The _Athenæum_ dismissed "Paracelsus" with a half contemptuous line or
two. On the other hand, the _Examiner_ acknowledged it to be a work of
unequivocal power, and predicted for its author a brilliant career. The
same critic who wrote this review contributed an article of about twenty
pages upon "Paracelsus" to the _New Monthly Magazine_, under the
heading, "Evidences of a New Dramatic Poetry." This article is ably
written, and remarkable for its sympathetic insight. "Mr. Browning," the
critic writes, "is a man of genius, he has in himself all the elements
of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic."
The author of this enthusiastic and important critique was John Forster.
When the _Examiner_ review appeared the two young men had not met: but
the encounter, which was to be the seed of so fine a flower of
friendship, occurred before the publication of the _New Monthly_
article. Before this, however, Browning had already made one of the most
momentous acquaintanceships of his life.
His good friend and early critic, Mr. Fox, asked him to his house one
evening in November, a few months after the publication of "Paracelsus."
The chief guest of the occasion was Macready, then at the height of his
great reputation. Mr. Fox had paved the way for the young poet, but the
moment he entered he carried with him his best recommendation. Every one
who met Browning in those early years of his buoyant manhood seems to
have been struck by his comeliness and simple grace of manner. Macready
stated that he looked more like a poet than any man he had ever met. As
a young man he appears to have had a certain ivory delicacy of
colouring, what an old friend perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly described
to me as an almost flower-like beauty, which passed ere long into a less
girlish and more robust complexion. He appeared taller than he was, for
he was not above medium height, partly because of his rare grace of
movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when
listening intently to music or conversation. Even then he had that
expressive wave o' the hand, which in later years was as full of various
meanings as the _Ecco_ of an Italian. A swift alertness pervaded him,
noticeable as much in the rapid change of expression, in the deepening
and illuming colours of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his
sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift to curve or droop in
response to the most fluctuant emotion, as in his greyhound-like
apprehension, which so often grasped the subject in its entirety before
its propounder himself realised its significance. A lady, who remembers
Browning at that time, has told me that his hair--then of a brown so
dark as to appear black--was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque
waves as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle, personal
charm was his voice, then with a rare flute-like tone, clear, sweet,
and resonant. Afterwards, though always with precise clarity, it became
merely strong and hearty, a little too loud sometimes, and not
infrequently as that of one simulating keen immediate interest while the
attention was almost wholly detached.
Macready, in his Journal,[11] about a week later than the date of his
first meeting with the poet, wrote--"Read 'Paracelsus,' a work of great
daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but
occasionally obscure: the writer can scarcely fail to be a leading
spirit of his time." The tragedian's house, whither he went at week-ends
and on holidays, was at Elstree, a short distance to the northward of
Hampstead: and there he invited Browning, among other friends, to come
on the last day of December and spend New Year's Day (1836).[12] When
alluding, in after years, to this visit, Browning always spoke of it as
one of the red-letter days of his life. It was here he first met
Forster, with whom he at once formed what proved to be an enduring
friendship; and on this occasion, also, that he was urged by his host to
write a poetic play.
[Footnote 11: For many interesting particulars concerning Macready and
Browning, and the production of "Strafford," etc., _vide_ the
_Reminiscences_, vol. i.]
[Footnote 12: It was for Macready's eldest boy, William Charles, that
Browning wrote one of the most widely popular of his poems, "The Pied
Piper of Hamelin." It is said to have been an impromptu performance, and
to have been so little valued by the author that he hesitated about its
inclusion in "Bells and Pomegranates." It was inserted at the last
moment, in the third number, which was short of "copy." Some one
(anonymous, but whom I take to be Mr. Nettleship) has publicly alluded
to his possession of a rival poem (entitled, simply, "Hamelin") by
Robert Browning the elder, and of a letter which he had sent to a friend
along with the verses, in which he writes: "Before I knew that Robert
had begun the story of the 'Rats' I had contemplated a tale on the same
subject, and proceeded with it as far as you see, but, on hearing that
Robert had a similar one on hand, I desisted." This must have been in
1842, for it was in that year that the third part of _Bells and
Pomegranates_ was published. In 1843, however, he finished it.
