Halleck's New English Literature Part 64

Neither the movement of the narrative nor the lightness of the lyric is wholly congenial to Arnold's introspective melancholy muse.

Prose Works.--Although Arnold's first works were in poetry, he won recognition as a prose writer before he was widely known as a poet.

His works in prose comprise such subjects as literary criticism, education, theology, and social ethics. As a critic of literature, he surpa.s.ses all his great contemporaries. Neither Macaulay nor Carlyle possessed the critical ac.u.men, the taste, ana the cultivated judgment of literary works, in such fullness as Matthew Arnold.

His greatest contributions to critical literature are the various magazine articles that were collected in the two volumes ent.i.tled _Essays in Criticism_ (1865-1888). In these essays Arnold displays great breadth of culture and fairness of mind. He rises superior to the narrow provincialism and racial prejudices that he deprecates in other criticisms of literature. He gives the same sympathetic consideration to the German Heine and the Frenchman Joubert as to Wordsworth. Arnold further insists that Frenchmen should study English literature for its serious ethical spirit, and that Englishmen would be benefited by a study of the lightness, precision, and polished form of French literature.

Arnold's object in all his criticism is to discover the best in both prose and poetry, and his method of attaining this object is another ill.u.s.tration of his scholarship and mental reach. He says in his _Introduction to Ward's English Poets_:--

"Indeed, there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the cla.s.s of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry."

When Arnold seeks to determine an author's true place in literature, his keen critical eye seems to see at a glance all the world's great writers, and to compare them with the man under discussion. In order to ascertain Wordsworth's literary stature, for example, Arnold measures the height of Wordsworth by that of Homer, of Dante, of Shakespeare, and of Milton.

Another essential quality of the critical mind that Arnold possessed is "sweet reasonableness." His judgments of men are marked by a moderation of tune. His strong predilections are sometimes shown, but they are more often restrained by a clear, honest intellect. Arnold's calm, measured criticisms are not marred by such stout partisanship as Macaulay shows for the Whigs, by the hero worship that Carlyle expresses, or by the exaggerated praise and blame that Ruskin sometimes bestows. On the other hand, Arnold loses what these men gain; for while his intellect is less biased than theirs, it is also less colored and less warmed by the glow of feeling.

The a.n.a.lytical quality of Arnold's mind shows the spirit of the age.

His subjects are minutely cla.s.sified and defined. Facts seem to divide naturally into brigades, regiments, and battalions of marching order.

His literary criticisms note subtleties of style, delicate shadings in expression, and many technical excellences and errors that Carlyle would have pa.s.sed over unheeded. In addition to the _Essays in Criticism,_ the other works of Arnold that possess his fine critical dualities in highest degree are _On Translating Homer_ (1861) and _The Study of Celtic Literature_ (1867).

General Characteristics.--The impression that Arnold has left upon literature is mainly that of a keen, brilliant intellect. In his poetry there is more emotion than in his prose; but even in his poetry there is no pa.s.sion or fire. The sadness, the loneliness, the unrest of life, and the irreconcilable conflict between faith and doubt are most often the subjects of his verse. His range is narrow, but within it he attains a pure, n.o.ble beauty. His introspective, a.n.a.lytical poetry is distinguished by a "majesty of grief," depth of thought, calm, cla.s.sic repose, and a dignified simplicity.

In prose, Arnold attains highest rank as a critic of literature. His culture, the breadth of his literary sympathies, his scientific a.n.a.lyses, and his lucid literary style make his critical works the greatest of his age. He has a light, rather fanciful, humor, which gives snap and spice to his style. He is also a master of irony, which is galling to an opponent. He himself never loses his suavity or good breeding. Arnold's prose style is as far removed from Carlyle's as the calm simplicity of the Greeks is from the powerful pa.s.sion of the Vikings. The ornament and poetic richness of Ruskin's style are also missing in Arnold's. His style has a cla.s.sic purity and refinement. He has a terseness, a crystalline clearness, and a precision that have been excelled in the works of few even of the greatest masters of English prose.

ROBERT BROWNING, 1812-1889

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT BROWNING. _From the painting by G. F. Watts, National Portrait Gallery._]

Life.--The long and peaceful lives of Browning and Tennyson, the two most eminent poets of the Victorian age, are in marked contrast to the short and troubled careers of Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats.

Robert Browning's life was uneventful but happy. He inherited a magnificent physique and const.i.tution from his father, who never knew a day's illness. With such health, Robert Browning felt a keen relish for physical existence and a robust joyousness in all kinds of activity. Late in life he wrote, in the poem _At the Mermaid_:--

"Have you found your life distasteful?

My life did, and does, smack sweet.

I find earth not gray but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue.

Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.

Do I stand and stare? All's blue."

Again, in _Saul_, he burst forth with the lines:--

"How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy?"

These lines, vibrant with life and joy, could not have been written by a man of failing vitality or physical weakness.

Robert Browning was born in 1812 at Camberwell, whose slopes overlook the smoky chimneys of London. In this beautiful suburb he spent his early years in the companionship of a brother and a sister. A highly gifted father and a musical mother a.s.sisted intelligently in the development of their children. Browning's education was conducted mainly under his father's eye. The boy attended neither a large school nor a college. After he had pa.s.sed from the hands of tutors, he spent some time in travel, and was wont to call Italy his university.

