Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  ‘In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselves about such matters [as a few blemishes]. Time enough for that afterwards, when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath had many particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero’s crown, but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted ‘Eureka!’’

  Many persons have discovered Mr. Browning since he has been known to fame. One only discovered him in his obscurity.

  Next to that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster among the first spontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning’s genius; and his admiration was, in its own way, the more valuable for the circumstances which precluded in it all possible, even unconscious, bias of personal interest or sympathy. But this belongs to a somewhat later period of our history.

  I am dwelling at some length on this first experience of Mr. Browning’s literary career, because the confidence which it gave him determined its immediate future, if not its ultimate course — because, also, the poem itself is more important to the understanding of his mind than perhaps any other of his isolated works. It was the earliest of his dramatic creations; it was therefore inevitably the most instinct with himself; and we may regard the ‘Confession’ as to a great extent his own, without for an instant ignoring the imaginative element which necessarily and certainly entered into it. At one moment, indeed, his utterance is so emphatic that we should feel it to be direct, even if we did not know it to be true. The passage beginning, ‘I am made up of an intensest life,’ conveys something more than the writer’s actual psychological state. The feverish desire of life became gradually modified into a more or less active intellectual and imaginative curiosity; but the sense of an individual, self-centred, and, as it presented itself to him, unconditioned existence, survived all the teachings of experience, and often indeed unconsciously imposed itself upon them.

  I have already alluded to that other and more pathetic fragment of distinct autobiography which is to be found in the invocation to the ‘Sun-treader’. Mr. Fox, who has quoted great part of it, justly declares that ‘the fervency, the remembrance, the half-regret mingling with its exultation, are as true as its leading image is beautiful.’ The ‘exultation’ is in the triumph of Shelley’s rising fame; the regret, for the lost privilege of worshipping in solitary tenderness at an obscure shrine. The double mood would have been characteristic of any period of Mr. Browning’s life.

  The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the natural imagery of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy instead of the direct poetic vision of the author’s later work.

  ‘Pauline’ received another and graceful tribute two months later than the review. In an article of the ‘Monthly Repository’, and in the course of a description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, the following passage occurs:

  ‘Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place. . . . They are natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surely as a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. ‘Probatum est.’ Last autumn L — — dropped a poem of Shelley’s down there in the wood,* amongst the thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found a delicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with ‘Pauline’ hanging from its slender stalk. Unripe fruit it may be, but of pleasant flavour and promise, and a mellower produce, it may be hoped, will follow.’

  * Mr. Browning’s copy of ‘Rosalind and Helen’, which he had lent

  to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic.

  This and a bald though well-meant notice in the ‘Athenaeum’

  exhaust its literary history for this period.*

  * Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words,

  Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract

  from the ‘Literary Gazette’ of March 23, 1833:

  ‘Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession’, pp. 71. London, 1833.

  Saunders and Otley.

  ‘Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual,

  and not a little unintelligible, — this is a dreamy volume,

  without an object, and unfit for publication.’

  The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reason why it should be. But ‘Pauline’ was, from the first, little known or discussed beyond the immediate circle of the poet’s friends; and when, twenty years later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon it in the library of the British Museum, he could only surmise that it had been written by the author of ‘Paracelsus’.

  The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning’s visit to Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. The Russian consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, and being sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed that he should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary. The letters written to his sister during this, as during every other absence, were full of graphic description, and would have been a mine of interest for the student of his imaginative life. They are, unfortunately, all destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscences of what they had to tell; but we know how strangely he was impressed by some of the circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endless monotony of snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companion rushed for days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, without seeming to move from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, and was fortunate enough, before his return, to witness the breaking-up of the ice on the Neva, and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremony of drinking the first glass of water from it. He was absent about three months.

  The one active career which would have recommended itself to him in his earlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desired for his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post of activity and responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman. Soon after his return from Russia he applied for appointment on a mission which was to be despatched to Persia; and the careless wording of the answer which his application received made him think for a moment that it had been granted. He was much disappointed when he learned, through an interview with the ‘chief’, that the place was otherwise filled.

  In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the ‘Monthly Repository’, extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. The earliest of these was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr. Browning’s works, and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse’s article in the ‘Century Magazine’, December 1881; now part of his ‘Personalia’. The second, beginning ‘A king lived long ago’, was to be published, with alterations and additions, as one of ‘Pippa’s’ songs. ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’ were reprinted together in ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ under the heading of ‘Madhouse Cells’. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning ‘Still ailing, Wind? wilt be appeased or no?’ afterwards introduced into the sixth section of ‘James Lee’s Wife’. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the poet’s future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most essential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems.

  This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction, of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning’s friends; foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with Alfred Domett. The magazine was called the ‘Trifler’, and published in monthly numbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-money on the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it one letter, February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled ‘Some strictures on a late article in the ‘Trifler’.’ This boyish production sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses of some obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was ‘A Dissertation on Debt and Debtors’, where the subject was, I imagine, treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing that indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all his sophistry
in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his life a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have preferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may be forgiven for quoting some passages from it.

  For to be man is to be a debtor: — hinting but slightly at the grand and primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hard for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do with nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralists have concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed an uninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place as represented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodge most commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce,* and those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot to discharge — or, as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it —

  He’s most in debt who lingers out the day,

  Who dies betimes has less and less to pay.

