I~ i^ 423 .Via LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Ghapi_U Copyright m sheit y\J-$ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I m II • ,1.1 !!$tmm$ter fc»-\ I Boston Small CUamwD nnti £ompaiu| Vonoon FicjaniJaulwEwh Crutracr auOd'o rat- ROBERT BROWNING ARTHUR WAUGH BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY MDCCCC PEEPACE. This brief Life of Browning is a minia- ture, not a panel portrait. Many of the qualities which a larger canvas might secure are, necessarily, lost to it; but, within the limits of a miniature, it seeks at least clear- ness and colour. It would be difficult to enumerate all the hooks tJmt have been gratefully consulted by the writer, since he has tried to make him- self acquainted with most of what has been written of Robert Browning. The fore- most debt is, naturally, oived to Mrs. Suth- erland Orr, the next to the u Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 11 The bibliography at the end of the volume gives some idea of the chief among other obligations. Apart from these, the writer has endeav- oured to give a picture, not only of the man, but of his surroundings, and to indi- cate concisely, but definitely, the relation in which Browning stood to the literary move- ments of his time. viii PEEFACE But the primary object of the book is, of course, to lead the reader to the Poems themselves. We use a rushlight in the shadow; but, when once ice are in the sun, tee can see the worWs beauty for ourselves. A. W. Hampstead, Christmas, 1809. CHRONOLOGY. 1812 May 7. Robert Browning born. 1822-26 (about) Browning at Mr. Ready's School, Cam- berwell. 1826 Browning studying at home under a private tutor. 1830 Attended Greek lectures at London Uni- versity. 1838 Pauline published. Browning travelled in Russia. 1834 Contributions to Monthly Repository, ed- ited by W. J. Fox. 1835 Paracelsus published. The Brownings moved to Hatcham. November 27. Browning met Macready. December 31. Browning met Forster (at Macready' s). x CHROXOLOGY 1836 Macready conimissionecl Strafford. 1837 May 1. Strafford produced at Covent Garden, and published. 1838 Browning travelled on the Continent. 1840 Sordello published. 1841 Plppa Passes published (Bells and Pomegranates, I.;. 1842 King Victor and King Charles published (Bells and Pomegranates, II. ). Dramatic Lyrics (Bells and Pomegranates, III.). 1843 The Eeturn of the Druses (Bells and Pomegranates, IV.). A Blot in the 'Scutcheon published (Bells and Pomegranates, V.) and pro- duced at Drury Lane. CHEONOLOGY xi 1844 Browning travelled in Italy. Colombe's Birthday published (Bells and Pomegran- ates, VI.)- Elizabeth Barrett's Poems published. 1845 Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (Bells and Pomegranates, VII.). Browning met Elizabeth Barrett. 1846 Luria and A SouVs Tragedy published (Bells and Pomegranates, VIII. ). September 12. Browning and Elizabeth Barrett married. 1847-49 The Brownings in Florence and Italy. 1849 March 9. Browning's son born. 1850 Christmas Eve and Easter Day published. 1851 Casa Guidi Windows published. xii CHRONOLOGY 1852 Browning's Introductory Preface to Shelley's Letters published. 1855 Men and Women published. 1856 Aurora Leigh published. 1860 Poems before Congress published. 1861 June 29. Elizabeth Barrett Browning died. Browning removed to London (Warwick Crescent). 1864 Dramatis Personal published. 1868 The Ring and the Book published. 1871 Balaustiorfs Adventure published, also Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. CHEO^OLOGY xiii 1872 Fifine at the Fair published. 1873 Bed Cotton Night- cap Country published. 1875 Aristophanes 1 Apology and The Inn Album published. 1876 Pacchiarotto and Other Poems published. 1877 Translation of the Agamemnon of JEs- chylus published. 1878 La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic published. 1879 Dramatic Idyls (first series) published. Browning received degree of LL.D. at Cambridge. 1880 Dramatic Idyls (second series) published. 1882 Browning received degree of D.C.L. at Oxford. ROBERT BROWNING. I. Except a man have history at his finger-tips, a date, taken by itself, is apt to be cold and unsuggestive. One reads and repeats glibly that Robert Browning was born upon the 7th ,of May, 1812 ; but nowadays, when tastes and fashions pass so quickly, one needs something more than a collocation of figures to carry the imagination back over an interval of nearly ninety years. Still, books are, fortunately, of longer life than fashions ; and, when we try to recall the literary atmosphere of the past, the horizon lightens at once. On the May morning when the little house in Camberwell was happy for the birth of a first-born, the first part of Byron 7 s Childe Harold, published three months before, was still the talk of the town. While the future author of Paracelsus 2 EOBEET BEOWNING was not yet a year old, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice made its first ap- pearance at the booksellers', after nearly twenty years of wandering among neg- lectful publishers ; Crabbe published his Tales in Verse; James and Horace Smith, their Rejected Addresses; Heber's Poems and Translations were first col- lected into a volume ; and Samuel Eogers's Poems were lying hot from the press on every drawing-room table. At that time Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Sir Walter Scott were all between forty and fifty years old. Lamb was thirty- seven. The Curse of Kehama was a com- paratively new book, and the Quarterly Review had issued but thirteen numbers. Among those whose names were to be great in literature, Tennyson was not three years old, Thackeray but a few months, Dickens even fewer, and Eliza- beth Barrett herself, if we take the Coxhoe date as authoritative, had just passed her sixth birthday. These, it is EOBEET BROWNING 3 true, are only a few among many of the names of the period ; but they give a certain atmosphere. They carry us back to a different London, — to what one may almost call a remote Camberwell, full of gardens and glades, acacia-trees, and the song of birds. It was in Southampton Street, Cam- berwell, that Robert Browning was born, the first child of his parents. His father, after whom the son was named, bore in turn the same name as his father. The poet's grandfather, as various testimo- nies agree, was an able, vigorous man of business. At the time of the poet's birth he had risen to a position of au- thority in the Bank of England, where he had worked assiduously for forty- three years. He was now over sixty, had married a second wife, who had given him a large family, and who was a somewhat hard ruler at home. He was well-to-do, however, and, except for the gout, had few anxieties. The poet's 4 ROBERT BROWNING father had been less fortunate. The stepmother had proved a burden. She objected to the son of the first wife en- joying any privilege which was likely to be denied to her own children. She had prevented him from going to the univer- sity, and may have had something to do with the father's peremptory refusal, when the boy begged to be trained as an artist. At any rate, he, too, was sent into the bank, married a Miss Wiede- mann in 1811, settled in Camberwell, and a year later became the father of the third and great Robert Browning, the poet. The traditions of a hard boyhood are apt to descend from father to son. We are all inclined to mete out to others the measure which we have ourselves received. But Robert Browning' s father was of humaner spirit. A kinder or more thoughtful parent has rarely ex- isted ; and it was by his genial influence, as Mrs. Orr points out, that the child's EOBERT BROWNING 5 early inclination for poetry was fostered. The father had a great gift for verse- niaking, and used to teach the boy hard facts, and even Latin declensions, by the use of a rhyming memoria technica. He was, moreover, an excellent reader, and fond of reading aloud to his children. A better training for certain elementary aspects of a poetical temperament it would be difficult to imagine. It is not uninteresting, when we re- flect how closely Browning and Tenny- son were to be allied in later life, and how pre-eminently the two names stand out in the poetry of their generation, to contrast the early associations of the two children. It is told of Tennyson, as every one now knows, that, when he was yet in frocks, he ran down the shady garden path at Somersby, carried along by the spring gale, and crying, "I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind." This, it has often been remarked, was his first line of poetry. It is also re- 6 EOBEET BBOWNING corded of Browning that, while he was yet so short that his hands could only just reach the edge of the table, he used to march round it, shouting out metrical lines, and emphasising the measure with the movement of his hands. The two stories point the contrast in themselves. And a little later, while Tennyson was roaming at will about Holywell Glen, reading his favourite classics in the open air, the young Browning was trudging to and from London University, along noisy, crowded streets, with Dulwich Wood on a holiday for his wildest coun- try. It is scarcely strange that talents so differently fostered should have found their first issues, the one in a love so pre-eminently akin to nature, the other in a sympathy so peculiarly human. The first associations of Tennyson were leaves and brooks ; but, from the begin- ning, Browning's life was centred among men and women. In one thing the boys' fortunes were ROBERT BROWNING 7 allied : each found in his mother a kind and homely influence. Not much is recorded of Browning's mother, but all that is told of her speaks of true mater- nity. She was musical ; and from her the poet derived that love of music, which, though it is not always implicit in his verse, was invariably an influence in his life. Moreover, she was poign- antly religious ; and, as a boy, Brown- ing took his spiritual inspiration entirely from her. His home life was so happy that, when first he went to school as a weekly boarder, the separation was almost more than the child could bear. The school, which was in the neigh- bourhood, was kept by the Rev. Thomas Ready, whose sisters superintended a preparatory department, to which Robert was at first admitted. It does not ap- pear that his school- days were of more than ordinary effect in his education. He learnt there the usual accomplish- ments, but the books that he especially 8 KOBEET BROWNING loved were the books which he found at home. Of these Mrs. Orr gives a very interesting list. Among the fa- vourites were Quarles's Emblems, of which his father possessed a seventeenth- cen- tury edition, often pored over by the boy, and even scrawled upon in crude, wandering characters. He was particu- larly fond of history, and read the Letters of Junius and the works of Voltaire while yet a boy. For poetry he had Milton and Byron ; and, like the young Tennyson, he fell immediately under the spell of the latter. His early verses, like the Poems by Two Brothers, were full of Byronic imitation. Nor were these merely disconnected essays in verse ; for, by the time he was twelve, he had actually produced a volume of poems, for which there was some idea, or even, as Mrs. Orr seems to imply, some direct attempt, to find a publisher. The scheme fell through, however ; and the young poet was left, as was best, to ROBERT BROWNING 9 write for the few private friends to whom he showed his manuscripts. No doubt it is always the case that certain poetic impulses pass, like waves, across the country, overwhelming, as it were, all the young minds that they encounter. Still, it is unusually interesting to find Browning, like Tennyson, passing from the influence of Byron directly to that of Shelley. Mr. William Sharp, in his monograph in the Great Writers series, relates that it was the sight of a volume on a bookstall, labelled "Mr, Shelley's Atheistical Poem: Very Scarce," that first aroused Browning's curiosity con- cerning a poet of whom he then knew nothing. He at once begged his mother to get him a complete set of Shelley's works, which, with some difficulty, she succeeded in doing. Their influence upon him was instantaneous ; and for the next few years Shelley was the one poet of his affections. Nor was Browning the man to drift from an allegiance once 10 KOBEET BKOWNING given. For Shelley lie always retained an undiminished admiration ; while of Byron he wrote in the year of his marriage : — I always retained my first feeling for Byron in many respects. ... I would at any time have gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one of his gloves, I am sure; while Heaven knows that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to cross the room, if at the other end of it all Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were con- densed into the little china bottle yonder, after the Rosicrucian fashion ! While he was undergoing these poetic influences, Bobert Browning left Mr. Beady' s school, and settled down at home under a private tutor. His stud- ies were many-sided ; but poetry, as was inevitable, absorbed his keenest ener- gies. As time went on, it became more and more evident that his ambitions were tending solely in the one direction. Various professions, among which diplo- macy was most attractive to him, were suggested, only to be dropped ; and, EOBEET BBOWNETO 11 shortly after lie liad begun to attend lectures at University College, he was encouraged to discuss with his father the idea of embracing literature as a career. He seems to have entered upon it with no extravagant expectations of recompense, but at the same time without any harassing apprehension. Years afterward, in writing to Eliza- beth Barrett, he gave a very intimate reflection of the prospects with which he set out : — My whole scheme of life [he said] (with its wants, material wants at least, closely cut down) was long ago calculated; and it sup- posed you — the finding such an one as you — ut- terly impossible, because, in calculating, one goes upon chances, not on providence. How could 1 expect you? So for my own future way in the world I have always refused to care. It is probable, too, that the poet's father, having himself been thwarted in the course of life upon which he had set his heart, was not the man to place ob- 12 ROBERT BROWNING stacles in the way of his son's better fortune. At any rate, before he was twenty, Robert Browning was devoted to the literary life, and hard at work at the poem which he afterward described as ' ' the little book I first printed as a boy," — the little book of which John Stuart Mill wrote, "The writer pos- sesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in a sane human being. ' ' Mill was in part right and in part wrong ; for the Browning of that first 11 little book" was a Browning who had been reading Shelley for months as a prelude to original poetry, and much of the self- consciousness was, in a sense, imitative or dramatic. But the book itself was Pauline, and its publication was the first-fruits of a poetic genius that will live as long as the English language. II. Although Browning did not lack that moderate measure of self-confidence which is necessary to artistic activity, he seems to have been somewhat diffident when it came to the printing of his first finished volume. For, though he knew that his parents were full of sympathy and interest, it was to his aunt that he first confided his ambition ; and it was she — good, kindly lady — who promised to provide the money required for pub- lication. Saunders and Otley undertook the task of publishers ; and Browning's benefactress paid a bill for some forty pounds for the slim volume of seventy pages, of which few copies are now known to survive. Years afterward, when Browning heard of the sale of a copy at one of those fancy prices dear to the bibliophile, he wished that his aunt had been living to see that a single copy 14 ROBERT BROWNING of the once neglected ' ' little book ' ' was now worth a sum very little less than the whole edition had originally cost to print and bind. Habent sua fata libelli I Pauline was published in January, 1833, a month later than Tennyson's volume of Poems which bears the same date. The year of its appearance was of more than common interest to English litera- ture. It saw the Last Essays of Elia col- lected from the London Magazine, and with them the close of Lamb's gentle and humane career. Within the same twelve months Fraser began to print Carlyle's wonderful Sartor Resartus. In September Arthur Hallam died ; and Tennyson, overwhelmed by grief, en- tered upon his ten years' silence. More- over, while Pauline was still fresh upon Otley's shelves, Elizabeth Barrett pub- lished her Translation of Prometheus Bound, so that the names of the three poets who were to render Victorian poetry illustrious come together in the ROBERT BROWNING 15 bibliography at the outset. Viewed in the perspective of nearly seventy years, 1833 seems a year of great events and greater promises. At the time, however, no citadel was carried by storm ; and Pauline made but a quiet appearance in the arena. The most conspicuous notice it received was, indeed, the result of a friendship already established. It will be remembered that, at the age of twelve, Browning had com- pleted a manuscript of verse, which had been handed about among the friends of his family. Among the most "influen- tial" of these was W. J. Fox, the Unita- rian minister, a man of quick literary perception and a very genial capacity for praising promise. He had spoken well of the verses ; and Browning, having now something more definite to show him, hastened to submit a copy of Pauline to his criticism. The letter which accom- panied the parcel is amusingly boyish, both in its rather stilted protestation of 16 ROBEET BROWNING modesty (from which a certain confi- dence may yet be seen peeping), and in its naive confession that the author sends the volume, " having either heard or dreamed that you contribute to the Westminster. ' ' But Fox was man enough to feel for the boy, and kindly critic enough to write a very eulogistic notice for the Monthly Repository, of which he was editor. "The poem," he said, "laid hold of us with the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius. ' ' In later years Browning expressed a quite disproportionate distaste for this first literary bantling of his. Every one knows the preface of 1867, in which he declares that he preserves the poem under protest and to forestall the print- ing of uncorrected transcripts, adding that "good draughtsmanship and right handling were at that time far beyond the artist." Readers of his letters to Elizabeth Barrett will also remember EOBEET BEOWNISTG 17 with how much hesitation and delay he excuses himself from sending her a copy of the poem. . . . " Will you and must you have Pauline f If I could pray you to revoke that decision. For it is alto- gether foolish and not boy-like. It is unluckily precocious," and so forth with much reiteration. Critics, however, have rightly agreed to see more in the "crab of the shapely Tree of Life in his FooV s Paradise ' ' than the poet could him- self discern ; and Pauline remains inter- esting and valuable for many reasons. It is no part of this little sketch to be minutely analytic ; but it will be at once apparent to the careful student, as it was to Fox, that Pauline could only be the first step in a career of genius. It is by no means typically Browningesque, for the tendency to splendour and colour, which Fox noticed with apprehension, was to fade out with the fading influence of Shelley ; but it was at once suggestive of Browning's future strength, in being 18 KOBEBT BBOWKING "one of those utterances of imaginary persons, not mine/' which were to de- velop in time into the dramatic fulness of The Ring and the Booh. Its principal interest, however, is not so much dra- matic as personal. When Mill remarked upon the deep self- consciousness of the writer, he touched perhaps nearer to truth than he knew j for there are pas- sages in it that are confessedly autobi- ographical, and that give us, more clearly than all the analysis of all the Browning societies, a glimpse into the character of the Browning of the time. I am made up of an intensest life, Of a most clear idea of consciousness Of self, distinct from all its qualities, From all affections, passions, feelings, powers- And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all: But linked, in me, to self-supremacy, Existing as a centre to all things, Most potent to create and rule and call Upon all things to minister to it ; And to a principle of restlessness Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all — EOBEET BROWNING 19 This is myself ; and I should thus have been Though gifted lower than the meanest soul. He goes on to say that this grasp upon the sensuous faculties, this restlessness for knowledge, is transfigured in him by imagination, which Has been a very angel, coming not In fitf id visions, but beside me ever And never failing me ; so, though my mind Forgets not, not a shred of life forgets, Yet I can take a secret pride in calling The dark past up to quell it regally. Added to these, and beckoning him, is the lode-star lighted in him by his mother's love, A need, a trust, a yearning after God : ... I saw God everywhere ; And I can only lay it to the fruit Of a sad after-time that I could doubt Even his being— e'en the while I felt His presence, never acted from myself, Still trusted in a hand to lead me through All danger ; and this feeling ever fought Against my weakest reason and resolve. Inquiry into a man's religious belief is 20 EOBEET BKOWBTING apt to degenerate into an impertinence, but so much is here definitely said by Browning himself that it may not be out of place to say a little more, towards the better understanding of the man, no less than of the poet. Baptized at an Independent Chapel, and brought up among devout surround- ings, the boy Browning was pre-emi- nently religious with the easy orthodoxy of childhood. His mother's gift of Shel- ley's poetry seems to have had a some- what disturbing influence. It was then that doubt was first presented to his mind in a tangible form ; and a nat- ural reaction followed. It is to this period that the passage in Pauline refers. Mrs. Orr tells us that, in the first years of manhood, Browning showed a ten- dency to become assertive and wayward. Increasing knowledge and the sense of talent in him grew restless under re- straint, and the things that had pleased him pleased him no more. The mood EOBEET BEOWNING 21 passed, — passed more quickly in him than in most. It left him with a settled confidence in immortality and in the continuity of spiritual activity, but the follower of no hard-and-fast sect or doc- trine. "The truth/ 7 his wife wrote to him a few weeks before their mar- riage,— the truth, as God sees it, must be something so different from these opinions about truth, these systems which fit different classes of men like their coats, and wear brown at their elbows always ! . . . I believe in what is divine, and floats at highest in all these different theologies. ... I could pray anywhere,— with all sorts of worshippers, from the Sistine Chapel to Mr. Fox's, those kneeling and those standing. To which Browning replies : — I know your very meaning in what you say of religion, and responded to it with my whole soul. What you express now is for us both. Those are my feelings, my convictions beside, — instinct confirmed by reason. This much by way of digression, that we may go forward with some sort of idea of Browning's attitude to life at the 22 EOBEET BBOWNING moment of his first entry upon the liter- ary stage. No doubt the mere sense of performance, the daily interest of work maturing, of self realised, would do much to dissipate the restlessness that so often accompanies unwilling inaction. The man with the sense in him of things to do, and the torment of the inability to do them, is never happy or at one with himself. From henceforth Browning was to be always active, always strenuous. There were other reviews of Pauline, but of no great importance. The book, naturally enough, did not sell. At a time when Tennyson, though "popular at Cambridge," as Moxon with uncon- scious humour remarked, had still a public of no more than three hundred purchasers, it was hardly likely that Browning, with no university friends to help him, would be popular in the com- mon sense. In the year of his marriage he had still a whole i l bale of sheets ' ' of Pauline, stowed away at the top of the EOBEET BROWNING 23 house. But the publication of the book attracted attention to its author in a smaller circle, and may have been in- directly responsible for an invitation from Mr. Benckhausen, the Eussian consul-general, in consequence of which Browning, in the winter after that of Pauline, spent three months of activity in St. Petersburg. His letters describing his visit were unfortunately lost ; but the careful student of verse will not need to be reminded that what he saw in Eussia has, in more than one of his poems, touched his descriptions with actuality. He returned to London, and settled down again to poetry. Some isolated lyrics (one of them now enshrined in Pi/ppa Passes) were printed in Mr. Fox's Repository ; but the greater part of his time was given to the preparation of a highly ambitious poem, the subject of which had been suggested to him by his friend, the Count Amedee de Eipert- Monclar. This young Frenchman was, 24 EOBEET BEOWNING Mrs. Orr tells us, staying in England as a private agent of communication be- tween the royal exiles and their friends in France ; and he and Browning, hav- ing many tastes in common, became firm friends. He was an artist, too, and painted an excellent portrait of the poet. The idea for Paracelsus was given to Browning in the early autumn after his return from Eussia ; and he must have worked hard, for by the middle of April the manuscript was complete, and offered to a publisher. Mr. Moxon declined to bring it out, although Browning's father was ready to pay the cost of publication ; and, after failing to come to terms with the publishers of Pauline, the poet at last intrusted the manuscript to Mr. Effingham Wilson, who had a consider- able following of poets. Fox was a friend of Wilson's, and, having been in the poet's confidence throughout his business transactions, seems to have helped in persuading the publisher to EOBERT BROWNING 25 undertake Paracelsus. Indeed, it should never be forgotten that Browning owed almost all his early encouragement to Fox's warm yet judicious friendship. The letters which passed between them at this anxious period of the poet's career show that Fox was the first to whom Browning turned instinctively for criti- cism and advice. With the publication of Paracelsus, however, the field of his acquaintance was to be enlarged. At first the book fell flat. Talfourd's Ion was among the new books of the season ; and Browning could not help feeling somewhat ag- grieved, not only by the fact that Tal- fourd enjoyed columns of praise to his own lines of condemnation, but, as he afterwards put it, with a touch of hu- mour, that in the same column often would follow a most laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I " did" for my old French master, and he published. That was really an useful work. 26 EOBEKT BKOWKING The Athenaeum gave to Paracelsus but three lines, "not without talent, but spoiled by obscurity and only an imita- tion of Shelley ' ' ; and the flock of little papers followed the lead, until Brown- ing and his publisher scarcely knew whether to laugh or weep at the una- nimity of the verdicts pasted in Wilson's book of Press Notices. Fox, it is true, was once more friendly. But his notice in the Monthly Repository was one upon which the poet, knowing his view be- forehand, could always depend j and the combined condemnation of all the un- known critics was beginning to discour- age him. Then one morning there ap- peared in the Examiner a discriminating, judicial review of Paracelsus, mingling praise and blame, but treating the work from the highest standpoint, and pro- nouncing it, after all that criticism could say, to be a work of brilliant promise and real power. This review, so clearly unbiassed and unprompted, at EOBEET BKOWXIXG 27 once introduced the book to the wider public, — so far as the public that cares for pure literature can ever be described as wide j and a copy of Paracelsus found its way to the shaded room of a delicate young lady, who read eagerly every new volume of reputable poetry and had herself already given promise of uncom- mon performance. She read it, and felt at once that it was ' ' the expression of a new mind ' ' ; and she differed from the common herd of literary amateurs in that she did not share their galling preference for Ion. The lady was Eliza- beth Barrett ; and the critic who first gave Browning conspicuous praise in a literary journal of the first grade was Jolin Forster, then as utterly unknown to him as his own future wife, but hence- forth to be one of his most trusted and valued friends. in. It was, however, before he met For- ster that Browning made an acquaint- ance which was to exercise a predomi- nant influence over the next few years of his life. On the 27th of November, 1835, Macready was dining in Bays- water with Browning' s ' ' literary father, ' 7 W. J. Fox ; and the poet was asked to u drop in ' > after dinner. It