not after death as is so often the guerdon of him who sees what is
hidden from his fellows. He set up a standard of thought and feeling,
and slowly but steadily he saw the public coming up to that standard,
and marching onward more hopefully, more bravely, more confidently. His
life story is simply told. He was born in Camberwell, and most of his
education was obtained at the London University. His father was a bank
clerk, who hated the routine of office work, and had a perfect passion
for books. He read in season and out of season, he was a familiar figure
at all the old book-stalls, he knew many languages, and had a mind
literally stored with treasures of culture and learning. Robert soon
showed he had inherited the same love of books, and when he was fourteen
coaxed his mother till, after some difficulty, she got him copies of the
poems written by Keats and Shelley. "Those two poets came to me as two
nightingales," he has told us, and from henceforward his mind was
practically made up. He, too, would be a poet, and as if to begin a
suitable course of training, he set himself to read and master the whole
of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. His father put no hindrances in his way,
on the contrary he promised him every assistance, and an aunt came
forward with offers of money, so firmly did she believe in the talents
of her nephew. It was at her expense that his first book, "Pauline,"
was published anonymously, and though a very small public appreciated
the work, here and there a friendly critic was found brave enough to say
that the author, whoever he was, though he must not look for popularity
or expect to make a sensation, was certainly a poet. "Paracelsus"
followed, the story of a man who desired knowledge above all else, and
who in the search for knowledge forgot to seek for love, hope, fear, and
faith, those nobler qualities that give to life its true note and
character; but at the time this shared the same fate as "Pauline," and
was little appreciated. Then he tried his hand at dramatic writing,
producing first "Stafford" and afterwards "The Blot in the Scutcheon,"
and though Dickens wrote enthusiastically concerning the latter, "This
play has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow.... It is full of
genius, natural and great thoughts, profound yet simple, and beautiful
in its vigour," Browning contented himself with saying, "A pitfull of
good-natured people applauded it." Then, with the buoyant hopefulness
which was part of him, he added, "Failure will not discourage me from
another effort: experience is yet to come, and earnest endeavour may yet
remove many disadvantages."
And he continued to write. In 1844, being then thirty-two, he met
Elizabeth Barrett, the invalid poetess with whose work he was already
familiar, and from the first his heart went out to her. For some time
she steadily refused to listen when he talked of marriage, on account of
her ill health. But his persistence wore down her half-hearted
resistance, especially as her happiness in the knowledge of his love
proved a good doctor, and she showed signs of growing stronger. Her
father, who seems to have objected to any of his daughters marrying, had
made up his mind that Elizabeth would never leave home, and it was
certain he would never have given his consent. So with some misgivings
Miss Barrett consented to her lover's entreaties. They were married
privately; he took her abroad, and in her newly found joy she rallied
surprisingly. To the end of her life she was fragile, and it was never
possible for her to stand side by side with him through all the daily
ups and downs, but the sympathy between them was as complete as their
love for each other was beautiful, and in spite of the many new
responsibilities it laid upon him, his marriage with this rare mind
brought a daily increasing happiness to the poet. From this time
forward much of his time was spent in Italy, for the sake of his wife;
but when in 1861, with her death, "the light of his life went out," he
returned to London and lived here till the end, always working, always
genial, drawn more and more into an ever-widening circle of friends, as
the greatness of his mind and genius became known and appreciated.
Active to the last, he died in 1889, while on a visit to Venice. But
England claimed him as her own, and so strong was the feeling as to the
Poets' Corner being the only place where he could be buried, that his
son consented, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Browning slept under the
blue skies of Italy.
It would be quite impossible now to talk of Robert Browning's poems by
name; they are too many in number and too deep in thought to be lightly
dealt with. But we can try to understand what it is that has made him
so great a figure in English literature, why it is that he has left so
powerful an influence on his age.
First of all he was a great teacher, he was a seer, as every true poet
must be if his work is to live.
"To know the heart of all things was his duty;
All things did speak to him to make him wise,
And with a sorrowful and conquering beauty,
The soul of all looked grandly from his eyes.
