bishop think oil Of "what is beyond." And what is beyond death for him ? The grave, and 1 60 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. nothing more ; and so the grand question is about a satisfactory tomb. 3. And how curious the passion of which the bishop is so full — that passion for monuments, and all our care for what may happen to our names after we have passed away ! Is it rational, or is it the vainest of man's illusions ? our self-respect carried beyond death, or only a wish to keep a kind of place and value in the world when we have no place more in it? Two things seem clear about it in the bishop's case — that it is a sensuous rather than a spiritual wish, and that the bishop does not think of himself as dead. He is in the church still, not in the grave, but on the tomb. That effigy becomes the man ; he feels through it and lives in it. 4. And what of the bishop's religion t He has had a Church and a ritual, and he has cared for them, but hardly a creed, and not a faith. "The blessed mutter of the Mass," " the perfume of the incense," " the aery dome of the church " — these are the notes of it. It is the religion of a sceptical and sensuous age. The " angels live " in the dome. There is no heaven for him. His thoughts get no higher than the material suggestions of ritual and art. 5. And his care for art is the bishop's strong point, as it was the strong point of his age. He is the epitome of the Renaissance in this and in his style of art. His frieze, with its mixture of mythologies, and his good Latin and bad morals, express this. And Browning has a liking for that age and its men, First Dramatic Lyrics. i6i and a secure mastery of its types and secrets. This mastery springs in part from sympathy. He likes the sensuous energy and frankness, the vigour and enjoyment and audacity, the care for art, the learn- ing, and all the picturesqueness and force of the men and their lives, while aware, too, of their terrible faults. 6. And so, as forcibly as Ruskin, he suggests the ways in which the temper and character of the Renaissance told on its art. This bishop, worldly, selfish, and sensual, would invent such art, and carry into the Church all the vanity of his heart and his life. His art, indeed, is as great an offence to his faith as his life itself. But, leaving the bishop, let us recur to the question of art we began with. Such poems make clear the principle of the work the poet first made in these dramatic lyrics. Drama would have put the bishop before you through action and speech. Here he is put by speech only. ^That is the sole action of the piece, and yet it leaves on you a clear sense of the man and the scene. How is so distinctly dramatic a result gained without the usual dramatic means ? By the energy of speech, which is thought — intense and immediate self-expression. The character is in action, and the poet's medium gives that action vividly and directly. ^ M ( i62 ) CHAPTER IX. POEMS OF LIFE AND DUTY, AND BROWNING'S "CRITICISM" OF LIFE. Having studied the rise of Browning's art, and the ideas and aims of his earlier works, I propose now to take his work more at large, and to consider certain groups of poems with regard to their substance rather than their form. And, first, I take a group dealing with certain problems and parts of life, on the ground that they throw light from this poet's mind on questions of duty and spiritual culture. To do this, I know, is likely to please some and oifend others — to please unduly those who care for literature only as it has ethical value ; to offend those who think it should have no such value or bearing. All cordial readers of Browning are thought to belong to the first class, and Browning is their prophet. But, though this is true of some of the poet's readers, it is not true of the poet, nor is it a possible view of literature. Browning's poetry, in spite of its inward problems and spiritual Literature and Life. ' 163 quality, is as just and profound in its idea of literature as in its ideal of life, and both are necessary to wise and great writing. But the question now touched has been much dis- cussed, and of all recent poets Browning is thought to raise it. Let us consider it so far as to make clear our point of view. Literature, some think, should be ethically neutral, simply human, its " use " consisting in its interest and its beauty only. But what, we must ask, is meant by " simply human " ? Morality is a very human interest, and may surely occupy the place in literature it has in life. Truth, too, is an interest of man as well as beauty. And if beauty be art's vision of truth and sense of man's pleasure in it, there must be regard for truth, and not for beauty •simply. While all literature of power has sprung from a passion and care for human life that laughs to scorn the exclusion of any of its interests, its " voice has been to the sons of men," its thoughts about the life of man, and the modern mind is only more explicit and deliberate in the matter, more spiritual and universal. But, granting the principle, and allowing some relations to be normal, the question may be thought to have been shifted, not solved, because we have still to define the right relation. Is it, for instance, that held by sopie earnest people who think literature nothing if not " moral " ? But morality, and still more life, includes much these good people do not include in their conception, and their view is even 164 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. narrower on its literary than on its ethical side. How, then, shall we indicate the right relation? A phrase put forth by a critic, whose phrases are often happy and light-giving, has been taken as fairly answering the question. He described the relation of literature to life as "criticism of life," and declared the higher value of literature to depend essentially on its worth in this respect. By some it has been thought that this is really a Puritanic view of letters, and that Mr. Arnold only stated that personal bias and inner thought which he has shown in all his later writings when he put forth that view. As he had said, besides, that " conduct is three parts of life,'' and as literature must to that extent be concerned with " conduct," the matter seemed very serious. Mr. Arnold's care for literature and mastery of it is so true that I should not much fear the effects of his " Hebraism ; " but his phrase is not large enough, and may be put to per- verse uses. Shall we say, then, that literature is the expression and interpretation of life, wise, large, and free, and that according to the power, breadth, and truth with which it grasps and states man's experience will be its value to men ? And how is this done? In what ways does literature help men to interpretation of life ? Not in any way of " criticism " in the narrower sense, let us be clear. The proper concern of art is with life, and not with notions about it. It must present life itself in such ways that men shall see it as they could not by their own insight. It must put some significant Browning's " Criticism " of Life. 165 part of life so that its significance may be felt. That is art's first and proper business. But that is only representation? Let us not mistake. Neither in science nor in art is the pure objective possible or intelligible. In other words, art is not life, but life as seen through the mind and experience of the artist. The ethical value of a writer will therefore depend on the power and reach of the man, on his scope and sanity of nature ; not only on his point of view and the value of his distinctive ideas, but on the power and passion he has put into his work ; not on his wisdom only, but on his vital power. If this be our standpoint, and these our principles, how do matters stand as regards the value and characteristics of Browning's work as interpretation of life ? How does he help his readers ? After vvhat has been above said of the poet's qualities, it will be seen that in all the ways just named he helps them. The man himself is a moral power of great worth and energy. He has breadth, variety, and strength of nature ; great force, not so much of single qualities as of many qualities acting well together. He rouses you to the reality and to the interest of life ; to the valour and force of man's will and mind. He braces you by tlie vigour and clearness of his own temper and bearing, both by the firmness of his hold on things and by his manliness. His frank acceptance and straightforward enjoyment are in the nature of a witness to the worth and health of things, with many uses on the poet's own time. I Q6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. And in the matter of moral truth and moral im- pressions, the personality of a writer has much to do with his influence. No man can ever convey explicitly the whole reason of any of his deeper convictions, still less of that most complex conviction which we call his " view of life." And it is the humanity of a writer, the " open secret " of his sense of things as a whole and his own relation to them, that moves and helps us beyond all he directly conveys. Browning has much of this kind of power and value. It often Jiappens that characters of much breadth lose something of power. It seems as if here the breadth and the power proved themselves together, and found means of conveying themselves through the work. There is power at every point, and yet, except on certain great principles, no emphasis. So this poet has essential moral truth, essential spiritual power, yet great freedom and naturalness ; a large independence of rules and opinions, and yet a strong hold of those principles which alone get to the heart of duty and right. He has, as moralist and as poet, the instinct and sympathy of life ; a care for what is alive or makes for life. And it is, I think, in this vital power, not only of the poet, but of his poetry in its whole principle and scope, that great part of his ethical value consists. • His poetry is almost wholly dramatic, free and varied representation of the facts of life and of the minds of men ; and by this he liberates our humanity, teaching lessons of intelligence and sympathy — nay, giving Browning' s " Criticism " of Life. i,6j power for these by setting us free from personal limitations, and making us aware of that larger world of passion and experience which, though it lie beyond our " bounds," is a most real part of life. As part also of the dramatic aspect of his work and its moral bearing through that, we must under- stand that " criticism " of life which is conveyed by the very principle of his characterization. At the basis of his dramatic method will be found certain ideas of high import in this reference, that the soul is individual ; that it has supreme worth in the scheme of life ; that the value of experience is in the culture of the " soul ; " that, as the worth and result of life are found finally within, none need miss life's good ; that the experience of each is so far adequate to the well-being of each ; that as experience develops the spirituality of the soul, life gains depth and scope. But here we touch distinctive ideas, or " views," of life as found in this poet ; only let us be clear that even as to these the poet is not a " moralist " simply. He does not select a world out of the world by coming to it with a set of notions it is to illustrate. As Mr. J. Morley finely said, speaking of Emerson, " All great minds see all things ; the only difference lies in the order in which they choose to place them." This order, and the estimate it implies, is great part of their criticism of life. It both reflects and determines leading ideas. And Browning, though he has looked at the world's order and each man's good constantly from the dramatic point of view, has his order, and so 1 68 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. leading ideas. These I now put, through a study of the chief poems containing them. I will begin with the poem called " The Boy and the Angel" (iv. 158). It is a Middle- Age legend, in which the poet saw a " romance " of a deep truth. And this truth he has put in words as simple and pious as the legend itself. The story is this : A boy in a monastery followed his trade, doing his work well, by the work and in the pauses of it " praising God." And Blaise, the monk, was pleased, and told the lad that his " praise " reached God as surely as the Pope's at the great Easter Festival at Rome. But the boy was not content ; he longed to " praise God " {i.e. to please himself) in some " great way " — the Pope's in St. Peter's. And he got his wish, with Gabriel's help. He became a priest, and rose to be Pope. But, as he had been carried out of his proper sphere by the mistaken kindness of the angel, the boy's place was empty, his work now undone. So the angel took his place. But the work and praise of the angel were not the boy's, and could not replace the boy's. In time the angel saw this, and took means to put matters again in their natural order. He went to Rome, and found Theocrite there as Pope, preparing for the great Easter service, and proud of his place and of his realized ambition. Gabriel made known to him the divine idea of life's plan as he had come to see it. He is out of his place, and in his place only can he fulfil his proper tasks and God's will. Another may fill the Pope's place ; none can fill his. So Theocrite returned to his craft Poems of Life and Duty. 169 and his cell a simpler and a better man, and grew old in peace among his early tasks. A new Pope dwelt at St. Peter's ; and when Theocrite died, the angel and the craftsman sought God side by side. It is a quaint story, of those simple and pure monastic minds, who first made work as such good and dear to God. And that idea had its battle to fight against many discontents and ambitions. To Theocrite the simple task and daily round seemed poor. Piety, as he thought, and pride much more, said that it were better to do something "greater" for God. And he reached the highest point of the monkish ambition, only to find, that, as wandering desires mistakenly helped had carried him from his own tasks and place, his life had ceased to bring its due praise to God. The old way was not better only, but the only good way. The lowly task was best heeded and valued by God, counting well in His great plan — a thought to reprove vain desires and sweeten simple lives. And so through the legend Browning suggests, with a mystic glow and depth such as he likes, ideas to which, in the spirit of them, he attaches great value — the worth of each soul and of all sincere work to God ; the personal quality of all real work ; the duty of each to keep his own place, to respect his own worth, and to rest satisfied with his own tasks. In their proper place, and at their own tasks, men are spiritually equal ; God is " praised," and the order of the universe is served by the least as truly as 1 70 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. by the greatest. " Greater " and " less " are words of no essential meaning in the matter. The only really great thing is the whole divine order. All value depends on helping that, and all can help it. Ail lives rest on a divine order, enter into a " scheme " that none of us comprehends, but that all further by simple discharge of duty. All work is consecrated and made right by its relation to that. If we move from our place, we mar the music of God's order. If we keep our place, the highest value our work can have comes from its being our duty. In the first of " Pippa's Songs " you have the same idea, and it is the keynote of the drama — " All service ranks the same with God." All of us, least and greatest, somehow serve Him, and His Will equalizes all events and souls. We are all near to Him whose Presence fills the world and our lives. This is a dramatic principle and a vital truth for the poet ; no "sentiment," as it too often is. In the " Statue and the Bust " (iv. 288) you will find what seems a very distinct, but is a perfectly congruous, idea of duty. In the poems we have just taken, the idea is that the simple duties and circum- stances of life are enough for happiness and for the " soul." Here the doctrine appears to be that it may be a duty to break through circumstances in order to reach a fuller life. Let us see how it is. It is another legend or romance. It arose in this way. In one of ' the squares of Florence is a statue of Duke Fer- dinand I. The statue is so placed that the Duke Poems of L ife and Duty. 1 7 ^ seems to be looking towards the palace of the Riccardi as he rides away, that palace standing at the corner of one of the streets running into the square. And this posture of the statue appears to have given rise to a legend. The figure looks fixedly at one of the windows of the Riccardi palace, and so fancy read design in the posture and meaning in the look. The story got abroad that the Duke had loved one of the ladies of the house of Riccardi; that her husband, knowing it, shut her in his palace, so that, if they saw each other, it could only be from a window looking into the square. The Duke, in love for the lady and scorn of her husband, had himself put where he might seem to wait and catch her every appearance. That is the tradition; but our poet, no doubt regarding the whole thing as invention, took it his own way. To make it a better vehicle for the truth of human hearts he saw in it, he added to and gave it fuller meaning. The bust is his, and the reality the love had for a time. The lady, newly married, but with heart quite free, sees the Duke ride past. The Duke sees the lady at the window. They love, and life begins for both. At a feast the same night they met, and the Duke found means to make known his love to the lady. But the husband heard, or, anyhow, knew, and determined to keep the wife a prisoner within his palace. The wife seemed to submit, in- wardly resolved to flee in disguise, which she always found reasons not to do, until, as the years passed, the love passed too, remaining only as a dream. 172 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. The Duke also had his plans, which he, too, found reasons for delaying, through months into years. They could see each other^ — she from the window, he from the square. To that they were faithful, with that satisfied. And then, when they marked the flight of the years, and the change of passion itself to the memory of a dream, they knew the thing past hope and vain, yet wished to commemorate it. And so they hit on the device of the statue and the bust, aware now that their lives in the matter had been no more vital — an " idleness which had only aspired to strive " and dreamed of being. Yet it pleased them somehow to think that when they were gone these images would speak truly enough of their futile passion and shadowy lives. They are gone ages ago; and what, asks the poet, are their thoughts now .' " What a gift life was," if only the temper and the power to use it had been theirs ! That temper and power they had not, and so they do not " see God nor his soldier- saints ; " they remain in the cold. For such natures there is no heaven. And what is the point f for this poem, at least, is made for the moral, and not merely for the tale. What was their crimef for they avoided one, surely. As to that, to postpone action, to vacillate, is not right ; it is only weak. Virtue does not lie in indecision and delay, and final indifference and futility — a statue-and-bust sort of life. That^ indeed, is to be nothing, neither wrong nor rio-ht the most hopeless of all conditions. To live is our only chance of coming right ; to be dead even while we liv£ Poems of Life and Duty. 1/3 is the greatest of wrongs both in Dante and in the Gospels. Live heartily and with purpose, whatever you do. Don't dream or vacillate your life away. Don't let the precious years slip through listless fingers, past a nerveless will. Be awake, alert. Have conviction and aim, and give frank effect to these through conduct and enjoyment. The crowning disaster is to miss life, whether by neutral quality or feebleness or cowardice. To allow circumstances to shut us out from life is to be entombed before we are dead, to be a ghost among the living ; and from the shadowy land itself to look back on the dead years as lost opportunity, a tale of what might have been. Anything rather than this. If you choose to play, no matter what the game or the stake, do your best, and win if you can ; not for the pelf, but for the game itself And here you will ask two questions. What, in this view and on this principle, is the use of life? and what is it to live? Let me answer them thus. To live as this poet means it, and presses it, is not to find great circumstance or great things, not to carry out your plans of pleasure or of golden success, and have a big share of things in life. You may do that and live ; you may have that and not live. Theocrite lived in his cell and his craft ; Pippa at her daily task and in her simple songs. Circumstance is well in its place. ., But the great thing is the will, the passion within, the soul. It is the meaning and the zest you put into life and get out of it. It is your thoroughness, your sincerity, your power. And 1 74 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. this answers the other and highly ioiportant question, What is the use of life ? The use of life is to live ; not the game nor the game's gains externally, but the full, free play, the honest and even intense develop- ment of the life itself, in all its powers and good. The " Grammarian's Funeral " (iv. 270) is another poem in which we have characteristic moral ideas. It is a " romance " of the later Renaissance, invented by the poet for the character and ideas of which he has made it the picture and the symbol. A body of scholars is carrying the grammarian to his grave, and the leader of the ,band tells the story of the dead scholar's life as they carry him. The man whose life has just closed had devoted himself soul and body to classical learning. He was a man very capable of other things, both in literature and in life. He had the face and throat of Apollo, and for a fime his days had been spent, if not in pleasure, at least lightly. But it dawned on him, that life was going, and nothing done, so he set himself to grapple the substance of things. The way to that, then, was the scholar's tasks. So he turned to " those who knew man best — the bard and sage," and won learning, but wore himself out. Friends suggest that it is " time to live." But no ; he will live when he has mastered all learning. He will -then be able to live a full and really wise life. What good living until he can do that t But time and health are both failing fast ; it will soon be too late. That can't be. With so much to know, and to use when known, man must Poems of Life and Duty. 1/5 have time for it all somewhere. So back to his books, and to harder toil. Disease comes of the tireless toil, and friends beg him now to rest. But he can't. His passion is keener than ever. He meets death at his work, the hunger and hope of the perfect science strong still, the fact of it far off. That is the story. Why tell it? What do such lives imply ? What is their bearing on man's nature and scope ? In an evident sense such lives are most incomplete. They miss " living " in many respects, and win only a little part of the full life of man. But these lives are noble, if partial. Their object may be narrow, but their spirit/ is ?reat. They do not miss life as 4iie--J@Stk€- siiia - the-4ady--did. "'jjL&y throw themselves with ardour and reality into their part of life. But this is not enough. To narrow life to a pursuit of " grammar," however keenly we seek it, is to make the loss of life almost too sad, if the scholar have only this life, is it not 1 We can see gains in, and still more by means of, such lives. Their concentration has its gains, and the scholar has his own joy, and they help to build up knowledge and the life of the race. But that does not satisfy us in thinking out the problem of such lives. And these lives themselves seem to involve more and fuller life. They seem so strong in their instinct, so deliberate in their choice. Their passion and their idea of knowledge seem to gain scope and ardour as their physical powers fail. Their plans ignore death and time, and assume eternity, as if they ,/;' V' I "]& Studies in the Poems of Robert Browning. had an assurance of things other men cannot see. They appear to throw themselves on God, as if in the faith that He will not make their noblest parts a mockery. ^And their idea of culture — the idea of perfect mastery of anything, even of " grammar " — is a counsel of perfection, a master passion of the mind; part of that sublime ideal, which, at all points of man's labour, has made the present and the accom- plished seem so small a part of the possible and the necessary^j^The narrow tasks, the brief years, the small results, the large passion, all look out into the Infinite of man's life, and so surely of man's hope. These lives are no caprice ; they follow a law. That inward obligation which throws them on their tasks is part of a rational order. It must be because the mind of man has its issues elsewhere that it impels men to such devotion and denial. There are lives of another kind, sharply contrasted against these lives of the scholar and the thinker- lives of limited and practical scope, or lives set upon merely earthly ends. They reach their ends and have their rewards, while the other lives, just because of their larger scope, appear to fail in reaching even that they were set upon. Can it be that because of their " success," because the " system of things " seems so far in their favour, that these lives are to be preferred? The higher lives certainly help man more, and there seems that in the best minds which draws them to such devotion and idealism. And it is better to have your ideal and to follow it with pure passion than to Poems of Life, and Duty. 177 live a life, which reaches contentment and secures success just because its scope is narrow and its aims poor. The " soul " lives only as its tasks have that scope and depth, and while the lives that look to the present may end because " they have had their reward," the higher lives are of good augury and promise, and carry us onward in hope as generous as the principle on which they have gone. The " Grammarian," with its type and its ideas, has other bearings pertinent to our life at the present time. The specialization of work and life has grown, with the growth of knowledge and of the world, every year more narrow and intense. After a certain point in life most men have to throw themselves very much on one line and one task, and they soon find how little of all that was ideally possible to them can be actually reached by them. It is obvious that for knowledge, and for the arts, this is good and even necessary. But it is surely a mistake to persuade ourselves that it is all right, and that there is no loss attaching to it, either as regards the work or the worker. The work itself suffers, and grows much more dull and mechanical, and the worker suffers far more. What is the remedy, and where must we look for compensation ? Is it that the spirit and thorough- ness are the great thing ; the mastery of the man's powers given by duty, and even by sacrifice? and is the sense of the ideal made more solid for us by the difficulty of doing anything really well .' This ta least is certain, that intense specialization makes it N 1 78 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. more necessary to keep the sense of the ideal alive by thoroughness and zeal, and that only as we put that quality into duty can we keep hold on the powers and hopes that make us men. And we shall find that the whole question of the relation of circumstances to marts life and growth has been deeply grasped by the poet. In the poem on a group of children by Woolner, called " Deaf and Dumb " (vi. 151), he has put a thought often present to his mind in his studies of human life. The children in the group were deaf and dumb, and, looking at them as the artist had made them, the poet saw finely suggested the solution of a question life often raises. The eyes of the children spoke, and their faces listened as -if the loss of the power of speech and the sense of hearing had roused all the other senses to finer life and fuller power. So it is, he thinks, with the limitations and hindrances of life. It is the prism reveals the hidden glory of the light by stopping and breaking it up. So obstruction and loss act in the life, and on the soul of man. They bring out a quality and power that would in other circumstances have remained unknown. Parts of "James Lee's Wife" (vi. 53-57), which I will refer to here simply in this connection, deal more at large with the same things in experience, with some things that touch all our hearts, through all our lives, though it may be never in the form in which they arose to the wife of James Lee. The theme of the section called " Under the Cliff" is that " old woe Poems of Life and Duty. 1 79 of the world " — the constancy of change, the incon- stancy of all besides. " Nothing endures ; " nothing we gaze upon in nature, and nothing we love, but is ever being taken from us by this law. No perfect moment, whether of dawn or of childhood, whether of twilight or of love, but fades and gives place to some other moment and something else. Yet this, it may be said, is only a sentiment, and an appearance. To human nature it is, however, a fact, and no one with much hold on life, or any deep care for it, but has felt the pain of it, making the past sad and strange. But things change only to give place to something better. It may be, but even the something better is another thing, and what our hearts crave is something above change. What is the function of this law, then, in our lives, and why are we subject to it at every point, in spite of the heart ? It exhilarates the soul and keeps it alive and in motion ; it enriches experience ; it enforces progress. Let us rise to it, and move with it, and gather all the wealth of life as God fashions it. The law of change, like all else in the order of life, has this for its end and result — the invigoration and growth of man. " By the Drawing Board," section viii. of the same poem, puts the problem of our losses and of the defects of life in fuller outlook. From our present standpoint we may regard it as sparable got from the relations of art and life. Which for the artist is the more profit- able field of study — life, or the works of art in some of their most perfect forms ? Life, certainly. Life is i8o Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. not abstractly perfect or beautiful. It does not answer our wishes, or meet our aesthetic demands. It is not, as we find it, " ideal." In our hopes we plan such a life, and then find the facts go against us. What then ? Life is best. We need its lessons and discipline, and only so can we ever reach a true art. The great artists have not worked in dreamland, but in the world of life. They have spent years in mastering that, not for its interest only, but because they saw there the one way to a right art. And in life it must be the same. Experience and self-denial, mastery, not avoidance or dreaming, are the method of that most difiScult art, the art of living. And we cannot make life beautiful our abstract way, because the matter and scheme of it are so much larger than our thought of or wishes about it. The imperfection and disappointment of life are most forcibly expressed in " The Last Ride Together" (iv. 220.) The speaker there has put his life upon love, and has failed ; and, surveying the lives of men and their results from his point of view, attainment seems small beside hope, and all results slight ; and, most of all, he feels how restricted is the scope of life compared with its spiritual possibility and desire. But this is not a question only of things that hinder and opportunities that fail. That is part of it, certainly. But it has another side and a better mean- ing. And that meaning I find in a poem, puzzling to many readers — that named " Two in the Campagna " (iii. 188). Poems of Life and Duty. 1 8 1 This poem is in the main a love-poem, but it deals through that with a wider theme, and with a larger aspect of life — with an experience that relates to life as a whole. Its general position is this : that the satisfactions of life are really inadequate to the heart ; that life's amplest experience leaves man still unsatisfied. Man is mastered by a yearning after what is perfect, and life in its finest passions and purest unions remains partial. Two lovers are together in the Campagna. It is May, and the silence and the passion of the season, the breadth and peace of the wide spaces open every- where to the vast sky — these, as they touch the yearning of love itself, rouse the still deeper desire at life's heart. It is the man who speaks. " I touched a thought now has tantalized me many times." In this situation, and with his present mood, he may seize and resolve it at last. And for a moment he fancies he has the clue, though it be light and delicate as a gossamer thread, and he follows it a little way, only to find it lost again. And so it ever is. We seem, now and again, to- find some " secret " of peace and of satisfaction. It is in conscience and duty, in knowledge, in love, or it is in the soul itself and some highest truth of that ; but as we close upon it and test it we find its sufficiency gone, and we are left again to that ex- perience of •' Infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn." 1 82 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Explain it how you will, such is the experience of man. Change hurls him from point to point of life, so that he has no rest in outward things. And of the soul itself it is a law to reach always on past its best things. It is kept from repose by its own nature. We yearn for perfect trust and oneness. We touch the heart, the truth, and then stand away. How is it? " Where does the fault lie ? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be ? " There is no account of the matter so good as this. It is because we find within both the finite and the Infinite, the human and the Divine ; limited power, yet indefinite desire ; a passion that clings to the parts, and yet is haunted and held by its sense of the whole. It is the pain and mystery of the ideal that it impels us to realize itself, and yet reserves us always for itself It is in all good things. It gives those things their worth, and yet we never find it. It is within, and yet far off, as it seems, for ever. But next in illustration of the moral spirit and ideal in this poetry, let us take a group oi poems that deals with the force and ■majesty of man's sense of right. And first with those that deal with it as it bears on work and action, on the true motive of the patriot and the artist. And we find the moral idea affirmed as a final law — right is right, whatever happen. " The Patriot " (iv. 149) puts this simply. But a year ago he was the hero of the hour, acclaimed of all ; to-day he is brought forth to die, and the only reason is that Poems of Life and Duty. 1 83 he has added a year's service to his former service. What then ? He is satisfied ; his reward is in the power of God, who is not put out by these events, and the will is kept pure by being thrown on what is eternal, and made to depend on that. At the same height is "Echetlos" ("Dramatic Idyls " ). It is a Greek myth. The story was of one who fought at Marathon, and did noble service in the great battle and then vanished, and did not leave a name or a trace whereby to follow him. The Greeks were very curious to find his name, and pressed the oracle for a name. Let them give him only the name of the deed he did. Let him be known simply as " the Wielder of the Ploughshare," his weapon in the battle ; for " the great deed ne'er grows small. Not so, alas ! the great name " — as the Greeks knew only too well. The closing lyric in " Ferishtah's Fancies " finely, and you may think boldly, carries the same principle to the highest level as a law of work and a principle of faith. The poet is there speaking of the motive and aim of his own work. He has not taken his law from the world, nor worked for its praise, and so the utmost he looks for at its hand is justice. If the work be good work, let it be taken for its worth. The worker has had his reward in the power to do and in the work done. With God, and for the soul, the highest law is loyalty" to the mind's ideal, and the proper " reward " is fruit in the soul itself of duty thus done. " Instans Tyrannus " (iv. 162) is a "romance" made to suggest the strange authority of conscience 1 84 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. in natures where you would not expect it. A king had a subject whom he hated and persecuted every way, in order to drive him to do something that would excuse the king in destroying him. The man, in his patient, simple goodness, bore even the worst, until at length, in embittered hatred, the king resolved to be rid of him, right or wrong — utterly wrong, he knew it. And just as he was in the act of destroying him, the man, meek hitherto, rose erect and threw himself on God. An arm seemed to run across the sky, sheltering the innocent and threatening the wrong-doer. The king stood confronted, as from divine heavens, by his sense of guilt and by the majesty of retributive law. The story of " H albert and Hob" ("Dramatic Idyls," i.), puts this question of conscience in a striking way, both as a moral and dramatic question. A father and son were together alone one Christmas night, and they quarrelled. The son dragged his father towards the door, with the design of throwing him violently forth into the stormy night. They were both strong, rough men, and yet the father was like a child in the hands of his son. The son was struck by it, and the father told how, years ago, he had in his passion done the same by his father, and felt the punishment that had come on him now. The son was struck calm before this new power, and stopped ; and father and son went back to their places by the fire. The father was dead by the morning, and the son an idiot. What is the point of such a story ? That even in rude and violent natures there seems a slumbering but strong Poems of L ife and Duty. 185 sense of right. " Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts ? " Lear had asked ; and Browning repHes, " That a reason out of nature " seems necessary " to turn them soft '' — a power above the common and yet within the true nature, divine and human. To conclude our study of the poems of this class, I will take four that consider life as a whole. And first of these and most notable of this whole class of poems is " Rabbi Ben Ezra " (vi. 99). In it you have a large and mature expression of the poet's thoughts about man's life. Ideas found in other poems are here brought together and presented in fuller and more connected statement, and the thoughts are more here, and the character less, than in other studies. The ideas have a dramatic fitness to the imaginary speaker ; but the ideas are more to the poet than usual, and it is, I think, right to find in the poem, not " his philosophy of life," but certain principles of that philosophy to which he attaches a personal value. It is a study of life from the point of view of Hebrew thought. Aben Ezra was a Jewish scholar and theologian of the Middle Age. He lived from 1092 to 1 1 87. He was born at Toledo, and made himself famous among the thinkers of his people and faith. He lived, as you see by dates, to a good old age — ninety-five years ; and, as he seems to have believed in a future life, the dramatic meditation here assigned him may fit very well with the thoughts of his later years. The poem is a survey of life from a point beyond 1 86 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. its maturity. The Rabbi is looking over the past and itito the future, and is weighing the gains of ex- perience and the whole meaning of life. He looks at the facts and the changes and the drift of the years to find what it means and to what it tends, and he <;aiiGlades-^atUiie_-must--b&~aiL£ducationjiLt^ It seems to him that, whether he look back or forward, the only real and lasting use he can see in experience is to mature the soul. The growth and power of the soul is the proper test of the results of life. By that standard you must try all attainment and success. You are on the right way, you succeed, as you gain spiritual power. If this be so, then the best part of life is that in which experience and culture have given you knowledge and mastery of your own nature. The best part, then, is not youth nor middle life, but mellow age. When this is seen, and the scope of life is ascertained by this test, it is found that what we often count the whole of life is but a part of life ; that our life here is one of experi- ment and development, not of accomplishment. Its higher test is not what a man does, but what he is on the way to be. The inward aim, the entire thought and aspiration, of the man — it is these that measure the man's worth and the fruit of his life. The " divine judgment " is an inward judgment, and looks less to the " work " than to the spiritual quality and character : of the man. And it is this great principle that explains the pain and failure and loss human lives so often contain. They are a result of the soul's scope, and a Poems of Life and Duty. 1 87 means of keeping it from resting on anything done