the poem. It was dark, before daybreak, when the students assembled for
the funeral, and it is still rather dark when the funeral procession
starts up the mountain. This appears from the lines, "Look out if
yonder be not day again rimming the rock-row"--meaning, see if that is
not daylight up there at the top of the mountains. It is not full day,
but they can see, far up, the lights of the citadel. The poet wants
to give us the feeling of a fortified city of the Middle Ages. You
must understand that multitudes of cities, especially in France and
in Germany, were then built upon mountain tops, so that they could be
better fortified and defended against attack. Part of such a city would
be of course on sloping ground. But the very highest place was always
reserved, inside the city, for military purposes. Outside the city
were walls and ditches and towers. Inside the city there was a smaller
city or citadel, also surrounded by ditches and walls and towers, and
occupying the highest place possible. An enemy, after capturing the
city proper, would still have the citadel to capture, always a very
difficult military feat. Now you will understand better the suggestions
of immense height in the poem. The students are going up above the
citadel to bury their teacher. They say that the place is appropriate
because the air at that height is, like intellectual thought, cold and
pure and full of electricity, the symbol of mental energy and moral
effort. You may notice that the students are still somewhat rough in
their ways. It was a rough age; they do not intend to submit to any
interference on the way, nor even to any curiosity, so the ignorant
"beholders" are bidden to be very careful.
At this point the poem gives us the students' account of their
teacher's life. They are singing a song about it, and you must
understand that all the lines in parentheses do not necessarily mean
interruptions of the narrative, though some of them do. A little
careful reading will make everything clear; then you will perceive how
very fine the spirit of the whole thing is.
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
Safe from the weather!
He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
Singing together,
He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo!
Long he lived nameless: how should Spring take note
Winter would follow?
Till lo! the little touch, and youth was gone!
Cramped and diminished,
Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
My dance is finished?"
No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side,
Make for the city!)
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
Over men's pity;
Left play for work, and grappled with the world
Bent on escaping:
"What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
Show me their shaping,
Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,--
Give!"--So he gowned him,
Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
Learned, we found him.
When his first students met him, they met him as a youthful and a
learned man; these latest students found him old, bald, scarcely
able to see--and yet he had not allowed himself any rest. In spite
of the fact that he felt death was coming, he continued to study day
and night, he read all the books then existing, and when he had read
them all, he said only, "Now I have got to the beginning of my real
studies. The material is in my hands; now I shall use it." Sickness or
health made no difference to him. This life he thought of only as the
commencement of eternity.
He said, "What's Time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever!"
Back to his books then; deeper drooped his head:
_Calculus_ racked him:
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:
_Tussis_ attacked him.
In vain did his friends and pupils beg him to take a little rest, but
he never would; he said that he must learn everything he could before
dying.
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer
He settled _Hoti's_ business--let it be!--
Properly based _Oun_--
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_,
Dead from the waist down.
"Hoti" is the Greek word "that"; "Oun" is the word "then," also "now";
it has other kindred meanings. "De" has the meaning of "toward" when
enclitic; but there is another Greek word "de" meaning "but." The
reference in the poem is to the rule for distinguishing the Greek "de"
meaning "toward" from the Greek "de" meaning "but." "Calculus" is the
disease commonly called "stone in the bladder." "Tussis" is a cough.
And now the singers have brought the body to the burial-place at the
top of the mountain, and their song ends with this glorious burst:
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
Hail to your purlieus,
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curlews!
Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
Live, for they can, there;
This man decided not to Live but Know--
Bury this man there?
Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects:
Loftily lying,
Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.
We may turn from this fine poem without further comment to a piece
entitled "The Patriot." There is a bit, and a very bitter bit, of the
true philosophy of life in it. Nothing is so fickle, so uncertain,
so treacherous as popularity. Thousands of men who tried to get the
applause of the multitude, the love of the millions, and thought that
they had succeeded, found out at a later day how quickly that applause
could be turned into roars of hate, how quickly that seeming admiration
could be changed into scorn. This fact about the instability of human
favour is well known to every clear headed person who enters into what
is called the social struggle; but it is more often illustrated in
politics. The political aspect of the matter is the most remarkable,
and has therefore been chosen by Browning. I do not know to what
particular person he may be making reference--perhaps he was thinking
of Rienzi. But in all periods of history the fact has been about the
same. You will remember, no doubt, the case of Pericles in the history
of Athens, and of many others. You may remember also how the French
Revolution devoured its own children, how the men that were one day
almost worshipped by the people like gods, would be dragged to the
guillotine the day after. And even in the history of this country I
think you must remember not a few examples of how uncertain popular
favour must always be. In this case the victim speaks, some man who
once had been regarded as the saviour of the people, but who is now
regarded as their enemy, and who is going to be executed as a common
criminal, simply because he happened to be unfortunate. He remembers
the past, and contrasts it with the cruel present:
It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said: "Good folk, mere noise repels--
But give me your sun from yonder skies!"
They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"
Here I may say that in Western countries from very ancient times it
has been the custom to cover with flowers the road along which some
great conqueror or other honoured person was to come. The ancients used
especially roses and myrtles, but even to-day it is often the custom to
throw flowers on the ground before the passing of a sovereign or other
great person. "Like mad" is an idiom used to express extreme action
of any sort; "to laugh like mad," would be to laugh unreasonably and
extravagantly. The reference to the apparent movement of the roofs of
the houses pictures the crowding of people on the house-tops to see
the hero, a custom still kept up. And the reference to the effect of
the bells as making "mist," indicates the excessive volume of sound;
for it is said that the firing of cannon or the making of any other
great noise will often cause rain to fall. The idea is that the people
rang the bells so hard that the rain fell, and these were what we call
"joy-bells."
"If on that day of my triumph," he says, "I had asked them to give me
the sun, they would have answered out of their hearts, Certainly--and
what else?" Now it is very different indeed.
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep!
Nought man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.
There's nobody on the house-tops now--
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet,
By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.
I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.
What he says is this: "I did not ask them for anything for myself;
it was I who wanted to give them the sun, or anything else that they
wished for. Every possible sacrifice that any man could make I made
for these people, and you see what my reward is to-day--just one year
from the time when they honoured and revered me. Nobody now stands on
the house tops to look at me; all have gone to the execution ground to
see me die, except a few old people who cannot walk, and who stay at
the windows to see me pass, with my hands tied behind my back. People
are throwing stones at me, and I think my face is bleeding." The last
allusion is to a very cruel custom only of late years abolished in
England by better police regulations. In the old times, when a prisoner
was being taken to the gallows, people would often strike him, or throw
stones at him as he went by, and nobody attempted to protect him.
