Browning and His Century

nd social movements of the nineteenth century have been pointed out. In this and the next chapter

ling as it must with his own conceptions and criticisms of art as well as

dards of the century it may be well first to consider the fundamental principles of ar

. Though the standards of art change and develop, because as man's soul evolves, more complex forms are needed to express his deeper experiences, his wider vision, yet in each stage of the development there is an element of permanent beauty which by the aid of the historical sense man may continue to enjoy. That element of permanence exists when genuine feeling and aspiration fi

ths

icient garnit

heathings now gro

truth they wra

march frost: Ma

erely,-does Jun

sture merely

n? Soon shall

th-the husk-l

s Corolla-

nce of feeling conserves even the form, if

er d

lived shall eve

psed things lost

le theirs, and s

shall see,

because fashioned out of elements infinitely less related to nature than those of other art forms. In his poems on music, the poet always emphasizes these aspects of music. Its supremacy as a means of giving expression to the subtlest regions of feeling is dwelt upon in "Abt Vogler" and "Fifine at the Fair." The Abbé, from the standpoint of the creator of music, feels so strongly from the inside its power for expressing infinite aspiration

or hoped or dreamed

ut itself; no beauty

forth, but each sur

nfirms the conce

too high, the heroi

ft the ground to lo

to God by the lo

d it once: we shall

is same power of music to express thoughts

uggle with

e False, thick

, and Truth! which

ngs, were reached

rd, and now by

ee force, oh Music,

in a passage t

chre, our words

anspierce

g, which in this case is not an exalted one, since it is one that chimes in with his own

ter speech, while n

,-mine, o'er-burth

tant, at last r

the back of som

ling once what I

ounds, and saved f

s prose,-nay, put

, I strike the

thanks greet th

I urge: 'O dea

es yet, thy streng

ve as well to

of truth! With me,

nd doubt and d

ssure-I gave

rtitude I yet m

round is piled

serves the assura

e same! thou, mas

marble, didst rec

ly to f

eriences with equal force music's power as a recorder of feeling. He no

uff tha

th thought and fe

same from age to

only for succes

dled by similar experiences. What the speaker in the poem perceives is not merely the fact of the feelings experienced but the power of the music to take him off upon a long train of more or les

on the positive value of the incompleteness of the form. In so far as painting or sculpture reaches a perfect unity of

ion and in so doing limits its range to the brief passion of a day. The effect of such art is to arouse a

ur weakness by

arms by their

t in your brea

submit is a m

eauty, the one way out is to turn away from the abject contemplation of such art and go back again to humanity itself, in whose widening nature may be discover

now self-

an, whateve

hine through the

andize the rag

invisible f

go to the dogs

of spiritual promise in it than the past perfection-"The firs

a Lippo Lippi, the realist, whose Madonnas looked like real women, and who has scandalized some critics on this account, and Andrea del Sarto, the faultless painter, who exclaims in despair as he

insisted upon in Francis Furini, not as an end in itself, but as the

hat this flesh

ld be, how th

reveal its

te, pour forth

assi

y, though when speaking of poetry it is the value of the subject

innovator but which is ready at a later date to laud his imitators. Any minor poet, for that matter, any Nokes or Stokes who merely prints blue according to the poetic conventions of the past, possessing not a sus

. In "Transcendentalism" he has his fling at the didactic poet who pleases to speak naked thoughts instead of draping them i

vents a bra

reaks the sudd

er, round us

ut the tables

mes, Boehme's

h a glory you

into this shut

assical imagery in derision of the style of Lairesse and hints covertly probably at the nineteenth-century masters of classical resuscitation, in subject matter and allusion, Swinburne and Morris. Reacting to soberer mood, he reiterates his belief in the utter deadness of Gree

sh old godl

cient fable

eality, rep

falseness, rec

rn unless 'tis

ncy, as the

bequeaths the

gone

uld r

ngs be-n

her,-do, and

significance i

lore lies bur

fire finds ashes

st Greece babbl

ched nothing,-s

··

sc

dly,-might the

the dregs once

er, drain the

es for h

that there shall never be one lost good echoing the thought in "Charles Avison," the climax of his mood is in the c

