Life of Robert Browning

r, and predicted for its author a brilliant career. The same critic who wrote this review contributed an article of about twenty pages upon "Paracelsus" to the

ius, he has in himself all the elements of a g

ad not met: but the encounter, which was to be the seed of so fine a flower of friendship, occurred before the publication of th

s an almost flower-like beauty, which passed ere long into a less girlish and more robust complexion. He appeared taller than he was, for he was not above medium height, partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation. Even then he had that expressive wave o' the hand, which in later years was as full of various meanings as the `Ecco' of an Italian. A swift alertness pervaded him, noticeable as much in the rapid change of expression, in the deepening and illuming colours of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift to curve or droop in response to the mos

is time." The tragedian's house, whither he went at week-ends and on holidays, was at Elstree, a short distance to the northward of Hampstead: and there he invited Browning, among other friends, to come on the last day of December and spend New Year's Day (1836).** When alluding, in

particulars concernin

trafford", etc., see the

eldest boy, William Cha

opular of his poems, "Th

n an impromptu perform

e author that he hesit

nates". It was insert

hich was short of "cop

be Mr. Nettleship)

a rival poem (entitle

der, and of a letter whic

es, in which he wri

he story of the `Rats'

and proceeded with

obert had a similar on

en in 1842, for i

of `Bells and Pomegr

e finished it. Brow

into French, Russian

man) version is in pro

se, and occupied th

Hameln, which is a qua

ome three months later (May 26th) he enjoyed another eventful evening. It was the night of the first performance of Talfourd's "Ion", and he was among the personal friends of Macready who were invited to the supper at Talfourd's rooms. After the fall of the curtain, Browning, Forster, and other friends sought the tragedian and congratulated him upon the success both of the play and of his impersonation of the chief character. They then adjourned to the house of the author of "Ion". To his surprise and gratification Browning found himself placed next but one to his host, and immediately opposite Macready, who sat between two gentlemen, one calm as a summer evening, and the other with a tempestuous youth dominating his sixty years, whom the young poet at once recognised as Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. Every one was in good spirits: the host perhaps most of all, who was celebrating his birthday as well as the success of "Ion". Possibly Macready was the only person who felt at all bored - unless it was Landor - for Wordsworth was not, at such a function, an entertaining conve

though the younger was sometimes annoyed by the elder's pooh-poohing his republican sympathies, and contemptuously waiving aside as a mere nobody no less an individual than Shelley, he never failed of respect and even reverence. With what tenderness and dignity he has commemorated the great poet's falling away from his

a profound sympathy and admiration: a sentiment duly reciprocated. The care of the younger for th

with the triumphant pleasure of the evening, was about to leave, Macready arrested him by a friendly grip of the arm. In unmistakable earnestness he asked Browning to write

that his friend would be more successful with th

th the manuscript of "Strafford". The latter hoped much from it. In March the MS. was ready. About the end of the month Macready took

e forenoon Carlyle gave the first of his lectures in London. The play was a success, despite the shamefully inadequate acting of some of those entrusted with important parts. There was once, perhaps there were more occasions than one, where success poised like the soul of a Mohammedan on the invisible thread leading to Paradise, but on either side of which lies perdition. There was none to cry `Timbul' save Macready, except Miss Helen Faucit, who gained a brilliant triumph as Lady Carlisle. The part of Charles I. was enacted so execrably that damnation for all was again and again within measurable distance. "The Younger Vane" ranted so that a hiss, like a

ding actors, having received a bette

pitful of good-natured people applauded it. Ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in the same way that should better reward their attention." But, except in so far as its abrupt declension from the stage hurt its author in the eyes of the critics, and possibly in those of theatrical managers, "Strafford" was certainly no failure. It has the elements of a great acting play. Everything, even the language (and here was a stumbling-block with most of the critics and criticasters), was subordinated to dramatic exigencies: though the subordination was in

a statement that has b

esses to give an account

said, it is always tha

f fact, the three plays

nd have owed it to fo

the boards has been

article in `The

can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by their vagueness become more clear: in a word, we all see in enactment what only a few of us can discern in perusal. The play has its faults, but scarcely those of language, where the diction is noble and rhythmic, because it is, so to speak, the genuine rind of the fruit it envelops. But there are dramatic faults - primarily, in the extreme economy of the author in the presentment of his `dramatis personae', who are embodied abstractions - monomaniacs of ideas, as some one has said of Hugo's personages - rather than men as we are, with manifold complexities in endless friction or fusion. One cardinal fault is the lack of humour, which to my mind is the paramou

