The results of this preoccupation with such subjects and of this manner
of dealing with them may be recognized very easily in Browning’s work.
First of all they turned him aside from becoming a great Nature-poet,
though he was well fitted to be one. It is not that he loves Nature’s
slow and solemn pageant less, but that he loves man’s quick and varied
drama more. His landscapes are like scenery for the stage. They
accompany the unfolding of the plot and change with it, but they do not
influence it. His observation is as keen, as accurate as Wordsworth’s or
Tennyson’s, but it is less steady, less patient, less familiar. It is the
observation of one who passes through the country but does not stay to
grow intimate with it. The forms of nature do not print themselves on his
mind; they flash vividly before him, and come and go. Usually it is some
intense human feeling that makes the details of the landscape stand out
so sharply. In _Pippa Passes_, it is in the ecstasy of love that Ottima
and Sebald notice
“The garden’s silence: even the single bee
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped,
And where he hid you only could surmise
By some campanula chalice set a-swing.”
It is the sense of guilty passion that makes the lightning-flashes,
burning through the pine-forest, seem like dagger-strokes,—
“As if God’s messenger through the closed wood screen
Plunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me.”
In _Home Thoughts from Abroad_, it is the exile’s deep homesickness that
brings the quick, delicate vision before his eyes:
“Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!”
But Browning’s touches of nature are not always as happy as this. Often
he crowds the details too closely, and fails to blend them with the
ground of the picture, so that the tonality is destroyed and the effect
is distracting. The foreground is too vivid: the aerial perspective
vanishes. There is an impressionism that obscures the reality. As Amiel
says: “Under pretense that we want to study it more in detail, we
pulverize the statue.”
Browning is at his best as a Nature-poet in sky-scapes, like the
description of daybreak in _Pippa Passes_, the lunar rainbow in
_Christmas Eve_, and the Northern Lights in _Easter Day_; and also in
a kind of work which might be called symbolic landscape, where the
imaginative vision of nature is made to represent a human experience.
A striking example of this work is the scenery of _Childe Roland_,
reflecting as in a glass the grotesque horrors of spiritual desolation.
There is a passage in _Sordello_ which makes a fertile landscape,
sketched in a few swift lines, the symbol of Sordello’s luxuriant
nature; and another in Norbert’s speech, in _In a Balcony_, which uses
the calm self-abandonment of the world in the tranquil evening light as
the type of the sincerity of the heart giving itself up to love. But
perhaps as good an illustration as we can find of Browning’s quality as a
Nature-poet, is a little bit of mystery called _Meeting at Night_.
“The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon, large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And the blue spirt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!”
This is the landscape of the drama.
A second result of Browning’s preoccupation with dramatic psychology is
the close concentration and “alleged obscurity” of his style. Here again
I evade the critical question whether the obscurity is real, or whether
it is only a natural and admirable profundity to which an indolent
reviewer has given a bad name. That is a question which Posterity must
answer. But for us the fact remains that some of his poetry is hard to
read; it demands close attention and strenuous effort; and when we find
a piece of it that goes very easily, like _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_,
_How They brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_, _Hervé Riel_, or
the stirring _Cavalier Tunes_, we are conscious of missing the sense of
strain which we have learned to associate with the reading of Browning.
One reason for this is the predominance of curiosity over harmony in
his disposition. He tries to express the inexpressible, to write the
unwritable. As Dr. Johnson said of Cowley, he has the habit “of pursuing
his thoughts to the last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of
generality.” Another reason is the fluency, the fertility, the haste of
his genius, and his reluctance, or inability, to put the brakes on his
own productiveness.
It seems probable that if Browning had been able to write more slowly
and carefully he might have written with more lucidity. There was a time
when he made a point of turning off a poem a day. It is doubtful whether
the story of _The Ring and the Book_ gains in clearness by being told by
eleven different persons, all of them inclined to volubility.
Yet Browning’s poetry is not verbose. It is singularly condensed in the
matter of language. He seems to have made his most arduous effort in
this direction. After _Paracelsus_ had been published and pronounced
“unintelligible,” he was inclined to think that there might be some fault
of too great terseness in the style. But a letter from Miss Caroline
Fox was shown to him, in which that lady, (then very young,) took the
opposite view and asked “doth he know that Wordsworth will devote a
fortnight or more to the discovery of the single word that is the one
fit for his sonnet.” Browning appears to have been impressed by this
criticism; but he set himself to work upon it, not so much by way of
selecting words as by way of compressing them. He put _Sordello_ into a
world where many of the parts of speech are lacking and all are crowded.
