Other modern thinkers, notably Schleiermacher in Germany and Shaftsbury in
England, have placed the basis of religious truth in feeling. The idea is
thus not a new one. Yet in Browning's treatment of it the conception has
taken on new life, partly because of the intensity of conviction with
which it is expounded in these later poems, and partly because of its
having been so closely knit into the scientific thought of the century.
Optimistically the thought is finally rounded out in "A Bean Stripe also
Apple Eating," in which Ferishtah argues that life in spite of the evil in
it seems to him on the whole good. He cannot believe that evil is not
meant to serve a good purpose since he is so sure that God is infinite in
love.
From all this it will be seen that Browning accepts with Spencerians the
negative proof of God growing out of the failure of intellect to grasp the
realities underlying all phenomena, but adds to it the positive proof
based upon emotion. The true basis of belief is the intuition of God
that comes from the direct revelation of feeling in the human heart, which
has been at once the motive force of the search for God and the basis of a
conception of the nature of God.
It was a stroke of genius on the part of the poet to present such problems
in Persian guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism for the dualism
which Ferishtah with his progressive spirit decries in his recognition of
the part evil plays in the development of good, and through Mahometanism
for the Fatalism Ferishtah learned to cast from him. The Persian
atmosphere is preserved throughout not only by the introduction constantly
of Persian allusions traceable to the great Persian epic, "The Shah
Nameh," but by the telling of fables in the Persian manner to point the
morals intended.
With the exception of the first Fancy, derived from a fable of Bidpai's,
we have the poet's own word that all the others are inventions of his own.
These clever stories make the poems lively reading in spite of their
ethical content. Ferishtah is drawn with strong strokes. Wise and clever
he stands before us, reminding us at times of Socrates--never at a loss
for an answer no matter what bothersome questions his pupils may
propound.
If we see the thoughtful and brilliant Browning in the "Fancies" proper,
we perhaps see even more clearly the emotional and passionate Browning in
the lyrics which add variety and an unwonted charm to the whole. This
feature is also borrowed from Persian form, an interesting example of
which has been given to English readers in Edwin Arnold's "Gulistan" or
"Rose Garden" of the poet Sa'di. Indeed Browning evidently derived the
hint for his humorous prologue in which he likens the poems to follow to
an Italian dish made of ortolans on toast with a bitter sage leaf,
symbolizing sense, sight, and song from Sa'di's preface to the "Rose
Garden," wherein he says, "Yet will men of light and learning, from whom
the true countenance of a discourse is not concealed, be well aware that
herein the pearls of good counsel which heal are threaded on strings of
right sense; that the bitter physic of admonition is constantly mingled
with the honey of good humor, so that the spirits of listeners grow not
sad, and that they remain not exempt from blessings of acceptance."
A further interest attaches to these lyrics because they form a series of
emotional phases in the soul-life of two lovers whom we are probably
justified in regarding as Mr. and Mrs. Browning. One naturally thinks of
them as companion pictures to Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the
Portuguese." In these the sunrise of a great love is portrayed with
intense and exalted passion, while the lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies"
reflect the subsequent development of such a love, through the awakening
of whole new realms of feeling, wherein love for humanity is enlarged
criticism from the one beloved welcome; all the little trials of life
dissolved in the new light; and divine love realized with a force never
before possible.
Do we not see a living portrait of the two poets in the lyric "So the head
aches and the limbs are faint?" Many a hint may be found in the Browning
letters to prove that Mrs. Browning with just such a frail body possessed
a fire of spirit that carried her constantly toward attainment, while he,
with all the vigor of splendid health, could with truth have frequently
said, "In the soul of me sits sluggishness." These exquisite lyrics,
which, whether they conform to Elizabethan models or not, are as fine as
anything ever done in this form, are crowned by the epilogue in which we
hear the stricken husband crying out to her whom twenty years earlier he
had called his "lyric love," in a voice doubting, yet triumphing in the
thought that his lifelong optimism is the light radiating from the halo
which her human love had irised round his head.
No more emphatic way than the interspersion of these emotional lyrics
could have been chosen to bring home the poet's conviction of the value of
emotion in finding a positive basis for religious belief.
In the "Parleyings" the discussions turn principally upon artistic
problems and their relation to modern thought. Four out of the seven were
inspired by artist, poet or musician. The forgotten worthies whom Browning
rescued from oblivion make their appeal to him upon various grounds that
connect them with the present.
Bernard de Mandeville evidently caught Browning's fancy, because in his
satirical poem, "The Grumbling Hive," he forestalled, by a defence of the
Duke of Marlborough's war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of good
and evil. This subject, though so fully treated in the "Fancies," still
continued to fascinate Browning, who seemed to feel the need of thinking
his way through all its implications. Fresh interest is added in this
case because the objector in the argument was the poet's contemporary
Carlyle, whose well-known pessimism in regard to the existence of evil is
graphically presented.
Browning clenches his side of the argument with an original and daring
variation upon the Prometheus myth led up to by one of the most
magnificent passages in the whole range of his poetry, and probably the
finest example anywhere in literature of a description of nature as
interpreted by the laws of cosmic evolution. A comparison of this passage
with the one in "Paracelsus" brings out very clearly the exact measure of
the advance in the poet's thought during the fifty years between which
they were written--1835 and 1887. While in the "Paracelsus" passage it is
the thought of the joy in the creator's soul for his creations, and the
participation of mankind in this joy of progression while pleasure climbs
its heights forever and forever, which occupies the poet's mind, in the
later passage, there is no attempt at a definite conception of the divine
nature. Force represented in the sunlight is described as developing life
upon the earth. The thrill of this life-giving power is felt by all
things, and is unquestioningly accepted and delighted in.
"Everywhere
Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime
Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there
No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,
No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew
Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less
Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,
Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,
The universal world of creatures bred
By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise."
Man alone questions. His mind reaches out for knowledge of the cause; he
would know its nature. Man's mind will not give any definite answer to
this question. But Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man's mind is
satisfied. He drew sun's rays into a focus plain and true. The very sun in
little: made fire burn and henceforth do man service. Denuded of its
scientific and mystical symbolism, Browning thus makes the Prometheus myth
teach his favorite doctrine, namely, that the image of love formed in the
human heart by means of the burning glass supplied by sense and feeling is
a symbol of infinite love.
Daniel Bartoli, a Jesuit of the seventeenth century who is dyed and doubly
dyed in superstition, is set up by Browning in the next poem simply to be
knocked down again upon the ground that all the legendary saints he
worshipped could not compare with a real woman the poet knows. The
romantic story of the lady is told in Browning's most fascinating
narrative style, so rapid and direct that it has all the force of a
dramatic sketch. The heroine's claim upon the poet's admiration consists
in her recognition of the sacredness of love, which she will not dishonor
for worldly considerations, and finding her betrothed incapable of
attaining her height of nobleness, she leaves him free.
This story bears upon the poet's philosophy as it reflects his attitude
toward human love, which he considers so clearly a revelation that any
treatment of it not absolutely noble and true to the highest ideals is a
sin against heaven itself.
George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep of these later poems. He gives
the poet an opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and sarcasm, while
the reader may exercise his wits in discovering that the poet _assumes_ to
agree with Dodington in his doubtful doctrine of serving the state with an
eye always upon his own private welfare, and pretends to criticise him
only for his method of attaining his ends. His method is to disclaim that
he works for any other good than that of the State--a proposition so
preposterous in his case that nobody would believe it. The poet then
presents what purports to be the correct method of successful
statesmanship--namely, to pose as a superior being endowed with the divine
right to rule, treating everybody as his puppet, and entirely scornful of
any criticisms against himself. If he will adopt this attitude he may
change his tactics every year and the people, instead of suspecting his
sincerity, will think that he has wise reasons beyond their insight for
his changes. The poem is a powerful, intensely cynical argument against
the imperialistic temper and in favor of liberal government. This means
for the individual not only the right but the power to judge for himself,
instead of being obliged to depend, because of his own inefficiency, upon
the leadership of the over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately too
seldom to be trusted.
The poet called from the shades by Browning, Christopher Smart, is
celebrated in the world of criticism for having only once in his life
written a great poem. The eulogies upon the beauties of "The Song of
David" might not be echoed by all lay readers of poetry; nor is it of any
moment whether Browning actually agreed with the conclusions of the
critics, since the episode is used merely as a text for discussing the
problem of beauty versus truth in art. Should the poet's province be
simply to record his vision of the beauty and the strength of nature and
the universe--visions which come to him in moments of inspiration such as
that which came once to Christopher Smart? Browning answers the question
characteristically with his feet upon the earth. The visions of poets
should not be considered as ends in themselves, but as material to be used
for greater ends.
The poet should find his inspiration in the human heart, and climb to
heaven by its means, not investigate the heavens first. Diligently must he
study mankind, and teach as man may through his knowledge.
In "Francis Furini" the subject is the nude in art. The keynote is struck
by the poet's declaring he will never believe the tale told by Baldinicci
that Furini ordered all his pictures in which there were nude figures
burned. He expresses his indignation at the tale vigorously at some
length, showing plainly his own sympathies.
The passage in the poem bearing more especially upon the present
discussion is the lecture by Furini imagined by the poet to have been
delivered before a London audience. It is a long and recondite speech in
which the scientific and the intuitional methods of arriving at truth
are compared. While the scientific method is acknowledged to be of value,
the intuitional method is claimed as by far the more important.
A philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet
in the "Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse," whom he makes the scapegoat of
his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was
described a walk through a Dutch landscape when every feature was
transmogrified by classic imaginings.
To this good soul, an old sepulcher struck by lightning became the tomb of
Phaeton, and an old cartwheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot
of the Sun.
In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could
make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic
metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies
from the eighth to the twelfth stanza. It is meant to be in derision of a
grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the
language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is
as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it--and
through his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously
beautiful. The double feeling produced in reading this passage only adds
to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make
Euripides, himself, turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks:
"Enough, stop further fooling," and to show how a modern poet greets a
landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric:
"Dance, yellows, and whites and reds."
The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely consonant with his
philosophy, placing as he does the paramount importance on living
realities, "Do and nowise dream," he exclaims:
"Earth's young significance is all to learn;
The dead Greek love lies buried in its urn
Where who seeks fire finds ashes."
