Browning and His Century

by Helen A. Clarke

Although Spenser was certainly unaware of any such modern refinement of the mythologist as a solar myth, yet the “Fairy Queen” forms a curious and interesting study on account of the survivals everywhere evident of solar characteristics in his characters and plots. Indeed it could hardly be otherwise, considering his intention, and his method of carrying it out, which he, himself, explains in his quaint letter to Sir Walter Raleigh—namely, “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” He goes on:

“I close the history of King Arthur as most fit for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men’s former works, and also further from danger and envy of suspicion of present time. In which I have followed all the antique poets historical; first Homer, who in the person of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor and a virtuous man, the one in his ‘Iliad,’ the other in his ‘Odyssey’; then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person of Æneas: After him, Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando, and lately Tasso dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two persons, the part which they in Philosophy call Ethice or virtues of a private man, colored in his Rinaldo, the other, named Politice, in his Godfieldo. By example of which excellent poets, I labor to portray in Arthur before he was King, the image of a brave Knight perfected in the twelve private moral virtues as Aristotle hath devised, the which is the purpose of these first twelve books.”

In the fashioning of his knight he took Arthur, a hero whose life as it appears in the early romances is inextricably mingled with solar elements, and has built up his virtues upon other ancient solar heroes. Here are all the paraphernalia of solar mythology: invincible knights with marvelous weapons, brazen castles guarded by dragons, marriage with a beautiful maiden and parting from the bride to engage in new quests, an enchantress who turns men into animals, even the outcast child; but none of the incidents appear intact. It is as if there had been a great explosion in the ancient land of romance and that in the mending up of things the separate pieces are all recognizable, although all joined together in a different pattern, while under all is the allegory. A gentle knight is no longer a solar hero as set forth by Max Müller or Cox, but Holiness; his invincible armor is not the all-powerful rays of the sun, but truth; the enchantress not night casting a spell over mortals, but sensuous pleasure entangling them.

These two poets, Chaucer and Spenser, are prototypes of two poet types of two poetical tendencies that have gone on developing side by side in English literature: Chaucer, democratic, interested supremely in the personalities of men and women, portraying the real, and Spenser, aristocratic, interested in imaging forth an ideal of manhood, choosing his subject-matter from sources that will lend themselves to such a purpose; Chaucer drawing his lessons out of the real actions of humanity; Spenser framing his story so that it will illustrate the moral he wishes to inculcate.

Shakespeare, of course, ranges himself in line with Chaucer. His interest centered on character, and wherever a story capable of character development presented itself, that he chose, altered it in outline comparatively little, and when he did so it was in order to carry forward the dramatic motif which he infused into his subject. The dramatic form in which he wrote furnished him a better medium for reaching a complete welding together of the external and spiritual side of his subject-matter. Where Chaucer hinted at the possibilities of an artistic development of character that would cause the events of the story to appear as the inevitable outcome of the hidden springs of action, Shakespeare accomplished it, and peopled the world of imagination with group after group of living, acting characters.

In the nineteenth century Tennyson and Browning have represented, broadly speaking, these two tendencies. As with Spenser, the classics and the Arthurian legends have been the sources from which Tennyson has drawn most largely; but although a philosophical undercurrent is this poet’s spiritual addition to the subject-matter, his method of putting his soul inside his work is very different from Spenser’s. He does not tear the old myths to pieces and join them together again after a pattern of his own to fit his allegorical situation, but keeps the events of his stories almost unchanged, in this particular resembling Chaucer and Shakespeare, and—except in a few instances, such as Tithonus and Lucretius, where the classic spirit of the originals is preserved—he infuses in his subject a vein of philosophy, illustrating those modern tendencies of English thought of which Tennyson, himself, was the exemplar. Even when inventing subjects, founded upon the experiences of everyday life, he so manipulates the story as to make it illustrate some of his favorite moral maxims. His characters do not act from motives which are the inherent necessities of their natures, but they act in accordance with Tennyson’s preconceived notions of how they ought to act. He manipulates the elements of character to suit his own view of development, just as Spenser manipulated the elements of the story to suit his own allegorical purpose.

Browning is the nineteenth-century heir of Chaucer; but it is doubtful whether Chaucer would recognize his own offspring, so remarkable has the development been in those five centuries. With Chaucer’s keen interest in human nature deepened to a profound insight into the very soul of humanity, and the added wealth of these centuries of human history, Browning not only had a far wider range of choice in subject-matter, but he was enabled to instil into it greater intellectual and emotional complexities.

Rarely has he treated any subject that has already been treated poetically unless we except the transcripts from the classics soon to be considered. Wherever he saw an interesting historical personage, interesting, not on account of his brilliant achievements in the eyes of the world, but on account of potentialities of character, such a one he has set before us to reveal himself. There are between twenty and thirty portraits of this nature in his work, chosen from all sorts and conditions of men—men who stand for some phase of growth in human thought; and always in developing a personality he gives the kernel of truth upon which their peculiar point of view is based. Thus, among the musical poems, Abt Vogler speaks for the intuitionalist—he who is blessed by a glimpse of the absolute truth. Charles Avison, on the other hand, is the philosopher of the relative in music and the arts generally. Among the art poems, Fra Lippo Lippi is the apostle of beauty in realism, Andrea del Sarto the attainer of perfection in form. In the religious poems the Jewish standpoint is illustrated in “Saul” and “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” the Christian in the portrait of John in “The Death in the Desert”; the empirical reasoner in “Paracelsus.”

This is only one of Browning’s methods in the choice and use of subject-matter. The characters and incidents in his stories are frequently the result of pure invention, but he sets them in an environment recreated from history, developing their individualities in harmony with the environment, thus giving at one stroke the spirit of the time and the individual qualities of special representatives of the time. Examples of this are: “My Last Duchess,” where the Duke is an entirely imaginary person and the particular incident is invented, but he is made to act and talk in a way perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the time—mediæval Italy. “Hugues of Saxe-Gotha” is another being of Browning’s fancy, who yet represents to perfection the spirit of the old fugue writers. “Luria,” “The Soul’s Tragedy,” “In a Balcony,” all represent the same method.

Another plan pursued by the poet is either to invent or borrow a historical personage into whose mouth he puts the defence of some course of action or ethical standard that may or may not be founded upon the highest ideals. Sludge, the hero of “Fifine at the Fair,” Bishop Blougram, Hohenstiel-Schwangau, range themselves in this group.