Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;

  Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls

  Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe

  Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek

  Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews

  His ancient rapture.”

  In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest the influence of the noble Hebraic poetry. It must have been at this period that Browning conned over and over with an exultant delight the simple but lordly diction of Isaiah and the other prophets, preferring this Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks. There is an anecdote of his walking across a public park (I am told Richmond, but more probably it was Wimbledon Common) with his hat in his left hand and his right waving to and fro declamatorily, while the wind blew his hair around his head like a nimbus: so rapt in his ecstasy over the solemn sweep of the Biblical music that he did not observe a small following consisting of several eager children, expectant of thrilling stump-oratory. He was just the man, however, to accept an anti-climax genially, and to dismiss his disappointed auditory with something more tangible than an address.

  The poet-precursor of scientific knowledge is again and again manifest: as, for example, in

  ”Hints and previsions of which faculties

  Are strewn confusedly everywhere about

  The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,

  All shape out dimly the superior race,

  The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,

  And man appears at last.”*

  —

  * Readers interested in Browning’s inspiration from,

  and treatment of, Science, should consult the excellent essay on him

  as “A Scientific Poet” by Mr. Edward Berdoe, F.R.C.S., and, in particular,

  compare with the originals the references given by Mr. Berdoe

  to the numerous passages bearing upon Evolution and the several sciences,

  from Astronomy to Physiology.

  —

  There are lines, again, which have a magic that cannot be defined.

  If it be not felt, no sense of it can be conveyed through another’s words.

  ”Whose memories were a solace to me oft,

  As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight.”

  ”Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once

  Into the vast and unexplored abyss,

  What full-grown power informs her from the first,

  Why she not marvels, strenuously beating

  The silent boundless regions of the sky.”

  There is one passage, beautiful in itself, which has a pathetic significance henceforth. Gordon, our most revered hero, was wont to declare that nothing in all nonscriptural literature was so dear to him, nothing had so often inspired him in moments of gloom: —

  ”I go to prove my soul!

  I see my way as birds their trackless way.

  I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first,

  I ask not: but unless God send His hail

  Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,

  In some time, His good time, I shall arrive:

  He guides me and the bird. In his good time.”

  As for the much misused `Shakespearian’ comparison, so often mistakenly applied to Browning, there is nothing in “Paracelsus” in the least way derivative. Because Shakespeare is the greatest genius evolved from our race, it does not follow that every lofty intellect, every great objective poet, should be labelled “Shakespearian”. But there is a certain quality in poetic expression which we so specify, because the intense humanity throbbing in it finds highest utterance in the greatest of our poets: and there is at least one instance of such poignant speech in “Paracelsus”, worthy almost to be ranked with the last despairing cry of Guido calling upon murdered Pompilia: —

  ”Festus, strange secrets are let out by death

  Who blabs so oft the follies of this world:

  And I am death’s familiar, as you know.

  I helped a man to die, some few weeks since,

  Warped even from his go-cart to one end —

  The living on princes’ smiles, reflected from

  A mighty herd of favourites. No mean trick

  He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed

  All traces of God’s finger out of him:

  Then died, grown old. And just an hour before,

  Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes,

  He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice

  Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors

  God told him it was June; and he knew well

  Without such telling, harebells grew in June;

  And all that kings could ever give or take

  Would not be precious as those blooms to him.”

  Technically, I doubt if Browning ever produced any finer long poem, except “Pippa Passes”, which is a lyrical drama, and neither exactly a `play’ nor exactly a `poem’ in the conventional usage of the terms. Artistically, “Paracelsus” is disproportionate, and has faults, obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear: but in the main it has a beauty without harshness, a swiftness of thought and speech without tumultuous pressure of ideas or stammering. It has not, in like degree, the intense human insight of, say, “The Inn Album”, but it has that charm of sequent excellence too rarely to be found in many of Browning’s later writings. It glides onward like a steadfast stream, the thought moving with the current it animates and controls, and throbbing eagerly beneath. When we read certain portions of “Paracelsus”, and the lovely lyrics interspersed in it, it is difficult not to think of the poet as sometimes, in later life, stooping like the mariner in Roscoe’s beautiful sonnet, striving to reclaim “some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand.” But it is the fleeting shore of exquisite art, not of the far-reaching shadowy capes and promontories of “the poetic land”.

  Of the four interlusive lyrics the freer music is in the unique chant,

  “Over the sea our galleys went”: a song full of melody and blithe lilt.

  It is marvellously pictorial, and yet has a freedom that places it among

  the most delightful of spontaneous lyrics: —

  ”We shouted, every man of us,

  And steered right into the harbour thus,

  With pomp and paean glorious.”

