"Old Pictures in Florence." } Dramatic Lyrics.
"Respectability." } Published in "Men
"Popularity." } and Women."
"Master Hugues of Saxe-gotha." } 1855.
"A Light Woman." Dramatic Romances. Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.
"Transcendentalism." ("Men and Women.") 1855.
"How it Strikes a Contemporary." ("Men and Women.") 1855.
"Dîs aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours." ("Dramatis
Personæ.") 1864.
"At the Mermaid." }
"House." }
"Shop." } "Pacchiarotto, and other
"Pisgah Sights," I. and II. } Poems." 1876.
"Bifurcation." }
"Epilogue." }
The first and fourth of these are significant from the insight they give
into Mr. Browning's conception of art. We must allow, in reading them,
for the dramatic and therefore temporary mood in which they were
written, and deduct certain utterances which seem inconsistent with the
breadth of the author's views. But they reflect him truly in this
essential fact, that he considers art as subordinate to life, and only
valuable in so far as it expresses it. This means, not that his standard
is realistic: but that it is entirely human; it could scarcely be
otherwise in a mind so devoted to the study of human life; but these
very poems display also, on Mr. Browning's part, a loving familiarity
with the works of painters, sculptors, and musicians, and a practical
understanding of them, which might easily have resulted in a partial
acceptance of artistic standards as such, and of the policy of art for
art; and it is only through the breadth and strength of his dramatic
genius, that artistic sympathies in themselves so strong could be
subjected to it.
In music, this position appears at first sight to be reversed; for Mr.
Browning rejects the dramatic theory which would convert it into a
direct expression of human thought. Here, however, the poet in him comes
into play. He leaves the plastic arts to express what may be both felt
and thought; and calls on music to express what may be felt but not
thought. In this sense he accepts it as an independent science subject
to its own ideals and to its own laws. But this only means that, in his
opinion, the relation of music to human life is different from that of
plastic art: the one revealing the unknown, while the other embodies
what is known.
"OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE" is a fanciful monologue, spoken as by one who
is looking down upon Florence, through her magical atmosphere, from a
villa on the neighbouring heights. The sight of her Campanile brings
Giotto to his mind; and with Giotto comes a vision of all the dead Old
Masters who mingle in spirit with her living men. He sees them each
haunting the scene of his former labours in church or chapter-room,
cloister or crypt; and he sees them grieving over the decay of their
works, as these fade and moulder under the hand of time. He is also
conscious that they do not grieve for themselves. Earthly praise or
neglect cannot touch them more. But they have had a lesson to teach; and
so long as the world has not learnt the lesson, their souls may not rest
in heaven.
"Greek art had _its_ lesson to teach, and it taught it. It reasserted
the dignity of the human form. It re-stated _the truth_ of the soul
which informs the body, and the body which expresses it. Men saw in its
creations their own qualities carried to perfection, and were content to
know that such perfection was possible, and to renounce the hope of
attaining it. In this experience the first stage was progress; the
second was stagnation. Progress began again, when men looked on these
images of themselves and said: "we are not inferior to these. We are
greater than they. For what has come to perfection perishes, and we are
imperfect because eternity is before us; because we were made to
_grow_." The soul which has eternity within its grasp cannot express
itself in a single glance; nor can its consciousness be petrified into
an unchanging sorrow or joy. The painters who set aside Greek art
undertook to vindicate the activity of the soul. They made its hopes and
fears shine through the flesh, though the flesh they shone through were
frayed and torn by the process. This was the work which they had to do;
and which remains undone, while men speak of them as "Old Master" this,
and "Early" the other, and do not dream that "Old" and "New" are
fellows: "that all are links in the chain of the one progressive art
life; the one spiritual revelation."
The speaker now relapses into the playful mood which his more serious
reflections have scarcely interrupted. He thinks of the removable
paintings which lie hidden in cloister or church, and which a
sympathizing purchaser might rescue from decay; and he reproaches those
melancholy ghosts for not guiding such purchasers to them. He, for
instance, does not aspire to the works of the very great; but a number
of lesser lights, whose name and quality he recites, might, he thinks,
have lent themselves to the fulfilment of his artistic desires;[64] and
he declares himself particularly hurt by the conduct of his old friend
Giotto, who has allowed some picture he had been hunting through every
church in Florence to fall into other hands. He concludes with an
invocation to a future time when the Grand Duke will have been pitched
across the Alps, when art and the Republic will revive together, and
when Giotto's Campanile will be completed--which glorious consummation,
though he may not live to see, he considers himself the first to
predict.
