Poems of Robert Browning from the author's revised text of 1889

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Contents

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Editor's Preface .

Index to First Lines

EDITORS' PREFACE.

BROWNING'S own selections from his works supply the general reader, or the student who intends further complete study, with the most coherent representative short survey or initial presentation of his whole complex and voluminous genius.

The poet has made his selections cover the entire range of his work from 1833 to 1879; th^ present editors, not presuming to go back over any part of the field from which he has garnered, have added from his later publications a choice handful of short poems, mainly lyrical, beginning with the second series of 'Dramatic Idyls,' 1880, and closing with the final volume, 'Asolando,' 1889, which was published in London on the day of Browning's death in Venice.

Care has been taken to give with accuracy Browning's own latest revised text of 1888, 1889; also, to make the Introduction and Notes rich in small space. In making the aesthetic part of the Notes, the aim has been neither to paraphrase, nor to give comment about the poems, but to epitomize the gist of each one, or, at most, where the poem demanded such treatment, to summarize its leading traits and show its outcome. Such a procedure seemed especially appropriate to this volume which Browning intended should offer the public a representative view of his poetic domain, and the editors hope this part of their work will especially commend itself. They believe the Notes will also be found to shed light on many allusions not before explained.

Finally, they desire to acknowledge with cordial gratitude their indebtedness to the work of their predecessors, especially to Mrs. Orr, Professor Hiram Corson, Mr. George Willis Cooke, Dr. Edward Berdoe, Dr. W. J. Rolfe, and Miss Hersey for help in allusions ; and to Mrs. Orr, Mr. William Sharpe, Mr. Edmund Gosse, and Mr. W. G. Kingsland, from whom the materials for the biographical sketch were drawn ; also to the Boston Browning Society, whose collection of first editions was consulted in compiling the bibliography.

Boston, May 20, 1896.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

" A peep through my window, if folk prefer ;

But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine." — ' HOUSE.'

WHEN some depredator of the familiar declared that "Only in Italy is there any romance left," Browning replied, "Ah! well, I should like to include poor old Camberwell," and " poor old Camberwell," where Robert Browning was born, May 7, 1812, offered no meagre nurture for the fancy of a child gifted with the ardor that greatens and glorifies the real.

Nature still garlanded this suburban part of London with bowery spaces breathing peace. The view of the region from Heme Hill over softly wreathing distances of domestic wood " was, before railroads came, entirely lovely," Ruskin says. He writes of " the tops of twenty square miles of politely inhabited groves," of bloom of lilac and laburnum and of almond-blossoms, intermingling suggestions of the wealth of fruit-trees in enclosed gardens, and companioning all this with the furze, birch, oak, and bramble of the Norwood hills, and the open fields of Dulwich " animate with cow and buttercup."

Nature was ready to beckon the young poet to dreams and solitude, and, too close to need to vie with her, the great city was at hand to make her power intimately felt. From a height crowned by three large elms, Browning, as a lad, used to enjoy the picturesqueness of his "poor old Camberwell." Its heart of romance was centred for him in the sight of the vast city lying to the westward. His memory singled out one such visit as peculiarly significant, the first one on which he beheld teeming London by night, and heard the vague confusion of her collective voice beneath the silence of the stars.

Within the home into which he was born, equally well-poised conditions befriended him, fostering the development of his emotional and intellectual nature. His mother was once described by Carlyle as "the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman." Browning himself used to say of

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BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

her "with tremulous emotion," according to his friend, Mrs. Orr, "she was a divine woman." Her gentle, deeply religious nature evidently derived its evangelical tendency from her mother, also Scotch ; while from her father, William Wiedemann, ship-owner, a Hamburg German, settled in Dundee, who was an accomplished draughtsman and musician, she seems to have derived the liking and facility for music which was one of the characteristic bents of the poet. To this Scotch-German descent on his mother's side the metaphysical quality of his mind is accountable, concerning which Harriet Martineau is recorded as having said to him, " You have no need to study German thought, your mind is German enough already." The peculiarly tender affection his mother called out in him seems to have been at once proof and enhancement of the mystical, emotional, and impressible side of his disposition; and these traits were founded on an organic inheritance from her of " what he called a nervousness of nature," which his father could not have bequeathed to him.

Exuberant vitality, insatiable intellectual curiosity and capacity, the characteristics of Robert Browning the elder, were the heritage of his son, but raised in him to a more effective power, through their transmutation, perhaps, as Mrs. Orr suggests, in the more sensitive physique and temperament inherited from his mother. Of his father, Browning wrote that his " Powers, natural and acquired, would easily have made him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or the love of money or social influence meant." He had refused to stay on his mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's in the West Indies, losing the fortune to be achieved there, because of his detestation of slavery, and the ofhce he filled in the Bank of England was never close enough to his liking to induce him to rise in it so far as his father had risen ; but it enabled him to indulge his tastes for many books and a few pictures and to secure for his son, as that son said shortly before his death, " all the ease and comfort that a literary man needs to do good work."