  It is, however, too long for present quotation, and as an example of Browning’s early lyrics I select rather the rich and delicate second of these “Paracelsus” songs, one wherein the influence of Keats is so marked, and yet where all is the poet’s own: —

  ”Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes

  Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,

  Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes

  From out her hair: such balsam falls

  Down sea-side mountain pedestals,

  From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,

  Spent with the vast and howling main,

  To treasure half their island-gain.

  ”And strew faint sweetness from some old

  Egyptian’s fine worm-eaten shroud

  Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;

  Or shredded perfume, like a cloud

  From closet long to quiet vowed,

  With mothed and dropping arras hung,

  Mouldering her lute and books among,

  As when a queen, long dead, was young.”

  With this music in our ears we can well forgive some of the prosaic commonplaces which deface “Paracelsus” — some of those lapses from rhythmic energy to which the poet became less and less sensitive, till he could be so deaf to the vanishing “echo of the fleeting strand” as to sink to the level of doggerel such as that which closes the poem called “Popularity”.

  “Paracelsus” is not a great, but it is a memorable poem: a notable achievement, indeed, for an author of Browning’s years. Well may we exclaim with Festus, when we regard the poet in all the greatness of his maturity —r />
  ”The sunrise

  Well warranted our faith in this full noon!”

  Chapter 4.

  The `Athenaeum’ dismissed “Paracelsus” with a half contemptuous line or two. On the other hand, the `Examiner’ acknowledged it to be a work of unequivocal power, and predicted for its author a brilliant career. The same critic who wrote this review contributed an article of about twenty pages upon “Paracelsus” to the `New Monthly Magazine’, under the heading, “Evidences of a New Dramatic Poetry”. This article is ably written, and remarkable for its sympathetic insight. “Mr. Browning,” the critic writes, “is a man of genius, he has in himself all the elements of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic.”

  The author of this enthusiastic and important critique was John Forster. When the `Examiner’ review appeared the two young men had not met: but the encounter, which was to be the seed of so fine a flower of friendship, occurred before the publication of the `New Monthly’ article. Before this, however, Browning had already made one of the most momentous acquaintanceships of his life.

  His good friend and early critic, Mr. Fox, asked him to his house one evening in November, a few months after the publication of “Paracelsus”. The chief guest of the occasion was Macready, then at the height of his great reputation. Mr. Fox had paved the way for the young poet, but the moment he entered he carried with him his best recommendation. Every one who met Browning in those early years of his buoyant manhood seems to have been struck by his comeliness and simple grace of manner. Macready stated that he looked more like a poet than any man he had ever met. As a young man he appears to have had a certain ivory delicacy of colouring, what an old friend perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly described to me as an almost flower-like beauty, which passed ere long into a less girlish and more robust complexion. He appeared taller than he was, for he was not above medium height, partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation. Even then he had that expressive wave o’ the hand, which in later years was as full of various meanings as the `Ecco’ of an Italian. A swift alertness pervaded him, noticeable as much in the rapid change of expression, in the deepening and illuming colours of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift to curve or droop in response to the most fluctuant emotion, as in his greyhound-like apprehension, which so often grasped the subject in its entirety before its propounder himself realised its significance. A lady, who remembers Browning at that time, has told me that his hair — then of a brown so dark as to appear black — was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque waves as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle, personal charm was his voice, then with a rare flute-like tone, clear, sweet, and resonant. Afterwards, though always with precise clarity, it became merely strong and hearty, a little too loud sometimes, and not infrequently as that of one simulating keen immediate interest while the attention was almost wholly detached.

  Macready, in his Journal,* about a week later than the date of his first meeting with the poet, wrote — “Read `Paracelsus’, a work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure: the writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time.” The tragedian’s house, whither he went at week-ends and on holidays, was at Elstree, a short distance to the northward of Hampstead: and there he invited Browning, among other friends, to come on the last day of December and spend New Year’s Day (1836).** When alluding, in after years, to this visit, Browning always spoke of it as one of the red-letter days of his life. It was here he first met Forster, with whom he at once formed what proved to be an enduring friendship; and on this occasion, also, that he was urged by his host to write a poetic play.

  —

  * For many interesting particulars concerning Macready and Browning,

  and the production of “Strafford”, etc., see the `Reminiscences’, vol. 1.

  ** It was for Macready’s eldest boy, William Charles, that Browning wrote

  one of the most widely popular of his poems, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”.

  It is said to have been an impromptu performance, and to have been

  so little valued by the author that he hesitated about its inclusion

  in “Bells and Pomegranates”. It was inserted at the last moment,

  in the third number, which was short of “copy”. Some one (anonymous,

  but whom I take to be Mr. Nettleship) has publicly alluded

  to his possession of a rival poem (entitled, simply, “Hamelin”)

  by Robert Browning the elder, and of a letter which he had sent to a friend

  along with the verses, in which he writes: “Before I knew

  that Robert had begun the story of the `Rats’ I had contemplated a tale

  on the same subject, and proceeded with it as far as you see,

  but, on hearing that Robert had a similar one on hand, I desisted.”

