Read Ebook: An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry by Browning Robert Corson Hiram

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--From a Paper by John B. Bury, B.A., Trin. Coll., Dublin, on Browning's `Aristophanes' Apology', read at 38th meeting of the Browning Soc., Jan. 29, 1886. --

Wordsworth, and the other poets I have named, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge, made such a protest against authority in poetry as had been made in the 16th century against authority in religion; and for this authority were substituted the soul-experiences of the individual poet, who set his verse to the song that was within him, and chose such subjects as would best embody and articulate that song.

But by the end of the first quarter of the present century, the great poetical billow, which was not indeed caused by, but received an impulse from, the great political billow, the French Revolution , had quite spent itself, and English poetry was at a comparatively low ebb. The Poetical Revolution had done its work. A poetical interregnum of a few years' duration followed, in which there appeared to be a great reduction of the spiritual life of which poetry is the outgrowth.

Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, in his article `On the Early Writings of Robert Browning', in the `Century' for December, 1881, has characterized this interregnum a little too contemptuously, perhaps. There was, indeed, a great fall in the spiritual tide; but it was not such a dead-low tide as Mr. Gosse would make it.

The volume comprised fifty-three poems, among which were `The Poet' and `The Poet's Mind'. These two poems were emphatically indicative of the high ideal of poetry which had been attained, and to the development of which the band of poets of the preceding generation had largely contributed.

A review of the volume, by John Stuart Mill, then a young man not yet twenty-five years of age, was published in `The Westminster' for January, 1831. It bears testimony to the writer's fine insight and sure foresight; and it bears testimony, too, to his high estimate of the function of poetry in this world--an estimate, too, in kind and in degree, not older than this present century. The review is as important a landmark in the development of poetical criticism, as are the two poems I have mentioned, in the development of poetical ideals, in the nineteenth century.

In the concluding paragraph of the review, Mill says: "A genuine poet has deep responsibilities to his country and the world, to the present and future generations, to earth and heaven. He, of all men, should have distinct and worthy objects before him, and consecrate himself to their promotion. It is thus that he best consults the glory of his art, and his own lasting fame. . . . Mr. Tennyson knows that "the poet's mind is holy ground"; he knows that the poet's portion is to be

"Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love";

he has shown, in the lines from which we quote, his own just conception of the grandeur of a poet's destiny; and we look to him for its fulfilment. . . . If our estimate of Mr. Tennyson be correct, he too is a poet; and many years hence may be read his juvenile description of that character with the proud consciousness that it has become the description and history of his own works."

Two years later, that is, in 1832 , appeared `Poems by Alfred Tennyson', pp. 163. In it were contained `The Lady of Shalott', and the untitled poems, known by their first lines, `You ask me why, tho' ill at ease', `Of old sat Freedom on the Heights', and `Love thou thy Land, with Love far brought'.

In `The Lady of Shalott' is mystically shadowed forth the relation which poetic genius should sustain to the world for whose spiritual redemption it labors, and the fatal consequences of its being seduced by the world's temptations, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

The other poems, `You ask me why', `Of old sat Freedom', and `Love thou thy land', are important as exponents of what may be called the poet's institutional creed. A careful study of his subsequent poetry will show that in these early poems he accurately and distinctly revealed the attitude toward outside things which he has since maintained. He is a good deal of an institutional poet, and, as compared with Browning, a STRONGLY institutional poet. Browning's supreme and all-absorbing interest is in individual souls. He cares but little, evidently, about institutions. At any rate, he gives them little or no place in his poetry. Tennyson is a very decided reactionary product of the revolutionary spirit which inspired some of his poetical predecessors of the previous generation. He has a horror of the revolutionary. To him, the French Revolution was "the blind hysterics of the Celt", , and "the red fool-fury of the Seine" . He attaches great importance to the outside arrangements of society for upholding and advancing the individual. He would "make Knowledge circle with the winds", but "her herald, Reverence", must

"fly Before her to whatever sky Bear seed of men and growth of minds."

