An Introduction to the Study of Browning Part 19

While _Ixion_ is the n.o.blest and most heroically pa.s.sionate of these poems, _Adam, Lilith, and Eve_, is the most pregnant and suggestive.

Browning has rarely excelled it in certain qualities, hardly found in any other poet, of pungency, novelty, and penetrating bitter-sweetness.

"ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE.

One day it thundered and lightened.

Two women, fairly frightened, Sank to their knees, transformed, transfixed, At the feet of the man who sat betwixt; And 'Mercy!' cried each, 'If I tell the truth Of a pa.s.sage in my youth!'

Said This: 'Do you mind the morning I met your love with scorning?

As the worst of the venom left my lips, I thought, "If, despite this lie, he strips The mask from my soul with a kiss--I crawl, His slave,--soul, body and all!"'

Said That: 'We stood to be married; The priest, or someone, tarried; "If Paradise-door prove locked?" smiled you.

I thought, as I nodded, smiling too, "Did one, that's away, arrive--nor late Nor soon should unlock h.e.l.l's gate!"'

It ceased to lighten and thunder.

Up started both in wonder, Looked round, and saw that the sky was clear, Then laughed, 'Confess you believed us, Dear!'

'I saw through the joke!' the man replied They seated themselves beside."

Much of the same power is shown in _Cristina and Monaldeschi_,[58] a dramatic monologue with all the old vigour of Browning's early work of that kind; not only keen and subtle, but charged with a sharp electrical quality, which from time to time darts out with a sudden and unexpected shock. The style and tone are infused with a peculiar fierce irony. The metre is rapid and stinging, like the words of the vindictive queen as she hurries her treacherous victim into the hands of the a.s.sa.s.sins.

There is dramatic invention in the very cadence:

"Ah, but how each loved each, Marquis!

Here's the gallery they trod Both together, he her G.o.d, She his idol,--lend your rod, Chamberlain!--ay, there they are--'_Quis Separabit_?'--plain those two Touching words come into view, Apposite for me and you!"

_Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli_, a dramatic lyric of three verses, the pathetic utterance of an unloved loving woman's heart, is not dissimilar in style to _Cristina and Monaldeschi_. It would be unjust to Fuseli to name him Bottom, but only fair to Mary Wollstonecraft to call her t.i.tania.

Of the remaining poems, _Donald_ ("a true story, repeated to Mr.

Browning by one who had heard it from its hero, the so-called Donald, himself,"[59]) is a ballad, not at all in Browning's best style, but certainly vigorous and striking, directed against the brutalising influences of sport, as _Tray_ was directed against the infinitely worse brutalities of ignorant and indiscriminate vivisection. Its n.o.ble human sympathies and popular style appeal to a ready audience. _Solomon and Balkis_, though by no means among the best of Browning's comic poems, is a witty enough little tale from that inexhaustible repository, the Talmud. It is a dialogue between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, not "solely" nor at all "of things sublime." _Pambo_ is a bit of pointed fun, a mock-modest apology to critics. Finally, besides a musical little love-song named _Wanting is--What?_ we have in _Never the Time and the Place_ one of the great love-songs, not easily to be excelled, even in the work of Browning, for strength of spiritual pa.s.sion and intensity of exultant and certain hope.

"NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE.

Never the time and the place And the loved one all together!

This path--how soft to pace!

This May--what magic weather!

Where is the loved one's face?

In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, With a malice that marks each word, each sign!

O enemy sly and serpentine, Uncoil thee from the waking man!

Do I hold the Past Thus firm and fast Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?

This path so soft to pace shall lead Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed!

Or narrow if needs the house must be, Outside are the storms and strangers: we-- Oh, close, safe, warm, sleep I and she, --I and she!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57: This note contains three burlesque sonnets whose chief interest is, that they are, with the exception of the unclaimed sonnet printed in the _Monthly Repository_ in 1834, the first sonnets ever published by Browning.]

[Footnote 58: One can scarcely read this poem without recalling the superb and not unsimilar episode in prose of another "great dramatic poet," Landor's Imaginary Conversation between the Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkof.]

[Footnote 59: Mrs. Orr, _Handbook_, p. 313.]

30. FERISHTAH'S FANCIES.

[Published in November, 1884 (_Poetical Works_, 1898, Vol.

XVI. pp. 1-92).]

_Ferishtah's Fancies_ consists of twelve sections, each an argument in an allegory, Persian by presentment, modern or universal in intention.[60] Lightly laid in between the sections, like flowers between the leaves, are twelve lyrics, mostly love songs addressed to a beloved memory, each lyric having a close affinity with the preceding "Fancy." A humorous lyrical prologue, and a pa.s.sionate lyrical epilogue, complete the work. We learn from Mrs. Orr, that

"The idea of _Ferishtah's Fancies_ grew out of a fable by Pilpay, which Mr. Browning read when a boy. He ... put this into verse; and it then occurred to him to make the poem the beginning of a series, in which the Dervish who is first introduced as a learner should reappear in the character of a teacher. Ferishtah's 'fancies' are the familiar ill.u.s.trations by which his teachings are enforced."[61]

The book is Browning's _West-Eastern Divan_, and it is written at nearly the same age as Goethe's. But, though there is a good deal of local colour in the setting, no attempt, as the motto warns us, is made to reproduce Eastern thought. The "Persian garments" are used for a disguise, not as a habit; perhaps for the very reason that the thoughts they drape are of such intense personal sincerity. The drapery, however, is perfectly transparent, and one may read "Robert Browning" for "Dervish Ferishtah" _pa.s.sim_.

