It has been commonly asserted that "Pauline" was almost wholly
disregarded, and swiftly lapsed into oblivion.
This must be accepted with qualification. It is like the other general
assertion, that Browning had to live fifty years before he gained
recognition--a statement as ludicrous when examined as it is unjust to
the many discreet judges who awarded, publicly and privately, that
intelligent sympathy which is the best sunshine for the flower of a
poet's genius. If by "before he gained recognition" is meant a general
and indiscriminate acclaim, no doubt Browning had, still has indeed,
longer to wait than many other eminent writers have had to do: but it is
absurd to assert that from the very outset of his poetic career he was
met by nothing but neglect, if not scornful derision. None who knows the
true artistic temperament will fall into any such mistake.
It is quite certain that neither Shakspere nor Milton ever met with such
enthusiastic praise and welcome as Browning encountered on the
publication of "Pauline" and "Paracelsus." Shelley, as far above
Browning in poetic music as the author of so many parleyings with other
people's souls is the superior in psychic insight and intellectual
strength, had throughout his too brief life not one such review of
praiseful welcome as the Rev. W.J. Fox wrote on the publication of
"Pauline" (or, it may be added, as Allan Cunningham's equally kindly but
less able review in the _Athenæum_), or as John Forster wrote in _The
Examiner_ concerning "Paracelsus," and later in the _New Monthly
Magazine_, where he had the courage to say of the young and quite
unknown poet, "without the slightest hesitation we name Mr. Robert
Browning at once with Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth." His plays even
(which are commonly said to have "fallen flat") were certainly not
failures. There is something effeminate, undignified, and certainly
uncritical, in this confusion as to what is and what is not failure in
literature. So enthusiastic was the applause he encountered, indeed,
that had his not been too strong a nature to be thwarted by adulation
any more than by contemptuous neglect, he might well have become
spoilt--so enthusiastic, that were it not for the heavy and prolonged
counterbalancing dead weight of public indifference, a huge amorphous
mass only of late years moulded into harmony with the keenest minds of
the century, we might well be suspicious of so much and long-continued
eulogium, and fear the same reversal of judgment towards him on the part
of those who come after us as we ourselves have meted to many an one
among the high gods of our fathers.
Fortunately the deep humanity of his work in the mass conserves it
against the mere veerings of taste. A reaction against it will
inevitably come; but this will pass: what, in the future, when the
unborn readers of Browning will look back with clear eyes untroubled by
the dust of our footsteps, not to subside till long after we too are
dust, will be the place given to this poet, we know not, nor can more
than speculatively estimate. That it will, however, be a high one, so
far as his weightiest (in bulk, it may possibly be but a relatively
slender) accomplishment is concerned, we may rest well assured: for
indeed "It lives, If precious be the soul of man to man."
So far as has been ascertained there were only three reviews or notices
of "Pauline": the very favourable article by Mr. Fox in the _Monthly
Repository_, the kindly paper by Allan Cunningham in the _Athenæum_,
and, in _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, the succinctly expressed impression
of either an indolent or an incapable reviewer: "Pauline; a Fragment of
a Confession; a piece of pure bewilderment"--a "criticism" which
anticipated and thus prevented the insertion of a highly favourable
review which John Stuart Mill voluntarily wrote.
Browning must have regarded his first book with mingled feelings. It was
a bid for literary fortune, in one sense, but a bid so handicapped by
the circumstances of its publication as to be almost certainly of no
avail. Probably, however, he was well content that it should have mere
existence. Already the fever of an abnormal intellectual curiosity was
upon him: already he had schemed more potent and more vital poems:
already, even, he had developed towards a more individualistic method.
So indifferent was he to an easily gained reputation that he seems to
have been really urgent upon his relatives and intimate acquaintances
not to betray his authorship. The Miss Flower, how ever, to whom
allusion has already been made, could not repress her admiration to the
extent of depriving her friend, Mr. Fox, of a pleasure similar to that
she had herself enjoyed. The result was the generous notice in the
_Monthly Repository_. The poet never forgot his indebtedness to Mr. Fox,
to whose sympathy and kindness much direct and indirect good is
traceable. The friendship then begun was lifelong, and was continued
with the distinguished Unitarian's family when Mr. Fox himself ended his
active and beneficent career.