To-day this is not done, simply because the police do not allow it, but
the natural cruelty of a mob is perhaps just as great as it ever was.
Thus I entered, and thus I go!
In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
"Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
Me?"--God might question; now instead,
'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.
These are the man's last thoughts. "I came into this city a hero, as
I told you; now I am going out of it, to be executed like a vulgar
criminal. How much better would it have been if I had died on the day
when all the people were honouring me! I have heard that men have
fallen dead from joy in the middle of such a triumph as I then had.
But would it have been better if I had died happy like that? Perhaps
it would not. God is said to demand a strict account in the next World
from any human being who has been too happy in this. If I had died
that day, God might have said to me, You have had your reward from the
world; have you paid to me what you owed in love and duty? But now the
world kills me; it is from God only that I can hope for justice. He is
terrible, but I can trust him better than this people; I am safer with
him!"
I am not sure what Browning refers to in speaking of those who have
been known to drop dead in the middle of a triumph. But perhaps he is
referring to the story of the Sicilian, Diagoras, which is one of the
most beautiful of all Greek stories, and is fortunately quite true.
Diagoras had been the greatest wrestler among the Greeks, the greatest
athlete of his time, and was loved and honoured by all men of Greek
blood. He had seven sons. When he was a very old man these seven sons
went to contend at the great Olympic games (if I remember correctly).
There were but seven prizes for all the feats of strength and skill;
and these seven prizes were all won by the seven sons of Diagoras--that
is to say, they had proved themselves the best men of the whole world
at that time, even the boy son winning the prize given only to boys.
Then the people demanded to know the name of the father of those young
men, and the sons lifted him upon their shoulders to show him to all
the people. The people shouted so that birds flying above them, fell
down; and the old man in the same moment died of joy, as he was thus
supported upon the shoulders of his sons. The Greeks said that this
was the happiest death that any man ever died. Perhaps Browning was
referring to this story; but I am not sure.
Kings have sometimes been accused of ingratitude, but on the whole,
kings have shown more gratitude than mobs; a sovereign is apt to
remember that it is good policy to repay loyalty and to encourage
affection. Browning gives us a few magnificent specimens of loyal
feeling toward sovereigns, feeling which it is pleasant to know was not
repaid with ingratitude. I am referring to his "Cavalier Tunes," little
songs into which he has managed to put all the fiery love and devotion
of the English gentlemen who fought for the king against Cromwell and
his Puritans, and who fought, luckily for England, in vain at that
time. Right or wrong as we may think their cause, it is impossible
not to admire the feeling here expressed. I shall quote the second
song first. You must imagine that all these gentlemen are drinking the
health of the king, with songs and cheers, even at the time when the
king's cause seems hopeless.
GIVE A ROUSE!
King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!
(_Single voice_)
Who gave me the goods that went since?
Who raised me the house that sank once?
Who helped me to gold I spent since?
Who found me in wine you drank once?
(_Chorus, answering_)
King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!
(_Single voice_)
To whom used my hoy George quaff else,
By the old fool's side that begot him?
For whom did he cheer and laugh else,
While Noll's damned troopers shot him?
(_Chorus, answering_)
King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!
The father is reminding his friends of the brave death of his own son,
who died shouting for the king and laughing at his executioners. I do
not think that there is a more spirited song in English literature
than this. Perhaps you may observe that the measure in the third
stanza does not run smoothly like the measure of the other stanzas; it
hesitates a little. But this is a great stroke of art, for it indicates
the suppressed emotion of the father speaking of his dead son. The
other song, the first of the three given by Browning, represents the
feeling of an earlier time in the civil war, probably the time when
the aristocracy and gentry first gathered together to defend the king.
There is a splendid swing in it. Both songs are a little rough, because
the spirit of the age was rough; the finest gentleman used to swear
in those days, and to use words which we now consider rather violent.
I may remark, however, that even to-day in the upper ranks of the
English army and navy, something of the same scorn of conventions still
remains; generals and admirals will swear occasionally in battle, just
as these gentlemen of an older school swore as they advanced against
the Puritan armies.
MARCHING ALONG
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup
Till you're--
(_Chorus_) Marching along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here,
(_Chorus_) Marching along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls
To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
Hold by the right, you double your might;
So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight,
(_Chorus_) March we along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
The names in this poem are all of them great names of the Civil War.
Hampden, you know, was Parliamentary leader in the movement against
the king. He was killed in battle, and his place as leader was taken
by Pym. The other names are of members of the Long Parliament--except
Rupert. Rupert, or Prince Rupert, as he is more generally known, was
the leader of the Royal cavalry, one of the most brilliant cavalry
leaders of history. He was never beaten seriously until he met
Cromwell's Puritan cavalry. A reference may be necessary in regard to
Nottingham. There was no fight exactly at Nottingham; but it was at
Nottingham that the cavalry gathered round the king's standard before
the battle of Edgehill, near Banbury, a drawn battle, not decided
either way.
So much for the references. As for the song itself, something remains
to be said. I think that the two songs are about the most spirited in
English literature. They are so for many reasons, especially because
of the fiery emotion which the poet has flung into them, and because
of their absolute truth to the feeling of the seventeenth century,
both as to form and as to tone. But I wonder whether any of you have
noticed what it is that gives such uncommon force to the verses. To a
great degree, it is the use of triple rhymes. In both songs the rhymes
are triple, while the measure is short, and the result is something of
that rough strength which characterises the old Northern poetry. For
instance:
Hold by the _right_, you double your _might_,
So onward to Nottingham, fresh for the _fight._
King Charles, and who'll do him _right_ now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for _fight_ now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's _despite_ now,
King Charles!
You see that very great effects may be produced by very simple means.
In "Marching Along," the "swing" or "lilt" is partly due to the fact
that the three rhymes follow each other not in regular but in irregular
succession, a rhymeless measure alternating between the second and the
third rhymes, as will be plainly seen if we write the verses in another
form:
Kentish Sir _Byng_
Stood for his _king_,
Bidding the crop-headed
Parliament _swing._
But I want to explain the spirit rather than the workmanship of
Browning; and I have turned aside here to the subject of measure only
because the instances happened to be very extraordinary. The beauty of
the work is really in the glow and strength of the loyal feeling that
peals through it.
