'Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will * And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.' A frustrate ghost, a frustrate life; but when is a life frustrated? How do we know how apparent failure and flawed work tell on the souls hereafter? The faith, that all real work tells somehow on the assured being, the eternal inheritance, the immortality, is one of the most incessant lessons reiterated by the poet. We have it in that fine poem Abt Vogler, when he exclaims,— ... All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist . . . For the fulness of the days?' We have the same lesson in that ineffable little poem, Evelyn Hope. (p. 447). It is the same lesson (that) shines out as a hope to the unfortunate lover in the Last Ride together. .. we might continue illustrations of verses rich with best hopes for what seems poor, broken, frustrated human nature; and thus everywhere Robert Browning's poetry carries the reader forward by high, indefinite hopes; it becomes truest ministrations; and thus of Sordello, this is throughout its master idea, its controlling purpose. (p. 448). Sordello.. poet. . patriot, soldier, lover, frustrated in all; a dim, indefinite character enough, historically, but quite sufficient for the poet's purpose, whose object was chiefly, or only, to tell the story of a soul, and how it gained, out of all in which it seemed only to fail... And hence it is that all the steps and processes are described by which the soul of Sordello comes into play... To live is indeed to strive, altho' the chief idea of life is not merely realized in that which is ordinarily called doing, the realist's perpetual cry,—although his sense of the thing done is limited by that which stands present, complete, and accomplished to the eye; to him, therefore, all failure or incompleteness is mere baffled, foiled existence. Not so, says the poet',- Ends accomplished turn to means;' (p. 448) and there is a world of work out of sight which has told upon, and borne along, the individual soul... And therefore the poet conducts the argument forward, and teaches that squls have to wait for death to live.. We must Wait For some transcendent life reserv'd by Fate To follow this '-Ill and well, then, sorrow and joy, beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice, the larger and the less,—all qualities, are modes of time; soul is thrust into matter; joy comes when so much soul is wrecked in time on matter: but suppose sorrow ? well, then, instead of joy, use grief; all is to disenfranchise the brilliancies (p. 449) of the soul. We feel we are what we feel; we know what we feel so much is truth to us. But by the same teaching we learn that the small is a sphere as perfect as the great, to the soul's absoluteness. . . It is manifest that a poem of upwards of 200 pages, every word of which is a nerve palpitating and thrilling with such lofty living hopes as those we have indicated, is not to be dealt with in a page or two of ephemeral criticism; but upon many accounts we may wonder that so tardy and begrudging a praise has been rendered to its remarkable merits; and we wonder at this the more, because, like so many great poems, it is crowded with small exquisitely cut cameos, delicate miniatures, sweet little etchings and landscapes, more or less. . finished. . we will venture to select a few pictures of the middle ages, 600 years since. (p. 453.) Poets before now have had their work, as a whole, likened to the immense space, the various art, the cryptic gloom, the quaint mellowed radiance, the manifold enclosures of chapelries and shrines, the faint flicking tapers, and the ever burning lamps of Gothic cathedrals; but we know not to which of the poets this description might very aptly apply, beside Robert Browning. He is the poet of the Gothic,-agony and harmony in unity, agony working itself at last to a place in the great harmony of the whole. Symmetry is by no means a word which fitly describes a great Gothic church, and it will by no means describe Mr. Br.'s works: . . of all architecture, the Gothic is the most human representative in stone of the terror and suffering, the awe and the infiniteness of the pained, weary, watching, aspiring heart of man. This is just the effect of these writings [of Robert Browning's]; ornament may be here, but more than ornament was in the intention of the writer. The reader, indeed, finds every thing. A strange, weird freak of verse, like Holy Cross Day, or The Glove, or The Pied Piper, may jut out, as we have said, like a gargoyle, through which the writer empties what is not less the serious fancy of the hour; but there are statues, as of warriors, saints, and martyrs; the pure, chaste forms of holy men and high-hearted women, who thro' suffering have attained and won their [p. 454] right to, the niche from which they seem to bend to give animation to the crowd of sufferers and strugglers on the vast pavements below. We seem to mingle our figures of the Gothic architect and the Gothic poet. Of all writers since Dante, with whom we are acquainted, we think we should speak of Robert Browning as the poet of suffering, suffering on a great scale, thought impelled and passion wrought. (p. 463.) Most critics and readers.. have, we believe, taken exception to what has seemed to them the rugged workmanship of these poems: it is admitted