But after a time the few admirers of "Pauline" forgot to speak about it:
the poet himself never alluded to it: and in a year or two it was almost
as though it had never been written. Many years after, when articles
upon Robert Browning were as numerous as they once had been scarce,
never a word betrayed that their authors knew of the existence of
"Pauline." There was, however, yet another friendship to come out of
this book, though not until long after it was practically forgotten by
its author.
One day a young poet-painter came upon a copy of the book in the British
Museum Library, and was at once captivated by its beauty. One of the
earliest admirers of Browning's poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti--for it
was he--felt certain that "Pauline" could be by none other than the
author of "Paracelsus." He himself informed me that he had never heard
this authorship suggested, though some one had spoken to him of a poem
of remarkable promise, called "Pauline," which he ought to read. If I
remember aright, Rossetti told me that it was on the forenoon of the day
when the "Burden of Nineveh" was begun, conceived rather, that he read
this story of a soul by the soul's ablest historian. So delighted was he
with it, and so strong his opinion it was by Browning, that he wrote to
the poet, then in Florence, for confirmation, stating at the same time
that his admiration for "Pauline" had led him to transcribe the whole of
it.
Concerning this episode, Robert Browning wrote to me, some seven years
ago, as follows:--
"St. Pierre de Chartreuse, Isère, France.
* * * * *
"Rossetti's 'Pauline' letter was addressed to me at Florence more
than thirty years ago. I have preserved it, but, even were I at
home, should be unable to find it without troublesome searching. It
was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether unknown
to me, had come upon a poem in the British Museum, which he copied
the whole of, from its being not otherwise procurable--that he
judged it to be mine, but could not be sure, and wished me to
pronounce in the matter--which I did. A year or two after, I had a
visit in London from Mr. (William) Allingham and a friend--who
proved to be Rossetti. When I heard he was a painter I insisted on
calling on him, though he declared he had nothing to show me--which
was far enough from the case. Subsequently, on another of my returns
to London, he painted my portrait, not, I fancy, in oils, but
water-colours, and finished it in Paris shortly after. This must
have been in the year when Tennyson published 'Maud,' for I remember
Tennyson reading the poem one evening while Rossetti made a rapid
pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, from one obscure corner of
vantage, which I still possess, and duly value. This was before
Rossetti's marriage."[8]
[Footnote 8: The highly interesting and excellent portrait of Browning
here alluded to has never been exhibited.]
As a matter of fact, as recorded on the back of the original drawing,
the eventful reading took place at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square, on
the 27th of September 1855, and those present, besides the
Poet-Laureate, Browning, and Rossetti, were Mrs. E. Barrett Browning and
Miss Arabella Barrett.
When, a year or two ago, the poet learned that a copy of his first work,
which in 1833 could not find a dozen purchasers at a few shillings, went
at a public sale for twenty-five guineas, he remarked that had his dear
old aunt been living he could have returned to her, much to her
incredulous astonishment, no doubt, he smilingly averred, the cost of
the book's publication, less £3 15s. It was about the time of the
publication of "Pauline" that Browning began to see something of the
literary and artistic life for which he had such an inborn taste. For a
brief period he went often to the British Museum, particularly the
Library, and to the National Gallery. At the British Museum Reading Room
he perused with great industry and research those works in philosophy
and medical history which are the bases of "Paracelsus," and those
Italian Records bearing upon the story of Sordello. Residence in
Camberwell, in 1833, rendered night engagements often impracticable: but
nevertheless he managed to mix a good deal in congenial society. It is
not commonly known that he was familiar to these early associates as a
musician and artist rather than as a poet. Among them, and they
comprised many well-known workers in the several arts, were Charles
Dickens and "Ion" Talfourd. Mr. Fox, whom Browning had met once or twice
in his early youth, after the former had been shown the Byronic verses
which had in one way gratified and in another way perturbed the poet's
father, saw something more of his young friend after the publication of
"Pauline." He very kindly offered to print in his magazine any short
poems the author of that book should see fit to send--an offer, however,
which was not put to the test for some time.