Do not suppose, however, that the poet picks out by preference the
noble or the attractive side of human feeling in any form of society,
for his subject. Quite the contrary. Most often he paints the ugly
side, even in speaking of kings and courts, nobles and princes. In the
splendid poem "Count Gismond," which I dictated last year, you may have
seen one very beautiful side of knightly character, but there were
horrible phases of human nature exhibited in the story. Browning made
the shadows very heavy, with the result that the lights appeared more
dazzling. Sometimes we have no lights--all is shadow, and sometimes
a shadow of hell. Such is the case in the horrible poem called "The
Laboratory," depicting the feelings of a jealous court-lady, as she
stands in the laboratory of a chemist who is selling her a poison with
which she intends to poison her rival in the favour of the king. The
story is laid in the time of Louis XIV, probably, when such things
did actually occur in France. A still blacker shadow, a still more
infernal picture of humanity's dark side, is "The Heretic's Tragedy,"
portraying the wicked feelings of a superstitious person while
watching a heretic being burned alive. Another frightful thing is
"The Confessional," a story of the Inquisition in Spain, showing how
the inquisitors succeeded in seizing, convicting, and burning alive a
young man, by taking advantage of the innocence of his sweetheart, who
was made to betray him through confession without knowing it. Another
piece that is ugly psychologically, is "Cristina and Monaldeschi."
Cristina was a queen of Sweden, and one of the most learned women of
her time, but very masculine; she liked to wear men's clothes and to
follow the amusements of men. She abdicated her throne, merely in order
to feel more free in her habits. It is believed that she secretly
loved her private secretary, and that he was dishonourable enough
to tell other people of his relation to her. At all events, one day
she ordered him to come into her room, and after upbraiding him with
treachery to her, she had him killed in her presence. The fact shocked
Europe a great deal at the time. Browning tries to make us understand
Cristina's feeling, and he forces us to sympathise a little with her
anger. There are multitudes of poems of this class in Browning. He
wants us to know all the strange possibilities of the human soul, bad
or good, and he never hesitates because a subject may be shocking to
weak nerves. It is just because he does not care about public feeling,
ignorant public opinion, upon these matters, that he manages to give
us such exact truth; he is not afraid. For a little bit of truth thus
exemplified--this is not ugly--let us take a little piece entitled
"Which?" Here is another picture of the manners of the old French
court, a very corrupt court and very luxurious. You must read Taine's
"Ancien Régime" to understand what its morals were. But let us turn to
the little picture. Three great ladies are talking with a priest about
love--a fashionable priest, a priest of the old age, ready to make love
or to say mass just according as it suited his private interest. A very
good priest could scarcely have existed in the court; one had to be
very clever and very subtle to live there. The conversation of these
four persons gives us a hint of the feeling of the age. Only one woman
really seems to say what she thinks; and she says what she thinks only
because she is the most clever of the three.
So, the three Court-ladies began
Their trial of who judged best
In esteeming the love of a man:
Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessed
Boy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and eager;
An Abbé crossed legs to decide on the wager.
First the Duchesse: "Mine for me--
Who were it but God's for Him,
And the King's for--who but he?
Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall brim
His cup with perfection: a lady's true lover,
He holds--save his God and his king--none above her."
"I require"--outspoke the Marquise--
"Pure thoughts, ay, but also fine deeds:
Play the paladin must he, to please
My whim, and--to prove my knight's service exceeds
Your saint's and your loyalist's praying and kneeling--
Show wounds, each wide mouth to my mercy appealing."
Then the Comtesse: "My choice be a wretch,
Mere losel in body and soul,
Thrice accurst! What care I, so he stretch
Arms to me his sole saviour, love's ultimate goal,
Out of earth and men's noise--names of 'infidel,' 'traitor,'
Cast up at him? Crown me, crown's adjudicator!"
And the Abbé uncrossed his legs,
Took snuff, a reflective pinch,
Broke silence: "The question begs
Much pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I flinch?
The love which to one and one only has reference
Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference."
The answer of the priest, giving the victory to the Comtesse, is
clever and double-edged. He probably knows everything that goes on
in the court: he knows how many lovers the Duchesse has had, and the
Marquise. He knows that their talk about religion and loyalty as the
perfections of man, are not quite sincere. Indeed, the Marquise is much
more sincere than the Duchesse; but if she were altogether sincere, she
would have recognised that her wish--her expressed wish, at least--must
appear as pure pride, not anything else. But the Comtesse tells a
bitter truth by pointing out that if it is a question of real love, the
place and station of the man can signify nothing at all; love should
be a thing of the heart, not a thing of rank and fashion. And the
priest, in supporting her claim and in saying that a true love can have
reference only to one person, really suggests to his audience, whose
love relations have doubtless been very numerous, what he thinks to be
the opinion of God on the subject. But "perhaps," as the priest utters
the word, is terrible irony. "Perhaps gains God's preference," means
"I know, of course, that in the society to which we belong, love only
for one's husband is not considered fashionable; yet the opinions of
God may not be the same as the opinions of our society. It would not be
polite of me to say directly that your opinions and God's opinions are
different, but I just hint it." It was a very queer age. Taine, in his
history of the time, tells a story about a nobleman who, on entering
his wife's room suddenly and finding her making love to another man,
took off his hat and saluted her, saying, "Oh, my dear, how can you be
so careless! Suppose it had not been your husband who opened the door!"
You must understand all this, to understand the mockery of the poem.
Then, again, you must understand the desire of the Comtesse even for
the love of a "wretch," a mere losel, as meaning that here is a woman
who deserves to be loved, but is not loved by her husband, and who has
learned that real love has a value in this world beyond all value of
rank or money or influence.
If you ask me why I have talked so much about so short a poem, the
answer is that nearly all of Browning's short poems mean a great deal,
and force us to think and to talk about them. The reason is that the
characters in these poems are really alive; they impress us exactly
as living persons do, and excite our curiosity in precisely the same
way. Accordingly, notwithstanding their many faults of construction and
obscure English, they have something of the greatness of Shakespeare's
dramas.