The "Parleying" with Charles Avison is more a poem of moods than any of
the others. The poet's profound appreciation of music is reflected in his
claiming it as the highest artistic expression possible to man. Sadness
comes to him, however, at the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a
fact that is borne in on him because of the inadequateness of Avison's
old march styled "grand." He finally emerges triumphantly from this mood
of sadness through the realization that music is the most perfect symbol
of the evolution of spirit, of which the central truth--
"The inmost care where truth abides in fulness"--
as Paracelsus expresses it, remains always permanent, while the form is
ever changing, but though ever changing it is of absolute value to the
time when the spirit found expression in it. Furthermore, in any form once
possessing beauty, by throwing one's self into its historical atmosphere
the beauty may be regained.
The poem has, of course, a still larger significance in relation to all
forms of truth and beauty of which every age has had its living, immortal
examples, the "broken arcs" which finally will make the perfect round,
each arc perfect in itself, and thus the poet's final paean is joyous,
"Never dream that what once lived shall ever die."
The prologue of this series of poems prefigures the thought in a striking
dialogue between Apollo and the Fates wherein the Fates symbolize the
natural forces of life, behind which is Zeus or divine power; Apollo's
light symbolizes the glamour which hope and aspiration throw over the
events of human existence, without actually giving any assurance of its
worth, and the wine of Bacchus symbolizes feeling, by means of which a
perception of the absolute is gained. Man's reason, guided by the divine,
accepts this revelation through feeling not as actual knowledge of the
absolute which transcends all intellectual attempts to grasp it, but as a
promise sufficiently assuring to take him through the ills and
uncertainties of life with faith in the ultimate triumph of beauty and
good.
The epilogue, a dialogue between John Fust and his friends, brings home
the thought once more in another form, emphasizing the fact that there can
be no new realm of actual, palpable knowledge opened up to man beyond that
which his intellect is able to perceive. Once having gained this knowledge
of the failure of intellectual knowledge to solve what Whitman calls the
"strangling problems" of life, man's part is to follow onward through
ignorance.
"Dare and deserve!
As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve,
So approximates Man--Thee, who reachable not,
Hast formed him to yearningly
Follow thy whole
Sole and single omniscience!"
It will be seen from this review of the salient points enlarged upon by
Browning in these last groups of poems that he has deliberately set
himself to harmonize the intellectual and the intuitional aspects of human
consciousness. He has sought to join the hands of mind and spirit. The
artistic exuberance of Paracelsus is supplemented by spiritual fervor. To
the young Browning, the beauty of immortal, joyous life pursuing its
heights forever was as a radiant vision, to the Browning who had grappled
with the strangling problems of the century this beauty was not so
distinctly seen, but its reality was felt with all the depth of an
intensely spiritual nature--a nature moreover so absolutely fearless, that
it could unflinchingly confront every giant of doubt, or of
disillusionment which science in its pristine egotism had conjured up,
saying "Keep to thine own province, where thou art indeed powerful; to the
threshold of the eternal we may come through thy ministrations, but the
consciousness of divine things cometh through the still small voice of the
heart."
Thus, while he accepted every law relating to phenomena which science has
been able to formulate, he realized the futility of resting in a primal,
wholly dehumanized energy, that is, something not greater but less than
its own outcome, humanity. He was incapable of any such absurdity as
Clifford's dictum that "Reason, intelligence and volition are properties
of a complex which is made up of elements, themselves not rational, not
intelligent, not conscious." Since Clifford's time, the marked differences
between the processes of a psychic being like man, and the processes of
nature have been so fully recognized and so carefully defined by
psychologists that Browning's insistence upon making man the center whence
truth radiates has had full confirmation.
Theodore Merz has summed up these psychological conclusions in regard to
the characteristics peculiar to man as distinguished from all the rest of
the universe in the following words:
"There are two properties with which we are familiar through common
sense and ordinary reflection as belonging especially to the phenomena
of our inner self-conscious life, and these properties seem to lie
quite beyond the sphere and the possibilities of the ordinary methods
of exact research.
"As we ascend in the scale of human beings we become aware that they
exhibit a special kind of unity which cannot be defined, a unity
which, even when apparently lost in periods of unconsciousness, is
able to reestablish itself by the wonderful and indefinable property
called 'memory'--a center which can only be very imperfectly
localized--a together which is more than a mechanical sum; in fact
we rise to the conception of individuality, that which cannot be
divided and put together again out of its parts.
"The second property is still more remarkable. The world of the inner
processes which accompany the higher forms of nervous development in
human beings is capable of unlimited growth and it is capable of this
by a process of becoming external: it becomes external, and, as it
were, perpetuates itself in language, literature, science and art,
legislation, society, and the like. We have no analogue of this in
physical nature, where matter and energy are constant quantities and
where the growth and multiplication of living matter is merely a
conversion of existing matter and energy into special altered forms
without increase or decrease in quantity. But the quantity of the
inner thing is continually on the increase; in fact, this increase is
the only thing of interest in the whole world."
Thus the modern psychologist and the poet who in the early days of the
century said the soul was the only thing worth study join hands.
The passage already referred to in "Francis Furini" presents most
explicitly the objective or intellectual method and the subjective or
intuitional method of the search for truth.
Furini is made to question--
"Evolutionists!
At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights,
Our stations for discovery opposites,
How should ensue agreement! I explain."
He describes, then, how the search of the evolutionist for the absolute is
outside of man. "'Tis the tip-top of things to which you strain." Arriving
at the spasm which sets things going, they are stopped, and since having
arrived at unconscious energy, they can go no further, they now drop down
to a point where atoms somehow begin to think, feel, and know themselves
to be, and the world's begun such as we recognize it. This is a true
presentation of the attitude of physicists and chemists to-day, the latter
especially holding that experiment proves that in the atoms themselves is
an embryonic form of consciousness and will. From these is finally evolved
at last self-conscious man. But after all this investigating on the part
of the evolutionist what has been gained? Of power--that is, power to
create nature or life, or even to understand it--man possesses no
particle, and of knowledge, only just so much as to show that it ends in
ignorance on every side. This is the result of the objective search for
truth. But begin with man himself, and there is a fact upon which he can
take a sure stand, his self-consciousness--a "togetherness," as Merz says,
which cannot be explained mathematically by the adding up of atoms; and
furthermore an inborn certainty that whatever is felt to be within had
its rise or cause without: "thus blend the conscious I, and all things
perceived in one Effect." Through this subjective perception of an
all-powerful cause a reflex light is thrown back upon all that the
investigations of the intellect have accomplished. The cause is no longer
simply blind energy, but must itself be possessed of gifts as great and
still greater than those with which the soul of man is endowed. The forces
at work in nature thus become instinct with wonder and beauty, the good
and evil of life reveal themselves as a means used by absolute Power and
Love for the perfecting of the soul which made to know on and ever must
know
"All to be known at any halting stage
Of [the] soul's progress, such as earth, where wage
War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy,
Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy
With all that quiets and contents."
To sum up--our investigations into Browning's thought show him to be a
type primarily of the mystic. Mysticism in its most pronounced forms
regards the emotions of the human mind as supreme. The mystic, instead of
allowing the intellectual faculty to lead the way, degrades it to an
inferior position and makes it entirely subservient to the feelings. In
some moods Browning seems almost to belong to this pronounced type; for
example, when he says in "A Pillar at Sebzevar," "Say not that we know,
rather that we love, therefore we know enough."
[Illustration: DAVID STRAUSS]
It must be remembered, however, that he is not in either class of the
supernatural mystic, one of which supposes truth to be gained by a fixed
supernatural channel, the other that it is gained by extraordinary
supernatural means. On the contrary, truth comes to Browning in pursuance
of a regular law or fact of the inward sensibility, which may be defined
in his case as a mode of intuition. His intuition of God, as we have seen,
is based upon the feeling of love both in its human and its abstract
aspects.
But this is not all. Upon the intellectual side Browning accepted the
conclusions of scientific investigation as far as phenomena were
concerned, and while he denied its worth in giving direct knowledge of the
Absolute, he recognized it as useful because of its very failure in
strengthening the sense of the existence of a power transcending human
conception. "What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence of the
fulness of the days?" And, furthermore, with mystic love already in our
hearts, all knowledge that the scientist may bring us of the phenomena of
nature and life only adds immeasurably to our wonder and awe of the power
which has brought these things to pass, thus "with much more knowledge"
comes "always much more love."
Once more, the poet's mysticism is tempered by a tinge of idealism. There
are several passages in his poems, notably one already quoted from Furini,
which show him to have had a perception of God directly through his own
consciousness by means of what the idealist calls the higher reason. His
perception, for instance, that whatever takes place within the
consciousness had its rise without and that this external origin emanates
from God is the idealist's way of arriving at the absolute.
Thus we see that into Browning's religious conceptions enter the
intuitions of the artistic consciousness as illustrated in Paracelsus
where God is the divine artist joying in his creations, the intuitions of
the intellect which finds in the failure of knowledge to probe the secrets
of the universe the assurance of a transcendent power beyond human ken,
the intuition of the higher reason which affirms God is, and the
intuitions of the heart which promise that God is love, through whom is
to come fulfilment of all human aspirations toward Beauty, Truth, and Love
in immortality.
If these are all points which have been emphasized, now by one, now by
another, of the vast array of thinkers who have crowded the past century,
there is no one who to my knowledge has so completely harmonized the
various thought tendencies of the age, and certainly none who has clothed
them in such a wealth of imaginative and emotional illustration.
In these last poems Browning appears to borrow an apt term from Whitman,
as the "Answerer" of his age. In them he has unquestioningly accepted the
knowledge which science has brought, and, recognizing its relative
character, has yet interpreted it in such a way as to make it subserve the
highest ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from reflecting any
degeneration in Browning's philosophy of life, these poems place on a
firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first,
while adding to these the profounder insight into life which life's
experiences had brought him.
The subject matter and form are no less remarkable than their thought. The
variety in both is almost bewildering. Religion and fable, romance and
philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich profusion; everything
in language--talk almost colloquial, dainty lyrics full of exquisite
emotion, and grand passages which present in sweeping images now the
processes of cosmic evolution, now those of spiritual evolution, until it
seems as if we had indeed been conducted to some vast mountain height,
whence we can look forth upon the century's turbulent seas of thought,
into which flows many a current from the past, while suspended above
between the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons's wonderful symbolic
picture of the Middle Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and joy
which Browning has made symbolic of the nineteenth century.
III
POLITICAL TENDENCIES
In the political affairs of his own age and country Browning as a poet
shows little interest. This may at first seem strange, for that he was
deeply sympathetic with past historical movements indicating a growth
toward democratic ideals in government is abundantly proved by his choice
and treatment of historical epochs in which the democratic tendencies were
peculiarly evident. Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures of the
Victorian era, in which as perhaps in no other era of English history the
yeast of political freedom has been steadily and quietly working?
