POETRY FROM 1850 TO 1870: THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT.
We have already seen that traces of change in the spirit of poetry
manifest themselves soon after the opening of the present period. They
appear in the works of men like Bailey and Sir Henry Taylor, and they grow
steadily stronger in the successive volumes of Tennyson. We have also seen
that a spirit cognate to this manifests itself in other departments of
literature as well. It attains its full growth, especially in poetry and
art, about the middle of the century; and so marked is the difference from
the previous four-and-twenty years that it has been called the English
Renaissance. The name is too ambitious and grandiloquent, yet if we do not
press it unduly it will be useful in reminding us that literature had in
nearly all departments come to be dominated by new ideals. Nowhere do we
see them more conspicuous than in poetry. Their influence is visible in
the rise of new schools; first, the 'Spasmodic School,' stronger in
passion than in intellect, and greater in promise than in performance; and
secondly, the Pre-Raphaelites, who were primarily artists, but who were
also men of letters. The first article of their creed was to be true to
nature; but they were far from being realists as the word is now commonly
understood. More important than either of these were those whose task may
be described as that of wedding intellect to imagination. They were not a
new school, for their leaders, Browning and Tennyson, had been active all
through the first part of the period. But their power and their influence
had now grown to maturity; both in their choice of subject and in their
treatment they were swayed by the spirit of the time; and they were
reinforced by some new writers who took a similar view of the functions of
poetry.
The greatest of these new writers is Matthew Arnold, and his thought is so
eminently representative of the generation that it may be well to consider
him even before his seniors. It was as a poet that Arnold began his
literary career. He won prizes for poetry at Rugby and at Oxford, and in
1849 he published his first volume, _The Strayed Reveller, and Other
Poems_. _Empedocles on Etna_, also accompanied by other poems, followed in
1852, and another volume of poems the year after. A few additions to the
pieces thus published were gradually made, and in 1867 appeared the _New
Poems_. From that date Arnold wrote poetry sparingly. His career was
therefore comparatively short, and the bulk of his verse is not great. He
was frozen into silence by 'that dull indifference to his gifts and
services which stirred the fruitless indignation of his friends.' But in
poetry quality counts for more than quantity. Small in bulk as is his
contribution, Gray has nevertheless a secure place among the immortals.
Arnold's contribution is much larger than Gray's, and it has the same
purity and beauty of finish.
Arnold was born just at the proper time to feel the forces of change
working around him, and the sense of change is from the first deeply
impressed upon his poetry. It is this, combined with his critical attitude
of mind, that makes him specially the voice of the doubts and difficulties
of his generation. The critical aspect of Arnold's verse has been already
noted. It is critical of human existence as well as of other poetry. In
_Obermann Once More_, in _Thyrsis_, in _The Scholar Gipsy_, in
_Mycerinus_, in _Resignation_, in the lines _To a Gipsy Child_, and in
numerous other pieces we see the workings of this critical spirit. We see
too that he is most of all weighed down with the profound sense of change.
He finds himself in a world where all things have to be made new, and
where the power that promised to renew them remains unseen. This is the
case with religion, for the conviction of the decay of Christianity in the
dogmatic sense is as plainly visible in Arnold's verse as in his prose. It
is the case also with politics and the social system. The French
Revolution had shaken these, and had left to the next generation the task
of rebuilding them. Its tremendous magnitude awes Arnold. He has none of
that confident optimism which in Browning springs from breadth of
intellect; still less does he share that which, in the panegyrists of
material progress, is begotten of narrowness. He thinks the conditions of
the time unfavourable to spiritual growth. It does not afford that
'shelter to grow ripe,' and that 'leisure to grow wise,' which even Goethe
found in his youth, exposed though he was in maturer years to 'the blasts
of a tremendous time.'
This conception of the conflict, and especially of the unparalleled
complexity, of modern life, is the dominant thought of Arnold. It is the
warfare of so many elements that in his eyes distinguishes his own from
all previous ages. In former times each civilisation stood by itself, not
vitally affected by the puzzling elements of alien civilisations. The
modern task is to fuse all together. The actress Rachel is typical, and as
in her birth, and life, and death, and in her physical, mental and moral
nature, there met and clashed 'Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens,
Rome,'--so do they meet and clash in the lives of all Arnold offers no
solution of the problem. He points out the difficulty, he cherishes an
ultimate hopefulness, but none of the answers to the riddle satisfies him.
The tone most characteristic of Arnold is in harmony with such fundamental
conceptions. It is a tone of refined and thoughtful melancholy. This made
him a supreme elegiac poet. _Thyrsis_, the memorial poem on his friend
Clough, is generally ranked with the masterpieces in the same type of
Tennyson and Shelley and Milton. But _Thyrsis_ does not stand alone. _The
Scholar Gipsy_, the _Obermann_ poems, _Rugby Chapel_, _A Southern Night_,
and several others of Arnold's finest pieces likewise belong to this
class. The elegiac spirit is his special gift, and he shows it in a
characteristic way. His poems are not elegiacs for the individual; they
are not so even when, as in _Rugby Chapel_ and _A Southern Night_, the
subjects are most intimately related in blood to Arnold. He habitually
looks beyond the individual to the race, and rather mourns 'the something
that infects the world.'