It is now time to turn to the study of the greatest of all Browning's
poems. Perhaps I should not call it a poem. It is rather an immense
poetic drama. As printed in this single volume it represents four
hundred and seventy-seven pages of closely printed small text. It is,
therefore, even considered as a dramatic composition, many times larger
than any true drama. But no true drama, except Shakespeare's, is more
real or more terrible. Besides, it is a purely psychological drama.
There is no scenery, no narrative in the ordinary sense. Everything is
related in the first person. The whole is divided into twelve parts,
each of which is a monologue. Nearly all of the monologues are spoken
by different persons. The first monologue is the author's own, in which
he tells us the meaning of the title and the story of the drama.
It is a true story of Italian life in the seventeenth century, the
chief incident having really occurred in the year 1698. The poet one
day found in an old Italian book shop a little book for sale, which was
the history of a celebrated criminal trial. Besides the book, which
included the speeches of the lawyers on both sides, and the evidence
given before the court, there was a good deal of old manuscript--papers
probably prepared by some lawyer of the time in connection with the
case. Browning was able to buy the whole thing for eight pence; that
small sum furnished him with material for the most enormous poem in the
English language. When he read the facts of the trial, he said he could
actually see all the characters as plainly as if they were alive, and
could even hear them speak. He soon formed in his mind the plan for his
poem; but it was a peculiar plan. The plan is indicated by the title
of "The Ring and the Book." In Italy there is a great deal of beautiful
light gold work made--for rings especially, which looks so delicate
that at first sight you cannot understand how it was made. In a gold
ring there are leaves and flowers and fruits and insects, so lightly
made that even if you let the ring fall they would be injured and
destroyed. Gold is very soft. In order to cut the gold in this way, the
goldsmith uses a hard composition with which he covers the gold work,
and after the carving and engraving have been done, this composition is
melted off, so that only the pure gold is left, with all the work upon
it. Browning says that he made his book somewhat in the same way that
the Italian goldsmith makes his ring--by the use of an alloy. The facts
of history and of law represent the gold in this case, and the poet
mixes them with an alloy of imagination, emotion, sympathy, which helps
him to make the whole story into a perfectly rounded drama, a complete
circle, a Ring. This is the meaning of the title.
I shall first tell you the story briefly, according to the historical
facts. About the year 1679 there was a family in Rome of the name
of Comparini. The family consisted only of husband and wife; but it
happened that the fact of their being without children proved a legal
obstacle in the way of obtaining some money which they greatly desired.
The wife, Violante, knew that her husband was too honest to wish to
cheat the law, so she determined to try to get the money without
letting him know her deceit in the matter. She pretended to have given
birth, unexpectedly, to a child, but the child had really been bought
from a woman of loose life--it was a very pretty female child, and was
called Francesca Pompilia. Little Pompilia was supposed to be the real
child of the Comparini; and the much desired money thus passed into
their hands. This is the first act of the tragedy.
Pompilia grew up into a wonderfully beautiful girl; and when she
was thirteen years old, many people wished to marry her. Guido
Franceschini, Count of Arezzo, noticed the girl's beauty, and heard
that she was rich. He determined to marry her if possible, chiefly for
the sake of her money. He was a wicked old man, between fifty and sixty
years of age, ugly, cunning, and poor. But he had immense influence,
both among the nobility and among the church dignitaries, on account
of his family relations; and he was himself of high rank. The marriage
was negotiated successfully. Pompilia, a child of thirteen, could not
naturally have wished to marry this horrible old man, but she had been
taught to obey her parents as she obeyed Almighty God, and when she
was told to marry him she married him without one word of complaint.
By this marriage the wicked Count got into his hands all the property
of the Comparini family, but it had been promised that the parents of
the girl were to live in the palace of the Count, and to be taken care
of for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, as soon as the Count had
everything in his hands, he turned the old parents out of his house, in
a state of absolute destitution; he had taken from them their daughter
and all their money, everything that they had in the world. This is the
second act of the tragedy.
Naturally the Comparini family were very angry. The mother of the girl
was so angry that she told her husband all about the trick which she
had played in passing off Pompilia for her own child. Pompilia, you
know, was not her real child at all. This changed the legal aspect of
the matter. Old Comparini went to the Count and said, "You took our
money, and thought that you were taking our daughter. But you must
give back that money. The girl is not our daughter; the money does not
belong to her: it will have to be given back to the government that we
deceived." This is the third act of the tragedy.
The Count was equal to the occasion. He understood the law; but he
understood it much better than the Comparini people. So long as he
kept Pompilia as his wife, he knew that he could keep the money.
If he divorced her, on the ground that she was of vulgar origin,
then he would have to give up the money. But this was not the only
alternative. There was a third possibility. If Pompilia committed
adultery, then he could either kill her or get rid of her and keep
the money notwithstanding. Pompilia was a weak child only thirteen
years old. He was a wicked and terrible man, with half a century of
experience, diabolical cunning, diabolical cruelty, and ferocious
determination. He would make her commit adultery. That would be the
simplest possible solution of the difficulty. But, strange to say,
this terrible man could not conquer that delicate child of thirteen.
First he tried to appeal to her passions, to excite her imagination
in an immoral way. But her heart was too pure to be corrupted. There
was in her no spur of lust. She was a simple good pure wife, too pure
for any wicked ideas to be planted in her mind. Then he tried force,
atrocious cruelty, horrible menace, always without letting her know
what he really intended. What he really intended was to force her to
run away from him. She could not run away except in the company of a
protector. If she ran away with a protector, then he could kill both
her and the man and claim that he had detected the two in adultery.
After having tortured the girl hideously, in every moral and immoral
way, he did succeed in getting her to ask for protection. She first
asked protection from priests and bishops. The priests and bishops were
afraid of the Count, and told her, like the cowards that they were,
that they could not help her. She wanted to become a nun. The nuns were
afraid of the Count, and refused her prayer. At last she did find one
priest, a brave man, who was willing to save her if possible. He said,
"You must run away with me, though it will look very bad; there is
no other way to help you." She ran away with him. Within twenty-four
hours the pair were overtaken by the Count and his company of armed
men. The opportunity to kill Pompilia and her "lover" had come; but the
so-called "lover," although only an honest poor priest, showed fight,
and protected Pompilia against the Count and all his followers. The
priest refused to surrender Pompilia except to the Church. The Church
arrested both. Pompilia was put into a convent for safe keeping. The
priest was tried for adultery, and acquitted. But he had done wrong by
breaking the law of the Church even for a good purpose; therefore he
was sentenced to banishment for a certain number of years. This is the
fourth act of the tragedy.
