To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”
No poet was ever more interested in life than Browning, and whatever else may be said of his poetry it must be admitted that it is very interesting. He touches all sides of human activity and peers into the secret places of knowledge. He enters into the life of musicians in Abt Vogler, Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, A Toccata of Galuppi’s, and Charles Avison; into the life of painters in Andrea del Sarto, Pictor Ignotus, Fra Lippo Lippi, Old Pictures in Florence, Gerard de Lairesse, Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper, and Francis Furini; into the life of scholars in A Grammarian’s Funeral and Fust and his Friends; into the life of politicians in Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau and George Bubb Dodington; into the life of ecclesiastics in the Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, Bishop Blougram’s Apology, The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church, and The Ring and the Book; and he makes excursions into all kinds of byways and crooked corners of life in such poems as Mr. Sludge, the Medium, Porphyria’s Lover, Mesmerism, Johannes Agricola in Meditation, Pietro of Abano, Ned Bratts, Jochanan Hakkadosh, and so forth.
Merely to read a list of such titles is to have evidence of Browning’s insatiable curiosity. It is evident also that he has a fondness for out-of-the-way places. He wants to know, even more than he wants to enjoy. If Wordsworth is the poet of the common life, Browning is the poet of the uncommon life. Extraordinary situations and eccentric characters attract him. Even when he is looking at some familiar scene, at some commonplace character, his effort is to discover something that shall prove that it is not familiar, not commonplace,—a singular detail, a striking feature, a mark of individuality. This gives him more pleasure than any distant vision of an abstraction or a general law.
“All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said