There were probably several reasons for his failure to make himself felt
as an influence in the political world of his time. In the first place, he
was preeminently a dramatic poet, and as such his interest was in the
presentation and analysis of individual character as it might work itself
out in a given historical environment. To deal with contemporaries in
this analytic manner would be a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we
see, in those instances where he did venture upon an analysis of English
contemporaries, as in the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), Carlyle in
Bernard de Mandeville and in "George Bubb Dodington," the sketch of Lord
Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress every external circumstance which
would lead to their identification, and to dwell only upon their
intellectual or psychic aspects.
A second reason is that the present is usually too near at hand to be used
altogether effectively as dramatic material. Contemporary conditions of
history seem to have an air of stateliness owing to the fact that every
one is familiar with them, not only through talk and experience but
through newspapers and magazines, while their larger, universal meanings
cannot be seen at too close a range. If, however, past historical episodes
and their tendencies can be so presented as to illustrate the tendencies
of the present, then the needful artistic perspective is gained. In this
manner, with a few minor exceptions, Browning has revealed the direction
in which his political sympathies lay.
When Browning was born, the first Napoleonic episode was nearing its
close. Absolutism and militarism had in its lust for power and bloodshed
slaughtered itself for the time being, and once more there was opportunity
for the people of England to strive for their own enfranchisement.
As a progressive ministry in England did not come into power until 1830,
the struggles of the people were rewarded with little success during many
years after the Battle of Waterloo. During the childhood and boyhood of
Browning the events which from time to time marked the determination of
the downtrodden Englishman to secure a larger measure of justice for
himself were exciting enough to have made a strong impression upon the
precocious mind of the incipient poet even in the seclusion of his
father's library at Camberwell.
The artificial prosperity which had buoyed up the workman during the war
with France suddenly collapsed with the advent of peace after the Battle
of Waterloo. Everything seemed to combine to make the affairs of the
workingman desperate. Public business had been blunderingly administered,
and while a fatuous Cabinet was congratulating the nation upon the
flourishing state of the country, trade was actually almost at a
standstill, and failures in business were the order of the day. To make
matters worse, a wet summer and early frosts interfered with farming, and
the result was that laborers and workmen could not find employment. A not
unusual percentage of paupers in any given district was four fifths of the
whole population. Thinking the farmers were to blame for the high price of
bread, these starving people wreaked their vengeance on them by burning
farm buildings, and machinery, and even stacks of corn and hay.
[Illustration: CARDINAL WISEMAN]
Instead of giving sympathy to these men in their desperate condition, a
conservative government saw in them only rioters, and took the most
stringent measures against them. They were tried by a special commission,
and thirty-four of them were condemned to death, though it is recorded
that only five of them were executed. The miners of Cornwall and Wales,
the lace makers of Nottingham, and the iron workers of the Black Country,
next broke out and the smashing of machinery continued. Finally there was
a meeting of the artisans of London, Westminster, and Southwick in Spa
Fields, Clerkenwall, which had been called by Harry Hunt, a man of
property and education, who was known as a supporter of extreme measures,
and the leader of the Radicals of that day. They met for the legitimate
purpose, one would think, of considering the propriety of petitioning the
Prince Regent and Parliament to adopt means of relieving the existing
distress. One of the speakers, however, a poor doctor by the name of
Watson, was of a more belligerent disposition. He made an inflammatory
speech which ended by his seizing a tri-colored flag and marching toward
the city followed by the turbulent rabble. On their way they seized the
contents of a gunsmith's shop on Snow Hill, murdered a man, and finally
were met opposite the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor, who, assisted by a
strong body of police, arrested some of the leaders and dispersed the
rest. The arrested persons were brought to trial and indicted for high
treason by the Attorney General, but the jury, evidently thinking the
indictment had taken too exaggerated a form, acquitted Watson, and the
others were dismissed.
The conservative Parliament was, however, so alarmed by these proceedings
that, instead of seeking some way of removing the cause of the
difficulties, it thought only of making restrictions for the protection of
the person of the Regent, of the more effective prevention of seditious
meetings and of surer punishment. And what were some of these measures?
Debating societies, lecture halls and reading rooms were shut up. Even
lectures on medicine, surgery and chemistry were prohibited. Though there
was a possibility of getting a license to lecture from the magistrate, the
law was interpreted in the narrowest spirit.
Parliamentary reform began to be spoken of in 1819, when a resolution
pledging the House of Commons to the consideration of the state of
representation was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to
fifty-eight. This decision stirred up the reform spirit, and large
meetings in favor of it were held. The people attending these meetings
received military drilling and marched to their meetings in orderly
processions, a fact naturally very disturbing to the government. When a
great meeting was arranged at Manchester on the 16th of August, troops
were accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry was ordered to charge the
crowd, and although they used the flat side of their swords, the charge
resulted in the killing of six persons and the wounding of some hundreds.
The clash did not end here, for to offset the ministerial approval of the
action of the magistrates and their decision that the meeting was illegal,
the Common Council of London passed a resolution by a large majority
declaring that the meeting was legal. A number of Whig noblemen also were
on the side of the London Council and made similar motions. But the
ministers, unmoved by these signs of the times, introduced bills in
Parliament for the repression of disorder and the further restraining of
public liberty. The bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in both
houses, but the eloquence expended against them was all to no purpose, the
bills were passed, and reform for the time being was nipped in the bud.
Although after this laws were gradually introduced by the ministers which
tended very much to the betterment of conditions, the fire of reform did
not burst out again with full fury until the time of the Revolution of
July, in France, which it will be remembered was directed against the
despotic King Charles X, and ended in his being deposed, when his crown
was given to his distant cousin Louis Philippe. The success of the French
in their stand against despotism caused a general revolutionary stir in
several European countries, while in England the spirit of revolution
showed itself in incendiary fires from one end of the country to the
other.
With Parliament itself full of believers in reform, the chief of the
Cabinet, the Duke of Wellington, announced that the House of Commons did
not need reform and that he would resist all proposals for a change. So
great was the popular excitement at this announcement that the Duke could
not venture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for fear that he might be
attacked.
Such were the chief episodes in the forward advance of the people up to
the time of the presentation of the Reform Bill in Parliament. This
important measure has been described as the greatest organic change in the
British Constitution that had taken place since the revolution of 1688.
When this bill was finally passed it meant a transference of governmental
control from the upper classes to the middle classes, and was the
inauguration of a policy which has constantly added to the prosperity and
well-being of the English people. The agitation upon this bill, introduced
in the House by Lord John Russell, under the Premiership of Earl Grey, and
a ministry favorable to reform, was filling the attention of all
Englishmen to the exclusion of every other subject just at the time when
Browning was emerging into manhood, 1831 and 1832, and though he has not
commemorated in his poetry this great step in the political progress of
his own century, his first play, written in 1837, takes up a period of
English history in which a momentous struggle for liberty on the part of
the people was in progress.
Important as the Reform Bill was, it furnished no such picturesque
episodes for a dramatist as did the struggle of Pym and Strafford under
the despotic rule of King Charles I.
In choosing this period for his play the poet found not only material
which furnished to his hand a series of wonderfully dramatic situations,
but in the three men about whom the action moves is presented an
individuality and a contrast in character full of those possibilities for
analysis so attractive to Browning's mind.
Another point to be gained by taking this remote period of history was
that his attitude could be supremely that of the philosopher of history.
He could portray with fairness whatever worth of character he found to
admire in the leaders upon either side, at the same time that he could
show which possessed the winning principle--the principle of progress. In
dealing with contemporary events a strong personal feeling is sure to gain
the upper hand, and to be non-partisan and therefore truly dramatic is a
difficult, if not an impossible, task. When we come to examine this play,
we find that the character which unquestionably interested the poet most
was Strafford's; not because of his political principles but because of
his devotion to his King. Human love and loyalty in whomever manifested
was always of the supremest interest to Browning, and, working upon any
hints furnished by history, the poet has developed the character of
Strafford in the light of his personal friendship for the King--a feeling
so powerful that no fickle change of mood on the part of the King could
alter it. Upon this fact of his personal relations to the King Strafford's
actions in this great crisis have been interpreted and explained, though
not defended, from the political point of view.
Some wavering on the part of Pym is also explained upon the ground of his
friendship for and his belief in Strafford, but mark the difference
between the two men. Pym, once sure that Strafford is not on the side of
progress, crushes out all personal feeling. He allows nothing to stand in
the way of his political policy. With unflinching purpose he proceeds
against his former friend, straight on to the impeachment for treason,
straight on, like an inexorable fate, to the prevention of his rescue from
execution. Browning's dramatic imagination is responsible for this last
climax in which he brings the two men face to face. Here, in Pym's
strength of will to serve England at any cost, mingled with the hope of
meeting Strafford purged of all his errors in a future life, and in
Strafford's response, "When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right--not now! Best
die," is foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of the parliamentary over the
monarchical principles of government, and the poet's own sympathy with the
party of progress is made plain.
It is interesting in the present connection to inquire whether there are
any parallels between the agitation connected with the reform legislation
of 1832 and the revolution at the time of Charles I which might send
Browning's mind back to that period. The special point about which the
battle raged in 1832 was the representation in Parliament. This was so
irregular that it was absolutely unfair. In many instances large districts
or towns would have fewer representatives than smaller ones, or perhaps
none at all. Representation was more a matter of favoritism than of
justice. The votes in Parliament were, therefore, not at all a true
measure of the attitude of the country. It seems strange that so eminently
sensible a reform should meet with such determined opposition. As usual,
those in power feared loss of privilege. The House of Lords was the
obstruction. The bill was in fact a step logically following upon the
determination of the people of the time of Charles I that they would not
submit to be levied upon for ship-money upon the sole authority of the
King. They demanded that Parliament, which had not been assembled for ten
years, should meet and decide the question. This question was not merely
one of the war-tax or ship-money, but of whether the King should have the
power to levy taxes upon the people without consent of Parliament.
As every one knows, when the King finally consented to the assembling of
Parliament, in April, 1840, he informed it that there would be no
discussion of its demands until it had granted the war subsidies for which
it had been asked. The older Vane added to the consternation of the
assembly by announcing that the King would accept nothing less than the
twelve subsidies which he had demanded in his message. In the face of this
ultimatum the committee broke up without coming to a conclusion,
postponing further consideration until the next day, but before they had
had time to consider the matter the next day the King had decided to
dissolve the Parliament.