Arnold was a student of Wordsworth, and was among the most discriminating
admirers of that great poet. One of the best of the critical essays is
devoted to him; and the finest selection ever made from the poetry of
Wordsworth was made by Arnold. The skill of that selection proves that
Arnold was capable of benefiting from Wordsworth without being tempted to
follow him where his guidance would have been dangerous. He admired
Wordsworth's calm, he admired him for his power to 'possess his soul,' he
admired him as a student of nature. The calm and rest in himself were with
Arnold rather an aspiration than a thing attained: it was part of his
creed that in these latter days such calm was unattainable. But he
followed Wordsworth as a student of nature. The love of nature was with
Arnold an inborn passion, the strength of which is proved not only by his
poetry, but in one sense even more convincingly by his familiar letters.
Wordsworth gave him a point of view and strengthened his power of vision.
But Arnold writes his nature-poetry for a new age under new conditions.
The very fact that the calm of Wordsworth is unattainable imparts to his
verse a subdued tone. He stands between Wordsworth and his other favourite
Senancour, sharing the spiritual force of the one and the reflective
melancholy of the other. Arnold's best descriptions are tinged with this
melancholy. The 'infinite desire of all which might have been' inspires
_Resignation_, one of the poems of his earliest volume. We see it again in
the lovely closing lines of _The Church of Brou_. It determines Arnold's
preference for pale colours, soft lights and subdued sounds, for moonlight
effects, and for the hum of 'brooding mountain bee.' In the beautiful
_Dover Beach_ it is associated with his sense of the decay of faith. Even
in the lyric rapture of the description of the sea-caverns in _The
Forsaken Merman_, the melancholy is still present. To many it is
oppressive, and perhaps it is the absence of it from the song of Callicles
in _Empedocles on Etna_ that has caused some sympathetic critics to
pronounce that the finest of all Arnold's poems.
Arnold's longer pieces fall into two classes: the dramatic, including
_Merope_ and _Empedocles on Etna_; and the narrative, best represented by
_Sohrab and Rustum_ and _Balder Dead_, for _Tristram and Iseult_ is as
much lyrical as narrative. As a dramatist Arnold was not successful. His
_Merope_, a play on the Greek model, is frigid; and fine as is _Empedocles
on Etna_, its merits are in the thought and the beautiful verse rather
than the dramatic structure. The truth is that Arnold had neither the eye
for fine shades of character nor the interest in action essential to the
drama. His treatment of character has already been commented upon in
connexion with his prose. With regard to action, Arnold himself withdrew
_Empedocles on Etna_ shortly after its publication, on the ground that it
was a poem in which all was to be endured and nothing to be done.
The same want of action appears in the narratives. The charm of these
beautiful poems resides not in what takes place in them, but in the
restful pictures they present. There is no breathless speed such as we
feel in the narratives of Scott and Byron, but, on the contrary, the calm
of a reflective spirit. _Sohrab and Rustum_ (1853) and _Balder Dead_
(1855) seemed to open out to Arnold a wider field of productiveness than
any he had hitherto found. They took him outside himself, and gave variety
to his poetry; and perhaps the thing most to be regretted in his literary
history is that he wrote no more pieces of this class. Not that they are
altogether the best of his poems; but blank verse so beautiful as his
never cloys, and it seemed as if he might have found innumerable subjects
suitable to his genius, subjects inviting quiet reflexion and not injured
by the absence of rapid movement.
There are two features of special value in the work of Arnold. One is his
unshrinking intellectual sincerity. The bent of his mind compelled him to
endeavour to understand the world in which he lived. He found much in it
that was unwelcome to him. His scepticism as to dogmatic religion was a
source of great pain to himself. Life would have been far more smooth and
easy if he had been able to believe more; and hence that sympathy with
many things he did _not_ believe which Newman noted in him. Yet he never
shows the slightest sign of yielding to the temptation and playing false
with his intellect. Wherever it leads him Arnold goes; and he has taught
no higher lesson than that of unvarying trust in reason and loyalty to
'the high white star of truth.' It may be doubted whether any of his
poetic contemporaries has pursued a path so undeviatingly straight. Even
Browning is bribed by his feelings to play questionable tricks with his
intellect.
The second feature is the style of Arnold. He presents one of the best
examples in English of the classical spirit. He is always measured and
restrained. He detested 'haste, half-work, and disarray,' and certainly
his own example tended to discourage them. Lucidity and flexibility and
sanity were the qualities he specially strove to embody in his work. It
was because he found them in Goethe that he specially admired the great
German poet. It was because of the absence of them that he uttered his
most severe criticisms upon his countrymen both in the present and in the
past.
[Sidenote: Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861).]