The first two fancies (_The Eagle_ and _The Melon-Seller_) give the lessons which Ferishtah learnt, and which determined him to become a Dervish: all the rest are his own lessons to others. These deal severally with faith (_Shah Abbas_), prayer (_The Family_), the Incarnation (_The Sun_), the meaning of evil and of pain (_Mihrab Shah_), punishment present and future (_A Camel-Driver_), asceticism (_Two Camels_), gratefulness to G.o.d for small benefits (_Cherries_), the direct personal relation existing between man and G.o.d (_Plot-Culture_), the uncertain value of knowledge contrasted with the sure gain of love (_A Pillar at Sebzevah_), and, finally, in _A Bean-Stripe: also Apple Eating_, the problem of life: is it more good than evil, or more evil than good? The work is a serious attempt to grapple with these great questions, and is as important on its ethical as on its artistic side.

Each argument is conveyed by means of a parable, often brilliant, often quaint, always striking and serviceable, and always expressed in scrupulously clear and simple language. The teaching, put more plainly and definitely, perhaps, with less intellectual disguise than usual, is the old unconquered optimism which, in Browning, is so unmistakably a matter of temperament.

The most purely delightful poetry in the volume will be found in the delicate and musical love-songs which brighten its pages. They are s.n.a.t.c.hes of spontaneous and exquisite song, bird-notes seldom heard except from the lips of youth. Perhaps the most perfect is the first.

"Round us the wild creatures, overhead the trees, Underfoot the moss-tracks,--life and love with these!

I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers: All the long lone Summer-day, that greenwood life of ours!

Rich-pavilioned, rather,--still the world without,-- Inside--gold-roofed silk-walled silence round about!

Queen it thou in purple,--I, at watch and ward Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave, love's guard!

So, for us no world? Let throngs press thee to me!

Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we!

Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face!

G.o.d is soul, souls I and thou: with souls should souls have place."

"With souls should souls have place," is, with Browning, the condensed expression of an experience, a philosophy, and an art. Like the lovers of his lyric, he has renounced the selfish serenities of wild-wood and dream-palace; he has gone up and down among men, listening to that human music, and observing that human or divine comedy. He has sung what he has heard, and he has painted what he has seen. If it should be asked whether such work will live, there can be only one answer, and he has already given it:

"It lives, If precious be the soul of man to man."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: This is emphasized by the ingenious motto from _King Lear_: "You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will say, they are Persian; but let them be changed."]

[Footnote 61: _Handbook_, p. 321.]

31. PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY.

[Published in January 1887. _Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol.

XVI., pp. 93-275.]

The method of the _Parleying_ is something of a new departure, and at the same time something of a reversion. It is a reversion towards the dramatic form of the monologue; but it is a new departure owing to the precise form a.s.sumed, that of a "parleying" or colloquy of the author with his characters. The persons with whom Browning parleys are representative men selected from the England, Holland, and Italy of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The parleying with _Bernard de Mandeville_ (born at Dort, in Holland, 1670; died in London, 1733; author of _The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits_) takes up the optimistic arguments already developed in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and elsewhere, and preaches, through the dubious medium of the enigmatic fabulist, trust in the ordering of the world, confidence in discerning a "soul of goodness in things evil." _Daniel Bartoli_ ("a learned and ingenius writer," born at Florence, 1608; died at Rome, 1685; the historian of the Order of Jesuits) serves to point a moral against himself, in the contrast between the pale ineffectual saints of his legendary record and the practically saint-like heroine of a true tale recounted by Browning, the graphic and brilliant story of the duke and the druggist's daughter. The parleying with _Christopher Smart_ (the author of the _Song to David_, born at Shipborne, in Kent, 1722; died in the King's Bench, 1770) is a penetrating and characteristic study in one of the great poetic problems of the eighteenth century, the problem of a "void and null" verse-writer who, at one moment only of his life, sang, as Browning reminds him,

"A song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang, And stations you for once on either hand With Milton and with Keats."

_George Bubb Dodington_ (Lord Melcombe, born 1691; died 1762) stands as type of the dishonest politician, and in the course of a colloquy, which is really a piece of sardonic irony long drawn out, a mock serious essay in the way of a Superior Rogues' Guide or Instructions for Knaves, receives at once castigation and instruction. The parleying with _Francis Furini_ (born at Florence, 1600; died 1649) deals with its hero as a man, as artist and as priest; it contains some of Browning's n.o.blest writing on art; and it touches on current and, indeed, continual controversies in its splendidly vigorous onslaught on the decriers of that supreme art which aims at painting men and women as G.o.d made them.

_Gerard de Lairesse_ (born at Liege, in Flanders, 1640; died at Amsterdam 1711; famed not only for his pictures, but for his _Treatise on the Art of Painting_, composed after he had become blind) gives his name to a discussion on the artistic interpretation of nature, its change and advancement, and the deeper and truer vision which has displaced the mythological fancies of earlier painters and poets. The parleying with _Charles Avison_ (born at Newcastle, 1710; died there, 1770), the more than half forgotten organist-composer, embodies an inquiry, critical or speculative, into the position and function of music. All these poems are written in decasyllabic rhymed verse, with varied arrangement of the rhymes. They are introduced by a dialogue between Apollo and the Fates, and concluded by another between John Fust and his friends, both written in lyrical measures, both uniting deep seriousness of intention with capricious humour of form; the one wild and stormy as the great "Dance of Furies" in Gluck's _Orfeo_; the other quaint and grimly and sublimely grotesque as an old German print.