He gazed on all within him and without him,
He watched the flowing of Time's steady tide,
And shapes of glory floated all about him,
And whispered to him, and he prophesied."
He looked on life as a great whole, part to be lived here, part to be
lived beyond the grave, but each part belonging to the other. He
believed that over all, guiding all and through all, was the Divine
Power.
"God's in His Heaven:
All's well in the world."
He knew that human nature must work its way upwards by struggling
bravely on through the darkness, certain of victory at last, because
good and not evil was the all-conquering force. And so, while he was
full of hope and full of confidence, his understanding and his
sympathies were boundless.
Courage! unfailing, confident courage! is the refrain of which he never
wearies. Aspire towards the highest; be your best; love for love's sake
and not for reward; work your hardest; fight valiantly to the end; never
listen to despair; never lessen your efforts. It is the struggle and
the striving that makes life worth living, for--
"Life is probation, and this earth no goal
But starting-point of men."
Nor is there such a thing as failure to those who aspire rightly.
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for?"
And again--
"Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit, nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three parts pain,
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang: dare, never grudge the throe."
The power and the love of God, the possibilities within the reach of
every man, and the unalterable certainty of the life beyond, these
beliefs made it impossible for Browning to sing in any but a hopeful
strain, and it is for this that we owe him our deepest debt of
gratitude. For he always encourages us, he always inspires us, he always
sends us on our way cheered by his own strong faith.
Sometimes, it is true, his verse is rough and rugged, often he is so
absorbed in the sense of what he says that he cares very little how he
says it, but every poem he wrote holds so many precious things that it
is worth while wading through difficult places to get at them. And as
he himself once said, "With care for a man or a book, most obstacles can
be overcome."
Many a poem could I give to show you that Browning could pour out sweet
music when he wrote of certain subjects. Here is one of his most
charming songs--"Home Thoughts from Abroad":--
"Oh to be in England now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge,--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you think he never could recapture
The first, fine, careless rapture!"
On the day of his death there was published the last volume of his
poems, and it had been a great pleasure to him to hear with how much
interest they were expected. For more than fifty years he had waited,
and at last his message to his generation was being understood. He had
been "ever a fighter," and now, as he stood facing that "one fight more,
the best and the last," which was at hand, he had still one fine
marching song to send back to his fellow-men.
"Never say of me that I am _dead_," he had asked of a friend not long
before.
"No work begun shall ever pause for death!
Love will be helpful to me more and more
In the coming course, the new path I must tread."
So when those who loved him read the words that told how Robert Browning
had died at Venice, having lived more than his threescore years and ten,
they turned for their comfort to his last stirring message, and
remembered him as he had wished to be remembered--
"At the midnight, in the silence of the sleep time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where--by death, fools think, imprisoned--
Low he lies, who once so loved you, whom you loved so.
Pity me?
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, hopeless, did I drivel
Being who?
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong could triumph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake!
No, at noonday, in the bustle of men's work time,
Greet the unseen with a cheer.
Bid him forward, breast and back, as either should be.
'Strive and strive!' cry Speed--fight on, fare ever
There as here."
Three years after Browning's death a crowd of over eleven thousand
persons filled Westminster to every corner, on the day when our other
great poet, Alfred Tennyson, was borne here, to remain for ever "a
citizen of the Abbey." His coffin, fitly draped with the Union Jack,
because some of his finest lines had been called out by the thought of
Empire, Flag, and Queen, was surrounded by all the most noteworthy men
of the day as it was carried slowly through the aisles, "down the avenue
of those men, princes and peers by right of intellect divine."
Tennyson, like Browning, had written a last message to the world, but
his was not a marching song. Instead it breathes of perfect peace, of
the joy which came to him, "who throughout the night had trusted all to
Him that held the helm, and then saw face to face, full flushed and
glorious with the new morning's glow, the Pilot whom he had trusted."
"Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar."