Practically simultaneously with the publication of "Pauline" appeared
another small volume, containing the "Palace of Art," "Oenone,"
"Mariana," etc. Those early books of Tennyson and Browning have
frequently, and somewhat uncritically, been contrasted. Unquestionably,
however, the elder poet showed a consummate and continuous mastery of
his art altogether beyond the intermittent expressional power of
Browning in his most rhythmic emotion at any time of his life. To affirm
that there is more intellectual fibre, what Rossetti called fundamental
brain-work, in the product of the younger poet, would be beside the
mark. The insistence on the supremacy of Browning over all poets since
Shakspere because he has the highest "message" to deliver, because his
intellect is the most subtle and comprehensive, because his poems have
this or that dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other active
minds, is to be seriously and energetically deprecated. It is with
presentment that the artist has, fundamentally, to concern himself. If
he cannot _present_ poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet, though
he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. Browning's eminence is
not because of his detachment from what some one has foolishly called
"the mere handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet." It is the
delight of the true artist that the product of his talent should be
wrought to a high technique equally by the shaping brain and the
dexterous hand. Browning is great because of his formative energy:
because, despite the excess of burning and compulsive thought--
"Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain
Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells,
Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight--"
he strikes from the _furor_ of words an electric flash so transcendently
illuminative that what is commonplace becomes radiant with that light
which dwells not in nature, but only in the visionary eye of man. Form
for the mere beauty of form, is a playing with the wind, the acceptance
of a shadow for the substance. If nothing animate it, it may possibly be
fair of aspect, but only as the frozen smile upon a dead face.
We know little of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834. It
was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one certain pinnacles
of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away. He began to
realise the first disenchantment of the artist: the sense of dreams
never to be accomplished. That land of the great unwritten poems, the
great unpainted pictures: what a heritance there for the enfranchised
spirits of great dreamers!
In the autumn of 1833 he went forth to his University, that of the world
of men and women. It was ever a favourite answer of his, when asked if
he had been at either Oxford or Cambridge,--"Italy was my University."
But first he went to Russia, and spent some time in St. Petersburg,
attracted thither by the invitation of a friend. The country interested
him, but does not seem to have deeply or permanently engaged his
attention. That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless is
manifest from the remarkably picturesque and technically very
interesting poem, "Ivàn Ivànovitch" (the fourth of the _Dramatic Idyls_,
1879). Of a truth, after his own race and country--readers will at once
think of "Home Thoughts from the Sea," or the thrilling lines in "Home
Thoughts from Abroad," beginning--
"Oh, to be in England,
Now that April's there!"--
or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work--
"I cherish most
My love of England--how, her name, a word
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!"
--it was of the mystic Orient or of the glowing South that he oftenest
thought and dreamed. With Heine he might have cried: "O Firdusi! O
Ischami! O Saadi! How do I long after the roses of Schiraz!" As for
Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her: but who has
worshipped her with so manly a passion, so loyal a love, as Browning?
One alone indeed may be mated with him here, she who had his heart of
hearts, and who lies at rest in the old Florentine cemetery within sound
of the loved waters of Arno. Who can forget his lines in "De Gustibus,"
"Open my heart and you will see, graved inside of it, Italy."
It would be no difficult task to devote a volume larger than the present
one to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy,
Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia and
all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty above
conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled gallery of
portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, what a movement of intensest
life!
It is pleasant to know of one of them, "The Italian in England," that
Browning was proud, because Mazzini told him he had read this poem to
certain of his fellow-exiles in England to show how an Englishman could
sympathise with them.
After leaving Russia the young poet spent the rest of his _Wanderjahr_
in Italy. Among other places he visited was Asolo, that white little
hill-town of the Veneto, whence he drew hints for "Sordello," and "Pippa
Passes," and whither he returned in the last year of his life, as with
unconscious significance he himself said, "on his way homeward."