The King was forced, however, to reassemble Parliament again in the
autumn. In this Parliament the people's party gained control, and many
reforms were instituted. Led by such daring men as Pym, Hampden, Cromwell,
and the younger Vane, resolutions were passed censuring the levying of
ship-money, tonnage and poundage, monopolies, innovations in religion--in
fact, all the grievances of the oppressed which had been ignored for a
decade were brought to light and redressed by the House, quite regardless
of the King's attitude.
The chief of the abuses which it was bent upon remedying was the imposing
of taxes upon the authority of the King and the persecution of the
Puritans. But there was another grievance which received the attention of
the Long Parliament, and which forms a close link with the reforms of
1832--namely, the attempt to improve the system of representation in
Parliament, an attempt which was partially carried into effect by Cromwell
later. Under Charles II, however, things fell back into their old way and
gradually went on from bad to worse until the tide changed, and the people
became finally aroused after two hundred years to the need of a radical
change. The blindness of the Duke of Wellington, declaring no reform was
needed, is hardly less to be marveled at than that of King Charles
declaring he would rule without Parliament. The King took the ground that
the people had no right to representation in the government; the Minister,
that only some of the people had a right.
The horrors of revolution followed upon the blindness of the one, with its
reactionary aftermath, while upon the other there was violence, it is
true, and a revolution was feared, but through the wise measures of the
liberal ministers no subversion of the government occurred. Violence
reached such a pitch, however, that the castle of Nottingham in Derby was
burned, the King's brother was dragged from his horse, and Lord
Londonderry roughly treated. The mob at Bristol was so infuriated that Sir
C. Wetherell, the Recorder of the city, who had voted against the bill,
had to be escorted to the Guildhall by a hundred mounted gentlemen. Two
men having been arrested, the mob attacked and destroyed the interior of
the Mansion House, set fire to the Bishop's palace and to many other
buildings. There was not only an enormous loss of property, but loss of
life.
A quieter demonstration at Birmingham carries us back, as it might have
carried Browning, to the "great-hearted men" of the Long Parliament. A
meeting was called which was attended by one hundred and fifty thousand
persons, and resolutions were passed to the effect that if the Reform Bill
were not passed they would refuse to pay taxes, as Hampden had refused to
pay ship-money.
The final act in this momentous drama was initiated with the introduction
by Lord John Russell of the third Reform Bill in December, 1831. Again it
was defeated in the House of Lords, whereupon some of the Cabinet wished
to ask the King to create a sufficient number of new peers to force the
bill through the House. Earl Grey was not at all in favor of this, but at
last consented. This course was not welcome to the House of Lords, and the
doubtful members in the House promised that if this suggestion were not
carried into effect they would insure a sufficient majority in the House
of Lords to carry the bill. This was done, but before the Lords went into
committee a hostile motion postponing the disfranchisement clauses was
carried. Then Earl Grey asked for the creation of new peers. As it would
require the creating of about fifty new peers, the King refused, the
ministry resigned and the Duke of Wellington came into power again. But
his power, like that of Strafford, was broken. He had reached the point of
recognizing that some reform was needed, but he could not persuade his
colleagues of this. In the meantime the House of Commons passed a
resolution of confidence in the Grey administration. Such determined
opposition being shown not only in Parliament but by the people in various
ways, Wellington felt his only course was resignation. William IV had,
much to his chagrin, to recall Grey, but he escaped the necessity of
creating a large number of peers, by asking the opposition in the House of
Lords to withdraw their resistance to the bill. The Duke of Wellington and
others thereupon absented themselves, and finding further obstruction was
useless, the Lords at last passed the bill and it became law in June,
1832.
This national crisis through which Browning had lived could not fail to
have made its impression on him. It is certainly an indication of the
depth of his interest in the growth of liberalism that his first English
subject, written only a few years subsequent to this momentous change in
governmental methods, should have dealt with a period whose analysis and
interpretation in dramatic form gave him every opportunity for the
expression of his sympathy with liberal ideals. Broad-minded in his
interpretation of Strafford's career, in love with his qualities of
loyalty, and his capabilities of genuine affection for the vacillating
Charles, he made Strafford the hero of his play, but it is Pym whom, in
his play, he has exalted as the nation's hero, and into whose mouth he has
put one of the greatest and most intensely pathetic speeches ever uttered
by an Englishman. It is when he confronts Strafford at the last:
"Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake
I still have labored for, with disregard
To my own heart,--for whom my youth was made
Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up
Her sacrifice--this friend--this Wentworth here--
Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,
And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,
I hunted by all means (trusting that she
Would sanctify all means) even to the block
Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel
No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour
I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I
Would never leave him: I do leave him now.
I render up my charge (be witness, God!)
To England who imposed it. I have done
Her bidding--poorly, wrongly,--it may be,
With ill effects--for I am weak, a man:
Still, I have done my best, my human best,
Not faltering for a moment. It is done.
And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say
I never loved but one man--David not
More Jonathan! Even thus I love him now:
And look for that chief portion in that world
Where great hearts led astray are turned again,
(Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:
My mission over, I shall not live long)--
Ay, here I know and talk--I dare and must,
Of England, and her great reward, as all
I look for there; but in my inmost heart,
Believe, I think of stealing quite away
To walk once more with Wentworth--my youth's friend
Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,
And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed ...
This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase
Too hot. A thin mist--is it blood?--enwraps
The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be."
At the same time that Browning was writing "Strafford," he was also
engaged upon "Sordello." In that he has given expression to his democratic
philosophy through his construction and interpretation of Sordello's
character as a champion of the people as well as a poet who ushered in the
dawn of the Italian literary Renaissance. As he made Paracelsus develop
from a dependence upon knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy of
life into a perception of the place emotion must hold in any satisfactory
theory of life, and put into his mouth a modern conception of evolution
illuminated by his own artistic emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from
the individualistic type to the socialist type of man, who is bent upon
raising the masses of the people to higher conditions. The ideal of
liberal forms of government was even in Sordello's time a growing one,
sifting into Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning's Sordello sees
something beyond either political or ecclesiastical espousal of the
people's cause--namely, the espousal of the people's cause by the people
themselves, the arrival of the self-governing democracy, an ideal much
nearer attainment now than when Browning was writing:
"Two parties take the world up, and allow
No third, yet have one principle, subsist
By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist
With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes.
So there is one less quarrel to compose
The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse--
I have done nothing, but both sides do worse
Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft
Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left
The notion of a service--ha? What lured
Me here, what mighty aim was I assured
Must move Taurello? What if there remained
A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained
For me its true discoverer?"
The mood here portrayed was one which might have been fostered in Browning
in relation to his own time. He doubtless felt that neither the
progressive movements in the state nor those in religion really touched
upon the true principles of freedom for the individual. He might not have
defined these principles to himself any more definitely than as a desire
for the greatest happiness of the whole number. And even of such an ideal
as that he had his doubts because of the necessity of his mind to find a
logical use for evil in the world. This he could only do by supposing it a
divine means for the development of the human soul in its sojourn in this
life. Speaking in his own person in "Sordello," he gives expression to
this doubt in the following passage in the third book:
"I ask youth and strength
And health for each of you, not more--at length
Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race
Might add the spirit's to the body's grace,
And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.
* * * * *
"----As good you sought
To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone
Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,
As hinder Life the evil with the good
Which make up Living rightly understood."
Still, though vague as to what the good for the whole people might be,
there was no vagueness in his mind as to the people's right to possess the
power to bring about their own happiness. Yet given the right principles,
he would not have the attempt made to put them into practice all at once.
His final attitude toward the problem of the best methods for bettering
human conditions in the poem is, strictly speaking, that of the
opportunist working a step toward his ideal rather than that of the
revolutionist who would gain it by one leap. Sordello should realize that
"God has conceded two lights to a man--
One, of men's whole work, man's first
Step to the plan's completeness."
Man's part is to take this first step, leaving the ultimate ideal to be
worked out, as time goes, on by successive men. To reach at one bound the
ideal would be to regard one's self as a god. Some such theory of action
as this is the one which guides the Fabian socialist working in England
to-day. Nothing is to be done to subvert the present order of society, but
every opportunity is to be made the most of which will tend to the
betterment of the conditions of the masses, until by degrees the
socialist regime will become possible. Sordello was too much of the
idealist to seize the opportunity when it came to him of helping the
people by means of the Ghibelline power suddenly conferred upon him, and
so he failed.
This opportunist doctrine is one especially congenial to the English
temperament and certainly has its practical advantages, if it is not so
inspiring as the headlong idealism of a Pym, which just as surely has its
disadvantages in the danger that the ideal will be ahead of humanity's
power of seizing it and living it, and will therefore run the risk of
being overturned by a reaction to the low plane of the past; especially
does this danger become apparent when the way to the attainment of the
ideal is paved with violence.
While Browning was writing "Sordello," the preparation of which included a
short trip to Italy, the Chartist agitation was going on in England. It
may well, at that time, have been considered to demand an ideal beyond
possibility of attainment, which was proved by its final utter
annihilation. The workingmen's association led by Mr. Duncombe was
responsible for a program in the form of a parliamentary petition which
asked for six things. These were: universal suffrage, or the right of
voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual
Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of
Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal
electoral districts.
There were two sorts of Chartists, moral-force Chartists and
physical-force Chartists, the latter of whom did as much damage as
possible in the agitation.
The combined forces were led by Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister, who
madly spent his force and energy for ten years in carrying forward the
movement, and, at last, confronted by disagreement in the ranks of the
Chartists and the Duke of Wellington and his troops, gave it up in
despair. He was a martyr to the cause, for he took its failure so much to
heart that he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.
This final failure came many years after "Sordello" was finished, but the
poet's conclusions in "Sordello" seem almost prophetic in the light of the
passage in the poem already quoted, in which the poet declares himself
grown wiser than he was at home, where he had asked the utmost for all
men, and now realized that this cannot be attained in one leap.
Agitation about the relations between England and Ireland were also
filling public attention at this time, but most important of all the
contemporary movements was the League for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The
story of the growth and the peaceful methods by which it attained its
growth is one of the most interesting in the annals of England's political
development. It meant the adoption of the great principle of free trade,
to which England has since adhered. For eight years the agitation in
regard to it was continued, during which great meetings were held,
thousands of pounds were subscribed to the cause, and the names of Sir
Richard Cobden and John Bright became famous as leaders in the righteous
cause of untaxed food for the people. John Bright's account of how he
became interested in the movement and associated himself with Cobden in
the work, told in a speech made at Rochdale, gives a vivid picture of the
human side of the problem which by the conservatives of the day was
treated as a merely political issue:
"In the year 1841 I was at Leamington and spent several months there.