Past

way before Life

ding Future!

still therein,

mbiguous Pres

reconciling

en which shall

ve the root, b

the ultimate an

unearthing ro

, leaf and flower-

ripens in the

he range of subjects under this general material of poetry is put forth very early in his poetical career in "Paracelsus" and it is all-inclusive. It

he throws in his weight on the side of the objective poet. In the passage in the third book the poet, speaking in person, gives illustrations of three sorts of poetic composition: the dramatic, the descriptive and the meditative; the first belongs to the objective, the

vision of the seer as well as the penetration of a psychologist. He must hold the mirror up not only to nature, regarded as phenomena, but to the human soul, and he must perceive the relation of that human soul to the universal. He must in fact plunge beneath the surface of actions and events and bring forth to the light the psychic and cosmic causes of these things. The passage referred to in the "Introduction to the Shelley Letters" points out how in the evolution of poetry there

mples of which, according to what are now considered the exigencies of art, we have hitherto possessed in distinct individuals only. A mere running in of the one faculty upon the other is, of course, the ordinary circumstance. Far more rarely it happens that either is found so decidedly prominent and superior as to be pronounced comparatively pure: while of the perfect shield, with the gold and the silver side set up for all comers to challenge, there has yet been no instance. A tribe of successors (Homerides), working more or less in the same spirit, dwell on his discoveries and reinforce his doctrine; till, at unawares, the world is found to be subsisting wholly on the shadow of a reality, on sentiments diluted from passions, on the tradition of a fact, the convention of a moral, the straw of last year's harvest. Then is the imperative call for the appearance of another sort of poet, who shall at once replace this intellectual rumina

ibboleths which every genius is bent upon disregarding. When Spenser was inventing his stanza, verse critics were abject in their worship of hexameters, and their hatred of bald rhymes. Though these sticklers for classical forms could see clearly enough that Spenser was possessed of genius, they yet lamented the blindness of one, who might have written hexameters, perversely exclaiming "Why a God's name may not we as else the Greeks have the kingdom of our own language, and measure our accents by the sound, reserving quantity to the verse?" When Milton appears and finds bla

on the unoffending head of the genius, who, with no chance of firing back in the open arena of the magazine, must either suffer in silence or take refuge in sarcastic slurs upon his critics in his poetry, f

o" with effusion. Even very intelligent people cracked unseemly jokes upon the appearance of "Sordello," and what wonder, for Browning's British instinct for freedom carried him in this poem to the most extreme lengths. In "Pauline" he had allied himself with things familiar to the English reader of poetry. Many of the allusions are classical and introduced with a rich

ed to know about the complicated struggles of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; no one but a philosopher about the tendencies, both political and literary, manifesting

before he can enter into sympathy with the poet. Then he will crack no more jokes, but he will marvel at the mind which could wield all this knowledge with such consummate

hought and feeling, he did not have sufficient mastery of his own form to weld these together into a harmonious and convincing whole,

is expended upon the less important as upon the more important fact, and while the details may be interesting enough in themselves, they dislodge more important affairs from the center of consciousness. It

thrown down the gauntlet. His subject matter was not to be like that of any other poet, nor was his form to be like that of any other poet. He discarded the flowing music of "Pauline" and of "Paracelsus." His allusions were no longer to be classic, but to be directly related to whateve

convince, but the moment he does, all that was not convincing falls into its right place. He becomes the master of his art, and relates the new elements in such a way that their rightness and their beauty, if not immediately recognized, are sure sooner or later to be recognized by the evolving appreciator, who is the necessary c

genuine success in this form, it is not the success of the popular acting drama. His dramas are to-day probably being left farther and farther aside every moment in the present exaggerated demands for characters in action, or perhaps it might be nearer the truth to say clothes horses in action. Besides, the drama of action in character, which is

n the stage, and with superb actors, who can give every subtlest change of mood, a Browning drama furnishes an opportunity for the utmost intensity of pleasure. Still, one cannot help but feel that the impressionis

focus his forces, bringing them into the sort of relationship need

e speaker he can portray not only the speaker but one or more other characters, and at the same time show the scene setting, and all without any direct description. On the other hand, his tendency to redundancy, so marked when he is making a character revea

tails of form. "My Last Duchess" is one among many fine examples of his method in monologue. In that short poem we are made to see what manner of man is the duke, what manner of woman the duchess. We see what has been the duke's past, what is to be his future, also the present scene, as the duke stands in the hall of his palace tal

feeling and mood, good, bad, and indifferent, from the uninspired organist who struggles with a mountainous fugue to the inspired improvisor whose soul ascends to God on the wings of his music, from the unknown sensitive painter who cannot bear to have his pictures the