In the summer of 1834, that is, when he was in his twenty-second year,
he returned to Camberwell. "Sordello" he had in some fashion begun, but
had set aside for a poem which occupied him throughout the autumn of
1834 and winter of 1835, "Paracelsus." In this period, also, he wrote
some short poems, two of them of particular significance. The first of
the series was a sonnet, which appeared above the signature 'Z' in the
August number of the _Monthly Repository_ for 1834. It was never
reprinted by the author, whose judgment it is impossible not to approve
as well as to respect. Browning never wrote a good sonnet, and this
earliest effort is not the most fortunate. It was in the _Repository_
also, in 1835 and 1836, that the other poems appeared, four in all.
The song in "Pippa Passes," beginning "A King lived long ago," was one
of these; and the lyric, "Still ailing, wind? Wilt be appeased or no?"
afterwards revised and incorporated in "James Lee," was another. But the
two which are much the most noteworthy are "Johannes Agricola" and
"Porphyria." Even more distinctively than in "Pauline," in their novel
sentiment, new method, and generally unique quality, is a new voice
audible in these two poems. They are very remarkable as the work of so
young a poet, and are interesting as showing how rapidly he had outgrown
the influence of any other of his poetic kindred. "Johannes Agricola" is
significant as being the first of those dramatic studies of warped
religiosity, of strange self-sophistication, which have afforded so much
matter for thought. In its dramatic concision, its complex psychological
significance, and its unique, if to unaccustomed ears somewhat barbaric,
poetic beauty, "Porphyria" is still more remarkable.
It may be of this time, though possibly some years later, that Mrs.
Bridell-Fox writes:--"I remember him as looking in often in the
evenings, having just returned from his first visit to Venice. I cannot
tell the date for certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queen of
Cities. He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties,
the palaces, the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original kind of
etching. Taking up a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over a
lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily
smoked over, and then utilising the darker smears for clouds, shadows,
water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on
cloud and palace, on bridge or gondola on the vague and dreamy surface
he had produced. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from
those delightful, well-remembered evenings of my childhood."
"Paracelsus," begun about the close of October or early in November
1834, was published in the summer of the following year. It is a poem in
blank verse, about four times the length of "Pauline," with interspersed
songs. The author divided it into five sections of unequal length, of
which the third is the most extensive: "Paracelsus Aspires"; "Paracelsus
Attains"; "Paracelsus"; "Paracelsus Aspires"; "Paracelsus Attains." In
an interesting note, which was not reprinted in later editions of his
first acknowledged poem, the author dissuades the reader from mistaking
his performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in common,
from judging it by principles on which it was not moulded, and from
subjecting it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. He
then explains that he has composed a dramatic poem, and not a drama in
the accepted sense; that he has not set forth the phenomena of the mind
or the passions by the operation of persons and events, or by recourse
to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis
sought to be produced. Instead of this, he remarks, "I have ventured to
display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, and
have suffered the agency, by which it is influenced and determined, to
be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate
throughout, if not altogether excluded: and this for a reason. I have
endeavoured to write a poem, not a drama." A little further, he states
that a work like "Paracelsus" depends, for its success, immediately upon
the intelligence and sympathy of the reader: "Indeed, were my scenes
stars, it must be his co-operating fancy which, supplying all chasms,
shall connect the scattered lights into one constellation--a Lyre or a
Crown."
In the concluding paragraph of this note there is a point of
interest--the statement of the author's hope that the readers of
"Paracelsus" will not "be prejudiced against other productions which may
follow in a more popular, and perhaps less difficult form." From this it
might fairly be inferred that Browning had not definitively adopted his
characteristic method: that he was far from unwilling to gain the
general ear: and that he was alert to the difficulties of popularisation
of poetry written on lines similar to those of "Paracelsus." Nor would
this inference be wrong: for, as a matter of fact, the poet, immediately
upon the publication of "Paracelsus," determined to devote himself to
poetic work which should have so direct a contact with actual life that
its appeal should reach even to the most uninitiate in the mysteries and
delights of verse.
