An Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning

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Introduction

• POETRY OF ROBERT BROWNING

BY

MuNRO Professor of English Language and Literature, Dalhousib College

AND University, Halifax, N.S., and formerly Fellow of

the Johns Hopkins University.

BOSTON, U.S. A.:

PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY

\y

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

WW. HABY H. BARCLAY

OCTOBER 14, 1926

Copyright, 1889, By GINN & COMPANY.

All Rights Reserved.

Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

Presswork by Ginn & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

Preface

The following Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning was originally delivered in the form of lectures to a class of advanced students. The writer is strongly averse to that study of literature which consists in reading about books rather than in reading the books themselves. Accordingly the present work consists largely of extracts, accompanied by careful analyses and a copious critical commentary. By the help of these, it is hoped that the reader will be enabled to feel the excellence, and will be led to make a wider study of the works of a poet who is, at first, confessedly difficult and somewhat repellent. For this wider study, the chapters on " Development " are intended to serve as a guide. The attention of those already familiar with Browning is specially directed to the Analysis of Sordelloy much fuller and more exact, it is believed, than any hitherto published. The text of the extracts has been harmonized, as far as possible, with the new and complete edition of Browning's works, now in course of publication in England. References by pages are invariably to this edition.

Besides being indebted to various articles cited in the body of this work, especially to the profound and suggestive criticisms of M. Milsand {Revue des Deux Mondes, 6*" SSrie^ tome xu ; Revue Contemporaire^ 107' Livraison), the author is conscious of being under obligation to Professor

IV PREFACE.

Dowden's Mr, Tennyson and Mr, Browning {Studies in Literature)^ and Mr. Hutton's Mr, Browning (Essays^ Theological and Literary), Much assistance has been afforded by the valuable collection of facts contained in Dn Furnivairs Bibliography of Robert Browning, which also furnishes the text of the Essay on Shelley, quoted in Chapter IV.

That it may not be supposed that obligations to various introductions to Browning now existing in book form, have been overlooked, it may be well to state that the present work was (with the exception of one or two statements of fact) already completed in manuscript, as it now stands, in September, 1886, before, as far as the author is aware, any of these books, except that of Mrs. Sutherland Orr, had appeared.

There is a debt, however, and that the greatest, which yet remains to be acknowledged. Although the author, in writing the following pages, had not the help of Professor Corson's Introduction to Browning, he had, some six years ago, the good fortune to hear My Last Duchess read and expounded (much as in the following pages) by Professor Corson himself. Those who have heard Professor Corson's extraordinarily sympathetic reading and interpretation of poetry, will easily understand that this occasion gave the impulse to the study of Browning, of which the present work is the outcome.

W. J. A.

Chapter I. General Characteristics

The difficulties which we encounter in attempting to appreciate a classic poet from whom we are separated by a long interval of time, are well known. These difficulties, however, are recognized, and for the reader who is earnestly bent on understanding and appreciating a great writer of the past, there are helps of all kinds. Criticism in the lapse of ages has sufficiently determined what we are to look for in such a poet, what we are to admire, what we are to recognize as faulty, what is worthy of repeated perusal, what may be glanced at or omitted. In the case of a poet of our own time, none of these points have been settled. If, indeed, he is one who follows the beaten track, we have no great difficulty in applying for ourselves the old canons of criticism ; but if he is a strikingly original worker, we are all at sea. Criticism does not precede, but follows art ; it is the artist that widens the sphere, and to the new facts which the artist forces upon him the critic slowly adjusts himself. When we approach a new and original artist, our rules do not apply, our prepossessions are shocked, we know not whether to admire or condemn. Of a classic author, we know both the merits and defects. We are aware that Shakespeare's diction is sometimes turgid, that he occasionally sins against good taste, that he is frequentlyobscure ; and we know where these defects are present. But in a new poet the apparent sin may be against our individual taste, not against the rules of art ; the obscurity may lie in our own dulness, not in the poet. We must give all points, therefore, painful and impartial consideration. Most great poets are uneven ; some of their works may be scarce worth reading : for the classics criticism has marked these off. But no matter how voluminous our new original poet is, we dare not pass lightly over any work. Who knows but careful study may find it a masterpiece.^ We are thus compelled to endure all his prolixity, his experiments, his failures ; and the weariness and distaste so begotten are apt to blind us to his beauties and his greatness. The task of keeping the mind open and impartial is for most a difficult one. If we could but fix our original poet at once, stamp him as bad or good ! But no, the greatest poets have great defects. Or if we could be but certain (and we can be fairly so in the classics) that here the poet is defective, and not our taste at fault, that there he is splendid, though we may be inappreciative !