  This must have been in 1842, for it was in that year

  that the third part of `Bells and Pomegranates’ was published.

  In 1843, however, he finished it. Browning’s “Pied Piper”

  has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, and German.

  The latter (or one German) version is in prose. It was made in 1880,

  for a special purpose, and occupied the whole of one number

  of the local paper of Hameln, which is a quaint townlet in Hanover.

  —

  Browning promised to consider the suggestion. Six weeks later, in company with Forster, with whom he had become intimate, he called upon Macready, to discuss the plot of a tragedy which he had pondered. He told the tragedian how deeply he had been impressed by his performance of “Othello”, and how this had deflected his intention from a modern and European to an Oriental and ancient theme. “Browning said that I had BIT him by my performance of `Othello’, and I told him I hoped I should make the blood come.” The “blood” had come in the guise of a drama-motive based on the crucial period in the career of Narses, the eunuch-general of Justinian. Macready liked the suggestion, though he demurred to one or two points in the outline: and before Browning left he eagerly pressed him to “go on with `Narses’.” But whether Browning mistrusted his own interest in the theme, or was dubious as to the success with which Macready would realise his conception, or as to the reception a play of such nature would win from an auditory no longer reverent of high dramatic ideals, he gave up the idea. Some three months later (May 26th) he enjoyed another eventful evening. It was the night of the first performance of Talfourd’s “Ion”, and he was among the personal friends of Macready who were invited to the supper at Talfourd’s rooms. After the fall of the curtain, Browning, Forster, and other friends sought the tragedian and congratulated him upon the success both of the play and of his impersonation of the chief character. They then adjourned to the house of the author of “Ion”. To his surprise and gratification Browning found himself placed next but one to his host, and immediately opposite Macready, who sat between two gentlemen, one calm as a summer evening, and the other with a tempestuous youth dominating his sixty years, whom the young poet at once recognised as Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. Every one was in good spirits: the host perhaps most of all, who was celebrating his birthday as well as the success of “Ion”. Possibly Macready was the only person who felt at all bored — unless it was Landor — for Wordsworth was not, at such a function, an entertaining conversationalist. There is much significance in the succinct entry in Macready’s journal concerning the Lake-poet — “Wordsworth, who pinned me.” . . . When Talfourd rose to propose the toast of “The Poets of England” every one probably expected that Wordsworth would be named to respond. But with a kindly grace the host, after flattering remarks upon the two great men then honouring him by sitting at his table, coupled his toast with the name of the youngest of the poets of England — “Mr. Robert Browning, the auth
or of `Paracelsus’.” It was a very proud moment for Browning, singled out among that brilliant company: and it is pleasant to know, on the authority of Miss Mitford, who was present, that “he performed his task with grace and modesty,” looking, the amiable lady adds, even younger than he was. Perhaps, however, he was prouder still when Wordsworth leaned across the table, and with stately affability said, “I am proud to drink your health, Mr. Browning:” when Landor, also, with a superbly indifferent and yet kindly smile, also raised his glass to his lips in courteous greeting.

  Of Wordsworth Browning saw not a little in the ensuing few years, for on the rare visits the elderly poet paid to London, Talfourd never failed to ask the author of “Paracelsus”, for whom he had a sincere admiration, to meet the great man. It was not in the nature of things that the two poets could become friends, but though the younger was sometimes annoyed by the elder’s pooh-poohing his republican sympathies, and contemptuously waiving aside as a mere nobody no less an individual than Shelley, he never failed of respect and even reverence. With what tenderness and dignity he has commemorated the great poet’s falling away from his early ideals, may be seen in “The Lost Leader”, one of the most popular of Browning’s short poems, and likely to remain so. For several reasons, however, it is best as well as right that Wordsworth should not be more than merely nominally identified with the Lost Leader. Browning was always imperative upon this point.

  Towards Landor, on the other hand, he entertained a sentiment of genuine affection, coupled with a profound sympathy and admiration: a sentiment duly reciprocated. The care of the younger for the elder, in the old age of the latter, is one of the most beautiful incidents in a beautiful life.

  But the evening was not to pass without another memorable incident, one to which we owe “Strafford”, and probably “A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon”. Just as the young poet, flushed with the triumphant pleasure of the evening, was about to leave, Macready arrested him by a friendly grip of the arm. In unmistakable earnestness he asked Browning to write him a play. With a simplicity equal to the occasion, the poet contented himself with replying, “Shall it be historical and English? What do you say to a drama on Strafford?”