or reached in this hfe. These are the general ideas; but now mark the course of thought a little more closely — a matter you will not find clear all at once. The Rabbi starts with the idea that the best of life is to come. The common idea is that the years up to the prime are best ; but that is to make life depend wholly on the body. And yet even in youth jt may be seen that man is spiritual ; for youth shows its discontent with the actual, and overleaps all satis- factions. As the life of the body is then at its best, that could not happen if the sense-life were the man. If man were " animal," selfish ends and gains would satisfy. They do not prove enough, and the reason is man shares the divine nature, and must give, not get only. Now, whatever throws us on this true nature, be it discontent, failure, or pain, is good ; and the finest use of "the body" for us is to "project the soul on its lone way." Yet, though this be our great principle, man should not be ungrateful for any good, and the proper rule of life is not ascetic. The world is good and beautiful, and so is the body in its due place. Do not let us put soul and body against each other, or regard things in that spirit. Let them rather combine in one service, and realize the. good of the Maker's plan. Only the end must be the soul's advancement. The man must come out of it more plainly a " god, though in the germ." The proper gain of life is wisdom and spiritual 1 88 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. manhood. And youth with its discontent and conflict past, man must test his experience so far, and make clear what he has gained. This can only be done when youth has gone. Youth was uncertain — it was a war of minds and experiences ; but in manhood we may see and know. Experience and the soul bring matters to the test ; the " right and good " are dis- cerned ; and, the noise and dispute having ceased, the meaning of the past and the way we are on grow clear. And what is it ? Discipline, growth of faculty, inward knowledge, craftsmanship. The world looks to and rewards " work " only. And from the world's point of view that may be right ; but it is a " coarse," outside view. The true view makes note not so much of what has been done, but of all a man's instincts and purposes ; all the things that could not be done, that could not even be expressed ; all that went to make the man. A man's worth to God is his true worth, and God finds the worth in "the man's amount." And now he finds his final clue to life and its process. The Hebrew idea of the potter and his wheel gives him that image of life which makes it clear. That shaping of the pitcher on the wheel explains it, and is what it all comes to. Life and its changes are the wheel on which man is being shaped to divine uses. We think at times that all changes;; and passes away with the flight of years. It is not so. That is a mere illusion of the sense-life. The fact is that all, that has told on or entered into the soul, lasts Poems of L ife and Duty. 189 and is. God and the soul endure, and circumstance is but a machinery shaping the soul as God wills. The rest of the poem, in which the Rabbi applies this image to the whole interpretation of life, belongs to the question of immortality. The last poems of this group we take are the two called « Pisgah Sights " (" Pacchiar," pp. 75-82). In the first of these the speaker looks back on life from a point at which he can see the whole like a globe lying beneath, and he states, as the sum of wisdom gathered thus — a lesson of unity and reconcilement ; large acceptance, not because all the questions raised are clear, but because he sees how "good and evil, joy and sorrow," work together, and need each other in the world as we know it. In the second of the " Pisgah Sights,'' the closing thought of the first is taken up. We reach these large views only from some remote height at life's close, and when we can make no use of them. It is sad, thinks the speaker here, and he describes how he would have lived had he known life as he now knows it. Cheerful acceptance, but also indifference ; con- tentment so far gone as to be inert submission, would be the temper of life could we see all. The man of " complete " experience would regard a great part of the things men strive for as trivial, and all situations as equal. It is, you see, the situation of Lazarus. And does the poet mean, then, that a really large and wise view of life would take all interest and energy out of it ? He does not believe in that kind I go Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of wisdom. If it be only a "game" of no great essential value, play it well for the soul's sake. That is the end. And the true wisdom is of the kind that gives light and power for that You cannot reach any " absolute truth " about life ; you cannot see all, nor would it be well if you could ; use well, therefore, your best "working view," and the Rabbi's idea of life's uses is the substance of such a view. In the quaint legend of " Jochanan Hakkadosh " (" locoseria," 1883) we find the same parable. The Rabbi is dying in his eightieth year. His disciples come to hear the sum of all his wisdom, and he gives them his last message in words of discouragement. We have power when without wisdom, and wisdom when the power is gone, and so great part of life is wasted. But they refuse to take that as the old Rabbi's last oracle. They must gather riper wisdom than that from him. So they contrive to keep him a year longer by getting him one quarter of a year out of each of four typical lives — lover, warrior, poet, states- man — that he may distil wisdom's soul out of all experience. It is a natural fancy that, if we could only start wise, we should then make the best of life and be happy. How is it with the Rabbi ? The experiment ends in disappointment. Why ? Because ignorance and illusion are necessary to life, and to fore- stall experience is to prevent, not enjoyment only, but wisdom too ? And so his disciples, who had looked for a science of man's life, are sad. But this is not the end. The Rabbi is found alive three months Poems of Life and Duty. 191 later, and now it is light and gladness with him. He has somehow reached a standpoint from which life is so seen that cordial acceptance and profound recon- ciliation are possible. He has, in fact, been kept on earth three days after the spirit has reached the " other life," and so he sees life from a point outside and above the earthly experience. He thus sees the law and result of all, and is " absurdly happy.'' But what is it he sees from this strange standpoint ? What is the knowledge that explains and harmonizes all .■' That life's method of " encountering opposites " works out a divine good, in which " every dream's assured of soberest fulfilment." It is, in the nature of the case, impossible to do more than suggest what might be seen from such a standpoint ; but the main matter is in the suggestion thus made, that for the higher criticism of life such a point of sight is necessary, and that the principle is clear, though the process is per- plexing. Life is a wine-press, from which, by the mingling of all elements, comes a wine fit for the use of those only whose brains can stand ecstasies. And this is Browning's " optimism " — robust ac- ceptance of the world's order as a divine road to the soul's ideal ; while energy, passion, purpose, enthu- siastic faith in the soul and in life, a hearty care for large experience, free self-affirmation, governance and mastery, with a view to life's fullest uses, are the notes of his ideal of life's conduct. ■ .( 192 ) CHAPTER X. RELIGIOUS POEMS: "SAUL," "CHRISTMAS EVE," "THE SUN." I HAVE called the present group of poems religious because they deal more directly than is usual with the poet with religious themes and ideas, and, though one of them has vivid dramatic properties, the ideas as such have much prominence even there. The poems differ much from each other in certain respects. The emotional key and musical quality of " Saul " is very distinct from the argumentative spirit and style of " Christmas Eve," or the didactic aim of " The Sun." But in themes and ideas they complement each other the better for these differences. Their dates are widely apart: "Saul," 1845; " Christmas Eve," 1850 ; and " The Sun " (" Ferishtah's Fancies"), 1885. Standing thus forty years apart, they show well the depth and stability of the poet's interest in their themes. He has always been and he remains deeply interested in these matters. Through his career as a poet, the greater facts and ideas of Religious Poems. I93 religion have found in him a student. Other poets besides in our age have been drawn to these questions, but no one has so well expressed the inner spirit and worth of religion or the essential greatness of its ideas. The mere mention of religious poetry is apt, I am aware, to prove an offence to lovers of poetry ; it has so often been a poetry of special emotions and narrow ideas ; it has so rarely had value as literature. Yet only in so far as these and similar poems in Browning h^ve the general truth and broad interest of literature do I present them for study. And it seems to me that these poems, in their method as in their matter, have that quality. I judge them to be a proof of the depth of modern poetry, and an instance of the modern spirit as regards the whole subject of religion. Religion in history is a great body oi facts, throw- ing light' not merely on the institutions, but on the very life of man. And religion in the present is not merely a tradition from the past, but a part of living experience. It has sprung, it springs, out of the nature and relations of man as something strictly natural. In that sense these facts of religion belong to and bear upon all who have to do with man or human Hfe. And Browning has explored the facts in that sense and with that aim. He is in deep agreement with the great modern view of religion — of religion as part of the vital study of man. He has sought out these facts in his own mind, and the facts of other minds and lives, for their proper interest and large o 'i94 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. significance as regards the nature of man. Religion interests him little as a body of opinion ; more as a faith, though rather in a way of suggestion than of definition ; but most of all as a revelation of man, and as a clue to man's thought and passion, and only through these to what may be known or guessed of the cosmic order. With a wide, if not impartial and really comprehensive, interest in the facts of man's nature, he has shown a special interest in the bearing and import of the emotions and beliefs we gall religious. He has appreciated and shown the unique place and power of religion among the facts of the mind, among the factors of life. He has, as a poet freely interested in man, exhibited the natural energy, the reality, of religion. But it is as a poet. Let fiiis be distinctly said and clearly seen, for two reasons. However true theology may be, and however valuable " edification " from their own standpoints and within their own spheres, these are not the poet's, and with these the poet meddles only to muddle, to lose his way and value. Looking at facts and ideas within the province of religion, his part is to see them in their place, to catch them in their action, to interpret and render their living value. If the modern mind, looking at the facts of religious history, regards them as it regards other facts in their order, and seeks to explain them in relation to man and experience, and man with due regard to them, the poet must carry the process and principle to a farther stage and a higher Religious Poems. 195 power. He must present them " alive and at work," if I may say so — present them as they play their parts in the souls of men, or as they reveal the passion and play of the natures of men. And it is in this way and as a poet that Browning has presented these ideas and their relations to men's lives. And the interest and power of some of his studies of this kind are so great, his statement of certain religious ideas in their relation to the soul and to life is so forcible, that he may be counted in the class of those who, by sheer power and vitality of conception, have given independent and original witness to the human truth of religion. The larger relations of this poetry to spiritual religion will be considered under another group of the poems. For the present we take only the ideas presented in the poems now chosen. " Saul," vol. iii. p. 146. This poem is one of the early dramatic lyrics. It belongs to the " Bells and Pomegranates " series in its first form. Its date is 1845. In that form it only went as far as section ix. (i.-ix.). When re-issued in "Men and Women," in 1855, it was much enlarged, and, from our present standpoint, had got a new purpose. The poet had in the interval added its great sections x.-xix. The subject had clearly attracted him, and he threw all his power of certain kinds into its development — his power of passion, of music, of mystical thought and hope. In its kind it is one of his finest poems — one of the finest proofs of his poetic power, his swiftness and sustained 196 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. energy of feeling and of verse ; while in the matter of it it has several aspects of deep interest Let us follow the development of the poem, and make clear as to its scheme. Saul, Israel's chosen king and special hope, is mad, driven so by his own wild and wilful passions. Those about him are impotent to control or help him. David is sent for as one likely to bring help. He comes with music and song, and even more, with his humanity and faith, to try what may be done for the mad king. He tries all kinds of song and all earthly appeals, and is only very partially successful. When impelled to save, he is driven by his very helplessness and yearning out upon God — on "the Christ in God" — and finds at length in that (when the whole feeling and resource of his nature had been roused) the saving help and vital power he was seeking. The divine love and pity, the essential humanity of Deity, are our last ground of h6pfi for such cases, and if, in a life such as ours and with men as they are, they are not a neces- sary truth, they are surely a reasonable faith. The poem is a. dramatic lyric. It gives an account / of the whole situation from a single point of view. ? David is the speaker, and tells all that happened as I he saw and felt it. And, most fitly, the whole is high- I strung. It was a task to put his whole nature to the I test and bring out all his passion, and Browning makes \ you feel it so, not only in the resource of the poet, \ but in the strain of the man. So it is highly lyrical. -In other words, Browning seeks the heart of the Religious Poems. 197 situation by taking his place within its chief actor, and relating all thence. The poem is spoken by David after the events are past, but only just past, when the whole effort and experience are still fresh, vivid, and strange. He has left Saul, and returned to the pastures and the flocks, and the day following he shapes the whole thing into song, seeing it now in its course and from his higher standpoint. And as he gathers the story into song, alone, with his sheep only round him, it seems to him dream-like and yet most real, because most deeply impressed on his soul. The dramatic circumstances are simple, yet need to be clearly grasped. Having gone from bad to worse, Saul now seems a ruin, melancholy mad. In his high place, and with his special responsibility as "divine minister," he has taken his own way, not God's, and the wrong has eaten into his soul ; banished him, with his risks and his burdens, from God. His nature has become morose, has lost its balance. In the language of the old time, he is " troubled by an evil spirit sent from God." For three long days in the mid-tent's deep silence he has been alone, nor given sign to tell whether he be still alive, or how the dark strife goes. But David has come, and Abner greets him out of his deep anxiety with hope. David, with his gifts, may help or even heal the king, and bring the long sad strife to a close. His very coming seems to bring freshness and health with it. The radiant youth, " God's dew on his gracious gold hair," and the lilies from the pastures tied about his harp, 198 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. both speak of a region quite different from this region of arid desert and anxious minds. By such sweetness even the scorched soul of the king may be refreshed. David kneels to God, and then makes his way into the tent. Having come to the inner tent and seeing only its darkness, he speaks to the king, who had sent for him ; but the king is lost to speech. But in the blackness of the tent he sees at length the giant shadow of the king, then a single sunbeam falling on it through the tent-roof ; sees the king, drear, stark, speechless, blind. He takes his harp, and, stripping it of its lilies, he plays the tune used at the sheep- folding, and then other tunes such as touch and please the creatures of the pasture lands — the simple songs that win all living creatures with the mere sense of the good of life in its simplest states. Then the glad song of the reapers, their wine-song, with its joy of men and their fellowship in labour and the good of life, he struck from his harp. And again other music, mournful or glad — the gentle lament for the dead, and the happy song of love and marriage ; then the great march of the union of men for help and defence. But none of these touched the king ; neither the elemental pleasures nor the general emotions of man's common life have any response in his nature, or any power to recall him from his gloom and isolation. He remains still far apart. So David tries the deeper strain of worship, the sacred chant of the Levites as they go to the altar of God. And this does reach him. It goes to the root of his woe and Religious Poems. 199 his loss — not with healing yet, but only with pain. It recalls him to the reason of his lonely sorrow, his shadowed faith, his lost fellowship. It brings his misery to life. He shudders so that the tent shakes under the pain of the strong man. But that was all. The body hung erect in its pain. He had been reached, but remained far off still. So the singer tries again, and he sings this time the jubilant song of man's life, in its pleasures, in its tasks, in its ties and affections and memories — all that makes life good, whether to the senses or to the heart ; the song of all this maris life had brought him, and had once been to him. It was a song meant to set his life in its true light, and to carry the wholesome sense of it far into the king's heart — into the very midst of his oblivion and gloom. Full of sadness and remorse as he is, how much life has given in the past ! what uses it has had, and good and honour too, lifting Saul's name out of sorrow and above shame ! Let him now recall these things. Even his wrongs cannot obliterate them, and his remorse ought not to keep them out of his view. What gifts had been given him ! All gifts, given singly to most, combined on his head, and -high deeds and fame of heroes. And here, in the first instance, the poet stopped, either unable then to carry it farther, or not feeling the need to do so. It has been said that he then meant us to suppose that Saul was freed — that that song of the good and kindness of the earthly life was enough to restore him. It does not so appear in the 200 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. light of the fuller song. He had been touched, roused out of torpor and death — that was all. Death was past. Life had not come ; aware of life, he had yet no care for it, no real concern in its affairs. He was re- leased, and stood now on its brink. His eyes and face wore the look of pallid autumn sunsets, out of which the life of the year seems gone, and all the glow and activity only a memory. What could he done to give life f What appeal can enliven and sustain f The whole good of life poured into song had only awoke him from death. He let the singer praise it, and he heard ; but for his part life was gone, and he would die. So the mind of the poet seeks intensely for further, greater truth ; for higher, fuller stimulus. And from the sense-life, with its good, he rises to the life and good that are spiritual. He sings of man's higher work and influence, the long fame of those who have done great things. He sings the dignity and honour of man, and all the fruits of kingly will and works as they live on through generations. At this the king was more deeply touched, more fully roused. He had stood lifeless before ; he now sank and sat, and the singer by his vast knees. Resuming the kingly motions, he lifted his hand and placed it softly and gravely, but not listlessly — rather now; in "mild, settled will" — on the singer's brow, bending back his head " in kind power," and looking into his face " intent to peruse it." As the great eyes of the king looked at him, the Religious Poems. 201 heart of the singer was filled with even fuller love and fuller desire to bless, and there was much still to do, to give. So the passion of help sprang higher as he looked into the sad face and knew it Saul. But how help? What is there beyond what has been sung — the good of life, and noble memory and long influence after death ? Can there be more? He feels that that does not restore and fill the broken heart, and he would do all, give all, that would heal and restore. And so, in this mood, with this " divine desire," he is carried beyond harp and song, into the vision and message of the prophet. This " vision and message " fill sections xvii. and xviii. How is this reached .'' He has put all that this life can yield of good and power even to the great ones, and it falls short. It leaves the heart still yearning amid the misery of such lives as this of Saul for a fuller hope, and there- fore an ampler power. Can it be ? He looks at the world, and he sees evidence of vast, possibly infinite, power. " God is seen God " at every point, and all is goodness and perfection ; but all is law. And yet love rises above the whole order, and would give and bless and heal for ever and infinitely. And this longing of endless pity and help is surely the best thing, the most god-like in man. If God be God, then it must be in God, this great pity and love — and highest in Him. The very greatness of God's gifts, the very build of man's heart, seem to require this — the very ideal of the " good God." Surpassing at 202 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. every point, in every power, the Creator must surpass in this too. He must will to save, and, willing. He must have power to do what is highest, There is, therefore, a life to repair and complete these broken lives, and a God who is Power and Law, but also Love for ever helpful. Surely it must be so. Man is indeed of little power, soon spent ; and yet it is not what a man does or can that tests him, but what he " would do." And greatest of all he " would do " is the act of saving another, even through sacrifice and suffering. So it must be with God. " Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst Thou, so wilt Thou ! So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown — And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for Thy creature to stand in ! " As Thy Love is discovered Almighty, Almighty be proved Thy Power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved ! He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak. 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for ; my flesh that I seek In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it, oh, Saul ; it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me Thou shalt love and be loved by for ever ; a Hand like this hand Shalt throw open the gates of new life to' thee. See the Christ Stand." As the poet-prophet made his way home in the night, his soul full of this highest truth, in which all the pain and sin of human life might be healed, the intensity of his emotion, his ecstasy of hope, gave all nature and the whole of life a new meaning. The? universe seemed aware, seemed in sympathy. His hope had become an " open secret." All the hosts of life seemed to press about him, and the stars beat Religious Poems. 203 with emotion, until the tumult and the rapture were quenched in quiet and rest. With the dawn, the trouble and sorrow and wrong seemed to have withered from the earth, in the opening light of a final era of hope. The birth of day and the grey of the hills had a new tenderness, a new promise. The breath of the morning air seemed a thrill of fresh joy, and all the creatures knew the truth. And what, you ask, is the general value of such a poem f (i) It is « study of"a mind diseased" and the means by which it may be restored — by music and song and human sympathy, and by the influence of a generous and healthy nature. (2) It is a study of character in one of those crises that call forth all its resources. David, face to face with the mad king, gloomy as the blackness of the mid-tent itself, is a striking picture of courage and tenderness. He tries one means, and then another, and, unsatisfied with partial success, he rises by sheer magnanimity of nature to that hope and faith in which a full success is assured. Two kingly natures, Saul and David ; but David the greater, the richer, more spiritual. (3)][It is, too, a study of the inmost spirit of the Psalms — of the relation of the faith of that sweet singer and heroic king to the man himself : " Like as a father pitieth his chil,d, even so the Eternal pitieth ; " " The mercy of the Eternal is from everlasting to everlast- ing." (4) It is a subtle and powerful exposition of the central problem of Christianity, and the great faith by 204 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. which that problem is solved. The relation of this faith to the moral necessities of life, and to what is best and deepest in the heart, is forcibly and greatly shown. It is the sorrow and sin of the world that raise its deepest problem, and force us on to the highest question ; and whenever a strong nature is face to face with such facts as this of Saul's deterioration and madness, these questions are raised. The question is raised by love and care for the individual " soul " even more than by thought. The idea of self-sacrificing love as the only one adequate to the facts of life, and as essential to the ideal of divine excellence, was never so finely expressed or so vitally "argued." The revelation of the Supreme Humanity of Deity, and the commanding power and grace of this con- ception of God, are most forcibly presented. The splendour and tenderness of the Christian faith, and what may be called the moral argument for it, are here at their best. (5) And this new and fuller thought of God seems to shed light not only on human life, but on the whole life of the world. All things have part in it. It gives the secret of the life of all ; it is the mystery of that " pent knowledge " and hidden law which waited to be " revealed." But obviously there are two objections to such a poem. It is not historic. David could not have reached these ideas, and certainly not in the form they have here. This train of thought is modern and Christian. That is true. The dramatic-lyric, ' as Browning used it, allows that, or at least uses that Religious Poems. 205 freedom, and you gain by it, since the ideas are amplified by the imagination and passion of the poet, while they keep a real fitness in regard to the speaker and his circumstances. The large and tender heart of the royal psalmist would have responded to such sentiments, though he could never have anticipated them, except in so far as the Messianic strain in his psalms gives a basis for it. And in the judgment of some the matter is not poetic. It is theological in these closing sections, and they would have liked " Saul " better without them. The poem, in point of form and passion, and in flow of verse, is one of the most poetic, and that seems to argue that the matter has been transmuted. And so it is. And the ideas are presented as part of the passion and insight of the singer. It is the very soul of the singer become faith and song. And the tone of the poem is not even didactic. It is dramatic narrative, in which the ideas are seen as they grow up out of the J, circumstances and spirit of the speaker. "Christmas Eve" (vol. v. 117) is a study of the central theme of " Saul " from a different standpoint, through a very different persona, and in a different atmosphere. It is a vision of Christ ; of the great figure and idea of Christianity as seen by a modern mind amid the division and debate and the doubt of the present qpntury. And the question has become, on the eve of the day consecrated to the memory of the Christ, what is to be thought of and believed about Him and His religion. The Christian religion has 2o6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. become so various and contradictory in its sects, and the history of Christ has become so uncertain, that the' question now is whether any of these sects express the true idea — whether the divine idea found historic expression in Christ, or whether the idea has fashioned the character and the legend. To the speaker's inner thought the great faith clearly remains — the figure and spirit of Christ remain the highest authority and law ; but that inner faith has much difficulty to keep any relation to " the Churches of Christ," and even to hold its own clearly against modern criticism. The poem is a kind of dramatic romance — an imaginary narrative, presenting the sections of the debate in scenes of a kind of dream. The speaker, who is clearly not the poet, relates what passed through his mind one Christmas Eve as if it had happened externally. He is in a chapel on the edge of a common — a poor place, with wretched service and vulgar worshippers. Driven in by the night's storm, he would worship and listen for an hour with the others to that gospel of the Christ who came as Saviour centuries ago. But what he sees and hears is very trying, and soon drives him well within his own thoughts and fancies, raising within his mind, by the quaint worship and gospel of these people, the question whether indeed any form of Christianity be credible any more. He fancies himself, in disgust of this particular form, quickly out of the little chapel again into the stormy night, with nature alone for temple and teacher, and the contrast between the Religious Poems. 207 narrow chapel and the spacious night seems a fit symbol of the difference between their creeds. Here at least God seems near and infinite. And as his heart is expanded with that sense, a great and rare thing happens. He sees a double lunar rainbow in mystic splendour arch the heavens, and on its summit a figure which seemed the Spirit of the glory. It took its place beside him, and he knew the divine Master " with His human air." But he saw only the back and the vesture, and the Master seemed to be leaving him. Was this, then, because he had left the poor chapel with proud thoughts ? He clings to the garment's hem, and explains that he only left in the search for a purer and truer worship, and for a truth that should more fitly express the divine Spirit. The Face then turned upon him fully, and he was lifted in the folds of the vast vesture and carried to St. Peter's at Rome, that he niight see another manner of worship and another form of Christian belief He sees the great church and its crowds of worshippers waiting with rapture the change of " the elements " into the flesh and blood of the Lord — one form of that mystery by which religion has seemed to break up earth and time, and let in on man the new day. of a divine and endless Hfe. He did not enter the church, but the Master did. And why } Some part, then, of His, truth and life were here, for all the error and superstition. So said reason, and remained still outside, afraid to risk a nearer approach. But the heart spoke. Above all the error there was and is 208 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. love — the greatest thing ; the love that gave Chris- tianity its first power, in the might of which it con- quered " the antique sovereign intellect," and made a new world, and in time a new art — though always more or less " blind." Feeling that, he went into the church. Still he would seek the whole ; not faith and love only, but intellect and knowledge too. And they leave St. Peter's ; and he is carried again in the folds of the Master's garment to the hall of a German professor, who is lecturing on the origin of Chris- tianity, the Christ-myth — trying to show how much fact there really is for it to rest upon ; that is, how little. He is left outside with the hem of Christ's garment, but Christ enters ; only he sees the professor and his audience, so different from St. Peter's, and he hears the Christmas Eve discourse — hears the pro- fessor argue that Christ was a " right true Man," who taught much wisdom and retains high value, though little understood by any who have been His followers. He did not enter the lecture-hall, "the exhausted air-bell of the critic," — nor did the Master ask him. He bade adieu to the professor, having had enough, and began thinking this theory over. If Christ be only a man, able, wise, and good, and there be no more " God in Christ," does not the whole of Christian faith and worship fall to the ground ? Neither in- tellect nor goodness can give a man any supreme right over men, and the highest powers of these leave him only a man. The teacher who should master the entire system of nature, and make known all its secrets, ' Religious Poems. '2og would still be a teacher, not a creator. The Creator's part is far other and higher than this ; to impress the truth of His own will and nature upon mind and hearj:, and to furnish motive and power to obey that truth, not to observe and teach only. Now, the " God in Christ '' does this — gives power and motive to men by His life and death ; and His own claim is to do this — not by belief of men in His wisdom, but by faith of men in Himself a« the Lord of life. If you believe this, and feel divine love to be so shown, you gain a new and tremendous truth. So he argues against the professor. Yet Christ is Himself inside the lecture-room. There must, then, be truth inside, since He stays there ? What is it .'' He puts it thus. The proper conclusion of the argu- ment was surely " throw away your ' faith,' now proved mistaken." But our professor does not say so ; he says, " Keep your faith, venerate the myth, adore the Man." There must, then, be love even here, and a sense of the divinity. Nor is this all. There is intellect and learning, and much regard for that kind of truth. Such doctrine as this can never be enough for life, it is true ; but there is power beyond men's thoughts in their aims and in the order of life. In this way he draws a lesson of genial tolerance — really of indifference tO' every form of belief, a mood that gives up search and care for truth, . and, seeing that nD belief can be perfect, regards them all as very much alike — a lazy benevolence without real conviction. But on this the storm broke out afresh, P 2IO Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and the divine figure and vesture seemed to leave him alone again. Something must be wrong. He sees how it is in the flash of the fear that fell on him as he saw the garment receding. This mild ifldif- ferentism is worse than the poorest belief The great matter is not to see the defect of this and the other belief, but to find what is true and good for one's self Belief and life are individual, of the soul. Take sincerely your own way of life ; you cannot know more really, except by putting things to that test. With this he was safe again in the garment's folds, and aware again of the little chapel and its service, not of the wandering world of rain. Had he been out of it ? Had he been asleep and dreaming, or only day-dreaming? He hardly knew. Only this had passed through his mind, and had been real to him. And what has he learned with reference to present circumstances ? Not to despise the bald service and the poor talk, but to see in the one a helpful worship, and in the other a divine message — living water, though with a taste of earthy matter. The very simplicity seems best as casting earthly aids behind, and letting " God's all in all serene show with the thinnest human veil between." And the poor con- gregation, offensive before, now seem to witness to the justice of his conclusion by the fact that, being as they are, they are helped and bettered by their faith. But what is the conclusion f you ask. That any sincere form of Christianity morally used is a way of life, and better than the finest form of intellectual Religious Poems. 211 contempt or indifference. A conclusion that " settles " nothing as to St. Peter's or the chapel ? No ; only it gives this principle — that we must put "faith" to the vital test. It is a matter of life, and all of it that has any meaning springs from divine dealings with each. And does the poet speak through his imaginary " per- son " ? Partly so. And his matter is argumentative. Yet he keeps it poetic and dramatic, and maintains the " action " of the piece even — the scene and the play of mind. But why the style, the tone of banter, the grotesque rhymes ? Is the speaker only half in earnest ? Or is it the mood he is thrown into by the chapel and its service — all the quaintness, etc., of it ; and, as he never really leaves it, does he keep this pitch as in tune with it ? The style is dramatic, and fits the mood of the speaker, and it varies, as in the description of the rainbows and St. Peter's, etc. But at bottom the speaker is earnest, as he implies in his appeal to Christ at the close, though his earnestness is mainly practical ; not the search for truth in its highest sense so much as the care for what is sincere and real in the higher life of men, and a desire to follow experience as indeed divine guidance. The sections of " Christmas Eve " that criticize the Gottingen professor set aside his " doctrine of Christ," and return to the doctrine of His divinity. These sections are valid against the professor, but also touch the deeper question raised by " Saul," the need to conceive the Deity as revealed in terms of human life and love. In " The Sun " (" Ferishtah's 212 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Fancies," p. 33) this question is considered in its more general form as the question how, for all moral and religious purposes, we are to think of the tiltimate power, whether in terms of nature or of human nature ; and its conclusion is that, though we never can reach the " nature of Deity," which is by us " inconceivable," our idea must contain " man's everyday conception of himself." Since our instinct of worship, our grati- tude, for us both natural and good, are meaningless if we may not do so, and there would be moral loss both ways. And the mystery of man's own nature is witness in its degree to the credibility of the divine mystery. Man's "dust instinct with fire unknow- able " makes it conceivable. What we reach on such a matter is a moral conception, not an exact truth ; and, though we are certainly unable to " make square to a finite eye the circle of infinity,'' though we cannot adjust our knowledge of the scheme of nature, or our abstract idea of divine "perfection," with such a doctrine on moral grounds, we must hold modestly by this way of thinking, and by this truth. Browning has come many times, in the course of his work, full upon this question of the validity and character of man's thought of God. It is a question that has been more openly and completely raised by the thought of our age than by that of any previous age. It has passed out of the sphere of abstract discussion, and has become a great spiritual and even practical question. It belongs, for this reason, to the scope of a poet to whom nothing is alien that enters Religious Poems. 213 into main's life, and the way in which a poet and thinker with Browning's quaHfications sees this ques- tion as it bears on man is a matter of much interest even in the consideration of the question itself As to the way in which Browning has regarded the question, I would note these points as shown in the poems above taken. The reality of some supreme fact, the validity of- some great idea, seems to be assumed. The question of the worth of man's thoughts about such a matter is frankly met. But the matter is regarded not so much as a question 'of knowledge, but as a question of life. It may be that in the former sense the question is too large, but, brought to the test of man's history and life, the ground is clear. And if any faith be valid, if any thought be reason- able, then no better thought is possible than such as is provided by the higher terms of man's own nature ; and we not only may, but ought to, regard the instincts of man's heart and the higher uses of man's life as leading parts of the problem. As bearing on these ideas, I will only refer to three passages — one in " Sordello " (pp. 206, 207), in which the poet gives obscurely the solution of part of the problem of that poem, Sordello, he tells us, had two great wants — the need of some power far above his life, and so out of all " rivalry " with it, and the need of some " representative '' of that power within his own sphere. Is this " representative " found in spiritual ideas and the service of mankind, or in some " revelation " of the divine ">. The answer is not clear. 