These thoughts of his filled the Abbey with a sense of their
restfulness; then there thundered out from thousands of voices the
familiar hymn--
"Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!"
and the words recalled to many a mind that Vision of which the
clear-souled poet had sung, the Gleam he had so faithfully followed,
until now it had surely led him right up to the presence of God.
[Illustration: LORD TENNYSON.]
Alfred Tennyson had been born at a country vicarage in Lincolnshire in
the year 1809, and had begun to scribble verse almost as soon as he
could write. When he was eight he produced such lines as--
"With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled the flood,"
which he thought "very grand" at the time; at twelve he wrote a poem of
six thousand lines, and at fourteen a drama. He was not the sort of boy
likely to be very happy at school, and he had, as he described it, "to
shout his verses to the skies." But to his brother he was wont to say
many a time, "Well, Arthur, I mean to be famous." He went to Cambridge,
and when Thompson, that shrewd observer, afterwards Master of Trinity,
saw him walk into the hall, "six feet high, broad-chested,
strong-limbed, his face Shakespearean and with deep eyelids, his
forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head firmly poised," he
remarked, "That man must be a poet!"
In 1829 he won the University Prize Poem on the not very inspiring
subject of Timbuctoo, and soon afterwards published a volume of short
poems, which was warmly welcomed and admired by his friends, one of
whom, Arthur Hallam, remarked, "Tennyson will be the greatest poet of
our generation." But the general public cared little for poetry, and
preferred novels, so that Tennyson was thought to have scored quite a
success when three hundred copies of his book had been sold.
In 1833 there fell on him a stunning blow. Arthur Hallam, the friend
whom he had loved with an intense love, who was so full of exceptional
promise that every one with whom he came in contact believed the
greatest future was in store for him, died quite suddenly, and to
Tennyson it seemed as if from henceforth the very light of his life had
been snatched from him. Dark were the years that followed, rendered more
so by the fact that the young poet was very poor and saw no chance of
being able to marry the woman he loved. But gradually, as he "faced the
need of going forward and braving the struggle of life" (to use his own
words), a fuller understanding and a wider view opened out before him.
Sorrow and work together led him out of the valley. He produced several
volumes of short poems, each one showing more certainly his great poetic
sense, his gift of using musical and beautiful language, and each one,
too, making it clear from the subjects he chose, and his way of dealing
with them, that he himself, like the poet of whom he wrote--
"Saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,
... Thro' his own soul,
The marvel of the Everlasting Will
An open scroll,
Before him lay."
Then came "The Princess," a longer work and a most delightful one, in
which Tennyson, many years in advance of public opinion, pleaded the
cause of women's education, and showed that "Woman's cause is man's;
they rise or sink together;" and though "distinct in individualities,"
they must be "self-reverent each, and reverencing each," if they would
in all their powers dispense the harvest, "sowing the To-be."
In 1850 he published his greatest work, "In Memoriam," the poem which
came straight from his own heart, and went as straight to the hearts of
all who ached under some crushing, desolating blow. It told of his love
for his dead friend, and how this very love led him onwards and upwards,
away from his own selfish sorrow, away from despair and darkness, till
with this larger hope there came faith in God and faith in man; the
certainty that good must be the final goal of ill; the conviction that
Love was the great power working in all and through all, destined in the
end to conquer all. "In Memoriam" has been rightly called "the triumph
of a great love." The work brought him fame if not fortune, and at last
he was able to marry her "who brought into his life," he said, "the
peace of God." A year later he was made Poet Laureate, and settled down
to a quiet country life at Farringford. "Maud," and some of his war
poems, "The Ode to the Duke of Wellington," and "The Charge of the Light
Brigade," were included in his work of the next few years, and then came
what he considered the most ambitious thing he had attempted, "The
Idylls of the King." The old mysterious story of King Arthur and his
knights had fascinated many a poet before him, and the romance of it all
laid full hold on his imagination. Nay, more than this, for he saw
beyond the fragmentary story, and each one of the characters, under his
hand, stands out in a new light. Arthur, Galahad, Percival, Bedivere,
Lancelot, Guinevere, Enid, and Elaine--how real they all become to us!
