Passing on from architecture to sculpture one finds that we have another art of concrete bodily form, with the added power of portraying the human form, face, and to a very slight degree, the soul. While the number of sculptors named is very small, then, Browning’s appreciation of this art surpasses his appreciation of architecture. Examples of this are Old Pictures in Florence, in which sculpture is treated at considerable length, by comparing its merits with the aspirations of the early painters, and Pippa Passes, in which Jules, the sculptor, is a prominent figure. The Bishop orders his Tomb deals almost entirely with sculpture. Still sculpture was not Browning’s favorite art by any means. Bodily perfection he admired; but he wished to go beyond it to the soul in dramatic situations, to its struggle and endeavor. And for these values the powers of sculpture are limited. To portray successfully any very great struggle or intense feeling of the soul is beyond its nature.
A cause for the large amount of Italian poetry in the writings of Browning has already been suggested, in part.[179] But one must further consider the fact that he did not continue to deal with poets and their writings as subject matter. After the first eight years of his career, he ceased to deal with the causes connected with the failure of poets. Fundamentally, all arts are agencies of expression through the representation of nature and humanity. With the breadth of vision which Browning possessed concerning the possibilities of expression in all the arts, there was none of the five in which he did not, at some time or other, wish to express himself. In the beginning of his career, when he was formulating his ideas of a poet, he expressed his ideas of that art by writing about other poets. But with ideas and forms for his own art once fully established, the art became self-expressive. He no longer needed to write about other poets; for the poet in himself had found his own purpose and method.
It has already been suggested that Browning’s appreciation of music, as he expressed it in his poems, was qualitative, rather than quantitative, so far as Italian music is concerned. This art rivals poetry in expressing the highest yearnings and ideals of which the soul is capable, and is, therefore, in a very high degree, though in abstract form, the art of personality. And this art Browning expressed most perfectly, as to the aims and ideals of its artists, when he chose to do so. But with all his own feeling for music and with such ability as he expressed in performance, it, like poetry, was largely self-expressive for him. That is he played, instead of writing poetry about music. Browning’s evident preference for other music than that of the modern composers of Italy explains the lack of space accorded to them. Yet in spite of this preference the best of his musical poems were built about Italians—obscure ones though they may be.
Browning did no work in actual study of the technique of painting. The nearest he came to it was at the time of his thirteen days application to drawing.[180] Yet painting is in a very large degree expressive of the soul—its anguish, sorrow, failure, joy, ecstasy, or endeavor. Drawn to it by his interest in personality, Browning made it contribute largely to his poems. The Italian painting with which he dealt had little to do with landscape or other phases of nature. It portrayed persons; and stimulated by the pictures which he saw, or by records of personality in the biography of artists, he incorporated many references to painting in his poems, dealing more largely with it than with any other art. Since, too, Italy was the home of painting, his environment was very conducive to a development of his tendency to make painting an important element in his poems.
Browning, as poet and man, was able to forgive any sort of failure if the person whom he was judging had only made a thorough effort to accomplish something. He carried this doctrine so far as to make a lack of effort the cause of his censure of the Duke and the Lady in The Statue and the Bust, even though the fulfillment of their plan would have been a sin. This love for endeavor, which always accompanies his attitude toward any personality, along with his enthusiasm for personality itself explains his selection and emphasis in his treatment of the arts. Painting he decidedly preferred above sculpture for other reasons than its greater ability in portraying the soul. This preference is stated in Old Pictures in Florence, and is based on the fact that Greek art had run, and “reached the Goal.” Its effort, then, was over:
“They are perfect—how else? they shall never change:
We are faulty—why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer’s hand is not arrested
With us ...”
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