214 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. but the passage implies the need of faith in some transcendent Power, whose excellence is the meaning of all good, the ground of all duty, and the inspiration of all love. A striking passage in the " Epistle of Karshish " is moi'e definite. The Arab physician, after describing the " case " and the character of Lazarus, goes on to speak of things Lazarus had said to him, and of one thing especially : he had said that the Man who had " cured " him (or, as Lazarus believed, brought him back to life) was " God, Creator and Sustainer of the world, who came and dwelt on it in flesh " for thirty years or more. He is ashamed even to have re- ported such a notion, and goes off in haste to other things. But he returns to it, next time as giving a new, tender, and sublime idea of God — the idea of a gentle humanity behind all the power. Strange and inci'edible, yet how winning ! Such passages point to the poet's faith in the moral and spiritual basis of an " incarnation," not, I judge, in any " historic fact" And later " Ixion " (" locoseria," 1883) depicts^ forcibly that moral necessity which impels man to seek the highest as God. By his pain and the terrible injustice he felt it to be, Ixion is driven within sight of a truth that makes his pain a triumph. He rises beyond " the gods " to God ; beyond Zeus to the Per- fection he feels must be above such as Zeus. The gods of fear and fancy give place to a God of conscience, and man realizes his own dignity in realizing that supreme Law which must be one with " the true God." ( 215 Chapter xi. browning's poetry and the ideal of religion -^leading spiritual ideas. Our last group of poems was described as poetic studies of religious ideas. Even in these poems one can discern a quality of sympathy and conviction. In the present group we shall find this quality much more distinctly. They raise, therefore, more fully the question of the relation of this poetry to religion, and the ques- tion of the spiritual ideas that are found in it. Of the first question I would say something now, of the second at a later point. It seems hard to get the relation of poetry to spiritual religion clearly grasped. And as to the second question, readers either hold most of the ideas found in the poems as the poet's own thoughts, or they hold that he has never expressed any of his own " beliefs " at all. In trying to make clear the poet's standpoint and relation in the matter, I must recur to part of what has been said before. Even yet, though less than in 2i6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. the past, religion is too much regarded as something peculiar and speculative — something kept alive, if not made, by theologians and Churches. And as in these senses it has lost interest and value for many of us, it is apt to be assumed that there is nothing in it now to warrant a good poet in troubling us about it. And this is so, unless there be a religion of the free mind and the free spirit — a religion that was before "Articles" and Churches, and that will be after all of these yet organized are no more. But if religion, as the poet deals with it, be a matter human and vital, the case is altered. Since these things belong to man they belong to art, and are distinctly within the province of the poet on the broad ground of fact. To give art the range, depth, and sincerity of life was very much the meaning of the romantic move- ment of the early part of this century, and one result of the movement was to restore art to its right relation to religion. And this result was as just on its historical and moral sides as it has been good on its sesthetic. The relations of poetry and religion are ancient and profound. The great drama of Greece is but one instance of a general law. Arising in religion, it remained a religious service and was animated by religious ideas. And we find other literatures powerfully affected or fashioned by these ideas. Man's first wonder, curiosity, and joy were religious. His sense of law in human life, his sense of good and evil, had reference to divine powers, Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 2 1 7 And in proportion to the greatness and beauty of these ideas has been the power and worth of the art. But it may be said that this was a partial associa- tion and a temporary law, true and fit in the past, but no longer so. The law of progress disengages life and art from a visionary and puts them on a true basis. It " secularizes " both. In freeing science froni effete systems of thought, and giving widest scope to reason and inquiry, this "law" has done vast good. But is it rightly read } And what is its true bearing on the higher thought and art 1 Does it mean the "secularization" of man? Many speak as if it did. But that may not be. Man's mind and passion cannot be " seculari/ed." It is awkward, no doubt, and cuts off the completeness of certain generalizations ; but it is true. Man's thought and emotion, man's wonder and awe, keep their old depth. The ancient sense is only larger and more explicit. And Brown- ing's art seems to me to interpret justly the romantic spirit in its relation to religion, as well as the new temper of mind in its relation to matters of belief The poet's critics may help us to make clear his true position in this matter. Some find fault with him because his ideas are indefinite and mystical ; others because they are too definite. The first because they seek special forms of religious ideas ; the second because they have no care for spiritual ideas at all. The breadth of the poet is seen in his respecting his own principle, and giving you large " criticism " with true spiritual conviction and a clear hold of great 2 1 8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. ideas, a free study of types and convictipns with a grasp of the deeper thought and the larger life — that universal sphere whence these particular ideas take their meaning and draw their life. Indeed, the sense and result of this larger thought is so constant that the poet baffles many, and reminds them of his own Sordello, who lost value for, and even hold of, all " secondary states " and partial forms in a sense of the spirit and truth that he felt to lie within and yet beyond them. And here is the ground from which to ascertain the bearings of the poet's work on religious ideas. A poet who is a thinker may tell in this matter in four ways : (i) By the force and truth with which he states certain ideas ; (2) by the way in which his representa- tion of man makes the greater religious ideas, which are the only valuable ones, credible ; (3) by the insight with which he presents religious ideas in their bearing on life and duty, or by the way in which his " criticism " of life brings out the worth of religious ideas in that relation ; (4) or he may show the relation of man to his beliefs, and make men aware of that world of passion and thought behind all opinion. And Browning has, I think, told on the interpre- tation of religion in all these ways, though not in all equally. The number of spiritual ideas in his poetry is not perhaps great, but the power and freshness with which they are stated are great, and so are the ideas themselves. And he: has put strikingly the bearing of certain ideas on the conduct of life. But Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 219 his highest influence has been exerted at other points. He has so presented man in himself, and in relation to great principles of the spirit, that he has made religion seem greater, therefore truer, to many minds. He has so exhibited the bearings of belief on character and on the higher work of man that the vital value of belief has been surer. He has shown the human substance and depth of the great ideas. He has forcibly exemplified the subtlety and individuality of all our higher thought, and has thus given a finer sacredness and purer depth to all sincere faith. And his dramatic interpretation of all belief, if it imply its relative value, implies also its vital quality, so making it in every case a witness to those " unseen " things that are within us all, and on the basis of which alone we can be understood. But this last point needs fuller explanation. Browning's religious poems are dramatic studies. He applies the modern dramatic spirit, and his method as a dramatic thinker, to the study and state- ment of religious ideas. Now, that is to use a principle and a method in the criticism of religious ideas that would have been impossible to art, because unattained by philosophy until the present century. And what does this mean as regards religion 1 It means disinterested study, a free recognition of facts, a free interest in ideas, a free interpretation of both, and of man as expressed through them from the point of view of the spirit. This may seem a large claim, and I am speaking of principles rather than 220 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning^ achievements — of a method, not of its application in every case. It means a Shaksperian breadth and steadiness of design and view in the expression of man's " soul," with a Hegelian power of illustrating the spiritual quality of religious beliefs ; or, to put it in another and it may be simpler way, it is the free criticism of the modern spirit, with a free yet sure hold on the elements and ideas and life of religion. And this will guide us in a study of what I may call the double strain of Browning's poetry, the dramatic and the vital. The dramatist, I have said, may suffer a double wrong. All he says may be taken as his own ; that is a " vulgar error." Nothing he says may be deemed from his own mind ; that is an easy criticism. I cannot hold it of Browning's work. As to the poems now before us, for example. Some of them are clearly invented for the ideas of which they become the dramatic statement. In others we find that recurrence of and insistence on certain ideas which always let us into part of a writer's mind, while about all the work you have an atmosphere of sympathy, and, involved in it, a basis of thought which surely come of the poet's own insight and faith. And first of this group we take is " A Death in the Desert" (vi. no).. This poem was published in 1864. It is among the religious poems what " Rabbi Ben Ezra " is among the life-poems. It is a dramatic romance, clothing a serious study of modern thought in dramatic circumstance and personality, and so Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 22 1 making the expression of the whole life-like, while keeping sincere the statement of thought. The story of the poem is legendary, but the character and ideas of St. John are involved in the poem. The deaths of the apostles are mostly wrapt in obscurity, and legends soon began to arise about them. In that element of myth and wonder the poet found a medium fit for his purpose. How and where St. John died was soon forgotten ; whether he was dead became matter of doubt. By some he was expected to linger " until the Lord came." The poet gives a simple story of St. John's last hours, fitting both the legend and his design. The situation is impressive and touching, fit for a message that is really from " another world " and for future ages. But its study is even more of the age itself and of problems then first raised. It is the close of the great first age of Christianity, when its apostolic tradition was fading, and a new state of things was' coming in its place. St. John was the last of the first age. He saw the century out, and survived all others of the early band. He saw the new time and the new spirit. It is reflected in his letters. The Gospel inspired by him is addressed to it, as his testimony that might remain and speak, when he had passed away. And this is why the poet chose him' as the persona of his dramatic argument, spoken to an age that seemed to require another St. John to state the great Christian argument afresh. And he chose him, too, because he loves the tender profundity, the deep simplicity and ardour, of the apostle of love. 222 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. And what was the new time, with its new condi- tions ? It was the age of speculation and criticism, coming after an age of testimony and faith. The Christian tradition, the doctrine of apostles, had come into contact with Alexandrian and Oriental thought. The simple message, with its great story and great ideas, must now enter into and hold its own against- the modes and systems of man's reason. So long as personal testimony and teaching lasted, Christian faith and doctrine seemed a simple matter, and authority was clear. But even before the close of the first age man's mind had begun its inevitable play upon the tradition and the ideas. It was making its first attempt to understand it, to put it in real relation to the mind and to experience. This was of course done crudely, and even childishly, and through many mistakes and with strange mixtures. The age of the "heretics" had, in fact, come. It was a necessary step in the growth of the Christian faith, the way to the only faith that could live and keep a living place in the world. But it was not seen in that light. It was looked on at first as merely evil. The inner meaning and law of the great process that then began ; the part it plays, and must play, in the life of man ; the service it performs for all ideas that are really spiritual ; — this is the main theme of the poem on the death of St. John. Not, you may think, a poetical subject, but anyhow a subject no serious mind in our age has been able to avoid, and according to the wisdoni of the answer given to it Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 223 must be the worth of religion. For it is the question that rose at the close of the first age come up again most explicitly and completely — whether the Christian story and ideas can make good their place in the world of thought ? and that other question — what is the reason of all the investigation and all the uncer- tainty of the modern mind, and why should the serious faith of men be always liable to such debate ? The poet has a solution of the problem as manly as it is wise and spiritual. And in this poem, poetic in matter and fit in style, he has given his fullest expres- sion to it. The poem opens with account of its own origin. It is said to have been found in a manuscript of Pamphylax of Antioch, who was with St. John when he died. Its owner and editor had it from Xanthus, his wife's uncle, who was also with St. John. The manuscript has been sacredly kept, and is now more precious because all who were with the apostle are gone, as its present owner soon will be. The " manuscript " begins with the circumstances as told by one present. In a time of persecution, and in his extreme age, St. John fled from Ephesus in the care of certain disciples, who have brought him for security to a deep cave in the desert. They have been hiding there for sixty days. St. John is dying, and they wait the event with sacred sorrow. He is in a kind of trance, but they hope he will come back long enough at least for some final message. That they may lose nothing of all that happens, they have 224 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. brought him from the inner cave to a place where they may see his face. There are dim signs of life and thought, and they use means to bring him to consciousness. Their best means only bring smiles, as of one asleep, until a boy in their company thinks of better means than wine. He reads from the Gospel the great words, so much to the point now — " I am the Resurrection and the Life." These words reach and restore him. He sits up, and in the still- ness of the desert he speaks his last words to them, or rather to the world. At first all seems a dream to him — the past real and near ; the present, even his body, far off. But the soul is clear and complete, though kept by a mere thread to the worn-out brain, and with just enough hold on the senses for him to know the " sons " near him, and to know that his companions of the sacred days are all gone. Alone left of all who knew the Lord, it must be for some divine purpose, to give more love and truth to men. Very soon none will be left who can say, " I saw." To say just this, and tell what he " saw," has been his task since the Lord left the world. This has been the burden and use of his writings as of his life — to tell men the way of life, and " urge them, for love's sake and in love's strength, to believe." And as he spoke men believed simply, for he could speak directly of the great days when truth's sea was at the full, and the Word of life was with men. But those simple days passed. The story grew older, the time farther off; men had many questions to ask Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 225 about it. And so he told the story more fully, and more to the point of men's new thoughts, and at length wrote, or had written, the story he had told so many times, and still men believed in the main. In the midst of this labour he fell sick, and seeing death near, and thinking of what should be when the last of all who knew the Lord had gone, he could only trust his truth to God's care for man's good, when, waking out of sleep, he passed into a prophetic trance, in which he saw the days to come, and knew ■ the minds of men, the way in which the Gospel would be regarded and the questions that would be put about it. Men will ask, Was it John really ? and did he say he saw all this that is put in his name .' and can we believe him ? And, seeing this, his soul was filled with desire to meet these questions, and help these men to the truth. Yet how can he ? The light is so near and full to him — nearer now that the body is worn thin and lets the light through at every point. He wrote of the divine life and light, " It was — I saw ; '' but now he would say, " It is — I see." It is the meaning of all the world to him — ^love ever at work in the world, conquering the wrong and healing the pain, and using even sin and death to reach the good and fulfil the glory of life. He sees this, having seen the divine life ; but those far-off men cannot see as he sees. How, then, are they to see the great truth ? Even in his Gospel it will seem only a tale of what was long ago. And yet, if they gaze with love on the life and Q 226 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. death these facts make known, the world of meaning and of light that is in them for all will grow clear. And this is the end for all, however reached. The meaning of life and its use lie in the chance it gives of learning the secret of that divine life, with its gospel of love, and, having gained that truth, sum and soul of all, to keep it, despite all that seems against it — to keep it and live in it. This is the end, he says, and may, so put, seem simple ; but it is not so, for the soul does not learn as the senses do. Physical experiences and truths, once reached, are clear and final. Spiritual truths, because they are spiritual and must enter into the life of men and interpret life, are not of that kind or capable of that proof They must be grasped by the soul and proved through life. And this is good. The life and progress of the body are brief, those of the spirit end- less. The truth it has to grasp is infinite, and so must be its progress towards it. Time's whole pur- pose is to prove the soul. The soul's proof is in its growth in truth. If truth were clear the soul's prowess were impossible. As it is, there is scope, for the search can never cease. Each age has to work out the great questions for itself. Nor is this an accident, still less an evil. It is a great law, and good. To have it otherwise were to evade life's proof, and so miss the very life of the soul. And this explains even St. John's experience. Those who " saw " the Lord would, you may think, hold fast the truth. Yet they did not. They took time to Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 227 grow into it. On their first trial they did not know it, and forsook their Lord. Yet later, in the martyr age, how very clear and brave all were ! He sees now that even in that age faith was passing from the stage of simple trust in " the tradition of the elders," into an effort to understand the truth. As soon as that attempt began the "heretics" arose. He put forth his Gospel to meet the needs of that time. And now that he sees an age of deeper investigation and pro- founder thought, he would meet that need too — ^would meet, if he might, the whole thought of man, that nothing may keep men from the divine truth. And he listens to catch the argument of that later age, and he hears it. Your story comes from a time long past. Such stories we have proved to be mixed with error, and your " wonders " are a trouble to us, not a "proof" at all. Your doctrine is good, and this life is very good, but as it comes to us it may be only one of those myths man's imagination loves to invent and likes to believe in. And what you teach of God is good and commends itself to the mind, but we can't know that the fact is so. Man has always made God in his own image, rising from lower to higher ideas — to will, reason, and love ; but these are man's, and, for aught we can prove, they may be man's only. Your faith is but the last and purest phase of an ancient and fallacious mode of thought — highest in its ideas, but true f how can we ever know that ? Having stated the zvhole thojight of the after-time, he meets it frankly. He goes back on his idea of 228 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. spiritual progress. Man exists to grow, lives only by growth of the soul. The conditions of faith change with the vital conditions. Miracle is first, and may serve then. But once the truth has been planted in the world miracles pass. Truth must then be proved otherwise, and miracles may seem difficulties, not evidences, to man's new thought of the world. God will not overbear man's thought. Enforced belief can never be living faith, and the " argument '' of faith must be morally fit. And what is the grand test of "divine truth"'? Its power to explain life, the nature of man, and the system of God. And this it does. The acknow- ledgment of God in Christ has this final evidence — that it solves man's greatest questions. Finding this so, ought men to fall into that worst of doubts, and doubt life itself, or waste life's brief space in searching about the roots of what commends itself to the soul, and has become life and light within ? No ! In itself it seems deeply true. Can it mattef so much how it arose ? To use such a method is to make a loss even of gain, and out of life to fall back into death. To argue, for instance, since all is might, what need of will, while will is the one source of power really known to man, is to fall back on a lower idea from sheer want of faith in the higher, which is to turn round on man's progress. And so to argue that love is so human that it cannot be divine, and that the legend of divine love has been made by hearts impelled by their own deepest life to think that way Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 229 of God, is to reject the Christ through very, need, and in mere worship, of Him. But now suppose it said that the story as we have it cannot be true, and so involves in doubt the great idea it has made historic. How is this met? By criticism of the records, such as may separate exactly the facts from the legend? No ; but by appeal to the method and ends of man's life. Uncertainty and error are parts of everything human, and on every line progress is made by throwing these out in the growth of knowledge. Our idea of God has been subject to this law. When man asked, What is God .' he became aware of himself and of his place as man. Man's progress since has led him to esteem will, wisdom, and love as highest and best. It were strange if we must conclude that, being all they are to us, they exist in man only, and so think of God as simply power and law. But that is to lose by gain and fall back on a lower idea. Then, if it be said that as men we really cannot know what God is, he answers — That is so, only let us admit that law of our knowledge as a whole, and accept its consequences. Let us admit our ignorance and accept progress as our element and quality in the sphere of the highest truths, even more than in other spheres. Let us see that by the nature of our knowledge, as by the law of our lives, an absolute "revelation" is impossible, though men have vainly wished and affirmed it. Spiritual knowledge has no such certainty, and ought not to have, and if we affect that 230 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. for it we arrest our own progress, and miss both knowledge and life's final harmony and fulness. Having delivered his "burthen," St. John died. They buried him in the evening, and then parted. This is St. John's message, as Browning reads it, holding, you think, as little relation to any historical teaching of St. John as " Saul " to David, and as little possible for the apostle as that for the psalmist. And you ask, In what sense is such a poem " dramatic" 1 Does anything but confusion result from calling it so, or putting such essentially m.odern thought under the mask of the apostle? The poet arranges for the difficulty, if he does not avoid the objection, by making the whole a result of prophetic trance ; not St. John, but the mind and spirit of the apostle as developed — shall I say ? — or as related to and arguing upon very recent thought and criticism, subsequent to Tubingen criticism and scientific philosophy. And so, from Browning's point of view, the question is, whether the spirit and ideas of the poem are in ajiy real relation to the principles of St. John — to his great ideas, as we know them through his writings. I judge distinctly that they are. That being allowed, you may inquire what is gained by such imaginative utterances — for, on any ground, imaginative they are. The poem is, I take it, the best answer to that. Its circumstances add to its force and interest, the poet's mind ■ is stimulated by speaking thus, and his whole argu^ ment — for argument it is — is more fully developed through the medium chosen. For him it is a natural Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 231 form. The matter shapes and vitalizes itself in that way. But, weighing the matter of the argument, let us ask not whether it be historic, but how far it is valid. So far as St. John is concerned, he would necessarily be so full of the matter, of the ideas and facts of the " wonderful life," that he could never get far enough away from them to put them in line for proof The poet appreciates that point, and expresses it forcibly. But does it not prevent the value and narrow the scope of the argument ? You may, of course, look at that either from the dramatic or the didactic point of view ; and in the case of a poem like this it is perhaps not easy to say which has the lead- ing place. Most readers would say that the leading impulse of the poem was interest in the ideas, not in the dramatic situation or in the dramatic relations ; and, if so, that would settle its leading quality. And what are those ideas, and are they valid, or only valid from St. John's point of view ? The poem would be justified if the last point only were true, (i) The spiritual and vital nature of all the higher knowledge and of all real belief about the highest matters. (2) The spiritual nature by consequence of all progress in such things. (3) The necessity of doubt as implied in experience, involved by discipline, and essential to real knowledge. (4) The relations of spiritual convictions to the body of man's other convictions involves progress in the apprehension and in the application of spiritual ideas. (5) The true 232 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. progress in such matters is one of evolution, not revolution, involving a truer apprehension of vital principles, not a denial of them ; it does not, for example, follow because man has seen that his nature and thought are no measure of the world, that they have no relation or value with regard to its interpretation. (6) Spiritual ideals and vital powers are a far greater thing than any critical or historical inquiries. Inquiries as to the origin of these ideas are all very well in place. Their existence and worth, the light and energy they give, their service in life and for its interpretation, are the greater thing. (7) The only, or, at least, the only serviceable and practical " revelation," the only " true faith," is to be found through the spirit of man and the best attain- able knowledge of man. (8) Man, in the fulness and freedom of his nature, is the "end" of life. Know- ledge is not the " end." One great test of " belief" is what serves man and life best. The view of religion that is presented, rather obscurely, I fear, in the poems placed as an "Epi- logue " to " Dramatis Personse," is in fine agreement with the points which have been developed through the preceding poems. There are three poems, and in each religion. is pre- sented from a different standpoint and in a different idea of it. In tlie first David speaks for the Judaic religion and conception of God, the religion of sensuous symbols and localized manifestations. The " dwelling-place " of Jehovah was the temple at Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 233 Jerusalem. There the Lord filled His house, bending porch and bowing pillar by His presence, and filling it with His visible glory. But there, at least, was the joy of worship, the strong sense of a divine greatness and mercy. In the second Renan speaks. What a way the world has travelled between the Hebrew psalmist and hero, and our superfine, critical French man of letters and sentiment ! Here we find religion historical and sensuous, destroyed apparently by reason and criticism, "all gone across the dark." A star shone out of the wide heavens, and came with its light to men ; a face, a form mild and great, grew upon the reverence of men. The Deity seemed knowable and human. But it is so no more. That simple faith is now incredible. The legend takes its place with all other legends, sweet but untrue. The facts were far otherwise. We are alone ; only the infinite vault and the unknowable universe ! Watchers of the twilight, we look up to find the void. We turn to earth only to find, to our dismay, that man is the highest known. Oh, the pity of the discovery ! But truth is truth, though man may shrink from the sceptre and curse the crown. But there is another and purer conception of religion and Deity, another and truer relation of man to God. This the third speaker represents ; and though he speaks of himself very modestly, as " witless alike of will and way divine," he has a very clear view and sense of this big question. His we may term a religion at once natural and spiritual, and this religion is confirmed, if 234 Studies in the Poetrj) of Robert Browning. not given, by life itself. God does not hold the Judaic, specialized relation to men or to a tribe. Nor does His presence depend on any interpretation of history. It is not a matter of the past It is a living and universal fact. The ground and centre of it is the personality and experience of each man. For each life is a real centre of things. The universe for the time works towards and is for that. The fable of the rock about which all the waters played for a time is the fact of man's life. Such is the play and function of Nature about man during man's life. It is the fact, so far clear and solid, that the play of the universe unfolds or confirms this intense self-consciousness. What it means, whither it leads, what it ends in, we may not know ; but so far it is. Through that the universe becomes a grand temple, Nature a great ritual, experience a divine culture, life a high servicej and the Deity a living relation and presence. This idea of personality, its certainty and yet its mystery, is one of the leading ideas of Browning's poetry. It is the basis of his art, we have seen. It is the centre of his philosophy, and the key to his religion. Life derives its meaning from it, all thought is conditioned by it, and it may be that the clue to the future with its developments lies in it. The poem called " Fears and Scruples " well illus- trates the spirit and humanity of Browning's thoughts about these matters. It is put in a kind of parablej and is a simpler and more familiar statement of thoughts about man's faith in God. Can we know that Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 235 the Invisible God is, or what He is ? Can we make the grounds of our belief honestly clear to others ? There are two friends, one greater than the other. They have never met, and the only evidences of the existence and character of the greater friend are letters which bear out his high character as far as they go. The humble friend is full of hope that some day they will meet and his trust have its reward. But the great friend does not come, and makes no clearer declarations of himself Acquaint- ances whisper doubts about his very existence. And some one suggests that perhaps the unknown friend keeps at a distance to put the other's trust to the test. It may be so, yet to friendship's heart it seems sad and strange. And then the poem breaks forth. What if the friend be God, and these be our relations to Him? The bearing is obvious. The little poem touches simply a frequent thought of the poet, the spiritual uses of uncertainty. It also, I think, suggests a criticism of the ready and easy reasons some good people have for the often obscure relations between God and man, and how human analogies hardly explain these or give their rationale. And, in considering Browning's criticism of religious belief, a due place should, I think, be assigned to the pope's speech or meditation in "The Ring and the Book "—to that part of it (vol. iv. pp. 54-84) which contains his " confession of faith." It is again dramatic, but for obvious reasons it touches the inner mind of the poet, as it states not the public but the frank. 236 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. private thought of the pope. And the occasion is one fit for it. The pope has spent a long day in considering the case of Count Guido. He has decided that the man is guilty and ought to die. And now, in the late evening of the day and of his own life, he reviews the story and the merits of the actors in it. He reviews, too, his own judgment and the very grounds of it — those great principles which make it right for him to punish with death the murderer of Pompilia. His tone is grave, modest, and sincere. He is clear as to the story. Life is difficult and man liable to error. Yet use and experience give a man faculty and right to judge of the things of human life. But how of the sphere above man's life, upon our knowledge of which depends so much of the value of our conclusions in this narrow sphere ? The pope feels strange doubts forced on him by this story, and by the life of his own time. Will he face that doubt and dare ask of the light in light's own sphere? He allows that his light is little, but he holds that it is from the sun and he must go by it. Still life to the end is trial, and here he will try his faith. And he begins with his idea of God. Man's knowledge of God is like the eye's vision of the immensity of heaven — a vision of scattered points. God is measureless ; man's mind an atom within the Infinite. Yet God is appreciable by each creature in its own degree, since love of God, which must for each be the end of life, is impossible without some knowledge. Why things are as they are and each of us in his Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 237 place for God, we know not ; the choice is God's. The universe, then, which gives some true knowledge of God, does not give an idea man can regard as complete. It shows power and intelligence in full measure, but not goodness in like degree, and not love. But there is a tale of God which makes the idea complete. That story he finds credible in itself and necessary to his ideal of God. The story as such may not represent the absolute truth of the divine nature, but only a truth relative to man's mind ; but that is the quality of all our knowledge, and so that it be true any way, he is' not exigent in regard to it. For here is its grand use : with its story of love unlimited in self-sacrifice it both completes the idea of God and interprets the world and man's life in it. " The dread machinery of sin and sorrow " can then be understood as giving man scope to learn the perfection of God, and become creative through self-sacrifice. And the difficulties of the great story agree with life's whole quality as " probation,'' and with that necessity of progress which is the very life of man's life. But there is a difficulty which he feels strongly. It is not that men take the present and forget the future, and even reject the great truth. Men must be free to do that. The real difficulty is that those who profess to believe it live as meanly as worldlings. Take the archbishop who thrust Pompilia back to her brutal husband, or the friar who had not the courage to help her, or the nuns who lied about her 238 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. to secure her property. Can such deeds be the proper fruit of " God's death for man " ? Are such effects proportioned to so great a cause? But per- haps the fault is in the nature of man ? No ; love and faith have sprung up profusely in the past, and they spring to-day out of natural powers in men. The impulses of chivalry and love do more than " faith " does. And then he notes sarcastically with what energy his priests spend themselves on trifles of ritual or dogma. And he asks, almost in terror, Is this all that was to be; only this seventeen cen- turies after Christ ; and as whole result of the divine power? Can this we see be "salvation," that "im- measurable change " we had the right to look for when the Maker of the world came to save it ">. This question is forced upon him by the state of things about him, and yet he leaves it feeling sure that God is, and that even this must be consistent with His goodness. He partly sees how it may be. The very weakness in a faith may be the most beautiful power in it, making it a test of, and incentive to, humanity and self-sacrifice, such as its triumph could not be. Then the question takes a new form. There is a world of men quite outside our Christian world, and many of the men of that world have lived better than your Christians are doing. Euripides, for instance, - who taught so steadily, five hundred years before St. Paul, that virtue is the rule of life, waiving "re- wards and loving for love's sake " only. How answer Euripides ? Frankly thus : that faith has been Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 239 partly lost in its own dogmatism and security. It was better at the dawn. It will be better again when the unspiritual certainty has been destroyed. Its ignoble confidence makes it worldly and heroism impossible. But this " torpor of assurance " will be shaken from their faith. The age of rationalism opens when their dogmas will be broken up ; and then faith, which has got to be " faith in the report," may become once more " faith in the thing," when men are constrained to " Correct the portrait by the Hving face, Man's God by God's God in the mind of man. " There are dangers in this process, as he sees by men's lives already. The faith of many will fail, and impulse will have too much power, leading to good in some, to evil in others ; but faith will gain in the end. The argument here is dramatic, fit in its general sense and spirit to the aged pope, though he must have pretty well advanced into the age of reason to have seen things as they are here put. But in spite of the fact that the pope speaks at the close of the seventeenth century, and St. John at the close of the first, they show many resemblances of idea and spirit. In those resemblances we come upon part of the mind of the poet. And thus we return upon the question raised before. Browning has hardly ever spoken in his own person. And when an argument is dramatic, even when the standpoint and line of it may be of the poet's own " invention,'' as in the case 240 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of some of the poems above, you can never take the argument as expressing the whole mind of the poet. At the same time you cannot doubt that you have part, and an important part, of the poet's mind expressed in such poems — great ideas or principles that interpret man's spirit as he sees it. These ideas may be got at, with all due allowance for the dramatic method of the work, through the ideas that recur, and through that medium of thought which the dramatic studies involve ; and the continual use of the dramatic method is itself a clue to his conception of the problems of human life and his criticism of " faith." The subject is one of great interest I am aware of the difficulty of it. It would take a chapter to itself, and require a careful citation and comparison of poems throughout But we have taken so many of the poems on which the study must proceed that it may be allowed us to sum up briefly. It is the more necessary to do this because, as was said, there is a want of clearness about the point itself. Many have taken a line of purely dramatic exposition, and others have treated our poet as Shakspere has been treated — taking all serious opinions in his writings as if they