that Browning is a poet, a great poet, but he is no artist. . what substantially is meant. [is] that Br.'s poems are not easy reading. Prettiness is patent to a very ready and easy admiration; power must have fewer admirers than prettiness; and to the measure of power, is at once the difficulty of rendering in metre, and apprehending in the sense of the reader. To us there seems an exact and most harmonious fitness between the thoughts of the poet and the measure in which he expresses himself. . in some pieces. . every syllable seems to express a motion. . . of the Laboratory we follow one critic in quoting one verse :-- 'He is with her; and they know that I know Where they are, what they do; they believe my tears flow 1 In another review Mr. Hood speaks of the impression of having suffered much, as that which George Eliot's works, with all their wealth of humour, give him. these.. Dramatic Lyrics.. are not merely lyrical as setting to song a passing emotion in the poets' mind: he has possessed himself of the character, or rather is possessed by the character, and so he sings. . . but (p. 464) one of the most remarkable instances of the manner in which the very form of syllables becomes dramatic, and lyrical too, is the Grammarian's Funeral. . the measure of the syllables keeps time with the very footfall of the bearers of the corpse... (p. 465) if it be conceded that the man is a great poet, the reader may rely upon it, (that) the defect is in himself, and not in the author, if to him the workmanship seems lacking in (p. 466) symmetry. Mr. Br. is a kind of Michael Angelo among our modern poets; he works upon a great scale, he hews at immense blocks, for the vast figures he designs; his grace is not the grace of the drawing-room, but the sweep of a vaulted sky, of the far-off round horizon of the distant sea, of swelling downs, and upheaving mountain chains. . . Many a (p. 467) reader has perhaps inquired, what meaning the poet attached in his own mind to that remarkable piece, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. It is evidently a dark page from some pilgrim's progress or other. (p. 468). It is one of the most cheerless, weird, utterly desponding fancies in poetry, without a line to light the reader's sense of meaning beyond that which a drear experience and knowledge may supply, to illustrate a picture of life shelving down over the steeps, all drear and desolate to the close,―nature, love, all withering into loneliness and disappointment, until the Dark Tower at the end of the journey, grim as are its fastnesses, becomes as an inn to the weary traveller, a refuge and a rest. "Such is Robert Browning. We agree with those who regard his works as a tonic. More robust poet or writer our language has not produced. In some particulars he reminds us of old Ben Jonson, in his learning, in his elaboration of character, in his pouring the whole wealth of scholarship and language along to develop a character.. A "What constitutes. .. a strong writer? not the power to heap a larger amount of strong and passionate, altho' they may be fitting, words together; it is the sense he conveys, that he has travelled farther and seen more. strong writer is another term for a great discoverer... he has lookt at things with so clear and steady a gaze, that out of the darkness new light has come upon his vision, and he has been able to transfer it to his pages for our benefit. Wordsworth in this spirit interpreted nature . . . (p. 469). But Browning has not found nature so pre-eminently interesting. Man is the entire subject of his whole thought; nature takes her place quite in the background. Man, or men and women, thro all the circles and ages of revolving time; man anywhere, anyhow; Soul, doing, suffering, achieving, sinning, thinking, painting, or fighting; Man is perpetually and perennially interesting; a sense of the indestructible existence of soul seems to be ever present with him. All work abides, perpetuates itself somehow or other; the mysterious here, and now, are themselves the mysterious beyond to those who lived ages since; while still stretches forward the mysterious beyond for us. It is given to some few writers to add to our sense of being; their pages are so surcharged with soul, that the soul of the reader becomes more vital, or more consciously vital; while reading, the destiny seems deeper and larger. Such words have the effect described by our poet himself; they liberate, enfranchise, and set free some ray imprisoned in the spirit, of which until then it was not aware; and this we are told is knowledge: not that the mind accumulates more, but rather that veils drop, walls fall, and skies clear before it and around it, so that it simply becomes able to be itself: this is the highest work of all teaching and spiritual ministration. The reader remembers how this has been done often by a line of Shakspeare or of Wordsworth, and to that same great soul-assisting race of men Robert Browning belongs; to the order of those who help us, rather to see great truths than to manipulate little ones; to whom poetry is no jingle of words, or pretty amusement for harpsichord or piano, but rather a divine trigonometry, a process of celestial triangulation, a taking observations of celestial places and spheres, an attempt to estimate our world, its place, its life amidst the boundless