Arthur Hugh Clough is in so many respects associated with Arnold that they
are best taken together. But just because of the similarities there is the
less need to dwell upon the inferior poet. Clough, who spent his early
boyhood in America, was educated under Dr. Arnold at Rugby and at Balliol
College, Oxford. At Oxford he was for a time carried away by the
Tractarian movement, in his own words, 'like a straw drawn up the chimney
by a draught.' In this he was influenced doubtless by his friendship for
W. G. Ward. But Clough was not born for unquestioning belief, and the
reaction shook his whole faith. The story of his separation from Ward is
told in the beautiful allegorical poem, _Qua Cursum Ventus_; and in
another of his finest poems, _Easter Day, Naples_, 1849, we see the
position to which Clough ultimately came. To use Arnold's distinction, it
is a faith which gives up the fact, but clings to the idea. Had Clough
written much in the strain of these pieces he might have had some title to
the name of a great poet. But he is seldom wholly satisfactory. He was
prone to choose themes beyond his strength. Thus _Dipsychus_ is a
colourless and weak reproduction of _Faust_. The author has not sufficient
force to deal with the battlings of a spirit with faith and doubt,
pleasure and virtue, good and evil, and all the most complex problems of
life. Defects fundamentally the same take a different shape in _Amours de
Voyage_. Clough's presentation, in Claude, of the doubts, distrust and
dilettantism of the century fails to give the sense of power. The poet is
happier in his 'long vacation pastoral,' the _Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_
(1848), with its glimpses of nature, its easy light touch, and its
underlying seriousness. But the verse is unfortunate. The hexameter in
English is an exotic, and has never yet been used in any long poem with
complete success. The reader tires at last of what might otherwise have
been a most successful story in verse.
The same movement visible in the poetry of Arnold and Clough may be
detected still moulding and modifying the works of Tennyson. In the year
1850 _In Memoriam_ appeared. It was the product of long meditation, and
part is known to have been written as early as 1833. Nevertheless it is
remarkable that just in the year when Browning published his _Christmas
Eve and Easter Day_, and just about the time when Arnold's verse was
exhibiting another aspect of the interest in religion, Tennyson too should
have made his greatest contribution in this kind to literature. For while
_In Memoriam_ is of all great English elegies the most closely associated
with the man to whom it is dedicated, still the treatment opens up the
questions of death and immortality; and the passages of the poem which
have clung to the popular memory are those in which the poet expresses his
convictions or his hopes on these subjects. Perhaps the greatest weakness
of _In Memoriam_ is its length. It is difficult if not impossible to
dwell on the subject of death long, and to preserve perfect healthiness of
tone. The other great English elegies are in the first place much shorter,
and in the second place the writers find more relief to them than Tennyson
does. The intensity of his friendship for Arthur Hallam kept him perhaps
even too strictly to his subject.
_In Memoriam_ is essentially a lyrical poem, and the years immediately
before and after its publication are those in which Tennyson's lyrical
genius was in fullest flower. _Maud_ (1855) is a lyrical poem. The
beautiful songs interspersed between the parts of _The Princess_ belong to
this period, and so does the grand _Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington_. The lyrics of these years are on the whole superior both in
fervour of passion and in weight of thought to the earlier lyrics. Some of
the songs, like 'Tears, idle tears,' are, as songs, almost overcharged
with thought, yet they are beautifully melodious; and Tennyson never wrote
anything more full of exquisite sound than 'The splendour falls on castle
walls.'
The _Ode on the Death of Wellington_ is worthy of study, because it is the
best specimen of a class of poems for which Tennyson was distinguished
from first to last. He was always a patriot, and there is no feeling he
expresses more fervently than that of pride in England. He contrasts her
stability with the fickleness of France. He is proud of her freedom slowly
won and surely kept. Patriotic ballads like _The Revenge_ and _The Defence
of Lucknow_ are among the most prominent characteristics of his later
volumes. His great success in the case of the _Ode_ is due to the fact,
first that his heart is stirred by the sense that 'the last great
Englishman is low;' and secondly, to the fact that he saw in Wellington an
impersonation of all that he had admired in England. The picture he draws
of the duke is identical in its great features with that he had painted
of the nation, and it has the advantage of being concrete.
The passionate fervour of which Tennyson's lyric strain was capable is
best illustrated from _Maud_, a poem which it is more easy to praise in
parts than as a whole; for it must be admitted that the character of the
hero is deficient in greatness and self-restraint; and the part which
depicts his madness is poor. A good deal of at best exaggerated blame has
likewise been meted out to the references to war in the course of the
poem. But these faults are more than redeemed by such lyric outbursts as
'Come into the garden, Maud,' and 'O that 'twere possible.' The first is
perhaps the most splendid, as it is one of the most justly popular, of all
Tennyson's lyrics; while the second is among the most exquisite and
delicately finished. These pieces have a deeper tone of feeling and more
reality of passion than we find in Tennyson's earlier lyrics.
The _Idylls of the King_ are the outcome of an interest in Arthurian
legends that seems to have gradually developed. _The Lady of Shalott_
proves that Tennyson's mind was dallying with the story of Arthur as early
as 1833; and _Sir Galahad_ and _Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_ attest
the continuance of the interest in the volumes of 1842. Another piece, the
_Morte d'Arthur_, published along with these, was afterwards embodied in
the _Idylls_. It was professedly a fragment, and the epic of which it was
described as the sole relic was spoken of disparagingly as 'faint Homeric
echoes, nothing-worth.' Notwithstanding the disparagement, _The Passing of
Arthur_ is the gem of the _Idylls_; but the reference serves at least to
direct attention to an actual difference between Tennyson's earlier and
later work. Though the _Morte d'Arthur_ is far from being a mere echo of
Homer, there are numerous lines and phrases in it directly recalling
Homer, and different in tone from the context. In the later _Idylls_ the
classical allusions seem to be one with the piece, they do not call
attention to themselves but are transformed and made Tennyson's own.