were his own. I can, of course, do no more than state some of those vital ideas that are to be found in or inferred from his work, and that go to indicate his body of tfwught as it bears on what we call religion. And in doing this I shall not attempt an exact arrangement of them, but be content ^\■ith suggestion as both Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 241 most fitting for the matter and congenial to the poet's own mode in putting forth his ideas. Upon the great questions it may be thought that a man's standpoint and balance of qualities are his whole secret ; and so it is, but many of us will still need his help to see the consequences of his greatest ideas. In Browning certainly personality stands in very distinct relation to his leading ideas, spiritual and moral. The key to his position is found in his spiritual passion and intellectual strength, in broad and disinterested contemplation of the world as it is, and his ardent and generous sense of that higher world revealed in and necessary to man's heart and mind. Shelley's sense of the ideal and Hegel's idea of " spirit " seem present in Browning's sense of " the soul." The religious interest and power of his poetry spring from this, in combination with robust realistic humour and acceptance of life. As to the first aspect of his mind in this relation. He sees in men, he knows in himself, he recognizes in the arts men have made to express their minds, a large passion that no art and no work of man has sufficed to express. Religion has interest for him in so far as it conciliates and interprets this " sense of the infinite," this large desire, as much of the intellect as of the emotions. It interests him because of the way in which it ejfplains the depth he feels in man and the world. With Carlyle, he knows not only that a man's faith, " fit to be called such," is the deepest and truest thing within, and that it reaches out to and grasps the R 242 Studies in tJie Poetry of Robert Browning. highest without, but that only as he has such a faith has he a way of understanding himself and life. And so, in a sense for him, religion, " fit to be called such," ib its own evidence Its greatness is its evidence ; it is only true as it is great The ideal must be true if only it be ideal and keep spiritual. And the Christian religion is true to him, not because he is concerned ^\ith the doctrines that have grown about it, but because he accepts the spirit and ideal of Christ In his temper and scope he is Christian. No poet has so finely, with such sympathy and power, interpreted the Christian ideas, their greatness, their humanity, their spiritual depth- No one has better seen what they have done in the life and thought of the past No one more frankly affirms their essential promise. For him, £is for Hegel, the Christian religion is true because it is the religion that has most profoundly read the spirit of man, and presented the purest spiritual ideal, both for duty and for hope. And so, as I read him, this poet is religious and Christian, not because he accepts any single statement of the greatest truths, but because he would keep for Ufa and the soul a free way to the highest ; because he would keep the freedom and depth of man's mind as religion indicates and promotes these — would keep for the spirit of man its full power and scope. You may think these words vague, as words are apt to be, about an aspect and function of religion that has not been much recognized in this country; but, in agreement with his genius and quality of Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 243 thought, Browning has aspects and truths more obvious. I said that no one had better understood the humanity of the Christian ideas ; and that is true, whether we regard its doctrine of God, or the way in which he has grasped the problem of the world and the facts and needs of men's hearts. As a dramatist and thinker, he has the clearest and steadiest perception of the conditions of life and the facts of the world. He takes men and the world as they stand for us all. No vain idealism hides from him the state of things. He refuses bluntly to disguise or evade the real problem by any partial solution of it. And what light has he to throw on the problem of problems, the wrong and pain, and all the evil and sorrow of the ^Vorld } The answer of St. Paul and St. John mainly, though not in their terms or on their grounds — divine love working out human good thi'ough a law of sacrifice as well as retribution. And some- thing very like the great Hegelian idea of the nature and function of evil and pain you will find. Good and evil, truth and error, if not complementary and necessary in the great scheme, certainly work together towards some result not to be reached in its fulness, so far as we can see, without both factors. That is a difficulty for most who either think or feel ; and some of us seek escape in a kindly optimism that reflects our own pity rather than the world's order, and in some way or other many of us hide the facts or forget them. Poets like Browning, and thinkers such as Hegel, meet the facts in full, state the problem in its 244 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. integrity, and seek a principle great enough to give a clue to the world-process. Nor are they afraid of the principle in which, as they suggest, the solution may be found. In the case of Browning it runs all through his work and thought What has been called "the unity of opposites" is both a poetic and a moral principle with him. His form of art and his criticism of, life both go upon it, and the " tantalizing '' quality of his thought, as many find, results from it. It is part of his real idealism. Through it he seeks that " unity of things with each other, and with the spirit of man,'' which art and thought both aim at. Matter-of-fact and critical, more aware of all the world and life present and suggest than concerned with theories of them, he is not, so far as I can see, at all careful to have a " big theory " of his own. I have indicated the foregoing ideas as in his works, but he leaves the impression of holding all but the largest principles lightly. His dramatic expression means this, and reflects it so strongly that some have re- garded the poet's " Agnosticism " as complete. I should rather describe it in his own strange phrase as " ignorance confirmed by knowledge," doubt quali- fied by faith, spiritual Agnosticism, or ignorance tempered by a sense of all that life and the soul suggest — the faith of one who believes in God and the soul, not caring for any " dogma " about either, but affirming as to both the moral substance of the Christian ideas. Browning's Poetry and the Ideal of Religion. 245 He is indeed strongly aware of the limits of know- ledge, but holds that these are not the limits of man. Man is greater than his thought can state, and the facts and powers of man's nature are our largest suggestion of the truth, and must neither be ignored nor explained away because our "theory of the world " for the time being cannot interpret them or even be squared with them. So at this point we see our poet's relation to the final mystery of religion, as it is seen or felt by so many in our time. The supreme test of the power and breadth of minds is found in their ability both to interpret and transcend the thoughts or tendency of their age, to give its truth or vital worth, and yet be clear as to its limits, and never to fall into the fallacy of its finality. The sense of mystery is prominent in faith as in science, and will be for years to come. Browning has it and a Butlerian modesty, but he holds firmly that reason and faith are good as far as they go ; that their light is light and from the Sun. Religion thus becomes the cordial and serious passion and endeavour of man towards all that is highest, in the belief that such effort not only is the proper law of man's nature, and a means of all good to man, but " reveals " the Highest to man, and unites him with it in vital realization. ( 246 ) CHAPTER XII. POEMS ON IMMORTALITY. The question of man's immortality has had a strong interest for the mind of our century. The literature of the subject, from Wordsworth's great " Ode " to the present time, is abundant and beautiful. And even more than the value of these poems is their spirit — their broad and free consideration of the question on its merits and as part of life. Browning's poems of this class are instances of this interest and examples of this spirit. No poet of our time has touched the question so often, or treated it with such power and freshness. You will find it in his work from " Paracelsus " to " Ferishtah," and whether love or art or life be its theme, he leads up to its bearing on this matter. The poet's approach and aim on this theme have been so far defined, but it may be well to make still clearer our standpoint and purpose in our study of these poems. Let me say, then, that I have no wish to put this poetry forward as a plea, and still less to use it as a "polemic" on the grave and difficult Poems on Immortality. 247 question of human immortality. My main purpose is apart from any formal doctrine or dogmatic position as to a " future life." My object is to make a free study of those parts and ideas of this poetry which bear on the question in its larger and essential mean- ing. The words often used to state the question and the issues raised are apt to carry meanings poorer than this poet's thought and narrower than his aim. It is a question of man's spiritual quality and scope. It is study of literature and matter of life that con- cern us — the substance, outlook, and ideas of this poetry as they bear upon a true and sufficient con- ception of the life of man. Now, what are t/ie grounds and what is the scope of the poets interest in this question that has had so much interest for him } It will make that question and the significance of Browning's work upon it clearer if we recall certain principles of art. And first, art, like philosophy, must be deeply human. Made by and for man, it must find its centre and deeper ground in man's mind and experience. It must interpret life and the world from man's point of view. A purely objective art, I have said, is as impossible as a purely physical philosophy. Thought and imagination must work from the same standpoint, with the same scope, in this regard. In other words; the higher problem of art is the problem of thought as stated by Hegel — to reconcile " nature " and " spirit," to interpret both spiritually. Humanity and spirituality, then, we require in the 248 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. art and in the thought that shall express our sense of things, our thought of ourselves. More than ever we are aware of an outer and an inner world. At the dawn of modern culture, and in revolt from a partial and crude inwardness, men sought the outward scope and joy, and this has been emphasized by the growth of the world and of knowledge ever since. But a simple outwardness, though possible as a reaction at the Renaissance, and though it has seemed, for reasons indicated, possible to many since, is not really possible to the modern spirit. The growth of thought, as well as the Christian " conscience,'' stands in the way of that. Whether we can, as some think, reach a truer ideal and a fuller interpretation of life or not, it is certain we can only now do so as we front the whole nature of man. Our ideal and interpretation must satisfy all man has become. And Brownings art stands the test of such principles:. The mere fact that he has dealt with the question at present before us as he has done, proves that he has the required scope. More fully than any poet of our time, he has presented this question as a true part of his study of man, and it is there we come on the ground of his interest in it. It is part of his vital dramatic work. His interest is in all the facts of thought or passion, of belief or desire, that belong to the matter in the first place. Then, not resting on the facts, and certainly not in any opinions about them, both as poet and thinker he seeks out what they may really tell of man's nature. Poems on Immortality. 249 It is because he has taken man for his theme and man's soul for his field that he deals with these beliefs and desires. He comes to them as a dramatic thinker, that through them he may know man, and especially that he may, if possible, throw light on that greatest of all questions — the meaning and scope of the soul itself This is the largest and most significant aspect of the question in Browning's poetry as I read it, and it is perhaps the deepest question present in his poetry as a whole. The whole of his work tends to that question. Its depth and suggestiveness spring from his grasp of that question, from his sense of its large meaning, from his power of placing his facts against it as a background, or in relation to it as a clue to what men think and seek and are. His studies of character, his studies of passion, as well as his studies of belief, show this—" Sordello," " Luria," " Easter Day ; " and so do his studies of life in the " Grammarian " and " Rabbi Ben Ezra," and his studies of art in " Abt Vogler." Thus the " beliefs " of men, so trivial to some wise people, have immense interest for him — as facts and products, and so revelations of the soul. And it is at this point, and in relation to this question, that we see more fully the reason for that profound interest in Christian ideas of which I spoke. He finds there the deepest and highest idea of man. Christianity has been the creator of the spirit. The Christian faith and the Christian centuries have developed the greatest of spiritual promises and ideas 250 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. — emotions and ideas that have deepened and enriched the consciousness of man, so as to have penetrated all art and all thought with its own quality. And Browning has realized that great idea as perhaps no poet has done since Dante. His work rests upon it And what is the meaning of this? Does it mean that, like Dante, the j)oet accepts this idea as a definite and final solution of the mjstery of the soul ? So far as his poetry is concerned, I would not put it so. But the grand use of the idea in his art and in his dramatic study of man is the way in which it reads for him the meaning and explains the powers of human nature. The facts and problems of the soul and of life are lightened by such a principle; and if the moral facts of the world do not actually warrant such a faith, these facts are not only more tolerable, they are more intelligible on such a basis. And man's development has made this feiith not less, but in some great sense even more necessarj-. Christianity not only planted in the general heart the idea of " eternal life," but an idea of man and an ideal of life which made that great idea of " eternal life " credible. And the growth of man's spirit and thought has only given it fiiller meaning. The things men desire and their conception of the universe are verj- different from what they were, but the passion and scope of the modem mind are really greater and more exigent than ever, as " Hamlet " and " Faust," as Goethe no less than Carlyle, shows. And Browning, £is our dramatist of the soul, present- Poems on Immortality. 251 ing its facts and seeking for some symbol of its secrets, has expressed this greatly — finding in Christian ideas a principle of interpretation. Turning to the poems to find what the poet has to give on his theme, you will find two kinds of poems bearing upon it — those in which it is touched only, and those in which it is the chief or only subject. We can but glance at the first class, though some of them throw much light on our theme. ' In " Paracelsus '' we have a rich and capable mind to a great extent wasted, as regards this life. He learns wisdom, as too many have done, when the time and power to use it are gone. Can that, then, be " attainment" — to see the light of life, and fade into a darkness on which nor sunlight nor starlight will ever break ? No ! The gains of life, which are its end and use, are not scattered on barren fields of death. They belong to the soul and live with it, and the soul's grasp of and care for them is its pledge of " life to come." The bearing of "Sordello^' is the same. The poet's career is a " failure," and yet the light in his eyes is of " triumph." True, in his narrow way, to the "soul," he found at length its freedom and hope. And in both poems you get a strong sense of the way in which the problems of conscience and culture run out beyond this life. " Saul " is full of the idea that what rouses man to the height of power and joy must be true. The "Grammarian's" passion for knowledge is from the 252 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. mind's own ideal, and tells more truly than secular opportunity the orbit of the soul. And in the " Love Poems," as interpreting that passion and union of souls, we find an idea that has puzzled some, but boldly expresses what the soul in its power seems to seek — not one life, but a series of lives rising through much experience ever nearer the soul's ideal. When we come to the poems in which our theme is more expressly found, we have two groups to be considered. First, three poems in which it is part of the matter or design of the poem ; then two in which it is the main purport and almost sole matter. In the first group are " Cleon," " Rabbi Ben Ezra," and the " Epistle of Karshish ; " in the second, " Easter Day " and " La Saisiaz." There is other matter in " Cleon." It is a dramatic study of later Greek life and thought, expressive in that respect, with style and feeling finely adapted to its theme ; but the point it leads up to is the contrast between the attainment of Greek culture and the promise and power of Christianity on the ground of the spirit. The results of Greek life are shown, its love of wisdom and beauty, its care for art, its love of pleasure, its ideal of earthly success and satisfaction, its final decay and despair. The form of the poem is that of a letter from Cleon, poet, artist, and thinker, to Protus, the king. Protus had sent the poet princely gifts, and a letter asking him how he faced death, which drew on for both. Protus thought that Cleon, having works to Poems on Immortality. 253 leave behind him, must meet the close better than he could. What thinks Cleon ? He will tell his thought and feeling fully. And what is it ? A sense of dis- couragement, non-fulfilment, and fear of death. And how is this for the man who gathers up and perfects in himself the powers and results of Greek culture ? He gives the king the reason of it. He has made the works Protus has heard of, and is master of the arts. He can do both more and less than the men of the earlier days. He has greater variety ; they had greater force. And it is clear that both work and life were more to them than they are to Cleon. And what is the secret of the evil .' It is found, he says, in self-consciousness and man's power of reflection. For thus man not only became aware of himself and of the joy he had, but of a world of capability for joy that he could not gratify. With the birth of self- conscious thought the desire of man grew indefinitely, while the power of enjoyment was reduced by this very growth. The soul became the life, and yet without the power to find satisfaction. The animal life was limited, and so perfect in its way. The soul, freed from those limits, becomes painfully aware of its own limited powers. " Life's inadequate to joy : A man can use but a man's joy, while he sees God's. We see the wider but to sigh the more ; Most progress is most failure." He agrees with the king. But the king would say, Surely there is joy in making these works and leaving 254 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. them to men, and living in them after death ? Not so, writes Cleon. That after-Hfe of the worker in his work and through his influence is a shadowy thing. The man is gone, though the work remains. And, in truth, the poet is worse and suffers more than other men ; for, with larger power and keener desire, he often gets less of life than they, and he is more aware of its limits and defects. It is so horrible that from a sheer sense of need he almost dares imagine there must be another life, where this infinite passion and the pain of unsatisfied hearts should give place to satisfaction and a due balance of desire and capability. And he takes the image of the butterfly as a possible suggestion of what may be. But no ; since it has not been revealed it is not possible, for were it so Zeus must have told us. In this case all that can be done is to make the most of life while it lasts — to "live long and die happy," glad for what has been. And he ends with a sneer at Paul, regarding whom Protus had made inquiry. He knows nothing of him except that he is a barbarian Jew, and not at all likely to have the grand secret of that other life, of which Protus wished above all things to know. That is all Cleon can see of it. It is the "joy- hunger," the sense of contradiction between the large desire and the limited life of man, that urges him to a surmise, not to a hope, of an after-life. Greek, is it, though not of the best Greek thought, and selfish—**' issue of a philosophy whose worst charge against life Poems on Immortality. 257 it shall be filled and satisfied — because the order of life is finally in its favour ? The force of the special " argument " of Ben Ezra will, of course, depend on the strenuousness and vigour of the moral nature — on the freshness and zeal of the soul, so to speak ; but if the order of things be moral, •the argument is good. In t^e next poem I take the matter is approached from quite another point of view. In " Cleon " wre see the futility of longing based on the lower view of life. Cleon did not dare to hope. And yet at that very time there were hearfs quick and large with this very hope. It is matter of history that Christianity gave an immense impulse to the idea and faith of a life beyond life and after death. This new and vivid faith is illustrated in certain Gospel stories — stories of men raised from the dead. The story of Lazarus as given in the Gospel of St. John is the most detailed and striking of these. Browning had read and dwelt on that story, was fascinated and interested, as thinker and poet, in certain aspects of it, and his impressions are recorded in the " Epistle of Karshish." Like " Cleon," it is a dramatic study, as well as a study of our present theme ; I take it only in the latter sense. Karshish is an Arab physician, who has come into Palestine to gather facts bearing on his researches and pursuits. He writes an account of what he gathers to Abib, his master in the medical art. He has in his wanderings come to Bethany and found Lazarus, and he gives an account of this strange case. s 25 8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. This man says he was dead — dead four days; was brought back to life by a certain Nazarene, a physician, of course, and he has since lived for many years in the most perfect health. Dead he could not have been, of course. It was a long trance — a case of epilepsy — so complete that it has led to a " mania." Still, that physician must have had strange powers to heal so completely. And the man really looks and lives as if he had been dead — had seen some great life beyond the bourne of death, and had come back with its ineffaceable impression upon him. He is dreamy, withdrawn, fantastical, with hidden fountains of light and passion within, and strangest ways of taking common things. Of course the whole case is only a curious case of madness, and Karshish apologizes for making so much of it, and turns from it to certain trivial discoveries of a professional sort, as much more important for his master. Still he is fascinated — is uncertain as to the adequacy of his explanation ; and that Nazarene who wrought the cure must have been himself an uncommon man and a great physician, not only working cures like this, but speaking strange things — strange new things about God and the divine love. And we must admit that the case would have been strangely interesting, if Lazarus could have been met nearly forty years after the event recorded by St John. But it is not the historical case the poet is set upon ; that merely puts his mind in motion on his problem, and gives him a setting for it. Poems on Immortality. 259 And the problem is this. If a man should die, and rise again and return to the uses and Hmits of earth for years, what would be the effect of it on the man and on his life ? It would destroy his moral balance and his interest in life ; it would incapacitate him for action, for judgments really fit and practical. Most events and things would seem so little, and he would so far have lost that sense of proportion among things, that wise action would be impossible. The things of the soul itself would alone seem important. Tell a man, who had gone through such an experience and reached the conviction it would give him, that his child was dying, and j'our words would not move him ; but let him see the least signs of evil in the child, and he would be strangely moved. He must, in fact, live with so strong and vivid a sense of the unseen universe and the final relation of things to that, that he would judge and act, not with reference to the sphere he was living in, but with reference to the invisible — a mode of action that could only perplex his conduct with reference to earthly duty.. His impulses and principles belong to the unseen, his tasks and actions to the seen. And his submission to the Divine Will has a quality of awe and prostration. He does not even care to proclaini his faith learned from the Nazarene, in spite of the strange importance it has for him, for he has seen how truth must prevail. And yet he is not cold or apathetic ; on the contrary, he is kind and loving — cares very gently even for the birds and the flowers. And he is indignant at the 26o Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. folly and sin of men, as if he saw its madness from some height far above our common life. The leading idea here is an idea most characteristic of Browning, and to which he recurs, perhaps, more frequently than any other ; and the aspect of it that is found in this poem is nowhere put so clearly. A man who had come back from the dead would be out of place in life. The mistake of Sordello would be a necessity for one in the position of Lazarus. For a wise and proportioned conduct of this life, we must not be too conscious of the spirit and its ideals. Certainty about a life to come, and " sight " of that life, would put most things in this life out of place, and render duty impossible. The position in which we actually find ourselves is as necessary to the uses of life, as it is to the moral value of faith. There is here a truth many of us cover over by a host of unreal words affecting a certainty about that " unseen world" such as we cannot honestly have, such as would not be good for us if we were in earnest about things.. Let us understand the conditions and hmits of life ; let us be sincere and wise ; let us live and judge by the best standard of earthly duty, and not affect impossible elevations. But this, you may think, is the principle of Blougram, and agrees with his worldly realism. It is to avoid the mistake of Sordello, and the Grammarian, and Lazarus, but only by keep- ing hold of this life firmly, and letting the next take thought for the things of itself But that is to make tiie positions alternative and choose the lower. And: Poems on Immortality. 261 that is not Browning's suggestion, nor is it the temper and bearing of his thought. We must live with a due regard for both sides of life — for the ideal and universal as for the real and temporal, for the seen as for the unseen ; only understanding that the real is the actual and our sphere of duty, and that, though the true unseen is the eternal, we can but dimly apprehend and partially use such truths. We now come to the first of the poems in which our present theme is the one theme, " Easter Day." As its title implies, it is a study of that Christian idea and hope of which Easter is the symbol and the festival — a study of that idea and hope in its relation to life and the soul. That conception of life which makes the faith of man's immortality credible, and the after-life natural, is tested within the soul itself, upon its principles and passions. The soul is set in action, and it is dramatically shown how the spirituality and greatness of the mind and heart affirm and require the scope of such a faith ; or, if the dramatic point of view be more rigidly regarded, the vital process of the Christian ideal is presented within this particular soul. The difficulty and greatness of the ideal are most forcibly shown, and the fact that, however difficult of application in life, it is the only ideal that satisfies certain souls, and is involved in all their desires and thoughts. In harmony with this, the poem opens with the moral question, the depth of which it is to show, "How hard it is to be a Christian." And from that point a 262 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. dramatic argument starts as between two minds — one representing reason and worldliness ; the other, faith and spiritual earnestness. And it is the believer who in this case feels the difficulty, because the difficulty is not a difficulty about Christian writings or beliefs, but the vital one of being really a Christian. The difficulty, in fact, is not intellectual ; it is moral — the difficulty of realizing the idea honestly in life. And if it be said that this is a matter of course, since every task and purpose has a degree of difficulty, if you apply yourself earnestly to its full accomplish- ment, he replies that there is something special in this — something that makes it harder than is the case with other aims. It is higher and greater, shall we say, and for that reason harder .'' It is great and high, but that is not really the heart and ground of its difficulty. Perhaps it is, then, that God fixed it so — made it harder than other duties? That is a mere " perhaps,'' and explains nothing ; only the fact is clear, whatever its cause — the duty is hard, and its hardness increases as you go on, and become more fully aware, not simply of the greatness of the duty and of its relation to life, but of its proper grounds ; its want of that absoluteness which so many suppose it to have. But this looks like putting the matter the wrong way. The difficulty, surely, is to really believe ; only believe, and you can do what else you are re- quired to do. Let a man be sure that it is God's will about him he should be a Christian, and that this command is enforced by an eternity of joy or Poems on Immortality. 263 pain, and he will have motive enough for obedience, will he not ? This looks a plain issue and a simple case. But the case is not, and cannot be, like that. It is true enough, from one point of view, that " could we joint this flexile, finite life once tight into the fixed and infinite life," it were easy to spurn the earthly life ; only the essential choice cannot be made so. A choice made on such cogent reasons would leave the heart unspiritual, and would destroy the discipline and the worth of life. And anyhow you can't do that. We have not this positive knowledge and certainty. We have only faith and moral evidence, and, seeing that so much of life goes by that kind of evidence, and so many things take their value from it, can't we take the will of God and our higher obligations on the same grounds ? Yet surely, though this kind of " faith" may be fit for man's ways and affairs, it can hardly be the method of God. He should go on more exact laws. But this, again, is only a guess in the dark, and is even wide of the facts. For look at the world, in which you have the works and method of God, and what do you see there? Everything so plain and certain .' Can you build your conclusions into so perfect an order ? Or are the greatest points there too often obscure } They are. And what then ? Here our man of plain sense and commonplace faith is not very sure of his ground. A scientific faith is " absurd," he allows, for it would defeat faith's end ; but he must at least have a rational, that is, a clear probability. On the strength of that 264 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. he could do all that is required. Men often, on very slight motives, practically " renounce the world." One man devotes his life to completing his list of Cole- optera, and another surrenders all objects in life besides that he may have for his owrn "a grignon with the regent's crest." Probability will do, then ; and all that is required is to renounce the world in the sense you imply ? In that case the matter seems to have become easy. If you wish to be a Christian you can find '' evidences" of the kind you desire, no doubt — evidences to con- firm what you wish. You look for the " external '' sort, and find, say, a mummy scrap proving Moses really lived, or you explain the story of Jonah and the whale ; or you seek the " internal " sort, and find the human heart made exactly for the creed you incline to. Only what then ? How does this kelp you to the Christian temper and ideal? You believe, what is called belief, but has your belief given you any new moral power ? Are you less worldly for it ? Can you now in heart and will give up the world ? You might, perhaps, if the crude, impulsive way of asceti- cism were the way to do it ; if it could be done once for all, and under some excitement. But you won't do that ; you'll find arguments ready for an easier way. You'll make it a piety to enjoy the good things, and go on in the old way of the world, only with gratitude to God for His gifts. But can that be all f and how, if it be, are we to understand the tremendous facts of Christianity- as Poems on Immortality. 265 they are usually understood and " received " ? Did all, that is said to have happened, happen only to give a reason for so much temperance and restraint as should make pleasure safer in the end — life continuing on the same level, and seeking at heart the same ends ? Can that be a reasonable view of the great history — a result proportioned to it ? It cannot be. And besides, there are certain, words that put other eommands very plainly on " Christians." You will now say, " Take the safe side and deny yourself. It has been done so often that it can't be very hard, and there seems reason to do it." " Yes," says Faith, in all this, seeming to turn upon shallow and commonplace religion, that finds- these precepts of Renunciation easy because none of its words are realized — " yes, it is very well to say that ; but how if, after all, death be the end, and we throw life away upon a vain hope .'' It is easy to give up if the gain be clear or your faith strong, but how different when neither is the fact ! Your friend of the coleoptera gave up — his way of giving up ; but he had his beetles, and for him that seemed much. How if I should have only death — the shadow ? " And what is the true reply to that, both frank and brave ? This only— that the gain cannot be proved ; but, whatever happen, we have " saved the soul " by ehoosing the higher part, as such, and on its own grounds. Now,, to make such a choice must be hard, and the difficulty does not lie in belief, but in the ideal obligatioH) of the Christian life; 266 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Thus we have returned upon the point at which our argument began, and now the friend who would like to make a middling "best of both worlds" is made uneasy by such thoughts, though he does not see how to meet them, and he complains. What is the good of making the matter so hard ? Why not leave him his " hopes " and his easy view of life ? " Because," answers the earnest man, " ' blind ' hopes may be false and are hurtful. They may spice the meal of life and hide its bitter close." But no faith with any depth or truth in it can consent to be used that way, and no man with any sincerity could be put off on that issue. And then, to make clear that he means all he says, and has felt in his own mind its full force, he relates an experience and crisis of his own life, so vivid that it seemed a thing outside him — an experience in which the depth and nature of life's choice were disclosed to him with startling power. And it is here you find the dramatic situation of the poem. Two friends are together one Easter Eve. One of them is in the habit of watching through the Easter night, pondering the meaning of its story and hope ; and he does this because of a strange and solemn thing that happened to him just three years ago. He was crossing the common that night, think- ing of the Easter-tide and its meaning, and he asked himself gravely the question as to what that story meant for him, what its faith really was to him ; whether, in simple, inward truth, it was anything at all. Poems on Immortality. 267 This kind of directness and honesty, he says, had in other things always been his habit ; even as a child he would know the fact, for good or ill. And as he examined himself, common sense, which looks to the outsides and customs, and has but a low ideal, encouraged him to take a flattering view of the case. He made progress on the whole, and he believed in the main. Of course his progress was not rapid, and with his knowledge there were many things he couldn't be sure about it. But he'll reach the port some day, and that is enough. But he insisted against the Voice, is it enough, this kind of Christianity, that at the most means so. little.^ and, witli his habit of seeking out the facts, he wishes it were clear. It will be clear some day. Some final Easter morn, perhaps, will bring in the great judgment, in which he affects to believe, and prove that this shallow dream has been folly and loss, never life at all. This is said or thought in a half-mocking way, but the word " loss," with its note of threatening, provokes him, and, with the remark that such talk is rather for children than for men, he throws back his head in a mood to give up the matter. But the " debate " was only beginning. As he threw back his head with a light laugh, the sky seemed suddenly to become one blaze of fire, night was gone and all the earth lit up, and the end of the world seemed to have come, and that great judgment, that a minute ago had seemed so far away as not to concern him. The sense of this burned all darkness from his soul too. Here was tlie clear light he had 268 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. affected to seek, disclosing the inmost fact. He saw his choice ; he knew himself ; he felt and under- stood his essential worldliness. He had reasons for his choice, and was very ready with them. The world was so good, so fair, so near. He could not, in so short a life, give it up — at least, not wholly. That was too hard ; and he was going to give up some day, and the command was not so plain or so exacting. Surely at worst this cannot be so great a sin, or merit a hell as its punishment. Then the sky was ablaze again, and he heard a Voice that said, " Life is done, and thou art judged ; " after that, all looked as it had used to look. He could not make it out. The world gone, yet here ; judgment past, and eternity begun, and yet all things as in other days. It must be a horrid dream. He tried to shake it off, and was regaining quiet, when the Voice spoke again beside him, and he saw now a Figure that seemed the Angel of the Judgment — sombre and vast, and its tone one of profound decision and stern pity. He fell at its feet, and heard the Voice declare the state of the case and the nature of judgment. It declared the intense individuality of judgment, and how judgment consists in the revelation of the soul to itself, and in giving it the fruits of its own choice. The shows of life are gone ; God and the soul are alone. The test of man in this life arose from its mixed character. They chose well who chose the spirit because they knew it the higher. While they who used the spirit only to. put a starry heaven, far Poems on Immortality. 