It is no part of the present plan to attempt a vindication of Browning’s treatment of the character of Cardinal Wiseman; the issues suggested by the Apology lie deeper, and are far broader than those involved in such a discussion. One object, at least, of the design would appear to be that of a defence of belief in those tenets of a creed which transcend the powers of reason; the particular religious body to which the speaker belongs being of little import to the real issue. It seemed, however, that any treatment of the poem would be incomplete which did not contain some brief comparison such as has been here attempted. And even now there is danger lest the attempt may prove misleading. Whether or not Browning has given us the true character of the Cardinal is not the question; the only fact in that connection which we shall do well to bear in mind is that, working from the materials at his command—the outward and visible manifestations afforded by Wiseman’s life as known to his contemporaries—the author of the Apology has given what may be a possible interpretation of character, sufficiently reasonable, at any rate, to account for, and to reconcile seeming inconsistencies, without laying its owner open to the charge of either folly or knavery.
In approaching a more detailed examination of the poem we must not neglect to take into account the peculiar conditions of religious life and thought prevailing in England at the time of the publication, 1855. Fourteen years earlier had appeared the celebrated No. 90 of Tracts for the Times. After an interval of six years, in 1847, had followed the secession of J. H. Newman to the Church of Rome, in 1853 that of Cardinal Manning. It was a time of anxiety and sorrow amongst all those most deeply attached to the Church of England, and of general unrest and uneasiness throughout the country. Sufficient evidence of the universal unsettlement and anxiety is afforded by the alarm, amounting almost to panic, excited by the Bull of 1850 announcing the territorial titles scheme. In a letter to Dean Stanley on the question of the Oxford University Reform Bill of 1854, Mr. Gladstone wrote, “The very words which you have let fall upon your paper ‘Roman Catholics,’ used in this connection (i.e., of extending full University privileges to students other than members of the Church of England) were enough to burn it through and through, considering we have a parliament which, were the measure of 1829 not law at this moment, would, I think, probably refuse to make it law.”[56] Such was the spirit of the times in England at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century, and the existence of this spirit must not be left out of account in dealing with Bishop Blougram and his Apology.
That Browning did not wholly escape its influence, even though removed from direct contact, is readily conceivable. And in spite of his own expressed surprise at the suggestion that he did not favourably regard the Roman Catholic creed, his natural sympathies would certainly appear to have inclined towards a Puritanic form of worship rather than to a more ornate ritual; setting aside questions of doctrine of which these may be the outward manifestations. This being the case, ample reason is at once discoverable for the resolve to examine the position more thoroughly, ascertaining how far it was possible to make out a case for the other side. For, whilst on the one hand, we have every right, despite his cosmopolitanism and his Italian sympathies to claim the author of the Apology as a genuine Englishman, with a fair proportion of the Englishman’s characteristics, on the other hand, we may exonerate him, if not wholly, yet to a very large extent, from insular prejudices and narrow-minded judgments. Had he designed to present Blougram either as fool or hypocrite, he might assuredly have attained his object with equal certainty by writing something less than the thousand and odd lines devoted to the work of psychological analysis: for, in making his defence, the Bishop is likewise revealing himself—to him who has eyes to see. Here, as elsewhere, it is Browning’s intent to present to his readers not what man sees but “what this man sees”; to lead them to judge of cause rather than of effect, of motive rather than of action, or of action by the recognition of motive. We may attempt to classify his characters, if we will: a Browning society may write and read papers on the “villains” or the “hypocrites” of Browning as distinguished from his saints. Such a classification is perhaps fairly possible in the case of a character delineator such as Dickens, whose lines of demarcation are stronger and broader, purposely so, than those of actual life; but it is questionable whether Browning himself could have thus labelled his people and separated them into distinct compartments. For if the complexity of human nature and character is fully recognized by any writer whether poet, novelist, or biographer, it has surely been so recognized by the author of Paracelsus, of Sordello, of The Ring and the Book. It has been so frequently remarked that it seems but reiterating a truism to repeat the assertion that he writes of the individual, not of the race, not of man but of men; of men with much indeed which is common to the race, but with peculiar attention also to those idiosyncrasies which establish individuality. Hence the choice of soliloquists for the dramatic poems is most frequently made amongst those the interpretation of whose actions has presented special difficulty to the world at large. Thus to Browning was left the vindication of Paracelsus, and for the bombast, the quack, the drunkard, of contemporary biography has been substituted the pioneer and martyr of science, failing, but on account of the magnitude of his designs; recognizing even in defeat the divine nature of the mission entrusted to his charge. For an Andrea del Sarto—to a less profound student of character appearing as “an easy-going plebeian” satisfied with a social life among his compeers, as an artist “resting content in the sense of his superlative powers as an executant”—is offered the Andrea of the poem bearing his name; a sometime aspiring nature, now embittered by the struggle, wellnigh ended within the soul, between yearnings towards future greatness and the desire for present gain; a nature of insight sufficient to realize that the bonds of materialism are galling, of moral force inadequate to effect their rupture. The more subtle, the more outwardly misleading the character, the stronger the attraction it would appear to have borne for Browning. It is no matter for surprise that in Prince Hohenstiel Schwangau he should have devoted over 2,000 lines to a study of that mysterious, if disappointing, figure in European politics of the middle of the last century—“at once the sabre of revolution and the trumpet of order.” And if conflicting elements of character constituted the main attraction of the personality of Napoleon III, a similar cause of fascination, as we have already noticed, exists in the instance before us; viz., the possibility of reconciling the extreme opinions professed in matters of Church ritual and doctrine, with the erudition, the political ability, and width of intellectual outlook notably characteristic of Cardinal Wiseman.