There is no poet of our time more original, be that originality good or bad, than Browning, — no poet, therefore, in whose case the disadvantages alluded to are more apparent. There is no poetry on which opinions are so much divided, none so at variance with preconceived ideas, none, therefore, which it is so difficult fairly to appreciate. There is no poet of our time so uneven, none so voluminous, none so obscure. There is no poet, then, who so much needs an interpreter. It is the aim of the present volume in some measure to obviate these difficulties. The writer is, of course, no more qualified to give judgment on disputed points than the rest of the world. He has merely the advantage of having closely and fully studied his author, and of having made himself acquainted with criticisms on Browning widely scattered in magazines and collected essays. It would nevertheless have been unnatural, and indeed impossible, to avoid giving his own judgment on Browning's excellences and defects, and abundant evidence will be found in these pages that the writer has not attempted to do so. These opinions may go for what they are worth. The value of the present attempt is expected to be found in its giving a compendious view of Browning's peculiarities, showing the reader what he is to look for in Browning's poetry, and what he need not expect; in unfolding such a consecutive view of Browning's leading ideas and aims as may be necessary for the understanding of his work ; and finally in giving and elucidating such a series of extracts as may set the reader in the proper path for appreciating the poet, and studying him further. There can be no doubt that many a reader has been repelled from Browning through unfortunately attempting to make his acquaintance in such poems as Sordelloy Fifine, or in one of his enigmatic shorter pieces, without having the clue for understanding their significance.

In this opening chapter a survey of Browning's most pervading and striking peculiarities is given, and an attempt made to account for them. The student of Browning is thus prepared for what awaits him, and is secured in some measure against the irritation begotten by the presence of oddities and uglinesses which are apparently the result of caprice.

It has come to be a truism in our day that a man's work is determined, not only by the character of his genius, but also by the conditions of his age. A Darwin may be bom in any age ; but if he is to make great advances in science, he must be born in a time favorable to scientific pursuits. Homer would not write a great epic, were he alive now; nor Shakespeare, great dramas. For the production of works of the highest class in any department, there is need, not merely of an individual possessing the highest endowments for that species of work, but also of an age and external circumstances in the highest degree favorable to the exercise of those endowments. And this influence of the age limits the artist in points where, perhaps, we might little expect it. It prescribes, for example, the subject of art. The time imposed one task on Phidias and his contemporaries, — that of producing ideally beautiful types of the human form ; another and very different one on Raphael and his fellows, — that of representing the conceptions of an ascetic religion, the body worn by spiritual and physical conflict, where the beauty of the outward man was often sacrificed to the perfection of the soul within. It by no means follows that Phidias would have attained the highest excellence in the second period, or Raphael in the first. In poetry, also, it is true, if less obvious, that the subject is within cejtain limits prescribed. The early Greek dramatists were confined to the traditional stories of the gods and heroes of their race, — confined by the overwhelming attraction these stories had for their audience, and by the national and religious aspects of the Greek stage.

There is a further limitation of subject, not at all affecting these earliest dramatists, but of the greatest importance in considering a late poet like Browning, — the narrowing of the field of art through preoccupation, — the exhaustion by earlier workers of any subject, or method x of treatment. We may again illustrate from plastic art. Sculpture, whose main aim is the presentation in marble of ideally perfect types of the human form, was the first of the plastic arts to reach perfection. Its proper subject — that in which its greatest triumphs were won — is the whole figure. The face is of no overwhelming importance ; on the contrary, it has been observed that Greek statues which happen to lack the head, lose comparatively little. But when the face is left out of consideration, the ideally perfect types of manhood and womanhood which the general figure is fitted to express, are soon exhausted, and were practically exhausted in the classic age of Greek sculpture. Subsequent artists were driven to subjects unfitted for marble, or to exaggerated types like the Farnese Hercules, and art declined, as it always does when it clings to an exhausted field. Before another great art epoch could arise, it was necessary that a new theme should be found.