269 over earth, to give life zest and finish, were earthly, not spiritual. So he did. He chose the world ; he has the world. It is his to glut his sense upon it. This was his punishment. He did not feel it so at first. He was glad to have the world and all its treasures. But the austere Voice was scornful. So soon and so easily satisfied ! The world you take for so much is but one rose out of the summer's wealth of God's infinity, thrown you out of the heaven from which you have shut yourself by its choice. You have the world indeed, but unvisited by any gleams or depths of the spirit you despised. Yet all the world ! He thinks there is enough there for man — enough in its beauty and wisdom and good. But the Voice again. The world is all, and more, than you know ; but the whole of it is only a little part of God's fulness. All the beauty of this world is but the promise of the infinite beauty and good that are God. They who choose this world take the part and miss the Whole. And the world has no substance or meaning as you take it. And that thought of meaning and beauty beyond the shows of sense touched the springs of the spirit within. His trust was gone from mere natural things. But there was art, where beauty takes meaning from . the mind and passion of man. He will take art, and that will give joy and permanence to nature and to man, Greek sculpture and Italy's painting. But the deeper thought awoke again — that far searching of the soul of which the Voice is the organ ; 2/0 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and the Voice spoke. Take art ; but art itself is the finest witness to a beauty greater than art ever expressed. Art seizes moments. The whole is felt, but never grasped. The very spirit of art is an effort towards an ideal never reached. His best work disappoints the artist himself. And he is greater than his work. His mind is unexhausted, and in good part unex- pressed through his work. Such spirits are our amplest evidence of the things that remain beyond. Here they have enough only for one stage. By use and mastery, and by the soul itself, they reach on to the glory of that fuller revelation— when, the world being broken up, eternity shall let in upon them the divine fulness. And so art involves the soul. There is still thought and science left — the finer sense of things. He will take mind and all its know- ledge. That will break his bonds and give meaning and reality to his world yet. But even as he spoke he had a sense of illusion in it, now that the end has come and earth is all. Science needs a goal, and its pursuit is great part of its pleasure ; and besides, in- telligence, as much as art, implies the unseen whole. The quest of truth carries us to a " world of spirit," and its ideal is meaningless if that '' world " have no reality. The best minds in their best hours have a sense of " gleams " that come from a sun, and " sting with hunger for the fuller light." With a kind of despair, he now chooses love. But even in doing so he feels that love has lost its sub- stance if earth be all. Men and women are but Poems on Immortality. 271 masks, and life a show, if there be no soul in them. And how does the Voice beside him take this final choice ? It reminds him severely how late his choice of love is ; how he had missed the meaning of the world's good — the love of God in it — and had ignored the highest revelation of love — the love of God in Christ — as an incredible story or a tale of man's fancy. Nor does he know yet that love above all must be divine and spiritual. His devices are now spent, and earth has failed him. The soul has tested itself upon its choice, and has proved its vanity. To have all the world and be shut within it is despair and death for the soul. Better far the old life, with its sorrows and hindrances. Best of all the old life, with its trials and duties and spiritual horizons. So he throws himself on God's mercy and prays to have the " old life again, if only he may go on and on, hoping some eve to reach the better land." The prayer was granted, and the poem closes with some hints of how it all happened — a vision the speaker had, or a dream that passed through his mind as he thought over these things intensely that night three years ago. It was a new birth for him, anyhow, and the truth then found remains a spring of higher life to him every way. And what is that truth ? The close of the poem suggests the speaker's gratitude for a life that tests the soul and keeps it from becoming earthly, and he speaks as if his own temper and ideal were somewhat timid and narrow. But the poem itself suggests other 272 ^' Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and broader truths, some of them very forcibly. The essential spirituality of all the higher things in the life and work of man seems to involve " another life." Man's use and enjoyment of this world depend on its not being final. Once shut a man within this world, and he would discover that the limitation was fatal to his proper life here ; while man's art and science, his poetry and philosophy, stretch inward and upward to a perfection and a truth that experience does not contain and yet suggests. Man has, in fact, become aware of the spiritual infinite. To restrict him within the limits of a worldly choice or an earthly hope, is to embark on a career doomed to failure and futility. It is no more possible to rest in the lower choice now that the higher has been revealed. To prefer the higher as such, to guide life in the spirit and by the law of such preference, is not only duty but well-being. It is no exterior command only ; it is a law of life. But the poem and its train of thought may be looked at from another point of sight. Many people would like another life to follow this who do not see or care what that means as to man's nature, and who have no care for what it means in regard to duty. They think of "going on" without seeing that the power to go on must rest on greatness, and must imply a higher idea of life altogether than many use. Only as man has powers fitted for eternity can he expect eternal life, and if he have the powers of an endless life, his ideal of life now must be of the spirit. Poems on Imfnortality. Looking at the matter from this point of view, we may put it thus : that the divine and the infinite belong to man, not as they are revealed to him, but as they are revealed in him ; and only as they are ■revealed within him can man hope for or truly desire the spiritual future of the Christian faith. And from this standpoint may we not describe this poem as an experiment of the soul on its own highest beliefs to ■ascertain the inner principle on which they must rest to be true, and to see how they stand in relation to the life of man in this world ? And how does this bear on the question with which we found the poem open ? That question we found to be, not one about belief and the evidences of the "Resurrection" — the question that would have been certain to arise in many minds at such a time — but the question as to the Christian ideal and its practicability in such a life as man's. Where is its difficulty ? In its quality, as in its greatness, and in the " mixed quality " of man's present life. And how is that question solved in the poem.' The speaker takes a high tone, and has a fine scorn for com- promise ; but he appears, as I said, to fall himself into a narrow idea of matters at the close. His own "trial" lies towards " worldliness," and he hopes yet to "escape" with care. But that is not Browning's idea ; and though it has been the temper of many, it is not an ideal. Renunciation is the method of that ; but fenunciation is not our highest word, though it may often be our wisest rule in given cases. It is T •^74 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. certainly not Browning's temper or ideal, and so far as it is the proper result of Christian ideas, and particularly of the Christian doctrine of a future and purely spiritual life, he would differ from it. In this aspect " Easter Day " may be regarded as a study of a type that he has only a partial sympathy with — a sympathy with the earnestness and the spirituality and the resolve to take the higher side, but not with the notion that one must watch for very life to " escape " the world. His own idea is more nearly expressed in the words of the Voice (p. 200) than in the closing words of the poem — " A world of spirit as of sense Was plain to him, yet not too plain, Which he could traverse, not remain A guest in." But this and other points in the general theme we shall find in " La Saisiaz." This poem has unique interest in its class, and among his works even. It is one of a small number of personal poems, and its subject is taken directly at a later point of the poet's life. It belongs to 1877, and was written because of an event that touched the poet deeply in September of that year. The poet, his sister, and a friend. Miss Smith of Liverpool, the "A. E. S." of the dedication, had gone for an autumn holiday to La Saisiaz, a quiet little place on the mountains near Geneva, and after some bright weeks there Miss Smith died very suddenly. In this way arose the old question, old as life, yet new on every fresh occasion that impresses Poems on Immortality. 275 the facts of life and discloses the pathos and strange- ness of death. The poem opens with account of the place, and circumstances which gave rise to it. The mountain .scenery, the pleasures of climbing, the society, the talk of the evening, and then the sudden shadow that fell with the morning. Looking for his friend by appointment, he found her dead, " captured in death's cold for ever." They buried her in a place protected by Saleve, where not even the village sports encroached upon the silence, and there she has slept, through two days. The poet is leaving next day, finding the place painful now ; but before leaving he has climbed Saleve again, as they meant doing together. As he looks on the hills alone, and thinks of the quiet grave- yard and the strange distance now between him and his friend, the question springs up, Where is that friend ? To that question he would dare seek a true answer. They had talked of that question, of " the soul and a future life," only a week ago, with a mild, remote interest. What point the question has now, for this is now its form ! Did that friend, so dear and true, end and pass away when she died, a tribute only to the flowers and the moss, her very memory to fade with the friends who knew her, and every trace of her earnest spirit to be as if she had never been ? and this all the comfort, that others live and reach the fuller life, though we and all who shared life with us are dead and gone? The heart rebels against such a doctrine ; but what of that ? The question is. What is 276 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. the fact ? What may be justly held and honestly believed about it ? So he proceeds to the question in that spirit. He sees these facts — the conscious mind and the universe exist, the soul and God. How and whence they are, he does not know. That they are, he knows. He finds himself in a stream whose source and end are equally hid from him. He is, then ; will he continue .' He tries the usual arguments in answer — God's good- ness, uses of the belief, human hopes. But with our experience the matter is not made clear that way. He falls back on our ignorance and the narrowness of our experience, a point and moment in an endless series. We are, but what we are is unknown to us. We know what pains or pleases us — so much and no more. But this can only give you private judgment? That is all. " Knowledge stands on my experience ; all outside is surmise " only. This ground clear, he states his judgment. He can't understand this world as a final divine scheme ; as a place where man is in process of training through good and ill, through pain and grief, it is more intelligible. But does it serve this end so plainly .' He sees that death gives zest to life, and that through pain men learn sympathy, and that good and ill work together for man's develop- ment ; but the process, as this world is made, can't be right, " If the harsh throes of the prelude die not off into the swell of that perfect piece they stino' one to become a strain for." But even then, with so much sorrow and wrong in the world, the question is forced Poems on Immortality. 277 upon him — Was this the only way op^n ? If it be of necessity, he will try to bear it ; but if it be of Divine Will, from a Cause all-good, wise, and powerful, then he would wish to see far better the reason and good of it to make it square with such an idea of God. In fact, with the world as it is, and man's life in it, and man's ijiind, he can only " acquiesce " if there be another life, and the " soul may carry high through death her cup unspilled," all life's gains for further use and fuller life. This is his judgment. But he does not hope to prove. that it is the solution of life's riddles, and a consolation for all the sorrows of men. He has no wish to play the prophet's or the critic's part ; only, with the thousand failures of life in view, he finds experience tolerable on that hypothesis. And then the thought of his friend recurs, and the cry of the heart against death — the longing for renewal of friendship. But this is sentiment, he says, and all his argument so far may seem " surmise prepared to mutter hope, but also fear." He would keep strictly by the facts. So ^^ tests the question another way — by the very law and first principles of man's soul and conscience. He has been looking at it in the light of the moral inadequacy of life, and in the light of man's faith in God ; he will now test the belief in an after- life by its fitness for man's conscience and for the conduct of this life. Upon this solid ground he argues the question out as between fancy and reason, the soul standing arbiter between the two to judge of the whole case. I condense and arrange the debate 278 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. between the two thus. You say there is another life, hkely, by a law of progress we see even in this world, to be a better ; then why prolong this one ? What good does it serve to go on with this twilight, if we may pass into the day ? We do so, it is said, by a divine order which we break through at our peril — hell for those who break, and heaven for those who keep, the great command. But even if that command make us wait, it cannot make us live ; and if we know that life is yonder, not here, we cannot really throw our- selves with zeal into this temporary life. But may we not do so if this brief life take infinite value from its relation to that greater life, if it prepare for that life, and if that life be fixed by the decisions and conduct of this life 1 That is not clear, for if we are sure of this, and thus have overpowering reason for the higher choice, does not our choice cease to be free, and our conduct lose its value .'' Once fix your dogma in man's nature, and do you not abolish moral good and ill, and make this life a calculation of gain and loss only ? Life, then, would have no use for the " soul," but only for the " body " .? This can't be, of course, not with man's nature and the scheme of things as we know it. And so we are thrown back on this side also upon uncertainty. We cannot think the thing out in its full scope, and reach intellectual assurance. All we can reach is a probability that fits in with experience and the heart. But that seems precisely what we do need. By the conditions of life, as by the nature of morality, life's ends would be frustrated by certainty ; they are served by hope. Poems on Immortality. 2'jg This is the argument, put modestly and kept deliberately in a low key, as if with a sefise of the greatness of the qxiestion, and the limited valup of all merely personal judgment on a matter that involves the very constitution and issues of life. But what, you may ask, is the result — the judgment of the soul, calm and large ? To the consideration of the great question you may think nothing is here added. ■ In a sense I admit that. Nothing material is added to the " argument for a future life," except in this way — that you have the deliberate judgment of a highly competent thinker, and one who has long considered the life and soul of man, that the best solution of the riddle of most men's lives may be found in the faith of another life. This is the poet's deliberate judgment on a broad survey of the moral facts of life. Its personal quality he admits. Its interest and value on this ground his readers will recognize. But this is not the main bearing of the meditation recorded in the poem. Its main points and most original " criticism " are these^the bearing of the faith in another life on the conduct of this life ; the reason for our uncertainty in regard to the question. The first point has been dealt with before, but never more directly. So far as the doctrine of a life to come damages or interferes with the effective conduct of this life, it is hurtful, and must be somewhere mistaken. The second question is the question of this poem, and very pertinent to the theme and to present hopes and fears regarding it. If there be another life, why is not the question made so 28o Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. clear that we need have no doubt about it and may " use the fact " in this Hfe. The question, says the poet in effect, is just in that state in which it ought to be for the spiritual good of man. And this connects " La Saisiaz " with a " Death in the Desert," which in its own class has something of the personal quality of this poem, applying to the religious question as a whole the test here applied to the question of a " future life." It is greatly to the advantage of man's spiritual life^that is, of man's best life in this world — that these questions should have the quality, the uncertainty, they have ; and the " end " of life is not science, but spiritual fulness and power. And this, let me say, is again an interpretation of the facts of life, and the order of the world ; no vain attempt to get away from them in the direction of rationalism or by dogmatism of any sort. But now we can hardly conclude our study of the subject without looking back and asking. What is the sum oftkepoefs thoughts about it ? What has he added to the " criticism " of belief in this matter ? He has taken the question on its proper basis, and given it its true scope. It is no question of evidences and logic. It is a question of man and life ; a question of man's true nature and power ; and a question, not simply of the inadequacy and unsatisfactoriness of life, but of life's drift and " promise." And so he has dwelt on the energy and reach of man, on the spirituality of thought and passion, on the infinite and the eternal within man ; for the argument depends on what man Poems on Immortality. 281 is capable of and worth. And he is very frank about the unsatisfactoriness of life as we see it, whether tested by conscience or judgment ; its inadequacy to man's affections, aims, and powers. The world is intelligible and tolerable,' though with difficulties then, if there be a "life beyond." And the order and method of life seem rational on that basis ; its ex- perience and discipline seem then to have a purpose. But the " heart " and *' personal claims " perplex the question. It is not what men wish, but what they are fit for, that must count. Man's continued power to serve the ends of .the universe must be the ground of hope. That is the principle and the test of the true immortality. The endurance of whatever is essential, of the true and the divine, is assured — the completion of the value, the solution of the problems, and the realization of the .ideals of the spirit. Does that imply personality in the after-life ? — that is the question eagerly pressed. We do not know. Our poet has nowhpre involved an answer. He wisely leaves it ; though the whole principle of his art conveys that impression of the value of personality that you may well hold his drift to be on the side of that idea, not as a nj^tter of sentiment, but of science. Then he has other ideas that may seem more practical. No one has so forcibly put the folly of " losing " thiis life in any way in the name of another. It is life that matters, not existence. Life here and everywhere belongs to those who live. The great question is not about a "future hfe," but about 282 Studies m the Poetry of Robert Browning. realizing the true idea of this life, and so leading up with energy to the life that may be when this no longer serves. The poet's own energy and freshness are such that he has, far more than most, inward sense of the soul, as Goethe described it, as "an essence that works on from eternity to eternity." And as this sense of power gives him assurance, so it gives him his conception, of a "life to come." It is not a " heaven," a stage of finality and fulfilment. It is the life of the soul, rising and expanding through what may be an " infinite series " of lives, " unhasting, yet unresting," because it serves no " taskmaster," but in love and power fulfils the very spirit of life. And here the poet approves his grasp of that principle of which I said he is so true an interpreter — the great Christian idea — the idea of spiritual ascent and evolution as the chief law of life. That is the meaning of this life. It is the ground and law of all life to come. If that principle hold good of man, life to come is possible and desirable ; if it hold good, life and duty here and hereafter are great — are, in truth, spiritually infinite and of eternal value. ( 283 ) CHAPTER XIII. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CASUISTIC STUDIES: " CALI- , ban" and "BISHOP BLOUGRAM." " Poetry," said Wordsworth, " is the image of man and nature." And there is nothing clearer in regard to it than this — that in poetry you will find man's thought of man most fully spoken. These poems on "Caliban" and his theology, and on "Bishop Blougram" and his defence of his position as a Roman Catholic bishop in the nineteenth century, are a most pertinent and forcible instance of this law. In their curious interest and picturesque research, their original characterization, and casuistic power and subtlety, they give a striking " image " of man as man is seen in our time. The poet who made them was making a new thing in poetry, but he was acting on the impulse and following the interest proper to the poet as truly as Shakspe're when he made his plays, and presented in that way his " image " of man in the age of Elizabeth. Yet I am aware that many who find " Hamlet " 284 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and " Lear " great and true " images " of man and of human life, would like to give another name to " Caliban " and " Blougram," or, it may be, would like to assign them to another part of literature. And yet, if the matter be looked at on its own merits, it will be seen that these poems have the relation described, and that Browning acted as sincerely and rightly as Shakspere in making them. Shakspere's dramas were not merely a form of art for which the age gave occasion, and in which it took pleasure ; they were the fit expression of its thought of human life. We have already seen that nothing is more striking in recent literature than the scope and quality of its interest in man, and this interest is other than the Elizabethan. And Browning's poetry, it was stated, must be judged in relation to that, and not in relation to the older thought. But there are certain points of the modern interest reflected in such poems as these that remain to be noted. The interest in man, which was at first social and religious, and has in truth remained so, became larger and more varied with the growth of knowledge and the rise of other interests. The extension of science, especially in the departments of man's own history, gave it new material and ideas, and a wider range. It was no longer ethical or spiritual only. It included, more or less, all the facts an'd questions of man's life, and our researches into the earliest accessible history of man gave it a field of fascinating interest and great extent. I am not, of course, now speaking of Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 285 poetry, but of other literature ; only both conception and matter have told on poetry, and markedly on Browning's work. And there is another question related to these .researches, and even more distinctive of tecent years and ideas, also reflected in the poems now before us —I mean the interest we take in the study of early ' forms of belief, and in the sources and formation of opinion generally. The natural history of belief, all the forces that enter into and fix or shape belief in interesting cases, is matter of much curiosity to us in our present mood. Human history we now see to be an evolution of ideas as really as of customs and institutions, stretch- ing back to the beginnings of experience, and forward through phases none can foresee. It is seen that the beliefs of men are very largely fashioned by environ- ment, race, culture, and personal qualities. Belief, in fact, is a vital far more than a logical problem. Variation and development, so far endless and practically infinite — variation and development by selection of the fittest among ideas as among organisms ^— that, with whatever qualification, is the modern formula for the growth of beliefs. Now, clearly this process may rouse two sorts of interest — one scientific, the other dramatic ; the first in the beliefs themselves, their process and value, the^ second in their vital bearings, the ways in which they illustrate the man thinking. Browning's is the latter _ interest, and it is a curious proof of his intellectual 286 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and dramatic energy that he has given such subtle and powerful statement to a special dramatic problem, which you will not find illustrated in any other poet. And in this the poet, in subject and conception, is in sincere relation to his age. And these poems, related as they both are to the researches and ideas just described, show diversity of power and reach in the studies they represent. Caliban, the study of a crude and simple nature, a primitive mind, if mind it may be called, that worked in that curious brain ; Blougram, a complex and cultivated, a powerful and modern mind ; yet both dealing with the same problem, both studies of the sources and process of the higher beliefs — of man's conclusion from his experience as to the system amid which he finds himself, and the quality of the law that rules all things. We shall begin with "Caliban" (vi. 136) as the simp ler study, and see how he puts his experience together "iivfo'a kind of " natural theology." It was a bold and characteristic thing of Browning to try his art, and prove his genius by such a study. Perhaps to him only would the problem have occurred in this way, and no one else could have given it such congruous, subtle, and forcibly dramatic statement. It is indicative of the range of Shakspere's curiosity, as of his power, that he should have imagined, and in his last play should have embodied, so strange a con- ception as Caliban. It was natural that a poet of our time should see and work out certain questions only Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 287 hinted by Shakspere. The differences in interest and scope between the poets and the ages, and their re- semblances too, are fairly measured in their conception and by their handling of the theme. In Shakspere's days men's thoughts about man had been much extended, and their curiosity greatly stimulated. Many causes led to this, and among, them the discoveries and tales of travellers, who had visited those new and strange parts of the world then becoming known. These discoveries made it very clear that the past as hitherto known, whether of English or classical life, did not exhaust the forms of life or of thought, and, indeed, were no measure of the ruder past, or even of the present as found in little- known parts of the world. And it was most natural that Shakspere, among the thousand forms of men fashioned in his world-wide mind, should seek to con- ceive the lowest and simplest type that had existed with human properties. And if in the age of Shakspere these facts regard- ing the dim and barbarous past of human life were first becoming known, and an image being formed of the variety of the human world, in our time such facts have first been extensively collected and scientifically studied, and their bearing on the history of belief and culture rightly seen. The simplest elements of the mind, the crudest ideas of primitive culture, have been explored. And so Browning, started by the suggestion of Shakspere, and working in the spirit and with the ideas of modern science, seeks to thread 288 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. his way through the quaint problems of Caliban's theology. Shakspere made Caliban in the maturity of his genius, and placed him in one of his finest dramas ; and the conception is, in fact, one of the most original and delicate in Shakspere. Trembling on the dan- gerous edge of crude animalism and even brutality, instinctive, yet with intelligence_niade all of self- interest and the "struggle for existeike," without gratitude, affection, or^inGrality,_and-yefe^ith a kind of religion, he was a critical task even for our greatest poet, and his " success " in the impersonation, both in its consistency with itself and its fitness to the world of Caliban, is wonderful. And Browning has shown his dramatic power by- grasping Shakspere's image as a whole, in its subtlety and its crudity, in its picturesque and in its moraP interest. Shakspere only hinted at the latter. He saw the concrete "image" in its place among the thousand figures of his world of man, and only 1 glanced at Caliban's " theory of experience." But it is the moral interest and the " mind " of Caliban that occupy ihe jmodern poet A rapid analysis will show the metiiod of the poem and its course of thought. The opening lines give the creature and the situation. They are the words of Caliban, though, owing to his peculiar use of the pronouns, they do not seem to be his. It is the noon of a summer day, and he isTaziIy sprawling in the mire of his cave — a most apparent animal. But as he looks over the sea, crossed by Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 289 sunbeams, through which at times a great fish leaps, he has thoughts, and he will talk them out to himself now, because there are times when it is not safe to do so — winter, with its cold and storms. He ought to be at his task ; but Prospero is asleep now, and he loves to cheat him. ^ , He has his thoughts, and, strange as it may seem, they are of theology. It had not then been imagined that the world could "go of itself." So he has his deity, " invented " on a -basis- of experience. This deity is Setebos — name and idea got from his mother ; for the " origins " lie behind Caliban even. And this Setebos is a moon-god, the moon having struck certain tribes more than the sun. And his god, j '• dwelling in the cold o' the moon," is a maker, if not ' a creator. He has made the sun and^-^this isle'' (Caliban knows nothing of " the earth "), but not the stars. Why not ? Because these seem to lie beyond the clouds and the lower heavens in a sphere of their own. And what was his motive in making these.' — for some "reason" he must- have had. He was "ill at ease ;" could not get away from the moon, and yet was not happy there. That an uncomfortable deity must have made this uncomfortable world, is , Caliban's view. But how did it help him to make ; Caliban's world and Caliban.? It is all argued by* " analogy " and from experience. Caliban is a matter- of-facrand logical person, and, granting his premisses, you would find it hard to upset his conclusions, in the mind of Caliban. He is " self-consistent," and, with u 290 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. other theologians too, that has been the leading test of truth. And what is his theory, then.-about the making of such a world as he finds ? (Spite partly, 3.nd sport partly, must have been its mbti,\ce_and^^gn, seeing that both qualities are in it. It might have served Setebos better to have made a " second self;'' but as he could not do that, he had to take the next best. Caliban, you see, understands blindly those "neces- sities of thought " which " hold " us to the final thesis of the Paleyan theology. And here comes an original view of attother matter. He has to explain his own power and weakness in such odd combination. Man can do many things Nature does not, and so cannot ; Caliban can do more than Setebos, and yet all the time is in his power completely. How is this ? It pJeasesJiim_to have creatures he can admire^ and mock too. There is more sport" that way. Thus is -explaTrred.^ man's freedom and power, and the fatal limits of iioth. This must be, he argues ; for if he ~eouldjnal^any- thing living, he would keep his mastery over it by the most purely arbitrary acts of power. And to him arbitrariness is the quality of power and the proof of greatness. He has the love of mastery and the caprice of the savage. He cannot ^vr& a reason even to himself for many things he does. He sees little: reason or order in things about him. To such a mind all the most striking things that happen take plate at the caprice of some imaginary power, and the dejty Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 291 of the savage, reflecting the heart of the savage and his image of nature, is masterful and capricious. It is .within his " right," and he uses that " right " as he likes, mostly in mere self-assertion. But, though sure to take his own way and keep man in his place, the deity is not bad in the main. He is fairly good, as life is. And if Caliban has his limits"\ ioiposed by Setebos, perhaps Setebos is limited too.\ And he is clearly ; for, if not, why should he remain " ill at ease " in the moon ? So Caliban asks ; and to other " thinkers " besides it has seemed that a " free and omnipotent Deity " does not account for the world as we know it ; if God might do all things, surely many things ought to be other than they are ? How, then, account for the limitation f What hinders Setebos .' Here again Caliban chimes with others who have thought much on experience. He is a j .dualist, but of a novel kind. He suspects a power over Setebos, whom he calls the Quiet, as both hidden \ and impassive — a power.jinly_ guessed, byjhe defe ct^j and limitation of Setebos and his world. His mother was a dualist of another sort. Shejield_that the Qyiet had made all, and that Setebos jfexed-th&..warld_out of devilry. But he cannot see that. The limitation of experience and the unhappiness of the world must reflect the maker's own state ; for a deity that could do all thingi/bemgTieither-happy nor unhappy, could have had no motive for making such a world as that known to Caliban. Impassive bliss crossed by devilry does not explain things, he thinks. 292 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. But things may change. The Quiet may "look up" and make things awkward. So far it has only troubled Setebos. He, seeing the happiness of the Quiet, was set on to make this " bauble world," with no "object" really, and possibly he will "knock it all down again." Why not ">. Caliban would do so. He has, in fact, no idea of " end " or " purpose." The world is neither rational nor spiritual to him. Casual and shallow from first to last, you may think, and yet his speculations have a quaint resemblance to more dignified theories that we have 'heard of. His crude, frank talk should give pause to some who essay lightly the great question of " motives " and " ends " in regard to creation and its scheme, and not least to those who, in the name of science, offer a view of things very like that of Caliban. His question of "ends" is, in truth, not merely insoluble ; it is unimaginable. But though good mostly, Setebos is not always so, and might grow dangerous. How please him, then ? You cannot know. He keeps the secret, and is not to be pleased except as he wills. For, again, going by himself, and by the random and often violent courses nature seems to take, he thinks you are likely to anger the deity by the assumption that what has pleased him once should do so again. It is all caprice, and you must take your chance. Not a cheerful outlook? It is the fact, however, and the only way out of it, should it grow intolerable, is death. That will make an end of it, he is sure, though his mother thought not. Meantime, humour the deity, Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 293 do not seem too happy, keep your thoughts to yourself mostly, and the Quiet may conquer or Setebos doze. So Caliban accounts for experience. Ingenious, you must allow, and Calibanesque. Caliban's god is a magnified and very natural Caliban, only " rougher " - and in some points worse. This deity knows nothing ' of law. Somehow things go on when he does not meddle, but caprice is his law. And he is not moral, i He neither loves nor hates his creatures ; he made ' them— foil— his— cfflf n pleasur e ; he keeps them under his power, and they must mind they pay him the tribute of fear and the compliment of envy. But what is it the poet has thus put before us f A fancy-sketch or a true study ? There are two ways in which a poet might present the subjept. He might i master all the facts that throw light on the workings of the primitive mind and construe these, or, by use • of his own imagination mainly, recover its elements ^ and process. Has the poet done either 1 I think not.. He has rather taken Shakspere's Caliban, and in the light of inodern principles has made his image of Caliban's world on the basis of Shakspere's conception^ Caliban does not represent the simplest stages of \ human thought. In the " Tempest " and as Shak- J spere made him he could not. And this poem, though it throws much light on the method and ideas of early religion, is not strictly a picture of it. Are we to take it, then, in any sense as a study of the genesis and construction of theology ? It has this 294 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. aspect and interest, certainly. The habits and as- sumptions of the " theological mode " of thought, when put forth with the crudity and courage of Caliban, may seem a satire, not a description. And some have used the poem as a polemic against theology, and regard it as a dramatic study of the evolution of ideas that in more refined forms have as little value as those of the poem, because they have the same basis and use the same method. Caliban's theology has two sources — his reading of the world, and his pwn-naturej,ndjiabits. NowptKSt theology began in such sources and with very crude ideas is matter of history. Shall we, then, say it can never lose the baseness of its origin ? But all know- ledge had a like origin. The origin of ideas is not the grand test of their werth. The value of expe- rience must depend on whether it has universal elements, and the growth of culture in these things has largely consisted in a fuller and more critical apprehension of such elements of the mind. Caliban's theology affirms that the deity is like .Caliban. When a theology arises which affirms that the bes t of man's mi nd is but the far-off image and hint of the Supreme, the case is altered. And no merely historical study of the origins of theology can settle the question of the right of its highest ideas to stand as in some true sense a vision of the Invisible Reality. Turning to " Bishop Blougram." What an interval of life and thought between the two ! Yet there are Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 295 deep instincts in common. Caliban has no doubts, and talks his theology as the most natural of theories. Setebos is very real to him in the moon's cold sphere. Blougram is full of doubts, and of a sense of possible revolution in the whole mode of thought ; but the instinct and idea of the savage are in the Catholic bishop too, and in fact hold him out of nature's depths. The poem is an able and elaborate argument, in which the bishop measures his mind and creed against those of Gigadibs. It leaves a strong sense of mental vigour and courage, but even more of personal force. It has two contrasted characters as well as contrasted views of life, and it is dramatic not only in the relation of its swift and forcible casuistry to the two " persons" of the poem, but in its " study " of the process of con- viction itself The bishop is not setting forth his theology as Caliban was, nor is belief the chief thing with him; It is his position and theory of life rather that he justifies against the criticism and theory of Gigadibs. Our bishop is not a theologian. He is a strong realist, a man of the world, masterly and shrewd, who values life highly, and all its good — the strength of whose " case " lies very much in the hold that his creed and conduct have given him on the good of the world. As the poem opens we see the men and the situation —the hearty, kindly, worldly, overbearing bishop ; and the literary man, who is enjoying the bishop's good things, and is proud of being his guest. The bishop 296 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. talks. He knows Gigadibs has a kind of scorn for him as a bishop — regards him from the point of view of a "superior." For Gigadibs knows, or thinks he knows, that the bishop does not beheve the dogmas and superstitions- of his Church, and he looks on the bishop's position and way of life as very dubious, if not contemptible, for a man of honour and ability. The bishop, on his- part,, does not mind the con- tempt of Gigadibs, the literary man. He knows that Gigadibs would rather be Goethe- (ideal man of letters) or Bonaparte (ideal of ambition),, or even Count D'Orsay (a mtuchi slighter person), than Blougram at his height. For he thinks the bishop plays a false part, and to be pope and not believe seems " eerie," even to Gigadibs. " Best be yourself" The plain and true life of Gigadibs is really better than the best of the bishop's, then, is it ? his ideal, sincere life than Blou/gram's real, which can never be true? No, the bishop will not allow that. Abstract ideals are not his aim at aU, but very realizable ideals. The all he leaves for Gigadibs, content to be much. The one remains a fancy ; the other may be made a/«rf. We cannot any of us do what we would — plant solid and detailed any of our fine schemes. We can only make the best of what we find, and wisdom lies in accepting things as they are, and making the most of them. We m.ust go by life's laws and conditions, not by abstract plans — very good it may be, but quite beside the mark. For the world is the world, and can never be turned into a fool's paradise. If you must Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 297 