In his early years Browning had always a great liking for walking in the
dark. At Camberwell he was wont to carry this love to the point of
losing many a night's rest. There was, in particular, a wood near
Dulwich, whither he was wont to go. There he would walk swiftly and
eagerly along the solitary and lightless byways, finding a potent
stimulus to imaginative thought in the happy isolation thus enjoyed,
with all the concurrent delights of natural things, the wind moving like
a spirit through the tree-branches, the drifting of poignant fragrances,
even in winter-tide, from herb and sappy bark, imperceptible almost by
the alertest sense in the day's manifold detachments. At this time, too,
he composed much in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in later
life. Not only many portions of "Paracelsus," but several scenes in
"Strafford," were enacted first in these midnight silences of the
Dulwich woodland. Here, too, as the poet once declared, he came to know
the serene beauty of dawn: for every now and again, after having read
late, or written long, he would steal quietly from the house, and walk
till the morning twilight graded to the pearl and amber of the new day.
As in childhood the glow of distant London had affected him to a
pleasure that was not without pain, perhaps to a pain rather that was a
fine delirium, so in his early manhood the neighbourhood of the huge
city, felt in those midnight walks of his, and apprehended more by the
transmutive shudder of reflected glare thrown fadingly upward against
the stars, than by any more direct vision or even far-borne
indeterminate hum, dominated his imagination. At that distance, in those
circumstances, humanity became more human. And with the thought, the
consciousness of this imperative kinship, arose the vague desire, the
high resolve to be no curious dilettante in novel literary experiments,
but to compel an interpretative understanding of this complex human
environment.
Those who knew the poet intimately are aware of the loving regard he
always had for those nocturnal experiences: but perhaps few recognise
how much we owe to the subtle influences of that congenial isolation he
was wont to enjoy on fortunate occasions.
It is not my intention--it would, obviously, be a futile one, if
entertained--to attempt an analysis or elaborate criticism of the many
poems, long and short, produced by Robert Browning. Not one volume, but
several, of this size, would have to be allotted to the adequate
performance of that end. Moreover, if readers are unable or unwilling to
be their own expositors, there are several trustworthy hand-books which
are easily procurable. Some one, I believe, has even, with unselfish
consideration for the weaker brethren, turned "Sordello" into prose--a
superfluous task, some scoffers may exclaim. Personally, I cannot but
think this craze for the exposition of poetry, this passion for
"dissecting a rainbow," is harmful to the individual as well as
humiliating to the high office of Poetry itself, and not infrequently it
is ludicrous.
I must be content with a few words anent the more important or
significant poems, and in due course attempt an estimate by a broad
synthesis, and not by cumulative critical analyses.
In the selection of Paracelsus as the hero of his first mature poem,
Browning was guided first of all by his keen sympathy with the
scientific spirit--the spirit of dauntless inquiry, of quenchless
curiosity, of a searching enthusiasm. Pietro of Abano, Giordano Bruno,
Galileo, were heroes whom he regarded with an admiration which would
have been boundless but for the wise sympathy which enabled him to
apprehend and understand their weaknesses as well as their lofty
qualities. Once having come to the conclusion that Paracelsus was a
great and much maligned man, it was natural for him to wish to portray
aright the features he saw looming through the mists of legend and
history. But over and above this, he half unwittingly, half consciously,
felt the fascination of that mysticism associated with the name of the
celebrated German scientist--a mysticism, in all its various phases, of
which he is now acknowledged to be the subtlest poetic interpreter in
our language, though, profound as its attraction always was for him,
never was poet with a more exquisite balance of intellectual sanity.
Latest research has proved that whatsoever of a pretender Paracelsus may
have been in certain respects, he was unquestionably a man of
extraordinary powers: and, as a pioneer in a science of the first
magnitude of importance, deserving of high honour. If ever the famous
German attain a high place in the history of the modern intellectual
movement in Europe, it will be primarily due to Browning's championship.
But of course the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim is a matter
of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's
presentment of the man--of that strange soul whom he conceived of as
having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant
speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently
pure, now lurid with gross constituents.[9]
[Footnote 9: Paracelsus has two particular claims upon our regard. He
gave us laudanum, a discovery of incalculable blessing to mankind. And
from his fourth baptismal name, which he inherited from his father, we
have our familiar term, 'bombast.' Readers interested in the known facts
concerning the "master-mind, the thinker, the explorer, the creator,"
the forerunner of Mesmer and even of Darwin and Wallace, who began life
with the sounding appellation "Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus
ab Hohenheim," should consult Browning's own learned appendical note,
and Mr. Berdoe's interesting essay in the Browning Society Papers,
No. xlix.]