Although his training was received in an irregular way, his scholarship cannot be doubted by the student of his poetry.

He early determined to devote his life to poetry, and his father wisely refrained from interfering with his son's ambitions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. From the painting by Field Talfourd, National Portrait Gallery._]

Romantic Marriage with Elizabeth Barrett Barrett,--Her Poetry.--In 1845, after Browning had published some ten volumes of verse, among which were _Paracelsus_ (1835), _Pippa Pa.s.ses_ (1841), and _Dramatic Lyrics_ (1842), he met Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (1806-1861), whose poetic reputation was then greater than his own. The publication in 1898 of _The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett_ disclosed an unusual romance. When he first met her, she was an invalid in her father's London house, pa.s.sing a large part of her time on the couch, scarcely able to see all the members of her own family at the same time. His magnetic influence helped her to make more frequent journeys from the sofa to an armchair, then to walk across the room, and soon to take drives.

Her father, who might have sat for the original of Meredith's "Egoist," had decided that his daughter should be an invalid and remain with him for life. When Browning proposed to Miss Barrett that he should ask her father for her hand, she replied that such a step would only make matters worse. "He would rather see me dead at his feet than yield the point," she said. In 1846 Miss Barrett, accompanied by her faithful maid, drove to a church and was married to Browning. The bride returned home; but Browning did not see her for a week because he would not indulge in the deception of asking for "Miss Barrett." Seven days after the marriage, they quietly left for Italy, where Mrs. Browning pa.s.sed nearly all her remaining years. She repeatedly wrote to her father, telling him of her transformed health and happy marriage, but he never answered her.

Before Miss Barrett met Browning, the woes of the factory children had moved her to write _The Cry of the Children_. After Edgar Allan Poe had read its closing lines:--

"...the child's sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath,"

he said that she had depicted "a horror, sublime in its simplicity, of which Dante himself might have been proud."

Her best work, _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, written after Browning had won her affection, is a series of love lyrics, strong, tender, unaffected, true, from the depth of a woman's heart. Sympathetic readers, who know the story of her early life and love, are every year realizing that there is nothing else in English literature that could exactly fill their place. Browning called them "the finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare's." Those who like the simple music of the heart strings will find it in lines like these:--

"I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight, I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the pa.s.sion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if G.o.d choose, I shall but love thee better after death."

After fifteen years of happy married life, she died in 1861, and was buried in Florence. When thinking of her, Browning wrote his poem _Prospice_ (1861) welcoming death as--

"...a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with G.o.d be the rest."

His Later Years.--Soon after his wife's death, he began his long poem of over twenty thousand lines, _The Ring and the Book_. He continued to write verse to the year of his death.

In 1881 the Browning Society was founded for the study and discussion of his works,--a most unusual honor for a poet during his lifetime.

The leading universities gave him honorary degrees, he was elected life-governor of London University, and was tendered the rectorship of the Universities of Glasgow and St. Andrew's and the presidency of the Wordsworth Society.

During the latter part of his life, he divided most of his time between London and Italy. When he died, in 1889, he was living with his son, Robert Barrett Browning, in the Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice.

Over his grave in Westminster Abbey was chanted Mrs. Browning's touching lyric:--

"He giveth his beloved, sleep."

Dramatic Monologues.--Browning was a poet of great productivity.

From the publication of _Pauline_ in 1833 to _Asolando_ in 1889, there were only short pauses between the appearances of his works. Unlike Tennyson, Browning could not stop to revise and recast; but he constantly sought expression, in narratives, dramas, lyrics, and monologues, for new thoughts and feelings.

The study of the human soul held an unfailing charm for Browning. He a.n.a.lyzes with marked keenness and subtlety the experiences of the soul, its sickening failures, and its eager strivings amid complex, puzzling conditions. In nearly all his poems, whether narrative, lyric, or dramatic, the chief interest centers about some "incidents in the development of a soul."

The poetic form that he found best adapted to "the development of a soul" was the dramatic monologue, of which he is one of the greatest masters. Requiring but one speaker, this form narrows the interest either to the speaker or to the one described by him. Most of his best monologues are to be found in the volumes known as _Dramatic Lyrics_ (1842), _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845), _Men and Women_ (1855), _Dramatis Personae_ (1864).

_My Last d.u.c.h.ess, Andrea del Sarto, Saul, Abt Vogler_, and _The Last Ride Together_ are a few of his strong representative monologues. The speaker in _My Last d.u.c.h.ess_ is the widowed duke, who is describing the portrait of his lost wife. In his blind conceit, he is utterly unconscious that he is exhibiting clearly his own coldly selfish nature and his wife's sweet, sunny disposition. The chief power of the poem lies in the astonishing ease with which he is made to reveal his own character.

The interest in _Andrea del Sarto_ is in the mental conflict of this "faultless painter." He wishes, on the one hand, to please his wife with popular pictures, and yet he yearns for higher ideals of his art.

He says:--

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

As he sits in the twilight, holding his wife's hand, and talking in a half-musing way, it is readily seen that his love for this beautiful but soulless woman has caused many of his failures and sorrows in the past, and will continue to arouse conflicts of soul in the future.

_Abt Vogler_, one of Browning's n.o.blest and most melodious poems, voices the exquisite raptures of a musician's soul:--