Book," an influence which was making itself felt in all classes of society at the time when the actual tragedy portrayed in the poem occurred. This habit, of course, brings into his poetry a far wider range of allusions unfamiliar to his contemporaries than is to be found in other Victorian poets, and makes it necessary that these should be "looked up" before an adequate enjoyment of their fitness is possible. Hence the Browning societies, so often held up to ri

and thereby to fresh planes of enjoyment. That Browning has outdone all ot

described by himself in the Shelley Introduction as neither completely subjective nor completely objective, but with the two faculties at times running in upon each othe

discoverable by man in his fundamental principles that they are actually universal truths, to be found lying deep down at the roots of all more partial expressions, just as gravitation, conservation of energy, evolution underlie every phenomena of nature, and therefore when a Pope in "The Ring and the Book," a Pr

han that spoken of by Browning, where a poet would issue successive works, in s

. If we place such a poem as "Reverie" side by side with "Fra Lippo Lippi" we see well-nigh perfect illustrations of the two faculties as they existed in the one poet, Browning. On the other hand, in those poems where the thought, as I have said, suggests Browning, in the speech of his characters he has something of the quality of what Browning calls the subjective poet of m

naturally would be incapable of understanding a man whose thought was permeated with the doctrines of evolution, then an unknown quantity except to the elect in scientific circles, and not to become the possession of the thinking world at large until beyond the middle of the century; whose soul was full of the ardor of democracy, shown not only in his choice and treatment of subjects, but in his reckless independence of al

schools of criticism has arisen a perception of the value of the new, the original, the different in art. Critics begin to apply the principles of evolution to their criticism as Browning applied it to his art, with the result that they no

might be, regardless of the sneers of newspaperdom and conventional academies. And gradually to the few appreciative critics of the early days have been added one auth

g is a sturdy but much lower peak with a blunted top. This is quite symbolic of the general attitude toward Browning at the end of the century, for, with all the appreciation, there has been on the part of authority a disinclination to ass

But so absolutely does he exclude all consideration for the reader from his choice of subject, so arbitrarily, in his treatment of his themes, does he compel his audience to place themselves at his own point of view, that the life of his art d

in Browning the elements of the Universal which are most assuredly there, and which were fully recognized by

shadows out of sight in the morning of a stronger faith; but even so the world will still turn to the finer poe

pathos, passion, tenderness, fancy, and imagination, but also of the most robust and masculine thought. He has written lyrics which must charm all who love, epics which must move all who act, songs which must cheer all who suffer, poems which must fascin

hahs over its own Immortals in proverbially unpenetrating conclave. No less a man than Taine declares that Browning stands

t so true to the ultimate tendencies of the century, indeed to those of all time, for evolution and democracy are henceforth the torch-bearers of the human soul-each of the

d Ten

lows; he leads. With his eyes fixed upon a far-off future where man shall be man at last, he faces every problem with the intrepidity of an ?dipus confronting the Sphynx. The mystery of its riddles has no terrors for him. It is given to him as to few others to see the ineffable beauty of life's mystery, the promise it holds out of eternal joy. While he frequently discourses upon the existence of evil, he never for a moment admits any doubt into his own utmost soul of the beneficent part evil is meant to play in the molding of human destinies. Mr. Santayana has called

itless of the

proportion

it be littl

him of prodig

o besiege h

ssing of a mu

n take it on

rifling fact,-h

at its ver

ee) as if i

igious import,

turn to us t

ame stupor (n

see not with h

manity. Though Tennyson talks of the "far-off divine event" he has no burning conviction of it and does not ride toward it with triumph in his eye and flaming joy in his soul. As he ambles along, steepin

