A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 19

"AT THE MERMAID" and the "EPILOGUE" deal with public opinion in its general estimate of poets and poetry; and they expose its fallacies in a combative spirit, which would exclude them from a more rigorous definition of the term "critical." In the first of these Mr. Browning speaks under the mask of Shakespeare, and gives vent to the natural irritation of any great dramatist who sees his various characters identified with himself. He repudiates the idea that the writings of a dramatic poet reveal him as a man, however voluminous they may be; and on this ground he even rejects the transcendent t.i.tle to fame which his contemporaries have adjudged to him. They know him in his work. They cannot, he says, know him in his _life_. He has never given them the opportunity of doing so. He has allowed no one to slip inside his soul, and "label" and "catalogue" what he found there.

This is truer for Shakespeare than for Mr. Browning, who has often addressed his public with comparative directness, and would be grieved to have it thought that in the long course of his writings he has never spoken from his heart. He would also be the first to admit that, in the course of his writings, the poet must, indirectly, reveal the man. But he has too often had to defend himself against the impression that whatever he wrote as a poet must directly reflect him as a man. He has too often had to repeat, that poetry is an art which "_makes_" not one which merely _records_; and that the feelings it conveys are no more necessarily supplied by direct experience than are its facts by the Cyclopaedia. And with the usual deduction for the dramatic mood, we may accept the retort as genuine.

I have departed in the case of this poem from the mere statement of contents, which is all that my plan admits of, or my readers usually can desire: because it expresses an indifference to general sympathy which belies the author's feeling in the matter. Mr. Browning speaks equally for himself and Shakespeare, when he derides another idea which he considers to be popular: that the fit condition of the poet is melancholy. "I," he declares, "have found life joyous, and I speak of it as such. Let those do otherwise who have wasted its opportunities, or been less richly endowed with them."

The "Epilogue" is a criticism on critics, and is spoken distinctly by Mr. Browning himself. He takes for his text a line from Mrs.

Browning:[67]

"The poets pour us wine,"

and denounces those consumers of the wine of poetry, who expect it to combine strength and sweetness in an impossible degree. Body and bouquet, he affirms, may be found on the label of a bottle, but not in the vat from which the bottle was filled. "Mighty" and "mellow" may be born at once; but the one is for now, the other only for after-time. The earth, he declares, is his vineyard; his grape, the loves, the hates, and the thoughts of man; his wine, what these have made it. Bouquet may, he admits, be artificially given. Flowers grow everywhere which will supplement the flavour of the grape; and his life holds flowers of memory, which blossom with every spring. But he denies that his brew would be the more popular if he stripped his meadow to make it so. How much do his public drink of that which they profess to approve? They declare Shakespeare and Milton fit beverage for man and boy. "Look into their cellars, and see how many barrels are unbroached of the one brand, what drippings content them of the other. He will be true to his task, and to Him who set it."

"Wine, pulse in might from me!

It may never emerge in must from vat, Never fill cask nor furnish can, Never end sweet, which strong began-- G.o.d's gift to gladden the heart of man; But spirit's at proof, I promise that!

No sparing of juice spoils what should be Fit brewage--mine for me."

(vol. xiv. p. 148)

At the 18th stanza the figure is changed, and Mr. Browning speaks of his work (by implication) as a stretch of country which is moor above and mine below; and in which men will find--what they dig for.

"HOUSE" is written in much the same spirit as "At the Mermaid." It reminds us that the whole front of a dwelling must come down before the life within it can be gauged by the vulgar eye; however we may fancy that this or that poetic utterance has unlocked the door--that it opens to a "sonnet-key."[68]

"SHOP" is a criticism on those writers, poets or otherwise, who are so disproportionately absorbed by the material cares of existence as to place the good of literature in its money-making power; and depicts such in the character of the shopman who makes the shop his home, instead of leaving it for some mansion or villa as soon as business hours are past.

"The flesh must live, but why should not the spirit have its dues also?"

"RESPECTABILITY" is a comment on the price paid for social position. A pair of lovers have been enjoying a harmless escapade; and one remarks to the other that, if their relation had been recognized by the world, they might have wasted their youth in the midst of proprieties which they would never have learned the danger and the pleasure of infringing.

The situation is barely sketched in; but the sentiment of the poem is well marked, and connects it with the foregoing group.

"A LIGHT WOMAN," "DiS ALITER VISUM," and "BIFURCATION" raise questions of conduct.