Paracelsus, his friends Festus and his wife Michal, and Aprile, an
Italian poet, are the characters who are the personal media through
which Browning's already powerful genius found expression. The poem is,
of a kind, an epic: the epic of a brave soul striving against baffling
circumstance. It is full of passages of rare technical excellence, as
well as of conceptive beauty: so full, indeed, that the sympathetic
reader of it as a drama will be too apt to overlook its radical
shortcomings, cast as it is in the dramatic mould. But it must not be
forgotten that Browning himself distinctly stated he had attempted to
write "a poem, not a drama": and in the light of this simple statement
half the objections that have been made fall to the ground.
Paracelsus is the protagonist: the others are merely incidental. The
poem is the soul-history of the great medical student who began life so
brave of aspect and died so miserably at Salzburg: but it is also the
history of a typical human soul, which can be read without any knowledge
of actual particulars.
Aprile is a projection of the poet's own poetical ideal. He speaks, but
he does not live as Festus lives, or even as Michal, who, by the way, is
interesting as being the first in the long gallery of Browning's
women--a gallery of superbly-drawn portraits, of noble and striking and
always intensely human women, unparalleled except in Shakspere. Pauline,
of course, exists only as an abstraction, and Porphyria is in no exact
sense a portrait from the life. Yet Michal can be revealed only to the
sympathetic eye, for she is not drawn, but again and again suddenly
silhouetted. We see her in profile always: but when she exclaims at the
last, "I ever did believe," we feel that she has withdrawn the veil
partially hiding her fair and generous spirit.
To the lover of poetry "Paracelsus" will always be a Golconda. It has
lines and passages of extraordinary power, of a haunting beauty, and of
a unique and exquisite charm. It may be noted, in exemplification of
Browning's artistic range, that in the descriptive passages he paints as
well in the elaborate Pre-Raphaelite method as with a broad synthetic
touch: as in
"One old populous green wall
Tenanted by the ever-busy flies,
Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders,
Each family of the silver-threaded moss--
Which, look through near, this way, and it appears
A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh
Of bulrush whitening in the sun...."
But oftener he prefers the more succinct method of landscape-painting,
the broadest impressionism: as in
"Past the high rocks the haunts of doves, the mounds
Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out,
Past tracks of milk-white minute blinding sand."
And where in modern poetry is there a superber union of the scientific
and the poetic vision than in this magnificent passage--the
quintessence of the poet's conception of the rapture of life:--
"The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
And the earth changes like a human face;
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks,
Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask--
God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged
With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate,
When in the solitary waste, strange groups
Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like,
Staring together with their eyes on flame--
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:
But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost,
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face;
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms
Like chrysalids impatient for the air,
The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run
Along the furrows, ants make their ado;
Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews
His ancient rapture."
In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest the influence
of the noble Hebraic poetry. It must have been at this period that
Browning conned over and over with an exultant delight the simple but
lordly diction of Isaiah and the other prophets, preferring this
Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks. There is an anecdote
of his walking across a public park (I am told Richmond, but more
probably it was Wimbledon Common) with his hat in his left hand and his
right waving to and fro declamatorily, while the wind blew his hair
around his head like a nimbus: so rapt in his ecstasy over the solemn
sweep of the Biblical music that he did not observe a small following
consisting of several eager children, expectant of thrilling
stump-oratory. He was just the man, however, to accept an anti-climax
genially, and to dismiss his disappointed auditory with something more
tangible than an address.
The poet-precursor of scientific knowledge is again and again manifest:
as, for example, in
"Hints and previsions of which faculties
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out dimly the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last."[10]
[Footnote 10: Readers interested in Browning's inspiration from, and
treatment of, Science, should consult the excellent essay on him as "A
Scientific Poet" by Mr. Edward Berdoe, F.R.C.S., and, in particular,
compare with the originals the references given by Mr. Berdoe to the
numerous passages bearing upon Evolution and the several sciences, from
Astronomy to Physiology.]