Browning's "Pied Piper" has been translated into French, Russian,
Italian, and German. The latter (or one German) version is in prose. It
was made in 1880, for a special purpose, and occupied the whole of one
number of the local paper of Hameln, which is a quaint townlet in
Hanover.]
Browning promised to consider the suggestion. Six weeks later, in
company with Forster, with whom he had become intimate, he called upon
Macready, to discuss the plot of a tragedy which he had pondered. He
told the tragedian how deeply he had been impressed by his performance
of "Othello," and how this had deflected his intention from a modern and
European to an Oriental and ancient theme. "Browning said that I had
_bit_ him by my performance of 'Othello,' and I told him I hoped I
should make the blood come." The "blood" had come in the guise of a
drama-motive based on the crucial period in the career of Narses, the
eunuch-general of Justinian. Macready liked the suggestion, though he
demurred to one or two points in the outline: and before Browning left
he eagerly pressed him to "go on with 'Narses.'" But whether Browning
mistrusted his own interest in the theme, or was dubious as to the
success with which Macready would realise his conception, or as to the
reception a play of such a nature would win from an auditory no longer
reverent of high dramatic ideals, he gave up the idea. Some three
months later (May 26th) he enjoyed another eventful evening. It was the
night of the first performance of Talfourd's "Ion," and he was among the
personal friends of Macready who were invited to the supper at
Talfourd's rooms. After the fall of the curtain, Browning, Forster, and
other friends sought the tragedian and congratulated him upon the
success both of the play and of his impersonation of the chief
character. They then adjourned to the house of the author of "Ion." To
his surprise and gratification Browning found himself placed next but
one to his host, and immediately opposite Macready, who sat between two
gentlemen, one calm as a summer evening, and the other with a
tempestuous youth dominating his sixty years, whom the young poet at
once recognised as Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. Every one was in
good spirits: the host perhaps most of all, who was celebrating his
birthday as well as the success of "Ion." Possibly Macready was the only
person who felt at all bored--unless it was Landor--for Wordsworth was
not, at such a function, an entertaining conversationalist. There is
much significance in the succinct entry in Macready's journal concerning
the Lake-poet--"Wordsworth, who pinned me." ... When Talfourd rose to
propose the toast of "The Poets of England" every one probably expected
that Wordsworth would be named to respond. But with a kindly grace the
host, after flattering remarks upon the two great men then honouring him
by sitting at his table, coupled his toast with the name of the youngest
of the poets of England--"Mr. Robert Browning, the author of
'Paracelsus.'" It was a very proud moment for Browning, singled out
among that brilliant company: and it is pleasant to know, on the
authority of Miss Mitford, who was present, that "he performed his task
with grace and modesty," looking, the amiable lady adds, even younger
than he was. Perhaps, however, he was prouder still when Wordsworth
leaned across the table, and with stately affability said, "I am proud
to drink your health, Mr. Browning:" when Landor, also, with a superbly
indifferent and yet kindly smile, also raised his glass to his lips in
courteous greeting.
Of Wordsworth Browning saw not a little in the ensuing few years, for on
the rare visits the elderly poet paid to London, Talfourd never failed
to ask the author of "Paracelsus," for whom he had a sincere admiration,
to meet the great man. It was not in the nature of things that the two
poets could become friends, but though the younger was sometimes annoyed
by the elder's pooh-poohing his republican sympathies, and
contemptuously waiving aside as a mere nobody no less an individual than
Shelley, he never failed of respect and even reverence. With what
tenderness and dignity he has commemorated the great poet's falling away
from his early ideals, may be seen in "The Lost Leader," one of the most
popular of Browning's short poems, and likely to remain so. For several
reasons, however, it is best as well as right that Wordsworth should not
be more than merely nominally identified with the Lost Leader. Browning
was always imperative upon this point.