idealize, why, then, idealize the real world ; that may be worth doing, and will have solid advantages. For what is our sitjiation f A simile may make that clear. We are all crossing the world's ocean in the ship of life, and have only a very limited space allowed us. Into that space we cannot put all we might wish for comfort or higher uses. What then ? Rebel against the limits and throw all overboard because you cannot take all, or choose and take what you can ? Men of sense take what the space permits and let the rest go. If you fling all away because your large ideas, cannot be carried out, you only make yourself absurd and your voyage miserable. And so it is in the outfit of beliefs. How stands that ? You can't believe fixedly and wholly. Very likely not. No more can. I„ perhaps. What then } Throw all over and hold by nothing ? Suppose we do, in what situation shall we then be — in what precise state of mind ? Shall, we then have reached a life clear, sure, and simple ? Not at all. We have got a life of doubt mixed with belief, in place of a life of belief crossed by doubts. Fixed belief or unbelief are equally impossible to men ; certainty is out of reach. The grand problem is for all of us insoluble in that sense. " I believe,'' and doubts spring up, soon and often. You deny, and doubts are flashed on your mind by whatever touches the deeper springs of passion or of thought. Nor is this done by us ; it is done within us by powers and instincts " old and new as Nature's self.' 298 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. The " grand perhaps" then, may be a truth. There may be a God, and He may, being good, have made Himself known to man. The Christian reUgion may be the way to and the truth about Him. Many things in the heart respond to it ; it touches hopes and fears at the quick of our natures. But if it may be so, it is far enough from being clear. Admitted ; but that may be in the nature of the case. It may arise from our position, or it may be a test of faith, even. Anyhow, what we have reached is, that neither faith nor unfaith can be simple or supreme powers in life or in the heart. Let us allow them equal powers, and, left to a man's choice, are the man of faith and the unbelieving man equal in life? By no means. In this matter again a man's choice ought to be according to the conditions of life and its limits. Belief, then, enables a man to live in and work with the world as 'it is. Doubt does not give that practical advantage. Idealism and suspense set you dreaming of a world that ought to be, perhaps, but is not, while you leave the world that is to those who take it as it comes. And if belief be so plainly best on this solid ground, what is the best way and kind of belief ? The belief that is decisive and thorough, since that is practically the most powerful, and, indeed, among the forces of the world the only serviceable belief. On every ground of character and utility, if you choose to " believe," do so decisively. This being granted, from the point of view of the Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 299 actual world and real life, there could be but one faith for Blougram, one way of declaring the probability of "the grand perhaps," and that Christianity in its Catholic form — the creed and Church of Hildebrand, equally as a strong organized religion, as an eccle- siastical system, and as a social power. That system and creed effect for him, and for his whole way of life, just what he wants ; through it, in fact, his ideal of life is made real enough, and placed solidly in the world for him to enjoy. It has given him a way of life, power among his fellows, and most things as he likes to have them. Such is his confession, frank and to the point. And now he supposes Gigadibs obliged to admit the practical value and force of the argument — to object that, both as argument and success, the apology takes low ground, and implies an ignoble nature. "Well," says the bishop, "•/ take what is, myself included. I am Blougram, not another. I did not make myself, and I cannot remake myself; all that is in my power is to make the best of what God has made me." That is one line of reply. But he has another. He does not allow to Gigadibs that the question about character and tastes is so clear as he thinks it. Not merely the foolish, whom Gigadibs despises, but the "wise" whom he respects, would side with the bishop, and at last leave the question open. For how is it with these " clever " men 1 They like such cases as this of Blougram. Not the plain and simple cases, 300 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. but the dubious and difficult cases, interest them. They prove their own ingenuity over them, and see more in them than they contain. A paradox is dear to them, and impossible combinations. Besides, the age is favourable for such cases. Its very conditions make them possible and pardonable. Still, though these clever men of the world tolerate, or, it may be, admire; the bishop, who unites sense and learning and faith, Gigadibs is disposed all the same to scorn. Well, then, whom does our writing man, " clever to a fault," admire ? Let us see, for it is life and embodied ideals that put things to the proof Is it Napoleon f But for your unbeliever this case of Napoleon won't do. Napoleon must have been a strong believer in fate or himself, and must have been very sure there was no moral government in the universe and no divine judgment. His career is unintelligible otherwise, or else he was mad. But a man of letters would rather be Shakspere. Blougram knows he cannot be the " divine poet." And yet, if only he might have the power, the full conscious- ness, the self-delight, of Shakspere, these would be life. And if the poet said, " In face of my works and self- consciousness your world is nothing," he could not gainsay that. But does the poet say that ? Does Shakspere act on that view of the values of things ? His life shows he did not, and proves that he was the very man to understand the difference between having and imagining. So we find him "leave the towers and gorgeous palaces " of his poetry, " to build the Psychological and Casuistic Studies, 301 trimmest house in Stratford town." He " saves money, spends it, and knows the worth of things." So the bishop concludes that the poet and himself, wanting the same things really, he having more of " the things," has the best of it, so far as this world goes. But only get belief, enthusiasm, and the whole case is changed. Sincere conviction — fire and life within — Luther's great faith and life say, and his " argument breaks up." Only you cannot, and the bishop's course is the best remaining. But Gigadibs will say, " If yow -cant be Luther, why not Strauss, in the chaiaged times ; that were at least sincere ? " The bishop replies, " There's no fulness of life, no gain that way. It's all cold and hopeless. Luther had his ' heaven in his heart ; ' Strauss has not even thanks for hi-s work, and, worst of all, he may be wrong." Now he supposes Gigadibs to take him on new ground, and here, too, is ready for him. He hears Gigadibs say, " Such faith as this, without ardour or conviction, can't serve or give men the power they need. A whole faith or none is our choice." " Not so fast," says Blougram. Your talk is vain and abstract. You don't know man or life. We have already seen that in some sense faith lies very deep. Allow its use or need, and you soon get it. For when you sink deeper than all arguments, you find that faith is a vital force and necessity of the soul, which doubt itself only tests and witnesses to. And this faith, which is a vital function, is the very 302 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. thing we want ; not " evidences " and '" conclusions/' but the soul's claim and attraction for what is divine, its choice on hidden grounds of will and passion. And here it approves itself Criticize as long and far as -you may, its divine power and grace win and hold men still. Then as to talk of " whole faith," of absolute belief in God. It is impossible in the nature of experience. That were to " see God," which no man ever did or can, nor was it meant we should. Men think creation was to " reveal God ; " to " hide Him," it seems as matter of fact. And all that " hides God," all evil and defect, is part of our discipline. In the " full light " we could not live ; it would burn us up. Experience case- hardens us that we may live as men. The balance between the forces of faith and unfaith in our nature are the very element and means of life for man. But there was absolute faith once in " that dear Middle Age noodles praise." And what was it worth ? he asks. Very little for life. He has a contempt for the ignorance as for the morals of that time. It is not absolute faith that is good for men. It is when the fight begins in a man, when he has moral choice to make, that life begins for him, the soul wakes and grows. Certainty destroys that. Incomplete faith is its condition. And so the bishop exults in " difficulties." He scorns those raised by modern knowledge. There is a real pleasure in accepting faith in face of them— the sum of all being that, though he has great doubt, he Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 303 has greater faith, and that is the proper condition of the soul. But it may be said that, though you may exult in " difficulties," you surely need not put delusions and lies on faith. And he replies that the whole of faith is needed for the masses of men, and that if you once begin cutting away there is no end to that. " Set eye or heart or brain to that, and they all get drunk alike." Best leave it, for the modern fancy for religion as science is a mistake. Its use and force in life are its working value. Then the argument takes fresh ground. His critic may say, " Your view of life, and even of truth, is poor and worldly." And Blougram meets this with a bold and blunt defence. What is life for } Not to miss or throw away, but to live and use, surely. This is the body's time ; the soul's comes after. There is a vain idealism which, being always just ahead of and superior to its actual state, misses life, and by that plan will miss reality for ever. He turns from that with, contempt, and an emphatic preference of his own way. Gigadibs may next urge, " Your argument makes no account of truth, and yet, ' special pleading ' apart, truth is true, and can take care of itself and the world in ways we cannot see. Let us be true, then, and, if we doubt, say so." Blougram does not meet this quite frankly. " Act your doubt, then," he says, "and make the most of your view of things. You don't ; and why not ? Because you defer to instinct and the ' blind forces ' of life. I 304 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. do, and my instinct says, that to do or be aught, I must have a God, and to me my instincts are God's Will, and so I live and you don't." To this Gigadibs may reply that his wish is to know what is true, and to live honestly and fairly among his fellows. And Blougram can't meet that. He can't trust the world and man so. The man who can do it is beyond him. But he sneers at it as a view of the life of Gigadibs, and browbeats him because he knows that the life he likes is the sort Gigadibs esteems too. And his " belief" on that ground has this advantage — it has given him what the other's doubts have not. So he takes his stand on his success, and scornfully patronizes his critic. And this \^ihe key toihe argument andi/ie situation. He has met Gigadibs, the dealer in words and " views," the idle critic. He has not really proved his " case." He hints at a deeper argument in reserve ; but, as Gigadibs never asked it, we don't get it, and may doubt, not of the bishop's ability t© give it, but of his own interest in it. And is the poem, then, merely a piece vf strong special pleading, with nothing better in it ? Does the bishop, who has sense ©f the depth oi religion and of the quality of life, advance nothing ®f that argument he hints at in case of need ? There are points of this argument, though not just as he uses them, (i) His frank admission of the uncertainty of " belief" taken on intellectual grounds, though he puts his admission to a very ecclesiastical use. (2) The bearing of moral Psychological and Casuistic Studies. 305 wnsiderations and the conditions of life on the problems of belief, though here again he makes a strange use of the " rule," and gets an " emotion of conviction," equivalent to certainty, by a process that will not bear scrutiny. (3) The inevitable and universal quality of faith. It is no matter of reasoning. It is part of the action of the soul. The bishop uses that to give him a basis for a very complex affirmation — makes it cover and affirm the Catholic creed, in fact ; but, though it is far simpler than that, it is a fact, and a fact that is much ignored. (4) He glances, too, at the spiritual uses of ignorance and uncertainty, a theme our poet is fond of ; and though the bishop only uses it to justify his worldly acceptance of a formal creed, it has far wider and purer uses. Blougram, in fact, turns the edge of Gigadibs' whole argument by admitting his positions to show that they bear in his own direction, not in favour of his critic's scepticism, for those who understand life. And this gives us another point — the bishop's realism in religion and in life. There lies his strength both ways. The " criticism " of religion is endless. The business of life is urgent and close. Take the life next you and use it, and do not, like a fool, merely criticize and lose it. The value of beliefs is to be tested by their use in life. There is the only " certainty " you can find. And Blougmm is indeed the prophet of compromise, and he makes, against all such as Gigadibs, an impregnable argument in its defence. Admit his idea of what is " good," and you must allow his X 3o6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. success and sense in reaching it. But deny that, declare your conviction that there is something higher and better even for this life, and his argument falls to the ground, though he will possibly think poorly of you. And yet he admits in the case of Luther, as in the case of Shakspere, that there is a heaven of the heart and of the mind — an enthusiasm of the spirit that, if you can reach and maintain it, puts his lower outward success on one side. A high and strenuous realization of what is best, and a care for what is true — set your life to these, and find your joy in them, and the bishop's comfortable realism becomes, by the bishop's own tests, and on his own grounds, a very poor affair. ( 307 ) CHAPTER XIV. "MR. SLUDGE, THE MEDIUM." Of certain lines of Wordsworth's poetry Coleridge said that, had he found them in the Sahara desert, he would have known whose they were. This might certainly be said of " Sludge, the Medium." Browning only would have taken the subject a"nd made the study of it that is here, and its fertifity, subtlety, zest of argument, and spiritual research make it one of his most striking poems. The poem was put in "Dramatis Personae " (1864), and stood beside " Caliban." The minds of Sludge and Caliban are not far apart, and their theologies, natural in both cases, have common principles, though Caliban is slow and primitive, and Sludge, under stress of this age, is alert, ingenious, and "sophisticated." We may prefer the savage as the more wholesome, but Sludge,has more that touches our own lives and thoughts. But the choice of Sludge as a dramatic subject may ask a word of explanation. In many ways a "survival" 3o8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. from the age of Caliban, he may seem too far behind our age for serious study. In fact the study was suggested by Sludge's existence among the dramatis per^sonce of an age of science. The mind of the public was much occupied about 1864 with spiritualistic phenomena. Here was an ancient " superstition " come to life again ; a primeval craving using the very facts of our science to help it in its quaint search, on its blind path. Some showed how all the things done were capable of physical explanations. Browning took the matter on another side of it. Supposing all the " phenomena " explained, you have still to explain the minds, that can indulge these cravings, and hold these beliefs. It was, perhaps, no great matter what they did, or did not do ; but the process of thought and passion in their souls, what they really thought, and how their thoughts hung together with their experience, — these were things of great interest. And the interest was by no means confined to these people and their doings ; for as these stood related to old things of human history, so did they to principles of human nature. It is a wrong view of such cases that takes them as merely absurd, as having nothing to do with minds that have been freed from " vulgar errors," and as arising wholly from special fallacies. We are far from the time when knowledge, shall be so com- plete as to leave no room for things of this sort. It may be that we can never reach that time, and science itself seems to leave us where those instincts and surmises have play, that have haunted the soul from " Mr. Sludge, the Medium" 309 the dawn of thought. The "mystery of the un- known " remains for us all. And not only have we all our part in the long history that has made our " image of nature," but subtle affinities hold us to the ancient passions and conceptions still. Mr. Sludge tells his own story, and makes his own defence. The poem is a speech spoken to his patron, and meant to persuade him of the medium's good faith. It is a critical moment in the career of Sludge that gives us his " apology." It may be, he has not considered matters in full before, and he is not doing so now for the sake of the subject. He has been cheating, which is not new ; but what is new, and what makes his defence real, is that his patron has found him out. Mr. Hiram H. Horsfall has proved that certain raps, which Sludge said were " communi- cations" from his patron's mother, were made by Sludge's toes. The occasion made the trick worse, and Mr. Horsfall is so angry that he means to expose and ruin Sludge. It is in face of this danger that Sludge puts forth all his powers of plausibility and persuasion, not to save his character, but to keep hold on his means of living — one of those situations that bring to a focus the history and mind of the speaker. He confesses, excuses, attacks, explains, and defends ; begins by seeming admission that most of the medium business is delusion, and ends by arguing that its essential part is a great truth. In our study of the poem it will be best to follow the dramatic order, which is vital, not logical ; but it 3 1 o Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. may make the points and bearings of the argument clearer if we see what kind of person Sludge was, and the life that led him to his calling, and so fix that type to which spiritualistic ideas and practices are most congenial. Sludge was an American. Many conditions of life in the States have favoured these growths — the stimulus, the fermentation of old and new, of ignorance and progress, of primitive passions and modern ideas, and freedom unchecked by European traditions. His early life was one of hardship and poverty. He got little education or training of any kind — its most active part, in fact, being got in the streets, in that mean struggle for existence which sharpens the wits certainly, but hardens and narrows the nature. He could read, though his spelling, even when " inspired," was bad, and his reading only fed a superstitious fancy. All he knew was picked up at random, on the impulses of crude curiosity. He had heard of science, but knew nothing of it, and cared less. His whole experience had given him no standard of truth, except his own impressions, ingenuities, and wishes. He had read .the Bible, and its miracles pleased him well. A world so framed and managed was just his notion of things. He liked the crude mystery, the pure caprice, and individualism of the older ways of thought. And this is the key to Sludge. He is clever, but crude as Caliban ; active and observant, but shallow. He has no curiosity of the mind, and does not under- stand knowledge. He has no sense of the relations " Mr. Sludge, the Medium^ 3 1 r or of the proportions of things. To him, as to Caliban, the bearings of things are all arbitrary. His private opinion seems to be that the world is really unintelli- gible as a matter of reason. Omniscience might know things on all their sides, in all their purposes ; science cannot. But, as was said, he has no care for that side of matters. All he hopes to know, or cares about, is the side and bearing of things that touches his own life and interests. And that note is the man to the heart of him. He has the shrewdest eye for the " main chance." He is keen to see and quick to use all points that make to the advantage of Sludge. And that "eye" which others keep for human affairs he carries into nature. In fact, a narrow and intense egoism is his basis at all points. His nature is not small only, and poor, but trivial and mean. He has no soul, though much faith in spirits ; and his spiritualism and notions of the unseen have been mainly used to help him to what he cares for in this life. The whole value and pertinence of things is to serve him. He might not say that the universe is a contrivance in the interest of Sludge, and an impertinence if it do not provide him with a good life here and a better hereafter ; but he does hold, as a result of egoism and ignorance together, that that is the only aspect of it he can understand. Agricola put the universe aside to get to God, because " the soul " of Agricola was more to Agricola and to God than all besides. Sludge is no Calvinist, and " election " is not his way; but his ruling 312 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. principle is the same — for Sludge as for Agricola, the higher ideas only serve to intensify selfishness. With such crudity of moral and mental conditions he has taken certain ideas into his mind — the idea of spirits, of an unseen universe, and of special divine guidance. As he holds and applies them, his ideas are almost on the level of Animism, and you can hardly decide whether they have taken hold of him, or whether he has laid hold of them to use them for his own ends. He tells us they are out of the Bible, and that he takes them as he finds them there. Most who profess to believe the Bible hold that though the things there set forth happened long ago, they don't now ; not that the principles have changed, only the mode. He holds by both as still good. There are spirits ; there is an invisible and divine order. These things have not gone dumb and dead. The world is still in touch with the power and purpose of God. And his " experience " confirms his belief; not clearly, of course, but clearly enough for a man who likes ingenuity and jugglery on its own account, and who has " private " reasons for believing. It is a theory of things which fits his mind, and, still better, his way of life. So Sludge believes his Bible, confirmed by his experience. That supernatural which used to hold the foreground in primitive religion he has brought back to its place. All acts and events of this life have their source in that, and must be explained by reference to it. And he has given a great extension to the "" Mr. Sludge, the Medium:' ' 313 primitive conception of things. That found God iil what was rare and great. He has learned science, and knows that nothing can be really explained, and that little things are " nearer God " than great things. So he finds hints from God everywhere. But as these " hints " are occult and arbitrary, how are they to be read, and the obscure relations of things to one's own fate made out ? Here, again. Sludge falls back on a primitive mode of thought. In the days when things had no rational meaning or natural order ; when all seemed casual ; when things had " meaning " only as they bore on the fortunes of men, and all came directly from some divine power — the only way to find their meaning was to call in divine help, and this was done by divination. And so with Sludge. If there be no order of reason in things, the right way to track them is by chance (which is some- how divine), by a mere trick,, it may be. And so he uses the old tricks, and tricks that make the ancient ones look wise. Here, in truth, is the reductio ad absurdum of his entire mode of thought. His devices expose the triviality of his ideas. Life, law, and the whole system of God are made infinitely small in the name of a religion, without morality or wisdom, and in which God is only the highest point and chief factor of self-interest. And Sludge finds a society with uses and encourage- ments for him and his notions ; without faith, but with much crude curiosity about spirits and the unseen world. He easily feigns, or actually believes, that he 314 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. has powers of intercourse with that world, and be- comes a " medium." He finds patrons, develops his art and his courage, and grows famous. But his success, and the need there is for such things to grow and keep their novelty, have led him too far : he has cheated his credulous patron, and been found out. Mr. Horsfall is so angry that he almost chokes the medium ; but Sludge, having got him to listen, shows more ability than he had ever shown before in an exposition of his ideas and a defence of his career. He allows, to begin with, that he was wrong, but thinks his patron's " sainted mother " wishes her son to let him off, and coolly " begs " the whole question of his powers as a medium by proposing to ask her. He will even quit America if only he may start else- where with money enough. When he sees his patron relent he helps himself to a seat and the " good things " on the table, and, feeling happier after that, opens his defence in earnest. And his first defence is an attack on those who blame him. It was they who made the things they complain of possible. With their shallow curiosity, credulity, and love of excitement, they induced it all. Were a lad to pretend he had got money by super- natural means, they'd quickly call him a thief; but if he only claim to have dealings with spirits, that's different. Men have a conceit that there is an " un- seen world," and that somehow and sometimes it touches this world. They don't quite believe, and they don't disbelieve such things. The question is " Mr. Sludge, the Medium:' 3 1 S left " open," with a balance on the side of belief, because of the stories good men have told or credited. Thus the youth finds his audience when he comes with his tale. He stumbles and blunders at first, but that proves his honesty, and they find excuses because they are in league with the " delusion." With their glib phrase that there's more in heaven and earth than any know ; with their notion not only of mystery beyond life, but of a mystery that is really the medium's vulgar mystery, they give him scope enough. He soon sees all this, plays his game more steadily, and gives them what they wish. And once having taken him up, he becomes part of their amour propre, and a kind of distinction for them. Thus the " lies " began ; and yet, so far, it was not ''lies" but a kind of poetry of belief— z. case of that "over-belief" which is really necessary to give belief its proper power over men's minds. For most men all facts and ideas readily lose that glow which is their life. This is why poets have such use for man- kind ; they bring the fire and fancy that make things live. And this is just what the medium does for his facts and ideas; he gives life to men's ideas of a spiritual world, and intercourse with it. That this power is dangerous he admits, for the medium is pushed on by those about him. There is sure to be, some "cool head" who hints, or says, that the thing is a delusion. But they don't believe him, or criticize coolly, for now they have a personal interest in it, and object to be proved fools. Having failed to 3 16 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. persuade, the doubter keeps quiet for the sake of the company and the wines, and takes the "spirits" as part of the "price" to be paid for these. And so again the story grows, helped, as every legend is, by the fancy and belief of those who receive it, until it gets far past its author's design. Nor is any one to blame — not the medium, certainly, who is forced on by the wishes of his friends. In fact, the process is natural, and to have stopped it the medium must have had such courage and honour as few men ever show in such cases, especially when self-interest is all on the side of letting things take their course. Success had brought him a pleasant life, and he couldn't sacrifice that, he admits. What he did was far easier, and also more natural. He added to the fiction what he saw to be wanted. It was dangerous to have got into the middk of such a stream, but exciting too, and he rose to the situation, and soon had all the spirits in free communication. The thing had got beyond his powers, he felt. The spirits made queer mistakes, and talked poor stuff. Bacon could not spell his own name, and did not know his birthplace ; and Beethoven made music no better than a Shaker's hymn. But that, too, is in the nature of the case ; it is because they have to speak through Sludge, With the growth of the " fiction " doubts again arise, and these doubts help him, for his patrons argue that the doubts keep the thing from being better ; and if the doubter persists, the rights of hospitality are invoked, or the doubter is quashed by the argu- " Mr. Sludge, the Medium^ 3 i 7 ment that one man cannot be right against a dozen. So he triumphs. But this help and success have their cost. He gets to a point where he would be glad to pause, but he cannot. The sensation must grow, and his art with it ; and of that art he explains a little. A mother full of longing for a dead child comes and asks his help, her heart so strongly on his side that she easily takes his " fiction." But he must know something of her child to make it speak to her, and one who lays himself out to gather that kind of knowledge' easily learns many things that come so pat as to surprise those who do not know this art of miscellaneous observation. Then he goes farther, and becomes more cynical in regard to his audience. He declares that, the conceit of the thing having once got to " the proper depth in the rotten of man's nature," it is really " impossible to cheat— that is, to be found out." And how is this ? Because they take the cheating as part of the very nature of the medium, as such. It belongs to his qualities, and proves nothing as regards the essential question. He is angry as he thinks of their contempt, and the injury he has suffered through it, ceases for a moment to be a sneak, and exults in the fact that he has cheated these people more than they guess. But he professes comfort in the service he has done what he calls " religion." He has laid the atheist on his back, for, as sceptics {i.e. all who deny Sludge's religion) are liars, his " lie " was. just the thing for them. Books and arguments are nothing— never prove 3 1 8 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. what they mean to prove ; and for knaves, anyhow, his is the better way. So some help Sludge for what they think Sludge's help to religion — help him without much care as to the truth of his spiritualism, for he has seen in men " a real love of a lie ; " of pleasant delusions, and what makes for their wishes or their conceits. And the fools are ready for him, and the incredulous and con- ceited — " men emasculated and cold," who take it for its novelty and trifle with it ; and your man of letters, who likes a subject, and will write on anything that pays ; and the fribbles who want something to prove their wits on over dinner ; — all these have been his patrons, and he is glad to have '' done " them all. But now the argument goes deeper. He chuckles again over his tricks and his art, but maintains that there was something in it all, and to prove this he gives the history of his own beliefs, above spoken of. We all believe in a spirit-world, to which have gone the infinite hosts of mankind. That world must be deeply concerned in this world, is surely within reach, with the will to help, and the power. If they may help, how do they .' A long tradition shows how. The Bible, even, has its stories of spirits. Here, then, is the method, and it holds still. Then there have always been men of special powers in this matter — " seers of the spiritual." From his childhood he has been one of these seers ; never did rest in " natural causes." As were his fancies about the " godsends '' of his boyhood, so are his notions about the things of '" Mr. Sludge, the Medium!' 319 life still. He is still the one reality inside the " show," and reads all from his own point of view. The talk of many goes on the view that this visible rests on an invisible order. They speak of " Providence," but refer their principle to rare events and great things only. Yet, if it be true, it must be true of all events. He takes and uses it so ; he finds signs and hints everywhere. You object that this degrades the doctrine. That is your pride, and is illogical. Or you say the Almighty cannot be giving hints to Sludge at all points of His work. But Sludge to himself is so important that he sees nothing absurd in it. It is, in fact, a cold and remote idea of religion that is the root of the common " error." To Sludge religion is " all or nothing ; " no " smile of contentment " only, or " sigh of aspiration," but " life of life and self of self." It is the meaning of things. And if you say that Sludge's application of the idea proves it absurd, he will allow much error, and hold still that there's "something in it." Man is a blunderer, and life many ways obscure, but those who take all means and use all chances are most likely to solve fairly the one great problem of getting as much as possible out of it all. That is the grand advantage of his idea and method — they enable him to make the utmost of the world : to take yourself for chief of things, and be ever on the watch so that you miss nothing, is a good rule. So much for the rule, but what of the idea it rests on? You think it absurd that the Infinite should 320 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. stoop to such care for Sludge. But Sludge takes easily " the great and terrible Name." He has never known awe or humility, has never felt the Divine Greatness or that conception of the order of things ■which it involves. And so he is complacently ready to show that the divine infinity lends itself to the littleness of Sludge's creed. The greatness of God is best seen in the minuteness of the divine attentions. The infinitely great is made up of the infinitely little. The nearer the ultimate, the closer to God. And the spirit of Christianity is equally in favour of his idea. The filial relation is the true relation of men to God, as Nature shows by the intimacy and beheficence of her cares. And, being His " children," we ought to take life in that spirit. He does, and is " guided " even in trifles ; he does not object to the word, for to a mind like his all is trivial, nothing trifling. If he be " heir," he means to live as " heir," and have the " benefit " of it, now and for this life. He admits that many facts in our lives do not fit his theory clearly ; but what is more significant is that there are facts in all lives that do — facts not capable of a natural explanation. Such facts are usually put aside or reserved. For Sludge they are leading facts, and fix the meaning of things. Most cannot see life so. He who does has his gains. This talk of gains reminds him of his drawbacks as a medium, a " poor creature " physically ; but he quickly leaves the defects to rise to a bolder flight over his success. He now inclines to regard his whole " Mr. Sludge, the Medium" 321 course as right, and himself as innocent of cheating. He allows that, had he seen whither his course was taking him, he might have drawn back afraid. But now, with results in view, the truth won, the insight proved, he does not feel so. The " lie " has given life to truth that had been dead without its help. And he holds this true in regard to all belief. In one sense he believes nothing, but in another sense he is ready to believe that " every cheat's inspired, and every lie quick with a germ of truth." But if there be truth, and a true way to show it, why cheat ? Because, he says, " there's a. strange, secret, sweet self-sacrifice in any desecration of the soul to a worthy end." Not that it is meant to go on in the false way. "After the minute's lie and the end's gain," the intention is to keep to the truth, only so much is against that. And this lying for the truth's sake is the clue to much in careers like his. Now he returns, with broader view, on an argument suggested before. His kind of " lying " is the sort of thing all men do. They all " cheat " — that is, feign and fancy. There is no other way to live in a world of " cheats " — in a world that itself is a " cheat," and where hardly any realize the life they seek. If men were to " take truth as truth is found," and the world just as it is, life were worth nothing. You must " force and .mend it," or you will miss it. Many do, and have "the hfe to come." But why not both? And why not have "the life to come" brighten up this life ? That is what Sludge does, and by the very Y 322 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. means the poets use — " lying." They get thanks ; why not Sludge, who does more than they can, by his " influx of life " from the world beyond, to take off the dulness and discontent of the present life ? But now Mr. Horsfall is tired or vexed at what he thinks special pleading, remote from the question of fact, and he brings the matter forcibly to a close. He cheated. No casuistry affects that, and he dis- misses Sludge with a decisive contempt that does not go into distinctions,, yet not ungenerously. And Sludge, as soon as he is alone, throws over the sneak and the casuist, shows all his malice, is sorry he hasn't made a better bargain, even by telling more lies, but takes comfort from the thought that there are many more fools in the world ready to help him, and that his " business " is safe yet. Such is the study of Sludge, the medium, our poet's fullest dramatic study before "The Ring and the Book." The poem is fertile in points of dramatic and intellectual interest. I. How is such a story to be read? Is it Sludge that speaks, or is it Browning? Is this the best " case " that could be made for the medium by the subtlest argumentative mind English poetry has had in our century ? I have before said that it is a con- dition of all poetic drama that the poet's mind should animate and unfold the minds of his dramatis persona. It is in the nature of art such as Browning's that there should be a higher degree of this in his work ; and what you may require is that the growth should " Mr. Sludge, the Medium." 323 be natural. Sludge would never have made this "apology." You may think he would not have understood if made on his behalf. And yet it is made within his mind ; it presents his passions and his image of the world, and it carries out his principles. And so the poem is not a mere study in casuistry, what may be thought or said from Sludge's standpoint and for Sludge, but of things and laws in the soul of Sludge. 2. And the dramatic interest goes with another — the humour of the poet. This is seen in the details and externals of the man, but is most of all felt in the conception and breadth of treatment, the type and the justice done to it. The strange play of truth and error, of doubt and belief, of reality and delusion, of audacity and cowardice, of cleverness and crudity, of lying so deep as to have become self-deception and sheer inability to say how much is false and how much true, whether in soul or conduct ; — all this is frankly given. 