I. For avoidance of misunderstanding as to the intention of the Apology it is well to read the Epilogue as Prologue, although, even with this introduction, it is not easy to decide how far the speaker is serious in his assertions—a definite answer to the question would probably have presented (so Browning would suggest) some difficulty to the Bishop himself.
For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.
The other portion, as he shaped it thus
For argumentatory purposes,
He felt his foe was foolish to dispute.
Some arbitrary accidental thoughts
That crossed his mind, amusing because new,
He chose to represent as fixtures there,
Invariable convictions (such they seemed
Beside his interlocutor’s loose cards
Flung daily down, and not the same way twice)
While certain hell-deep instincts, man’s weak tongue
Is never bold to utter in their truth
Because styled hell-deep (’tis an old mistake
To place hell at the bottom of the earth)
He ignored these—not having in readiness
Their nomenclature and philosophy:
He said true things, but called them by wrong names.
“On the whole,” he thought, “I justify myself
On every point where cavillers like this
Oppugn my life: he tries one kind of fence,
I close, he’s worsted, that’s enough for him.
He’s on the ground: if ground should break away
I take my stand on, there’s a firmer yet
Beneath it, both of us may sink and reach.
His ground was over mine and broke the first.” (ll. 980-1004.)
II. Thus the Bishop believed himself to realize the weakness of his opponent; his superficiality in spite of his appeal to the ideal; the worldliness which would esteem this hour of intercourse with the prelate the highest honour of his life,
The thing, you’ll crown yourself with, all your days.
An incident which he would not fail to turn to
Capital account;
“When somebody, through years and years to come,
Hints of the bishop,—names me—that’s enough:
Blougram? I knew him”—(into it you slide)
“Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,
All alone, we two: he’s a clever man:
And after dinner,—why, the wine you know,—
Oh, there was wine, and good!—what with the wine ...
’Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!
He’s no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen
Something of mine he relished, some review:
He’s quite above their humbug in his heart,
Half-said as much, indeed—the thing’s his trade.
I warrant, Blougram’s sceptical at times:
How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!” (ll. 31-44.)
Just or unjust, such is the Bishop’s estimate of his companion—(if the opportunist is “quite above their humbug in his heart,” not so the would-be idealist!) And, accepting this view, the futility of casting pearls before swine restrains him from a free expression of those deeper thoughts which rise to the surface only here and there throughout the monologue, evidence of the man beneath the prelate. There are problems which do not admit of discussion “to you, and over the wine.” Hence Blougram holds himself justified in exercising that “reserve or economy of truth” recognized[57] by a contemporary writer of his own community as permissible under given conditions, within one class of which he may reasonably account as falling, his interview with Gigadibs; viz., that in which the listener is incapable of understanding truth stated exactly, when it may be presented in the nearest form likely to appeal to his comprehension. The journalist is thus from the first accepted by the Bishop as representative of his world—that portion of the lay world to which the position of this particular prelate of the Roman Catholic Church is one requiring justification. Scepticism is so easy to this special intellectual type of man, faith so difficult, that it is to him incomprehensible that the Bishop may be genuine in his profession. On these grounds Blougram bases the necessity for his defence.