One of the poet's own early recollections gives a picture that epitomizes the joint influence of his happy parentage. It depicts the child " sitting on his father's knees in the library, listening with enthralled attention to the tale of Troy, with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in the fireplace ; with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment — from the neighboring room where Mrs. Browning sat ' in her chief happiness, her hour of darkness and solitude and music ' — of a wild Gaelic lament."

His father's brain was itself a library, stored with literary antiquitieSj which, his son used to say, made him seem to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic personages personally, and his heart was

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xiii

so young and buoyant that his lore, instead of isolating him from his boy and girl, made him their most entertaining companion.

It is not surprising that under such circumstances the ordinary schooling was too puerile for young Robertas wide-awake wits. He was so energetic in mind and body that he was sent to a day-school near by for peace' sake at an early age, and sent back again, for peace' sake, too,

because his proficiency made the mammas complain that Mrs. was

neglecting her other pupils for the sake of bringing on Master Browning. Home teaching followed. Also home amusement, which included the keeping of a variety of pets, — owls, monkeys, magpies, hedgehogs, an eagle, a toad, and two snakes. If any further proof is needed of the hospitable warmth of his youthful heart, an entry in his diary at the age of seven or eight may serve — " married two wives this morning." This referred, of course, to an imaginary appropriation of two girls he had just seen in church.

Later he entered the school of the Misses Ready and passed thence to their brother's school, staying there till he was fourteen, but his contempt for the petty and formal learning which is the best accorded many children, was marked, and perfectly natural to a boy who delighted to plunge in the deeper knowledge his father's book-crammed house opened generously to him.

In the hst, given by Mrs. Orr, of books early attractive to him, were a seventeenth edition of Quarles's ' Emblems ' ; first editions of ' Robinson Crusoe,' and Milton ; the original pamphlet, ^ Killing no Murder ' (1559) which Carlyle borrowed for his '■ Cromwell ' ; an early edition of the * Bees ' by the Bernard Mandeville, with whom he was destined later to hold a '■ Parleying ' of his own ; rare old Bibles ; Voltaire ; a wide range of English poetry; the Greek and Elizabethan dramatists.

His father's profound love of poetry was essentially classic, and his marked aptitude in rhyming followed the models of Pope, but Browning's early poet was Byron, and all his sympathies were warmly romantic. His verse-making, which began before he could write, resulted at twelve in a volume of short poems, presumably Byronic, which he gracefully entitled ' Incondita.'

He wanted, in vain, to find a publisher for this, and soon afterwards destroyed it, but not before his mother had shown it to Miss Flower, and she, to her sister, Sarah Flower, and to Mr. Fox, and the budding poet had thus gained the attention of three genuine friends.

Shortly after this, the Byronic star which had shed its somewhat lurid influence over the first ebullitions of his genius, was forever banished by the appearance of a new star within his field of vision. Incredible as it may seem to the present generation, he had never heard xiv BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION-.

of Shelley, and if it had not been for a happy chance, an important influence in the early shaping of his poetic faculties might have been postponed until too late to furnish its quickening impulse- One day in passing a book-stall, he happened to see advertised in a box of second-hand wares a little book, 'Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poems : ' very scarce. Though the little second-hand volume was only a miserable pirated edition, by its means such entrancing glimpses of an unsuspected world were revealed to the boy that he longed to possess more of Shelley. His mother, accordingly, sallied forth m search of Shelley's poems, which, after many tribulations, she at length found at C. and J. Ollier's of Vere Street. She brought away not only nearly all of Shelley in first editions (the ' Cenci ' excepted), but three volumes of Keats, whom she was assured would interest anybody who liked Shelley. Browning, himself, used to recall how, at the end of this eventful day, two nightingales, one in the laburnum at the end of his father's garden, and one in a copper beech in the next garden, sang in emulation of the poets whose music had laid its subtile spell upon him. While Keats was duly appreciated, it was Shelley who appealed most to Browning, and although it was some years before any poetic manifestation of Shelley's influence was to work itself out, he, with youthful ardor, at once adopted the crude attitude taken by Shelley in his immature work 'Queen Mab,' became a professing atheist, and even went so far as to practise vegetarianism, of which, however, he was soon cured because of its unpleasant effect on his eyesight. Of his atheism Mrs. Orr says, " His mind was not so constituted that such doubt fastened itself upon it ; nor did he ever in after life speak of this period of negation except as an access of boyish folly, with which his mature self could have no concern. The return to religious belief did not shake his faith in his new prophet. It only made him willing to admit that he had misread him. This period of Browning's life remained, nevertheless, one of rebellion and unrest, to which many circumstances may have contributed besides the influence of one mind."

