Life of Robert Browning

hat its pre-eminence is considered from the standpoint of technical achievement, of art, merely. It seems to me, like all simple and beautiful things, profound enough for the searching plummet of the

he Latin epitaph of Platino Piatto; and, as might be expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti called fundamental brain-work, is as luminous, de

ent moonlight: its surge and turbulence under passing tempests: below all, the deep oceanic music. There are, of course, many to whom the sea is but a waste of water, at best useful as a highway and as the nursery of the winds and rains. For them there is no hint "of the incommunicable dream" in the curve of the rising wave, no murmur of the oceanic undertone in the short leaping sounds, invisible things that laugh and clap their hands for joy and are no more. To them it is b

the husht beau

oo deep fo

a vibration

s before a

nsight depends upon the depth of his spiritual heritage. If wonder dwell not in his eyes and soul there can be no "far ken" for him. Here it seems apt to point out that Browning was the first writer of our day to indicate this transmutive, this inspired and inspiring wonder-spirit, which is the deepest motor in the evolution of our modern poetry. Characteristically, he puts his utterance into the mouth of a dreamy German student, the shadowy Schramm who is but metaphysics embodied,

tter when he says, "He who, having no touch of the Muse's madness in his soul, comes to the door and

upon the poet. No wonder this resort was for long one of his sacred places, and that he lamented its disappearance as fe

of observation at that time would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole or an Iroquois: he saw and watched everything, the bird on the wing, the snail dragging its shell up the pendulous woodbine, the bee adding to his golden treasure as he swung in the bells of the campanula, the green fly darting hither and thither like an animated seedling, the spider weaving her gossamer from twig to twig, the woodpecker heedfully scrutinising the lichen on the gnarled oak-bole, the passage of the wind through leaves or across grass, the motions and shadows of the clouds, and so forth. These were his golden holidays

py vagrant days, was to join company with any tramps, gipsies, or other wayfarers, and in good fellowship gain much knowledge of life that was useful at a later time. Rustic entertainments, particularly peripatetic "Theatres Royal", had a singular fascination for him, as for that matter had rustic oratory, whether of the alehouse or the pulpit. At one period he took the keenest interest in sectaries of all kinds: and often h

e image flashed upon him," writes his intimate friend, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his o

m dramatic concepts rather than attempting to concentrate these in a quick, moving verisimilitude, can attempt. The passing hither and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate, a wandering chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a lower world, changing the circumstances and even the natures of certain more or less heedless listeners by the wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence, is of this `vraie verite'. It is so obvio

isodes, and subsidiary interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that it should be acted is a wholly errant one. The

"long blue solemn hours serenely flowing." The dramatic poet may occupy himself with that deeper insight, and the wider expression of it, which is properly altogether beyond the scope of the playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme with the light that never was on sea or land, nor will he thereby sacrifice aught of essential truth: but his comrade must see to it that he is content with the wide liberal air of the common day. The poetic alchemist may turn a sword into pure gold: the playwright wil

s no song at all, properly, but simply a beautiful short poem. From the dramatist's point

small event'

e pain than

nt', should

Untwine me

ch make up l

fall short i

It seems to me entirely consistent with the character of Ottima's reckless lover. He is akin to the gallant in one of Dumas' romances, who lingered atop of the wall of the prison whence he was escaping in order to whistle the concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom. What is, dramatically, disastrous in the instance of Mertoun si

dramatic effect is fully experienced only in retrospe

w nothing of the fate of Luigi: we can but surmise the future of Jules and Phene: we know not how or when Monsignor wi

music, by any other Victorian poet: its poetic insight is such as no other poet than the author of "The Ring and the Book" and "The Inn Album" can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb. From the outset of the tremen

s to me a night w

, perplext in the extreme." Still more profound a touch is that where Ottima, daring her lover to the "one thing that must be done; you know what thing: Come in and help to carry," says, with affected lightsomeness, "This dusty pane might serve for look

so yo

r should wave

this

the verse, as well as by the dramatic intensity

e day of it

llars seemed o'e

ue canopy su

h, to weigh dow

p all life ex

till the s

. How

in woods we lay

searching te

anon some bri

ine-tree roof, her

enger thro' the

lunged his weap

ilty thee and

ike a whole s

ppa sings here and throughout are as pathetically fresh and free as a thrush's song in the heart of a beleaguered city, and as with

