"But at the last, why, I seemed left alive
Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,
To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared
When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things.
* * *
Yet now I wake in such decrepitude
As I had slidden down and fallen afar,
Past even the presence of my former self,
Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,
Till I am found away from my own world,
Feeling for foothold through a blank profound."
The poem entitled "Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the
Island," has for a motto, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an
one as thyself." Caliban talks to himself about "that other, whom his
dam called God." Setebos is the great First Cause as conceived and
dreaded in the heart of a Caliban. The poem is by no means a caricature
of the natural theology which springs from selfishness and fear. All the
phenomena of the world are neither
"right nor wrong in Him,
Nor kind nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
'Am strong myself, compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so."
The materialist who believes in Forces is brother to the Calvinist who
preaches Sovereignty and the Divine Decrees. The preacher lets loose
upon the imagination of mankind a Setebos, who after death will plague
his enemies and feast his friends. The materialist believes, with
Caliban, that
"He doth his worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die through pain,
Saving last pain for worst,--with which, an end."
The grave irony of this poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his
own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of
these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In
both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is
the faith of his whole soul in the excellence of that world whose beauty
he interprets, of the human nature whose capacity he does so much to
"keep in repute," and of the Infinite Love.
"Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw Power, shall see Love perfect too:
Perfect I call thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"
We find in this new volume more distinct and tranquil expressions of Mr.
Browning's thought upon the relation of the finite to the infinite than
he has given us before. And his pen has turned with freedom and
satisfaction towards these things, as if the imagination had broken new
outlets for itself through the world's beautiful horizon into the great
sea. How "like one entire and perfect chrysolite" is the little piece
called "Prospice"! But we are all the more surprised to see occasionally
a touch of the genuine British denseness, whenever he recollects that
there are such people as Strauss, Bishop Colenso, and the men of the
"Essays and Reviews" prowling around the preserve where the ill-kept
Thirty-Nine Articles still find a little short grass to nibble. When we
read the last three verses of "Gold Hair," we set him down for a
High-Church bigot: the English discussions upon points of exegesis and
theology appear to him threatening to prove the Christian faith false,
but for his part he still sees reasons to suppose it true, and this,
among others, that it taught Original Sin, the Corruption of Man's
Heart! We escape from this to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" for reassurance, not
greatly minding the inconsistency that then appears, but confirmed in an
old opinion of ours, that John Bull, in this matter of theology, has his
mumps and scarlatina very late, and they are likely to go hard with a
constitution that is weaned from the pure truth of things.
"Gold Hair," notwithstanding its picturesque lines, is weak and
inconclusive. Its moral is conventional, while the incident is too
far-fetched for sympathy. The series of little poems called "James Lee"
is full of beauties, but it is too vague to make a firm impression. We
suppose it tells the story of love that exaggerates a common nature,
clings to it, and shrivels away. What can be finer than the way in which
an unsatisfied heart makes the wind the interpreter of its pain and
dread? This is the sixth poem, "Under the Cliff."
"Or wouldst thou rather that I understand
Thy will to help me?--like the dog I found
Once, pacing sad this solitary strand,
Who would not take my food, poor hound,
But whined and licked my hand."
But in this very poem the figure of the nun is artificial, and
interrupts the pathetic feeling. And we cannot make anything out of the
piece, "Beside the Drawing-Board," unless we first detach it from its
position in the series, and like it alone. On the whole, many fine lines
are here, but no real person and no poetic impression.
Neither the dramatic nor the lyrical quality appears in this volume as
it did once in the splendid "Bells and Pomegranates," which gave us such
vivid shapes, and emotions so consistent and sustained, even though they
were so often flawed by over-reflection. In this volume the purposes are
less palpable, and the pen seems to have pursued them with less tenacity
than usual. It has the air of having been scraped together. Yet how
charming is "Confessions," and "Youth and Art," and "A Likeness"!
Besides these, the best pieces are those which touch upon the highest
themes.