was, in many senses, a psychological moment for such a meeting. Macready was in a very unsettled and dissatisfied state of mind. During the spring of that year he had taken an expensive travelling company, of whom he expected much, into the West of England, and had played to very poor houses with a de- pressing effect upon his exchequer. On his return to London, he had joined Alfred Bunn's company at Drury Lane for the winter season, and had played ROBERT BROWNING 29 during October several of his favourite parts, including Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, and Hotspur, but again without influencing the returns of the box office so largely as Bunn had hoped. A drama by Planche was tried as an experiment ; and Macready, who had retained a veto upon the parts he was to play, declined to appear in it. By the law of contraries the new piece proved a prodigious success, and Macready found himself shelved. He was, of course, paid his salary ; but he was "out of the bill," and there is no doubt that the situation annoyed him. It was just the time when he would be looking out for a man of talent to write him a play worthy of his powers ; and he and Browning could scarcely have met under more favour- able circumstances. It is at least certain that the meeting was cordial. Browning was just beginning to feel his feet, and his general address was ex- tremely prepossessing. Enough of the 30 ROBERT BROWNING boyish confidence remained to give him ease and spirit in conversation, while at the same time he had matured in man- ner and bearing. His appearance, moreover, was highly in his favour. He dressed well, was dark, slender, and handsome ; and Macready noted in his diary that his "face was full of in- telligence." They parted with mutual promises for an early meeting j and Browning at once sent his new friend a copy of Paracelsus. Within a very few days Macready found time to read it, and his admiration for the writer was increased. A work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure. The writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. Such was the criticism confided to the actor's diary. A few weeks later Browning was invited to see the old year out at Macready' s place at Elstree. When the North London Coach was EOBEET BROWNING 31 making ready at the "Blue Posts" on that New Year's Eve, two young men among the waiting passengers passed and repassed each other on the pavement, stamping out the cold in exercise. Each suspected that the other might be going to the Elstree party ; but, with charac- teristic British reticence, neither spoke until the two were introduced in the lighted drawing-room. Then they found that they were already known and grateful to one another j for one was Browning, and the other Forster. They were exactly of an age ; and, by way of cementing the introduction, Forster remarked, "Did you see a little notice of you I wrote in the Examiner ? ' ' He could scarcely have brought a better claim to the poet's gratitude, for the Examiner review had been the most helpful that Browning had yet received. Little wonder that the poet felt among friends, and that he "won opinions from all present" by his bright and en- thusiastic talk of men and books. 32 EOBEET BROWNING This evening must have been set in golden letters in Browning's calendar, but it by no means stood alone. For, although Paracelsus was not a pub- lishers' success, it served to make his name known in the inner circles of men of letters. About this time the Brown- ing family moved to Hatcham, where other relatives joined them $ and in one house and another Browning's name began to be familiar. He met Richard Hengist Home, Leigh Hunt, Bryan Wal- ler Procter, Monckton Milnes, Talfourd, and many others, and upon one of his visits to Elstree was introduced to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth, the Eye- bright of Sordello, who became one of^ his dearest friends, and to whom he used to turn for criticism and advice in the portrayal of his female characters. Whether Macready at once suggested to Browning that he should write him a play is not clear, but it is fairly certain that the idea had formed itself vaguely ROBERT BROWNING 33 in the poet's Hiind long before any actual arrangement was made. Within a few weeks of the evening at Elstree, Brown- ing and Forster called on the great actor, and the conversation turned upon the stage. Planche's Jewess had had its run ; and Macready was on the boards again, starting in February with Othello. Browning had been to Drury Lane to see him, and was so much impressed that he could not rest until he had told his friend of his admiration. Then, in the course of talk, he mentioned a drama which he himself had in mind, — a tragedy, Warses, which in the whirligig of fortune came to nothing. But Mac- ready was pleased with the idea, and it worked in his mind to some purpose. Meanwhile things came to a head at Drury Lane. Enraged by what he con- sidered Buna's slighting treatment of him, Macready — on a night in April when he had been obliged to play three acts of Bichard III. as the first part of 34 EOBEET BKOWNING a sort of variety programme — dashed from the stage in an itching fury, and, seeing Bunn's office door open, inconti- nently thrashed him on the spot. It was a squalid fight, unfortunately, and ended in the law courts ; but it had the effect of transferring Macready to Covent Garden and Osbaldiston's management, where for the first time he was associated with Miss Helen Faucit, the partner of his greatest successes, and the leading lady in the dramas which Browning was to write for him. It was there that on the 26th of May, 1836, the author's birth- day, Talfourd's Ion was produced with complete success j and that evening was to seal the connection between Macready and Browning. There was a party after- wards at Talfourd's, a memorable gath- ering. Macready sat between Words- worth and Landor, with Browning op- posite. Miss Ellen Tree, who had that evening played Clemanthe with appro- bation, was of the company, besides ROBERT BROWNING 35 Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, and Miss Mitford. Macready was (in his own words) "tranquilly happy. " The host proposed the toast of the English poets, and to the surprise of the company, whose eyes naturally turned to Words- worth, called for a response from "Mr. Robert Browning, the youngest of our poets." It must have been a nervous moment ; but Browning came through it admirably, "with grace and modesty." As they were descending the stairs, Macready detained Browning for a mo- ment. "Write me a play," he said, "and keep me from going to America." The poet was ready with a suggestion. "What do you say to Strafford f" he replied. And so began a co-operation, chequered, indeed, and not without its misfortunes, but of the first importance to the development of Browning's genius. When one remembers the feeling of not unworthy irritation with which he had watched the critics' praise of Ion a few 36 BOBEET BBOWKING months before, it is not uninteresting to reflect that it was upon the occasion of its theatrical birthday that Browning himself received this first great compli- ment, which was to be so fruitful of con- sequences in his own career. He began work upon the drama almost at once, setting aside Sordello> upon which he was some way advanced. The history of the play was already familiar to him, as he had been helping Forster in a biographical sketch of Wentworth for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. By the following March the drama was fin- ished, and Macready was delighted with it. He put it in rehearsal for his benefit upon May Day, and everything seemed to be progressing fortunately. Unluckily, Osbaldiston's stock company was a very poor one. Apart from the stars, Mac- ready and Miss Helen Faucit, it was composed of hack actors, ignorant be- yond belief, several of whom seemed to be incapable of getting Browning's mean- ROBERT BROWNING 37 ing drummed into them. As the even- ing of performance drew near, Macready began to lose confidence ; and, indeed, the performance was certainly bad enough to destroy its chances. Brown- ing himself was fairly satisfied with Mr. Yandenhof s Pym j but the Examiner thought him ' i positively nauseous, whin- ing, drawling, and slouching." Young Vane was a u whimpering school-boy" j and, as for the king, his performance was merely execrable. Despite every drawback, however, the play was a com- plete success. It was withdrawn on the fifth night, owing to Mr. Yandenhof leaving the company j but, so long as it was played, it met with general appro- bation. Macready and Helen Faucit acted splendidly, and their spirit seems to have carried the piece against the re- tarding dulness of the rank and file. Browning had no cause to be dissatisfied with his first acquaintance with the stage. 38 KOBERT BROWOTNG Strafford was published as a book by Longmans simultaneously with its per- formance ; and it is pleasant to find that the first copy upon which Browning could lay hands was sent, on the very day of performance, to his old friend, Fox. Encouraged, no doubt, by the fact that the play was to be performed so conspicuously, the publishers took it up at their own expense ; but the enter- prise was unremunerative. Meanwhile Browning resumed his interrupted task of Bordello. He worked at it through the winter and into the spring; and then, feeling the need of the southern at- mosphere to give colour to the poem, he determined to carry it off, and finish it in Italy. So with the sunshine he sailed for Trieste, the only passenger on a mer- chant vessel. On the way out they had a strange adventure, sighting a wreck which proved to be a smuggler, with a crew of dead bodies, drowned beside their booty. The ship had been floating ROBERT BROWNING 39 keel upwards for a month under a blaz- ing sun. Besides this grisly encounter and a heavy storm in the Bay, little hap- pened on the outward journey ; but, before they reached Trieste, Browning had written "How they brought the Good News " and "Home Thoughts from the Sea," with its picture of the Gibral- tar which he was carried upon the deck to look at. Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Tra- falgar lay; In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey. From Trieste he went to Venice, then to Asolo, back to Venice, and thence by Verona and the Tyrol to Frankfort and Mayence, and home by the Rhine and Antwerp. With so many places to see it is not surprising that he should have done very little towards finishing Soi~- detto. It was indeed practically un- touched when he returned to London, and was not ready for a publisher till 40 EOBEET BROWNING more than a year later. This time the trade would not support him sufficiently to take risk, and the book was again published at his kindly father's charges. It is not unlikely that the broken fashion in which Sordello was worked upon was to a great degree responsible for the inherent difficulties of the poem. It is obvious that work sustained at full course must naturally have more unity than work taken up at intervals, and that a joined thread has less strength than a virgin one. Certainly, one of the acutest criticisms of Sordello is Mrs. Browning's own : — It is like a noble picture with its face to the wall or at least in shadow. ... It wants drawing together and fortifying in the connections and associations, which hang as loosely every here and there as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists in thinking himself awake. This loose hanging of associations is pre- cisely what we should expect in work that was frequently interrupted, and it ROBERT BROWNING 41 is not without interest that Browning should have often had it in his mind to reconstruct portions of the poem and reconnect its interests. Still, from the point of view of the student of poetic development, it is more satisfactory to have the poem as it stood at first. It marks, indeed, the final step in the first stage of Browning's intellectual growth. Like Pauline and Paracelsus, it is the study of an aspiring soul ; and it has in common with both the fact that it is clearly not without autobiographical touches. Browning himself, as every dramatic poet both before and after him has found cause to do, expressly deprecated the reading of personal sentiment into what was essentially impersonal analysis. But the character of Aprile in Paracelsus is clearly a reflection of his own aspira- tions ; and, indeed, he is understood to have accepted the implication. 42 ROBERT BROWNING I would speak [says Aprile] ; no thought which ever stirred A human breast should be untold ; all passions, All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir Within a heart fed with desires like mine, To the last comfort shutting the tired lids Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well ; And this in language as the need should be, Now poured at once forth in a burning flow, Now piled up in a grand array of words. This done, to perfect and consummate all, Even as a luminous haze links star to star, I would supply all chasms with music, breathing Mysterious motions of the soul, no way To be defined save in strange melodies. This is clearly, as so mucli else in the poem, a forecast of the line upon which Browning was steering his course. And in SordeUo we already get the dawning of a sense of the necessity of selection. At first the poet was for portraying every emotion $ but, after a first survey, he begins to understand the helplessness and, indeed, the unprofitableness of so comprehensive a scheme. A crowd,— he meant To take the whole of it ; each part's intent EOBERT BKOWNING 43 Coucerned him therefore; and, the more he pried, The less became Sordello satisfied. . . . Made these the mankind he once raved about ? Because a few of them were notable, Should all be figured worthy note ? There are many such passages, familiar to the student, which are of the highest interest, but for which space is unfortu- nately lacking to an analysis here. They show, not only with how keen and sin- cere an aspiration Browning adopted the literary life, but also how intimately he associated himself with these earlier creatures of his fancy. The poetic soul was naturally the first to attract a poet's analysis ; and Sordello is, in a certain sense, an enlargement upon the charac- ter of Aprile in Paracelsus. But in Sor- dello the poet has become more dramatic and less personal. With maturity he is acquiring more and more the power of assuming a cast of thought alien to his own. The idea of intellectual and spir- 44 ROBERT BROWNING itual growth is almost always present in Browning's dramatic poems ; but with So?