Browning and His Century Part 6

If these are all points which have been emphasized, now by one, now by another, of the vast array of thinkers who have crowded the past century, there is no one who to my knowledge has so completely harmonized the various thought tendencies of the age, and certainly none who has clothed them in such a wealth of imaginative and emotional ill.u.s.tration.

In these last poems Browning appears to borrow an apt term from Whitman, as the "Answerer" of his age. In them he has unquestioningly accepted the knowledge which science has brought, and, recognizing its relative character, has yet interpreted it in such a way as to make it subserve the highest ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from reflecting any degeneration in Browning's philosophy of life, these poems place on a firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first, while adding to these the profounder insight into life which life's experiences had brought him.

The subject matter and form are no less remarkable than their thought. The variety in both is almost bewildering. Religion and fable, romance and philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich profusion; everything in language--talk almost colloquial, dainty lyrics full of exquisite emotion, and grand pa.s.sages which present in sweeping images now the processes of cosmic evolution, now those of spiritual evolution, until it seems as if we had indeed been conducted to some vast mountain height, whence we can look forth upon the century's turbulent seas of thought, into which flows many a current from the past, while suspended above between the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons's wonderful symbolic picture of the Middle Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and joy which Browning has made symbolic of the nineteenth century.

III

POLITICAL TENDENCIES

In the political affairs of his own age and country Browning as a poet shows little interest. This may at first seem strange, for that he was deeply sympathetic with past historical movements indicating a growth toward democratic ideals in government is abundantly proved by his choice and treatment of historical epochs in which the democratic tendencies were peculiarly evident. Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures of the Victorian era, in which as perhaps in no other era of English history the yeast of political freedom has been steadily and quietly working?

There were probably several reasons for his failure to make himself felt as an influence in the political world of his time. In the first place, he was preeminently a dramatic poet, and as such his interest was in the presentation and a.n.a.lysis of individual character as it might work itself out in a given historical environment. To deal with contemporaries in this a.n.a.lytic manner would be a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we see, in those instances where he did venture upon an a.n.a.lysis of English contemporaries, as in the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), Carlyle in Bernard de Mandeville and in "George Bubb Dodington," the sketch of Lord Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress every external circ.u.mstance which would lead to their identification, and to dwell only upon their intellectual or psychic aspects.

A second reason is that the present is usually too near at hand to be used altogether effectively as dramatic material. Contemporary conditions of history seem to have an air of stateliness owing to the fact that every one is familiar with them, not only through talk and experience but through newspapers and magazines, while their larger, universal meanings cannot be seen at too close a range. If, however, past historical episodes and their tendencies can be so presented as to ill.u.s.trate the tendencies of the present, then the needful artistic perspective is gained. In this manner, with a few minor exceptions, Browning has revealed the direction in which his political sympathies lay.

When Browning was born, the first Napoleonic episode was nearing its close. Absolutism and militarism had in its l.u.s.t for power and bloodshed slaughtered itself for the time being, and once more there was opportunity for the people of England to strive for their own enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

As a progressive ministry in England did not come into power until 1830, the struggles of the people were rewarded with little success during many years after the Battle of Waterloo. During the childhood and boyhood of Browning the events which from time to time marked the determination of the downtrodden Englishman to secure a larger measure of justice for himself were exciting enough to have made a strong impression upon the precocious mind of the incipient poet even in the seclusion of his father's library at Camberwell.

The artificial prosperity which had buoyed up the workman during the war with France suddenly collapsed with the advent of peace after the Battle of Waterloo. Everything seemed to combine to make the affairs of the workingman desperate. Public business had been blunderingly administered, and while a fatuous Cabinet was congratulating the nation upon the flourishing state of the country, trade was actually almost at a standstill, and failures in business were the order of the day. To make matters worse, a wet summer and early frosts interfered with farming, and the result was that laborers and workmen could not find employment. A not unusual percentage of paupers in any given district was four fifths of the whole population. Thinking the farmers were to blame for the high price of bread, these starving people wreaked their vengeance on them by burning farm buildings, and machinery, and even stacks of corn and hay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARDINAL WISEMAN]