A man desires to extricate his friend from the toils of "A LIGHT WOMAN;"

and to this end he courts her himself. He is older and more renowned than her present victim, and trusts to her vanity to ensure his success.

But his attentions arouse in her something more. He discovers too late that he has won her heart. He can only cast it away, and a question therefore arises: he knows how he appears to his friend; he knows how he will appear to the woman whom his friend loved; "how does he appear to himself?" In other words, did the end for which he has acted justify the means employed? He doubts it.

"DiS ALITER VISUM" records the verdict of later days on a decision which recommended itself at the time: that is, to the person who formed it. A man and woman are attracted towards each other, though she is young and unformed; he, old in years and in experience; and he is, or seems to be, on the point of offering her his hand. But caution checks the impulse.

They drift asunder. He forms a connection with an opera-dancer. She makes a loveless marriage. Ten years later they meet again; and she reminds him of what pa.s.sed between them, and taxes him with the ruin of four souls. He has thought only of the drawbacks to _present_ enjoyment, which the unequal union would have involved; he never thought or cared how its bitter-sweetness might quicken the striving for eternity.

This criticism reflects the woman's point of view, and was probably intended to justify it. It does not follow that the author would not, in another dramatic mood, have justified the man, in his more practical estimate of the situation. Mr. Browning's poetic self is, however, expressed in the woman's belief: that everything which disturbs the equal balance of human life gives a vital impulse to the soul. The stereotyped completeness of the lower existences supplies him here also with a warning.

The t.i.tle of "BIFURCATION" refers to two paths in life, followed respectively by two lovers whom circ.u.mstances divide. The case is not unusual. The woman sacrifices love to duty, and expects her lover to content himself with her choice. Why not, she thinks? She will be constant to him; they will be united in the life to come. And meanwhile, she is choosing what for her is the smoother and safer path, while for him it is full of stumbling-blocks. Love's guidance is refused him, and he falls. Which of these two has been the sinner: he who sinned unwillingly, or she who caused the sin? We feel that Mr. Browning condemns the apparent saint.

"PISGAH SIGHTS. I." depicts life as it may _seem_ to one who is leaving it; who is, as it were, "looking over the ball." As seen from this position, Good and Evil are reconciled, and even prove themselves indispensable to each other. The seer becomes aware that it is unwise to strive against the mixed nature of existence; vain to speculate on its cause. But the knowledge is bittersweet, for it comes too late.

"PISGAH SIGHTS. II." is a view of life as it _might_ be, if the knowledge just described did not come too late; and shows that according to Mr. Browning's philosophy it would be no life at all. The speaker declares that if he had to live again, he would take everything as he found it. He would neither dive nor soar; he would strive neither to teach nor to reform. He would keep to the soft and shady paths; learn by quiet observation; and allow men of all kinds to pa.s.s him by, while he remained a fixture. He would gain the benefit of the distance with those below and above him, since he would be magnified for the one cla.s.s, while seen from a softening point of view by the other. And so also he would admire the distant brightness, "the mightiness yonder," the more for keeping his own place. If seen too closely, _the star might prove a glow-worm_.

EMOTIONAL POEMS.

LOVE.

Those of Mr. Browning's poems which are directly prompted by thought have their counterpart in a large number which are specially inspired by emotion; and must be noticed as such. But this group will perhaps be the most artificial of all; for while thought is with him often uncoloured by feeling, he seldom expresses feeling as detached from thought. The majority, for instance, of his love poems are introduced by the t.i.tle "dramatic," and describe love as bound up with such varieties of life and character, that questions of life and character are necessarily raised by them; the emotion thus conveyed being really more intense, because more individual, than could be given in any purely lyric effusion not warmed by the poet's own life. Some few, however, are genuine lyrics, whether regarded as personal utterances or not; and in the case of two or three of these, the personal utterance is unmistakable.

Under the head of LYRICAL LOVE POEMS must be placed

"One Word More," to E. B. B. ("Men and Women." 1855.) "Prospice." ("Dramatis Personae." 1864.) "Numpholeptos." } "Prologue." } "Pacchiarotto and other Poems."

"Natural Magic." } 1876.

"Magical Nature." } "Introduction." } "The Two Poets of Croisic."

"A Tale." } 1878.

"ONE WORD MORE" is a message of love, as direct as it is beautiful; but as such it also expresses an idea which makes it a fitting object of study. Most men and women lay their highest gift at the feet of him or of her they love, and with it such honour as the world may render it.

They value both, as making them more worthy of those they love, and for their sake rejoice in the possession. Mr. Browning feels otherwise.