With the exception of the poetic awakening just recorded. Browning's youthful life is uneventful.

By his father's decision his education was continued at home with instruction in dancing, riding, boxing, fencing ; in French with a tutor for two years ; and in music with John Relfe for theory, and a Mr. Abel, pupil of Mc,~'"^eles, for execution, doubtless supplemented with continuous browsing among the rare books in his father's library. At eighteen he attended a Greek class at the London University for a term or two and with this his formal education ceased. It was while at the university that his final choice of poetry as his future profession was made.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION-. XV

That he had a bent in other artistic directions as well as that of poetryis witnessed by his own confession written on the fly-leaf of a first edition of ' Pauline ' now treasured in the South Kensington Museum. " '■ Pauline ' written in pursuance of a foolish plan I forget, or have no wish to remember; involving the assumption of several distinct characters : the world was never to guess that such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech proceeded from the same notable person."

Some idea had been entertained of the possibility of Robert's qualifying himself for the bar, but Mr. Browning was entirely too much in sympathy with his son's interests to put any obstacles in the way of his choice, and did everything in his power to help him in establishing himself in his poetical career. When the decision was made. Browning's first step was to read and digest the whole of Johnson's Dictionary.

During these years of preparation his consciousness of his own latent powers, together with youthful immaturity, made him, from all accounts, a somewhat obstreperous personage. Mrs. Orr says that his mother was much distressed at his impatience and aggressiveness. ^' He set the judgments of those about him at defiance, and gratuitously proclaimed himself everything that he was and some things that he was not." It is probable, as his sister suggests, that the life of Camberwell, in spite of the dear home to which he was much attached, and a small coterie of congenial friends, including his cousins, the Silverthornes, and Alfred Domett, did not afford sufficient scope for the expansion of his eager intelligence.

In 1833 appeared the first flowering of his genius in '■ Pauline,' for the publication of which his aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne, furnished the money. It was printed with no name affixed, by Saunders and Otley.

The influence of Shelley breathes through this poem ; not only is it immanent in the music of the verse, but in its general atmosphere, while one of its finest climaxes is the apostrophe to Shelley beginning, " Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever ! " These influences, however, are commingled with elements of striking originality indicating, in spite of some crudities of construction, that here was a new force in the poetic world. Not many recognized it at the time. Among those who did was his former friend, Mr. Fox, then editor of the Monthly Repository, who gave ' Pauline ' a sympathetic review in his magazine. Later, another article praising it was printed in the same magazine. This and one or two other inadequate notices ended its early literary history, and thus was unassumingly planted the first seed of one of the most splendid poetical growths the world has seen. How completely ' Pauline ' was forgotten is shown by the anecdote told of Rossetti's coming across it in the British Museum twenty years later, and guessxvi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION,

ing from internal evidence that it was by the author of 'Paracelsus.' Delighted with it, he transcribed it. If he had not, it might have remained buried there to this day, for Browning was very loath to acknowledge this early child of his genius.

A journey to Russia at the invitation of the Russian consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, with whom he went as nominal secretary, and the contribution to the Monthly Repository of five short poems fills up the time until the appearance of 'Paracelsus.' Most remarkable among these short poems were ' Porphyria's Lover ' and ' Johannes Agricola in Meditation,' of which Mr. Gosse says, " It is a curious matter for reiiectioii that two poems so unique in their construction and conception, so modern, so interesting, so new could be printed without attracting attention so far as it would appear from any living creature."

Paracelsus was suggested as a subject to Browning by Count de Ripert Monclar, a young French Royalist, who, while spending his summers in England, formed a friendship with the poet. The absence of love in the story seemed to him afterwards a drawback, but Browning, having read up the literature of Paracelsus at the British Museum, decided to follow his friend's suggestion and according to promise dedicated the poem to Count Monclar.

In the days when he was writing ' Paracelsus ' Browning was fond of drawing inspiration from midnight rambles in the Dulwich woods, and he used often to compose in the open air. Here we may perhaps find an explanation of the fact that in these earlier poems there is a constant interfusion of nature imagery which, later, when the poet " fared up and down amid men," gave place to the human emotions upon which his thoughts became concentred, or appeared only at rare intervals.

