Robert Browning: How to Know Him

by William Lyon Phelps

Irks care the cropfull bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Of course Browning's theory of poetry does not justify or explain all the unmusical passages in his works. He felt, as every poet must, the difficulty of articulation—the disparity between his ideas and the verbal form he was able to give them. Browning had his trials in composition, and he placed in the mouth of the Pope his own ardent hope that in the next world there will be some means of communication better than language:

Expect nor question nor reply
At what we figure as God's judgment bar!
None of this vile way by the barren words
Which, more than any deed, characterise
Man as made subject to a curse: no speech.

Over and over again, however, Browning declared that poetry should not be all sweetness. Flowers growing naturally here and there in a pasture are much more attractive than cut and gathered into a nosegay. As Luther's long disquisitions are adorned with pretty fables, that bloom like flowers on furze, so, in the Epilogue to Pacchiarotto, Browning insisted that the wide fields of his verse are not without cowslips:

And, friends, beyond dispute
I too have the cowslips dewy and dear.
Punctual as Springtide forth peep they:
But I ought to pluck and impound them, eh?
Not let them alone, but deftly shear
And shred and reduce to—what may suit
Children, beyond dispute?

Now, there are many law-abiding and transparently honest persons who prefer anthologies to "works," who love to read tiny volumes prettily bound, called "Beauties of Ruskin," and who have substituted for the out-of-fashion "Daily Food" books, painted bits of cardboard with sweet sayings culled from popular idols of the day, with which they embellish the walls of their offices and bedrooms, in the hope that they may hoist themselves into a more hallowed frame of mind. This is the class—always with us, though more prosperous than the poor—who prefer a cut bouquet to the natural flowers in wood and meadow, and for whose comfort and convenience Browning declined to work. His poetry is too stiff for these readers, partly because they start with a preconceived notion of the function of poetry. Instead of being charmed, their first sensation is a shock. They honestly believe that the attitude of the mind in apprehending poetry should be passive, not active: is not the poet a public entertainer? Did we not buy the book with the expectation of receiving immediate pleasure? The anticipated delight of many persons when they open a volume of poems is almost physical, as it is when they settle themselves to hear certain kinds of music. They feel presumably as a comfortable cat does when her fur is fittingly stroked. The torture that many listeners suffered when they heard Wagner for the first time was not imaginary, it was real; "Oh, if somebody would only play a tune!" Yet Wagner converted thousands of these quondam sufferers, and conquered them without making any compromises. He simply enlarged their conception of what opera-music might mean. He gave them new sources of happiness without robbing them of the old. For my part, although I prefer Wagner's to all other operas, I keenly enjoy Mozart's Don Giovanni, Charpentier's Louise, Gounod's Faust, Strauss's Salomé, Verdi's Aida, and I never miss an opportunity to hear Gilbert and Sullivan. Almost all famous operas have something good in them except the works of Meyerbeer.

We all have moods when the mind wishes to be lulled, soothed, charmed, hypnotised with agreeable melody, and in English literature we fortunately have many great poets who can perform this service.

That strain again! it had a dying fall.

Tennyson was a veritable magician, who charmed with his genius hundreds and thousands of people. No arduous mental effort is necessary for the enjoyment of his verse, which is one reason why he is and will remain a popular poet. Browning can not be taken in just that way, any more than a man completely exhausted with the day's work can enjoy Siegfried or Hedda Gabler. Active, constant cerebration on the part of the listener or the reader is essential. This excludes at once a considerable number to whom the effort of real thinking is as strange as it is oppressive. Browning is a stimulus, not a sedative; his poetry is like an electric current which naturally fails to affect those who are non-conductors of poetry. As one of my undergraduate students tersely expressed it, "Tennyson soothes our senses: Browning stimulates our thoughts." Poetry is in some ways like medicine. Tennyson quiets the nerves: Browning is a tonic: some have found Thomson's Seasons invaluable for insomnia: the poetry of Swift is an excellent emetic.

I do not quite understand the intense anger of many critics and readers over the eternal question of Browning's obscurity. They have been harping on this theme for eighty years and show no more sign of exhaustion than a dog barking in the night. Why do the heathen rage? Why do they not let Browning alone, and read somebody they can understand? Browning is still gravely rebuked by many critics for having written Sordello. Over and over again we have been informed that the publication of this poem shattered his reputation for twenty-five years. Well, what of it? what difference does it make now? He seems to have successfully survived it. This huge work, which William Sharp called "that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry," is destined to have an immortality all its own. From one point of view, we ought to be grateful for its publication. It has aroused inextinguishable laughter among the blessed gods. It is not witty in itself, but it is the cause of wit in many. Douglas Jerrold and Carlyle commented delightfully on it; even Tennyson succeeded for once in saying something funny. One critic called it a fine house in which the architect had forgotten to put any stairs. Another called it a huge boil in which all the impurities in Browning's system came to an impressive head, after which the patient, pure from poison, succeeded in writing the clear and beautiful Pippa Passes. Besides innumerable parodies that have been forgotten, Browning's obscurity was the impenetrable flint that struck two mental flashes that belong to literature, Calverley's Cock and the Bull, and Swinburne's John Jones, a brilliant exposition of the perversities in that tedious poem, James Lee's Wife. Not long ago, a young man sat by the lamplight, studying a thick volume with evident discomfort. To the friend who asked what he was doing, he replied, "I'm studying Browning."