a least excu

- whe

lming effect than that which interrupts Ottima and Sebald at the perilous summit of the

d it thrice

ueen, your spir

nt in sin

. I cr

queen, my spi

ficen

heard the voice o

's at th

's at t

g's at

side's de

k's on

l's on t

n his h

ht with t

A pas

n his heaven! D

sp

Phene when all the happiness of their unborn years trembles in the balance, reaches the Prince of the Church just when his conscience is sore b

ranks the s

se puppets, b

e is no last

d

in his

ht with t

als jedes Gewoelk darin, und dauerhafter dazu,' meditates Jean Paul: "There can be nothing good, as we know it,

at Hatcham, and upon Wimbledon Common, whither he was often wont to wander and to ramble for hours, and where he composed one day the well-known lines upon Shelley, with many another unr

with "notched and burning rim." He never forgot the bygone "sunsets and great stars" he saw in those days of his fervid youth. Browning remarked once that the romance of his life was in his own soul; and on another occasion I heard him smilingly add, to some o

w yellow moonli

but I have th

eady alluded to "Sordello" as a derelict upon the ocean of poetry. This, indeed, it still seems to me, notwithstanding the well-meaning suasion of certain admirers of the poem who have hoped "I should do it justice," thereby meaning that I should eulogise it as a masterpiece. It is a g

he salt brine is as the breath of delight. The fatal facility of the heroic couplet to lapse into d

, its treatment verbose, its intricacies puzzling to those unaccustomed to excursions from the familiar highways of old us

idities when Mr. Swinburne, in periods as resplendent as the whirling wheels of Pho

nly for the gleam of the quenchless lamps amid its long deserted alleys and stately avenues. Sadly enough, for to poets it will always be an unforgotten land - a continent

How can one explain paradoxes? There is a charm, or there is none: that is what it amounts to, for each individual. `Tutti ga i so gusti, e mi go i

and the strange comet-like Sordello of the Italian and Provencal Chronicles (who has his secure immortality, by Dante set forth in leonine guise - `a guisa di leon quando si posa' - in the "Purgatorio"), both these are the most shadowy of prototypes. The Sordello of Browning is a typical poetic soul: the narrative of the incidents in the development of this soul is adap

auty. Readers familiar with the poem will recall passage after passage - among w

umn eve w

ns of sunset

ests, - like a t

ack upon its

lare of crims

eneath lay

ere - such as those of Palma, with her golden ha

fine

honey oozed fr

the livelong

the

y b

on the lily

labyrinthine bu

once

uch d

eyeball owns

h his garden w

urther, save only the concluding lines of the

pacer of

ell disgorgeth

ts whirring s

rieved and obsc

kness quie

ranths grown b

lights where hi

.

te rhythms, of wild conjunctions, of panic-stricken collocations, oftentimes overwhelms it. "Sordello" grew under the

sode. A few lines, he says, put Jerrold in a state of alarm. Sentence after sentence brought no consecutive thought to his brain. At last the idea occurred to him that in his illness his mental faculties had been wrecked. The perspiration rolled from his forehead, and smiting his head he sank back on the sofa, crying, "O God, I AM an idiot!" A little lat

cident almost in these very words, and his enjoyment therein:

were only two lines in it that I understood, and they were both lies; they were the opening and closing lines, `Who will may hear Sordello's story told,' and `Who would has heard Sor

poet says "God gave man two faculties" - and adds, "I wish while He was about it (`pendant qu

head, his cheeks were flushed, his hands were trembling, the nerves in his face were twitching. Then he arose, and solemnly cursed Robert Browning. And then he took all his volumes, and, disposing them carefully in the fireplace, set light to them. `I wish,' he said, `that I could put the poet there too.'" One other anecdote of the kind was often,

e advisability of "rewriting it in a more transparent manner, but concluded that the labour would be disproportionate to the result, and

early admirers. "My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book such would be surmounted, and

ive: the memorable sentence in the dedicatory preface - "My stress lay o

t failure. "Vast as night," to borrow a simile from