Towards Landor, on the other hand, he entertained a sentiment of genuine
affection, coupled with a profound sympathy and admiration: a sentiment
duly reciprocated. The care of the younger for the elder, in the old
age of the latter, is one of the most beautiful incidents in a
beautiful life.
But the evening was not to pass without another memorable incident, one
to which we owe "Strafford," and probably "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon."
Just as the young poet, flushed with the triumphant pleasure of the
evening, was about to leave, Macready arrested him by a friendly grip of
the arm. In unmistakable earnestness he asked Browning to write him a
play. With a simplicity equal to the occasion, the poet contented
himself with replying, "Shall it be historical and English? What do you
say to a drama on Strafford?"
Macready was pleased with the idea, and hopeful that his friend would be
more successful with the English statesman than with the eunuch Narses.
A few months elapsed before the poet, who had set aside the long work
upon which he was engaged ("Sordello"), called upon Macready with the
manuscript of "Strafford." The latter hoped much from it. In March the
MS. was ready. About the end of the month Macready took it to Covent
Garden Theatre, and read it to Mr. Osbaldiston, "who caught at it with
avidity, and agreed to produce it without delay."
It was an eventful first of May--an eventful twelvemonth, indeed, for it
was the initial year of the Victorian era, notable, too, as that wherein
the Electric Telegraph was established, and, in letters, wherein a new
dramatic literature had its origin. For "Strafford," already significant
of a novel movement, and destined, it seems to me, to be still more
significant in that great dramatic period towards which we are fast
converging, was not less important to the Drama in England, as a new
departure in method and radically indicative of a fresh standpoint, than
"Hernani" was in France. But in literary history the day itself is
doubly memorable, for in the forenoon Carlyle gave the first of his
lectures in London. The play was a success, despite the shamefully
inadequate acting of some of those entrusted with important parts. There
was once, perhaps there were more occasions than one, where success
poised like the soul of a Mohammedan on the invisible thread leading to
Paradise, but on either side of which lies perdition. There was none to
cry _Timbul_ save Macready, except Miss Helen Faucit, who gained a
brilliant triumph as Lady Carlisle. The part of Charles I. was enacted
so execrably that damnation for all was again and again within
measurable distance. "The Younger Vane" ranted so that a hiss, like an
embodied scorn, vibrated on vagrant wings throughout the house. There
was not even any extraneous aid to a fortunate impression. The house was
in ill repair: the seats dusty, the "scenery" commonplace and sometimes
noticeably inappropriate, the costumes and accessories almost sordid.
But in the face of all this, a triumph was secured. For a brief while
Macready believed that the star of regeneration had arisen.
Unfortunately 'twas, in the words of a contemporary dramatic poet, "a
rising sorrow splendidly forlorn." The financial condition of Covent
Garden Theatre was so ruinous that not even the most successful play
could have restored its doomed fortunes.
After the fifth night one of the leading actors, having received a
better offer elsewhere, suddenly withdrew.
This was the last straw. A collapse forthwith occurred. In the scramble
for shares in the few remaining funds every one gained something, except
the author, who was to have received £12 for each performance for the
first twenty-five nights, and, £10 each for ten nights further. This
disaster was a deep disappointment to Browning, and a by no means
transitory one, for three or four years later he wrote (_Advt._ of
"Bells and Pomegranates"): "Two or three years ago I wrote a play, about
which the chief matter I much care to recollect at present is, that a
pitful of good-natured people applauded it. Ever since, I have been
desirous of doing something in the same way that should better reward
their attention." But, except in so far as its abrupt declension from
the stage hurt its author in the eyes of the critics, and possibly in
those of theatrical managers, "Strafford" was certainly no failure. It
has the elements of a great acting play. Everything, even the language
(and here was a stumbling-block with most of the critics and
criticasters), was subordinated to dramatic exigencies: though the
subordination was in conformity with a novel shaping method. "Strafford"
was not, however, allowed to remain unknown to those who had been unable
to visit Covent Garden Theatre.[13] Browning's name had quite sufficient
literary repute to justify a publisher in risking the issue of a drama
by him; one, at any rate, that had the advantage of association with
Macready's name. The Longmans issued it, and the author had the pleasure
of knowing that his third poetic work was not produced at the expense of
a relative, but at that of the publishers. It had but an indifferent
reception, however.