Mr. Fox, always ready to praise the young poet whom he had been the first to recognize, was upon the publication of 'Paracelsus' seconded by John Forster, who wrote an appreciative article about it in the Exa7}iiner.

If 'Paracelsus' did not win popularity, it gained the poet many friends among the literary men of the day. From this period dates the acquaintanceship of notabilities like Serjeant Talfourd, Home, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Harriet Martineau, Miss Mitford, Monckton Milnes, Dickens, Wordsworth, Landor, and others. The most important in its consequences of his new friendships was that begun with the celebrated actor William Macready, to whom he was introduced by Mr. Fox. Macready, delighted with Browning, shortly after asked him to a New Year's party at his house at Elstree.

Every one who met the poet seemed attracted by his personality. Macready said he looked more like a youthful poet than any man he

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION'. xvii

had ever seen, Mr. Sharpe's description of him from hearsay is more definite. As a young man he appears to have had a certain ivory dehcacy of coloring. He appeared taller than he was, partly because of his rare grace of movement and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation. Even then he had the expressive wave of the hand which in later years was as full of various meanings as the Ecco of an Italian.

A swift alertness pervaded him noticeably as much in the rapid change of expression, in the deepening and illuming colors of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his sensitive mouth as in his greyhound-hke apprehension, which so often grasped the subject in its entirety before its propounder himself realized its significance. His hair — then of a brown so dark as to appear black — was so beautiful in its heavy, sculpturesque waves as frequently to attract attention. His voice then had a rare flute-like tone, clear, sweet, and resonant.

The influence of Macready turned the poef s thoughts toward writing for the stage. A drama, 'Narses,' was discussed, but for some reason abandoned, and the subject of Strafford was decided upon in its place.

The occasion upon which the decision was made gives an attractive glimpse of the young Browning receiving his first social honor. It was at a dinner at Talfourd's after the performance of ' Ion,' in which Macready acted. Mr. Sharpe says : —

" To his surprise and gratification. Browning found himself placed next but one to his host and immediately opposite Macready, who sat between two gentlemen, one calm as a summer evening, the other with a tempestuous youth dominating his sixty years, whom the young poet at once recognized as Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. When Talfourd rose to propose the toast of ' The Poets of England,' every one probably expected that Wordsworth would be named to respond ; but with a kindly grace, the host, after flattering remarks upon the two great men then honoring him by sitting at his table, coupled his toast with the name of the youngest of the poets of England, Mr. Robert Browning, the author of ' Paracelsus.' According to Miss Mitford, he responded with grace and modesty, looking even younger than he was."

The conversation turning upon the drama, Macready said, " Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America." The reply came, " Shall it be historical and English ? What do you say to a drama on Strafford?"

'■ Sordello ' had already been begun, but '- Strafford ' and a journey to Italy were to intervene before it was finished. 'Strafford' was performed at Covent Garden, May i, 1837, with Macready as Strafford and Helen Faucit as Lady Carlisle, was well received, and would probably xviii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

have had a long run had it not been for difficulties which arose in the theatre management.

If Shelley was the paramount influence of his youthful years, from the time of his Italian journey in 1838, Italy became an influence which was henceforth to exert its magic over his work. He liked to call Italy his university. In ' Sordello ' he had already chosen an Italian subject, and his journey was undertaken partly with the idea of gaining personal experience of the scenes wherein the tragedy of Bordello's soul was enacted.

It was published in 1840, and except for a notice in the Eclectic Review^ and the appreciation of a few friends, was ignored. A world not over sensitive to the beauties of his previous work, could hardly be expected to welcome enthusiastically a poem so complex in its historical setting and so full of philosophy. Even the keenest intellects approach this poem with the feeling that they are about to attack a problem ; for in spite of undoubted power and many beauties, it must be confessed that the luxuriance of the poet's mental force often unduly overbalances his sense of artistic proportion. Evidently the world was frightened. The little breeze, with which Browning's career began, instead of developing as it normally should into a strong wind of universal recognition, died out, and for twenty years nothing he could do seemed to win for him his just deserts, though his very next poem, ' Pippa Passes,' showed him already a consummate master of his forces both on the artistic side and in the special realm which he chose, the development of the soul.

' Pippa Passes,' ' King Victor and King Charles,' and ^ The Return of the Druses ' lay in his desk for some time without a publisher. He finally arranged with Edward Moxon to bring them out in pamphlet form, using cheap type, each issue to consist of a sixteen-page form, printed in double columns. This was the beginning of the now celebrated series, 'Bells and Pomegranates.' They were issued from 1841 to 1846, and included all the dramas and a number of short poems.