He learned to pack the largest, possible amount of meaning into the
smallest possible space, as a hasty traveller packs his portmanteau. Many
small articles are crushed and crumpled out of shape. He adopted a system
of elisions for the sake of brevity, and loved, as C. S. Calverley said,
“to dock the smaller parts of speech
As we curtail th’ already curtailed cur.”
At the same time he seldom could resist the temptation to put in another
thought, another simile, another illustration, although the poem might be
already quite full. He called out, like the conductor of a street-car,
“Move up in front: room for one more!” He had little tautology of
expression, but much of conception. A good critic says “Browning
condenses by the phrase, elaborates by the volume.”[15]
One consequence of this system of writing is that a great deal of
Browning’s poetry lends itself admirably to translation,—into English.
The number of prose paraphrases of his poems is great, and so constantly
increasing that it seems as if there must be a real demand for them.
But Coleridge, speaking of the qualities of a true poetic style,
remarked: “Whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same
language without diminution of their significance, either in sense, or
in association, or in any other feeling, are so far vicious in their
diction.”
Another very notable thing in Browning’s poetry is his fertility
and fluency of rhyme. He is probably the most rapid, ingenious, and
unwearying rhymer among the English poets. There is a story that once,
in company with Tennyson, he was challenged to produce a rhyme for
“rhinoceros,” and almost instantly accomplished the task with a verse in
which the unwieldy quadruped kept time and tune with the phrase “he can
toss Eros.”[16] There are other _tours de force_ almost as extraordinary
in his serious poems. Who but Browning would have thought of rhyming
“syntax” with “tin-tacks,” or “spare-rib” with “Carib,” (_Flight of
Duchess_) or “Fra Angelico’s” with “bellicose,” or “Ghirlandajo” with
“heigh-ho,” (_Old Pictures in Florence_) or “expansive explosive” with “O
Danaides, O Sieve!” (_Master Hugues_). Rhyme, with most poets, acts as a
restraint, a brake upon speech. But with Browning it is the other way.
His rhymes are like wild, frolicsome horses, leaping over the fences and
carrying him into the widest digressions. Many a couplet, many a stanza
would not have been written but for the impulse of a daring, suggestive
rhyme.
Join to this love of somewhat reckless rhyming, his deep and powerful
sense of humour, and you have the secret of his fondness for the
grotesque. His poetry abounds in strange contrasts, sudden changes of
mood, incongruous comparisons, and odd presentations of well-known
subjects. Sometimes the whole poem is written in this manner. The
_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_, _Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_, and
_Caliban upon Setebos_, are poetic gargoyles. Sometimes he begins
seriously enough, as in the poem on Keats, and closes with a bit of
fantastic irony:
“Hobbs hints blue,—straight he turtle eats:
Nobbs prints blue,—claret crowns his cup:
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats—
Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?”
Sometimes the poem opens grotesquely, like _Christmas Eve_, and rises
swiftly to a wonderful height of pure beauty and solemnity, dropping
back into a grotesque at the end. But all this play of fancy must
not be confused with the spirit of mockery or of levity. It is often
characteristic of the most serious and earnest natures; it arises in
fact from the restlessness of mind in the contemplation of evil, or from
the perception of life’s difficulties and perplexities. Shakespeare
was profoundly right in introducing the element of the grotesque into
_Hamlet_, his most thoughtful tragedy. Browning is never really anything
else but a serious thinker, passionately curious to solve the riddle of
existence. Like his own _Sordello_ he
“Gave to familiar things a face grotesque,
Only, pursuing through the mad burlesque,
A grave regard.”
We may sum up, then, what we have to say of Browning’s method and manner
by recognizing that they belong together and have a mutual fitness and
inevitableness. We may wish that he had attained to more lucidity and
harmony of expression, but we should probably have had some difficulty
in telling him precisely how to do it, and he would have been likely to
reply with good humour as he did to Tennyson, “The people must take me
as they find me.” If he had been less ardent in looking for subjects
for his poetry, he might have given more care to the form of his poems.