How intensely vivid are the scenes unfolded before our eyes, how great
and noble are the ideals of the true chivalry as distinguished from the
false, towards which Tennyson leads us, reverence for conscience,
faithfulness to duty, pure-heartedness, love of truth, fear of sin,
courtesy, gentleness, courage, pity, and forgiveness.
"A poet must teach, but not preach," Tennyson once said, and I think it
is in these legendary stories of "The Idylls," told in the beautiful
language of which he was master, that the poet has given some of his
greatest lessons, and has held up his loftiest ideals to the age in
which he lived. After "The Idylls" came some dramas, and many short
poems, "Enoch Arden," perhaps, being the one best liked by the large
public Tennyson could now command. But even to touch on the short poems
is impossible here, so many and so varied are they; some, soul-stirring
and patriotic, as "The Defence of Lucknow" or "The Revenge;" some, poems
of nature; some, coloured with the quaint, north-country humour he knew
so well; some, exquisite little word-pictures. His last volume of all
was published in 1889, and it included "Merlin and the Gleam," an
allegory of the ideals he had set before himself as a poet. He, as the
old man, talks to the young mariners just about to set out. He tells of
the Gleam which shines for every one who will see it; which calls, which
beckons on through wilderness, desolate hollows, and wraiths of the
mountain; past warbles of water and cataract music of falling torrents;
by rolling of dragons and over the level of pasture and ploughland.
Onwards, ever onwards, it leads. To follow it is to live, to die in the
search for it is happiness, for the Gleam can never fail.
"Through the magic
Of Him that is mighty,
Who taught me in childhood,
There on the border
Of boundless Ocean
And all but in Heaven
Hovers the Gleam."
So to the young mariners, he, the old magician, gives his parting word
of counsel--
"Down to the haven,
Launch your vessel
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam."
"I want to go down to posterity," Tennyson once said, "as a poet who
uttered nothing base." And the criticism which he declared was "the
best and tenderest praise that came to cheer his old age," was the
remark of a girl who said, "When I read his poems, I always rise
determined to be better."
Much might be said about the perfect music of his poetry; the richness
of his imagination; the faultless ear he had for words; the crystal
clearness of his style; his power to see beauty and, having seen it, to
shape it; his sympathy, his sensitive understanding, and his lofty
ideals. His claim to greatness is based on all that and still more.
Out of the depths of his pure soul he gazed on all things lovely, just,
true, pure, and of good report; and translating these into language easy
to be understood, he led those who listened to him along the Road
Beautiful, till they too stood with him on
"The heights of life, with a glimpse of a height that is
higher."
*CHAPTER XXII*
*A LAST WANDER AROUND*
There are still many monuments and memorials in the Abbey which do not
come in under the broad headings we have made, and to some few of these
I must take you in this our last wander round the aisles and chapels.
As we come in by the great north entrance and pass between the row of
statesmen, we must stop for a moment by the Canning group and notice the
monument to the "loyall Duke of Newcastle," who lost a large fortune and
became an exile from England on account of his devoted faithfulness to
Charles I. The Duchess, who came of a family in which "all the brothers
were valiant and all the sisters virtuous," was, in the Duke's eyes at
least, a very "wise, witty, and learned lady," though every one did not
deem her so. Pepys, when he made her acquaintance, wrote: "She is a
good, comely woman, but her dress is so antick, and her deportment so
ordinary, that I did not like her at all. Nor did I hear her say
anything that was worth hearing." It was curiosity, I suppose, that
caused Pepys to stay at home one day "to read the history of my Lord of
Newcastle, written by his wife." Certainly his criticisms were not
favourable. "It shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman," he
said. "And he is an ass to suffer her to write what she writes to him
and of him."
Perhaps the "loyall Duke" found his learned lady not always quite easy
to restrain, for he is reported once to have declared to a friend, "Sir,
a very wise woman may be a very foolish thing."
But she had better claims than her wit or wisdom to his love, as the
inscription on her monument tells, for she proved herself to be "a
louvinge carefull wife, who was with her lord all the time of his
banishment and miseries, and when he came home, never parted from him in
all his solitary retirements."
