—
* In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of this book,
Browning stated that "the title is taken from the work
of Melander (`Schwartzmann'), reviewed, by a curious coincidence,
in the `Blackwood' of this month. I referred to it
in a note to `Paracelsus'. The two Hebrew quotations
(put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun and invention)
being translated amount to (1) `A Collection of Many Lies':
and (2), an old saying, `From Moses to Moses arose none like Moses' . . . ."
—
In 1881 the "Browning Society" was established. It is easy to ridicule any institution of the kind — much easier than to be considerate of other people's earnest convictions and aims, or to be helpful to their object. There is always a ridiculous side to excessive enthusiasm, particularly obvious to persons incapable of enthusiasm of any kind. With some mistakes, and not a few more or less grotesque absurdities, the members of the various English and American Browning Societies are yet to be congratulated on the good work they have, collectively, accomplished. Their publications are most interesting and suggestive: ultimately they will be invaluable. The members have also done a good work in causing some of Browning's plays to be produced again on the stage, and in Miss Alma Murray and others have found sympathetic and able exponents of some of the poet's most attractive `dramatis personae'. There can be no question as to the powerful impetus given by the Society to Browning's steadily-increasing popularity. Nothing shows his judicious good sense more than the letter he wrote, privately, to Mr. Edmund Yates, at the time of the Society's foundation.
== "The Browning Society, I need not say, as well as Browning himself, are fair game for criticism. I had no more to do with the founding it than the babe unborn; and, as Wilkes was no Wilkeite, I am quite other than a Browningite. But I cannot wish harm to a society of, with a few exceptions, names unknown to me, who are busied about my books so disinterestedly. The exaggerations probably come of the fifty-years'-long charge of unintelligibility against my books; such reactions are possible, though I never looked for the beginning of one so soon. That there is a grotesque side to the thing is certain; but I have been surprised and touched by what cannot but have been well intentioned, I think. Anyhow, as I never felt inconvenienced by hard words, you will not expect me to wax bumptious because of undue compliment: so enough of `Browning', — except that he is yours very truly, `while this machine is to him.'" ==
The latter years of the poet were full of varied interest for himself, but present little of particular significance for specification in a monograph so concise as this must perforce be. Every year he went abroad, to France or to Italy, and once or twice on a yachting trip in the Mediterranean.* At home — for many years, at 19 Warwick Crescent, in what some one has called the dreary Mesopotamia of Paddington, and for the last three or four years of his life at 29 De Vere Gardens, Kensington Gore — his avocations were so manifold that it is difficult to understand where he had leisure for his vocation. Everybody wished him to come to dine; and he did his utmost to gratify Everybody. He saw everything; read all the notable books; kept himself acquainted with the leading contents of the journals and magazines; conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German, and Italian books of mark; read and translated Euripides and Aeschylus; knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of afternoon-tea parties; and then, over and above it, he was Browning: the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry since Shakespeare. His personal grace and charm of manner never failed. Whether he was dedicating "Balaustion's Adventure" in terms of gracious courtesy, or handing a flower from some jar of roses, or lilies, or his favourite daffodils, with a bright smile or merry glance, to the lady of his regard, or when sending a copy of a new book of poetry with an accompanying letter expressed with rare felicity, or when generously prophesying for a young poet the only true success if he will but listen and act upon "the inner voice", — he was in all these, and in all things, the ideal gentleman. There is so charming and characteristic a touch in the following note to a girl-friend, that I must find room for it: —
—
* It was on his first experience of this kind, more than
a quarter of a century earlier, that he wrote the nobly patriotic lines
of "Home Thoughts from the Sea", and that flawless strain of bird-music,
"Home Thoughts from Abroad": then, also, that he composed
"How they brought the Good News". Concerning the last, he wrote, in 1881
(see `The Academy', April 2nd), "There is no sort of historical foundation
about [this poem]. I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel
off the African coast, after I had been at it long enough to appreciate
even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse, `York',
then in my stable at home. It was written in pencil
on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's `Simboli', I remember."
—
==
29 De Vere Gardens, W.,
6th July 1889.
My beloved Alma, — I had the honour yesterday of dining with the Shah, whereupon the following dialogue: —
"Vous e^tes poe"te?"
"On s'est permis de me le dire quelquefois."
"Et vous avez fait des livres?"