The Count finds that all his plans have failed. He has not been able
to convict his wife of adultery, although he has been able to injure
her reputation in the opinion of the public. He cannot get rid of
her, and keep her money too, except by killing her. But she is in the
convent. While he is thinking what to do, another event happens which
upsets all his calculations. Pompilia gives birth to a child of which
he certainly is the father. The money question, the legal aspect of it,
is still more complicated by the birth of the child. At once the Count
determines to kill Pompilia and her parents, out of revenge. He knows
that on certain days she goes to visit her parents. He watches for
such an occasion, and with the help of some professional murderers, he
kills the Comparini, and stabs Pompilia twenty-two times with a dagger.
He imagined that this could be done so as to remain undiscovered; he
thought that the crime could not be proved upon him. But poor Pompilia
is very hard to kill. Although her slender body was thus stabbed
through and through by a powerful man, she did not die at once; her
wonderful youth kept her alive long enough to tell the police what had
happened. The Count and his hired murderers were arrested and thrown
into prison. This is the fifth act of the tragedy.
It is one thing to find the author of a crime, and put him into
prison; it is a very different thing to convict and punish him. The
Count was very powerful with the army, with the nobility, with the
Church; everybody in his native city was more afraid of him than of
the devil. Nothing is so hard to get in this world as justice. The
Count's powerful friends and relations all united to defend him. Dukes
and great captains, cardinals and bishops and abbots and priests,
rich merchants, influential statesmen, all combined to secure his
acquittal. They obtained the services of great lawyers. They used
money and threats to corrupt witnesses or to terrify them. Yet there
was one thing necessary to secure his acquittal--evidence that the
deed, which he cannot deny, was justified by adultery. An attempt was
made to blacken the character of the murdered wife. But this evidence
was overthrown in the court, and the judges pronounced sentence of
death. Thereupon all the Count's friends made an appeal to the Pope;
the Pope can save the Count, if pressure be brought of a sufficient
sort upon his judgment. But the Pope happened to be a good man, and a
keen man. He examines the evidence. He sees the truth. He understands
the innocence and beauty of the character of the murdered Pompilia;
he comprehends also the innocence and the courage of the priest who
tried to defend her. He sends word to the prison that the Count must
be executed immediately. So justice is obtained, at least so far as
the punishment of murder can be called justice. But what becomes of
the money? The nuns of the convent in which Pompilia died, they get
the money by very discreditable means, and they keep it. The terrible
Franceschini family cannot try to get that money from the convent; for
the convent means the power of the Church; and the power of the Church
is even more terrible than the power of the Franceschini. Of course the
Pope knows nothing of this matter; the Pope is the finest character
in the whole story. Historically this Pope was Innocent XII, but his
character, as drawn in the study of Browning, is much more like the
character of one of his predecessors, Innocent XI.
Now I have told you the story, or rather the history of the real
tragedy, which happened something more than two hundred years ago. You
can imagine how complicated the whole thing is, from the very short
summary which I have made. Now if you had to treat a story like this
dramatically, how would you do it? where would you begin? in what way
could you hope to make artistic order out of such confusion? The task
might have puzzled even Shakespeare. It puzzled Browning for more than
a year before he felt how the thing was possible to manage. When I tell
you the way in which he treated the whole material of the case, I think
you will perceive that only a genius could have thought of the way.
As I have said, Browning divides his poem into twelve parts; and each
part is a monologue. I shall now give you in paragraphs as brief as
possible, the subject of each monologue. You had better follow the
order of the book, using Roman numerals at the beginning of each
paragraph, and putting the title of the book in Italic letters:
I. _The Ring and the Book._ Interpretation of the title, and history of
the crime and the trial as told in the ancient legal documents. This
monologue represents the author's speaking only.
II. _Half-Rome._ Public opinion is always divided upon any
extraordinary event. Browning here tries to give us one side of public
opinion in the year 1698, upon the Franceschini murder. The monologue
represents the ideas of a man of the society of that time.
III. _The Other Half-Rome._ This monologue represents the contrary
opinion on the subject. But it is a curious fact that neither form of
public opinion even approaches the truth. Both sides are absolutely
mistaken, and very unjust to poor Pompilia.
IV. _Tertium Quid_ (i.e., "a third somebody" or "party"). This opinion
is quite different from that of the two halves of Rome, but it is
equally far from the truth.
V. _Count Guido Franceschini._ Notice that although the three forms
of opinion previously expressed all contradict each other, and all
are untrue, nevertheless every one of them seems true while you read
it. So does the story of Count Guido Franceschini, the murderer, in
his own defence. Although you have been prejudiced against him from
the beginning, when you first read his side of the story you cannot
help thinking that it is a very reasonable and very true story. He
says in substance that he made a great mistake in marrying so young a
girl, that she disliked him, that he did everything in his power to
obtain her affection and to make her happy, that she ran away from
his house with a monk, that even after that he was willing to make
every allowance for her, but that at last it was impossible for him,
without losing all self-respect, not to punish her crimes, and those of
her infamous parents. He makes an excellent speech, this Count Guido
Franceschini.
VI. _Giuseppe Caponsacchi._ This is the good priest, the true loyal
man that tried to save Pompilia. He tells his story with perfect
truthfulness and simplicity, and you know that it is true. But at
the same time you feel that no one can believe it. The evidence is
against the priest. Although he is innocent, everybody laughs at his
protestations of innocence.
VII. _Pompilia._ This is the most horrible part of the book. It is
a monologue by Pompilia telling of the cruelty and the atrocious
wickedness of her husband. It makes your blood run cold to read it, but
you know that nobody would believe that story in a court of justice.
It is too terrible, too unnatural. Those who hear it only think that
Pompilia is a very cunning wicked woman, trying to make people hate her
husband, in order to excuse her own adultery.