~dellOj as more than one critic has noticed, we emerge from the self-con- scious stage of Browning's imagination, and his attitude to life becomes alto- gether more altruistic. No doubt, the practice in formal drama had helped to this ; and so the intervention of Strafford between portions of SordeUo had more than an external effect upon Browning's work. In writing directly for the stage, he had perforce to assume a deliberately dramatic spirit. Introspection was prac- tically debarred, and the necessity for action and movement became para- mount. The result is immediately ap- parent in Pippa Passes, the next piece of work to engage the poet's attention. Here the dramatic touch is at once stronger, keener, more vital, than in any of the earlier poems. Here the subtle sense of motive and effect begins to move like a spirit on the face of the waters. KOBERT BEOWXING 45 Here, in a word, Browning begins to realise his power. It was, in truth, a crucial moment in the poet's career when he first encountered the actor's influence. IV. "Sordetto" was the last poem for whose publication Browning was in- debted to his father's unfailing gener- osity. No doubt, the poet, since he was always sensitive about such things, was anxious to shift for himself. At any rate, when he came to turn over a number of poems which lay in his desk, he deter- mined to do the best he could for them on his own behalf. The sequel has been told, with characteristic picturesqueness, by Mr. Edmund Gosse. Browning went to discuss the matter with Moxon ; and the publisher told him he was bringing out an edition of some of the Elizabethan dramatists in a cheap form, and that, if Browning cared to print his poems as pamphlets, using the type Moxon was employing, the cost would be inconsid- erable. The poet was pleased with the idea ; and it was agreed that each poem ROBERT BROWNING 47 or issue should consist of a sheet of six- teen pages, in double column, the entire cost of which should not be more than fifteen pounds. Such was the beginning of Bells and Pomegranates, which ap- peared in eight numbers, between 1841 and 1846. The first was Pippa Passes; the second (1842), King Victor and King Charles; the third, in the same vear, Dramatic Lyrics; the fourth, The Return of the Druses (1843); the fifth, A Blot in the ' Scutcheon (1843); the sixth, Colombe's Birthday (1844); the seventh, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845); the last, Luria and A Soid's Tragedy r , published in the year of Brown- ing's marriage, 1846. Pippa Passes was originally priced at sixpence ; but, as the sale was small, it was increased to a shilling, and eventually rested at half a crown, which was the price of each subsequent number. In this fashion, so humble outwardly, a " perfect treasury of fine poetry," as Mr. Gosse well calls 48 ROBERT BROWNING it, was presented to the public. The title was explained by Browning him- self:— The Rabbis make Bells and Pomegranates symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the Gay and the Grave, the Poetry and the Prose, Singing and Sermonising. He chose the symbolical phrase as being less pretentious than any formal explanation ; but in the last number, in deference to the suggestion of his wife, he printed an explanatory note. The original edition of Pippa Passes had also a preface, which serves to empha- sise the hint made in the last chapter, that the dramatic intensity of this new burst of poetry was largely due to his experience in writing for the stage : — Two or three years ago [it ran] I wrote a play, about which the chief matter I much care to recollect at present is that a Pit-full of good-natured people applauded it. Ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in the same way that should better reward their at- tention. What follows I mean for the first of a EOBEET BROWNING 49 series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at in- tervals; and 1 amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which they appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. This promise is definite enough, and the result is even more so. "With this in- comparable series Browning established himself in his mature manner, in the dramatic portrayal of "so many imag- ^ary characters" not his own, which has rendered him by far the subtlest artist in motive that has ever written in English, save only Shakespeare. In the meanwhile Macready had not forgotten him, and was anxious for another play. The great actor had been experiencing various vicissitudes. Weary of the cramping restraint of Bunns and Osbaldistons, he had gone into management on his own account, and had been moving from the Hay- market to Covent Garden, and thence to Drury Lane, with varying degrees of success. In the spring of 1842 he was at 50 EOBEET BBOWOTNG the Haymarket ; and while there he ac- cepted for production during his next season A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, which Browning had just written, designedly for him. In the autumn Macready moved to Drury Lane, and, in order to make an unusual display for the winter season, engaged Mrs. Nisbett, the popular comic actress, together with Charles Mathews and Madame Yestris. Unfortunately, the combination failed ; and, by the time that Macready was ready to bring out Brown- ing's play, the season had involved him in serious pecuniary embarrassments. Had he told Browning the facts frankly, a great deal of trouble would have been saved. But Macready was always ab- normally sensitive ; and, instead of a straightforward statement, he wrote to Browning that, of the two plays which were by arrangement to precede his, The Patrician's Daughter had been unsuc- cessful, and Plighted Troth had " smashed his arrangements altogether," but that EOBEET BKOWNING 51 he was still prepared to produce Brown- ing's Blot in the 'Scutcheon in accordance with his agreement. Undoubtedly, Mac- ready hoped that Browning would ap- preciate a hint, and withdraw ; but the poet, in his own words, "had no notion that it was a proper thing, in such a case, to release him from his promise," and the actor found himself obliged in courtesy to go forward. He then appears to have lost his temper and judgment altogether. He caused the piece to be read to the company by the prompter, Mr. Willmott, an elderly gen- tleman of somewhat comic appearance, who so mangled the lines that some of the actors laughed. Macready then sent for Browning, and told him that his piece had been ridiculed by the company en- gaged to play it, and yet, when Brown- ing expostulated, confessed the circum- stances of the reading, and promised to read it to the actors next day himself. However, having so far made amends, 52 EOBEET BEOWNING he attempted yet another device to get Browning to withdraw the play. He declared that, under the pressure of management, he was unable to play Tresham himself, and that Phelps must act instead. Again Browning failed to take the hint. Phelps was ill, and could only sit in a chair at rehearsal, while Macready read the part. Appar- ently, the manager liked the play better after this trial ; for Phelps, stopping Browning at the stage door, assured him in a broken voice that Macready meant to play the part after all, that of course he himself could not ask Browning to give up such an advantage, but that he was prepared to study the part all night, if the poet cared to have him play it. Thereupon Browning returned to Mac- ready's room, and cried abruptly, "I beg your pardon, sir ; but you have given the part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satis- fied that he shall act it." This was two days before the performance (February ROBERT BROWNING 53 11, 1843) ; and Phelps had but one clear day to rehearse. The result of all this unfortunate vacillation was that Mac- ready let the representation drift in its own way. No new scenery was painted, no new dresses bought : the piece was lit- erally thrown upon the stage. Yet once again, in spite of every hindering ele- ment, Browning's dramatic reputation was avenged by the issue. Phelps, ill as he was, proved better than his word, and played the part of Tresham very finely. And of Helen Faucit's Mil- dred Browning himself wrote with the utmost enthusiasm, sending her at the same time a copy of verses for her al- bum, of which the following lines are a striking memento of an unfortunate occasion : — Helen Faucit, you have twice Proved my Bird of Paradise. He who would my wits inveigle Into boasting him my eagle, Turns out very like a Raven: Fly off, Blacky, to your haven. 54 ROBERT BROWNING But you, softest Dove, must never Leave me, as he does for ever. I will strain my eyes to blindness Ere lose sight of you and kindness. There is no doubt, too, that her tact and woman's wit had much to do with smoothing matters over in the almost disorganised company. She was a true friend to Browning in this trying crisis, and he in his turn was extremely con- siderate and amiable with the actors. In the result the piece, difficult and es- tranging as some of its taste undoubtedly is, went well with the audience, and was enthuiastically received. It was only played three times, but its prema- ture removal was not improbably due to Macready's disaffection. It was nearly twenty years before he and Browning spoke together again. The story of this incident, pitiable as it is in many of its aspects, has been told at some length (with the aid of Mrs. Orr and Mr. William Archer), because ROBERT BROWNING 55 there is no doubt that it had a consider- able influence upon Browning himself. First and last, it separated him alto- gether from the theatre. Colombo s Birthday, it is true, was performed ten years later at the Hay market ; and dur- ing the last years of his life Browning saw both Strafford and the ill-fated Blot in the y Scutcheon not unworthily performed by amateurs. But after his misunder- standing with Macready he ceased to write directly for the stage. It is an ambition that every poet feels at some period of his career. Nowadays, when the pecuniary rewards of a dramatic success are so considerable, the glitter of the footlights is more than ever tempt- ing. With Browning the claim asserted itself early, and passed early away. How far he would ever have succeeded as a popular stage poet is problematic. In that glaring light, fustian shows better than gossamer 5 and the stage has commonly preferred its Sheridan Knowleses to its 56 ROBERT BEOWNIXG Brownings. At any rate, Browning for his part had no further traffic with "the boards." His experience there served him in excellent stead, not only in the field of ethics, but of art ; yet he never desired ardently to return to it. The stage had cost him one of his dearest friends, and he was happy to have done with it. The stage production of A Blot in the y Scutcheo7i, whatever its indirect influ- ence, was merely an episode. The real heart of Browning's activity during the first six years of the forties is centred, of course, in Bells and Pomegranates. And, since these little yellow pamphlets con- tained much that will always rank with the best of his poetry, it is not without interest to notice how ripe was the time for a poetic debut. Iu the history of Victorian poetry these were indeed years of the very first significance. Great poetical outbursts invariably move in cycles. There are wildernesses of what appears to be literary stagnation or pa- ralysis, and then suddenly the desert blossoms like a rose. This was precisely the case at the time which we are con- sidering. During the first twenty or thirty years of Browning's life, poetry 58 EOBEET BKOWtfING had been languishing. After the some- what dreary Ecclesiastical Sonnets of 1822, Yarrow Revisited (in 1835) was Words- worth's only important publication. Crabbe died in 1832 j and, though Coleridge lived till two years later, he had already been inactive for a decade. Moore had found his lyric spring ex- hausted, and Southey was devoting the last years of his life almost exclusively to prose. Suddenly, in 1842, Tennyson, who had published nothing for ten years, took the public gaze again. His two volumes of poems came at the very moment when they were needed, and their success was immediate. Within a few months of their publication a uni- versity debating society was discussing the question that " Alfred Tennyson is the greatest poet of the age," and the whole of England was reading ' l Ulysses ? ' and the ' ' Dream of Fair Women. ' ' An appearance of this kind is never isolated. When poetry is in the air, poets are ROBERT BROWNING 59 ready for the hour. The recognition of Tennyson was followed at once by a burst of rivalry, some deliberate, some unconscious. In the former class must be placed the feverish activity of Eliza- beth Barrett, who at once set about ar- ranging a two-volume edition of Poems, recasting old pieces and designing new ones with all the spasmodic energy of the invalid. To the latter, no doubt, we must ascribe the calm, even production of Robert Browning, who had already sketched out his own u programme,' 7 but who was unquestionably sustained in its performance by the general inter- est in poetry that was seething in Ten- nyson's wake. Various occasions, of course, helped to various ends. The "Pied Piper," immortal favourite with children of every age, was written to amuse Macready's little boy, who was ill in bed, and wanted a poem to draw pictures to. "The Flight of the Duch- ess," with six others, was given to Tom 60 ROBEET BROWNING Hood for his Magazine, — a graceful assistance to a friend who was himself past work. But, whatever the occasion, the course of Browning's labours was impelled by it, not diverted. It was always a characteristic of his work that he never allowed considerations from out- side to interfere with its order. Editors sought him in vain. He would not put aside, for the chances of the most brill- iant advertisement, work which he had planned beforehand. He was one of the most conscientious artists that ever laboured with the quill. During this period of almost ceaseless literary activity, Browning seems to have worked with all the painstaking that was at the disposal of a naturally careful artist. Under inspiration he wrote rapidly, but the labour of elabora- tion and finish was long and thoughtful. The mere exercise of writing was not, as it is with many men of letters, a pleas- ure to him : he never opened his desk, ROBERT BROWNING 61 he said, without a sigh, nor closed it without a smile. But his desire for per- formance overcame all petty inconven- iences. Above all things, he wrote for himself, and for the satisfaction of his own sense of art. It is clear from his letters that he was quite contented with the amount of reputation which his work had so far brought him. For a wide circulation, in a vulgar sense, he had very little care. With all