He has a great regard for precedents, almost AS precedents. He is emphatically the poet of law and order. All his sympathies are decidedly, but not narrowly, conservative. He is, in short, a choice product of nineteenth century ENGLISH civilization; and his poetry may be said to be the most distinct expression of the refinements of English culture--refinements, rather than the ruder but more vital forms of English strength and power. All his ideals of institutions and the general machinery of life, are derived from England. She is

"the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land where, girt with friends or foes, A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of SETTLED GOVERNMENT, A LAND OF JUST AND OLD RENOWN, WHERE FREEDOM BROADENS SLOWLY DOWN FROM PRECEDENT TO PRECEDENT:

Where faction seldom gathers head, But by degrees to fullness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread."

But the anti-revolutionary and the institutional features of Tennyson's poetry are not those of the higher ground of his poetry. They are features which, though primarily due, it may be, to the poet's temperament, are indirectly due to the particular form of civilization in which he has lived, and moved, and had his culture, and which he reflects more than any of his poetical contemporaries.

The most emphasized and most vitalized idea, the idea which glints forth everywhere in his poetry, which has the most important bearing on man's higher life, and which marks the height of the spiritual tide reached in his poetry, is, that the highest order of manhood is a well-poised, harmoniously operating duality of the active or intellectual or discursive, and the passive or spiritually sensitive. This is the idea which INFORMS his poem of `The Princess'. It is prominent in `In Memoriam' and in `The Idylls of the King'. In `The Princess', the Prince, speaking of the relations of the sexes, says:--

"in the long years liker must they grow; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto noble words; And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, Self-reverent each and reverencing each, Distinct in individualities, But like each other ev'n as those who love. Then comes the statelier Eden back to men: Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm: Then springs the crowning race of humankind."

To state briefly the cardinal Tennysonian idea, man must realize a WOMANLY MANLINESS, and woman a MANLY WOMANLINESS.

Tennyson presents to us his ideal man in the 109th section of `In Memoriam'. It is descriptive of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. All that is most characteristic of Tennyson, even his Englishness, is gathered up in this poem of six stanzas. It is interesting to meet with such a representative and comprehensive bit in a great poet.

"HEART-AFFLUENCE in discursive talk From household fountains never dry; The CRITIC CLEARNESS of an eye, That saw through all the Muses' walk;

SERAPHIC INTELLECT AND FORCE TO SEIZE AND THROW THE DOUBTS OF MAN; IMPASSIONED LOGIC, which outran The bearer in its fiery course;

HIGH NATURE AMOROUS OF THE GOOD, BUT TOUCH'D WITH NO ASCETIC GLOOM; And passions pure in snowy bloom Through all the years of April blood."

"A love of freedom rarely felt, Of freedom in her regal seat Of England; not the school-boy heat, The blind hysterics of the Celt;

All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have look'd on; if they look'd in vain, My shame is greater who remain, Nor let thy wisdom make me wise."

Tennyson's genius was early trained by the skeptical philosophy of the age. All his poetry shows this. The `In Memoriam' may almost be said to be the poem of nineteenth century scepticism. To this scepticism he has applied an "all-subtilizing intellect", and has translated it into the poetical "concrete", with a rare artistic skill, and more than this, has subjected it to the spiritual instincts and apperceptions of the feminine side of his nature and made it vassal to a larger faith. But it is, after all, not the vital faith which Browning's poetry exhibits, a faith PROCEEDING DIRECTLY FROM THE SPIRITUAL MAN. It is rather the faith expressed by Browning's Bishop Blougram:--

"With me faith means perpetual unbelief Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot, Who stands firm just because he feels it writhe."

And Tennyson, in picturing to us in the Idylls, the passage of the soul "from the great deep to the great deep", appears to have felt it necessary to the completion of that picture , that he should bring out that doubt at the last moment. The dying Arthur is made to say:--

"I am going a long way With these thou seest--if indeed I go -- To the island-valley of Avilion"; etc.