VIII. _Dominus Hyocinthus de Archangelis_, _Pauperum Procurator._ The
speech of the lawyer for the defence, very cautious, very learned, very
cunning. It was in those days the custom to argue such cases partly in
Latin, and the papers were made out in Latin. "Dominus," "lord," was
the Latin title of lawyer. "Pauperum Procurator" means the advocate
or counsel of the poor; persons without money enough to procure legal
services in the ordinary way, might be furnished with a lawyer employed
by the state.
IX. _Juris Doctor Johannes-Battista_, _Bottinius_, _&c._ The speech of
the lawyer on the other side, equally learned, equally cunning, and
equally cautious. The reader is forced to the conclusion that neither
of these lawyers really understands the truth of the case. Both are
telling untruth, and both are afraid of the truth. But you will notice
that the lawyer who should speak in favour of Pompilia really does her
more harm than the lawyer whose duty it is to speak against her. This
is the result of cowardice and self-interest on both sides.
X. _The Pope._ A beautiful study of character. For the first time we
learn the truth in this tenth monologue, so that we feel it is all
there, and not to be mistaken by any one who hears it.
XI. _Guido._ Horrible. The murderer's confession of his own character.
XII. _The Booh and the Ring._ Conclusion, and moral commentary.
I believe there is only part of this whole drama that has been
seriously called into question by critics--the last line of the
eleventh monologue, where Guido cries out, "Pompilia, will you let them
murder me?" The question is whether the poet is right in representing
this terrible man in such a passion of fear that he calls to his dead
wife to help him. Certainly it is a general rule that the man capable
of studied cruelty to women and children--to the weak, in short--is a
coward at heart. But there are exceptions to this rule, and a great
many remarkable Italian exceptions. Again many tribes of savages
contradict the rule, being at once brave and cruel. I think that the
criticism in this case may have been largely inspired by the history
of certain Italian families, who were cruel indeed, but ferociously
brave as well. However, Browning studied the facts for his characters
very closely, and he may be right in representing Guido as a coward. He
has been proved to be both treacherous and avaricious by the evidence
in the case, and although prudence may sometimes be mistaken for
cowardice, there were some facts brought out by witnesses that seem to
show the man to have been as much of a coward as he was a miser.
Now observe the immense psychological work that this treatment of
the story involves--the study of nine or ten completely different
characters, no one of whom could resemble a character of the nineteenth
century, not at least in the matter of thought and speech. To create
these was almost as wonderful as to call the dead of two hundred years
ago out of their graves, a veritable necromancy. This work alone
would make the book a marvellous thing. But the book is more than
marvellous; it is in the highest degree philosophically instructive.
Almost anything that happens in this world is judged somewhat after
the fashion of the judgments delivered in "The Ring and the Book."
For example, let us suppose an episode in Tokyo to-day, rather than
an episode in Italy two hundred years ago, a case of killing. At
first when the mere fact of the killing is known, there is a great
curiosity as to the reason of it, and different newspapers publish
different stories about it, and different people who knew both parties
express different opinions as to the why and how. You may be sure that
none of these accounts is perfectly true--they could not be true,
because those from whom the accounts come have no perfect knowledge
of the antecedents of the crime. But presently the case comes before
the criminal court, with lawyers on both sides, to prosecute and
to defend. Each does his duty the very best he can, one trying to
convict, one trying to secure acquittal. But do these know the real
story from beginning to end? Probably not. It is very seldom indeed
that a lawyer can learn the inside, the psychological, history of a
crime. He learns only the naked facts, and he must theorise largely
from these facts. Finally the judge pronounces judgment. Does the judge
know all about the matter? Almost certainly not. His duty is fixed
by law in rigid lines, and he cannot depart from those lines; he can
sentence only according to the broad conclusions which he draws from
the facts. And after the whole thing is over, still the real secrets
of the two parties, of the criminal and the victim, remain forever
unknown in a majority of cases. Now what does this prove? It proves
that human judgment is necessarily very imperfect, and that nothing is
so difficult to learn as the absolute truth of motives and of feelings,
even when the truth of the facts is unquestionable. Browning's book
tells us more than this; it shows us that in some cases, where power
and crime are on one side, and poverty and virtue upon the other, the
chances against truth being able to make itself heard are just about a
thousand to one. Of course the world is a little better to-day than two
hundred years ago; murder is less common, justice is less corrupt. But
allowing for these things, the chances of a man persecuted by a rich
corporation, without reason, perhaps with monstrous cruelty, to obtain
even a hearing, would be scarcely better than those of Pompilia in the
story of "The Ring and the Book."
So much for the teaching. There is more than teaching, however; there
are studies of character truly Shakespearian. Pompilia is quite as
sweet a woman as Shakespeare's Cordelia. Her sweetness is altogether
shown by a multitude of details, little words and thoughts and
feelings, that we find scattered through her account of her terrible
sufferings. The author never interrupts his speakers; he makes them
describe themselves. In the case of the Pope, we are brought into
the presence of a very superior intellect--one-sided, perhaps, but
immensely strong in the direction of moral judgment; the mind of
an old man whose entire life has been spent in the finest study of
human nature from an ethical point of view, of human nature in its
manifestations of good and evil. Nothing but this long experience helps
him to see exactly how matters stand. The evidence brought before
him is hopelessly confused, and where not confused, the facts are
against Pompilia and strongly in favour of the murderer. Moreover, the
murderer is powerful in the Church, with all the influence of clergy
and nobility upon his side. But the old man can see through the entire
plot; he cuts it open, gets to the heart of it, perceives everything
that was hidden. What is the lesson of his character? I think it is
this, that a pure nature obtains, simply by reason of its unselfishness
and purity, certain classes of perceptions that very cunning minds
never can obtain. Very cunning people are peculiarly apt to make false
judgments, because they are particularly in the habit of looking for
selfish motives. They judge other hearts by their own. A pure nature
does not do this; it considers the motive in the last rather than
the first place, preferring to judge kindly so long as the evidence
allows it. Intellectual training cannot always compensate for purity of
character.