his inter- est in the mental attitude of the ordi- nary man, — and that interest is contin- ually apparent, — he had, nevertheless, a thoroughly good-natured contempt for the judgment of "that rather narrow- toned organ, the modern Englishman." If the public had bought his poems, he would have had use for the money. Meanwhile he was far more interested in the verdict of those whose opinion was worth attention. Criticism which appreciated his intention stimulated him ; but, if it was unintelligent or un- 62 ROBERT BROWNING sympathetic, lie was not greatly de- pressed. He could never understand, he said, why Keats or Tennyson should "go softly all their days" for the sake of an unkind reviewer. Still less could he approve of a poet modelling himself, against his better instincts, to suit the wit of blundering criticism. His friends at this time were principally men of letters, and such women — a very few — as showed literary tendencies. In a word, his life was bound up in litera- ture. It chanced, however, that some three years or so before the time we are im- mediately considering he had made a friend who was to bring a new and ab- sorbing interest into his life. He was dining, Mrs. Orr tells us, at Talfourd's, when an elderly gentleman came up to him, and asked if his father had ever been at school at Cheshunt. Browning remembered that that was the case $ and his new acquaintance rejoined, ROBERT BROWNING 63 " Then ask him if he remembers John Kenyon." The question was put next morning, and the elder Browning re- called his old acquaintance at once. The two met ? and a broken friendship was re- newed with interest. John Kenyon was one of the kindest of men. He was gen- ial, unselfish, and of a fine, manly as- pect. Browning nicknamed him "The Magnificent." He was particularly fond of young people, and had a true sympa- thy with literary aspiration. Among the dearest of his friends was his distant cousin, Elizabeth Barrett, the poet. To her from her earliest years he was, as she herself said, unspeakably my friend and helper, and my books' friend and helper, critic and sympa- thiser, true friend of all hours. She was, as every one knows, an invalid, and so peculiarly dependent upon her friends. Kenyon was one of her most frequent visitors, and it was his pleasure to bring with him any new friend whom 64 EOBERT BROWNING he thought she would like to see in her enforced solitude. Shortly after he had made the acquaintance of Robert Brown- ing, he suggested taking him to Glouces- ter Place, where the Barretts were then living. They even went to the door ; but she was still too ill to see them, and by some chance negligence the oppor- tunity was not at once repeated. Mean- while Elizabeth Barrett passed through a great trouble, which marks also, as it happens, a crisis in her whole career. Her favourite brother was lost at sea under circumstances of peculiar poig- nancy. He was far the dearest to her of all her family, and she had been extremely ill. It was found necessary to send her to Torquay for the winter ; and this brother, Edward, took her there, with the intention of returning to town at once. But, when it became necessary to part from him, she was so much over- come with grief that they were obliged EOBEET BEOWNING 65 to get him to remain. He stayed with her for months, during which she was in perpetual danger of death. Then, just as she seemed to be recovering, the little boat in which he was sailing was mys- teriously lost; and she never saw him again. With the peculiar sensitiveness which was characteristic of her, she blamed herself for the catastrophe. Her father had much wished the brother to return to London ; and she felt now that, if he had gone, the misfortune of their lives might have been avoided. She was at once plunged into the deepest distress, in which the kindly affection of her father — and this must always be remembered in palliation of any later doubts — was her only comfort. How- ever, she overcame her trouble in time ; and with her mastery of it she seemed to have gained strength of every kind but physical. Her poetry emerged from its first imitative immaturity, and she began to be recognised as one of the fore- 66 EOBERT BROWNING most writers of her day. She was read, first by the few who care for literature, then by the wider public both in Eng- land and America. She was established as a favourite ; enjoyed the confidence of critics ; her opinions and advice were sought by some of the best-known men of her time. As a woman, her position was unique. By virtue of her sympathy and intellectual vivacity, she queened it from her sick-room over the literary fashions of London and New York. Such was the position of Elizabeth Barrett, when Browning, at the close of 1844, returned from a short tour in Italy to find her new Poems the poetic success of the season. He naturally hastened to read the book, and among the pieces found one which had, as a matter of fact, been written at full speed to fill an empty sheet, but in which he could hardly have failed to be pleased by the occurrence of his own name : — ROBERT BROWNING 67 There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own ; Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle overflowings Found in Petrach's sonnets— here's the book, the leaf is folded down ! Or at times a modern volume, Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyll, Howitt's ballad - verse, or Tennyson's en- chanted reverie,— Or from Browning some " Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity. Browning was indeed delighted with the whole work. Meeting his friend Kenyon while still full of the subject, he expressed his admiration generously. "Why don't you write and tell her so? " said Kenyon. "She is an invalid, and sympathy is a great help to her." Browning went home, and took Kenyon 7 s advice ; and so began one of the most idyllic stories in all the history of love. VI. The letter which Browning wrote, at Kenyon's suggestion, to Elizabeth Bar- rett (January 10, 1845), was of precisely the kind to strike fire from a nature full of the yearning for sympathy. With no preamble of introduction or excuse, it broke at once into the topic of admira- tion. ' i I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett," — these were the first words to greet her eye. The letter went on to say that he had meant to give himself the pleasure of analysing and justifying his enjoyment in her poetry, — even, perhaps, of criticising a little, — but that, when he sat down to write to her, he found it impossible to do more than express again and again his sincere affection for her work. Finally, he told her how Kenyon had once tried to bring them together; but a the half- opened door shut, and the sight was ROBERT BROWNING 69 never to be." The letter was not long, but it was so full of evident sincerity that it must have seemed more eloquent than columns of conventional praise. Elizabeth Barrett was cordially de- lighted with it, replied at twice the length, begging for the criticism which he had withheld, and hinting that the meeting, which had been prevented, was, perhaps, only deferred. Her letter in turn invited an answer, and the corre- spondence between them was started upon lines that seemed to wander into perpetuity. Within three weeks of Browning's first letter they had agreed to "sign and seal a contract" of friend- ship, to write to one another without constraint or ceremony, and to discuss every topic that might find itself upon the paper with an entire absence of con- ventionality or pretence. If it be true that the surest partner- ships are those between friends whose qualities supply one another's deficien' 70 ROBERT BROWNING cies, then the alliance between these two poets might be said to have prom- ised richly from the first. Their lives had hitherto afforded a perfect con- trast. Always delicate from the time when, at the age of fourteen, she was thrown from her pony, Elizabeth Barrett had spent her early girlhood at the foot of the Malvern Hills, with fewer friends than books. There she had built up for herself an artificial religion of classic gods and goddesses, and as a child had even offered little secret sacrifices to Minerva in hidden corners of the gar- den. She lost her mother early, and was thrown more and more upon her own resources. Among her earliest studies had been Tom Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Out of these she had constructed a sort of half-pagan, half-Christian philosophy. When the family removed to Lon- don, she had indeed enlarged her field of vision, and had not altogether lacked BOBEBT BKOWNING 71 the company of men and women. But the society of a sick-room is necessarily cribbed and confined ; and in the hours of her serious illness, when she thought that she was never likely to recover, it was borne in upon her with every access of regret that she had been spending her life on literary culture, when she ought to have spent it in the study of man- kind, and that she really knew very little of her fellow men and women. With Browning it was precisely the reverse. As Kenyon often remarked, what seemed the super-subtlety of his poetry was in direct contrast with the open, practical nature of his social in- tercourse. Outside his study he was essentially a man of the world. Indeed, he was particularly fond of society ; and, while his days were laboriously devoted to poetry, his evenings were freely given to dinners, receptions, dances, and all the ordinary routine of a London season. His view of life was also eminently 72 ROBERT BROWNING practical, his attitude to the jn'oblems it presented reasoned and logical. He was as far as possible from the u head- long " spirit in which his new friend plunged into fresh relations and literary enterprises. Each of them may well have found in the other the qualities most stimulating to mutual respect and affection; and it is not surprising that their correspondence ripene8 Birthday on the stage. Mrs. Browning was feverishly interested in the scheme ; but, if further evidence were needed of the disinclination for the stage which the trouble with Macready had brought to Browning, it would be afforded by the indifference with which he regarded the present production. He was grateful for the friendly feeling, but he would take no active part in the preparation. Beyond referring the ac- tress to the latest edition of the play and begging her to use that text as it stood, he troubled not at all about the matter. The piece had a success with the critics ; but it was again badly acted, Miss Faucit alone, and for the third time, doing justice to the poet's intention. For the rest, there was the life of the mountains, with much riding along pre- cipitous paths and tarryings at little country inns to feast on strawberries and 100 EOBEET BEOWNING milk. They seem to have found in their work, and in the splendid communion of nature, everything they needed for re- freshment and consolation. It is a fine testimony to Browning's confidence and artistic magnanimity that, during these years of hard work, he never seems to have felt depression from any sense of lack of public appreciation. It was enough for him to be doing work that was gradually growing more into accord- ance with his own and his wife's ideal. He was confident, but never over- confi- dent. In all probability it never oc- curred to him that the poetry which was springing up among those vineyards and olive groves of Florence was to be among the most precious of all the treasures of English literature. Certainly, he never would have allowed that the Men and Women among whom he was living were more vital creatures than his wife's Aurora Leigh, Eomney, and Marian Erie. "She has genius," he said: "I EOBEET BBOWNISTG 101 am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans and tries to build up something ? He wants to make you see it as he sees it, shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, ham- mering into your head the things that he wants you to understand ; and, whilst all this bother is going on, God Al- mighty turns you off a little star. That's the difference between us." There is no artist but would wish for just such modesty for himself. Yet this man wrote "Abt Vogler" and the " Guardian Angel." VIII. The summer of 1855, when next the Brownings were in London, was one of uncommon literary agitation. It is, in- deed, not unlikely that the sense of movement at the centre of things induced them to break in upon their Florentine seclusion ; for they were both engrossed in work at the time, and the change must have incurred interruptions. But it was a great year in literary London. Seldom have so many masterpieces burst upon a single season. Dickens had fin- ished Little Dorrit; Kingsley, Westward Ho! Macaulay had put forth two new vol- umes, the third and fourth, of his monu- mental History of England; a new series of Poems had borne the name of Matthew Arnold ; Thackeray published the last part of The Newcomes in August. Leigh Hunt, George MacDonald, and Anthony Trollope were all represented by less im- EOBERT BROWNING 103 portant volumes ; and people were talk- ing vaguely of a new genius, revealed in a rich and imaginative romance called the Shaving of Shagpat. Above all other books, Maud was the poem of the year. When the Brownings reached London, the critical bombardment of Tennyson had begun ; and all the various passions of mankind were being exercised in his condemnation and defence. Such an atmosphere was acutely stimulating to literary production, and there is no doubt that both poets felt the move- ment. They saw their friends freely, but callers were apt to notice that Mrs. Browning slipped a scrap of paper be- neath her pillow as they were ushered into the room. She was, indeed, finish- ing Aurora Leigh at high-speed, writing, as the inspiration seized her, upon backs of envelopes, advertisements, or any blank sheet that was ready to her hand. Browning himself was correcting the proofs of Men and Women; and, on the 104 EOBEET BEOWNING evening when Tennyson read Maud to a select company in the Brownings' rooms in Dorset Street, the ink was scarcely dry upon the beautiful dedication, " One Word More." By the time the Brown- ings were back again in Eome the two volumes of Men and Women were in the reviewers' hands. With this publication we enter upon a new period of Browning's life. Now, for the first time since his earlier vol- umes had surprised a little clan into admiration, he began to take a definite place in the estimates of criticism. There is no doubt that great expecta- tions had been founded upon these vol- umes, and that the loving hopes of the wife prophesied a high success for them. It is equally certain that these expecta- tions were far from being fulfilled. "You should see Chapman's returns," she wrote. And the gloomy figures of the publishers' balance sheet proved too clearly that the poet had not yet touched ROBERT BROWNING 105 the big reading public with whom Ten- nyson was now established. But Men and Women, containing, one need scarcely say, much of his finest and most concen- trated work, had more than restored the shattered confidence of his friends. It had introduced him also to another gen- eration of students of poetry, who were too young to remember the appearance of Pauline, and had found but few men- tors to point out its promise. From this time, although the common interest in Browning was still languid and puzzled, the literary interest in him continued firm and increasing. In America he was at once recognised far more cor- dially than in England. There were "Browning evenings" in Boston ; and it could not but hurt his wife's sensibility that "a small knot of pre-Baphaelite men" should form the main body of Browning's public in his own country, while in America an acquaintance with his work was held as a necessary badge 106 EOBEET BKOWNING of culture. Nevertheless, lie was no longer " neglected " in the most galling sense of that much-abused phrase. In the small circle where the highest poetry is appreciated he had his place of honour. This winter of partial disappointment was spent in Paris, with much visiting and entertainment ; and during its gay months Mrs. Browning worked unceas- ingly upon Aurora Leigh. By the sum- mer it was finished, the last touch being added, as the dedication shows, upon the 17th of October, 1856, when from John Kenyon's own house in London she as- cribed the poem to her cousin and friend who through "her various efforts in literature and steps in life had believed in her, borne with her, and been gener- ous to her far beyond the common uses of mere relationship and sympathy.' 