Now, the natural course of the human mind, as illustrated by all arts and sciences, is from the simple and general to the complex and detailed. So it is because sculpture is, of the plastic arts, the one best fitted to express simple and general types, that it was the first to reach perfection. Thereafter, art had to advance a step in complexity, and give individual characterization to representations of men and women, — to picture, not general types, but typical individuals. Such characterization is found mainly in the minute lines of the face, and such types are often morally, rather than physically, beautiful. On both accounts marble was not a fit medium ; and when, in the Middle Ages, a demand arose for this kind of representation, recourse was had to painting. So a second great art epoch came into existence, that of the Old Masters, whose

^ works both in complexity of composition, and in minutiae of characterization, far surpass the works of the age of Pericles. But here again, when the subject — the picturesque presentation of the central scenes of Christianity — was exhausted, decline followed.

Turning now to the drama, we find an analogous development. It began in the grand general types of character /presented in the works of iEschylus and Sophocles. « But \ the nobly impressive figures afforded by Greek traottion ' were easily exhausted ; and alrea*dy Euripides was forced to lend novelty by exaggeration, or to introduce characters unsuited to the treatment of the Greek stage. To these works of yEschylus and Sophocles the works of the second great period of dramatic development — the one to which Shakespeare belongs — bear a relation analogous to that of the nainting of the Renaissance to the sculpture of ^hidiasM We have no longer the simple grouping of two or three figures, and these figures are no longer merely sketched in broad outlines ; but we have, in the works of Shakespeare, a reproduction of the most complex situations of human life, and the characters are most minutely elaborated presentations of typical individuals. jQWe may' illustrate the relation of the ancient to the modem drama by the fact that the Greek actor's face was covered with a mask, which, while it presented the general conception of the character, could not exhibit the changes of expression which correspond to details of feeling ; and again, by the fact that the actor's voice, in those vast open-air assemblies, could only have rendered the broad phases of passion, and not the finer play expressed by the intonations of the modern actor's voice.

Having thus seen how conditions external to the artist further and retard his work and determine its nature, let

GENERAL CHARACTEKISTICS.

US examine what effect the conditions of our own age must have on poetic art.WThe poets of the present century have found a comparatively fresh subject in external nature, and are mainly lyrical. Browning, however, has ai decided bent towards the objective presentation of human! life, for which the favorite form has been the drama.^©utl Shakespeare's work in this department is so surp^sing and extensive that, as Goethe has observed, it has precluded any really successful work in those lines which he followed out. What he left unoccupied was seized by the writers of the last century ; and the drama has in England, at present, every appearance of being an exhausted field. Moreover, apart from this consideration, there are reasons enough in the general conditions of the age, and of society in England, why the drama should not be successfully cultivated. ^ThQ subject of the drama is human! life tn movement y — in other words, action, and characteJ in so far as it is revealed in exterior manifestations.|#Butl for dramatic action, the life of to-day is not so favorable as the Ufe of the past. The picturesque actions of life have been largely handed over to society incorporated in government. The injured man does not avenge himself, or if he does so, commands but partial sympathy, through the law-abiding instincts which have grown strong within , us. It is government which executes vengeance; and corporate action has not the power of rousing sympathy and interest which individual action possesses.

Again, character is not made apparent through exterior manifestations as it once was. We do not burst into tears as did Homer's heroes. The whole force of social discipline is employed to repress manifestations of feeling. In society, our utterances must be tempered to the demands of politeness ; gesture is a violation of decorum, even the play of feature and expression is checked. But frank speech, gesture, and expression are, to the drama, the verybreath of life ; while the self-control and subdued conventional bearing of English society of to-day are fatal to it. It is recorded that Queen Elizabeth occasionally struck her courtiers in the face, and Essex drew his sword and swore he would not endure her treatment of him. Just as in our costume the picturesqueness of the Middle Ages has departed, and the whole civilized world is rapidly being reduced to one monotonous fashion, in which national and class distinctions are lost, and but little play allowed to individual taste; so in character, the idiosyncrasies of nation, class, and individual are hidden under a common conventional mould. Thus he who attempts to write dramas nowadays, inevitably falls either into pale reflexes of earlier works, or into those exaggerations which characterize periods of artistic exhaustion. He fails in the aim which Shakespeare, through the mouth of Hamlet, has laid down for the drama, "whose end," he says, "both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure!'