Tennyson's poetry is, in fact, an expression of the highest sublimation of the scepticism which came out of the eighteenth century, which invoked the authority of the sensualistic philosophy of Locke, and has since been fostered by the science of the nineteenth; while Browning's poetry is a decided protest against, and a reactionary product of, that scepticism, that infidel philosophy , and has CLOSED with it and borne away the palm.

The key-note of his poetry is struck in `Paracelsus', published in 1835, in his twenty-third year, and, with the exception of `Pauline' published in 1833, the earliest of his compositions: Paracelsus says :--

And again:--

In the last three verses is indicated the doctrine of the regenerating power of exalted personalities, so prominent in Browning's poetry, and which is treated in the next paper.

There is no `tabula rasa' doctrine in these passages, nor in any others, in the poet's voluminous works; and of all men of great intellect and learning , born in England since the days of John Locke, no one, perhaps, has been so entirely untainted with this doctrine as Robert Browning. It is a doctrine which great spiritual vitality , reaching out, as it does, beyond all experience, beyond all transformation of sensations, and all conclusions of the discursive understanding, naturally and spontaneously rejects. It simply says, "I know better", and there an end.

The great function of the poet, as poet, is, with Browning, to open out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, not to effect entry for a light supposed to be without; to trace back the effluence to its spring and source within us, where broods radiance vast, to be elicited ray by ray.

In `Fifine at the Fair', published thirty-seven years after `Paracelsus', is substantially the same doctrine:--

"Truth inside, and outside, truth also; and between Each, falsehood that is change, as truth is permanence. The individual soul works through the shows of sense, Up to an outer soul as individual too; And, through the fleeting, lives to die into the fixed, And reach at length `God, man, or both together mixed'."

In his poem entitled `Popularity', included in his "fifty men and women", the speaker, in the monologue, "draws" his "true poet", whom HE knows, if others do not; who, though he renders, or stands ready to render, to his fellows, the supreme service of opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor of their souls may escape, is yet locked safe from end to end of this dark world.

Though there may be, in his own time, no "reapers reaping early in among the bearded barley" and "piling sheaves in uplands airy" who hear his song, he holds the FUTURE fast, accepts the COMING AGES' duty, their present for this past. This true, creative poet, whom the speaker calls "God's glow-worm, creative in the sense of revealing, whose inmost centre, where truth abides in fulness, has that freedom of responsiveness to the divine which makes him the revealer of it to men, plays the part in the world of spirit which, in the material world was played by the fisher who, first on the coast of Tyre the old, fished up the purple-yielding murex. Until the precious liquor, filtered by degrees, and refined to proof, is flasked and priced, and salable at last, the world stands aloof. But when it is all ready for the market, the small dealers, "put blue into their line", and outdare each other in azure feats by which they secure great popularity, and, as a result, fare sumptuously; while he who fished the murex up was unrecognized, and fed, perhaps, on porridge.

Popularity.

My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend That loving hand of His which leads you, Yet locks you safe from end to end Of this dark world, unless He needs you, Just saves your light to spend?

His clenched hand shall unclose at last, I know, and let out all the beauty: My poet holds the future fast, Accepts the coming ages' duty, Their present for this past.

That day, the earth's feast-master's brow Shall clear, to God the chalice raising; "Others give best at first, but Thou Forever set'st our table praising, Keep'st the good wine till now!"

Who has not heard how Tyrian shells Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes Whereof one drop worked miracles, And colored like Astarte's eyes Raw silk the merchant sells?

And each by-stander of them all Could criticise, and quote tradition How depths of blue sublimed some pall-- To get which, pricked a king's ambition; Worth sceptre, crown, and ball.

Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh, The sea has only just o'er-whispered! Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh, As if they still the water's lisp heard Through foam the rock-weeds thresh.

Enough to furnish Solomon Such hangings for his cedar-house, That, when gold-robed he took the throne In that abyss of blue, the Spouse Might swear his presence shone

Most like the centre-spike of gold Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb What time, with ardors manifold, The bee goes singing to her groom, Drunken and overbold.

Hobbs hints blue,--straight he turtle eats: Nobbs prints blue,--claret crowns his cup: Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,-- Both gorge. Who finished the murex up? What porridge had John Keats?

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