gone through the century in the same ambling fashion, a prey to its fears, intellectual enough to

ns of the day that they are not problems at all, and he is quite in love with the beauty of aristocratic society, though he occasionally descends to the people for a subject. These are all entirely sufficient reasons for his popularity

ome the closest of allies to poetry, and Tennyson was brilliant enough to seize the new possibilities in scientific language with a realization that nature imagery might almost be made over by the use in describing it of scientific epithets. A famous illustration of the happy effects he produced by these means is in the lines "Move eastward happy Earth and round again to-night." His observation of Nature, moreover, had a scientific accuracy, which made possible far more delicate and individual descriptions of Nature's aspects than had been

He pleased the highest powers in the land, became Laureate and later Lord Tennyson. He will therefore always remain the poet most thoroughly representative of that especial sort of beauty belonging to a social order which has r

highest honors of the Victorian Era are Landor, Arnold, Ro

d in by a few. After all, the people may not immediately accept a poet of too great independence, but they are least of all likely to grow enth

ical principles were not of the most advanced type, however. He believed in the notion of a free society, but seems to have thought the best way of attaining it would be a commonwealth in which the wise should rule, and s

iciently progressive to triumph over the classicism of his style in an age of romantic poetry, though there will always be those who hold on to the

their lips and blew a blast of courage. Science had undermined their belief in a future life as well as destroying the revealed basis of moral action. In such a m

heir revealed religion, but who loved it and regretted its passing aw

sea o

the full, and ro

lds of a bright

w I on

y, long, with

ng, to t

ind, down the

hingles of

the destruction of the ideal in which they had been bred and in which they devoutly believed. Arnold's sympathetic treatment of this phase of doubt seems, however, to have been of incalculable service to those who felt as he did. It softened the anguish of the shock to have not only the beauty

friend, or c

ome far nort

his own Go

mournful awe

e fallen R

faiths, and

tween two wor

powerless

e yet to re

on earth I w

my tears, the

hed them at

t in stanzas like the following, but

e energy of

the grave, b

g'd not in the

to strength ad

knit, and all

at hardly, to

on earth come withou

des o'ershado

Mountains o

rrower margin

t day dawn a

through the net

ccupation-pl

ce, envy-li

with his fellow

tanding face to

s of the century, Browning and Tennyson and the pre-Raphaelite group. Gosse, with more penetration than can always be accorded to him, declares that "His devotion to beauty, t

quisite music romantic subjects derived both from the classics and from medi?val legend. The new note of sensuousness, due largely to the Italian influence of Rossetti, with his sensuous temperament, his intensity of passion and his love o

ers to feel like Swinburne, pantheistic, and, like Morris, utterly hopeless of a future, while others again might criticise the pagan feeling, but, with

Swin

attraction of the French romances of chivalry for William Morris, of Tuscan painting for D. G. Rossetti, of the spirit of English Gothic architecture for Christina Rossetti, of the

t make any impression on the public, with the publication of Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" an interest was awakened which reached a climax with the publication

it could well go in a direction which painted life primarily from the outside. But when this brilliant culminating flash of the early school of Coleridge and Keats began to burn itself out, there was Tennyson, who might be called the conservative wing of the

lding of romantic, classical, and medi?val elements, temper

fundamental principle laid down by Rossetti in the little magazine they started called the Germ. This new creed was simple enough and ran:

qualities of Rossetti's poetry are found. "He speaks alternately like a seer and an artist; one who is now bewitched with the vision of beauty, and now is caught up into Paradise, where he hears unutterable things. To him the spiritual world is an intense reality. He hears the voices, he sees the presences of the supernatural. As he mourns beside the river of his sorrow, like Ezekiel, he has his visions of winged and wheeling glory, and leaning over the ramparts o

sured and he has had an unfortunate influence upon scores and scores of younger writers who have seemed to think that the province of th

inality of this group, and when he developed away from his nauseating eroticism, he could charm as no

winburne's art, and that, unfortunate as it is in many respects, it was a phase of the century's life which must find its expression in art if that life is to be completely given, and that it was a passing phase Swinburne himself proved in the development of other phases shown in his interest in cu

ism in the face of doubt of a hi

eary and faint

night devoured

hour consumed i

e too, when shal

heart and head, i

than all things

s save the ine

eth shall neithe

et that one wer

when all men's h

dream, that by

flawed hearts, and b

e were blind, our d

the whole world's

, nation would

ive, and the old g

hes of pantheistic aspiration is t

hat whi

e the ye

me God

ual and

and the form of them

ee many

ells to

ndage re

fe-tre

is the sap of my leaves;

