Two more of these poems show the irony of circumstance as embodied in popular opinion.
"POPULARITY" is an expression of admiring tenderness for some person whom the supposed speaker knows and loves as a poet, though it is the coming, not the present age, which will bow to him as such. But the main idea of the poem is set forth in a comparison. The speaker "sees" his friend in the character of an ancient fisherman landing the Murex-fish on the Tyrian shore. "The 'murex' contains a dye of miraculous beauty; and this once extracted and bottled, Hobbs, Nobbs, and Co. may trade in it and feast; but the poet who (figuratively) brought the murex to land, and created its value, may, as Keats probably did, eat porridge all his life."
"HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY" describes a poet whose personality was not ignored, but mistaken; and the irony of circumstance is displayed both in the extent of this mistake, and the colour which circumstance has given to it. This poet is a mysterious personage, who constantly wanders through the city, seeing everything without appearing to use his eyes. His clothing, though old and worn, has been of the fashion of the Court. He writes long letters, which are obviously addressed to "our Lord the King," and "which, no doubt, have had to do with the disappearance of A., and the fate of B." He can be, people think, no other than a spy. A spy, we must admit, might proceed in much the same manner. Mr. Browning does, however, full justice to the excesses of popular imagination, once directed into a given channel, in the parallel touches which depict the portentous luxury in which the spy is supposed to live: the poor though decent garret in which the poet dies.
"TRANSCENDENTALISM" is addressed to a young poet, who is accused of presenting his ideas "naked," instead of draping them, in poetic fashion, in sights and sounds: in other words, of talking across his harp instead of singing to it. He acts on the supposition that, if the young want imagery, older men want rational thoughts. And his critic is declaring this a mistake. "Youth, indeed, would be wasted in studying the transcendental Jacob Boehme for the deeper meaning of things which life gives it to see and feel; but when youth is past, we need all the more to be made to see and feel. It is not a thinker like Boehme who will compensate us for the lost summer of our life; but a magician like John of Halberstadt, who can, at any moment, conjure roses up."[[66]]
There is a strong vein of humour in the argument, which gives the impression of being consciously overstated. It is neverthess a genuine piece of criticism.
"AT THE MERMAID" and the "EPILOGUE" deal with public opinion in its general estimate of poets and poetry; and they expose its fallacies in a combative spirit, which would exclude them from a more rigorous definition of the term "critical." In the first of these Mr. Browning speaks under the mask of Shakespeare, and gives vent to the natural irritation of any great dramatist who sees his various characters identified with himself. He repudiates the idea that the writings of a dramatic poet reveal him as a man, however voluminous they may be; and on this ground he even rejects the transcendent title to fame which his contemporaries have adjudged to him. They know him in his work. They cannot, he says, know him in his life. He has never given them the opportunity of doing so. He has allowed no one to slip inside his soul, and "label" and "catalogue" what he found there.
This is truer for Shakespeare than for Mr. Browning, who has often addressed his public with comparative directness, and would be grieved to have it thought that in the long course of his writings he has never spoken from his heart. He would also be the first to admit that, in the course of his writings, the poet must, indirectly, reveal the man. But he has too often had to defend himself against the impression that whatever he wrote as a poet must directly reflect him as a man. He has too often had to repeat, that poetry is an art which "makes" not one which merely records; and that the feelings it conveys are no more necessarily supplied by direct experience than are its facts by the Cyclopædia. And with the usual deduction for the dramatic mood, we may accept the retort as genuine.
I have departed in the case of this poem from the mere statement of contents, which is all that my plan admits of, or my readers usually can desire: because it expresses an indifference to general sympathy which belies the author's feeling in the matter. Mr. Browning speaks equally for himself and Shakespeare, when he derides another idea which he considers to be popular: that the fit condition of the poet is melancholy. "I," he declares, "have found life joyous, and I speak of it as such. Let those do otherwise who have wasted its opportunities, or been less richly endowed with them."
The "Epilogue" is a criticism on critics, and is spoken distinctly by Mr. Browning himself. He takes for his text a line from Mrs. Browning:[[67]]