It was near the middle of September there fell upon me one of the
heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself living there
with none living of my house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden
called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me and so
prostrating. He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this
grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much. There are at this
moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who
are dying of hunger--of hunger made by the law. If you come along with
me, we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.' We saw
the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the
nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that
if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of
hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we
should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to
the starving people of this country."
The movement thus inaugurated was, as Molesworth declares, "without
parallel in the history of the world for the energy with which it was
conducted, the rapid advance it made, and the speedy and complete success
that crowned its efforts; for the great change it wrought in public
opinion and the consequent legislation of the country; overcoming
prejudice and passion, dispelling ignorance and conquering powerful
interests, with no other weapons than those of reason and that eloquence
which great truths and strong conviction inspire."
A signal victory for the League was gained in 1843, when the London
_Times_, which up to that time had regarded the League with suspicion
and even alarm, suddenly turned round and ranged itself with the advancing
tide of progress by declaring, "The League is a great fact. It would be
foolish, nay, rash, to deny its importance. It is a great fact that there
should have been created in the homestead of our manufacturers
(Manchester) a confederacy devoted to the agitation of one political
question, persevering at it year after year, shrinking from no trouble,
dismayed at no danger, making light of every obstacle. It demonstrates the
hardy strength of purpose, the indomitable will, by which Englishmen
working together for a great object are armed and animated."
The final victory, however, did not come until three years later, when Sir
Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister to defend the Corn Laws, announced
that he had been completely convinced of their injustice, and that he was
an "absolute convert to the free-trade principle, and that the
introduction of the principle into all departments of our commercial
legislation was, according to his intention, to be a mere question of time
and convenience." This was in January, 1845, and shortly after, June,
1846, the bill for the total repeal of the Corn Laws passed the House.
How much longer it might have been before the opposition was carried is a
question if it had not been for the failure of the grain crops and the
widespread potato disease which plunged Ireland into a state of famine,
and threatened the whole country with more or less of disaster.
Even when this state of affairs became apparent in the summer of 1845
there was still much delay. The Cabinet met and discussed and discussed;
still Parliament was not assembled; and then it was that the Mansion House
Relief Committee of Dublin drew up resolutions stating that famine and
pestilence were approaching throughout the land, and impeaching the
conduct of the Ministry for not opening the ports or calling Parliament
together.
But still Peel, already won over, could not take his Cabinet with him; he
was forced to resign. Lord John Russell was called to form a ministry, but
failed, when Peel was recalled, and the day was carried.
Browning's brief but pertinent allusion to this struggle in "The
Englishman in Italy" shows clearly how strongly his sympathies were with
the League and how disgusted he was with the procrastination of Parliament
in taking a perfectly obvious step for the betterment of the people.
"Fortnu, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing Corn laws
Be righteous and wise
If 'twere proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!"
An occasional allusion or poem like this makes us aware from time to time
of Browning's constant sympathy with any movement which meant good to the
masses. Even if he had not written near the end of his life "Why I am a
Liberal," there could be no doubt in any one's mind of his political
ideals. In "The Lost Leader" is perhaps his strongest utterance upon the
subject. The fact that it was called out by Wordsworth's lapse into
conservatism after the horrors of the French Revolution had brought him
and his _sans culotte_ brethren, Southey and Coleridge, to pause, a fact
very possibly freshened in Browning's mind by Wordsworth's receiving a
pension in 1842 and the poet-laureateship in 1843, does not affect the
force of the poem as a personal utterance on the side of democracy.
Browning, himself, considered the poem far too fierce as a portrayal of
Wordsworth's case.[2] He evidently forgot Wordsworth, and thought only of
a renegade liberal as he went on with the poem. It was written the same
year that there occurred the last attempt to postpone the passing of the
Anti-Corn Law Bill, when the intensity of feeling on the part of all who
believed in progress was at its height, and the bare thought of a deserter
from Liberal ranks would be enough to exasperate any man who had the
nation's welfare at heart. That Browning's feeling at the time reached the
point not only of exasperation but of utmost scorn for any one who was not
on the liberal side is shown most forcibly in the bitter lines:
"Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,
One more wrong to man, one more insult to God!"
Browning speaks of having thought of Wordsworth at an unlucky juncture.
Whatever the exact episode which called forth the poem may have been, we
are safe in saying that at a time when Disraeli was attacking Sir Robert
Peel because of his honesty in avowing his conversion to free trade, and
because of his bravery in coming out from his party, in breaking up his
cabinet and regardless of all costs in determining to carry the bill or
resign, and finally carrying it in the face of the greatest odds--at
such a time, when a great conservative leader had shown himself capable of
being won over to a great liberal principle; the spectacle of a deserter
from the cause, and that deserter a member of one's own brotherhood of
poets, would be especially hard to bear.
One feels a little like asking why did not Browning let his enthusiasm
carry him for once into a contemporary expression of admiration for Sir
Robert Peel? Perhaps the tortuous windings of parliamentary proceedings
obscured to a near view the true greatness of Peel's action.
The year of this great change in England's policy was the year of Robert
Browning's marriage and his departure for Italy, where he lived for
fifteen years. During this time and for some years after his return to
England there is no sign that he was taking any interest in the political
affairs of his country. Human character under romantic conditions in a
social environment, or the thought problems of the age, as we have already
seen, occupied his attention, and for the subject matter of these he more
often than not went far afield from his native country.
In "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau" is the poet's first deliberate portrayal
of a person of contemporary prominence in the political world. The
alliance of Napoleon III with England brought his policy of government
into strong contrast with that of the liberal leaders in English politics,
a contrast which had been emphasized through Lord Palmerston's sympathy
with the _coup d'etat_.
The news of the manner in which Louis Napoleon had carried out his policy
of smashing the French constitution caused horror and consternation in
England, and the Queen at once gave instructions that nothing should be
done by her ambassador in Paris which could be in any way construed as an
interference in the internal affairs of France. Already, however, Lord
Palmerston had expressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs his
entire approbation in the act of Napoleon and his conviction that he could
not have acted otherwise than as he had done. When this was known, the
Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote Palmerston a letter, causing his
resignation, which was accepted very willingly by the Queen. The letter
was as follows:
"While I concur in the foreign policy of which you have been the
adviser, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has
been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings
perpetually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too
frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have
followed from a sound policy and able admirers. I am, therefore, most
reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of
foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to
the country."
When England's fears that Louis Napoleon would emulate his illustrious
predecessor and invade her shores were allayed, her attitude was modified.
She forgot the horrors of the _coup d'etat_ and formed an alliance with
him, and her hospitable island became his refuge in his downfall.
A prominent figure in European politics for many years, Louis Napoleon had
just that combination of greatness and mediocrity which would appeal to
Browning's love of a human problem. Furthermore, Napoleon was brought very
directly to the poet's notice through his Italian campaign and Mrs.
Browning's interest in the political crisis in Italy, which found
expression in her fine group of Italian patriotic poems.
The question has been asked, "Will the unbiased judgment of posterity
allow to Louis Napoleon some extenuating circumstances, or will it
pronounce an unqualified condemnation upon the man who, for the sake of
consolidating his own power and strengthening his corrupt government,
spilled the blood of no less than a hundred thousand Frenchmen?"
When all Europe was putting to itself some such question as this, and
answering it with varying degrees of leniency, Browning conceived the idea
of making Napoleon speak for himself, and at the same time he added what
purports to be the sort of criticism of him indulged in by a Thiers or a
Victor Hugo. The interest of the poem centers in Napoleon's own
vindication of himself as portrayed by Browning. What Browning wrote of
the poem in a letter to a friend in 1872 explains fully his aim, as well
as showing by indirection, at least, how much he was interested in
political affairs at this time, though so little of this interest crops
out in his poetry: "I think in the main he meant to do what I say, and but
for weakness--grown more apparent in his last years than formerly--would
have done what I say he did not. I thought badly of him at the beginning
of his career, _et pour cause_; better afterward, on the strength of the
promises he made and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him
very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to
Thiers's best." At another time he wrote: "I am glad you like what the
editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, which it
is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be, 'a
scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England.' It is just what
I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."
Browning depicts the man as perfectly conscious of his own limitations. He
recognizes that he is not the genius, nor the creator of a new order of
things, but that his power lies in his faculty of taking an old ideal and
improving upon it. He contends that in following out his special gifts as
a conservator he is doing just what God intended him to do, and as to his
method of doing it that is his own affair. God gives him the commission
and leaves it to his human faculties to carry it out, not inquiring what
these are, but simply asking at the end if the commission has been
accomplished.
Once admit these two things--namely, that his nature, though not of the
highest, is such as God gave him, and his lack of responsibility in regard
to any moral ideal, so that he accomplishes the purpose of this
nature--and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies he may choose to
indulge in in bringing about that strengthening of an old ideal in which
he believes. The old ideal is, of course, the monarchical principle of
government, administered, however, in such a manner that it will be for
the good of society in all its complex manifestations of to-day. His
notion of society's good consists in a balancing of all its forces,
secured by the smoothing down of any extreme tendencies, each having its
orbit marked but no more, so that none shall impede the other's path.
"In this wide world--though each and all alike,
Save for [him] fain would spread itself through space
And leave its fellow not an inch of way."
Browning makes him indulge in a curiously sophisticated view of the
relativity of good and evil in the course of his argument, to the effect
that since there is a further good conceivable beyond the utmost earth can
realize, therefore to change the agency--the evil whereby good is brought
about, try to make good do good as evil does--would be just as foolish as
if a chemist wanting white and knowing that black ingredients were needed
to make the dye insisted these should be white, too. A bad world is that
which he experiences and approves. A good world he does not want in which
there would be no pity, courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy--devotedness, in
short--which he believes form the ultimate allowed to man; therefore it
has been his policy not to do away with the evil in the society he is
saving. To mitigate, not to cure, has been his aim.
Browning would, himself, answer the sophistry, here, by showing that evil
though permitted by divine power was only a means of good through man's
working against whatever he conceives to be evil with the whole strength
of his being. To deliberately follow the policy of conserving evil would
be in the end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau could
not see so far as this.
It is not astonishing that with such a policy as this his methods of
carrying it out might seem somewhat dubious if not positively criminal.