There is no clear evidence before 1859 of an intention to treat the
Arthurian story as a whole. In that year four of the idylls were
published; but they were still fragments, and great gaps were left
between. Gradually the gaps were filled, until in 1885 the poem was
completed. Still, the connexion of the parts is loose. Each idyll is a
separate story, related to the others because all are parts of one greater
story. But the idylls have not the coherence required in the books of an
epic. Tennyson was conscious of the want of unity, and he sought for a
principle of connexion in allegory. At best the allegory is very
indistinct; it appears chiefly in the parts later in order of publication;
and we may suspect that it was an after-thought meant to supply a defect
to which the author slowly awakened. The very name, _Idylls of the King_,
serves as a warning not to expect too much unity. An 'idyll' is a short
story, and the word therefore indicates the essentially episodic character
of the whole poem.
The _Idylls_ were, as they still are, Tennyson's greatest experiment in
blank verse; and next to Milton's _Paradise Lost_ they are the finest body
of non-dramatic blank verse in the language. The form had gone out of
fashion in the eighteenth century. Thomson, it is true, revived it, and
the poets of the period of the Revolution followed his example. But
through the early death of Keats, through that feebleness of will which
robbed the world of an untold wealth of poetry in Coleridge, and through
the fate that forbade Wordsworth to write long poems well, it remained
true that no very great and sustained modern English poem was written in
blank verse. The measure attracted Tennyson, and he soon mastered it. A
number of pieces prior to the _Idylls_ seem to be experiments in
preparation for a bolder flight. The _English Idylls_, _Ulysses_,
_Aylmer's Field_, _Sea Dreams_ and _Lucretius_ are specimens. The measure
is used on a larger scale in _The Princess_. But Tennyson's supreme
success was in the _Idylls of the King_. They cannot be said to rise
higher than the best of the early poems; for the _English Idylls_ include
the _Morte d'Arthur_, and _Ulysses_ is among the finest of Tennyson's
poems. These pieces show the same exquisite grace, the same smoothness,
the same variety of pause, the same skill in the use of adjuncts, such as
alliteration. But there is necessarily more scope and variety in a long
poem; and one of the finest features of Tennyson's verse is the
flexibility with which it adapts itself to the soft idyllic tone
appropriate to _Enid_, to the darkness of moral degradation in _The Last
Tournament_, to the crisis of the parting of Arthur and Guinevere, to the
spiritual rapture of _The Holy Grail_, and to the mysticism of _The
Passing of Arthur_. Tennyson cannot equal the stateliness of Milton; but
Milton is the only poet with whom, in respect of blank verse, he need
greatly fear comparison.
When we come down to later years the principal change visible in
Tennyson's work is the development of the dramatic element. The dramas
proper have been the most neglected of all sections of his work; but 'the
dramatic element' is by no means confined to them. They are rather just
the final result of a process which had been long going on. Tennyson, as
we have already seen, gradually put more and more thought into his verse.
In doing so he felt the need of a closer grip of reality, and he found, as
other poets have found too, that the dramatic mode of conception brought
him closest to the real. This is all the more remarkable because nothing
could well be more foreign to the dramatic spirit than his early work. His
youthful character sketches are not in the least dramatic. Neither is
there much trace of humour, a quality without which true dramatic
conception is impossible. The change begins to show itself about the
middle of the century. In _The Grandmother_ and _The Northern Farmer_ we
have genuine dramatic sketches of character. The poet does not regard them
from his own point of view, he speaks from theirs. _The Northern Farmer_
is moreover rich in humour. Tennyson never surpassed this creation, but he
multiplied similar sketches. All his poems in dialect are of a like kind.
They are in dialect not from mere caprice, but because the characters
could only be painted to the life by using their own speech. Other pieces,
not in dialect, like _Sir John Oldcastle_ and _Columbus_, are likewise
dramatic in their nature. Less prominent, but not less genuine, is the
dramatic element in the patriotic ballads, such as _The Revenge_. The
greater part of the work of Tennyson's last twenty years is, in fact, of
this nature, and herein we detect the principal cause of the change of
which all must be sensible in that work as compared with the work of his
youth. The old smoothness and melody are in great part gone, but a number
of pieces prove that Tennyson retained the skill though he did not always
choose to exercise it. It is the early style with which his name is still
associated, and probably the majority of his readers have never been quite
reconciled to the change. But while we may legitimately mourn for what
time took away, we ought to rejoice over what it added, rather than left.
If there is less melody there is more strength; if the delightful dreamy
languor of _The Lotos-Eaters_ is gone, we have the vivid truth of _The
Northern Farmer_ and _The Northern Cobbler_, and the tragic pathos of
_Rizpah_; if the romantic sentiment of _Locksley Hall_ is lost, something
more valuable has taken its place in the criticism of life in _Locksley
Hall Sixty Years After_.
