'The sanity of true genius' was a happy phrase of Charles Lamb's. Our
greatest poets were our sanest men. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare,
Milton, and Wordsworth might have defied even a mad doctor to prove his
worst.
To extol sanity ought to be unnecessary in an age which boasts its
realism; but yet it may be doubted whether, if the author of the phrase
just quoted were to be allowed once more to visit the world he loved
so well and left so reluctantly, and could be induced to forswear his
Elizabethans and devote himself to the literature of the day, he would
find many books which his fine critical faculty would allow him to
pronounce 'healthy,' as he once pronounced 'John Buncle' to be in the
presence of a Scotchman, who could not for the life of him understand
how a book could properly be said to enjoy either good or bad health.
But, however this may be, this much is certain, that lucidity is one
of the chief characteristics of sanity. A sane man ought not to be
unintelligible. Lucidity is good everywhere, for all time and in all
things, in a letter, in a speech, in a book, in a poem. Lucidity is not
simplicity. A lucid poem is not necessarily an easy one. A great poet
may tax our brains, but he ought not to puzzle our wits. We may often
have to ask in Humility, What _does_ he mean? but not in despair, What
_can_ he mean?
Dreamy and inconclusive the poet sometimes, nay, often, cannot help
being, for dreaminess and inconclusiveness are conditions of thought
when dwelling on the very subjects that most demand poetical treatment.
Misty, therefore, the poet has our kind permission sometimes to be; but
muddy, never! A great poet, like a great peak, must sometimes be
allowed to have his head in the clouds, and to disappoint us of the wide
prospect we had hoped to gain; but the clouds which envelop him must be
attracted to, and not made by him.
In a sentence, though the poet may give expression to what Wordsworth
has called 'the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible
world,' we, the much-enduring public who have to read his poems, are
entitled to demand that the unintelligibility of which we are made to
feel the weight, should be all of it the world's, and none of it merely
the poet's.
We should not have ventured to introduce our subject with such very
general and undeniable observations, had not experience taught us that
the best way of introducing any subject is by a string of platitudes,
delivered after an oracular fashion. They arouse attention, without
exhausting it, and afford the pleasant sensation of thinking, without
any of the trouble of thought. But, the subject once introduced, it
becomes necessary to proceed with it.
In considering whether a poet is intelligible and lucid, we ought not to
grope and grub about his work in search of obscurities and oddities, but
should, in the first instance at all events, attempt to regard his
whole scope and range; to form some estimate, if we can, of his general
purport and effect, asking ourselves, for this purpose, such questions
as these: How are we the better for him? Has he quickened any passion,
lightened any burden, purified any taste? Does he play any real part
in our lives? When we are in love, do we whisper him in our lady's ear?
When we sorrow, does he ease our pain? Can he calm the strife of mental
conflict? Has he had anything to say, which wasn't twaddle, on those
subjects which, elude analysis as they may, and defy demonstration as
they do, are yet alone of perennial interest--
'On man, on nature, and on human life,'
on the pathos of our situation, looking back on to the irrevocable and
forward to the unknown? If a poet has said, or done, or been any of
these things to an appreciable extent, to charge him with obscurity is
both folly and ingratitude.
But the subject may be pursued further, and one may be called upon to
investigate this charge with reference to particular books or poems.
In Browning's case this fairly may be done; and then another crop of
questions arises, such as: What is the book about, _i. e._, with what
subject does it deal, and what method of dealing does it employ? Is it
didactical, analytical, or purely narrative? Is it content to describe,
or does it aspire to explain? In common fairness these questions must be
asked and answered, before we heave our critical half-bricks at strange
poets. One task is of necessity more difficult than another. Students of
geometry, who have pushed their researches into that fascinating science
so far as the fifth proposition of the first book, commonly called the
_Pons Asinorum_ (though now that so many ladies read Euclid, it ought,
in common justice to them, to be at least sometimes called the _Pons
Asinarum_), will agree that though it may be more difficult to prove
that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that
if the equal sides be produced, the angles on the other side of the base
shall be equal, than it was to describe an equilateral triangle on a
given finite straight line; yet no one but an ass would say that the
fifth proposition was one whit less intelligible than the first. When we
consider Mr. Browning in his later writings, it will be useful to bear
this distinction in mind.
Our first duty, then, is to consider Mr. Browning in his whole scope and
range, or, in a word, generally. This is a task of such dimensions
and difficulty as, in the language of joint-stock prospectuses, 'to
transcend individual enterprise,' and consequently, as we all know, a
company has been recently floated, or a society established, having Mr.
Browning for its principal object. It has a president, two secretaries,
male and female, and a treasurer. You pay a guinea, and you become a
member. A suitable reduction is, I believe, made in the unlikely event
of all the members of one family flocking to be enrolled. The existence
of this society is a great relief, for it enables us to deal with our
unwieldy theme in a light-hearted manner, and to refer those who have
a passion for solid information and profound philosophy to the printed
transactions of this learned society, which, lest we should forget all
about it, we at once do.
When you are viewing a poet generally, as is our present plight, the
first question is: When was he born? The second, When did he (to use
a favourite phrase of the last century, now in disuse)--When did he
commence author? The third, How long did he keep at it? The fourth, How
much has he written? And the fifth may perhaps be best expressed in the
words of Southey's little Peterkin:
'"What good came of it all at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.'
Mr. Browning was born in 1812; he commenced author with the fragment
called 'Pauline,' published in 1833. He is still writing, and his works,
as they stand upon my shelves--for editions vary--number twenty-three
volumes. Little Peterkin's question is not so easily answered; but,
postponing it for a moment, the answers to the other four show that
we have to deal with a poet, more than seventy years old, who has been
writing for half a century, and who has filled twenty-three volumes.
The Browning Society at all events has assets. The way I propose to deal
with this literary mass is to divide it in two, taking the year 1864 as
the line of cleavage. In that year the volume called 'Dramatis Personae'
was published, and then nothing happened till the year 1868, when our
poet presented the astonished English language with the four volumes and
the 21,116 lines called 'The Ring and the Book,' a poem which it may
be stated, for the benefit of that large, increasing, and highly
interesting class of persons who prefer statistics to poetry, is longer
than Pope's 'Homer's Iliad' by exactly 2,171 lines. We thus begin with
'Pauline' in 1833, and end with 'Dramatis Personae' in 1864. We then
begin again with 'The Ring and the Book,' in 1868; but when or where
we shall end cannot be stated. 'Sordello,' published in 1840, is better
treated apart, and is therefore excepted from the first period, to which
chronologically it belongs.
Looking then at the first period, we find in its front eight plays:
1. 'Strafford,' written in 1836, when its author was twenty-four years
old, and put upon the boards of Covent Garden Theatre on the 1st of May,
1837, Macready playing Strafford, and Miss Helen Faucit Lady Carlisle.
It was received with much enthusiasm; but the company was rebellious and
the manager bankrupt; and after running five nights, the man who played
Pym threw up his part, and the theatre was closed.