[Footnote 13: "It is time to deny a statement that has been repeated _ad
nauseam_ in every notice that professes to give an account of Mr.
Browning's career. Whatever is said or not said, it is always that his
plays have 'failed' on the stage. In point of fact, the three plays
which he has brought out have all succeeded, and have owed it to
fortuitous circumstances that their tenure on the boards has been
comparatively short."--E.W. GOSSE, in article in _The Century
Magazine._]
Most people who saw the performance of "Strafford" given in 1886, under
the auspices of the Browning Society, were surprised as well as
impressed: for few, apparently, had realised from perusal the power of
the play as made manifest when acted. The secret of this is that the
drama, when privily read, seems hard if not heavy in its diction, and to
be so inornate, though by no means correspondingly simple, as to render
any comparison between it and the dramatic work of Shakspere out of the
question. But when acted, the artistry of the play is revealed. Its
intense naturalness is due in great part to the stern concision of the
lines, where no word is wasted, where every sentence is fraught with the
utmost it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by their vagueness
become more clear: in a word, we all see in enactment what only a few of
us can discern in perusal. The play has its faults, but scarcely those
of language, where the diction is noble and rhythmic, because it is, so
to speak, the genuine rind of the fruit it envelops. But there are
dramatic faults--primarily, in the extreme economy of the author in the
presentment of his _dramatis personæ_, who are embodied
abstractions--monomaniacs of ideas, as some one has said of Hugo's
personages--rather than men as we are, with manifold complexities in
endless friction or fusion. One cardinal fault is the lack of humour,
which to my mind is the paramount objection to its popular acceptance.
Another, is the misproportionate length of some of the speeches. Once
again, there is, as in the greater portion of Browning's longer poems
and dramas, a baneful equality of emphasis. The conception of Charles I.
is not only obviously weak, but strangely prejudiced adversely for so
keen an analyst of the soul as Browning. For what a fellow-dramatist
calls this "Sunset Shadow of a King," no man or woman could abase every
hope and energy. Shakspere would never have committed the crucial
mistake of making Charles the despicable deformity he is in Browning's
drama. Strafford himself disappears too soon: in the fourth act there is
the vacuum abhorred of dramatic propriety.
When he again comes on the scene, the charm is partly broken. But withal
the play is one of remarkable vigour and beauty. It seems to me that too
much has been written against it on the score of its metrical rudeness.
The lines are beat out by a hammer, but in the process they are wrought
clear of all needless alloy. To urge, as has been lately urged, that it
lacks all human touch and is a mere intellectual fanfaronade, and that
there is not once a line of poignant insight, is altogether uncritical.
Readers of this mind must have forgotten or be indifferent to those
lines, for example, where the wretched Charles stammeringly excuses
himself to his loyal minister for his death-warrant, crying out that it
was wrung from him, and begging Strafford not to curse him: or, again,
that wonderfully significant line, so full of a too tardy knowledge and
of concentrated scorn, where Strafford first begs the king to "be good
to his children," and then, with a contempt that is almost sublime,
implores, "Stay, sir, do not promise, do not swear!" The whole of the
second scene in the fifth act is pure genius. The reader, or spectator,
knows by this time that all hope is over: that Strafford, though all
unaware, is betrayed and undone. It is a subtle dramatic ruse, that of
Browning's representing him sitting in his apartment in the Tower with
his young children, William and Anne, blithely singing.