According to him the gifts by which we are known to the world have lost graciousness through its contact. Their exercise is marred by its remembered churlishness and ingrat.i.tude. Every artist, he declares, longs "once" and for "one only," to utter himself in a language distinct from his art; to "gain" in this manner, "the man's joy," while escaping "the artist's sorrow." So Raphael, the painter, wrote a volume of sonnets to be seen only by one. Dante, poet of the "Inferno," drew an angel in memory of the one (of Beatrice). He--Mr. Browning--has only his verse to offer. But as the fresco painter steals a camel's hair brush to paint flowerets on his lady's missal--as he who blows through bronze may also breathe through silver for the purpose of a serenade, so may _he_ lend his talent to a different use. He has completed his volume of "Men"

and "Women." He dedicates it to her to whom this poem is addressed. But his special offering to her is not the book itself, in which he speaks with the mouth of fifty other persons, but the word of dedication--the "One Word More"--in which he speaks to her from his own. The dramatic turns lyric poet for the _one only_.

And what he says of himself, he in some degree thinks of her. The moon, he reminds her, presents always the same surface to the world: whether new-born, waxing, or waning; whether, as they late saw her, radiant above the hills of Florence; or, as she now appears to them, palely hurrying to her death over London house-tops. But for the "moonstruck mortal" she holds another side, glorious or terrible as the case may be--unknown alike to herdsman and huntsman, philosopher and poet, among the rest of mankind. So she, who is his moon of poets, has also her world's side, which he can see and praise with the rest;

"But the best is when I glide from out them, Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, Come out on the other side, the novel Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, Where I hush and bless myself with silence." (vol. iv. p. 305.)

"PROSPICE" (look forward) is a challenge to spiritual conflict, exultant with the certainty of victory, glowing with the prospective joy of re-union with one whom death has sent before. We cannot doubt that this poem, like the preceding, came from the depths of the poet's own heart.

"NUMPHOLEPTOS" (caught by a nymph) is pa.s.sionately earnest in tone, and must rank as lyrical in spite of the dramatic, at least fantastic, circ.u.mstance in which the feeling is clothed. It is the almost despairing cry of a human love, devoted to a being of superhuman purity; and who does not reject the love, but accepts it on an impossible condition: that the lover shall complete himself as a man by acquiring the fullest knowledge of life, and shall emerge unsullied from its experiences. This woman, more or less than mortal, belongs rather to the "fairyland of science" than to the realm of mythology. She stands, in pa.s.sionless repose, at the starting-point of the various paths of earthly existence. These radiate from her, many-hued with pa.s.sion and adventure, as light rays scattered by a prism; and, in the mocking hopes with which she invests their course, she seems herself the cold white light, of which their glow is born, and into which it will also die. She bids her worshipper travel down each red and yellow ray, bathe in its hues, and return to her "jewelled," but not smirched; and each time he returns, not jewelled, but smirched; always to appear monstrous in her sight; always to be dismissed with the same sad smile: so pitying that it promises love, so fixed that it bars its possibility. He rebels at last, but the rebellion is momentary. He renews his hopeless quest.

"PROLOGUE" is a fanciful expression of the ideas of impediment visible and invisible, which may be raised by the aspect of a brick wall; such a one, perhaps, as projects at a right angle to the window of Mr.

Browning's study, and was before him when he wrote.

"NATURAL MAGIC" attests the power of love to bring, as by enchantment, summer with its warmth and blossoms, into a barren life.

"MAGICAL NATURE" is a tribute to the beauty of countenance which proceeds from the soul, and has therefore a charmed existence defying the hand of time.

The INTRODUCTION to the "TWO POETS OF CROISIC," (reprinted under the t.i.tle of "Apparitions,") recalls the sentiment of "Natural Magic." The "TALE" with which it concludes is inspired by the same feeling. Its circ.u.mstance is ancient, and the reader is allowed to imagine that it exists in Latin or Greek; but it is simply a poetic and profound ill.u.s.tration of what love can do always and everywhere. A famous poet was singing to his lyre. One of its strings snapped. The melody would have been lost, had not a cricket (properly, cicada) flown on to the lyre and chirped the missing note. The note, thus sounded, was more beautiful than as produced by the instrument itself, and, to the song's end, the cricket remained to do the work of the broken string. The poet, in his grat.i.tude, had a statue of himself made with the lyre in his hand, and the cricket perched on the point of it. They were thus immortalized together: she, whom he had enthroned, he, whom she had crowned.

Love is the cricket which repairs the broken harmonies of life.