3. And if there be humour in the subtle and free appreciation of the type, there is fuller humour in the large and subtle suggestion through it of a world-wide comedy in which we are all engaged, and in which the serious opinions and aims of men bear no small part. This man is a sneak, a liar, and an egotist, you say, wjth hardly enough sound matter in him to keep him alive ; and yet the poet not only brings him within the sphere of dramatic but of moral interest. When you have seen his picture of the soul, to which 324 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. these things were possible, you not only see how this man came to be, but are startled by points of sympathy with men^ and opinions around you, with principles and temptations in your own soul. You see how much of the lying of Sludge grows out of social unrealities and follies ; you see what opening there is for Sludgeism among the passions and opinions of men. 4. And this brings us to the chief points raised by Sludge and his apology — the bearing of the poem on spiritualism and on religious belief generally. As to the first point. Those who now study the question of " spirits " and mediums would say the poem makes too much of arguments and too little of pathology. Such cases are less a question of perverse and narrow inferences than of psychical conditions that involve certain beliefs and illusions. And the poet touches that side of the matter in his account of Sludge. The grounds on which he has taken it are perhaps of wider bearing and greater interest. And what is his bearing on spiritualism and the theory of spirits f Sludge seems to make his " case " for some kind of intercourse with the " world of spirits " very plausible, on what may be called orthodox grounds of belief Grant him his ideas, and how are you to close the door on his " phenomena " ? He says you can only do so by letting the beliefs lie dead in the mind. And Dr. Johnson, we know, was of that opinion. What has been gained since Johnson's time to alter the matter? That the climate, of opinion and "Mr. Sludge, the Medium:' 325 standard of belief about such things has so changed as to put such " follies " not merely out of fashion, but out of " court " ? Or shall we say that Sludge answers himself, and that follies like his are a disproof of his theories ? Both are true and to the point. And let us add, we are in no position to argue such a question in the abstract, even if ordinary ideas were granted. The question is one of experience, not of inference. " Ghosts " may or may not be a possible part of the universe. Whether they be an actual part of this world is a question of fact and evidence. Just so, says Sludge; and look at the "body of evidence," the universal tradition. Or, as Johnson said, there are more stories to confirm the belief than to support anything else men have held. But these stories are very capable of other explanations, and how few of them can be regarded as having any proper basis ! There may be more in Sludge and the " ghosts " than our secular century has thought ; and the Psychical Society appears to argue so much, but it won't be of the "ghostly" kind. It will bring the "ghosts" within the "dull realm" of natural causes, and to Sludge that is worse usage for them than to leave them " alone in their glory." 5. But the bearing of the poem on the quality and method of religious beliefs generally is more to us. Is Sludge in any sense a study and warning on that matter? Have men, in the interest of their own beliefs, often shown as little regard for truth and as great powers of casuistry as Sludge develops ? With- 326 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. out doubt it has often been so. The sphere of religious emotion and opinion is peculiarly open to the perversions and illusions of self-will and self-love. Neither Blougram nor Sludge have any passion for truth, or so much as a decent care for it. 6. And the "success" as well as the "argument" of Sludge may seem to go even deeper, and leave nothing of truth in human life at all. The man who is not true himself has no faith in truth, and he who sets himself the mean task of making his " beliefs " serve and answer his wishes very soon loses all conviction. And that explains Sludge. But beyond all that is shallow in Sludge's casuistry the dramatist suggests not only the germ of truth that hides under every lie, but also the " lies " that go with all truth. 7. And Sludge carries warning in another way. He is a fanatic. For him " religion is all or nothing." He would place and define certain instincts and ideas, and, thrusting aside all natural knowledge, would dominate life by, dogmas and inferences from them. He would do this in a paltry spirit and for low ends. Others have done it in a great spirit and for noble ends, but it is a mere " passion of the brain," and a pernicious fallacy in both cases. For not only is it impossible for the mind of man to frame or apply a view of things of such scope and authority, but a sphere and system that are in place and divine are set aside. And those who say with Sludge that religion is the whole of life are apt to make self- concern the soul of religion. " Mr. Sludge, the Medium" 327 8. Then a word on a great question that runs through the poem — that of the " supernatural" and the bearing of the poem on it. Minds like those of Sludge degrade all they touch, and the notion of an " unseen order," after Sludge has handled it, may seem no better than a poor superstition. To Sludge law is nothing, and God the only thinkable explanation of things, and to him the visible rests on an invisible which is the real universe; and Browning possibly holds that these instincts result from such fixed relations of man's mind to the universe that no science can abolish them, and only religion ennoble them— that the facts of the world, and, above all, of thought, seem to imply and require such an order, though we cannot prove its existence, and must regulate life on a basis of natural knowledge qualified by the faith of that unseen. And such studies raise the full question of the value of man's thoughts about the final matters of belief When Caliban, Sludge, and Blougram ex- pound our ideas and aspirations, they seem but forms of self-deception — the data got from instinct, and the argument quite " unchecked by verification." Are these ideas and instincts worthless, then, and faith an illusion of the soul ? Or are even Caliban and Sludge witnesses to the sincerity and depth of faith? In his "criticism" of belief the poet has given ample analysis of its psychological elements, and forcible proof of their quality and extent. But the large impression left by his method as by his 328 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. mind is that, though much faith is only subjective plausibility, and though none can "turn the whole of faith to rational thought," yet faith is essential as reason itself, and the deeper things of thought and art are the truer for this, that they never explain, because they cannot exhaust, the facts of experience, or the powers and realities of man's spirit, with which they yet have real contact and significant communion. ( 329 ) CHAPTER XV. POEMS ON ART : PAINTERS AND PAINTING. Care for art and sensibility to its impression is one of the features of our time. It has united itself with some of our best things and aims, and it reads for us qualities and motives of our lives and of our books. It is part of our better culture — of our quickened sense of beauty, our new care for the good of the world, our escape from the too-much fact of so many lives, our quest for something gone from knowledge yet needed by the soul. In some points a new, Renaissance has happened in our century, and this care for art is one of them. Our poetry since Keats, who " loved the principle of beauty in all things," has been deeply qualified by this care, and in poetry _/ew have shown such sympathy and power in this matter as Browning. This may seem strange, since the poet's own work is not eminent for beauty of form or colour. Yet his interest and power here are a true part of his genius and of his relation to his time. He has been called the artists' poet. 330 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. He is, in a larger sense, the poet of art. The artistic type and qualities are dear to him. He is a cordial interpreter of the passion and aims of the artist, and' still more of the general passion and ideas of art It is not easy to trace the sources of this interest beyond the poef s own mind ; but some points are clear in regard to it. His early care for Keats, and his lifelong care for Greek poetry, have cultivated his sympathy. His residence in Italy, the climate and home of art and artists, has told on it, as many poems prove, and in him, as in the rest of us, it is part of the modem spirit, part of our keen interest in the past, and in whatever preserves for us its lif& \ But Browning's power and interest in this matter are a most characteristic fart of his own mind, and throw light on the body and spirit of his work. His vivid senses, and care for the forms of things ; his love of definite expression, and sense of the soul made visible in and through fit forms ; his quest of the ideal through mastery of the real; his feeling that the real world can be seen only in that purer other Ught of the imagination, of which art is the sovereign expression ; — ^his love of art tpUs of these things in his mind. It is part of his character, too, and throws light on his ethics. The method and spirit of the artist are good in themselves. The artistic way of taking things, through love and enjoyment, seems to him to gain more of the truth of things than " pure science " can ever gain. The life and good of things is more than knowledge. And he has a cordial sense of that good- Poems on Art : Painters and Painting. 331 ness and beauty of things, which is the soul and basis of art. And there is another aspect of this poet's interest in and delineation of art that seems often missed. He is essentially a dramatic poet, and his great interest is the " soul," and even his art-interest has this relation and scope. There are two ways in which art and art- work may be regarded — one we may call the aesthetic, the other the spiritual. One is concerned with the works and the pleasure they give, simply as art, or with analysis of the work and the pleasure ; \the other with the light thrown on the artists themselves, and the light cast on man and man's mind by the ideas and scope of art — by the impulse in which art arises, and by its aims. Now, Browning's interest not merely touches the latter, but often takes it as chief I His interest in art for its own sake serves his keen dramatic interest, his interest in men and in the soul. The relation of art to character, the dramatic and moral interest of artistic work and ideas, is familiar now. Not so clearly seen is its relation to the " soul," and yet you will certainly omit an important aspect of Browning's poetry on art if you do not consider this. He will lead you to ask, What does art mean ? Nor will he let you rest on the notion that it means pleasure only, and delight in " the shows of things." He believes that heartily. But he will carry you beyond that to__a sphere of emotions and ideas, inter- pretation of which he finds in, and himself seeks through, art — ideas and emotions that are not imitative 332 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. and sensuous, but of man's own heart and mind. The soul of every true artist has sought, through the medium of art, to convey its intuition and aspiration. The higher principles and aims of art are spiritual ideas. And art, through these aims and ideas, is as true an interpreter of the passion and thought of man as philosophy or religion. Coming to the poems, we shall find the poet's interest in art proved by their number and variety as well as by their value. As a poet interpreting art, he has dealt with painting and sculpture, with poetry and music, and with power and insight in each case. Of these art-poems we take first a group dealing with Italian painting and painters — studies of artists and types of art, or of art in a more critical way. We begin with " Old Pictures in Florence" (iii. 131). The poet is the speaker, and it gives us part of his mind, but freely and in relation to the circumstances and thoughts of the time, and its style is meant to give its lyric-dramatic quality. On a March morning, with the spring begun, the poet is gazing through the clear air on Florence. He sees the fair city, but most of all the Campanile of Giotto. It startles him by bringing up Giotto, who has lately seemed to trick over him a picture of his own, that the poet has been hunting for and missed — " a precious little thing that Buonarotti eyed"like a lover." And Giotto brings up the early masters and the spring-birth of Italian art. The poet has been studying those masters for months, and the dead Poems on Art : Painters and Painting.. 333 painters have become part of the city's life to him. He has seen them in the churches, standing by their pictures, and felt their pain as they saw those works dropping away. Yet why should they, who are safe in heaven, trouble ? Because their work is yet to do. The work of the great masters is done and safe ; but the great masters have surely put out these early masters, and taken away their value .' They will not think so who know the place and worth of these masters, the value of their impulse and idea. And what was that impulse and idea ? It was they who carried art forward from the point where Greek art had stopped, and indeed failed. Greek art had given the life and meaning of man, so far as the beauty and power of perfect forms animated by clear and active minds could give man. Men saw that serene perfection of Olympian gods, but knew they could never reach it. It put before them a godlike humanity — admirable grace, dignity, strength ; but its only lesson was submission to man's limits, not aspiration or effort. Thus soul through body, and bodily per- fection, as man's ideal, meant an ideal both limited and unattainable, and brought man's progress to an end. But the end of progress is death in life for man. How, then, was progress to start again with new life for man .? The new birth of hope and effort came when, looking inward, man found the ideal of the soul and of a spiritual humanity. It was then seen that the Greek ideal is inadequate as well as impossible. In the soul was felt the power and promise of what is 334 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. " eternal." The nature that has this principle and " vision " cannot reach the serene and bounded perfec- tion of antique art and its ideals. But for that very reason it will pass beyond them, and see them abolished. The new ideal requires and promises " eternity." The sense of imperfection and inadequacy that belongs to life now is the result of the greater ideal, and the evidence of the larger attainment. What has come to perfection dies. We cannot find the perfect form, because thought and passion have grown too great for such absolute expression. It is from this point of view that he regards and values the early masters. Imperfect and crude as they are in so many ways, they went beyond Greek art because they were aware of the spirit, because they first sought to represent man in the light of that, and by that to give the spiritual ideal. They " failed," but they took this great step, and their aim and truth started art on its new and greater course, and are yet to be realized. So he reads the history of art. And after this flight he feels, as he leans on his villa gate this warm spring morning, as if the great ideal were too much for him. To go on and on and never stop — an evolution of life through an endless series of lives, always progressive — is that the idea that has come into the world as the revelation of the spirit — as the law of man's work and hope ? It tires one to think of it, and for the moment he leans to the notion that some time we shall stop and rest. (Instance Poems on Art: Painters and Painting. 335 again of his sense of the duahty, yet unity, of the nature of man.) With this fancy he ends his " philosophy," and goes back to the early painters, whom he banters for not showing a wiser care for their pictures, by guiding them into the hands of those who know their worth — himself, for instance, who would be pleased with a Gaddi or a Pollajuolo, and does not expect one of the greater names. In his banter he gives a list of these masters, with critical notes of their works, and gets back to Giotto. Then he turns to Florence, and the bell-tower of Giotto, and longs for the days when, in a free Italy, art may revive, and the Campanile be finished — "completing Florence as Florence Italy." Then come two poems dealing with artists, dramatic studies, and also studies of artistic types and styles, one in the second, and the other in the third and great period of Italian painting. The first of these, " Fra Lippo Lippi," put in " Men and Women " (1855), belongs to the early married years in Florence. The study was suggested by Vasari, though it departs from his story at certain points. Filippo Lippi, born at Florence in 1412, was left an orphan when two years old. He fell to the care of an aunt, and led a hard life until, at the age' of eight, he was placed in the Carmelite convent. Here he soon showed a quick ' eye and a turn for drawing, but no taste for learning. His use for his books was to cover them with sketches of what he had seen in the streets. The prior .saw 336 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. his bent, and thought it best to use his talent. He set him to learn art. The chapel of the Carmine had been painted by Massaccio, and Lippi went there daily to study. He learned and used for a time the manner of that painter. He soon grew famous, broke away from the convent, and had his travels and adventures. On his return to Florence, he painted the " Coronation of the Virgin " for the nuns of Sant Ambrogio. This got him the patronage of Cosimo de Medici, and for Cosimo's wife he painted a Nativity, with a figure of St. John Baptist. Lippi had a frank love of the world and its pleasures, and a warm, im- pulsive nature. The story that is the basis of the poem shows this. Once, when the painter was busy with a work for Cosimo, and was confined to his palace, that the work might be done as soon as possible, the painter got so tired of his confinement that he made ropes of his bed-clothes, let himself down into the city, and took his pleasure there for some days. And the story agrees with Lippi's life as we know it. In his life, more than his work, he broke quite away from monkish rule. He loved a novice of one of the convents, and took her from the nuns ; and their son was Filippino Lippi, the painter. He had a facile and affluent hand, and Vasari says the beauty of his work atoned for the failings of his life. He died at Spoleto in 1469. In many points the poet has dramatized Vasari, giving life and character to the old painter and his idea of art. Lippi is out on his escapade from Poems on Art : Painters and Painting. 339 and of the power of art to express " soul " through true and fair forms ; to rouse men to " The beauty and the wonder and the power ; The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades. Changes, surprises , , ." and give them sense, through its mere, joy and beauty, that " God made it all." '^Andrea del Sarto" is, again, a dramatic study — a study, also, of a type and of certain principles in art. It was suggested by a picture of the painter, with Vasari's story as a comment on it. Andrea del Sarto was of the third Oind great period. He was born in Florence about 1488, and died in 1530. Vasari says his father was a tailOr, and hence his name " tailor's Andrew." He early showed talent as a painter, and soon won fame. This led the King of France to invite him to his court, and there he was generously encouraged. But he left France and came back to Florence, because of his wife. When leaving France he promised to return, and got money to buy pictures for the king. He spent the money for his own uses, and remained in Italy. Vasari speaks very plainly of the evil influence over the painter of, his b eautiful wife ; and, though he has much praise for his many works, he speaks also of their defects. His design and workmanshi p, his colour and finish, were very good . He wanted inward power, fervour, and el gvation of min d. His technical skill was so great that with invention he might have stood beside the great masters. There is a story that Agnolo said 340 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning, that, had his tasks been greater, he might have rivalled Rafael ; but fire and power were both lacking. The poem was suggested by a picture in the Pitti Palace, and, in fact, its first design was to give Mr. Kenyon an idea of that picture, a copy of which the poet could not send him. The painter and his wife are in talk over a letter which she holds. His hand is on her shoulder, and he is looking into her face, while she looks away from him. She is cold and masterful, he loving and submissive. By her beauty, as by her self-will, she rules him. That is the picture. Turn to the poem. It is evening . The painter is weary, and wants to rest. The twilight soothes him as he looks towards " sober, pleasant Fiesole," and he wishes his wife to stay with him kindly for a little. It will help him, and he will do the picture she wishes. Her beauty has done much for him, as her figure in so many of his works proves ; her love would do more. But he knows that he pleads vainly ; she is her own, not his, yet " very dear no less." She smiles coldly as he pleads. He feels the charm, but also the want of ardour and hope, the greyness of everything in his life and work. All is toned down to the tint of the autumn evening, and he accepts it for its harmony and quiet. It is God's will, too ; for nature and circumstances are destiny, and men are not free. And if it be not the best, it is many ways good and fit for him, with his defects and limits. He knows his powers, the artistic value of his work, but also its want of force and depth. His work is exact and Poems on Art: Painters and Painting. 341 adequate to its themes. The work of others, who are and see more than he does, is for that reason less exact and perfect. The low pulse gives a steady hand, but it is the craftsman's, and truth and vital beauty are more felt in the work of the others. This clear self -consciousness and technical mastery are good as means ; but the gain is loss when they become ends. There is no progress, and can be no future for any art that is without spiritual effort and s'uggestiveness, however placid and perfect it may be within its own limits. The future is to those who see more than they as yet express. And why has he not done greater work f for, though he can see Rafael's faults, he feels that Rafael's work is greater than his own. Is it because his wife has not given him love, and has cared for the money, not for the work .■' But neither Rafael nor Agnolo were so helped, and the true incentives to all creative work must come from the mind itself. Is it, then, a law of life that gifts be parted — executive power to one, and passion and insight to another ? It may seem so. Yet he too had days of passion and a fire of souls about him once, when in France ; and he thinks of those days, but only to fall quickly into his mood of acquiescence. Yet he is not quite satisfied, for perhaps he might have done more. He calls to mind Agifolo's remark about him. Then he frankly allows he could not have made Rafael's work. Still, what more was possible he has given up for his wife, and he tries to find in that a gain for all loss, and an. 342 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. incentive, not to better work, but to work that will make more money. It is dusk now, and they go in. She is in haste to go to a certain " cousin." He wishes her to stay this evening, if only that he may dream of one great picture — "a virgin, not his wife this time" — that should justify the praise of Agnolo, and after that he will find her the money she wants. But no ; he will never, he sees, do better work here. Will he anywhere take his place with the great ones .? He does not know ; he knows only the bondage he cannot break. In "Andrea del Sarto," then, we have a study of character, and of art as qualified by character. The study of character is both exact and gentle. Candid self-judgment is the quality of men like Andrea. He describes himself and his work frankly, touching the source of evils in life and art. He is weak, and his art limited. His love for a selfish, worldly woman has been a hindrance ; but a radical and insuperable hindrance lay in himself. He has not the passion or stuff of the higher minds ; their power and their divine necessity are both wanting to him. He can .express well what is in him, and there is nothing in him he cannot express ; but his mastery and expression are adequate just because his thoughts are inadequate to the life of man and the meaning of the world. His technical perfection results from his limitation. That perfection is not the highest note of art. In the highest art a certain incompleteness may be the result of greatness, and great work is often true and sug^ Poems on Art : Painters and Painting. 343 gestive because of that incompleteness which conveys the artist's sense of the greatness of his theme — or even Fra Lippo's sense of the wonder and beauty of the world, and of man's life in it. Then these poems, taken together, touch certain ideas in the history of art. The early masters went beyond Greek art so far as they expressed the Christian ideal. But they missed truth and greatness in art, not only for technical reasons, but because of their ascetic view of the Christian ideal. With the Renaissance came a new impulse and idea — ^the impulse of free enjoy- ment and the antique idea of life and beauty. These ideals could not, as then seen, be combined ; and not only did art fail for that reason, but life had become worldly and corrupt, and the old motives and ideas had lost their inspiring power and sincerity, as the temper and work of Andrea clearly show. And, taken with " Pictor Ignotus," which is put with them, these poems are studies of unfulfilled lives . Lippi through circumstances, A ndrea throug -h moral d efects , and the unknown painter through moral sen- sibility and ascetic ardour, fail tn rparJi _an ideal th ey see ; and. the fact is very general, so general that it must be accounted for, which this poet does by regarding life with reference to the " soul," and by taking fidelity and aspiration as its measure. ( 344 ) CHAPTER XVI. POEMS ON ART : CHIEFLY POETRY. Browning has shared our age's romantic interest in art. He has also shared its interest in art-theories, and most of his poems on art have a critical quality. It is matter of regret to some that since Goethe's days our artists have been so often occupied with these points. They hold that art should be instinctive, and think it has been made self-conscious by all this criticism. It is, to a great extent, a result of the intellectual and inward quality of our interests and work — our self-consciousness has produced the criticism, if it has also been increased by it. And since the days of " Sordello," which so strongly expressed the poet's theoretic and ethical interest in art, he has touched these things with power and strong sense. The poems on art we have still to consider are mainly of this critical kind, and if their ideas should not seem, after all our criticism, original, they throw light on the poet's mind and aims, and put forcibly his ideas about his own art. Poems on Art: chiefly Poetry. 345 r. We take a group dealing with the conditions of art in the lives of the artists. The story of the sculptor in " Pippa Passes " bears finely on this. The love into which he has been entrapped reveals to him a principle higher than he had yet known, shows him how helpful love is, how it is the true principle of life and work. True work must rest on the true spirit and the right relation to men — must be made in a spirit of pure service. "Youth and Art" (vi. 154) has the same truth. Two artists, one a woman and a singer, the other a man and a sculptor, lived in their early days of struggle in opposite garrets. They had something more than kindness for each other, and might have helped each other. But, with fame and fortune to make, they had no room in their lives for simple love. They have made, not all they wished, but some part of what they hoped, of both now, yet she feels some- thing lost never to be gained. They are worldly and cold, and you know their art is less because they are so. With more of the heart, and less of the world, their lives had been happier and their art higher. "Pictor Ignotus" (v. 231) touches the above point, and the next to be considered. As the poet has put this poem, made in 1,845, with his " Men and Women," and in the Renaissance series, he means it as a study of the meeting of the older, religious, and freer popular art. The work and breath of a new time were round the painter — breath of popular interest and work of popular appeal. He would gladly have made such 346 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. work, and had the joy of the fuller passion and the wider service. Why not make the work, then ? Because he saw that popular work must reflect and gratify the popular mind. He would not degrade his art to that. And so he made his choice — the cloister with its seclusion and its integrity. He has missed fame, but he has kept his aims true, his heart pure. With his proud self-respect and severe conseience this was his only course, and, though he feels the loss of influence, and feels too the narrow scope, the cold and shadowy quality of his art, he rests in the conviction that it could not have been other than it is without loss of that inward honour which to such as he is more than life. The poem called " Shop," with its blunt phrase and tone, bears on life, but touches the artist as well as the merchant. Its main point is the folly and essential poverty of those who have, no life or interest except in their trade or calling ; who starve and crush the man into a hole behind the "shop." There are writers who have no life except in their books, artists to whom nothing has interest except their pictures. The man and the work both suffer in such cases. The best work requires a man's free soul and true life behind it. 2. Our next group is one dealing with the relations of the popular judgment to art. And first, "Respecta- bility " (iii. 201). This is its theme. An artist and his wife have had a free ramble in Paris, with picturesque views of the city's life. But what would the world, Poems on A rt : chiefly Poetry. 347 or, in George Eliot's phrase, " the world's wife," say if she saw them, if she knew their freedom used in other ways ? Be severe and condemn, of course^ But those who would depict life must see it and keep in touch with it, There are many gains for the free. Life and experience are more than the world's " con- ventions." " Popularity " (iii. 2 1 8) deals with popular relations to the true artist in another way. You may take the poef himself as speaker, and John Keats as the case he had most in his mind. And he thinks how the public ignored Keats until he lay in his Roman grave. Yet, never mind ; he is " dear to God and the coming ages " for the work he did and the genius he proved, and a few knew him. And what happens when he is gone ? Others take his secret, copy his art, popularize and vulgarize it, grow famous, and, it may be, rich by doing so. He found the "Tyrian dye, blue as Astarte's eyes." Hobbs, Nobbs, Nokes, and Stokes, get all the " profit " of it — and the good- natured scorn of our poet " How it Strikes a Contemporary " (v. 209) deals with popular mistakes about the poet. It begins, " I only knew one poet in my life, and this was his way." He was a man of mark, though not after the style or for the uses of the world. His dress and bearing made yoti aware of that. He mixed in and noted the world, quiet, withdrawn, but full of eyes. He saw every one, stared at no one. You stared at him, and though he barely looked at you, he knew you and 348 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning- took, your gaze as a thing of course. Not knowing what these " ways " meant, yet sure they must have some " use," people said he was the king's " spy," and they could quote cases that seemed to be explained by it. And they mistook his private life as much as they did his public function. The poet lived in the simplest way, but the public thought he lived in a voluptuous style. The speaker's father, a man of sense, saw in him the true Corregidor, " censor " of men's ways. The poem ends with the poet's death, and the simple dignity and honour of the close crown his worth : " Here had been , the general-in-chief. Through a whole campaign of the world's life and death Doing the King's work all the dim day long. " The " scene " is Spanish. Was there thought of Cervantes, and his way of life when he made " Don Quixote," and proved his place among the world's great poets .'' 3. We come now to the most interesting group of the poems dealing with poetic art — those in which we have more or less of a personal expression. And first of these we recur to the digression in " Sordello" (pp. 97-1 1 1). There the poet pauses at a crisis of Sordello's story to give account of his own art and its aims. It opens with the distinction between Eglamor's and Sordello's art — the first able to put all his heart and soul into his work and to make his songs complete, because his theme is small and his art the whole of his life ; the other feeling his work but part of his life, with greater themes, and work that Poems on Art : chiefly Poetry. 349 shows in its very manner, purpose, and passion- out- reaching it. The latter is the true poet. The former is an artist, or at most a troubadour. Beyond all his work the poet feels a life great and free, and the true mind has no sooner made any work than it " strikes sail, cuts cable,'' and is away again upon the broad and open sea. And this distinction gives a clue to his choice of Sordello's story. Other themes occur as he muses in Venice, but he seeks some theme that shall give the realities and scope of human Hfe, in the hope of serving mankind through the spiritual interest of his work. And what is humanity ? and how can he help it in its need .' He sees it vividly through what he sees in Venice ; sees its sin and weakness and suffering as of some erring woman. But can he explain such a life, or help to clear it up for these " warped souls and bodies " that he sees } Life seems the grand teacher, through a very maze of lies guiding by some thread or core of truth, and through all the evil and pain working a way to good. Such life seems, and we have to master its method and purpose if we would help men through it. How do this } By clever verses, by pretence of knowledge, by laborious science ? By none of these, as it seems to him, but by the living waters that flow from ■ the rock of truth ; and this rock the poet must smite at his peril, .that the waters may flow forth for men. Some poets only '' see," and some reveal, the truth of life, and " the best impart the gift of seeing to the rest ; " but insight is the basis, and truth the bearingj 3 so Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of all their work, and the work must be done with courage and devotion. These were the aims our poet took forty-five years ago, risking the ugly name of " metaphysical poet," and other perils too. The peculiar poem, "A Light Woman" (iv. 217), connects with part of the above passage, that in which he sees the " lost ones " of mankind as first claiming his help. The theme of the poem is an imaginary subject from life, and its design is to show, through the case put, how complex men's motives may be, and how hard it is often to reach a judgment that shall include and explain the facts of conduct ; only those who have, the power of getting behind apparent facts and to the heart can hope to do so, and they have often to pause, and even to fall back on the facts as the best they can do. Here is the problem. There are two friends. The younger and weaker falls into the " net " of a " light woman ; '' the other, to free him, makes love to the woman on his own account, and the woman loves him. What is he to do ? Quite misunderstood by his friend and by the woman, he scarcely knows what to think of himself, and certainly does not know what to do. The problem is handed over to the dramatic poet as one he ought to be able to deal with. " Transcendentalism " (v. 207) is a piece of advice to a poet not yet up to all the secrets of his art — to the poet of " Sordello " say (its date is 1855). Its burden is, that the poet speaks and does not sing ; that he puts forth his thoughts solid and bare, not Poems on Art: chiefly Poetry. 3Si draped in the folds of imagery and metre. The thoughts are good, but to give out this kind of things as poetry is too bad. Better throw the harp away, get a Swiss horn, and shout his " great thoughts " for all Europe to hear. But, he may say, grown men want thoughts, not verses ; truths, not images. They ought to, perhaps, but they don't. They spend years in spelling out the meaning of things through science and philosophy, and find life's summer gone, and the " meaning " still to seek. How help them ? What do they need ? Another book, tough and dark too .'' No ; they want some mage or poet, to give them hold of the things in their inner meaning and beauty ; to give them life in its glow and its zest ; to make them young again, and " pour heaven into this shut house of life." That were worth doing. Try song that way. Sing from the heart, and put the life of that into your song. You are a poem, though all the poetry you make as yet is nought. Was this mockery of his critics i or self-criticism? Poetiy is not magic, and the poet is no magician, as the vulgar conceive it. Yet poetry ought to do something of this kind for us, by its thoughts, its images, its verse, its influx of the poet's soul. "At the Mermaid" (" Pacchiarotto," 1876) is a monologue imagined for Shakspere, and spoken at the tavern that was the rendezvous of Elizabethan wits. It deals with the true relation of the dramatist to his work. It may be regarded as a protest against certain recent criticism of Shakspere, and against an 3 52 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. easy kind of criticism that every dramatic poet is open to. It mocks the notion that the poet puts himself and his Hfe into his work for all the world to find. The speaker says he has no wish to take the kingly place some would give him ; it is enough to have done the work. But the work is not the whole of life or all the man, and he wishes to live a man's life with his fellows, cheerful, free, kindly, independent. He has not sold his soul for the world's praise, or made life's good turn on that. He has kept his soul safe and clear within, and wishes his work to stand by itself. By the work let him be judged, without vain curiosity as to the life. He has made no vain display of feelings or of " morals," and if any seek a poetry of gloom and discontent, he has none such to give. Life has been and is good to him, and heaven " blue, not grim," and men have been friendly on the whole, while a few, honest to the core, have loved him well. Nor of women has he had the sad experience some like in their verse. Not "world-smart," but friendly enjoyment, has, in fact, been his note. Now, despite its drift, what relation has this to Browning'? It was not made for or of Shakspere only, though much of it is fit for him (not "oreichalch " and " welt-schmerz "). The dramatist cannot keep his work clear of himself in the way here implied ; not even Shakspere could, if he ever deliberately wished, which is doubtful. To find the dramatist through his dramas is indeed a task of much delicacy, and can only be done by those who respect the principles of Poems on Art : chiefly Poetry. 353 dramatic art ; but it can be done more than this poem implies. And the poem itself we may surely take in evidence, for Browning is distinctly here in these notes of it — the appeal to the work, the reserve of the heart, the self-reliance, the cheerfulness and frank enjoyment, the manly value for life as the more essential good, the scorn of sentimental art and of melancholy as a poetic mood. The poem that follows, named " House," suggested, perhaps, by certain " Lives " and the public curiosity in that matter, denies of even Shakspere's sonnets their directly autobiographic quality. If Shakspere did unlock his heart so, he was not the man or the poet some of us have thought. An author may give the public a peep through his window, but only an earthquake can be an apology for destroying the privacy of a house by throwing its whole front down. The public has no right to such exposure of the whole " interior," and if it be made it only leads to blunders and perversions. The intimate facts of life are for those eyes only that have " the spirit sense," and these can find what is of moment without any vulgar ex- posure. The " Epilogue " in the same volume is, of course, personal ; an expression of the poet's views about his own work. Poets, it is said, should give us wine, to gladden the inward sense, and they ought. But neither poetry nor wine can combine in one all the virtues. A certain kind of sweetness cannot be united with real strength. But is it not the very business 2 A 354 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. of the poet to give us the " impossible/' " body and bouquet in one 1" There is such wine of poetry in the world, mighty and mellow. Pindar and ^schylus, Shakspere and Miltcn, though those who loudly demand this quality from living poets take no great draughts of it out of these poets. So let them talk. And as to his own work. He "brews stiff drink," strong rather than sweet. But, like wine, poetry grows mellow with age, if only it have strength. Anyhow, he gives his best, with zeal and without sparing. And his vineyard is earth, " man's thoughts, loves, and hates.'' But why not give it a lyrical flavour ? Because he will not "strip his meadows of the cowslips and the daisies." He keeps the tender and private emotions for the health and good of his own heart The Epilogue at the close of " Dramatic Idyls " (second series) has the same note. It contrasts two kinds of poets, the one emotional, superficial ; the other with thought and depth of soul. Song in the one flows lightly, on the least impulse ; in the other more slowly, but from fuller power. And strength is the soil for song. The power of a nature not lightly moved, but capable of strong passion, thought, and will, and whose work grows as the pine, because, like the pine, its roots are in the rock. The prologues to " Pacchiarotto " and " locoseria " give other notes and aims. In the first, the sight of a garden wall, and the thought of the life beyond it, tell how often " Wall upon wall are between us." Song should remove the walls, and bring heart to Poems on Art : chiefly Poetry. 