Tennyson's dramas then, surprising as they were when they first appeared,
are merely the legitimate and almost the inevitable outcome of his course
of development. Inevitable he seems to have felt them, for he persevered
in the face of censure or half-hearted approval, perhaps it should be
said, in the face of failure. A deep-rooted scepticism of his dramatic
powers has stood in the way of a fair appreciation. The fame of his
earlier poetry has cast a shadow over these later fruits of his genius;
and the question, 'Is Saul also among the prophets?' was hardly asked with
greater surprise than the question whether Tennyson could possibly be a
dramatist. And, in truth, at sixty-six he had still to learn the rudiments
of his business. _Queen Mary_ (1875) is a failure. It is not a great poem,
and still less is it a great drama. The stage is overcrowded with
_dramatis personae_ who jostle each other and hide one another's features.
_Harold_ (1876) showed a marked advance; but _Becket_ (1884) was the
triumph which justified all the other experiments. It is a truly great
drama, and, though not yet recognised as such, will probably rank finally
among the greatest of Tennyson's works. The characters are firmly and
clearly delineated. Becket and Henry, closely akin in some of their
natural gifts, are different in circumstances and develop into very
different men. Rosamond and Eleanor are widely contrasted types of female
character, the former a little commonplace, the latter a subtle conception
excellently worked out. All the materials out of which the play is built
are great. No finer theme could be found than the mediaeval conflict
between Church and State; and Tennyson has seized it in the true dramatic
way, as concentrated in the single soul of Becket, torn between his duty
to the Church and his duty to the King, whose Chancellor and trusted
friend he had been and to whom he owed his promotion.
The minor dramatic pieces are of inferior worth, and in some of them, as
for example, _The Promise of May_ and _The Falcon_, Tennyson showed a
certain infelicity in his choice of subjects. But their failure leaves
unimpaired the interest of the dramatic period. It seemed an almost wanton
experiment on the part of Tennyson. But he was an artist all his life, and
here too he was only obeying the inherent law of development of his art.
Instead of wantonness, there is deep pathos in the old man's perseverance
under unfamiliar conditions, and there can only be joy at his final
success. There is surprise too that he who, from his earlier work, would
have been judged one of the least dramatic of poets, should have so
decidedly surpassed a poet so markedly dramatic as Browning.
Tennyson wrote up to the very close of his long life. His last
publications were _The Foresters_ and _The Death of OEnone_. They show
some decline of power. _Demeter_ too (1889) was probably a little below
his level. But previous to that, though there had been change, there had
been nothing that can be called decay. For the long period of sixty years
and upwards Tennyson had written, and with rare exceptions he had written
greatly. From the death of Wordsworth to his own death he was almost
universally looked upon as the first poet of his time. No one else has
wielded so great an influence. In no other poet's work is the record of
change during the period so clearly written. In part he made the age, in
still larger measure it made him. The hesitancy of his early work was
typical of the spirit of the time. The gradual awakening, the deeper
thought, the larger subjects, the more varied interests of the
intermediate period, were typical too. In this last period, while
Tennyson was as faithful as ever to the law of his own development, he did
not move precisely with the time. Another race was rising and other palms
were to be won.
Browning could not go through the same phase of development, for in him
the intellectual element from the first was even abnormally prominent. Yet
in Browning too the influence of the time is felt. _Christmas Eve and
Easter Day_ (1850) handles topics to which he is perpetually recurring;
but in it they are seen in a new light. The poet had heard the noise of
the Tractarian controversy, and in _Christmas Eve_ he passes in review the
three principal phases of contemporary opinion regarding religion,--the
evangelical, represented by the Nonconformist Chapel, the Catholic,
represented by Rome, and the critical, represented by the German professor
in his lecture-room. It is significant that while Browning can accept
neither of the two former, he prefers both to the third. Both are
intellectually indefensible, yet in both the vital thing, love, is
present, while it is not to be found in the lecture-room. Both 'poison the
air for healthy breathing,' but the critic 'leaves no air to poison.'
There is throughout the poem an unquestionable bias towards finding as
much true as will by any means pass muster with the intellect. Long
afterwards, in _La Saisiaz_ (1878), Browning handled the same problems in
a more boldly speculative spirit, though still with the same bias. The
difference is largely due to time; for before the date of _La Saisiaz_
Browning had adopted a method more philosophical than artistic. But
partly, perhaps, it was due to his wife, who was alive when _Christmas
Eve_ was written, and dead long before _La Saisiaz_.
In the period between these two poems the same problems were frequently in
Browning's mind, and no section of his work is richer in thought and
poetic beauty than that which expresses them. In _Karshish_, with its
vivid realisation of the mind of a thoughtful heathen longing for a faith,
in _A Death in the Desert_, where the St. John is rather a man of the age
of Strauss than of the first century, in _The Pope_ and in _Rabbi Ben
Ezra_, we have Browning's deepest treatment of the problems which
interested him most, and we have not that sacrifice of poetry to
philosophy which mars _La Saisiaz_. We may say that about this time
Browning discovered the vital interest of his generation, and discovered
also where his own strength lay. The effect is seen in the uniform
excellence of his work. The publications of the twenty years between 1850
and 1870, taken as a whole, certainly surpass what he had done before or
what he did afterwards. _Men and Women_ (1855) has been probably the most
popular and the most widely read of all his writings; _Dramatis Personae_
(1864) is even richer in poetry, but has been commonly felt to be more
difficult in thought; while _The Ring and the Book_ (1868-1869) is by
almost all competent judges pronounced his masterpiece.