Mr. Browning alludes, in the course of this monologue, to the two
opposite theories of human probation: one confining it to this life, the
other extending it through a series of future existences; and without
pronouncing on their relative truth, he owns himself in sympathy with
the former. He is tired and likes to think of rest. The sentiment is,
however, not in harmony with his general views, and belongs to the
dramatic aspect of the poem.[65]
MASTER HUGUES OF SAXE GOTHA, also a monologue, is christened after an
imaginary composer; and consists of a running comment on one of his
fugues, as performed by the organist of some unnamed church. The latter
has just played it through: the scored brow and deep-set eyes of Master
Hugues fixed on him, as he fancied, from the shade; and he now imagines
he hears him say, "You have done justice to the notes of my piece, but
you must grasp its meaning to understand where my merit lies;" so he
plays the fugue again, listening for the meaning, and reading it as out
of a book. From this literary or dramatic point of view, the impression
received is as follows. Some one lays down a proposition, unimportant in
itself, and not justly open to either praise or blame. Nevertheless a
second person retorts on it, a third interposes, a fourth rejoins, and a
fifth thrusts his nose into the matter. The five are fully launched into
a quarrel. The quarrel grows broader and deeper. Number one restates his
case somewhat differently. Number two takes it up on its new ground.
Argument is followed by vociferation and abuse; a momentary
self-restraint by a fresh outbreak of self-assertion. All tempers come
into play, all modes of attack are employed, from pounding with a
crowbar to pricking with a pin. And where all this time is music? Where
is the gold of truth? Spun over and blackened by the tissue of jangling
sounds, as is the ceiling of the old church by cobwebs.
"Is it your moral of Life?
Such a web, simple and subtle,
Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,
Death ending all with a knife?" (vol. vi. p. 202)
The organist admires Master Hugues, and approaches his creations with an
open mind; but he cannot help feeling that this mode of composition
represents the tortuousness of existence, and that its "truth" spreads
golden above and about us, whether we accept her or not. He ends by
bidding Master Hugues and the five speakers clear the arena; and leave
him to "unstop the full organ," and "blare out," in the "mode
Palestrina," what another musician has had to say.
This scene in an organ loft has many humorous touches which would in any
case forbid our taking it too seriously; and we must no more think of
Mr. Browning as indifferent to the possible merits of a fugue than as
indifferent to the beauties of a Greek statue. But the dramatic
situation has in this, as in the foregoing case, a strong basis of
personal truth.
Two more of these poems show the irony of circumstance as embodied in
popular opinion.
"POPULARITY" is an expression of admiring tenderness for some person
whom the supposed speaker knows and loves as a poet, though it is the
coming, not the present age, which will bow to him as such. But the main
idea of the poem is set forth in a comparison. The speaker "sees" his
friend in the character of an ancient fisherman landing the Murex-fish
on the Tyrian shore. "The 'murex' contains a dye of miraculous beauty;
and this once extracted and bottled, Hobbs, Nobbs, and Co. may trade in
it and feast; but the poet who (figuratively) brought the murex to land,
and created its value, may, as Keats probably did, eat porridge all his
life."
"HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY" describes a poet whose personality was
not ignored, but mistaken; and the irony of circumstance is displayed
both in the extent of this mistake, and the colour which circumstance
has given to it. This poet is a mysterious personage, who constantly
wanders through the city, seeing everything without appearing to use his
eyes. His clothing, though old and worn, has been of the fashion of the
Court. He writes long letters, which are obviously addressed to "our
Lord the King," and "which, no doubt, have had to do with the
disappearance of A., and the fate of B." He can be, people think, no
other than a _spy_. A spy, we must admit, might proceed in much the same
manner. Mr. Browning does, however, full justice to the excesses of
popular imagination, once directed into a given channel, in the parallel
touches which depict the portentous luxury in which the spy is supposed
to live: the poor though decent garret in which the poet dies.