The studies of Guido himself, which are very horrible, are especially
studies of the man of the Renaissance. We have had other studies of
this kind in other poems of Browning, some of which I have already
quoted to you. But there is a special moral in this study of Guido,
the moral that a really wicked man must hate a really good woman,
simply for the reason that she is good. Then we have in the two
lawyers two pictures of conflicting selfish interests, of selfishness
and falsehood combined to defeat the truth, not because truth is
necessarily unpleasant to the lawyer, but because he wants to make
no enemies by exposing it. This is the way of the world to-day, and
although these men speak the language of the sixteenth or seventeenth
century, their feelings are those of the shrewd and selfish modern man
of society, the man who has no courage in the face of wrong, if his
pocket happens to be in danger. We like only three characters in the
whole drama--Pompilia, the Pope, and Caponsacchi. Yet there is nothing
very remarkable about Caponsacchi, except in the way of contrast. He is
the one character who, although his life and interests and reputation
are at stake, boldly risks everything simply for a generous impulse.
Happily he is not extraordinary; if he were, one would lose faith in so
terrible a world. Happily we know that wherever and whenever a great
wrong is done, there will always be a Caponsacchi to speak out and to
do all that is possible against it. But Caponsacchi is crushed; and
even the Pope is obliged to punish him for doing what is noble. This is
one of the moral problems of the composition. The man who wants to do
right, and cannot do right except by disobedience to law, may be loved
for doing right, but he must be punished nevertheless for breaking the
law. Does this mean that he is punished for doing right? I think we
should not look at it in that way. The truth is that the observance of
discipline must be insisted upon even in exceptional cases, because
it regards the happiness of millions. We cannot allow men to decide
for themselves when discipline should be broken. Caponsacchi is thus a
martyr in the cause of individual justice. He has to pay, justly, the
penalty of setting a dangerous example to thousands of others. But he
is not on that account less estimable and lovable, and even the Pope,
in punishing him, gives him words of warm praise.
The consideration of this huge poem ought also to tempt some of you
at a later day to try some application of its method to some incident
of real life. I do not now mean in poetry, but in prose. If you know
enough about human nature to make the attempt, there is no better way
of telling a story. It was a pure invention on the part of Browning,
and we may call it a new method. But of course one must have a very
great power of reading character to be able to do anything of the same
kind.
This is the most colossal attempt in psychology made by Browning,
but a large number of his longer poems are worked out in precisely
the same manner as single monologues. "The Bishop Orders his Tomb,"
another Italian study, gives us all the ugly side of the Renaissance
character--its selfishness, lust, hypocrisy, and ambition, together
with that extraordinary sense of art which gave a certain greatness
even to very bad men. "Bishop Blougram's Apology" (which is said to
be a satire upon a famous English Cardinal) is quite modern, but it
is almost equally ugly. It shows us a very powerful mind arguing,
with irresistible logic and merciless cleverness, in an absolutely
unworthy cause. The bishop has heard a young free thinker observe
that the bishop could not believe the doctrines of the church, he
was too clever a bishop for that. So he calls the young man to him,
and utterly crushes him by a very clever lecture, in which he proves
that belief or unbelief are equally foolish, that right and wrong are
interchangeable, that black may be white or white black, that common
sense and a knowledge of the world represent the highest wisdom, and
that the free thinker is an absolute fool because he tells the world
that he is a free thinker. We know that the bishop is morally wrong
the whole way through, that every statement which he makes is wrong;
yet it would take a clever man to prove him wrong. The logic is too
well managed. Few psychological studies are comparable to this. "Mr.
Sludge, 'the Medium,'" said to be a satire upon the great Scottish
spiritualist and humbug, Home, shows us another kind of quackery; a man
who lives by imposture explains to us how he can practise imposture
with a good moral conscience, and under the belief that imposture is a
benefit to mankind. He talks so well that he obliges even the person
who has detected his imposture to lend him or give him a considerable
sum of money--in short, he can trick even those who know his trickery.
But see how different these beings are from each other, and how
different the studies of their character must necessarily prove. Yet
Browning seems never to find any difficulty in painting the mind of
a man, whether good or bad, whether of to-day or of the Middle Ages.
"Paracelsus," for example, is a mediæval character; Browning makes
him tell us the story of his researches into alchemy and magic, makes
him impart to us the secret ambition that once filled him, and the
consequences of disappointment and of failure. "Sordello," again, is
of the thirteenth century; you will find his name in the great poem
of Dante. Sordello was a poet and troubadour, who tried to succeed
socially and politically by the exercise of a brilliant talent, and
almost did succeed. Browning's poem on him is the whole story of a
human soul; only, it is the man himself who tells it. And the moral is
that suffering and sorrow bring wisdom. How various and how wonderful
is this range of character-study! Yet I have mentioned only a few out
of scores and scores of compositions. I cannot insist too much upon
this quality of versatility in Browning, this display of Shakespearian
power. In all Tennyson you will find scarcely more than twenty
really distinct characters; and some of these are but half drawn. In
Rossetti you will find scarcely more than half a dozen, mostly women.
In Swinburne there is no character whatever, except the poet's own,
outside of that grand singer's dramatic work. But in Browning there
are hundreds of distinct characters, and there is nothing at all vague
about them; they speak, they move, they act with real and not with
artificial life. Sometimes a character may occupy a hundred pages,
sometimes it may be drawn in half a dozen lines, but the drawing is
equally distinct and equally true. And there is scarcely any kind of
human nature of which we have no picture. Even the lowest type of
savage is drawn, the primitive savage, for "Caliban upon Setebos" gives
us the thoughts and feelings of such a savage about God--God being
figured in the savage mind, of course, as only a much stronger and
larger kind of savage, possessing magical power.
In all his poems, as I said, Browning is essentially dramatic. Quite
rightly has he grouped several collections of short poems under
titles which suggest this fact, such as "Dramatic Idyls," "Dramatis
Personæ," "Men and Women." Sometimes the poet himself is the only
speaker and actor, giving us his own particular feelings of the moment;
but in the most noteworthy cases of this kind he is talking, not to
the reader, but to ghosts. For instance, "Parleyings with Certain
People of Importance in Their Day," are imaginary conversations which
Browning holds with the ghosts of men long dead--writers, philosophers,
statesmen, priests. It is in this collection that you will find the
remarkable verses on the great poem of Smart, which revived Smart's
work for modern readers after a hundred years of oblivion. I cannot
find time to tell you about the other personages of these imaginary
conversations; but I may mention that Mandeville is the subject of
a special conversation, and that you will find the whole germ of
Mandeville's philosophy in this composition. But let us turn to some
consideration of Browning's work in the true dramatic form--in plays,
tragedies or comedies, and in translations of plays from the Greek.