The plan of The _Ring and the Book_, whereby the same story is told ten
times over from ten different points of view, is defensible only on the
ground that it succeeds. Nearly half the poem is hardly worth reading; yet
the other half so splendidly redeems it that _The Ring and the Book_ ranks
among the great poems of modern times. The pictures of Caponsacchi, of
Guido, of Pompilia and of the Pope are all great. Guido has the interest,
unique in this poem, of appearing twice; and there is no better
illustration of the subtlety of Browning's thought than the difference
between the Count, plausible, supple and polished, pleading for his life,
and the man Guido, stripped of all but bare humanity, condemned to death,
first desperately petitioning, then tearing off the veil of hypocrisy and
uttering his terrible truths both about himself and the messengers who
bear his sentence. Pompilia is Browning's most perfect female character;
but, though a beautiful creation, she illustrates one of the defects in
his dramatic art. She speaks Browning's speech, and she thinks his
thought. Simple child as she is, there is a depth of philosophy in her
utterances that is not in strict keeping with her character; and she, like
all Browning's men and women, uses the abrupt vivid language of the poet.
Notwithstanding his almost passionate repudiation of the idea, Browning is
a self-revealing poet; and nowhere does he reveal himself more than in the
Pope, the greatest character in _The Ring and the Book_. In him the
resemblance to Browning himself does not matter, it rather adds a new
interest. The mind can conceive and picture nothing higher than its own
ideal best; and the Pope is Browning's ideal man, great in intellect, in
morals and in faith. In two other cases, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ and _A Death in
the Desert_, Browning has given similar glimpses of his own ideal, but
they are less full than the view we get in _The Pope_.
To Browning's middle period belong likewise many of his love-poems, and
these are unique in the English language. Others, like Shakespeare and
Burns and Shelley, have given a more purely captivating expression to the
ardour of love; no one else has so worked out its philosophy. Not that
Browning's poems are deficient in feeling; the expressions of his own love
for his wife, 'O lyric love' and _One Word More_, would suffice to refute
such a criticism. But he prefers to take an aspect of passion and to
explain it by the way of thought. He is analytical. The best example is
_James Lee's Wife_, which goes through a whole drama of passion, and might
be described, like Tennyson's _Maud_, as 'a lyrical mono-drama.' This, for
good or evil, is another method from that of 'Take, oh take those lips
away,' or 'I arise from dreams of thee,' or 'Of a' the airts.' There is
both gain and loss in Browning's way of treatment. On the one hand, the
lyric strain is less pure. If poetry ought to be 'simple, sensuous and
impassioned,' and it has been generally thought that lyric poetry in
particular should be so, then is Browning's less in harmony with the
ideal. On the other hand, because his is a new way Browning impresses the
reader with his originality; and because it is a thoughtful way he has a
wide range. Moreover, it is a purifying and ennobling way. No poet free,
as Browning is, from the taint of asceticism has ever treated the passion
of love in a manner so little physical as he. There are in his works
errors of taste that cause a shudder; but they are not here.
It was likewise during this period that Browning was at his dramatic best.
Nearly all his best pieces are dramatic in conception, though sometimes,
as in the love-poems, we are confined to single aspects of character. Not
to speak of the great figures of _The Ring and the Book_, there is ample
variety in _Men and Women_ and in _Dramatis Personae_. There are few
figures more clearly drawn or more easily remembered than _Andrea del
Sarto_; and _My Last Duchess_ is equally fine. In these two pieces
Browning has succeeded better than elsewhere in keeping himself in the
background. _Fra Lippo Lippi_ has likewise the stamp of dramatic truth,
and is rich in humour; and _Bishop Blougram_ is at once an excellent
character, and, though a satirical conception, the mouthpiece of some
serious thought.
In the last twenty years of his life Browning, on the whole, appears at
his worst. We have seen how the development of Tennyson, though not
unattended with loss, carried with it much compensating gain. There are
some indications that Tennyson felt the influence of his great
contemporary. The metrical effects of his later poems, as well as the
studies of character, are sometimes suggestive of Browning. It would have
been well if Browning had in turn borrowed a few hints from Tennyson; but
unfortunately he went steadily along his own course, bringing into ever
greater prominence characteristics that rather needed repression. He
should have nourished the artistic rather than the intellectual element.
Instead, the former dwindled and the latter grew; and some of his later
writings may be not unfairly described as merely treatises in verse. Such
is _Fifine at the Fair_ (1872); such is _La Saisiaz_ (1878); such are many
parts of _Ferishtah's Fancies_ (1884), and of the _Parleyings with Certain
People of Importance_ (1887). Such too is _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_
(1871); for there the dramatic conception of Louis Napoleon is smothered
beneath the arguments of the Saviour of Society. In all of these the
philosophy overloads the poetry, a state of matters all the less
satisfactory because the philosophy itself is not so sound as that of the
earlier periods.