His departure from his early idealism is excused for the reason that
idealism is not practicable when the region of talk is left for the real
action of life. Every step in his own aggrandizement is apologized for on
the ground that what needed to be accomplished could only be done by a
strong hand and that strong hand his own. He was in fact an unprincipled
utilitarian as Browning presents him, who spoiled even what virtue resides
in utilitarianism by letting his care for saving society be too much
influenced by his desire for personal glory. One ideal undertaking he
permitted himself, the freeing of Italy from the Austrian yoke. But he was
not strong enough for any such high flight of idealism, as the sequel
proved.
Browning does not bring out in the poem the Emperor's real reasons for
stopping short in the Italian campaign, which certainly were sufficient
from a practical standpoint, but as Archibald Forbes says in his "Life of
Napoleon," should have been thought of before he published his program of
freedom to Italy "from the Alps to the Adriatic." "Even when he addressed
the Italians at Milan," continues Forbes, "the new light had not broken in
upon him which revealed the strength of the quadrilateral, the cost of
expelling the Austrians from Venetia, and the conviction that further
French successes would certainly bring mobilized Germany into the field.
That new light seems to have flashed upon Napoleon for the first time from
the stern Austrian ranks on the day of Solferino. It was then he realized
that should he go forward he would be obliged to attack in front an enemy
entrenched behind great fortresses, and protected against any diversion on
his flanks by the neutrality of the territories surrounding him."
Mrs. Browning, whose consternation and grief over Villafranca broke out in
burning verse, yet made a defence of Napoleon's action here which might
have been worked into Browning's poem with advantage. She wrote to John
Foster that while Napoleon's intervention in Italy overwhelmed her with
joy it did not dazzle her into doubts as to the motive of it, "but
satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it
did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed
perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium and an invasion of England. Have we not
watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the
Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese
institutions like so many eggshells? Was he ever going away with his army,
and hadn't he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the
city? Didn't he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to
come down on us with a grand duke or a Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to
rule it? And wouldn't he give back Bologna to the Pope?... Were not
Cipriani, Farini and other patriots his 'mere creatures' in treacherous
correspondence with the Tuileries 'doing his dirty work'?" Of such
accusations as these the intelligent English journals were full, but she
maintains that against "The Inane and Immense Absurd" from which they were
born is to be set "a nation saved." She realized also how hard Napoleon's
position in France must be to maintain "forty thousand priests with
bishops of the color of Monseigneur d'Orleans and company, having, of
course, a certain hold on the agricultural population which forms so large
a part of the basis of the imperial throne. Then add to that the parties
who use this Italian question as a weapon simply."
Many of Napoleon's own statements have furnished Browning with the
arguments used in the apology. After deliberately destroying the
constitution, for example, and himself being the cause of the violence and
bloodshed in Paris, he coolly addressed the people in the following
strain, in which we certainly recognize Hohenstiel-Schwangau:
"Frenchmen! the disturbances are appeased. Whatever may be the decision of
the people, society is saved. The first part of my task is accomplished.
The appeal to the nation, for the purpose of terminating the struggle of
parties, I knew would not cause any serious risk to the public
tranquillity. Why should the people have risen against me? If I do not
any longer possess your confidence--if your ideas are changed--there is no
occasion to make precious blood flow; it will be sufficient to place an
adverse vote in the urn. I shall always respect the decision of the
people."
His cleverness in combining the idea of authority with that of the idea of
obeying the will of the people is curiously illustrated in his speech at
the close of his dictatorship, during which it must be confessed that he
had done excellently well for the country--so well, indeed, that even the
socialists were ready to cry "_Vive l'Empereur!_"
"While watching me reestablish the institutions and reawaken the
memories of the Empire, people have repeated again and again that I
wished to reconstitute the Empire itself. If this had been so the
transformation would have been accomplished long ago; neither the
means nor the opportunities would have been lacking.... But I have
remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as heretofore, to do
all in my power for France and nothing for myself, I would accept any
modification of the present state of things only if forced by
necessity.... If parties remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But
if they endeavor to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny
the legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they
continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, but only
then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new title which
would irrevocably fix on my head the power with which they have
already clothed me. But let us not anticipate difficulties; let us
preserve the Republic. Under its banner I am anxious to inaugurate
once more an epoch of reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all
without distinction who will frankly cooperate with me for the public
good."
In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases Napoleon was capable of the most
dishonorable tactics in order to gain his ends. Witness the episode of his
tempting Bismarck with offers of an alliance against Austria at the same
time that he was treating secretly with Francis Joseph for the cession of
Venetia in return for Silesia. And while negotiating secretly and
separately with these two sworn enemies, he pretended to be so
disinterested as to suggest the submission of their quarrel to a European
congress.
Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history
of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves.
In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he
has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness
beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a
conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a
great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the
desire of power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to
gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he
was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet
makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he
would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and
temperament being the gift of God he was bound to follow out his nature in
order that God's purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an
explanation of his life from the philosopher's or psychologist's
standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less
interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly
human and dramatic touch.
Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with
consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he
was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the
fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by
autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result
is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of
freedom allowed to it, and nobody is pleased. When added to such a policy
as this is the surmounting desire for power and the Machiavellian
determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of
statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in
its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power
carried within it the seeds of destruction.
It has been said that "never in the history of the world has one man
undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that
which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through." He professed to be at
one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the
revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the
demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his
elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had
to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, assumed
various utterly incompatible attitudes, and the day that the masses found
themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle classes found
their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable.
[Illustration: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE]
In spite of his heinous faults, however, historians have grown more and
more inclined to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a necessary niche
in the line of progress, just that step which Browning makes him say
the genius will recognize that he fills--namely, to
"Carry the incompleteness on a stage,
Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth,
And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,
It will not prove the worst achievement, sure
In the eyes at least of one man, one I look
Nowise to catch in critic company:
To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self
Destined to come and change things thoroughly.
He, at least, finds his business simplified,
Distinguishes the done from undone, reads
Plainly what meant and did not mean this time
We live in, and I work on, and transmit
To such successor: he will operate
On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine."
That is, at a time when Europe was seething with the idea of a new order,
in which the ideal of nationality was to take the place of such decaying
ideas as the divine right of kings, balance of power, and so on, Napoleon
held on to these ideas just long enough to prevent a general
disintegration of society. He held in his hands the balance of power until
the nations began to find themselves, and in the case of Italy actually
helped on the triumph of the new order.
It is interesting to note in this connection that one of the principal
factors in the making of Gladstone into the stanch liberal which he
became was the freeing of Italy, in which Napoleon had so large a share.
Gladstone himself wrote in 1892 of the events which occurred in the fifth
decade: "Of the various and important incidents which associated me almost
unawares with foreign affairs ... I will only say that they all
contributed to forward the action of those home causes more continuous in
their operation, which, without in any way effacing my old sense of
reverence for the past, determined for me my place in the present and my
direction toward the future." In 1859 Gladstone dined with Cavour at
Turin, when the latter had the opportunity of explaining his position and
policy to the man whom he considered "one of the sincerest and most
important friends that Italy had." But as his biographer says, Gladstone
was still far from the glorified democracy of the Mazzinian propaganda,
and expressed his opinion that England should take the stand that she
would be glad if Italian unity proved feasible, "but the conditions of it
must be gradually matured by a course of improvement in the several
states, and by the political education of the people; if it cannot be
reached by these means, it hardly will by any others; and certainly not by
opinions which closely link Italian reconstruction with European
disorganization and general war." Yet he was as distressed as Mrs.
Browning at the peace of Villafranca, about which he wrote: "I little
thought to have lived to see the day when the conclusion of a peace should
in my own mind cause disgust rather than impart relief." By the end of the
year he thought better of Napoleon and expressed himself again somewhat in
the same strain as Mrs. Browning, to the effect that the Emperor had
shown, "though partial and inconsistent, indications of a genuine feeling
for the Italians--and far beyond this he has committed himself very
considerably to the Italian cause in the face of the world. When in reply
to all that, we fling in his face the truce of Villafranca, he may
reply--and the answer is not without force--that he stood single-handed in
a cause when any moment Europe might have stood combined against him. We
gave him verbal sympathy and encouragement, or at least criticism; no one
else gave him anything at all. No doubt he showed then that he had
undertaken a work to which his powers were unequal; but I do not think
that, when fairly judged, he can be said to have given proof by that
measure of insincerity or indifference."
Gladstone's gradual and forceful emancipation into the ranks of the
liberals may be followed in the fascinating pages of Morley's "Life," who
at the end declares that his performances in the sphere of active
government were beyond comparison. Gladstone's own summary of his career
gives a glimpse of what these performances were as well as an
interpretation of the century and England's future growth which indicate
that had he had another twenty years in which to progress, perhaps fewer,
he would beyond all doubt have become an out and out social democrat.
"The public aspect of the period which closes for me with the fourteen
years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal connection with
Midlothian is too important to pass without a word. I consider it as
beginning with the Reform Act of Lord Grey's government. That great
act was for England, improvement and extension: for Scotland it was
political birth, the beginning of a duty and a power, neither of which
had attached to the Scottish nation in the preceding period. I rejoice
to think how the solemnity of that duty has been recognized, and how
that power has been used. The threescore years offer as the pictures
of what the historian will recognize as a great legislative and
administrative period--perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our
annals. It has been predominantly a history of emancipation--that is,
of enabling man to do his work of emancipation, political, economical,
social, moral, intellectual. Not numerous merely, but almost
numberless, have been the causes brought to issue, and in every one of
them I rejoice to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland
has done battle for the right.
"Another period has opened and is opening still--a period possibly of
yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great ordeal for those classes
which are now becoming largely conscious of power, and never
heretofore subject to its deteriorating influences. These have been
confined in their actions to the classes above them, because they were
its sole possessors. Now is the time for the true friend of his
country to remind the masses that their present political elevation is
owing to no principles less broad and noble than these--the love of
liberty, of liberty for all without distinction of class, creed or
country, _and the resolute preference of the interests of the whole_
to any interest, be it what it may, of a narrower scope."
Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament at twenty-three, in 1832, and a year
later Browning, at twenty-one, printed his first poem, "Pauline." The
careers of the two men ran nearly parallel, for Browning died in 1889, on
the day of the publication of his last volume of poems, and Gladstone's
retirement from active life took place in 1894, shortly after the defeat
of his second Home Rule Bill. Though there is nothing to show that these
two men came into touch with each other during their life, and while it is
probable that Browning would not have been in sympathy with many of the
aspects of Gladstone's mentality, there is an undercurrent of similarity
in their attitude of mind toward reform. The passage in "Sordello" already
referred to, written in 1840, might be regarded almost as a prophecy of
the sort of leader Gladstone became. I have said of that passage that it
expressed the ideal of the opportunist, not that of the revolutionary.