It would require several lectures to give a summary of Browning's
plays; and they do not always represent his best genius. For it is a
curious fact that this man who, as a simple poet, was the greatest of
English dramatists after Shakespeare, was rarely quite successful when
he attempted the true dramatic form. He was great in the monologue; he
was not great upon the stage. Some of his plays were acted, such as
"Strafford" and "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon"; but they did not prove to
be worthy of great success. "In a Balcony," which could not be put upon
the stage at all, is much better; and perhaps it is better because it
consists only of two monologues, or rather of a conversation between
two persons; for the part taken by the other actors is altogether
insignificant. "The Return of the Druses" and "Luria," like Tennyson's
dramas, are excellent poetry, but they are not suited for the stage.
The best of all Browning's dramas, the only one that I really want
you to read, is "A Soul's Tragedy." I may say a word about the plot
of this. It is a story of friendship between two young men, patriots
and statesmen. In a political crisis one of the young men stabs a
political enemy, and has fled from the country. But before fleeing, he
trusts all his interests and his property to his friend, and asks the
friend also to take care of his betrothed. What does the friend do?
Exposed to great temptation, he betrays his trust. He sees a chance to
obtain political power by pretending to be the man who really stabbed
the politician on the other side--the tyrant of an hour. The people
acclaim him as their saviour, make him dictator. Then he goes further
in his treachery, by making love to his friend's sweetheart. At last
a Roman statesman, Ogniben, appears upon the scene, with power to
crush the revolution, or to do anything that he pleases. But Ogniben
is a terribly clever man, and he does not want bloodshed; he knows the
character of the new dictator, and determines to play with him, as a
cat with a mouse. First he flatters him enough to make him betray all
his weaknesses, his vanities, his fears. Then, at quite the unexpected
moment, he summons the young man who had run away, I mean the friend
betrayed, and brings him face to face with the treacherous dictator.
The result is of course a moral collapse; that is the real Soul's
Tragedy. I am giving only a thin skeleton of the plot. But you ought
to read this play, if only for the wonderful studies of character in
it, not the least remarkable of which is the awful Ogniben, far-seeing,
cunning beyond cunning, strong beyond force, who can unravel plots
with a single word and pierce all masks of hypocrisy with a single
glance; but whom you feel to be, in a large way, generous and kindly,
and so far as possible, just. I think not only that this is Browning's
greatest play, but that as a play it is psychologically superior to
anything else which has been done in Victorian drama. It is not fit for
the stage, and it is not even very great as poetry--indeed half of it
or more is prose, and rather eccentric prose; but it offers wonderful
examples of analytical power not surpassed in any other contemporary
poet or dramatist.
About Browning's translations from the Greek poets, I scarcely know
what to say. Most critics of authority acknowledge that Browning
has made the most faithful metrical translation of the "Agamemnon"
of Æschylus. But they also declare that in spite of its exactness,
the Greek spirit and feeling have entirely vanished under Browning's
treatment. My own feeling about the matter is that you would do much
better to read the prose translation of Æschylus. Yet I could not
say this in regard to Browning's translation of the "Alkestis" of
Euripides, which you will find embodied in the text of "Balaustian's
Adventure." Balaustian is a Greek dancing girl. She is taken prisoner
with many Athenian people at the time of the disastrous Greek
expedition to Syracuse, which you must have read about in history.
To please her captors, she repeats for them the wonderful verses of
Euripides, by which they are so much affected that they pardon both her
and her companions. This incident is founded upon fact, and Browning
uses it very well to introduce his translation. Perhaps the genius of
Euripides was closer to the genius of Browning than that of Æschylus;
for this translation is incomparably better from an emotional point of
view than the other. It is very beautiful indeed; and even after having
read the Greek play in a good prose translation, I think that you would
find both pleasure and profit in reading Browning's verses.
The important thing now for you to get clearly into your minds is one
general fact about this enormously various work of Browning. Suppose
somebody should ask you what is different in the work of Browning from
that of all other modern poets, what would you be able to answer? But
unless you can answer, the whole value of this lecture would be lost
upon you. Browning himself has excellently answered, in a little verse
which forms the prologue to the second series of the Dramatic Idyls.
"You are sick, that's sure,"--they say:
"Sick of what?"--they disagree.
"'Tis the brain,"--thinks Doctor A;
"'Tis the heart,"--holds Doctor B.
"The liver--my life I'd lay!"
"The lungs!" "The lights!"
Ah me!
So ignorant of man's whole
Of bodily organs plain to see--
So sage and certain, frank and free,
About what's under lock and key--
Man's soul!
That is to say, even the wisest doctors cannot agree about the simple
fact of a man's sickness, notwithstanding the fact that they have
studied anatomy and physiology and osteology, and have examined every
part of the body. Yet, although the wisest men of science are obliged
to confess that they cannot tell you everything about the body, which
can be seen, even ignorant persons think that they know everything
about the soul of a man, which cannot be seen at all, and about the
mind of a man, to which only God himself has the key. Now all the
purpose of Browning's work and life has been to show people what a
very wonderful and complex and incomprehensible thing human character
is--therefore to show that the most needful of all study is the study
of human nature. He is especially the poet of character, the only
one who has taught us, since Shakespeare's time, what real men and
women are, how different each from every other, how unclassifiable
according to any general rule, how differently noble at their best,
how differently wicked at their worst, how altogether marvellous
and infinitely interesting. His mission has been the mission of a
great dramatic psychologist. And if anybody ever asks you what was
Robert Browning, you can answer that he was the great Poet of Human
Character--not of character of any one time or place or nation, but of
all times and places and peoples of which it was possible for him to
learn anything.
Here we must close our little studies of Victorian poets--that is to
say, of the four great ones. I hope that you will be able to summarise
in your own mind the main characteristic of each, as I have tried to
indicate in the case of Browning. Remember Tennyson as the greatest
influence upon the language of his mother country, because of his
exquisiteness of workmanship and his choice of English subjects in
preference to all others. He is the most English of all the four.
Remember Rossetti as being altogether different in his personality and
feeling--a man of the Middle Ages born into the nineteenth century, and
in the nineteenth century still the poet of mediæval feeling. And think
of Swinburne--the greatest musician of all, the most perfect master of
form and sound in modern poetry--as an expounder of Neo-Paganism, of
another Renaissance in the world of literature.