  So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that

  Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c.

  as thou pratest, ‘tis plain that they have willed on the very outset to inculcate this truth on the mind of every man, — no barren and inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productive rule of life, — that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor — aye, friend, and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander, — no recreant as thou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true — remark, as did his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast ‘paid the debt of nature’? Ha! I have thee ‘beyond the rules’, as one (a bailiff) may say!

  * Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my

  attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies

  is identical with that expressed in these words of

  ‘Prospice’,

  . . . in a minute pay glad life’s arrears

  Of pain, darkness, and cold.

  Such performances supplied a distraction to the more serious work of writing ‘Paracelsus’, which was to be concluded in March 1835, and which occupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know to what extent Mr. Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; but the following letters show that the friend of ‘Pauline’ gave ready and efficient help in the strangely difficult task of securing a publisher for the new poem.

  The first is dated April 2, 1835.

  Dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter: — Sardanapalus ‘could not go on multiplying kingdoms’ — nor I protestations — but I thank you very much.

  You will oblige me indeed by forwarding the introduction to Moxon. I merely suggested him in particular, on account of his good name and fame among author-folk, besides he has himself written — as the Americans say — ’more poetry ‘an you can shake a stick at.’ So I hope we shall come to terms.

  I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kind interest, and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you have as yet seen; indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour, for it will never do for one so distinguished by past praise to prove nobody after all — ’nous verrons’. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and obliged Robt. Browning.

  On April 16 he wrote again as follows:

  Dear Sir,

  Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no time in presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke’s letter perused than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat — the Moxonian accent grew dolorous thereupon: — ’Artevelde’ has not paid expenses by about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson’s poetry is ‘popular at Cambridge’, and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last, some 300 only have gone off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever venture again, &c. &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting, &c. &c.

  I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, do really think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms — I shall know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine.

  You will ‘sarve me out’? two words to that; being the man you are, you must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have of your criticism’s worth, and if I have had no more of it, surely I am hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance bored you sufficiently: but not a particle of your article has been rejected or neglected by your observant humble servant, and very proud shall I be if my new work bear in it the marks of the influence under which it was undertaken — and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace who anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot. I purposely keep back the subject until you see my conception of its capabilities — otherwise you would be planning a vase fit to give the go-by to Evander’s best crockery, which my cantharus would cut but a sorry figure beside — hardly up to the ansa.

  But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive — and likely I hope to do good; and though I am rather scared at the thought of a fresh eye going over its 4,000 lines — discovering blemishes of all sorts which my one wit cannot avail to detect, fools treated as sages, obscure passages, slipshod verses, and much that worse is, — yet on the whole I am not much afraid of the issue, and I would give something to be allowed to read it some morning to you — for every rap o’ the knuckles I should get a clap o’ the back, I know.

  I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, I conceive, but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two — so I decide on trying the question with this: — I really shall need your notice, on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms akimbo; there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift and scope are awfully radical — I am ‘off’ for ever with the other side, but must by all means be ‘on’ with yours — a position once gained, worthier works shall follow — therefore a certain writer* who meditated a notice (it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on ‘Pauline’ in the ‘Examiner’, must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose, but in no case an idle spectator of my first appearance on any stage (having previously only dabbled in private theatricals) and bawl ‘Hats off!’ ‘Down in front!’ &c., as soon as I get to the proscenium; and he may depend that tho’ my ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’ be rather awkward, yet there shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff — that I shall warm as I get on, and finally wish ‘Richmond at the bottom of the seas,’ &c. in the best style imaginable.

  * Mr. John Stuart Mill.

  Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and

  (The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph.)

  Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, we understand, on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the author than on that of its intrinsic worth.

  The title-page of ‘Paracelsus’ introduces us to one of the warmest friendships of Mr. Browning’s life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a young French Royalist, one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berri on her Chouan expedition, and was then, for a few years, spending his summers in England; ostensibly for his pleasure, really — as he confessed to the Browning family — in the character of private agent of communication between the royal exiles and their friends in France. He was four years older than the poet, and of intellectual tastes which created an immediate bond of union between them. In the course of one of their conversations, he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possible subject for a poem; but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable, because it gave no room for the introduction of love: about which, he added, every young man of their age thought he had something quite new to say. Mr. Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he would write a poem on Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It was dedicated, in fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom its inspiration had been due.

  The Count�
��s visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friends did not meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome, Mr. Browning heard a voice behind him crying, ‘Robert!’ He turned, and there was ‘Amedee’. Both were, by that time, married; the Count — then, I believe, Marquis — to an English lady, Miss Jerningham. Mrs. Browning, to whom of course he was introduced, liked him very much.*

  * A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning

  became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique, and in

  1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle, to

  both of which learned bodies his friend belonged.

  Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doing produced a character — at all events a history — which, according to recent judgments, approached far nearer to the reality than any conception which had until then been formed of it. He had carefully collected all the known facts of the great discoverer’s life, and interpreted them with a sympathy which was no less an intuition of their truth than a reflection of his own genius upon them. We are enabled in some measure to judge of this by a paper entitled ‘Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine’, written by Dr. Edward Berdoe for the Browning Society, and read at its October meeting in 1888; and in the difficulty which exists for most of us of verifying the historical data of Mr. Browning’s poem, it becomes a valuable guide to, as well as an interesting comment upon it.