Opportunist Mr. Gladstone was often called by captious critics, but any
unbiased reader following his career now as a whole will see, as Morley
points out, that whenever there was a chance of getting anything done it
was generally found that he was the only man with courage and resolution
enough to attempt it.
A distinction should be made between that sort of opportunism which
_waits_ upon the growth of conditions favorable to the taking of a short
step in amelioration, and what might be called militant opportunism,
which, at all times, seizes every opportunity to take a step in the
direction of an evolving, all-absorbing ideal. Is not this the opportunism
of both a Browning and a Gladstone? Such a policy at least tacitly
acknowledges that the law of evolution is the law that should be followed,
and that the mass of the people as well as the leader have their share in
the unfolding of the coming ideal, though their part in it may be less
conscious than his and though they may need his leadership to make the
steps by the way clear.
The other political leader of the Victorian era with whom Gladstone came
most constantly into conflict was Disraeli, of whom Browning in "George
Bubb Dodington" has given a sketch in order to draw a contrast between the
unsuccessful policy of a charlatan of the Dodington type and that of one
like Disraeli. The skeptical multitude of to-day cannot be taken in by
declarations that the politician is working only for their good, and if he
frankly acknowledged that he is working also for his own good they would
have none of him. The nice point to be decided is how shall he work for
his own good and yet gain control of the multitude. Dodington did not know
the secret, but according to Browning Disraeli did, and what is the
secret? It seems to be an attitude of absolute self-assurance, a disregard
of consistency, a scorn of the people he is dealing with, and a pose
suggesting the play of supernatural forces in his life.
This is a true enough picture of the real Disraeli, who seems to have had
a leaning toward a belief in spiritualism, and who was notorious for his
unblushing changes of opinion and for a style of oratory in which his
points were made by clever invective and sarcasm hurled at his opponents
instead of by any sound, logical argument, it being, indeed one of his
brilliant discoveries that "wisdom ought to be concealed under folly, and
consistency under caprice."
Many choice bits of history might be given in illustration of Browning's
portrayal of him; for example, speaking against reform, he exclaims:
"Behold the late Prime Minister and the Reform Ministry! The spirited and
snow-white steeds have gradually changed into an equal number of sullen
and obstinate donkeys, while Mr. Merryman, who, like the Lord Chancellor,
was once the very life of the ring, now lies his despairing length in the
middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted and his bottle empty."
As a specimen of his quickness in retort may be cited an account of an
episode which occurred at the time when he came out as the champion of the
Taunton Blues. In the course of his speech he "enunciated," says an
anonymous writer of the fifties, "one of those daring historical paradoxes
which are so signally characteristic of the man: 'Twenty years ago' said
the Taunton Blue hero, 'tithes were paid in Ireland more regularly than
now!'
"Even his supporters appeared astounded by this declaration.
"'How do you know?' shouted an elector.
"'I have read it,' replied Mr. Disraeli.
"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed the elector.
"'I know it,' retorted Disraeli, 'because I have read, and you' (looking
daggers at his questioner) 'have not.'
"This was considered a very happy rejoinder by the friends of the
candidate, and was loudly cheered by the Blues.
"'Didn't you write a novel?' again asked the importunate elector, not very
much frightened even by Mr. Disraeli's oratorical thunder and the
sardonical expression on his face.
"'I have certainly written a novel,' Mr. Disraeli replied; 'but I hope
there is no disgrace in being connected with literature.'
"'You are a curiosity of literature, you are,' said the humorous elector.
"'I hope,' said Mr. Disraeli, with great indignation, 'there is no
disgrace in having written that which has been read by hundreds of
thousands of my fellow-countrymen, and which has been translated into
every European language. I trust that one who is an author by the gift of
nature may be as good a man as one who is Master of the Mint by the gift
of Lord Melbourne.' Great applause then burst forth from the Blues. Mr.
Disraeli continued, 'I am not, however, the puppet of the Duke of
Buckingham, as one newspaper has described me; while a fellow laborer in
the same vineyard designated me the next morning, "the Marleybone
Radical." If there is anything on which I figure myself it is my
consistency.'
"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed many hearers.
"'I am prepared to prove it,' said Mr. Disraeli, with menacing energy. 'I
am prepared to prove it, and always shall be, either in the House of
Commons or on the hustings, considering the satisfactory manner in which I
have been attacked, but I do not think the attack will be repeated.'"
It seems extraordinary that such tactics of bluff could take a man onward
to the supreme place of Prime Minister. Possibly it was just as much owing
to his power to amuse as to any of the causes brought out by Browning. Is
there anything the majority of mankind loves more than a laugh?
The conflicts of Disraeli and Gladstone form one of the most remarkable
episodes of nineteenth-century politics. One is tempted to draw a parallel
between Napoleon III and Disraeli, whose tactics were much the same,
except that Disraeli was backed up by a much keener intellect. Possibly he
held a part in English politics similar to that held by Napoleon in
European politics--that is, he conserved the influences of the past long
enough to make the future more sure of itself. Browning, however,
evidently considered him nothing more than a successful charlatan.
When Browning wrote, "Why I Am a Liberal," in 1885, liberalism in English
politics had reached its climax in the nineteenth century through the
introduction by Mr. Gladstone, then Premier for the third time, of his
Home Rule Bill. The injustices suffered by the Irish people and the
horrible atrocities resulting from these had had their effect upon Mr.
Gladstone and had taken him the last great step in his progress toward
freedom. The meeting at which this bill was introduced has been described
as the greatest legislative assembly of modern times. The House was full
to overflowing, and in a brilliant speech of nearly four hours the veteran
leader held his audience breathless as he unfolded his plans for the
betterment of Irish conditions. We are told that during the debates that
followed there was a remarkable exhibition of feeling--"the passions, the
enthusiasm, the fear, and hope, and fury and exultation, sweeping, now
the surface, now stirring to its depths the great gathering." The bill,
which included, besides the founding of an Irish Parliament in Dublin,
which would have the power to deal with all matters "save the Crown, the
Army and Navy, Foreign and Colonial Policy, Trade, Navigation, Currency,
Imperial Taxation, and the Endowment of Churches," also provided that
Ireland should annually contribute to the English exchequer the sum of
L3,243,000.
Eloquence, enthusiasm, exultation--all came to naught. The bill did not
even suit the liberals, the bargain from a financial point of view being
regarded as hard. It was defeated in Parliament and fared no better when
an appeal was made to the country, and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In nine
months, however, a general election returned him to office again, and
again he introduced a Home Rule Bill, and though it passed the Commons, it
was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Lords.
It is pleasant to reflect that in this last act of a noble and brilliant
career spent in the interests of the ever-growing ideals of democracy
Gladstone had the sympathy of Browning, shown by his emphatic expression
of "liberal sentiments" at a momentous crisis, when a speech on the
liberal side even from the mouth of a poet counted for much.
As we have seen, the reflections in Browning's poetry of his interest in
public affairs are comparatively few, yet such glimpses as he has given
prove him, beyond all doubt, to have been a democrat in principle, to have
arrived, in fact, at the beginning of his career at a point beyond that
attained by England's rulers at the end of the century. This far-sighted
vision of his may have been another reason to be added to those mentioned
at the beginning of the chapter why his interest in the practical affairs
of his country did not more often express itself. The wrangling, the
inconsequentialness, the eloquence expended upon mere personal interests
which make up by far the larger proportion of all political agitation, are
irritating to the last degree to a man of vision. His part was that of the
philosopher and artist--to watch and to record in the portrayal of his
many characters the underlying principle of freedom, which was the guiding
star in all his work.
IV
SOCIAL IDEALS
Browning's social ideals revolve about a trinity of values: the value of
love, the value of truth, the value of evil. His ethics are the natural
outgrowth of his mysticism and his idealism, with no touch of the
utilitarianism which has been a distinctive mark of the fabric of English
society during the nineteenth century, nor, on the other hand, of the
hidebound conventionalism which has limited personal freedom in ways
detrimental to just those aspects of social morality it was most anxious
to preserve.
The fact of which Browning seemed more conscious than of any other fact of
his existence, and which, as we have seen, was the very core of his
mysticism, was feeling. Things about which an ordinary man would feel no
emotion at all start in his mind a train of thoughts, ending only in the
perception of divine love. The eating of a palatable fig fills his heart
with such gratefulness to the giver of the fig that immediately he fares
forth upon the way which brings him into the presence of the Prime Giver
from whom all gifts are received. What ecstasy of feeling in the artist
aspiring through his art to the higher regions of Absolute Beauty in "Abt
Vogler" of the poet who loves, aspiring to the divine through his human
love in the epilogue to "Ferishtah's Fancies!" The perception of feeling
was so intense that it became in him exalted and concentrated, incapable
of dissipating itself in ephemeral sentimentalities, and this it is which
gives feeling to Browning its mystical quality, and puts personal love
upon the plane of a veritable revelation.
Though reports have often floated about in regard to his attachments to
other women after Mrs. Browning's death, the fact remains that he did not
marry again, that he wrote the lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies," and the
sonnet to Edward Fitzgerald just before his death, and thirty years after
his wife's death. Moreover, in the epilogue to "The Two Poets of Croisic"
he gives a hint of what might be his attitude toward any other women who
may have come into his life, in the application of the tale of the cricket
chirping "love" in the place of the broken string of a poet's lyre--
"For as victory was nighest,
While I sang and played,
With my lyre at lowest, highest,
Right alike--one string that made
Love sound soft was snapt in twain,
Never to be heard again,----
"Had not a kind cricket fluttered,
Perched upon the place
Vacant left, and duly uttered,
'Love, Love, Love,' when'er the bass
Asked the treble to atone
For its somewhat sombre drone."
These rare qualities of constancy, exaltation and aspiration, in love
sublimating it into a spiritual emotion, which was evidently the
distinctive mark of Browning's personality on the emotional side,
furnishes the keynote by which his presentation or solution of the social
problems involved in the relations of men and women is always to be
gauged.
He had been writing ten years when he essayed his first serious
presentation of what we might to-day call a problem play on an English
subject in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon." In all of his long poems and in
many of his short ones personal love had been portrayed under various
conditions--between friends or lovers, husband and wife, or father and
son, and in every instance it is a dominating influence in the action, as
we have already seen it to be in "Strafford." Again, in "King Victor and
King Charles" the action centers upon Charles's love for his father, and
is also moulded in many ways by Polyxena's love for her husband, Charles.