Can one read and ever forget the lines giving the gay Italian rhyme,
with the boy's picturesquely childish prose-accompaniment? Strafford is
seated, weary and distraught:--
"_O bell'andare
Per barca in mare,
Verso la sera
Di Primavera!_
_William_. The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while--
_Verso la sera
Di Primavera!_
And the boat shoots from underneath the moon
Into the shadowy distance; only still
You hear the dipping oar--
_Verso la sera,_
And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone,
Music and light and all, like a lost star.
_Anne_. But you should sleep, father: you were to sleep.
_Strafford_. I do sleep, Anne; or if not--you must know
There's such a thing as ...
_William_. You're too tired to sleep.
_Strafford_. It will come by-and-by and all day long,
In that old quiet house I told you of:
We sleep safe there.
_Anne_. Why not in Ireland?
_Strafford_. No!
Too many dreams!--"
To me this children's-song and the fleeting and now plaintive echo of
it, as "Voices from Within"--"_Verso la sera, Di Primavera_"--in the
terrible scene where Strafford learns his doom, is only to be paralleled
by the song of Mariana in "Measure for Measure," wherein, likewise, is
abduced in one thrilling poignant strain the quintessential part of the
tense life of the whole play.
So much has been written concerning the dramas of Robert
Browning--though indeed there is still room for a volume of careful
criticism, dealing solely with this theme--that I have the less regret
in having so inadequately to pass in review works of such poetic
magnitude as those enumerated above.
But it would be impossible, in so small a book as this, to examine them
in detail without incurring a just charge of misproportion. The
greatness and the shortcomings of the dramas and dramatic poems must be
noted as succinctly as practicable; and I have dwelt more liberally upon
"Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Strafford," partly because (certainly
without more than one exception, "Sordello") these are the three least
read of Browning's poems, partly because they indicate the sweep and
reach of his first orient eagle-flight through new morning-skies, and
mainly because in them we already find Browning at his best and at his
weakest, because in them we hear not only the rush of his sunlit
pinions, but also the low earthward surge of dullard wings.
Browning is foreshadowed in his earliest writings, as perhaps no other
poet has been to like extent. In the "Venus and Adonis," and the "Rape
of Lucrece," we have but the dimmest foreview of the author of "Hamlet,"
"Othello," and "Macbeth"; had Shakspere died prematurely none could
have predicted, from the exquisite blossoms of his adolescence, the
immortal fruit of his maturity. But, in Browning's three earliest works,
we clearly discern him, as the sculptor of Melos provisioned his Venus
in the rough-hewn block.
Thenceforth, to change the imagery, he developed rapidly upon the same
lines, or doubled upon himself in intricate revolutions; but already his
line of life, his poetic parallel, was definitely established.
In the consideration of Browning's dramas it is needful to be sure of
one's vantage for judgment. The first step towards this assurance is the
ablation of the chronic Shaksperian comparison. Primarily, the shaping
spirit of the time wrought Shakspere and Browning to radically divergent
methods of expression, but each to a method in profound harmony with the
dominant sentiment of the age in which he lived. Above all others, the
Elizabethan era was rich in romantic adventure, of the mind as well as
of the body, and above all others, save that of the Renaissance in
Italy, animated by a passionate curiosity. So, too, supremely, the
Victorian era has been prolific of novel and vast Titanic struggles of
the human spirit to reach those Gates of Truth whose lowest steps are
the scarce discernible stars and furthest suns we scan, by piling Ossas
of searching speculation upon Pelions of hardly-won positive knowledge.
