ROBERT BROWNING (1812–89)
1. His Life. Browning was born at Camberwell, his father being connected with the Bank of England. The future poet was educated semi-privately, and from an early age he was free to follow his inclination toward studying unusual subjects. As a child he was precocious, and began to write poetry at the age of twelve. Of his predecessors Shelley in particular influenced his mind, which was unformed and turbulent at this time with the growing power within. After a brief course at London University, Browning for a short period traveled in Russia (1833); then he lived in London, where he became acquainted with some of the leaders of the literary and theatrical worlds. In 1834 he paid his first visit to Italy, a country which was for him a fitful kind of home. In 1845 he visited Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess, whose works had strongly attracted him. A mutual liking ensued, and then, after a private marriage, a sort of elopement followed, to escape the anger of the wife’s stern parent. The remainder of Browning’s life was occupied with journeys between England and France and Italy, and with much poetical activity. His wife died at Florence in 1861, leaving one son. Browning thereupon left the city for good and returned to England, though in 1878 he went back once more to Italy. His works, after suffering much neglect, were now being appreciated, and in 1867 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. He died in Italy, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
2. His Poems and Plays. His first work of any importance is Pauline (1833). The poem is a wild imitation of the more extravagant outbursts of Shelley, whom it praises effusively. The work is crude and feverish, and at the time it attracted little notice. Paracelsus (1835) reveals Browning’s affection for unusual subjects. The poem, a very long one, is composed largely of monologues of the medieval charlatan whose name forms the title. The work gave the public its first taste of Browning’s famous “obscurity.” The style is often harsh and rugged, but the blank verse contains many isolated passages of great tenderness and beauty. There are in addition one or two charming lyrics that are as limpid as well-water:
Thus the Mayne glideth
Where my love abideth.
Sleep’s no softer: it proceeds
On through lawns, on through meads,
On and on, whate’er befall,
Meandering and musical,
Though the niggard pasturage
Bears not on its shaven ledge
Aught but weeds and waving grasses
To view the river as it passes,
Save here and there a scanty patch
Of primrose too faint to catch
A weary bee.
His next effort was the play Strafford (1837), which was written at the suggestion of the actor Macready, and was fairly successful. Sordello (1840) established Browning’s reputation for obscurity. The poem professes to tell the life-story of a Mantuan troubadour, but most of it is occupied with long irrelevant speeches and with Browning’s commentary thereon. Pippa Passes (1841) is in form a drama. In plot it is highly improbable, as it is based on several coincidences that all happen in one day. The work is rather more terse than its predecessors, and the purple patches are more numerous. Pippa’s songs, moreover, are often of great beauty. In Dramatic Lyrics (1842) there are many examples of clear and forcible work, including his Cavalier lyrics and such well-known pieces as Home Thoughts from Abroad. Other works of this period include The Return of the Druses (1843), a play; Dramatic Romances (1846), which shows the Browning obscurity and virility at their best and worst; Luria (1846), perhaps the weakest of his tragedies, resembling Othello in some respects; Men and Women (1855), consisting of dramatic monologues, some of great power and penetration; Dramatis Personæ (1864), containing more monologues; Balaustion’s Adventure (1871), a transcript from Euripides; and the longest of all his works, The Ring and the Book (1868–69), with which the period closes.
The Ring and the Book is (the word is so apt as to be inevitable) a literary “stunt.” It is the story of the murder of a young wife, Pompilia, by her worthless husband, in the year 1698, and the same story is told by nine different people, and continues for twelve books. The result is a monument of masterly discursiveness.
In the later stages of his career Browning’s mannerisms are accentuated in the dreary wildernesses of Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871), Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873), The Inn Album (1875), and La Saisiaz (1878). It is difficult to understand the use of such poems, except to give employment to the Browning Societies that were springing up to explain them. But his better qualities are shown in Fifine at the Fair (1872), which is still too long; Dramatic Idylls (1879–80); Jocoseria (1883); Ferishtah’s Fancies (1884); and Parleyings with Certain People (1887). His long life’s work has a powerful close in Asolando (1889), which, along with much of the tired disillusion of the old man, has in places the firmness and enthusiasm of his prime. The last verses he ever wrote describe himself in the character he most loved to adopt:
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s worktime
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
“Strive and thrive!” cry, “Speed,—fight on, fare ever
There as here!”
3. Features of his Work. (a) His Style. Browning’s style has been the subject of endless discussion, for it presents a fascinating problem. Within itself it reveals the widest range. Its famous “obscurity” was so pronounced that it led to the production of “Browning dictionaries” and other apparatus to disclose the deep meanings of the master. This feature of his work is partly due to his fondness for recondite subjects, to his compression and also to his diffuseness of thought and language, and to his juggling with words and meters. It often leads to such passages as the following, which is nothing less than jockeying with the English language:
Now, your rater and debater
Is baulked by a mere spectator
Who simply stares and listens
Tongue tied, while eye nor glistens
Nor brow grows hot and twitchy,
Nor mouth, for a combat itchy,
Quivers with some convincing
Reply—that sets him wincing?
Nay, rather, reply that furnishes
Your debater with what burnishes
The crest of him, all one triumph,
As you see him rise, hear him cry “Humph!
Convinced am I? This confutes me.
Receive the rejoinder that suits me!
Confutation of vassal for prince meet—
Wherein all the powers that convince meet,
And mash my opponent to mincemeat!”
Pacchiarotto
In contrast with this huddle of words, Browning can write clearly and with perfect cohesion and directness, as may easily be seen in such well-known poems as How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, Time’s Revenges, and The Glove. His middle style, common in his blank verse and his lyrics, is somewhat like that of Byron in its fine prosaic aptness:
This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name’s sake.
Garden Fancies
(b) His Descriptive Power. In this respect Browning differs widely from Tennyson, who slowly creates a lovely image by careful massing of detail. Browning, however, makes one or two dashing strokes, and, by his complete mastery of phrase, the picture is revealed:
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;
Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,
That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye
By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue
That pricks deep into oakworts for a worm,
And says a plain word when she finds her prize.
Caliban upon Setebos
This love for the picturesque leads him into many crooked byways of life, manners, and history, often with results that dismay his warmest admirers. Frequently, however, the stubborn thistle of his style blossoms into glossy purples. For example, in The Ring and the Book, we often light upon a tender passage like the following, which refreshes the whole arid page around it:
So, when the she-dove breeds, strange yearnings come
For the unknown shelter by undreamed-of shores,
And there is born a blood-pulse in her heart
To fight if needs be, though with flap of wing,
For the wool-flock or the fur-tuft, though a hawk
Contest the prize.
(c) His Teaching. Much play has been made with this side of his writings. But, after analysis, his teaching can with fairness be summed up in the simple exhortation to strive, hope, and fear not. A fair proportion of his poems are inspired with the facile optimism that led him to cry,
God’s in his heaven,
All’s right with the world,
but his sager mind let him perceive that much of the world was wrong. He had generous enthusiasms, such as that for the cause of Italian liberty; several strong prejudices, such as that against spiritualism; but on the whole his is a fair reflex of the average mind of his day, with the addition of much reading and observation and the priceless boon of genuine poetical genius.
(d) His Reputation. Recognition was slow in coming, but like Wordsworth he lived to see his name established high among his fellows. He wrote too freely, and often too carelessly and perversely, and much of his work will pass into oblivion; but the residue will be of quality high enough to make his fame secure.