7 This touching dedication is the closing act in a friendship of unfailing devotion. "Within two months of its inscription the KOBEKT BROWNING 107 kind and manly heart of Kenyon had ceased to beat. He was not privileged to witness the full success of the book, — a success which would have been in- tensely gratifying to him. But his last thoughts were for his friends ; and by his will the Brownings, husband and wife, were generously and helpfully benefited. Their sorrow for his loss was overwhelming. For a time it blotted out all other interests. At length, how- ever, they returned to Florence and to work. The success of Aurora Leigh was im- mediate. It will never rank with the best of its author's work. It is very un- equal in style. There are arid wastes of narrative, and sentiment is sometimes drowned in sentimentality. But its very faults endeared it to the general reader, and probably no single poem has been so frequently bestowed as a gift-book. At one time it shared with Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House the 108 EOBEET BEOWNING honours of literary pre-eminence in every list of wedding presents. As Mrs. Browning justly said, she had no cause to complain of the public attitude towards herself, for hers were the privi- leges of a favourite. Meanwhile their child was growing up, and in his society they found conso- lation for the loss of older friends. He was a perpetual companion to them, sharing their mountain expeditions, and adding with pleasant prattle to the di- versions of the way. They took up again their dreamy life, and the thunder of London sounded far away. Occasion- ally a friend broke in upon them with news from the book world. Occasion- ally again they were able of their own initiative to cement old friendships and associations. Among such incidents was their pleasant and kindly intercourse with Walter Savage Landor. The old man was at Fiesole, very unhappy, and time after time escaped to the Brown- ROBERT BROWNING 109 ings with an eloquent tale of loneliness. Browning, feeliug that it was an urgent situation, wrote to Landor' s brother, and arranged for his support, so that the aged poet was settled in a cottage close to Casa Guidi, and cared for by the very maid who had been Mrs. Browning's companion in her elopement, and her faithful attendant ever since. The ar- rangement had its clouds, for Landor was not always suave. There were mo- ments when suspicion and a hot temper made the situation narrow enough. But Browning understood the old man's innate gentleness, and was wonderfully adroit in smoothing over difficulties. Landor lived in the little Florentine cot- tage very comfortably for the five re- maining years of his life. Meanwhile Mrs. Browning had been seriously ailing, and her husband's anx- iety had been intolerable. It would seem that the air of Florence was begin- ning to undermine the health of both 110 ROBERT BROWNING of them. Neither was well, and her con- dition gave cause for the gravest appre- hension. They moved her to Rome, however ; and she rallied slowly, dating from there the fulminating Poems be- fore Congress which showed how closely she had taken the interests of her adopted country to heart, no less than how gen- erously illogical a true woman may at times become. The anxieties of the hour increased ; and it is small wonder that Browning found it impossible to write. Active manual work became essential to distraction, and he busied himself with modelling from the antique. As soon as he had finished a bust or torso, he broke it, and began upon an- other. His restlessness was acute. The winter, however, passed without disas- ter ; and they returned to Siena for the spring. Then a fresh anxiety broke in upon them. Mrs. Browning's sister Hen- rietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook) became dan- gerously ill ; and during the next winter, ROBERT BROWNING 111 again spent at Roine, she died. The shock prostrated Mrs. Browning, and she never really recovered. They took her back to Casa Guidi ; and there, in the home of her happiest memories, she sank gradually, but peacefully. At the last it was her love and sorrow for Italy which dealt her death-blow. The news of Cavour's death plunged her into a melancholy from which she was unable to rouse herself. "If tears or blood could have saved him, he should have had mine," she wrote. Three weeks later, on the 29th of June, 1861, the tender, chivalrous, and eager spirit of Elizabeth Barrett Browning was at rest forever. Words like "love" and "womanli- ness, ' ' so often abused in the currency of speech and print, begin in time to lose their lustre. "The eternal God- word, Love," is forced into so many sullied uses that men are obliged to decorate it 112 ROBERT BROWNING with epithets, when they wish to give it a more than common implication of purity and strength. But for the poet of the Sonnets from the Portuguese two words only suffice : "love" and " womanli- ness " were of the essence of her fine and quintessential spirit. Love, in itself rebellious of restraint, overwhelming, tempestuous, will not always go hand in hand with reason : the feminine nature is often too self-sufficing to seek for argu- ments. But with women, and above all with women who love, there is a wonder- ful, prompting instinct, which leads them more directly towards truth than all the weighed and proportioned logic of men ; and the causes to which Eliza- beth Barrett Browning lent her bright enthusiasm were rarely causes undeserv- ing of her love. Her poetry suffered from her passion. She felt so strongly, that she could not always pause to choose expressions for her feeling ; and much that she wrote in a white heat of elo- KOBERT BROWNING 113 quence is unlikely to bear the cooling, sifting influence of time. As a poet, she stands a step below the highest. She saw, indeed, into the holy of holies, — saw, in her own words, The cherub faces which emboss The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat ; but it was not hers to minister at the altar. Yet even here, and so far, " Blessed are they which have seen.' 7 But what was denied her in art was given back to her an hundred- fold in life. The story of her devotion to her love is the story, as a critic has well said, of the "stainless harmony " of two of the finest spirits that were ever trammelled with the cares of humanity. The grand ideal of marriage, so often blurred be- hind a mist of hindering emotions, gleams out in their life, like the noonday sun in its strength. The marriage of true minds admits no impediment. rs. When the first acute bitterness of his loss was over, and he was able to think of the future, Browning decided that Florence was no longer possible as a home. Its memories were too poignant, and he had his little son to consider. An English education seemed desirable, no less than woman's companionship ; and it was settled that the Brownings should move to London, where Miss Arabel Barrett, his wife's favourite sis- ter, was engaged in a sort of mission work among the destitute children of Paddington. Browning had always been fond of her. She was a gentle creature, in whose presence, as Mrs. Browning once said, no one ever mentioned the possibility of one man hating another ; for she was all love and self-sacrifice. His own sister was engaged in taking care of her aged father in Paris - y and so EOBEET BROWNING 115 lie naturally turned to the other aunt, and to London. As soon as the neces- sary preparations were completed, they left Florence, the melancholy interval having found some consolation in the devoted kindness of another friend, Miss Isa Blagden, who took little "Pen" from the house of mourning, and did all she could to spare both him and his father the more sordid cares inseparable from such an occasion. Two summer months were passed near Dinard, and in the early autumn Robert Browning and his son arrived in town. After a few months of unsettled lodging, Brown- ing took a house in Warwick Crescent, over against the canal, and within a stone's throw of Miss Barrett's home in Delamere Terrace. This was his Lon- don home for more than twenty-five years. Of the many actions in his life which go to prove Browning's strength of mind and character, there is nothing so im- 116 EOBEET BROWNING pressive as this stern, lonely resumption of work and duty. For many years to come his life was to creep on broken wing ; and, indeed, so far as the finer issues of the spirit go, he always felt that his life was already behind him. Still, with indomitable energy, he pursued the path he had set before himself. The education of his son he regarded as a sacred legacy from his wife, the comple- tion of his own work in poetry as the only offering he could make to her memory. Like the speaker of his own " Evelyn Hope/' he looked out upon the future with the determination to win all that was essential from the present. I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes. It was part of the religion of his love that no talent which could be devoted to its service should be buried in a napkin. ROBERT BROWNING 117 At first the depression of a change from a Florentine summer to a damp, foggy London winter was almost over- whelming. "How I yearn, yearn for Italy ! " he wrote. But his natural courage carried him through ; and he soon took up the new life, not only with resignation, but with something like zest. He had work in hand to finish, and he was engaged also in preparing for publication a posthumous volume of his wife's Last Poems. So the winter passed, and the next summer, which, in accordance with what now became a general custom with him, was spent abroad at Biarritz. Henceforth it be- comes unnecessary to review his simple, recurrent life month by month. The winters were spent in London and the summers on the Continent ; and winter and summer alike he divided his time between the company of his friends and the consolations of his poetry. In 1864 he published Dramatis Per- 118 ROBERT BROWNING sonce, after a silence of nine years. Probably Browning, absorbed in his own art, bad scarcely noticed any change in the general attitude to poetry ; but it so happened that during those nine years there had been a considerable development of poetic taste among the younger generation. Especially at the universities poetry had begun to be read more intelligently, and to be writ- ten, less in the old formal fashion of Pope qualified by Crabbe, and with a nearer approach to spontaneity and freedom from academic affectation. The influ- ence of Ruskin, which had been slowly growing at Oxford for twenty years, had changed the whole attitude of the younger generation towards literature and art. A fresher spirit was astir, and among the young men at Oxford who had shown promise in this sort of renaissance were Philip Stanhope Wors- ley, for example, and John Addington Symonds; while, in the very year of ROBERT BROWNHSTG 119 Dramatis Personce, Professor Courthope, then an undergraduate, had won the Newdigate with an uncommonly natural and delicate poem upon Shakespeare's Tercentenary. At the same time Mr. Andrew Lang was a Freshman, and Pro- fessor Saintsbury in his last year. These are apparently trivial indications ; but a straw shows the way of the wind, and one of the first things that Brown- ing's publishers had to report was that his new book was proving unexpectedly popular both at Oxford and Cambridge. All my new cultivators [wrote Browning] are young men,— more than that, I observe that some of my old friends don't like at all the irruption of outsiders who rescue me from their sober and private approval, and take the words out of their mouths, which they always meant to say, and never did. The universities are not, of course, the hub of the universe ; but they are a great recruiting ground for literary reputa- tion. The young men who in 1864 were reading and praising Atalanta in Calydon, 120 EOBEKT BKOWHIKG and "Babbi Ben Ezra" and " Abt Yogler," had three or four years later developed into the critics who gave such a thunderous welcome to Poems and Ballads and The Ring and the Book. The steady increase of readers for Dramatis Personal was a sign of the times. Browning was no longer in ad- vance of his generation : his hour was on the point of striking. And, in the stimulating fitness of things, he was at that moment engaged upon his great- est work. The story of that poem and its genesis is told, once and for all, with Browning's inimitable richness, in the overture to The Ping and the Book itself. One June day, among his last at Casa Guidi, he was strolling along the Piazza San Lorenzo, when a little book caught his eye upon a market-stall. It was an old, square, yellow volume, with crumpled vellum covers ; and, seeing that it was marked at eightpence, and dealt with a KOBERT BROWNING 121 famous murder case, promising interest, he bought it on the spot, and started to read it