There is nevertheless some fine work belonging to this late period. The
translations from the Greek are interesting; but their value is outweighed
by that of the beautiful romance of _Balaustion_, in which they are set,
and by the discussion of the principles of art in _Aristophanes' Apology_
(1875). Still better is _The Inn Album_ (1875), remarkable for the
magnificent character of the heroine, and for some of the most powerful
reasoning to be found in Browning's works. His last volume, _Asolando_
(1889), will always have a special interest for its publication
coincidently with his death; and it illustrates how his favourite ideas
remained fixed to the end. There is nothing more characteristic of him
than the thought that evil is necessary to the evolution of good. We can
trace this all through his work. It is present in _Sordello_, where we
find evil described as 'the scheme by which, through ignorance, good
labours to exist;' and the poet even modifies the prayer, 'Lead us not
into temptation,' because, if we are strong enough to overcome it, the
temptation will only do us good. It is indeed Bishop Blougram whom he
causes to speak of 'the blessed evil;' but Browning could consistently
have used the phrase himself. Nowhere is this doctrine, at first so
strange, yet so suggestive, more fully and clearly expressed than in the
poem _Rephan_ in _Asolando_. Earth is superior to Rephan just because evil
blended with good is better than 'a neutral best,' and it is progress to
move from the sphere where wrong is impossible to one where through the
risk of evil, and often through evil itself, a higher good may be
attained.
Browning's last word to the world, the epilogue to _Asolando_, is most
distinctive of his style and tone of thought. He held throughout a steady
optimism, all the more cheering because it is the optimism of a man of
wide knowledge of the world, and one who has looked evil in the face. The
note is never clearer than in the epilogue, where he describes himself as
'One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
'No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
Strive and thrive! Cry, "Speed,--fight on, fare ever
There as here."'
[Sidenote: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861).]
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an author at an earlier date than her
husband. As early as 1826 she published a poetical _Essay on Mind_, along
with other pieces; but her first work of any note was _The Seraphim_
(1838). Her introduction to Browning took place in 1846. She was prepared
to admire him, for she already admired his work, and had expressed her
opinion of it in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_. An accident in girlhood had
made her a confirmed invalid; but in spite of this the two poets fell in
love, and were married in the autumn of the year when they first met. They
left England and settled at Florence for the sake of Mrs. Browning's
health; and there, in 1861, she died.
There are two points of special and peculiar interest in connexion with
Mrs. Browning. She has only one possible rival, Christina Rossetti, for
the honour of being the greatest poetess who has written in English; and
her marriage with Browning formed a union without parallel in literature.
Moreover, in relation to Mrs. Browning's works, sex is not a mere
accident. She is a woman in all her modes of thought and feeling, and she
is so especially in her very finest work. Her greatest contribution to
literature, _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, derives its unique interest
from being the expression of the woman's love; and _A Child's Grave at
Florence_ could hardly have been written but by a woman and a mother.
Mrs. Browning's influence upon her husband was remarkably slight; his
influence upon her was of mixed effect, but good predominated. The
questionable element is seen when we compare _The Seraphim_ with poems
like _Casa Guidi Windows_ (1851) and _Aurora Leigh_ (1857). _The
Seraphim_, a lyrical drama, though immature, is of high promise. It is,
above all, right in tone and method; for the writer, Mrs. Browning, was
not really a thinker; woman-like, she felt first, and the attempt to
translate her feeling into thought was an error. She was by nature prone
to this error, and Browning strengthened her innate ambition. But she
never succeeds where thought is suffered to predominate. _Casa Guidi
Windows_ is sadly wanting in force and concentration; and the ambitious
metrical romance of _Aurora Leigh_ would be much improved by being
compressed within half its bulk. It is moreover always the thought, the
social discussions, the parts meant to be especially profound, that are
wrong; the poetic feeling is sound and just, and its expression is often
excellent. Minor influences of Browning may be traced in his wife's rhymes
and rhythms; but while his effects, though often grotesque and uncouth,
are striking and memorable, hers are feeble and commonplace.
But if Browning inspired his wife with a false ideal, he, on the other
hand, lifted the shadow from her life, and gave her courage and hope, and
the measure of health without which her work could not have been
accomplished. Her best poems are related to him directly, like the
_Sonnets from the Portuguese_, or indirectly, like _A Child's Grave at
Florence_; for there her own child is an influence.
Beyond question, the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ (1850) are Mrs.
Browning's most valuable contribution to literature. They are valuable
even beyond their intrinsic merits. Good as they are, these sonnets have
neither massiveness and subtlety of thought on the one hand, nor melody
and charm on the other, sufficient to secure a place beside the greatest
poetry. But they are the genuine utterance of a woman's heart, at once
humbled and exalted by love; and in this respect they are unique. The
woman's passion, from the woman's point of view, has seldom found
expression at all in literature, and this particular aspect of it never.
Hence, while it would be absurd to say that these sonnets are, as pieces
of poetry, equal to the sonnets of Wordsworth or of Milton, it is not so
unreasonable to question whether their removal would not leave a more
irreparable gap in literature.