The only one of these poems with a story other than literary, is ' The Blot in the 'Scutcheon,' written for Macready, and performed at Drury Lane, on February 11, 1843. A favorite weapon in the hands of the Philistines has been the often reiterated statement that the performance was a failure. A letter from Browning to Mr. Hill, editor of the Daily News, at the time of the revival of '■ The Blot ' by Lawrence Barrett in 1884, drawn out by the same old falsehood, gives the truth in regard to the matter, and should silence once for all the ubiquitous Philistines.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xix

" Macready received and accepted the play, while he was engaged at the Haymarket, and retained it for Dmry Lane, of which I was ignorant that he was about to become the manager : he accepted it at the instigation of nobody. . . . When the Dnuy Lane season began, Macready informed me that he would act the play when he had brought out two others, — 'The Patrician's Daughter' and 'Plighted Troth.' Having done so, he wrote to me that the former had been unsuccessful in moneydrawing, and the latter had 'smashed his arrangements altogether' : but he would still produce my play. In my ignorance of certain symptoms better understood by Macready's professional acquaintances — I had no notion that it was a proper thing, in such a case, to release him from his promise ; on the contrary, I should have fancied that such a proposal was offensive. Soon after, Macready begged that I would call on him : he said the play had been read to the actors the day before, 'and laughed at from beginning to end ' ; on my speaking my mind about this, he explained that the reading had been done by the prompter, a grotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, ill at ease in the love scenes, and that he would himself make amends by reading the play next morning, — which he did, and very adequately, — but apprised me that in consequence of the state of his mind, harassed by business and various troubles, the principal character must be taken by Mr. Phelps ; and again I failed to understand, . . . that to allow at Macready's theatre any other than Macready to play the principal part in a new piece was suicidal, and really believed I was meeting his exigencies by accepting the substitute.

At the rehearsal. Macready announced that Mr. Phelps was ill, and that he himself would read the part : on the third rehearsal, Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time . . . while Macready more than read, rehearsed the part. The next morning Mr. Phelps waylaid me to say . . . that Macready would play Tresham on the ground that himself, Phelps, was unable to do so. . . . He added that he could not expect me to waive such an advantage, — but that if I were prepared to waive it, ' he would take ether, sit up all night, and have the words in his memory by next day.' I bade him follow me to the greenroom, and hear what I decided upon — which was that as Macready had given him the part, he should keep it : this was on a Thursday ; he rehearsed on Friday and Saturday, — the play being acted the same evening, — of the fifth day after the ' readhig'' by Macready. Macready at once wished to reduce the importance of the play . . . tried to leave out so much of the text, that I baffled him by getting it printed in four and twenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. He wanted me to call it ' The Sister ! ' — and I have before me . . . the stage-acting copy, with two lines of his own insertion to avoid the tragical ending — Tresham was to announce his intention of going into a monastery! all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, and Macready alone, could produce a veritable 'tragedy' unproduced before. Not a shilling was spent on scenery or dresses. If your critic considers this treatment of the play an instance of ' the failure of powerful and experienced actors ' to insure its success, — I can only say that my own opinion was shown by at once

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breaking off a friendship . . . which had a right to be plainly and simply told that the play I had contributed as a proo+ of it would, through a change of circumstances, no longer be to my friend's advantage. . . . Only recently, . . . when the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments at that time was made known, could I in a measure understand his motives — less than ever understand why he so strangely disguised them. If ' applause,' means success, the play thus maimed and maltreated was successful enough ; it ' made way ' for Macready's own Benefit and the theatre closed a fortnight after."

Browning's second visit to Italy took place in the autumn of 1844, from which he returned to meet with the supreme spiritual influence of his life. ' Lady Geraldine's Courtship ' had just been published, and Browning expressing his enthusiasm for it to Mr. Kenyon, a dear friend of his and a cousin of Miss Barrett's, the latter immediately suggested that Browning should write and tell her of his delight in it. The correspondence soon developed into a meeting which was at first refused by Miss Barrett in a few self-depreciative words, " There is nothing to see in me, nothing to hear in me, I am a weed fit for the ground and darkness."

Mr. Browning's fate was sealed at the first meeting, we are told, but Miss Barrett, conscious of the obstacle offered by her ill-health, was not easily won, and only consented, at last, with the proviso that their marriage should depend upon improvement in her health.

Though the new joy in her life seemed to give her fresh strength, her doctor told her, in the summer of 1846, that her only hope of recovery depended upon her spending the coming winter in Italy. Her father having absolutely refused to hear of such a course, she was persuaded to consent to a private marriage with Mr. Browning, which took place on September 12, 1846, at St. Pancras Church. A week later they started for Italy. Mrs. Orr writes : —