And yet it is not for a moment to be admitted that modern life is less varied and intense than that of earlier periods ; but it is not in the outer, but in the inner life that this interest and intensity lie. Mental life is ever becoming more free, more varied, more complex. Here, then, the present age affords, in a detail and fulness which no previous age can rival, a subject for literary art. It is, further, a subject which earlier poets have not exhausted. The most general types of character were treated in the Greek drama. Shakespeare treated, with greater detail and complexity, action, and character as exhibited in action and ) external manifestations. It remained to make the mind / the main subject of presentation, — mental conditions, I psychological facts, too subtle to be apparent in the coarse | medium of action and ordinary speech. The minute study • and analysis necessary for the presentation of such a theme, is in harmony with the prevailing scientific tendency 1 of the time ; and there is besides a widespread and unpre- i cedented interest in the inner life. To this tendency and i interest, the character of the biographies and autobiogra- ; phies continually being published bears witness. And it is, , possibly, because the novel permits the fullest treatment of psychological life, that the novel is now the most popular ': form of literature. That novels themselves are becoming | more and more dominated by the same tendency, is easily apparent. We have but to compare the works of Scott and Jane Austen with those of George Eliot and W. D. Ho wells.

Naturally enough, then, Browning, the only great poet of our day who has won his chief triumphs in the objective presentation of life and character, is a man who "is possessed of the keenest eye for the inner life, whose I interest in outer action is subordinate to an interest in the I inner drama of the soul. He is the successor of our great I dramatists, and no English poet since- Shakespeare has seized and presented views of human life and character with such variety and vividness. But, as was to be anticipated from the character of his age. Browning is no dramatist. The drama is not a fit instrument to reveal the! subtler and minuter workings of the mind, with which I Browning chiefly deals. In his most successful work, he* has resorted to another form of presentation, the Monologue,/ of which it will be well, before describing it in

^llM lO GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.

general terms, to give a concrete example. The piece entitled My Last Duchess^ is selected as affording in the smallest compass a most - characteristic and successful illustration of Browning's peculiar manner. For the benefit of those unaccustomed to Browning's style, the extract is accompanied by an introduction and running commentary. Browning is so pregnant a writer, indicates so much by a hint, that prolonged and careful study is usually necessary in order to grasp""the f ull signifi cance of his work.

In My Last DuchesSy two characters are portrayed. One is a beautiful young girl, to whose just opening mind the whole world is full of fresh beauty, to whose unworn sensibilities existence is a joy ; whose heart, in its ignorance of the coldness and wickedness of this world, is full of love and clinging trustfulness. The other character, the Duke, is her direct antithesis. Old in years, and older in experience, he is the complex product of a highly artificial state of society. Of noble birth, with external perfection of breeding, possessed of a highly cultivated taste and intellect, he is inwardly the very incarnation of cold and selfish egoism. In him, moreover, a combination of selfishness with pride has begotten that grudging temper which hates happiness in others, and would fain keep its pleasures to itself. He marries this girl. Her freshness and frank happiness, her innocence and sweetness, charm all about her; but the Duke cannot endure that others should enjoy the fragrance and beauty of a rose which he has plucked to be all his own, and he grudges her the pleasure she finds in the simple delights of a world which palls upon his jaded palate. In his own mind, he represents her conduct as unbecoming her position, and determines to put an end to it. Coldly and relentlessly.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. II

the more cruelly that there is no outward violence, he proceeds to shape this tender creature to his^ own mould, but succeeds only in crushing hope, love, and life out of his young wife. She dies of a broken heart. Thereupon, to fill the vacant place, the Duke enters into negotiations for the daughter of a Count. To complete the arrangements about dowry, etc., a third person visits him on behalf of this Count. To this third person, the Duke shows a portrait of his deceased wife ; and here the poem opens. The Duke speaks with all the satisfaction of a connoisseur in the possession of a fine painting, but without trace of the emotions which such a picture might be expected to rouse in a husband : —

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall.

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now : Frk Pandolfs hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Wiirt please you sit and look at her? I said 5

" Frk Pandolf " by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance.

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The ciu-tain I have drawn for you, but I) 10

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there ; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus.

The words enclosed in brackets give a characteristic touch of the dog-in-manger spirit of the Duke ; he keeps the picture veiled, grudging the pleasure it would give to others.