Instead of giving sympathy to these men in their desperate condition, a conservative government saw in them only rioters, and took the most stringent measures against them. They were tried by a special commission, and thirty-four of them were condemned to death, though it is recorded that only five of them were executed. The miners of Cornwall and Wales, the lace makers of Nottingham, and the iron workers of the Black Country, next broke out and the smashing of machinery continued. Finally there was a meeting of the artisans of London, Westminster, and Southwick in Spa Fields, Clerkenwall, which had been called by Harry Hunt, a man of property and education, who was known as a supporter of extreme measures, and the leader of the Radicals of that day. They met for the legitimate purpose, one would think, of considering the propriety of pet.i.tioning the Prince Regent and Parliament to adopt means of relieving the existing distress. One of the speakers, however, a poor doctor by the name of Watson, was of a more belligerent disposition. He made an inflammatory speech which ended by his seizing a tri-colored flag and marching toward the city followed by the turbulent rabble. On their way they seized the contents of a gunsmith's shop on Snow Hill, murdered a man, and finally were met opposite the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor, who, a.s.sisted by a strong body of police, arrested some of the leaders and dispersed the rest. The arrested persons were brought to trial and indicted for high treason by the Attorney General, but the jury, evidently thinking the indictment had taken too exaggerated a form, acquitted Watson, and the others were dismissed.

The conservative Parliament was, however, so alarmed by these proceedings that, instead of seeking some way of removing the cause of the difficulties, it thought only of making restrictions for the protection of the person of the Regent, of the more effective prevention of seditious meetings and of surer punishment. And what were some of these measures?

Debating societies, lecture halls and reading rooms were shut up. Even lectures on medicine, surgery and chemistry were prohibited. Though there was a possibility of getting a license to lecture from the magistrate, the law was interpreted in the narrowest spirit.

Parliamentary reform began to be spoken of in 1819, when a resolution pledging the House of Commons to the consideration of the state of representation was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to fifty-eight. This decision stirred up the reform spirit, and large meetings in favor of it were held. The people attending these meetings received military drilling and marched to their meetings in orderly processions, a fact naturally very disturbing to the government. When a great meeting was arranged at Manchester on the 16th of August, troops were accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry was ordered to charge the crowd, and although they used the flat side of their swords, the charge resulted in the killing of six persons and the wounding of some hundreds.

The clash did not end here, for to offset the ministerial approval of the action of the magistrates and their decision that the meeting was illegal, the Common Council of London pa.s.sed a resolution by a large majority declaring that the meeting was legal. A number of Whig n.o.blemen also were on the side of the London Council and made similar motions. But the ministers, unmoved by these signs of the times, introduced bills in Parliament for the repression of disorder and the further restraining of public liberty. The bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in both houses, but the eloquence expended against them was all to no purpose, the bills were pa.s.sed, and reform for the time being was nipped in the bud.

Although after this laws were gradually introduced by the ministers which tended very much to the betterment of conditions, the fire of reform did not burst out again with full fury until the time of the Revolution of July, in France, which it will be remembered was directed against the despotic King Charles X, and ended in his being deposed, when his crown was given to his distant cousin Louis Philippe. The success of the French in their stand against despotism caused a general revolutionary stir in several European countries, while in England the spirit of revolution showed itself in incendiary fires from one end of the country to the other.

With Parliament itself full of believers in reform, the chief of the Cabinet, the Duke of Wellington, announced that the House of Commons did not need reform and that he would resist all proposals for a change. So great was the popular excitement at this announcement that the Duke could not venture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for fear that he might be attacked.

Such were the chief episodes in the forward advance of the people up to the time of the presentation of the Reform Bill in Parliament. This important measure has been described as the greatest organic change in the British Const.i.tution that had taken place since the revolution of 1688.

When this bill was finally pa.s.sed it meant a transference of governmental control from the upper cla.s.ses to the middle cla.s.ses, and was the inauguration of a policy which has constantly added to the prosperity and well-being of the English people. The agitation upon this bill, introduced in the House by Lord John Russell, under the Premiership of Earl Grey, and a ministry favorable to reform, was filling the attention of all Englishmen to the exclusion of every other subject just at the time when Browning was emerging into manhood, 1831 and 1832, and though he has not commemorated in his poetry this great step in the political progress of his own century, his first play, written in 1837, takes up a period of English history in which a momentous struggle for liberty on the part of the people was in progress.

