[A DEFENCE OF BROWNING'S LATER WORK.]
If a defence of Browning's work were to include all he has written since the date when Edmund Gosse said his books were chiefly valuable as keeping alive popular interest in the poet, and as leading fresh generations of readers to what he had already published, it would needs begin as far back as 1868; and considering the amount of work done since that time would require at least a volume to do the subject justice.
Fortunately it has long been admitted that Homer sometimes nods, though not with such awful effect as was said to attend the nods of Jove--Hence, in spite of Mr. Gosse's undoubted eminence as a critic, we may dare to assume that in this particular instance he fell into the ancient and distinguished trick of nodding.
If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practically put on a par with a mere advertising scheme many poems which have now become household favorites. Take, for example, 'Hervé Riel.' Think of the blue-eyed Breton hero whom all the world has learned to love through Browning, tolerated as nothing more than an index finger to 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin!' Take, too, such poems, as 'Donald,' whose dastardly sportsmanship is so vividly portrayed that it has the power to arouse strong emotion in strong men, who have been known literally to break down in the middle of it through excess of feeling; 'Ivan Ivanovitch,' in which is embodied such fear and horror that weak hearts cannot stand the strain of hearing it read; the story of the dog Tray who rescued a drowning doll with the same promptitude as he did a drowning child--at the relation of whose noble deeds the eyes of little children grow eager with excitement and sympathy. And where is there in any poet's work, a more vivid bit of tragedy than 'A Forgiveness!'
And would not an unfillable gap be left in the ranks of our friends of the imaginative world if Balaustion were blotted out? The exquisite lyric girl, brave, tender and with a mind in which wisdom and wit are fair playfellows.
As Carlyle might say, "Verily, verily Mr. Gosse, thou hast out-Homered Homer, and thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the semblance of a snore."
These and many others which might be mentioned as having appeared since the date when Mr. Gosse autocratically put up the bars to the poet's genius are now so universally accepted that any defence of them would be absurd.
There are again others whose tenure of fame is still hanging in the balance like 'The Red Cotton Night-cap Country,' 'The Inn Album,' 'Aristophanes' Apology,' 'Fifine at the Fair'; but as they have had already some able defenders, I shall not attempt any defence of them further than to say, in passing, that the longer I know them, and the more I read them, the more I am impressed with their masterly portrayal of human motives as they either reflect a given social environment or work contrary to it. Only a genius of the greatest power could have grasped and moulded into palpitating life beings of the calibre of the brilliant complex and illogical Aristophanes, or the dunderheaded, well meaning and equally illogical Miranda and set them to act out their little parts in a living historical environment--one in decadent Athens with her petty political and literary rivalries and dying religion; the other in ultramontane France where superstition and materialism were fighting for the mastery. Such art as is illustrated in these poems on in 'Fifine at the Fair' or in 'The Inn Album,' may not be of the kind to give one direct ideals for the conduct of life; but it represents the most splendid realism from which as from life itself deep moral lessons may be drawn. There is an actuality of realism in these poems of Browning's that puts into the shade, that of the great apostle of realism, Zola, for his realism too often presents what I venture to call obverse idealism--evil apotheosized, not evil struggling toward good as it invariably appears in life.
Among the poet's later works, 'Ferishtah's Fancies' and 'The Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day' have perhaps been more obscured by mists of non-appreciation than any others. I shall, therefore, confine myself for the present to making here and there a rift in these mists in the hope that some glimpses of the splendor of the giant form behind them may be gained.