nt insight, is altogether uncritical. Readers of this mind must have forgotten or be indifferent to those lines, for example, where the wretched Charles stammeringly excuses himself to his loyal minister for his death-warrant, crying out that it was wrung from him, and begging Strafford not to curse him: or, again, that wonderfully significant line, so full of a too tardy knowledge and of concentrated scorn, where Strafford first begs the king to "be good to his

lian rhyme, with the boy's picturesquely childish prose-a

ell'

rca in

o la

rima

in the broad moonl

so l

rima

hoots from und

dowy distanc

the dip

o la

ainter, and then

t and all, lik

ld sleep, father:

eep, Anne; or if n

uch a thi

u're too ti

l come by-and-by

quiet house

ep saf

y not in

ffor

ny dre

" - in the terrible scene where Strafford learns his doom, is only to be paralleled by the song of Mariana in "Measure for Measu

om for a volume of careful criticism, dealing solely with this theme - that I have the less regret

ave dwelt more liberally upon "Pauline", "Paracelsus", and "Strafford", partly because (certainly without more than one exception, "Sordello") these are the three least read of Browning's poems, partly because they indicate the sweep and reach of his

mmest foreview of the author of "Hamlet", "Othello", and "Macbeth"; had Shakespeare died prematurely none could have predicted, from the exquisite blossoms of his adolescenc

me lines, or doubled upon himself in intricate revolutions; but alre

he human spirit to reach those Gates of Truth whose lowest steps are the scarce discernible stars and furthest suns we scan, by piling Ossas of searching speculation upon Pelions of hardly-won positive knowledge. The highest exemplar of the former is Shakespeare, Browning the profoundest interpreter of the latter. To achieve supremacy the one had to create a throbbing actuality, a world of keenest living, of acts and intervolved situations and episodes: the other to fashion a mentality so passionately alive that its manifold phases should have all the reality of concrete individualities. The one reveals individual life to us by the play of circumstance, the interaction of events, the correlative eductio

seless to dogmatise. The psychic portraiture produced by

weakness, of what is temporal and perishable and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect even the subtlest analyst to adequately depict other souls than his own. It is Browning's high distinction that he has this soul-depictive faculty - restricted as even in his instance it perforce is - to an extent unsurpassed by any other poet, ancient or modern. As a sympathetic critic has remarked, "His stage is not the visible phenomenal Engl

in from outward forms "the passion and the life whose fountains are within" - the propriety of this dramatic means can scarce be gainsaid. The swift complicated mental machinery can thus be exhibited infinitely

nd King Charles", to kingly and filial duty: in Anael's and Djabal's, in "The Return of the Druses", respectively to religion and unscrupulous ambition modified by patriotism: in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy", to purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to noble steadfastness: and in Constance's, in "In a Balcony", to self-denial. Of these plays, "The Return of the Druses" seems to me the most picturesque, "Luria" the most noble and dignified, and "In a Balcony" the most potentially a great dramatic success. The last is in a sense a fragment, but, though the integer of a great unaccomplished drama, is as complete in itself as the Funeral March in Beethoven's `Eroica' Symphony. "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" has the radical fault characteristic of writers

f Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it; who, further, at a later date, affirmed that he would rather have written this play than any work of modern times: nor with less reluctance, that I find myself at variance with Mr. Skelton, who speaks of the drama as "one of the most perfectly conceived and perfectly executed tragedies in the language." In the instance of Luria, that second Othello, suicide has all the impressiveness of a plenary act of absolution: the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of lig

re the Prefect, drawing a breath of relief, is almost simultaneously assassinated; and that where Anael, with every nerve at tension in her fierce religious resolve, with a poignant, life-surrendering c

- was s

ed him, Thoro

d forgot me:

trous day," Luria takes the phial o

s all I brought

elp

; "King Victor and

uses", and "A Blot in

1844; "Luria", and "A

matters of interest, pertinent to the present theme. One is that the song in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon", "There's a woman like a dew-drop", written several years before the author's meeting with Elizabeth Barrett, is so closely in the style of "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and other ballads by the sweet singer

e dedication to him of "Luria", which Landor sent to Brownin

not our poet b

m no speech! an

e Chaucer was

ked along our

o enquiring

discourse. Bu

umage, stronger

ts thou playest

ento and Am

thee, singing