There are lines, again, which have a magic that cannot be defined. If it
be not felt, no sense of it can be conveyed through another's words.
"Whose memories were a solace to me oft,
As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight."
"Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once
Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
What full-grown power informs her from the first,
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
The silent boundless regions of the sky."
There is one passage, beautiful in itself, which has a pathetic
significance henceforth. Gordon, our most revered hero, was wont to
declare that nothing in all nonscriptural literature was so dear to him,
nothing had so often inspired him in moments of gloom:--
"I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send His hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, His good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time."
As for the much misused 'Shaksperian' comparison, so often mistakenly
applied to Browning, there is nothing in "Paracelsus" in the least way
derivative. Because Shakspere is the greatest genius evolved from our
race, it does not follow that every lofty intellect, every great
objective poet, should be labelled "Shaksperian." But there is a certain
quality in poetic expression which we so specify, because the intense
humanity throbbing in it finds highest utterance in the greatest of our
poets: and there is at least one instance of such poignant speech in
"Paracelsus," worthy almost to be ranked with the last despairing cry of
Guido calling upon murdered Pompilia:--
"Festus, strange secrets are let out by death
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world:
And I am death's familiar, as you know.
I helped a man to die, some few weeks since,
Warped even from his go-cart to one end--
The living on princes' smiles, reflected from
A mighty herd of favourites. No mean trick
He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed
All traces of God's finger out of him:
Then died, grown old. And just an hour before,
Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes,
He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice
Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors
God told him it was June; and he knew well
Without such telling, harebells grew in June;
And all that kings could ever give or take
Would not be precious as those blooms to him."
Technically, I doubt if Browning ever produced any finer long poem,
except "Pippa Passes," which is a lyrical drama, and neither exactly a
'play' nor exactly a 'poem' in the conventional usage of the terms.
Artistically, "Paracelsus" is disproportionate, and has faults,
obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear: but in the main it has a beauty
without harshness, a swiftness of thought and speech without tumultuous
pressure of ideas or stammering. It has not, in like degree, the intense
human insight of, say, "The Inn Album," but it has that charm of sequent
excellence too rarely to be found in many of Browning's later writings.
It glides onward like a steadfast stream, the thought moving with the
current it animates and controls, and throbbing eagerly beneath. When we
read certain portions of "Paracelsus," and the lovely lyrics
interspersed in it, it is difficult not to think of the poet as
sometimes, in later life, stooping like the mariner in Roscoe's
beautiful sonnet, striving to reclaim "some loved lost echo from the
fleeting strand." But it is the fleeting shore of exquisite art, not of
the far-reaching shadowy capes and promontories of "the poetic land."
Of the four interlusive lyrics the freer music is in the unique chant,
"Over the sea our galleys went:" a song full of melody and blithe lilt.
It is marvellously pictorial, and yet has a freedom that places it among
the most delightful of spontaneous lyrics:--
"We shouted, every man of us,
And steered right into the harbour thus,
With pomp and pæan glorious."
It is, however, too long for present quotation, and as an example of
Browning's early lyrics I select rather the rich and delicate second of
these "Paracelsus" songs, one wherein the influence of Keats is so
marked, and yet where all is the poet's own:--
"Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.
"And strew faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
From closet long to quiet vowed,
With mothed and dropping arras hung,
Mouldering her lute and books among,
As when a queen, long dead, was young."
With this music in our ears we can well forgive some of the prosaic
commonplaces which deface "Paracelsus"--some of those lapses from
rhythmic energy to which the poet became less and less sensitive, till
he could be so deaf to the vanishing "echo of the fleeting strand" as to
sink to the level of doggerel such as that which closes the poem called
"Popularity."
"Paracelsus" is not a great, but it is a memorable poem: a notable
achievement, indeed, for an author of Browning's years. Well may we
exclaim with Festus, when we regard the poet in all the greatness of his
maturity--
"The sunrise
Well warranted our faith in this full noon!"