But a perception of the possible heights to be obtained by the passion of
romantic love only fully emerges in "Pippa Passes," for example in
Ottima's vision of the reality of her own love, despite her great sin as
contrasted with that of Sebald's, and in Jules's rising above the
conventionally low when he discovers he has been duped, and perceiving in
Phene a purity of soul which no earthly conditions had been able to sully,
"Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends,
What the whole world except our love--my own,
Own Phene?...
I do but break these paltry models up
To begin art afresh ...
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Like a god going through the world there stands
One mountain for a moment in the dusk,
Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:
And you are ever by me while I gaze
--Are in my arms as now--as now--as now!
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!"
Again, in "The Return of the Druses" there is a complicated clash between
the ideal of religious reverence for the incarnation of divinity in Djabal
and human love for him in the soul of Anael, resulting at the end in the
destruction of the idea of Djabal's supernatural divinity, and his
reinstatement perceived by Anael as divine through the complete exaltation
of his human love for Anael.
These examples, however, while they illustrate Browning's attitude toward
human love, are far enough removed from nineteenth-century conditions in
England. In "Pippa," the social conditions of nineteenth-century Italy are
reflected; in "The Druses," the religious conditions of the Druse nation
in the fifteenth century.
In the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" a situation is developed which comes home
forcibly to the nineteenth-century Englishman despite the fact that the
scene is supposed to be laid in the eighteenth century. The poet's
treatment of the clash between the ideal, cherished by an old and honored
aristocratic family of its own immaculate purity, and the spontaneous,
complete and exalted love of the two young people who in their ecstasy
transcend conventions, illustrates, as perhaps no other situation could,
his reverential attitude upon the subject of love. Gwendolen, the older,
intuitional woman, and Mertoun, the young lover, are the only people in
the play to realize that purity may exist although the social enactments
upon which it is supposed to depend have not been complied with. Tresham
learns it only when he has wounded Mertoun unto death; Mildred never
learns it. The grip of conventional teaching has sunk so deeply into her
nature that she feels her sin unpardonable and only to be atoned for by
death. Mertoun, as he dies, gives expression to the essential purity and
truth of his nature in these words:
"Die along with me,
Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape
So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,
With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds
Done to you?--heartless men shall have my heart
And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,
Aware, perhaps, of every blow--O God!--
Upon those lips--yet of no power to bear
The felon stripe by stripe! Die Mildred! Leave
Their honorable world to them! For God
We're good enough, though the world casts us out."
This is only one of many instances which go to show that Browning's
conception of love might include, on the one hand, a complete freedom
from the trammels imposed upon it by conventional codes of morality, but
on the other, was so real and permanent a sympathy between two souls, and
so absolute a revelation of divine beauty, that its morality far
transcended that of the conventional codes, which under the guise of
lawful alliances permit and even encourage marriages based upon the most
external of attractions, or those entered into for merely social or
commercial reasons. A sin against love seems in Browning's eyes to come
the nearest of all human failings to the unpardonable sin.
It must not be supposed from what has been said that he had any
anarchistic desire to do away with the solemnization of marriage, but his
eyes were wide open to the fact that there might be sin within the
marriage bond, and just as surely that there might be love pure and true
outside of it.
Another illustration of Browning's belief in the existence of a love such
as Shakespeare describes, which looks on tempests and is never shaken, is
given in the "Inn Album." Here, again, the characters are all English, and
the story is based upon an actual occurrence. Such changes as Browning
has made in the story are with the intention of pitting against the
villainy of an aristocratic seducer of the lowest type a bourgeois young
man, who has been in love with the betrayed woman, and who when he finds
out that it was this man, his friend, who had stood between them, does not
swerve from his loyalty and truth to her, and in the end avenges her by
killing the aristocratic villain. The young man is betrothed to a girl he
cares nothing for, the woman has married a man she cares nothing for. All
is of no moment in the presence of a genuine loyal emotion which shows
itself capable of a life of devotion with no thought of reward.
Browning has nowhere translated into more noble action the love of a man
than in the passage where the hero of the story gives himself unselfishly
to the woman who has been so deeply wronged:
"Take heart of hers,
And give her hand of mine with no more heart
Than now, you see upon this brow I strike!
What atom of a heart do I retain
Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
May she accord me pardon when I place
My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
Since uttermost indignity is spared--
Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
Where you appoint and how you see the good!
I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
Means that have power against the world. Fortune--
Take my whole life for your experiment!
If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,
Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
Swing it wide open to let you and him
Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
Fling me a '_Thank you!--are you there, old friend?_'
Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
So I feel now, at least: some day, who knows?
After no end of weeks and months and years
You might smile! '_I believe you did your best!_'
And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!
Why? Are you angry? If there's after all,
Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
The shame--I said was no shame,--none, I swear!--
In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
My name,--might be your safeguard now,--at once--
Why, here's the hand--you have the heart."
The genuine lovers in Browning's gallery will occur to every reader of
Browning: lovers who are not deterred by obstacles, like Norbert, lovers
like Miranda, devoted to a woman with a "past"; like the lover in "One Way
of Love," who still can say, "Those who win heaven, blest are they."
Sometimes there is a problem to be solved, sometimes not. Whenever there
is a problem, however, it is solved by Browning on the side of sincerity
and truth, never on the side of convention.
Take, for example, "The Statue and the Bust," which many have considered
to uphold an immoral standard and of which its defenders declare that the
moral point of the story lies not in the fact that the lady and the Duke
wished to elope with each other but that they never had strength enough of
mind to do so. Considering what an entirely conventional and loveless
marriage this of the lady and the Duke evidently was we cannot suppose, in
the light of Browning's solution of similar situations, that he would have
thought it any great crime if the Duke and the lady had eloped, since
there was so genuine an attraction between them. But he does word his
climax, it must be confessed, in a way to leave a loophole of doubt on the
subject for those who do not like to be scandalized by their Browning:
"Let a man contend to the uttermost for his life's set prize, be it what
it will!"
There is a saving grace to be extracted from the last line.
"--The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say."
In "The Ring and the Book," the problem is similar to that in the "Inn
Album," except that the villain in the case is the lawful husband. The
lover, Caponsacchi, under different conditions demanding that he shall not
give the slightest expression to his love, rises to a reverential height
which even some of Browning's readers seem to doubt as possible.
Caponsacchi is, however, too much under the spell of Catholic theology to
see the mystical meaning of the love which he acknowledges in his own soul
for Pompilia. In this poem it is Pompilia who is given the divine vision.
If I may resay what I have said in another connection,[3] there is no
moral struggle in Pompilia's short life such as that in Caponsacchi's.
Both were alike in the fact that up to a certain point in their lives
their full consciousness was unawakened: hers slept, through innocence and
ignorance; his, in spite of knowledge, through lack of aspiration. She was
rudely awakened by suffering; he by the sudden revelation of a possible
ideal. Therefore, while for him, conscious of his past failures, a
struggle begins: for her, conscious of no failure in her duty, which she
had always followed according to her light, there simply continues duty
according to the new light. Neither archbishop nor friendly "smiles and
shakes of head" could weaken her conviction that, being estranged in soul
from her husband, her attitude toward him was inevitable. No qualms of
conscience troubled her as to her inalienable right to fly from him. That
she submitted as long as she did was only because no one could be found to
aid her. And how quick and certain her defence of Caponsacchi, threatened
by Guido, when he overtakes them at the Inn! As she thinks over it calmly
afterward, she makes no apology, but justifies her action as the voice of
God.
"If I sinned so--never obey voice more.
O, the Just and Terrible, who bids us 'Bear.'
Not--'Stand by; bear to see my angels bear!'"
The gossip over her flight with Caponsacchi does not trouble her as it
does him. He saved her in her great need; the supposition that their
motives for flight had any taint of impurity in them is too puerile to be
given a thought, yet with the same sublime certainty of the right,
characteristic of her, she acknowledges, at the end, her love for
Caponsacchi, and looks for its fulfilment in the future when marriage
shall be an interpenetration of souls that know themselves into one.
Having attained so great a good she can wish none of the evil she has
suffered undone. She goes a step farther. Not only does she accept her own
suffering for the sake of the final supreme good to herself, but she feels
assured that good will fall at last to those who worked the evil.
In her absolute certainty of her realization of an unexpressed love in a
future existence, she is only equaled in Browning's poetry by the speaker
in "Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead."
That Browning's belief in the mystical quality of personal love never
changed is shown by the fact that near the end of his life, in the
"Parleying" with Daniel Bartoli, he treats a love romance based upon fact
in a way to emphasize this same truth which so constantly appears in his
earlier work. The lady in this case, who is of the people, having been
offered a bribe by the King which will mean the dishonoring of herself and
her husband, and which if she does not accept will mean her complete
separation from her husband, instantly decides against the bribe. She
prefers love in spirit in a convent to the accepting of the King's
promise that she will be made much of in court if she will sign a paper
agreeing that her husband shall at once cede his dukedoms to the King. She
explains her attitude to the Duke, who hesitates in his decision,
whereupon she leaves and saves his honor for him, but his inability to
decide at once upon the higher ground of spiritual love reveals to her the
inadequacy of his love as compared with her own and kills her love for
him. She later, however, marries a man who was only a boy of ten at the
time of this episode, and their life together was a dream of happiness.
But she dies and the devoted husband becomes a man of the world again. The
Duke, however, has a streak of genuineness in his nature after all.
Although carried away by the charms of a bold, black-eyed, tall creature,
a development in keeping with the nature of the Duke in the true story,
Browning is equal to the occasion, and makes him declare that the real man
in him is dead and is still faithful to the old love. All she has is his
ghost. Some day his soul will again be called into life by his ideal love.
The poet frequently expresses a doubt of man's power to be faithful to the
letter in case of a wife's death. "Any wife to any husband" reveals that
feeling as it comes to a woman. The poet's answer to this doubt is
invariably, that where the love was true other attraction is a makeshift
by which a desolate life is made tolerable, or, as in "Fifine at the
Fair," an ephemeral indulgence in pleasure which does not touch the
reality of the spiritual love.
Browning was well aware that the ordinary woman had a stronger sense of
the eternal in love than the ordinary man. In relation to the Duke in the
poem previously mentioned he remarks:
"One leans to like the duke, too; up we'll patch
Some sort of saintship for him--not to match
Hers--but man's best and woman's worst amount
So nearly to the same thing, that we count
In man a miracle of faithfulness
If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress
On the main fact that love, when love indeed,
Is wholly solely love from first to last--
Truth--all the rest a lie."