The painter had been successful in catching the characteristic expression of the young Duchess, — the bright soul, with unconscious and unsuppressed revelation of its inner depths, looks out on the world in earnest interest. So full of self-revelation and feeling was the ?xpression, that a stranger might suspect some tender relation between sitter and painter ; the husband, therefore, names the artist Fra Pandolf, whose well-known character would preclude any such suspicion, and goes on further to account for the expression.

Sir, 'twas not Her husband's presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess' cheek : perhaps 15

Frk Pandolf chanced to say " Her mantle laps Over my lady's wrist too much," or " Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat : " such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20

For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart — how shall I say ? — too soon made glad, Too easily impressed ; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

The poet finely throws out a suggestion of her beauty for the imagination to work on, in the beautiful lines 17-19.

In the passage which follows, the artistic power and brevity of the poet are apparent in the way in which the Duke, while describing his wife, is made to reveal his own character : —

Sii*, 'twas all one ! My favour at her breast, 25

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace — all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good ! but thanked

Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old-name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 35

In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, " Just this

Or that in you disgusts me ; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark " — and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

— E'en then would be some stooping ; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her ; but who passed without

Much the same smile ? This grew ; I gave commands ; 45

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive.

Observe the impatient anger of " some officious fool *' (1. 27), and in lines 30 ff . one feels anger welling out, though repressed by the politeness and cold temperament of the Duke.

The impatient question, "Who'd blame this sort of trifling ? " is characteristic of Browning's style. He thus, without making the second person speak, enables us to perceive his influence on the course of the monologue.

Browning merely indicates action or Jgavft&it wholly to the reader's imagination. In the following passage we must supply action suited to the words. The two gentlemen rise and proceed towards the staircase, and the Duke returns to a topic which has evidently been broken off to look at the picture, — viz., his approaching marriage. This exhibition of his late wife's picture, while engaged in a discussion with regard to the dowry of the next, is another fine touch.

Wiirt please you rise ? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed ; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir.

The predominating importance of the dowry is evident in the very disclaimer. At line 53 they reach the top of the staircase. The stranger, who is of course the Duke's social inferior, will not go first, and the considerate manners which are often linked with a hollow heart, are indicated by the Duke's "Nay, we'll go together down, sir."

Passing a window, the Duke, in the following lines, points to a statue in the court ; and in a final touch the poet gives us a glimpse of the pride of the virtuoso, which peeps through the assumed modesty of " thought a rarity."

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me !

With this example in our minds, let us proceed to examine the general characteristics of Browning's favorite method. As is illustrated in the poem just read, the depictingof character and of psychological sittratron is Jus main object ; the story is only indicated in order to throw light upon the personages. The specific charm of a story or drama, plot development, is quite neglected, the interest of the writer being centred on the course of the inner, not of the outer life. The inner life, however, is not perceptible to the outsider, except in general results, and these are not minute enough to reveal the ultimate processes of the mind. No person is naturally, or can artistically be supposed to be, fully acquainted with a course of thought,! except the person in whose brain it is evolved. The novelist's plan of relating, in the third person, the inner life, without attempting to account for his knowledge of it, is unnatural and inartistic. The dramatists, who occasionally found it necessary that their audience should know more of the minute processes of a character's mind than action or natural speech would reveal, resorted to soliloquy, i.e.y to making the character think aloud, — a device whos^ ' unnaturalness custom has taught us to overlook. A mere stream of thinking, however, such as soliloquy is, is essentially formless, unmoulded by any organic principle. Browning, therefore, has in very many cases chosen a form against which this objection cannot be urged — the monologue. The monologue is addressed to a second person, is therefore accounted for, — motivirty as the Germans say. It further receives 'ofganic structure from being shaped to some definite objecMvhich the speaker has in view in addressing a second^pgraoh. By making this aim, as Browning usually does, a far-reaching and comprehensive one, — a defence, for example, of the speaker's course of life, or of some characteristic opinion, — the speaker is naturally and necessarily made to reveal his innermost soul. This is to a certain degree true of the .poem just read, which is an implicit defence by the Duke of his conduct towards his wife. But more striking examples will be found everywhere in Browning's works. Paracelsus, Bishop Blougraniy Andrea del SartOy Fifiney Aristophanes Apology y Prince Hohenstiel Schwangau, may be mentioned as examples. Perhaps there is no better illustration of how effective and subtle an instrument this is, in Browning's hands, for the revelation of character, than his longest work. The Ring and the Book,