"TRANSCENDENTALISM" is addressed to a young poet, who is accused of
presenting his ideas "naked," instead of draping them, in poetic
fashion, in sights and sounds: in other words, of talking across his
harp instead of singing to it. He acts on the supposition that, if the
young want imagery, older men want rational thoughts. And his critic is
declaring this a mistake. "Youth, indeed, would be wasted in studying
the transcendental Jacob Boehme for the deeper meaning of things which
life gives it to see and feel; but when youth is past, we need all the
more to be made to see and feel. It is not a thinker like Boehme who
will compensate us for the lost summer of our life; but a magician like
John of Halberstadt, who can, at any moment, conjure roses up."[66]
There is a strong vein of humour in the argument, which gives the
impression of being consciously overstated. It is neverthess a genuine
piece of criticism.
"AT THE MERMAID" and the "EPILOGUE" deal with public opinion in its
general estimate of poets and poetry; and they expose its fallacies in a
combative spirit, which would exclude them from a more rigorous
definition of the term "critical." In the first of these Mr. Browning
speaks under the mask of Shakespeare, and gives vent to the natural
irritation of any great dramatist who sees his various characters
identified with himself. He repudiates the idea that the writings of a
dramatic poet reveal him as a man, however voluminous they may be; and
on this ground he even rejects the transcendent title to fame which his
contemporaries have adjudged to him. They know him in his work. They
cannot, he says, know him in his _life_. He has never given them the
opportunity of doing so. He has allowed no one to slip inside his soul,
and "label" and "catalogue" what he found there.
This is truer for Shakespeare than for Mr. Browning, who has often
addressed his public with comparative directness, and would be grieved
to have it thought that in the long course of his writings he has never
spoken from his heart. He would also be the first to admit that, in the
course of his writings, the poet must, indirectly, reveal the man. But
he has too often had to defend himself against the impression that
whatever he wrote as a poet must directly reflect him as a man. He has
too often had to repeat, that poetry is an art which "_makes_" not one
which merely _records_; and that the feelings it conveys are no more
necessarily supplied by direct experience than are its facts by the
Cyclopædia. And with the usual deduction for the dramatic mood, we may
accept the retort as genuine.
I have departed in the case of this poem from the mere statement of
contents, which is all that my plan admits of, or my readers usually can
desire: because it expresses an indifference to general sympathy which
belies the author's feeling in the matter. Mr. Browning speaks equally
for himself and Shakespeare, when he derides another idea which he
considers to be popular: that the fit condition of the poet is
melancholy. "I," he declares, "have found life joyous, and I speak of it
as such. Let those do otherwise who have wasted its opportunities, or
been less richly endowed with them."
The "Epilogue" is a criticism on critics, and is spoken distinctly by
Mr. Browning himself. He takes for his text a line from Mrs.
Browning:[67]
"The poets pour us wine,"
and denounces those consumers of the wine of poetry, who expect it to
combine strength and sweetness in an impossible degree. Body and
bouquet, he affirms, may be found on the label of a bottle, but not in
the vat from which the bottle was filled. "Mighty" and "mellow" may be
born at once; but the one is for now, the other only for after-time. The
earth, he declares, is his vineyard; his grape, the loves, the hates,
and the thoughts of man; his wine, what these have made it. Bouquet may,
he admits, be artificially given. Flowers grow everywhere which will
supplement the flavour of the grape; and his life holds flowers of
memory, which blossom with every spring. But he denies that his brew
would be the more popular if he stripped his meadow to make it so. How
much do his public drink of that which they profess to approve? They
declare Shakespeare and Milton fit beverage for man and boy. "Look into
their cellars, and see how many barrels are unbroached of the one brand,
what drippings content them of the other. He will be true to his task,
and to Him who set it."
"Wine, pulse in might from me!
It may never emerge in must from vat,
Never fill cask nor furnish can,
Never end sweet, which strong began--
God's gift to gladden the heart of man;
But spirit's at proof, I promise that!
No sparing of juice spoils what should be
Fit brewage--mine for me."
(vol. xiv. p. 148)
At the 18th stanza the figure is changed, and Mr. Browning speaks of his
work (by implication) as a stretch of country which is moor above and
mine below; and in which men will find--what they dig for.