If he had cut fewer blocks, he might have finished more statues. The
immortality of much of his work may be discounted by its want of perfect
art,—the only true preservative of man’s handiwork. But the immortality
of his genius is secure. He may not be ranked finally among the great
masters of the art of poetry. But he certainly will endure as a mine for
poets. They may stamp the coins more clearly and fashion the ornaments
more delicately. But the gold is his. He was the prospector,—the first
dramatic psychologist of modern life. The very imperfections of his work,
in all its splendid richness and bewildering complexity, bear witness to
his favourite doctrine that life itself is more interesting than art, and
more glorious, because it is not yet perfect.
V
“The Glory of the Imperfect,”—that is a phrase which I read in a pamphlet
by that fine old Grecian and noble Christian philosopher, George Herbert
Palmer, many years ago. It seems to me to express the central meaning of
Browning’s poetry.
He is the poet of aspiration and endeavour; the prophet of a divine
discontent. All things are precious to him, not in themselves, but as
their defects are realized, as man uses them, and presses through them,
towards something higher and better. Hope is man’s power: and the things
hoped for must be as yet unseen. Struggle is man’s life; and the purpose
of life is not merely education, but a kind of progressive creation of
the soul.
“Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.”
The world presents itself to him, as the Germans say, _Im Werden_. It is
a world of potencies, working itself out. Existence is not the mere fact
of being, but the vital process of becoming. The glory of man lies in
his power to realize this process in his mind and to fling himself into
it with all his will. If he tries to satisfy himself with things as they
are, like the world-wedded soul in _Easter Eve_, he fails. If he tries to
crowd the infinite into the finite, like Paracelsus, he fails. He must
make his dissatisfaction his strength. He must accept the limitations of
his life, not in the sense of submitting to them, but as Jacob wrestled
with the angel, in order to win, through conflict, a new power, a larger
blessing. His ardent desires and longings and aspirations, yes, even his
defeats and disappointments and failures, are the stuff out of which his
immortal destiny is weaving itself. The one thing that life requires of
him is to act with ardour, to go forward resolutely, to “burn his way
through the world”; and the great lesson which it teaches him is this:
“But thou shalt painfully attain to joy
While hope and love and fear shall keep thee man.”
Browning was very much needed in the Nineteenth Century as the antidote,
or perhaps it would be more just to say, as the complement to Carlyle.
For Carlyle’s prophecy, with all its moral earnestness, its virility,
its indomitable courage, had in it a ground-tone of despair. It was the
battle-cry of a forlorn hope. Man must hate shams intensely, must seek
reality passionately, must do his duty desperately; but he can never tell
why. The reason of things is inscrutable: the eternal Power that rules
things is unknowable. Carlyle, said Mazzini, “has a constant disposition
to crush the human by comparing him with God.” But Browning has an
unconquerable disposition to elevate the human by joining him to God. The
power that animates and governs the world is Divine; man cannot escape
from it nor overcome it. But the love that stirs in man’s heart is also
Divine; and if man will follow it, it shall lead him to that height
where he shall see that Power is Love.
“I have faith such end shall be:
From the first Power was—I knew.
Life has made clear to me
That, strive but for closer view,
Love were as plain to see.
When see? When there dawns a day
If not on the homely earth,
Then yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth
And Power comes full in play.”[17]
Browning’s optimism is fundamental. Originally a matter of temperament,
perhaps, as it is expressed in _At the Mermaid_,—
“I find earth not gray, but rosy,
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy,
Do I stand and stare? All’s blue——”
primarily the spontaneous tone of a healthy, happy nature, it became the
chosen key-note of all his music, and he works it out through a hundred
harmonies and discords. He is “sure of goodness as of life.” He does
not ask “How came good into the world?” For that, after all, is the
pessimistic question; it assumes that the ground of things is evil and
the good is the breaking of the rule. He asks instead “How came evil into
the world?” That is the optimistic question; as long as a man puts it in
that form he is an optimist at heart; he takes it for granted that good
is the native element and evil is the intruder; there must be a solution
of the problem whether he can find it or not; the rule must be superior
to, and triumphant over, the exception; the meaning and purpose of evil
must somehow, some time, be proved subordinate to good.
That is Browning’s position:
“My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can’t end worst,
Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.”
The way in which he justifies this position is characteristic of the man.
His optimism is far less defensive than it is militant. He never wavers
from his intuitive conviction that “the world means good.” He follows
this instinct as a soldier follows his banner, into whatever difficulties
and conflicts it may lead him, and fights his way out, now with the
weapons of philosophy, now with the bare sword of faith.