Important as the Reform Bill was, it furnished no such picturesque episodes for a dramatist as did the struggle of Pym and Strafford under the despotic rule of King Charles I.

In choosing this period for his play the poet found not only material which furnished to his hand a series of wonderfully dramatic situations, but in the three men about whom the action moves is presented an individuality and a contrast in character full of those possibilities for a.n.a.lysis so attractive to Browning's mind.

Another point to be gained by taking this remote period of history was that his att.i.tude could be supremely that of the philosopher of history.

He could portray with fairness whatever worth of character he found to admire in the leaders upon either side, at the same time that he could show which possessed the winning principle--the principle of progress. In dealing with contemporary events a strong personal feeling is sure to gain the upper hand, and to be non-partisan and therefore truly dramatic is a difficult, if not an impossible, task. When we come to examine this play, we find that the character which unquestionably interested the poet most was Strafford's; not because of his political principles but because of his devotion to his King. Human love and loyalty in whomever manifested was always of the supremest interest to Browning, and, working upon any hints furnished by history, the poet has developed the character of Strafford in the light of his personal friendship for the King--a feeling so powerful that no fickle change of mood on the part of the King could alter it. Upon this fact of his personal relations to the King Strafford's actions in this great crisis have been interpreted and explained, though not defended, from the political point of view.

Some wavering on the part of Pym is also explained upon the ground of his friendship for and his belief in Strafford, but mark the difference between the two men. Pym, once sure that Strafford is not on the side of progress, crushes out all personal feeling. He allows nothing to stand in the way of his political policy. With unflinching purpose he proceeds against his former friend, straight on to the impeachment for treason, straight on, like an inexorable fate, to the prevention of his rescue from execution. Browning's dramatic imagination is responsible for this last climax in which he brings the two men face to face. Here, in Pym's strength of will to serve England at any cost, mingled with the hope of meeting Strafford purged of all his errors in a future life, and in Strafford's response, "When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right--not now! Best die," is foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of the parliamentary over the monarchical principles of government, and the poet's own sympathy with the party of progress is made plain.

It is interesting in the present connection to inquire whether there are any parallels between the agitation connected with the reform legislation of 1832 and the revolution at the time of Charles I which might send Browning's mind back to that period. The special point about which the battle raged in 1832 was the representation in Parliament. This was so irregular that it was absolutely unfair. In many instances large districts or towns would have fewer representatives than smaller ones, or perhaps none at all. Representation was more a matter of favoritism than of justice. The votes in Parliament were, therefore, not at all a true measure of the att.i.tude of the country. It seems strange that so eminently sensible a reform should meet with such determined opposition. As usual, those in power feared loss of privilege. The House of Lords was the obstruction. The bill was in fact a step logically following upon the determination of the people of the time of Charles I that they would not submit to be levied upon for ship-money upon the sole authority of the King. They demanded that Parliament, which had not been a.s.sembled for ten years, should meet and decide the question. This question was not merely one of the war-tax or ship-money, but of whether the King should have the power to levy taxes upon the people without consent of Parliament.

As every one knows, when the King finally consented to the a.s.sembling of Parliament, in April, 1840, he informed it that there would be no discussion of its demands until it had granted the war subsidies for which it had been asked. The older Vane added to the consternation of the a.s.sembly by announcing that the King would accept nothing less than the twelve subsidies which he had demanded in his message. In the face of this ultimatum the committee broke up without coming to a conclusion, postponing further consideration until the next day, but before they had had time to consider the matter the next day the King had decided to dissolve the Parliament.

The King was forced, however, to rea.s.semble Parliament again in the autumn. In this Parliament the people's party gained control, and many reforms were inst.i.tuted. Led by such daring men as Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and the younger Vane, resolutions were pa.s.sed censuring the levying of ship-money, tonnage and poundage, monopolies, innovations in religion--in fact, all the grievances of the oppressed which had been ignored for a decade were brought to light and redressed by the House, quite regardless of the King's att.i.tude.