355 heart. It is the spirit that unites men, and the poet has put his hopes on that " subtle thing." The lyric in " locoseria," " Wanting is — what ? " like the prologue and epilogue to " The Two Poets of Croisic," turns on the power of love. The last of the three will serve best to put the idea as regards poetry. At an ancient contest for the prize of song, a poet was singing so that it seemed certain the prize would fall to him, when one of the strings of his lyre snapped. But all was not lost, for a " mad thing " of a cricket, " with its heart on fire," came to his help. Lighting on the lyre, it gave the missing note, " low and sweet," and he won the prize. A parable — Love was the cricket that replaced the broken string, and gave its sweetness to the song. The conclusion of " The Two Poets of Croisic " (1878), all I can here speak of, has bearing on the criticism of poetry. One of the poets, after a brief blaze of fame, withdrew to the rustic quiet of Croisic, and put verse aside. He did so because he thought he had once had "direct dealing with God." The other found a brief fame, and then sank into neglect. The poem puts dramatic explanation of both cases. Then, in view of both, the poet asks. By what tests shall we try poets f In the spirit of Scott and Wordsworth, he offers this test, "Which one led a happy life?" The man's worth, and life's value to him, must be taken as our final test. The strong because joyful man, who stands master over his passions, using brightly his acquist of power and experience, is victor 3S6 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning- in every sphere, and nothing can make up to any man for the lack of this. Browning's preference for Euripides among Greek dramatists, and his defence of that poet in the person of Balaustion against Aristophanes {vide "Aristo- phanes' Apology ") shows how distinctly he has con- sidered the principles raised by the later drama of Greece, and how deliberately he prefers Euripidean art and aims to Aristophanic naturalism. He likes the human and ethical standpoint, the serious and truth-loving spirit of the tragic rather than the " pure Hellenism " of the comic poet ; while the "Apology" suggests a broader spirit and a larger view, an art that unites the realism of the one with the higher interests of the other — delight in and free study of the world, with ideal aims and spiritual truth. And is not this the aim of his own art f Let me answer that question very briefly by a simple state- ment of leading principles. Art may and ought to deal with all the significant facts of human nature and life. It should be commensurate with the world and spirit of man as man's thought and passion have grasped them. And the medium of art should corre- spond with this view of its matter. In selection and subjects and treatment art should be free, rational. It should not be restrained by theories based on past experience only, or by the conventions of custom and pleasure. The poet must trust his own genius and insight in his choice of themes, and must establish his " rights " by his mastery and vital power. Poems on Art : chiefly Poetry. 357 The substance and power of the work are primary ; its style and form 'secondary. Truth, not beauty only, is required in art. The art that is made with an exclusive regard for beauty is as inadequate to life as it is false to the higher thought of man. That emphasis on beauty and music, which is part of our inheritance from the classical revival, is narrow as art and untrue as an " image of life." If the poet is to give men the contact and power of life as he sees it — the impulse of that vital thought and passion in which the world and the soul are truly expressed — he must use a fuller medium. To represent life, art must deal frankly with experience, and, so dealing, must not be afraid of the facts of pain and sorrow. Its image of life and its image of man must both be frank and adequate. This vital adequacy and truth of art is a ruling principle, and essential to its higher functions ; for art is not an end so much as a means. It should serve the life of man, not in the interest of any types or theories, whether of culture or belief, but as promoting the fullest expression and the freest development of man ; and this it may do only by using the poet's imagination, passion, and delight, and all the means and powers of art and song, to give the world of man's life in its " higher reality." ( 358 ) CHAPTER XVII. POEMS ON ART: MUSIC. Of Browning's poems on art there remain those dealing with music. In the other arts we have found enjoyment and insight — the grasp of a mind dealing vitally with matters proper to it. The music-poems show even greater power. In these the poet has fuller value and originality as an interpreter. The poet's heartiness and breadth of sympathy with the arts has led to a question whether he might not have found expression for his genius in some other art And in the dedication of " Men and Women " he hints at the possibility of such expression. If there be another art in which this might have been done congenially, I should say it was music. Browning has gathered much knowledge — some of it quaint and remote, and, as part of it, there must be much knowledge of music and musicians. The com- posers to whom he refers, the technical mastery implied in his criticism, and in the statement of his ideas in the poems on music, prove this ; while his Poems on Art : Music. 359 power to interpret musical ideas, and to express the very soul of music, show how full is his sympathy with the art and its modern aims. And this care for music m,eans much more than "ear" and sensibility to sound. It speaks of the poet's large and subtle passion, and of his spiritual sense of things. It is, in truth, fit that the poet of "the soul" should prove his power and scope by his relation to that art by which so much of the modern mind, with its large ideas and desires, has been expressed. We have three poems of this class, two dealing with special kinds of music and views of life suggested ; the third with the general power of music to express the passion and life of the soul itself, and that world for which suggestive expression is best. The first and lightest of the three is on a " Toccata of Galuppi" (iii. I27,date 1855). It is spoken by some one listening to the music, who has a basis of conscience and purpose, and feels that life must be looked at in the light of these. And it puts a train of images and thoughts suggested by the music — a train of thoughts and images that give the meaning of the music itself by interpreting the emotions in which it took its rise, and to which its appeal was' made. You may, of course; object that this can only be dramatically true; that by reading music this way you get a purely subjective interpretation of it ; and the poet meets the objection by making his poem from that point of view, though he would not say that such, criticism has a merely personal value. 360 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Galuppi Baldassaro was born near Venice in 1706. Starting as an organist, he became famous as a writer of operas. He also wrote for the harpsichord and church music. Dr. Burney met him at Venice in 1 770 {cf. Grove, " Dictionary of Music "), and speaks of " the fire and imagination " of the composer ; of " the novelty, delicacy, and spirit " of his music. He wrote many works, but, with all earlier opera, was thrown into the shade by Rossini, and has long been a name known only to the learned. But the life and meaning of the poem depend simply on its force and truth as an image of one piece of his music. The speaker has been listening to a Toccata of Galuppi — a light, simple kind of music, and as he listens the past returns. He sees the musician and Venice (though he never was there), and the men and women who used and loved this music, and, through the music they loved, the lives they lived and the quality of their hearts. And what he sees is not cheerful, now that death has cast its solemn shadow over the picture. Light was their music and gay their lives, bright women and careless men ; merriment their key, and pleasure their good. They wore the days out, and the nights too, and themselves also, in balls and masks, while our genial musician made fit music for them at the harpsichord. It was all bright and graceful, and they would pause at times as Galuppi's music fell on their ears, and in a light way put questions the music lightly touched. A plaintive passage would hint, " Must we die } " — for Poems on Art: Music. 361 even such life is touched at times by the sadness of the close. Yet, though it could not avoid the question, it did not let the mind dwell on it. It whispered hope, if only the delusive sort which comes from putting certainties out of sight. " And are we happy ? " it would ask, and persuade them they were, though men never are so when they put the question that way, and it could not disguise the fact that their hearts were unsatisfied. So they listened, then left him for their pleasures until death put an end to it all. And as we listen now to the cold, shallow music, death seems the proper, not the casual, close of such lives. Life with no more in it must end. Immortality is fit where you have undying principle and purpose ; where no soul can be found, it were out of place. But these, too, were men and women, and to think of them as the music makes you think is not only to feel the pathos of death, but a chill of doubt cast on more serious lives, and on the value of man. "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" (iii. 221, date 185s) is a study and criticism of the fugue as a form of music. It depicts the effect of that kind of music, and the life it would be the image of, and in the interest of life sets it aside for a better music. "Master Hugues" (given by fugue?) is not in the dictionaries, and has no " Life." He is an invention of the poet — the genius of the fugue. And what is the fugue .' It is a form of music in which the parts seem to answer and pursue each other over and over, intricately, elaborately, until they may seem to lose 362 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. themselves in the " hot debate,'' and all without result. From one or two simple themes a great structure of sounds may be evolved and built, as Bach does in his great fugues. Such music has an almost purely- technical meaning and value. It gives play for in- genious construction and masterly execution. It is the mechanism of the art ; it is the form without the poetry and passion of music. The speaker here is an organist who has been playing certain great fugues, He has mastered them, and is satisfied so far. But now that it is all done, he would like to be clear as to the good of this sort of music. What relation has it to the reasonable ends of life? The question may seem beside the mark, and it does not occur to him that such music may be made simply for itself. In his present mood he thinks that even our master of the fugues must have had thoughts and passions, and that his music must have had meaning for him in relation to these. He has seen this old master in the loft while he played, come from the dead with his quaint face to listen to his own music, and he wishes to talk the matter over with him, as circumstances are most favourable. And so the question is discussed from section xiL The structure and drift of the fugue are described. You begin with your phrase. There isn't much in that — a brief series of single notes. It is answered, though there seemed really nothing to answer. Thus two have started. Then another is added, and another, until five are going, the wrangle getting faster Poems on A rt : Music. 363 and faster, atwi not one of them with anything to say. A listener, who is not a musician, soon gets lost ; the whole thing turns to a maze, with no order or result. But it may be this is its design and proper result f The master meant to land us on this very moral. This is his image of life ; life is a fugue, a web simple yet subtle and intricately woven, but aimless and resultless, full of impotent striving towards nothing, and without real conclusion — not ended, but cut short by death. Over us, indeed, are nature and truth, but by vain habits and customs we keep ourselves quite from them. We even make a body of laws on purpose to bar our way to them ; we take opinion and usage without wisdom and without reality, and put those for hfe. Nay, "the nothings grow something;" we get to believe in their reality, and so "close the earnest eye of heaven " — life's fact and the soul's truth —and in the end have " no glimpse of the far land at all." We take the fashions and the traditions for the secret and the substance. We are even wilfully blind. We argue down our souls, and whoever may see. Our fathers were wise and knew— all we need ; and so the folly goes on. To keep the " web " whole becomes the great point, and we neither live nor get any true hold of things. It was his meaning, then, to have no meaning, because he saw that life and conduct have none. Ah ! most wise master, you knew life then, and your music is worth playing, because by its combined diffi- 364 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. culty and futility it gives a forcible sense of what men make of their lives. So far he interprets and seems to agree, but now you find he has been ironical ; he has been bringing the matter to the point of absurdity. This is not the whole of life, though very much in men's lives is like that ; there is a better view, and he throws the fugue aside for a music that is closer to the right view and spirit. Clear off your fugues, and give us Palestrina with the full power of the organ, a music with natural passion and depth. It is our fault that life is not better. Truth is near us, and we can touch Nature if we will. But his light dips and goes out, and the poet leaves him in lines that are the echo of the noise he must have made rattling downstairs in the dark church. The last of the three poems, " Abt Vogler " (vi. 92), is the poet's fullest word on music. In verse and thought it is one of his finest poems, and as an inter- pretation of the scope and power of music as it is now made and felt, it is, perhaps, quite unique. The musician from whom the poem is named is to a great extent a symbol of the art in its modern scope. But a few facts of the abba's life, as told by M. Nisard, will make some points clearer. I take those facts from an analysis made by Miss Marx. Vogler was born at Wjirtzburg in 1749. He early showed his power in music, and was sent by the Elector Palatine to study under Martini at Bologna. He tired of Martini in six weeks, and went on to Padua to study Poems on Art : Music. 365 under Valotti, on whose system of harmony he based his own. He also studied theology, and was ordained a priest at Rome. Returning to Mannheim in 1775, he opened a school of music there, and published his " Theory of Music and Composition." Later, he made a " Miserere," and wrote operas at Munich without success. He went to Paris and produced an opera there, which failed. Having travelled in the East, he settled in Sweden, and there invented his "Orchestrion." With his organ he gave concerts in London in 1790, which were a success, and this seems to have been the turning-point in the abba's career. He went back to Sweden, and was there until 1799, and after that visited the chief cities of Germany. At Darmstadt he had Weber and Meyerbeer as pupils, and was much valued by them. His mastery of his- art was original and thoughtful, and his devotion to it full of zeal. His organ and powers of extemporization made him famous, and these, with his serious interest in his art, made him most fit for our poet's purpose. The poem is a monologue, and so the abb^ is free to speak his ecstasy, and the moment is fit. He has been extemporizing on his organ— putting all his passion into it — and he wishes the music, with all its meaning, would last. He has built a palace, magically as Solomon for the princess he loved, only in the legend the palace remained, while his fairer palace of the sounds is fleeting as the clouds and subtle as the air. Yet what power and beauty were in it ! and how nobly built ! — deep as the roots of things and high as 366 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. heaven, and with a light upon it beyond the glory of Rome on a festal night. He has said Rome and in sight ; but that is not half the truth as to his city built of sounds and for the soul. It rests on the deepest and soars to the highest, and it does much more both ways. It brings heaven to earth. If his passion sought to scale the sky, heaven yearned down to crown his aspiration. Music not only makes the soul alive and aware, it gives life the height and hope and glow of heaven. The ideal of man's highest passion is brought near, made real for the time in the soul, so as to light up every point of man's effort. Nor is that all. As it kindles the soul with its passion, music makes us aware of the universal. The free scope of life is felt ; its depths and springs are opened. We are with the ages past and to come ; free of our bounds, we catch the meanings and see the unity of the system from its simplest to its highest parts. An intuition and sympathy vaster than thought seems to comprehend things, making their law clear, and the divine good in and for them all. This music achieves, or say music and the soul acting as one. And what other art can do this for us.' Painting cannot, for there means and method too are seen. In music only you have an art that is above art ; you have creative power and beauty, and the mystery that belongs essentially to these — law, certainly, but the hidden Power that is behind all law. And the wonder is greater as we see how Poems on Art: Music. 367 simple are the elements of music. By itself each tone of the scale is nothing, and you can do nothing with it except make it loud or soft. But the musician takes it, and what then > He finds the chord (the fundamental chord, which is the basis of harmony, a tone, its third and its fifth), unites the tone " with two in his thought," and of the three makes not a fourth sound, but a wonder before unguessed — ■" a star of the eternal sky," whose power we cannot explain. So he built his golden palace on the impulse of the moment. But it is gone. Such music is in its nature momentary, and never to be brought back ; other great combinations may be, not this, for all its life and glory. A better may be, but that does not take away the sadness of this loss. It seems part of himself gone, and it belongs to his soul to cling to all that has been fair, to the whole self, to the eternity of all good. And the music seems to say that good things may pass away. But can that be so.? Can any good be so transitory as the music seems to have been ? It cannot be ; and he falls back on the soul and its faith in the divine eternity to correct his impression. And then music becomes a subtle and splendid suggestion of the way in which this may happen. His course pf thought seems to be this : the tran- science of the music, which a minute ago filled his whole soul, reminds him vividly of that law of change and loss which plays so great a part in 368 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. life. Everything is for a moment only, then seems to fade into a past that never comes again. But surely the very joy of music, its sense of beauty and wonder and resource in the universe, proves that this " law of loss " is an illusion. The permanence of good must be the true law, for that is the orderly result of the divine eternity. The eternal God is the Maker, the universe is His palace. Being what He is, His work must stand. Fear of change is out of place in a world of which He is the Maker. If He expand the soul, it is to fill it. Our ideas are the instinct of His designs. All good endures in ever fuller good. It is evil that passes — is nought, or is on its way to reach and be good. It is a mistake to go by what is now seen ; earth is part of which heaven gives the whole. And so music, the amplest and most spiritual expression of the heart, becomes symbolic, prophetic. Its longing and dreaming are not a hint only, but a promise of what is to be. All aspiration is prayer to the Eternal, our souls seeking the good meant to be ours. And all the effort and passion of human life that had good for their aim are '' music sent up to God," which, by the law of things, reaches its goal. It is the musician, then, who has a true hold of life's order. He best feels its hidden law. The very principles of his art, the way in which all tones and pauses make his work, and in which even discords can be used to reach the full harmony, give him an intuition of God's method. Thinkers reach a timid Poems on Art: Music. 369 and partial solution of the problem ; musicians hold the secret and know. But these hours of insight pass. " Silence resumes her reign," and we cannot fill life with music. It is earth now, though heaven may be to come, and here we cannot but think of evil as evil. So he will be patient and proud. From the heights he must get back to the level of life and duty — a hard task for most ; to the master an occasion for mastery. And so, by a series of bold movements, he seeks his way back, resting at last on sober acquiescence tempered by enthusiasm and insight. This is how Browning read the meaning of music through the soul of the Abb^ Vogler, in one of his hours of inspiration. Is the poem "true" only in that way ? or does it, in a measure, say what the poet himself feels about an art that appeals very strongly to him ? I must think that the poem says in its own terms very much what great music has often said to the poet. It depicts that world of high emotion into which music carries the soul. It suggests that sphere of the ideal and the universal which music has the power to render. Whether its suggestions be as hopeful and definite as those of the abb^ must de- pend on the mind set in motion by the music ; but it commands a sphere of emotion such as this, and interprets the soul by its power over it. All that is meant by this world of sublime and subtle emotion neither thought nor music can tell us, and the soul itself must be our final interpreter. 2 B ( 370 ) CHAPTER XVIII. THE ROMANCES. Among the poems Browning made between 1845 and 1855 were a group called "Dramatic Romances." And when the group is examined, to ascertain what is meant by a " dramatic romance," it becomes clear that it is a poem in which the matter and incidents are mainly imagined, and in which what fact there may be is construed with a view to certain ends of the imagination. And they are " dramatic " because told from the standpoint and through the mask of one of the "actors." The "Grammarian's Funeral" and " Waring " are " romances," and so are " The Boy and the Angel " and " The Statue and the Bust" In all of these the shaping mind of the poet is at work to present a dramatic picture of his thought. But some of these poems lie closer to the outward facts of life, and are more shaped in that medium ; while others are more purely imaginative, and the series of images and emotions is so much their more obvious aspect, that you wonder whether they are The Romances. 371 only flights of fancy. I refer to " The Flight of the Duchess " and " Childe Roland " more especially. The first in point of time is " The Flight of the Duchess ; " it is also nearer the others in manner. I do not know where, if anywhere, the poet got the first suggestion of this romance, but judge that it is his own invention. The story is simple. The speaker is a huntsman, whose family has long been in the service of the duke, and much valued. This man tells the story so far as he understood it, and, like all stories of years past, that have made a deep im- pression on the simple but intense imagination of .such people, it has grown to a romantic legend. The style is meant to suggest the speech and tone of the peasant, and verse and phrase are such as to give his mode. You may, indeed, demur to so rude a tran- script, and most of all to the rhymes ; but if you accept the dramatic intention, you must allow some freedom to the humour of the speaker. And the character of the huntsman is one of the "successes" of the poem. His bluff, hearty, vivid nature, his simple yet deep and generous heart, his shrewd sense and brusque realism, with what you find in these natures, a strong vein of poetry and ardour, and a truly chivalrous temper, make him the very man to tell the story here told. The story is told thirty years after the event. Its period is that of decadent feudalism, in a country where old fashions linger long. The poem opens with a picture of the country. It is a great, wide, 372 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. wild land, bounded by mountains with solemn pine woods on their slopes, opening on a wider and wilder land bounded by the sea. The old duke was a strong baron, fit to rule such a land and enjoy its life. The young duke is of another kind and for another sphere. The sturdy baron died, and left his young son to his wife's care. She was a sickly, sour, masterful woman, from another country and of obscure origin. The son is like her, and, to make him more fully to her mind, she takes him to her own country to be educated. So the old hall was dull and empty for years, and when they came back the results of descent and training were too plain. The young duke was pert, full of his travels, full of himself, scornful towards his own rough northern land, and full of Parisian notions. And one of these ideas was a fantastic and shallow regard for his own country and its past. It was rough, but stood nearer picturesque " heroic " times, and was full of crude poetry. So he set himself to " restore " the past ; to set up again its dead forms, and make an idle show of them. Having nothing solid to do, and no life in himself, he plays at living the life his fkthers really lived. Such a spirit is a double falsehood. The past has no meaning to it and the present no use. There is no reality ; all is shadow and make-believe. The honest huntsman knows this ; sees the thing so hollow that it gets its value even for the duke from the impression it makes on others. And the very horse he rides, "all legs and length," is a type of the sham it is. The Romances. 373 But soulless as is the duke, he must marry. So he brought a lady to his castle to be " duchess," not wife, as part of his ceremonial, for no moral object. She was from a convent ; a very little lady, but quick, fervid, and full of life and enjoyment, so much so she " might have been made in a piece of nature's mad- ness" — a woman frank, vivid, and natural, with interest in everything, longing to live, with heart in every tone, meaning in every look, fascinating and friendly to all. What a contrast ! The stiff, self- conscious, dead-alive formalist, all affectation and pride, beside this woman ! And worse still the mother ! Her very first tone and glance chilled the girlish heart and took the light from her face. The duke did not know her, did not affect to love her. Such things were not in his plan. Yet it had been better if in this case they had been. The very retainers see the situation. The lady got over her first shock, and meant to make the best of so stupid a life. She would live the life there was, and take her part in it. But that was not the duke's idea. She was for show, not use, and, being " his," must take his way, "sit, stand, see, and be seen," just when required, and " die , away the life between." And when she tried to give her help, she was treated as a child whose opinions matter so little that they are simply ignared. She now saw where she was, and lost hope. Chilled and frustrated, she grew sad and ill. The duke saw this, and thought it done to spite him. Any 374 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. illness springing from the soul he could not conceive. But he will bring her to reason, and arranges a great hunting-party, in which she is to take her part. The part gave much trouble to find, and when it had been found she would not fulfil it. The duke and the mother did their worst to bring her to terms, but the lady kept her purpose. The hunting went without her help. The duke, angry with her, left the castle by sunrise. Just out- side he came on a troop of gipsies. It was a land, set between the civilized and ruder peoples and cultures, where gipsies seemed native, and showed their full powers. In the troop was one who might be the very oldest gipsy above ground, skilled in all their lore, well known in, and knowing the country well. She begged the duke that she might go and pay her duty to the duchess ; and he, thinking to show the duchess what life and sorrow might bring a woman to, and so teach her submission, let the crone go, sending our huntsman with her. The gipsy had heard the lady's story from the duke, and she had skill in the " cure of souls," if he had not. So she went with zeal. She no sooner left the duke than her mien and face changed. She grew, taller, brighter, younger. Her eyes grew " live and aware ; " her soul and aim shone through her. And in the presence of the duchess she became the very genius of a great message and a great deliverance. Life's pure fire seemed to flow with magnetic powef from her speech and spirit. Words, we are told, The Romances. 375 failed to convey what was done and given, but the substance is this. Crushed under the dead weight of the life about her, and weary of its vanity, the lady had revealed to her, with mystic passion and promise, the vision of a true, keen, full life — a life of free activity, of heroic deeds and generous passions and sustaining love. Her soul had longed for this. She found new life in the mere vision of it, sprang to meet it, threw off the vain life about her, and left it for ever. Only part of the message that had this great result is given, music being the medium for the rest. These are the ideas that got into words. She finds her race, proves her power and her right to share in its tasks, is taken to its heart, and made one with it in lovCj honour, and duty. She sees that love, the love of those who live for great common ends, is the only good in the world. She sees that it is power as well — power so great that if any two hearts and wills were to become really one, and alive with some true pur- pose, they would do more than has yet been done in the world. And in this new life she is offered just and warm regards, praise and blame, never indiffer- ence. And when age comes, rich in memories, and the past is reviewed, and all its good gathered at the last, another life will dawn beyond the dark, and the soul pass to the scope of that. Then the words cease. This is the heart of the romance. And you ask, did it ever happen? or was the soul its sphere, and moral passion its medium? What matters.? This 376 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. was and is the " way of life/' the only way of escape from a life that has gone to formality, worship of custom, selfish sentimentalism, pride, and show of sense, and that has no love, service, or sacrifice in it, The " story " does not go much farther. The lady left the castle, beautiful and glad now, and the hunts- man, as if enchanted, helped her to go, and in going, with the frank humanity that had won him from the first, she left him a plait of her hair. He has heard nothing of her since, and yet her memory has been the romance of his life, more so than his love and marriage ; and in his last years, his wife and children being dead, he is going to seek her. Now, is this poem an allegory f or a romance with- out moral design? a study, say, of certain types of character in romantic forms of them, and in circum- stances fitted for them? I should not call it an allegory — that is not Browning's mode ; and yet, if we say that dramatic statement of spiritual truth has been a mode of his art, the difference is not great. The characters are types, we must admit, and the poem becomes quite mystical, and even the peasant hears a wondrous music. He stands for common sense, the duke for false culture, and the duchess for the higher spirit and passion — so some have read it. It seems to me that this goes beyond the design of the poet, and the matter of the poem. I have above indicated certain dramatic and moral points of the poem, and need only add that it contrasts the free yet earnest life, a life at once natural and spiritual, with a The Romances. 377 formal, external life, a life of pompous and selfish routine and isolation. The lady, by nature and race, is formed to hate the one and seek the other ; the duke to do the contrary. All experience and the promise of life is to the first, death in life to the other. And I fancy the poet had an eye to certain " revivals " and " mediaevalisms "' that were making a vain effort to become a " way of life '' to Englishmen about the date of this poem (1845). "Childe Roland" was first published in 1855, and has, I believe, been a puzzle to most readers since. A study of madness, says an injured reader, with some tendency to produce it. Shall we, then, regard the poem as a pure phantasy ^ and nothing more 1 If we do, how shall we take it, and what value could it have ? Much still, I should say, as the expression of a series of emotions, or the invention of a ser ies of ima ges that depict these, and so suggest certain ex perie nces of the soul . But how is this ? It is hard, I judge, for most of us to under- stand ho^y a poet may express himself in images and metres simply, stating his emotions and perceptions in concrete imagery. The poet has spoken of " Childe Roland " as a pure romance made in that sense, and we shall take it first in that way. But how did the poem arise in the poet's fancy ? and what were its primary suggestions ? First, there is the line from Edgar's song in " Lear " — a line that seems to have haunted the poet's mind, insisting on interpretation : " Childe Rowland to the dark tower 378 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. came." That line, is irQni_an„oLd .ballad, and_ takes us back dimly to heroic legends. And I should think the tragic situation in Lear wrought on the poe t's fancy. Edgar sings that son^in the awful scene on the lieath and . b-efore JtheJlgKg L King Lear is his Childe Rowland, and the t ower^bothJalkid anddark, was the ma dness to whi ch Lear was coming. Other points in- the picture, and things entering into its com- position, are mentioned by Dr. Furnivall — the gaunt figure of a red horse on a piece of tapestry in Mr. Browning's house, which kept staring at him, and a picture seen at Paris. As to the tower, two state- ments are made — Corfe Castle, and a tower among certain mountains in Italy. None of these items may seem of much importance, but they give a clue to the nature of the poem through its composition. And as you read the poem you will see how these images, with the emotions they touched, have formed a striking picture. The_2 hero " of the a dventure is the, speaker, so he has_s.ursdy£d ".th e_dark tower." As a knight, he had gone round the world to carry out the task laid on him. Many had tried and failed, and that seems likely to be his fate. He has even got to a point at which failure would be a relief It is the dull twilight of a dreary day. He comes on a hoary cripple, with a look of malice, who points out a path. He has no confidence that the path is right, but takes it, caring only that somehow his quest should end. He is in such weariness that he seems cut off even from those The Romances. 379 who have failed, and left to seek vainly alone. And th e whole scene,loQks_the sh adow of his despair. The very sun " leers " at him .as-it_aeta. But so much he knows — the " tower " is somewhere in the tract. So he took the plain, and as soon 3 s he had Hnne so the pnth J-ffhind fjRfiinffd gnnr, and h'^-w''"-)-"-'""^ to-b-U fcltej _jiejnii^t go on iTnn1yhpr.aufie-.tJiej:e,w-as-Jlotlung:- elseto do. And on he went, through a scene starved, base, and dead, hardly a blade and not a creature, save " one stiff blind horse, with every bone astare." This horse seemed so wretched he could not help hating it ; it must be wicked to be in such misery. It was all so bad he shut his eyes to seek comfort out of memory and the past, but there was no comfort that way. All those once with him who have failed come back, and to avoid the past he takes the path again. It grew darker, drearier, and all seemed so dead that he longed for anything — an owl or a bat, even, if only it had Hfe or motion. He came on something in motiori — a restless, spiteful little river, that seemed a curse to everything near it, and Whose presence only gave new horror to the scenery. It was a relief to get away from it. Surely something better must come. But no; a worse tract, full of horrid, shadowy struggle, like " wild cats in a red-hot iron cage," base, cruel, vain. And the very ground was evil ; not only waste, but hideous. This to bear, and the end far off as ever, and neither desire nor aim left ! But here came another crisis. A great black bird went past, and as he looked up, thinking even 380 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. that might be a guide in so strange a land, he saw mountains shut him in on every side. It all seemed a horrid dream ; and now both e scape and progress seemed cut off, and he was giving all np^ when he heard a sound as of a trap closing, and knew the time and place to which all the years had led. And there in th€ midst was the tower — " The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart. Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world." It came on him unawares, after years of training and quest. As he saw it the dying sun shone out, and the hills lay on watch for his fate, and all who had failed seemed there to see him fail. The woe of years was pressed into a moment But the passion of years turned to purpose. To win or lose, he threw himself on his task, and blew his knightly challenge. Such is the poem. Have its images and incidents any meaning or result? Is it a dream-picture, the symbol of a whole class of experiences ? or some more definite conflict of the soul — some chapter of a " Pil- grim's Progress," or adventure of a " Faerie Knight " ? You will readily believe that the riddle has been variously read by those who have seen it that way. The " riddles " of the poets have many sides, and give room for guessing. Some have seen a parable of the search for truth, found only after infinite, weary toil, and as if by chance at last. It is an image of death, others think, and of all the vain fears that gather in that waste land of sunset And others read it of any The Romances. 381 crisis in life, or of life itself, with its fears and illusions, which are mainly shadows of the soul. I must say I have been strongly disposed to take the poem as a kind of " waking-dream," only certain phrases will not have it so, and even dreams have some relation to life and express the soul. The poet had no design, but his romance is some image of experience all the same. And at the risk of adding another " fancy " to those the poem has] provoked, let me say what it suggests to me. It seems to me a romance of the soul in one of its hardest tasks — the task of keeping true to. itself against itself ; the task of keeping on when the fire of life burns low, and experience looks not so much painful as hideous and futile. It is a romance of that high courage which hardly knows itself as courage or purpose, but which fights down the depressions and terrors that crowd round one when years of zeal and eifort seem to have gone for nothing ; when duty looks so dull and uncertain that disaster, or any change to break up the vanity of things, seems desirable. To conceive high aims and enter the knightly course is not so hard ; but to carry these through the years against weariness and temptation requires that high virtue — tenacity and fidelity of the very soul. Childe Roland has no foes to fight ; that may be past. His critical fight is, I said, in the soul, and against the whole appearance of things. And life often seems a conspiracy, not so much for defeat- ing high purpose as for dragging it dbwn, making it 382 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. seem foolish and out of place ; and the worst of all our doubts at times is the doubt whether our best aims be not absurd. Childe Roland had not failed. He had kept on till it hardly seemed worth while to succeed, and in the dreary dusk everything took shape and colour from his own apathetic moods, and the whole of heroism had sunk down to going on because there was nothing better to do. This, I said, may be the last trial of some, and it asks more of virtue than tasks that seem far more heroic. And if any say, "that or some similar series of ideas and emotions," I don't object. A great passage of music says one thing to you, another, it may be, to me ; and there is nothing wrong with interpreter or music when it is so. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON'AND BECCLES. A LIST OF KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. iSy. I, Patirmsttt Square, London, A LIST OF KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. CONTENTS. General Literature. Parchment Library . Pulpit Commentary . 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