Mrs. Browning is on the whole happiest as a sonnet-writer. The sonnet form
restrained that tendency to diffuseness which was her besetting sin, and
so the fetters proved, as they so often do, to be the means whereby she
moved more freely. Her purpose however frequently required the use of
other forms. Thus, she sometimes aimed at romantic effects. She did so
with no great success in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, a kind of _Lord of
Burleigh_ from the other side, spoilt by excessive length. _The Rhyme of
the Duchess May_ is much better. _The Romaunt of Margret_ altogether fails
to catch the weird effect aimed at, while _The Lay of the Brown Rosary_
succeeds. But apart from the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ and some of the
miscellaneous sonnets, her truest note is pathos. _Bertha in the Lane_, a
simple story, sentimental but not weak, is an example of one aspect of it;
_A Child's Grave_, already mentioned, of another; and, perhaps highest of
all, _The Cry of the Children_ of a third.
Mrs. Browning had a dangerous facility of composition, and much that she
wrote is poor. Few poets gain more by selection. A small volume of pieces
judiciously chosen would convince the reader that he was listening to the
voice of a true and even a great poet; but his sense of this is lost in
the flatness and weariness of the five superfluous volumes.
[Sidenote: Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883).]
There remains one very remarkable poet, Edward FitzGerald, whom it is
difficult to place. Formally, he ought to be classed merely as an
interpreter of other men's thoughts; but in reality he is an original poet
of no mean rank, and his friendship with Tennyson, together with the
strong intellectual quality of his principal work, gives him an affinity
to the group now under discussion. His first noteworthy publication was a
fine prose dialogue, _Euphranor_ (1851), but his principal work was the
translation of poetry. He translated six dramas of Calderon (1853), the
_Rubaiyat_ of Omar Khayyam (1859), _Salaman and Absal_ (1856), and the
_Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, which, having been first privately printed, was
published anonymously in 1876.
Probably no other translator ever showed equal originality. As a rule, the
reader of a version of poetry, even if he be unacquainted with the
original, feels a sense of loss. Pope's Homer is 'a pretty poem;' but not
only is it not Homer, we feel that it is not worthy of the great
reputation of Homer; and there is not one of the numerous versions of
_Faust_ but falls far short of the force and suggestiveness of the
original. It is not so with FitzGerald. To some extent in the case of all
his poems, but eminently in the case of the _Rubaiyat_, we feel that we
are in the presence of a man of native power; and some Persian scholars
hold that in this instance the order of merit is reversed, and that
FitzGerald is greater than Omar.
That his success was partly due to an inborn gift for rendering verse is
proved by FitzGerald's high, though not equal felicity, as a translator of
poets so different as Aeschylus, Calderon, and Omar Khayyam. But partly
also it was due to a very liberal theory of translation, outlined by
himself in the prefaces to Calderon and the _Agamemnon_. In the former he
says, 'I have, while faithfully trying to retain what was fine and
efficient, sunk, reduced, altered, and replaced much that seemed not;
simplified some perplexities, and curtailed or omitted scenes that seemed
to mar the general effect, supplying such omissions by some lines of
after-narrative; and in some measure have tried to compensate for the
fulness of sonorous Spanish, which Saxon English at least must forego, by
a compression which has its own charms to Saxon ears.' The extent to
which he allowed himself liberties may be partly gauged by the differences
between the first and fourth editions of the _Rubaiyat_. In short,
FitzGerald was more properly a paraphrast than a translator. He got into
his mind a conception of the central meaning of the work and of the
author's character where, as in the case of Omar, that was of importance
as a key to the meaning; and he then, without troubling himself about
exact equivalence of word or phrase, or even of whole sections, proceeded
to create a similar impression in the new language. Hence his work is
wholly free from the impression of cramped movement so common in
translations.
With reference to Omar, FitzGerald had first to decide whether his
quatrains were to be interpreted literally, or as the utterances of a
mystic Sufism, in which the wine so frequently sung of really meant Deity,
and all the sensual images covered a spiritual meaning. Fortunately, he
decided for the former alternative; and whatever the real Omar may have
been, FitzGerald's Omar is an epicurean. The original Omar has been
compared to Lucretius; as FitzGerald represents him he is far more
suggestive of Horace. His touch is lighter than the elder Roman's; and he
has no system, nor any ambition to frame one. Rather it is his conviction
of the futility of systems that makes him what he is. He is a thoughtful
man, questioning the meaning of life, finding no answer except in the
philosophy of 'eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die,' and
drawing thence the inevitable melancholy it must impart to the reflective
mind.
'There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see;
Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE
There was--and then no more of THEE and ME.'
Herein lies the charm of his epicureanism, and herein too its kinship
with that of Horace. In both, the moral, _carpe diem_, is the advice of
men who, in spite of themselves, must live for more than the day.
Thanks to the deeply human element in his philosophy, Horace after
nineteen centuries is one of the most modern of poets. He has been
emphatically the guide of the man of the world, whose experience, as it
broadens, more and more convinces him of the poet's truth. FitzGerald's
Omar has the same modern tone, perhaps in a degree even higher. His
necessitarianism is modern, his scepticism is modern, and the difficulties
in which it arises are modern too. His stinging quatrains answer a
theology familiar enough to the readers of Burns, and seem to breathe the
spirit of the Scotch poet's satires on the Kirk:
'Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
'Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!'
Except perhaps in America, FitzGerald is not yet appreciated as he ought
to be. When he is so appreciated he will rank only under the greatest of
his time, and his chief work will be classed little below their best.