The chief of the abuses which it was bent upon remedying was the imposing of taxes upon the authority of the King and the persecution of the Puritans. But there was another grievance which received the attention of the Long Parliament, and which forms a close link with the reforms of 1832--namely, the attempt to improve the system of representation in Parliament, an attempt which was partially carried into effect by Cromwell later. Under Charles II, however, things fell back into their old way and gradually went on from bad to worse until the tide changed, and the people became finally aroused after two hundred years to the need of a radical change. The blindness of the Duke of Wellington, declaring no reform was needed, is hardly less to be marveled at than that of King Charles declaring he would rule without Parliament. The King took the ground that the people had no right to representation in the government; the Minister, that only some of the people had a right.

The horrors of revolution followed upon the blindness of the one, with its reactionary aftermath, while upon the other there was violence, it is true, and a revolution was feared, but through the wise measures of the liberal ministers no subversion of the government occurred. Violence reached such a pitch, however, that the castle of Nottingham in Derby was burned, the King's brother was dragged from his horse, and Lord Londonderry roughly treated. The mob at Bristol was so infuriated that Sir C. Wetherell, the Recorder of the city, who had voted against the bill, had to be escorted to the Guildhall by a hundred mounted gentlemen. Two men having been arrested, the mob attacked and destroyed the interior of the Mansion House, set fire to the Bishop's palace and to many other buildings. There was not only an enormous loss of property, but loss of life.

A quieter demonstration at Birmingham carries us back, as it might have carried Browning, to the "great-hearted men" of the Long Parliament. A meeting was called which was attended by one hundred and fifty thousand persons, and resolutions were pa.s.sed to the effect that if the Reform Bill were not pa.s.sed they would refuse to pay taxes, as Hampden had refused to pay ship-money.

The final act in this momentous drama was initiated with the introduction by Lord John Russell of the third Reform Bill in December, 1831. Again it was defeated in the House of Lords, whereupon some of the Cabinet wished to ask the King to create a sufficient number of new peers to force the bill through the House. Earl Grey was not at all in favor of this, but at last consented. This course was not welcome to the House of Lords, and the doubtful members in the House promised that if this suggestion were not carried into effect they would insure a sufficient majority in the House of Lords to carry the bill. This was done, but before the Lords went into committee a hostile motion postponing the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt clauses was carried. Then Earl Grey asked for the creation of new peers. As it would require the creating of about fifty new peers, the King refused, the ministry resigned and the Duke of Wellington came into power again. But his power, like that of Strafford, was broken. He had reached the point of recognizing that some reform was needed, but he could not persuade his colleagues of this. In the meantime the House of Commons pa.s.sed a resolution of confidence in the Grey administration. Such determined opposition being shown not only in Parliament but by the people in various ways, Wellington felt his only course was resignation. William IV had, much to his chagrin, to recall Grey, but he escaped the necessity of creating a large number of peers, by asking the opposition in the House of Lords to withdraw their resistance to the bill. The Duke of Wellington and others thereupon absented themselves, and finding further obstruction was useless, the Lords at last pa.s.sed the bill and it became law in June, 1832.

This national crisis through which Browning had lived could not fail to have made its impression on him. It is certainly an indication of the depth of his interest in the growth of liberalism that his first English subject, written only a few years subsequent to this momentous change in governmental methods, should have dealt with a period whose a.n.a.lysis and interpretation in dramatic form gave him every opportunity for the expression of his sympathy with liberal ideals. Broad-minded in his interpretation of Strafford's career, in love with his qualities of loyalty, and his capabilities of genuine affection for the vacillating Charles, he made Strafford the hero of his play, but it is Pym whom, in his play, he has exalted as the nation's hero, and into whose mouth he has put one of the greatest and most intensely pathetic speeches ever uttered by an Englishman. It is when he confronts Strafford at the last:

"Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake I still have labored for, with disregard To my own heart,--for whom my youth was made Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up Her sacrifice--this friend--this Wentworth here-- Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be, And whom, for his forsaking England's cause, I hunted by all means (trusting that she Would sanctify all means) even to the block Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I Would never leave him: I do leave him now.

I render up my charge (be witness, G.o.d!) To England who imposed it. I have done Her bidding--poorly, wrongly,--it may be, With ill effects--for I am weak, a man: Still, I have done my best, my human best, Not faltering for a moment. It is done.

And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say I never loved but one man--David not More Jonathan! Even thus I love him now: And look for that chief portion in that world Where great hearts led astray are turned again, (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon: My mission over, I shall not live long)-- Ay, here I know and talk--I dare and must, Of England, and her great reward, as all I look for there; but in my inmost heart, Believe, I think of stealing quite away To walk once more with Wentworth--my youth's friend Purged from all error, gloriously renewed, And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed ...