The highest exemplar of the former is Shakspere, Browning the
profoundest interpreter of the latter. To achieve supremacy the one had
to create a throbbing actuality, a world of keenest living, of acts and
intervolved situations and episodes: the other to fashion a mentality so
passionately alive that its manifold phases should have all the reality
of concrete individualities. The one reveals individual life to us by
the play of circumstance, the interaction of events, the correlative
eduction of personal characteristics: the other by his apprehension of
that quintessential movement or mood or phase wherein the soul is
transitorily visible on its lonely pinnacle of light. The elder poet
reveals life to us by the sheer vividness of his own vision: the
younger, by a newer, a less picturesque but more scientific abduction,
compels the complex rayings of each soul-star to a singular simplicity,
as by the spectrum analysis. The one, again, fulfils his aim by a broad
synthesis based upon the vivid observance and selection of vital
details: the other by an extraordinary acute psychic analysis. In a
word, Shakspere works as with the clay of human action: Browning as with
the clay of human thought.
As for the difference in value of the two methods it is useless to
dogmatise. The psychic portraiture produced by either is valuable only
so far as it is convincingly true.
The profoundest insight cannot reach deeper than its own possibilities
of depth. The physiognomy of the soul is never visible in its entirety,
barely ever even its profile. The utmost we can expect to reproduce,
perhaps even to perceive in the most quintessential moment, is a
partially faithful, partially deceptive silhouette. As no human being
has ever seen his or her own soul, in all its rounded completeness of
good and evil, of strength and weakness, of what is temporal and
perishable and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect even
the subtlest analyst to adequately depict other souls than his own. It
is Browning's high distinction that he has this soul-depictive
faculty--restricted as even in his instance it perforce is--to an extent
unsurpassed by any other poet, ancient or modern. As a sympathetic
critic has remarked, "His stage is not the visible phenomenal England
(or elsewhere) of history; it is a point in the spiritual universe,
where naked souls meet and wrestle, as they play the great game of life,
for counters, the true value of which can only be realised in the
bullion of a higher life than this." No doubt there is "a certain
crudeness in the manner in which these naked souls are presented," not
only in "Strafford" but elsewhere in the plays. Browning markedly has
the defects of his qualities.
As part of his method, it should be noted that his real trust is upon
monologue rather than upon dialogue. To one who works from within
outward--in contradistinction to the Shaksperian method of striving to
win from outward forms "the passion and the life whose fountains are
within"--the propriety of this dramatic means can scarce be gainsaid.
The swift complicated mental machinery can thus be exhibited infinitely
more coherently and comprehensibly than by the most electric succinct
dialogue. Again and again Browning has nigh foundered in the morass of
monologue, but, broadly speaking, he transcends in this dramatic method.
At the same time, none must take it for granted that the author of the
"Blot on the 'Scutchcon," "Luria," "In a Balcony," is not dramatic in
even the most conventional sense. Above all, indeed--as Mr. Walter Pater
has said--his is the poetry of situations. In each of the _dramatis
personæ_, one of the leading characteristics is loyalty to a dominant
ideal. In Strafford's case it is that of unswerving devotion to the
King: in Mildred's and in Thorold's, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," it
is that of subservience respectively to conventional morality and family
pride (Lord Tresham, it may be added, is the most hopelessly
monomaniacal of all Browning's "monomaniacs"): in Valence's, in
"Colombe's Birthday," to chivalric love: in Charles, in "King Victor and
King Charles," to kingly and filial duty: in Anael's and Djabal's, in
"The Return of the Druses," respectively to religion and unscrupulous
ambition modified by patriotism: in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy,"
to purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to noble steadfastness: and in
Constance's, in "In a Balcony," to self-denial. Of these plays, "The
Return of the Druses" seems to me the most picturesque, "Luria" the most
noble and dignified, and "In a Balcony" the most potentially a great
dramatic success. The last is in a sense a fragment, but, though the
integer of a great unaccomplished drama, is as complete in itself as the
Funeral March in Beethoven's _Eroica_ Symphony. The "Blot on the
'Scutcheon" has the radical fault characteristic of writers of
sensational fiction, a too promiscuous "clearing the ground" by syncope
and suicide. Another is the juvenility of Mildred:--a serious infraction
of dramatic law, where the mere tampering with history, as in the
circumstances of King Victor's death in the earlier play, is at least
excusable by high precedent. More disastrous, poetically, is the ruinous
banality of Mildred's anticlimax when, after her brother reveals himself
as her lover's murderer, she, like the typical young _Miss Anglaise_
of certain French novelists, betrays her incapacity for true passion by
exclaiming, in effect, "What, you've murdered my lover! Well, tell me
all. Pardon? Oh, well, I pardon you: at least I _think_ I do. Thorold,
my dear brother, how very wretched you must be!"