"HOUSE" is written in much the same spirit as "At the Mermaid." It
reminds us that the whole front of a dwelling must come down before the
life within it can be gauged by the vulgar eye; however we may fancy
that this or that poetic utterance has unlocked the door--that it opens
to a "sonnet-key."[68]
"SHOP" is a criticism on those writers, poets or otherwise, who are so
disproportionately absorbed by the material cares of existence as to
place the good of literature in its money-making power; and depicts such
in the character of the shopman who makes the shop his home, instead of
leaving it for some mansion or villa as soon as business hours are past.
"The flesh must live, but why should not the spirit have its dues also?"
"RESPECTABILITY" is a comment on the price paid for social position. A
pair of lovers have been enjoying a harmless escapade; and one remarks
to the other that, if their relation had been recognized by the world,
they might have wasted their youth in the midst of proprieties which
they would never have learned the danger and the pleasure of infringing.
The situation is barely sketched in; but the sentiment of the poem is
well marked, and connects it with the foregoing group.
"A LIGHT WOMAN," "DÎS ALITER VISUM," and "BIFURCATION" raise questions
of conduct.
A man desires to extricate his friend from the toils of "A LIGHT WOMAN;"
and to this end he courts her himself. He is older and more renowned
than her present victim, and trusts to her vanity to ensure his success.
But his attentions arouse in her something more. He discovers too late
that he has won her heart. He can only cast it away, and a question
therefore arises: he knows how he appears to his friend; he knows how he
will appear to the woman whom his friend loved; "how does he appear to
himself?" In other words, did the end for which he has acted justify the
means employed? He doubts it.
"DÎS ALITER VISUM" records the verdict of later days on a decision which
recommended itself at the time: that is, to the person who formed it. A
man and woman are attracted towards each other, though she is young and
unformed; he, old in years and in experience; and he is, or seems to be,
on the point of offering her his hand. But caution checks the impulse.
They drift asunder. He forms a connection with an opera-dancer. She
makes a loveless marriage. Ten years later they meet again; and she
reminds him of what passed between them, and taxes him with the ruin of
four souls. He has thought only of the drawbacks to _present_ enjoyment,
which the unequal union would have involved; he never thought or cared
how its bitter-sweetness might quicken the striving for eternity.
This criticism reflects the woman's point of view, and was probably
intended to justify it. It does not follow that the author would not, in
another dramatic mood, have justified the man, in his more practical
estimate of the situation. Mr. Browning's poetic self is, however,
expressed in the woman's belief: that everything which disturbs the
equal balance of human life gives a vital impulse to the soul. The
stereotyped completeness of the lower existences supplies him here also
with a warning.
The title of "BIFURCATION" refers to two paths in life, followed
respectively by two lovers whom circumstances divide. The case is not
unusual. The woman sacrifices love to duty, and expects her lover to
content himself with her choice. Why not, she thinks? She will be
constant to him; they will be united in the life to come. And meanwhile,
she is choosing what for her is the smoother and safer path, while for
him it is full of stumbling-blocks. Love's guidance is refused him, and
he falls. Which of these two has been the sinner: he who sinned
unwillingly, or she who caused the sin? We feel that Mr. Browning
condemns the apparent saint.
"PISGAH SIGHTS. I." depicts life as it may _seem_ to one who is leaving
it; who is, as it were, "looking over the ball." As seen from this
position, Good and Evil are reconciled, and even prove themselves
indispensable to each other. The seer becomes aware that it is unwise to
strive against the mixed nature of existence; vain to speculate on its
cause. But the knowledge is bittersweet, for it comes too late.
"PISGAH SIGHTS. II." is a view of life as it _might_ be, if the
knowledge just described did not come too late; and shows that according
to Mr. Browning's philosophy it would be no life at all. The speaker
declares that if he had to live again, he would take everything as he
found it. He would neither dive nor soar; he would strive neither to
teach nor to reform. He would keep to the soft and shady paths; learn by
quiet observation; and allow men of all kinds to pass him by, while he
remained a fixture. He would gain the benefit of the distance with those
below and above him, since he would be magnified for the one class,
while seen from a softening point of view by the other. And so also he
would admire the distant brightness, "the mightiness yonder," the more
for keeping his own place. If seen too closely, _the star might prove a
glow-worm_.