Gods of y

e and th

pity an

urge and

in the bark that falls off;

ood is wha

nds in

ght in my

y of th

ill the sunrise shall tread

tury, and this the first volume from a pre-Raphaelite was hardly noticed by the critics. Morris sulked within his literary tents for ten years before he again appeared, this time with "The Life and Death of Jason" (1867), which immediately became popular. Later came the "Earthly Paradise." These tales, in verse noble and simple, in style recalling the tales of Chaucer, yet with a charm all their own, in which the real men and women of

abriel

The critics have found many faults in her style, mainly those growing out of an impassioned nature which carried her at times beyond the realm of perfectly balanced art. But even an English critic of the conse

large audience will it have, but it will have audience; and that is more than most poems have. To those who know what poetry is and in what struggles it is born-how the great thoughts justify themselves-this work will be looked upon as one of the wonders of the age." Mrs

showing similar tendencies, and overshadowed by his novels, has not yet emerged into the light of universal appreciation. One finds it even ignored altogether in the most recent books of English literature, yet he is the author of one of the most remarkable series of sonnets in the English language, "Modern Love," pr

he is hostes

ever cheerful

ver intelle

afloat. They

surface-eyes

th a most co

keleton shal

his the devils

greater wonde

our acting a

ther like tru

glances, Love

'er the dishe

nvy of our

golden, shows ou

w have seen Love's

writes "L

ee thee most

ght the spirit

ce, their alt

hat Love through

e dusk hours (

nd eloquent of

idden glimmeri

nly sees thy

ve! if I no m

the earth the

thine eyes in

sound upon Life'

of the perish'd

eath's imperi

higher things, and earnestly seeking to interpret nature and human life, is echoed in his "Old Pictures in Florence," which was written but six years after Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti formed their brotherhood. In poetry, the

critics because they followed logically in the line of development inaugurated by the earlier poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, etc., whose poetry had already done some good work in breaking down the school of Dryden and Pope, though it succeeded only in erecting another standard not sufficiently universal to include Browning. The evolution of art forms, a principle so clearly understood, as we have shown by Browning, has never become a guiding one with critics, though Mr. Gosse in his "Modern English Literature" has expressed a wish that the principle of evolution might be adapted to criticism. He has evidently felt

at which is pursued by the cultivators of gigantic gooseberries. They do their best to nip off all other buds, that the juices of the tree of fame may be concentrated on their favorite fruit. Such a plan may be convenient for the purposes of malevolence, and in earlier times our general ignorance of the principles of growth might well excuse it. But it is surely time that we should recognize only two criteria of literary judgment. The first is primitive, and merely clears the gro

e Mer

all that is best worth while in literature, instead of being taken, as it too often is, upon a wro

we have such senseless criticism as a remark which has become popular lately, and which I believe emanated from a university in the South-namely, that Browning never

aven, all's righ

enny

at times

out from pla

s to the wo

night that a

nold's criterion of criticism-namely, that a taste which is born of culture is the only certain possessio

are considering. I do not deny that the prevailing rage for novelty must also be taken into account. Liberty, variety, novelty, are all necessary to the development of Art. Without novelty there can be no invention, without variety there can be no character, without liberty there can be no life. Life, character, invention, these a

strongly the inward and relative nature of poetry, do you think there was one so completely a skeptic as to imagine that he was the sole proprietor of the perception he sought to embody in words; one who doubted his power, by means of accepted symbols, to communicate to his audience hi

t would not be in the least appropriate from the lips of a little silk-winding girl as she wanders through the streets of Asolo on a sunny morning singing her little songs. She is certainly a more lifelike child speaking Browningese, as she has often been criticised for doing, than she would be if upon this occasion she spoke in a Tennysonian manner. That