I am unaware if this anticlimax has been pointed out by any one, but
surely it is one of the most appalling lapses of genius which could be
indicated. Even the beautiful song in the third scene of the first act,
"There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest," is,
in the circumstances, nearly over the verge which divides the sublime
from the ridiculous. No wonder that, on the night the play was first
acted, Mertoun's song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, caused
a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant auditory. It is
with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint from that of
Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun,
no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its
conception, like it; who, further, at a later date, affirmed that he
would rather have written this play than any work of modern times: nor
with less reluctance, that I find myself at variance with Mr. Skelton,
who speaks of the drama as "one of the most perfectly conceived and
perfectly executed tragedies in the language." In the instance of Luria,
that second Othello, suicide has all the impressiveness of a plenary act
of absolution: the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of
lightning after the concussion of thunder-clouds. But Thorold's suicide
is mere weakness, scarce a perverted courage; and Mildred's broken heart
was an ill not beyond the healing of a morally robust physician.
"Colombe's Birthday" has a certain remoteness of interest, really due to
the reader's more or less acute perception of the radical divergence,
for all Valence's greatness of mind and spirit, between the fair young
Duchess and her chosen lover: a circumstance which must surely stand in
the way of its popularity. Though "A Soul's Tragedy" has the saving
quality of humour, it is of too grim a kind to be provocative of
laughter.
In each of these plays[14] the lover of Browning will recall passage
after passage of superbly dramatic effect. But supreme in his
remembrance will be the wonderful scene in "The Return of the Druses,"
where the Prefect, drawing a breath of relief, is almost simultaneously
assassinated; and that where Anael, with every nerve at tension in her
fierce religious resolve, with a poignant, life-surrendering cry, hails
Djabal as _Hakeem_--as Divine--and therewith falls dead at his feet.
Nor will he forget that where, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," Mildred,
with a dry sob in her throat, stammeringly utters--
"I--I--was so young!
Besides I loved him, Thorold--and I had
No mother; God forgot me: so I fell----"
or that where, "at end of the disastrous day," Luria takes the phial of
poison from his breast, muttering--
"Strange! This is all I brought from my own land
To help me."
[Footnote 14: "Strafford," 1837; "King Victor and King Charles," 1842;
"The Return of the Druses," and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," 1843;
"Colombe's Birthday," 1844; "Luria," and "A Soul's Tragedy," 1845.]
Before passing on from these eight plays to Browning's most imperishable
because most nearly immaculate dramatic poem, "Pippa Passes," and to
"Sordello," that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry, I should
like--out of an embarrassing quantity of alluring details--to remind the
reader of two secondary matters of interest pertinent to the present
theme. One is that the song in "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," "There's a
woman like a dew-drop," written several years before the author's
meeting with Elizabeth Barrett, is so closely in the style of "Lady
Geraldine's Courtship," and other ballads by the sweet singer who
afterwards became a partner in the loveliest marriage of which we have
record in literary history, that, even were there nothing to
substantiate the fact, it were fair to infer that Mertoun's song to
Mildred was the electric touch which compelled to its metric shape one
of Mrs. Browning's best-known poems.
The further interest lies in the lordly acknowledgment of the dedication
to him of "Luria," which Landor sent to Browning--lines pregnant with
the stateliest music of his old age:--
"Shakespeare is not our poet but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale
No man has walked along our roads with step
So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song."