then and there, among the piles of merchandise and the hubbub of mid- day traffic. He tells how he walked on, absorbed in the matter, reading, — Through street and street, At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge ; Till, by the time I stood at home again In Casa Guidi by Felice Church, Under the doorway where the black begins With the first stone-slab of the staircase cold, 1 had mastered the contents, knew the whole truth. The psychology of crime had always a peculiar attraction for Browning. Mr. Kegan Paul, in his pleasant volume of Memories, tells of a dinner party at which he and Browning were present, when the conversation turned upon famous murder cases j and the company were surprised to find that the poet pos- sessed an elaborate knowledge of the details of evidence and motive in almost every important trial of the kind. The 122 EOBERT BROWNIKG Franceschini case was, therefore, just the sort of thing to appeal to him ; and, though he seems to have offered the theme to other writers, it was always working in his brain, and within a year of his settling in London had taken some shape as a poem in his lively im- agination. He tells us himself that he was four years at work upon the actual manuscript ; but, before that, the whole development of the case, in its every aspect, had been churned over and over again in his mind and subjected to searching analysis. It is said that he read over the evidence eight times before he set out upon his own tenfold presentation of it. The result, as every one knows, is the wonderful poem of twenty thousand lines, against which so much criticism and eulogy have beaten eager wings. The Ring and the Booh might well be discussed in a volume of criticism as bulky as itself, and yet the question of KOBERT BROWNING 123 its artistic justification would remain un- settled. That it is "tyrannously long without action, mercilessly voluble/' as Professor Saintsbury pronounces it, and at times irritatingly reiterative, every one but the fanatic must reluc- tantly admit. But that it contains pas- sages of supreme poetry, and that its entire scheme is founded upon the most delicate and subtle fabric of imaginative analysis, no one but a dullard will at- tempt to deny. Brevity was never one of Browning's virtues j and, in discuss- ing any of his poems, the trick of pro- lixity must be discounted at the outset. In The Ring and the Booh he deliberately seeks it : it is of the very essence of the idea that every hair should be split. One may quarrel with the method ; but it is absurd to suppose that the author was ignorant of his own devices ! The search for truth — truth of motive, the mainspring of action — became more and more the absorbing interest of his poetry • 124 KOBERT BROWNING and in that search he adopted the habit of sifting every false aspect of the question, until there was left, like a precipitate, the simple grain of truth in the whole solution. This is the method of The Ring and the Book, applied, one need scarcely say, with an elaborate fidelity, of which Browning alone among the English poets of three hundred years was capable. In its course he re-creates characters only to dissolve them into their component emotions, suggests mo- tives only to probe their sincerity, and reveals himself more than anywhere else in his work the inspired master of human thought and action. With The Bing and the Book we reach the culminating point of Browning's poetic development. As we have seen, it is always with the individual soul that his philosophy is occupied. The salva- tion, the possibilities, of individual devel- opment, here and hereafter, are always his concern. But, while at first he EOBEET BBOWNIXG li turned to his own emotions for analysis, and imputed himself to his characters, he next, in the natural course of develop- ment, sought for subjects outside his own range of experience, and, as in "Bishop Blougram" or "Mr. Sludge," became definitely dramatic in method. Then, as the search for truth becomes more search- ing, he goes outside the individual, to arrive at the individual motive, and, as in The Ring and the Book, brings an array of characters, with an infinity of different side-lights and broken truths, to bear upon the one, isolated, individual act, and by the mixture of a vast alloy of falsehood completes, as it were, the golden ring of truth. The method may be casuistical: " falsehood, ' 1 as Profes- sor Dowden remarks, "seems almost more needful to the poet than truth ' ? ; but the wonderful verisimilitude of de- tail is justified by the clear and gleam- ing light in which the truth is event- ually revealed. 126 ROBERT BROWNING After The Ring and the Booh Browning continued to employ the same method with something of the same wonderful result ; but it was already perfected, and he naturally never developed it further. Indeed, it is doubtful whether he ever again exhibited the same exquisite deli- cacy of treatment, or wrote with the same magnificence of diction, the same singular bursts of harmony. An analytic method such as this has its own perils. It is only a consummate genius that can bend it to true poetic uses. As Browning declined in years, the sub- tlety was apt to be obscured by sup- pression and unconscious crudity, the music to be abused by eccentricities of rhyme, which offend the ear and lend nothing to the effect. Red Cotton Night- cap Country and Pacchiarotto will always survive as literary curiosities j but it is doubtful whether they will long be read, either with pleasure or profit. The Browning of 1889 was substantially EOBERT BROWXING 12 the Browning of 1868, with his manner solidified and his habit frozen. As a man ages, his characteristics either fade into nullity or assume emphatic angles. With a strong temperament the second alternative is almost inevitable, and it was so with Browning. Like Tennyson, he remained productive to the last ; but in neither case had the fresh fruit other than a reminiscent flavour of the old. Browning's creative course will always be marked in an ascending grade until the rich year of The Ring and the Book. With that year he took rank among the acknowledged great ; and for the rest of his life it was his pleasant privilege to reap the harvest of his labours, in the broad fields of universal recognition and close and intimate friendship. X. There were twenty years of active life left to Browning after The Ring and the Book ; and during those twenty years he published fourteen volumes of poetry. They were, indeed, in many senses, the fullest years of his life. He was con- scious, at last, of popularity and a public. He was a welcome and en- treated guest in the houses of a hundred friends. His pen was ceaselessly em- ployed in " giving the people of his best." And yet to the biographer these years afford but little colour. More that is of vital import may be concentrated in one twenty minutes of a man's life than in another twenty years ; and in the even tenour of a ripe and successful career there is less that appeals to the heart than in the broken record of early struggles and disappointments. The years that saw the publication of Balaus- EOBEET BROWNING 129 Hon 1 s Adventure and Fifine at the Fair, of Bed Cotton Night-cap Country, Jocoseria, Ferishtah, and the rest, are chiefly inter- esting to a brief biography for their record of the friendships with which Browning's life was now so richly en- dowed. For it was now for the first time that he became a familiar figure in London society. Literary friendships he had always enjoyed, but even these, owing to his absence from England, chiefly in the form of correspondence. With his settlement in London he added daily to the circle of his acquaintances, and many different pictures of him are to be found in many books. They re- veal a temperament at once strong and lovable. To his friends Browning was indeed a very real friend, giving himself freely and without the slightest affecta- tion or self- consciousness. It was always said of him that no man was freer from the "pose of the poet." He had no literary tricks of tone or gesture. Those 130 KOBERT BROWNING who had come out of the wilderness in the hope of seeing a poet were apt to be disappointed. They thought to find a prophet, enveloped in a mantle of mystery, and, lo ! a kindly, white- bearded gentleman, who spoke with knowledge of horsemanship and the opera. But those who were quicker in perception saw that his natural, unas- suming talk was really the fruit of abun- dant, encyclopaedic information, out of which Browning could equally discuss tides and shoals with a sailor, or shares and bubbles with a city magnate. He preferred, indeed, to talk to a man of the things the man himself could un- derstand. Nor was it any part of his energy to play mentor or guide to an open - mouthed bevy of school - girls. With Tennyson, Palgrave, and Glad- stone he would discuss Shakespeare and Latin verses ; but he knew all about the price of Pornic butter for the thrifty housewife. And in all such changes ROBERT BROWNING 131 of standpoint lie was never patronizing nor petty. Whatever the topic, he discussed it with an intellectual vigour ; and the simplest girl felt at her ease with him instinctively. His dearest friends were always women, and at every pressing crisis in his life a woman was his confidante. At one time it was Miss Haworth, at another Miss Mitford, and, in his darkest hour of all, Miss Isa Blagden ; while he found in his own wife a friend whose sympathy ren- dered all other confidences needless for the space of fifteen years of absolute communion. The strongest and most masculine character will always be found to seek those complementary qualities of womanhood, for which a weekly or effem- inate nature can find substitutes in itself. The most completely "manly" men have always understood women best. This was precisely so with Browning. His letters to his women friends are full of sympathy, tact, and insight, — quali- 132 EOBERT BROWNING ties in the absence of which anything like sincerity of intercourse is impossible between the sexes. He never made the mistake of writing or talking "down" to a woman. He had been privileged to share the aspirations of one woman of spiritual force, and knew well enough "the silent silver lights and darks un- dreamed of" which are revealed in most women's hearts for the man who can find the key to the gate. With the death of his wife, he lost a kindly critic, to whom his work owed much, even beyond the primal inspira- tion of sympathy. Turbid and troubled as much of her own work was, Mrs. Browning was fully alive to the risks of obscurity and suppression in her hus- band's. Her criticism and advice made always for lucidity ; and it will be ap- parent to any one who cares to examine carefully that the best and most vital of Browning's poetry was produced under her influence. In saying this, one does ROBERT BROWNING 133 not forget the date of The Ring and the Boole, which was published seven years after her death, but is manifestly full of her memory. It was written with the afterglow of her influence full upon him, and breathes her inspiration in every part. But in his later works the ten- dency to difficulty of expression and crudity of music returned incorrigibly. It is somewhat of a paradox that the hardest of Browning's work was pro- duced after people had ceased to com- plain of his obscurity. During the last fifteen years of his life he had become a vogue. A Browning Society, which he regarded with kindliness not altogether free from apprehension, had arisen to expound him ; and to fail to admire him was now considered to argue lack of culture. The swing of the pendulum is from pole to pole. Among his friends were several to whom he looked for criticism. M. Mil- sand, the distinguished French critic, 134 EOBEET BBOWNTNG who was the first to introduce his poetry to a Parisian audience, was perhaps the most trusted. He read the proofs of all Browning's later volumes, and made many helpful suggestions. Miss Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Bichmond Bitchie) was often with Browning abroad, and, be- sides suggesting the title of Bed Cotton Night- cap Country, was a close confidante of his literary plans during many sunny afternoons at St. Aubin. For during these summer holidays Browning was continually at work, and much of his closest application was left to the hours when he should have been at rest. In London his activity was remark- able. He rose early, and invariably found a pile of letters upon his table. Correspondence was never a pleasure to him, for he disliked the exercise of writ- ing. But so punctilious was his cour- tesy that by the time he had finished answering his morning letters he was often too tired to take up his more ROBERT BROWNING 135 serious work. The same courtesy and consideration were shown in his welcome to visitors. He had none of that inac- cessibility behind which great men have been wont to protect their freedom. Mrs. Ritchie relates the incident of one morning call, when she found every room in the house at Warwick Crescent occupied by different visitors awaiting audience, and Browning himself pale and exhausted from the effort of con- versation with well-meaning enthusiasts. Of an afternoon he was an assiduous attendant at concerts. His friend Miss Egerton Smith used to call for him in her carriage 5 and for years, Mrs. Orr tells us, the two friends scarcely missed a single musical " event" of any im- portance. In the evening he was a con- stant diner-out ; and yet during the greater part of his residence in London not a day passed without his adding something to his poetry, working slowly, it is true, but with infinite pains, pro- 136 ROBERT BROWNING during, perhaps, a single page of manu- script in a morning's work. In his poetry and in the society of his friends he seems to have found consid- erable happiness. As all who met him agree, Browning was at heart an opti- mist. He had a comfortable gift of adapting himself to circumstances, of accepting gladly what life had to give him, of conrpromising with life, in short. In his own philosophy, as in his poetry, he was content to regard life as the exercise ground of faculties which should be more fully realised in some ultimate existence elsewhere. He was always consciously fostering his talents for their fuller, mysterious development. And so he appears to us, moving through the shadows of advancing age, — blithe, contented, self-contained, a man of in- finite sympathy and unflagging energy. Miss Arabel Barrett died in the year of The Ring and the Book, and the poet's father had then been dead two years. ROBERT BROWNING 137 After her father's death, Miss Browning came to live with her brother j and her kindliness and tact did much to brighten his home. More than all, his son's dis- tinctions as an artist were a continual pride to him ; and it may be truly said of Browning that the closing days of his life were not ouly illumined by honours from without, but also sustained and heartened from within by the unfailing af- fection of those who were dearest to him. In 1887 his son married, and he him- self moved from Warwick Crescent to De Vere Gardens. He took keen inter- est in the arrangement of his new home, but those who knew him best noticed that the old energy was no longer ca- pable of such prolonged nights. During the next two years his vigour slowly abated, and he began to think of settling for the end of his life in a home that should remind him of its beginning. It had long been a cherished ambition with him to secure a house at Asolo, and 138 KOBEKT BEOWKING there was a half-finished building in the precincts of the castle there, which he particularly desired to complete and to name "Pippa's Tower." Negotiations were opened, and languished. Brown- ing went to Venice in the November of 1889, and was daily expecting a settle- ment of the affair. The delay worried him, and towards the end of the month he caught a severe chill. Bronchitis set in, and he sank steadily. On Thursday, the 12th of December, at about ten o'clock at night, he died. His gentle optimism stood by him to the last. He continually assured the watchers by his bed that he was not suffering. He knew that he was dying, and he met the knowledge without fear. I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, The best and the last ! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, And bade me creep past. ROBERT BROWNING 139 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend- voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest ! He had felt — without caring very greatly, however — that he should like to lie by his wife's side : but the nation thought otherwise. On the last day of the year he was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, and rests there to-day, before the Chaucer monument, side by side with Alfred Tennyson. ' l In poetry illustrious and consummate, in friendship noble and sincere," the great twin - brethren of Victorian poetry are united once more in death. XI. It is a commonplace of criticism that for the first fifty years of his life Brown- ing was in advance of his age. But a platitude, often repeated, begins to lose its significance ; and perhaps we hardly realise precisely how it was that Brown- ing's poetry was so long in finding recog- nition. It is said, and repeated with iteration, that he is obscure j and, in- deed, as he himself remarked, he did not profess to provide the kind of poetry which should serve as a substitute for a cigar or a game of cards. But obscurity is a permanent defect. It does not wear off with the friction of time ; and, if Browning's Men and Women were obscure in 1855, they would be equally obscure in 1900. We are now, however, gen- erally agreed that very little of his poetry is so involved but that an ordi- nary intellect can unravel it by ordinary ROBERT BROWNING 141 exercise ; and there must have been something beyond subtlety of thought to estrange the readers who were already beginning to honour Carlyle. What, then, was the quality in which Brown- ing lay outside the habits of his own time, — the quality which kept him for more than thirty years at work before he began to have anything like a consider- able following ? It would seem to have been almost entirely a question of method, and not a question of thought or of u message" at all. Browning's " mes- sage, ' ' as we shall presently see, is essen- tially simple and direct. It is concerned entirely with wide and open problems of life. It may be made to move hand in hand with orthodox religion. It con- tains nothing to repel or even to aston- ish. It is a necessary part of any spiritual system whatever, of every conceivable school of philosophy which leads anywhere beyond the abyss of despair. But his method was another 142 ROBERT BROWJSTNG matter. It was new and disturbing, intricate and curious ; and it was intro- duced into poetry at a time when litera- ture, having just recovered from the fervours of the French Revolution, had settled down again into a natural calm, in the pursuit of beauty for its own sake. Now, although the pursuit of the spirit of beauty is implicit in all Browning's work, he had very little care for abstract principles apart from their direct rela- tion to humanity. Mankind, and espe- cially the individual man as the micro- cosm, was the entire concern of his poetry ; and, in order to arrive at the truth of all general principles as they affected man, it was the essence of his method to analyse the emotions of the individual, to dissect the impulse, and from the isolated example to proceed to the generalisation. The method re- quired complexity, if it was to be in the least degree effectual ; and the com- plexity demanded concentrated atten- tion in the reader who was to follow it. EOBEET BEOWKIKG 143 The public taste for poetry in 1833 was far below the taste for prose. Byron's vogue had already waned j Keats and Shelley were silent in death. The field was given over to moonlight - verse melodists ; to Moore and the metres of sugar and tinsel keepsalce verse. The early Victorian reader expected poetry to entertain him, to appeal mildly to the sentiments of parted love and as- piring poverty. He had just emerged from the barrel-organ tenderness of Thomas Haynes Bayly, and was rising to the flights of Eliza Cook and the Hon. Mrs. Norton. He was puzzled, baffled, annoyed by Browning's brusque and vigorous lines. He resented his demand upon the brain, and decided at once that such poetry was unintelligible. And yet what could be simpler than the direct theme of almost all Brown- ing's poetry, — his "message," if we must use the word that, having been thumped into every pulpit- cushion of 144 ROBERT BROWNING Evangelicisin, is now a little dusty and threadbare ! Browning took the human soul as the unit of humanity ; and he took it as he found it, let and hindered by the slough of its mortality. He found it bounded in a nutshell, but trembling with the fire of boundless ambition. It was too great, too strong for its surroundings : the world was not worthy of it ; but the sphere of its activ- ity was still the world itself. Clearly, so spiritual a fire was not destined to be quenched in death. The life which we know was, as he saw it, a preparation for some further, fuller existence, in which the faculties would be no longer depressed, but every unfulfilled impulse would burst into fruition. Life, then, must be concentrated upon the emotions : every enthusiasm must be given play ; but the play of all must be subordinated by a sense of the impossibility of realis- ing the true power of the faculties in this life. The present career can only EOBEET BROWNING 145 be one of failure : the man who thinks he has succeeded is indeed a castaway ; for he has lost his sense of the possibili- ties of his own soul. But in high failure lies the true success of well-directed effort. So in "Rabbi Ben Ezra" : — Not on the vulgar mass Called "work," must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price ; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice : But all the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account ; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and es- caped ; All 1 could never be, All, men ignored in me, This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 146 EOBEET BBOWNING So, too, of course, in that splendid paean of exalted failure, — "A Grammarian's Funeral >> That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. The same idea animates his poems upon the arts, which, since the artist's aim is always ideal and inaccessible, are para- bles, so to speak, of the higher life. "Andrea del Sarto" is the picture of a painter who, being without fault in small technicalities, blameless to the smaller critic, is ruined in the higher and spiritual expression. He looks at a picture by the young Eaphael, can see faults in its drawing, faults which he could remedy, but knows that the soul of the work is beyond him. Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: But all the play, the insight and the stretch- out of me, out of me ! ROBERT BROWNING 147 So in u Abt Vogler" the musician hears the melody die away, and feels that in power of permanent expression he is far behind the builder, who rears some mag- nificent cathedral for all time. But to both the painter and the musician the same consolation returns, bringing a sense of future development, — u Other heights in other lives, God willing." For Andrea, — What would one have ? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance — Four great walls in the new Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel's reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me To cover. For the musician, — All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 148 EOBERT BKOWKTNG The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; Enough that He heard it once : we shall hear it by and by. There, shorn of all external concomi- tants, is the simple, direct, eternal " mes- sage " of Browning's poetry. "He ap- proaches the real world, ' ' says Professor Dowden, — putting the whole discussion into a sentence, — "and takes it as it is and for what it is, yet at the same time penetrates it with sudden spiritual fire." The doctrine is as old as Plato, and has reappeared in a score of different forms ; it is inseparable from the teaching of the Hebrew prophets ; it has thrown its roots into the fabric of Christianity. There is nothing in it obscure, difficult, or remote. It is the elementary doctrine of the continuity of energy. But in Browning it assumes a hundred facets, EOBERT BROWNING 149 which take the light so differently that we get a perpetual sense of novelty and change. As each new character is dis- played, with amazing subtlety of sympa- thy and insight, the eye is almost dazzled with the flashing of side-lights ; and the one, bright, u gem-like flame" at the heart of things is occasionally sub- merged. Penetrate the outward scintil- lations, however ; and it is always found to be burning steadily and clear. To realise himself in all his emotions and aspirations, to grow into form and beauty like the clay upon the potter's wheel, — that is the whole duty of man. Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,— Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day ! " Fool ! all that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure : 150 EOBEET BROWNING What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be : Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay endure. It has been objected against Bro wr- ing's claim to greatness that he did but little to reflect the aims and aspirations of his own countrymen, that he was very little moved by the stream of events, and that his historical value is affected by his lack of immediate value to his time. It is true, indeed, that Browning was at no time a " topical " poet; and much of his long unpopularity was, no doubt, due to his disinclination to come down into the market-place, with his singing robes about him, and make great ballads of the day to the chorus of the crowd. But there is a higher part even than that of a national poet ; and Browning is, in a very real sense, the poet, not of Eng- land alone, but of the world. His atti- tude to men and life was never distraught by petty interests of blood or party : the ROBERT BROWNING 151 one claim upon him was the claim of humanity. He was a man, and nothing that pertained to man was foreign to himself. What will be his final place in the long array of English poetry it is still impossible to say. It took long for him to come into his own, and even then many outside developments helped him. We think ourselves to-day far wiser than our grandparents : we fancy, perhaps, that, if Pauline had come to one of us fresh from the press, we should have hailed it forthwith as a work of coming genius. All this may be, and yet the last word will always remain to be said. Time brings in, not only re- venges, but redresses ; and it is probable that Robert Browning is not even yet appreciated as he will be by our chil- dren's children. But even now we know him for much that he is, — the subtlest, strongest master of human aspiration, save only Shakespeare, that has ever dignified the English language with 152 ROBERT BROWNING poetry j a man who felt for men with all the intensity of a great, unselfish heart ; a genius crowned with one guer- don which genius cannot always boast, — a pure and noble life. Standing in the twilight shades of the whispering Abbey, in that sacred corner full of haunting melodies and immortal yearnings, we may gladly feel that, however long and weary was the neglect of him, he is now, at last, gathered to his peers. Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him,— still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying. BIBLIOGEAPHY. The fullest bibliography of Eobert Browning's writings is that issued in 1896-97 by Mr. Thomas J. Wise. But, as this is printed for subscribers only, it is best to refer the ordinary reader to the excellent Browning bibliography which is appended to the later editions of Mrs. Sutherland Orr's Handbook to the Works of Eobert Browning. Students who desire full information should con- sult it carefully. For those who wish to enlarge their familiarity with Brown- ing's life without intimate research, and who seek clear and simple criticism of his work, the following books will be of particular value : — The Life and Letters of Eobert Browning. By Mrs. Sutherland Orr. Second edition : in one volume. (Lon- don, 1891.) The Life of Eobert Browning. By William Sharp. " Great Writers Se- 154 BIBLIOGEAPHY ries." (A New Edition.) (London, 1897.) Egbert Browning : Personalia. By Edmund Gosse. (Boston and London, 1890.) Critical Kit-Kats. By Edmund Gosse. "The Sonnets from the Portuguese." (London, 1896.) Eecords of Tennyson, Euskin, and Browning. By Anne Eitchie. (Lon- don, 1892.) An Introduction to the Study of Browning. By Arthur Symons. (Lon- don, 1886.) The Poets and Poetry of the Cen- tury. Article on Eobert Browning by Dr. F. J. Furnivall. (London, 1892.) Studies in Literature. By Edward Dowden, LL.D. Article on Tennyson and Browning. (London, 1887. ) BIBLIOGRAPHY 155 New Studies in Literature. By Edward Dowden, LL.D. Article on "Bordello." (London, 1895.) Corrected Impressions. By Profes- sor George Saintsbury. Article on Browning. (London, 1895.) A Handbook to the Works of Rob- ert Browning. By Mrs. Sutherland Orr. (London, 1886.) / ,i lyuu LIBRARY OF CONGRESS