"Mr. Sludge, the Medium," cannot be called a poem. It would not be
possible to write satire, epic, idyl, not even elegy, upon that
"rat-hole philosophy," as Mr. Emerson once styled the new fetichism of
the mahogany tables. It has not one element that asks the sense of
beauty to incorporate it, or challenges the weapon of wit to transfix
it. It is humiliating, but not pathetic, not even when yearning hearts
are trying to pretend that their first-born vibrates to them through a
stranger's and a hireling's mind. It is not even grotesque, but it is
gross, and flat, and stale; its messages are fatuous, its machinery the
rickety heirlooms of old humbugs of Greece and Alexandria. No thrill, no
terror, no true awe, nothing but "goose-flesh" and disgust, creep from
the medium's presence. Pegasus need not be saddled; summon, rather, the
police.
Yet this composition, which Mr. Browning must have undertaken in a
moment of high indignation, with the motive of self-relief, is full of
common sense. Mr. Sludge's vindication of his career turns upon the
point that people like on the whole to be deceived, especially in
matters relating to the invisible world. Sludge must be right in this;
otherwise the theologians would not have had such a successful run. The
facile and eager "circle" betrays the imaginative medium into reporting
what it appears most to desire. The superstition of the people excites
and feeds his own. He is only one against a crowd which deluges him with
its expectation, and resents a scarcity of the supernatural. Mr. Sludge
is not so much to blame: the people at length push the thing so far that
he is obliged to cheat in self-defence. And when a man tasks his wits
successfully, if it be only to mislead the witless, he has a sense of
satisfaction in the effort akin to that of the rhetorician and the
quack.
But shrewdness and good sense cannot make a poem by assuming the measure
of blank verse. And a few Yankee phrases are pasted into Mr. Sludge's
talk, such as "stiffish cock-tail," "V-notes," "sniggering," allusions
to "Greeley's newspaper," Beacon Street, etc.: there is no character in
them at all. Mr. Sludge is a bad Yankee, as well as impudent pleader.
The lines never sparkle, even with the poet's indignation, but they seem
to be all the time blown into a forced vivacity and heat. Nemesis
attends the poet who plunges his arm for a subject into this burrow of
Spiritualism.
Let us pass from this to note the noble lesson that the last poem,
entitled "Epilogue," conveys. Three speakers tell in turn their feeling
of the Divine Presence. The first intones the old Hebrew notion, loved
by the childhood of all races and countries, that the Lord's Face fills
His earthly temple at stated periods, culminating with the human glory
of psalms and hallelujahs, to absorb and shine in the rejoicing of the
worshippers, to sink back again into the invisible upon the dying
strain. The second speaker describes the reaction, when the enthusiastic
belief of early times is replaced by a dull sense that no Face shines,
by a doubt if beyond the darkness and the distance there be yet a God
who will answer to the old rapture, a sun to rise when man's heart
rises, a love corresponding to his ecstasy:--
"Where may hide what came and loved our clay?
How shall the sage detect in yon expanse
The star which chose to stoop and stay for us?
Unroll the records!"
But the third speaker bids the records be closed, that man may worship
the God who lives, instead of regretting that He lived of old. Take the
least man, observe his head and heart, find how he differs from every
other man; see how Nature by degrees grows around him, to nourish,
infold, and set him off, to enrich him with opportunities, as if he were
her only foster-child, and to flatter thus every other man in turn,
making him her darling as though in expectation of finding no other,
till, having extorted all his worth and beauty, and cherished him to the
utmost of his possible life, she rolls away elsewhere, continually
keeping up this pageant of humanity:--
"Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet-calls?
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows!"
This is the true religion, hallowing the poet's gifts and inviting them
to celebrate and express it. We wish that the lines would let their
meaning meet us with a more level gaze. In the poems of this class there
is riper thought and a clearer intuition, toward which all the previous
poems of Mr. Browning appear to have struggled, faring from the East to
contribute myrrh, frankincense, and gems to this simplicity.