This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase Too hot. A thin mist--is it blood?--enwraps The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be."

At the same time that Browning was writing "Strafford," he was also engaged upon "Sordello." In that he has given expression to his democratic philosophy through his construction and interpretation of Sordello's character as a champion of the people as well as a poet who ushered in the dawn of the Italian literary Renaissance. As he made Paracelsus develop from a dependence upon knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy of life into a perception of the place emotion must hold in any satisfactory theory of life, and put into his mouth a modern conception of evolution illuminated by his own artistic emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from the individualistic type to the socialist type of man, who is bent upon raising the ma.s.ses of the people to higher conditions. The ideal of liberal forms of government was even in Sordello's time a growing one, sifting into Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning's Sordello sees something beyond either political or ecclesiastical espousal of the people's cause--namely, the espousal of the people's cause by the people themselves, the arrival of the self-governing democracy, an ideal much nearer attainment now than when Browning was writing:

"Two parties take the world up, and allow No third, yet have one principle, subsist By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes.

So there is one less quarrel to compose The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse-- I have done nothing, but both sides do worse Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left The notion of a service--ha? What lured Me here, what mighty aim was I a.s.sured Must move Taurello? What if there remained A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained For me its true discoverer?"

The mood here portrayed was one which might have been fostered in Browning in relation to his own time. He doubtless felt that neither the progressive movements in the state nor those in religion really touched upon the true principles of freedom for the individual. He might not have defined these principles to himself any more definitely than as a desire for the greatest happiness of the whole number. And even of such an ideal as that he had his doubts because of the necessity of his mind to find a logical use for evil in the world. This he could only do by supposing it a divine means for the development of the human soul in its sojourn in this life. Speaking in his own person in "Sordello," he gives expression to this doubt in the following pa.s.sage in the third book:

"I ask youth and strength And health for each of you, not more--at length Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race Might add the spirit's to the body's grace, And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.

"----As good you sought To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone Or keep me to the unchoked ca.n.a.ls alone, As hinder Life the evil with the good Which make up Living rightly understood."

Still, though vague as to what the good for the whole people might be, there was no vagueness in his mind as to the people's right to possess the power to bring about their own happiness. Yet given the right principles, he would not have the attempt made to put them into practice all at once.

His final att.i.tude toward the problem of the best methods for bettering human conditions in the poem is, strictly speaking, that of the opportunist working a step toward his ideal rather than that of the revolutionist who would gain it by one leap. Sordello should realize that

"G.o.d has conceded two lights to a man-- One, of men's whole work, man's first Step to the plan's completeness."

Man's part is to take this first step, leaving the ultimate ideal to be worked out, as time goes, on by successive men. To reach at one bound the ideal would be to regard one's self as a G.o.d. Some such theory of action as this is the one which guides the Fabian socialist working in England to-day. Nothing is to be done to subvert the present order of society, but every opportunity is to be made the most of which will tend to the betterment of the conditions of the ma.s.ses, until by degrees the socialist regime will become possible. Sordello was too much of the idealist to seize the opportunity when it came to him of helping the people by means of the Ghibelline power suddenly conferred upon him, and so he failed.

This opportunist doctrine is one especially congenial to the English temperament and certainly has its practical advantages, if it is not so inspiring as the headlong idealism of a Pym, which just as surely has its disadvantages in the danger that the ideal will be ahead of humanity's power of seizing it and living it, and will therefore run the risk of being overturned by a reaction to the low plane of the past; especially does this danger become apparent when the way to the attainment of the ideal is paved with violence.

While Browning was writing "Sordello," the preparation of which included a short trip to Italy, the Chartist agitation was going on in England. It may well, at that time, have been considered to demand an ideal beyond possibility of attainment, which was proved by its final utter annihilation. The workingmen's a.s.sociation led by Mr. Duncombe was responsible for a program in the form of a parliamentary pet.i.tion which asked for six things. These were: universal suffrage, or the right of voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal electoral districts.

There were two sorts of Chartists, moral-force Chartists and physical-force Chartists, the latter of whom did as much damage as possible in the agitation.