Round the west door, and underneath the statue of the younger Pitt, are
a number of memorial monuments to men, many of whom lived and laboured
in our own times. There is Lord John Russell, the great statesman, who
throughout his life was true to the emblem and the motto of his house,
which you will see on the pedestal--a mountain goat wending its way
through dangerous precipices, but never losing its footing. And there
is General Gordon, true type of the happy warrior, who lived for the
poor, the needy, and the oppressed, and who fell at his post in far
Khartoum, faithful unto death. On the one side is a spot sometimes
called the Little Poets' Corner, and here, under a window given by an
American to the memory of George Herbert and Cowper, "both Westminster
scholars, and both religious poets," we find statues or busts of
Wordsworth; of the two Arnolds, Dr. Arnold, the schoolmaster, and his
son Matthew Arnold, the poet, whose beautiful verses about his father,
telling of his radiant vigour, his buoyant cheerfulness, his strong
soul, have inspired many a one struggling to be a leader, not a laggard,
in the march of life. Here also is Keble, another religious poet, some
of whose hymns, "Sun of my Soul" and "New every morning is the Love,"
are as well known to all of us as any poems in our language; and close
by we find Maurice, the teacher and preacher who influenced so many
young men to become knights of their own day; to war against all that
was mean, or base, or false; to fight in the foremost rank for the
wronged or the oppressed; to champion the unpopular cause, and defend
the truth well-nigh forgotten. By those who loved him he was called the
Prophet, because he stood, as it were, between God and man, because he
looked beyond the present and the things that are seen, right into the
hidden glories of the things eternal. Kingsley, too, lies here, the
most famous of Maurice's disciples--the man who was scholar, poet,
novelist, thinker, teacher, enthusiast, and leader all in one; who
roused his listeners to a sense of the duty that lay at their door; who
taught them to love the beautiful things in nature even as they loved
nature's God; who made them enthusiastic for all that was chivalrous and
soul-stirring; who himself so loved all humanity that round his grave
the highest in the land, gipsies from the country lanes, and
white-faced, sweated toilers from the great cities, mourned side by
side, this their great-hearted friend.
Fittingly in this group comes Henry Fawcett, the most knightly figure in
modern politics. For though he became blind through an accident when he
was twenty-five, he refused to let that turn him aside from his purpose,
and threw himself all the more earnestly into public life. At first
when he tried to go into Parliament he was beaten, the electors actually
being afraid of a blind candidate, but gradually his speeches, which
showed how much he thought and cared, and how intensely alive he was to
the needs of the working classes, broke down this foolish prejudice, and
once in the House he was loved as he was trusted by men of both parties.
His monument is quite one of the most beautiful among the modern
monuments, and one great authority has declared that "the exquisite
little figures which adorn it are the best of their kind since the
little angels were placed on the tomb of Queen Philippa."
In the south aisle of the choir is the monument of Sir Cloudesley
Shovel, which so annoyed Addison. And indeed it is rather hard on this
British sailor, who worked his way up from the lowest rank till he
became Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet, and was drowned in a shipwreck
off the Isle of Stilly, to be handed down to posterity, dressed, not in
the uniform he loved and wore so honourably, but in the armour of a
Roman general!
Monuments to Doctor Isaac Watts the hymn writer and to John and Charles
Wesley are here, and very appropriate is the Wesley inscription, "The
whole world is my Parish," breathing as it does the great-hearted spirit
of the Abbey.
Sir Godfrey Kneller, the only painter who has a monument in the Abbey,
refused to be buried here, declaring he would not lie among fools, and
he left money for a memorial to himself which was to be put up in
Twickenham Church. But the place he had chosen had already been
appropriated by Pope, who refused to give way, so that after all the
monument had to be put up in Westminster, and Pope, by way of
compensation, undertook to write the inscription, in which he declared
that "Kneller was by Heaven, not by master taught."
Gilbert Thornburgh, a courtier, has a delightful Latin epitaph which
states that