immeasurable sweeps of space and time, or if describing, then describing the animating stories of the giants, how they fought and fell, or conquered." violets and reses have a real and lovely relation.. to the great fountain principles of life, and their beauty comforts and encourages; but the mighty oak out of which we can build the ship, or the tall aspiring palm, which may give life and food to a whole village, are more than violet and rose, and it is no diminution to the loveliness of the flower which blooms at their feet, to say it. So a great allinclusive strength of song, which is as a battle march to warriors, or as the refreshment of brooks and dates to the spent (p. 470) and toiling soldiers on their way, is more than the pretty idyll, whose sweet and plaintive story pleases the idle hour or idle ear. And for these reasons, because we believe it [Mr. B.'s poetry] fulfils these conditions, we hail Mr. Browning as one of the surest aids to faith and trust in the present, and one most certain of . . . immortality in time, as one of the greatest poets of the future." 1868-9. The Ring and the Book. (Edinb. Rev.' July 1869, p. 164-184.) "Like the majority of poets, he [R. B.] is remarkable for a highly sensitive emotional nature, and, like some of the great poets only, he is at the same time and to an equal degree distinguished by the serenity of his intellect. He knows. . human nature; [is] familiar with all its gradations, from the 'poach'd filth' of its lowest depravity to the white blamelessness' that crowns as with inviolate snow its moral heights. Everywhere he reveals his love of what is noble, his hatred of what is ignoble; but he never loses the balance of an even mind in adjudicating praise or blame. Through human nature he discerns clearly the problem of human nature, the enigma of man's existence and destiny, that painful riddle of the earth' which has overthrown the calm, and vanquished the courage, of so many a noble mind. Although he confronts that problem always with deep earnestness, he displays something of an eager alacrity in grappling it; and he has never yet come sad and crestfallen from the encounter. To blend a profound knowledge of human nature, and a keen perception of the awful problem of (p. 165) human destiny, with the conservation of a joyous, hopeful spirit-to know men and not despair of them, to battle with men's spiritual foes and not be broken by them-is given only to the very strong. This is to be a valiant and unvanquished soldier of humanity." [The Reviewer then divides great men of the intellectual type into 2 classes: those who have been vanquisht by the problem of man's existence and destiny-like Shelley, Byron, Heine, Carlyle,—and those who, although they have not vanquisht it, have not been vanquisht by it, but have kept their hope and cheer, like Shakspere, Goethe, Tennyson, and Browning. He then sketches the Ring and Book story, and gives (p. 178)] "extracts as specimens of the dramatic power of Mr. Br.'s work. That power can only be rightly appreciated by those who will study the poem; and they will find, that the more attention they give to it, the closer the scrutiny to which they subject it, the more vividly distinct will grow the individual characters of the drama. These are not lay figures through the mouth of which, after they have been twisted into the fitting pose, the poet declaims appropriate sentiments; they are men and women throbbing with life and passion, giving vent in words to the emotions of love and hate, and hope and fear, and good and evil desires, that stir within them, and which find only intense expression because they are intensely felt. These characters range, we may almost say, through the entire scale of human nature. Beside the arch-villain, that true spark of hell' Count Guido, and his four cut-throats, we have notable specimens of the 'subordinately vile'; Marzi-Medici, pusillanimous Governor of Arezzo, who will not help the weak, lest he offend the strong; the hireling' Archbishop, who will not save from the wolf's paw, the lamb that is within reach of his crozier; the craven monk. . Guido's two brothers, the Abate 'fox-faced horrible priest', and the young Girolamo, hybrid between wolf and fox. . and the mother of these, 'The hag that gave these three abortions birth'. . Then we have types of average humanity-impulsive gossip-loving busybodies.. some philosophical dandy... the lawyers. . . (p. 179). Lastly, to set off against all this superlative and subordinate villany, this humdrum of the commonplace, this professional insincerity and greed to set off against these, and vindicate the majesty of human nature, stand forth Pope Innocent in all the clarity of wisdom, of Christian fortitude and grace; Pompilia in the .... purity, the sweetness of womanly innocence; Caponsacchi in the full brightness . was the trial sore? That so he may do battle, and have praise! [Then, showing how Br. holds that sin and sorrow here are meant to 'evolve the moral qualities of man,' and so enable him to wring from out all pain, all pleasure for a common heritage to all eternity'; how within B.'s 'circle of experience burns the central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness.—God': and therefore his speech must be throughout the darkness," "It will end: The light that did burn, will burn"! (p. 182) so thro all trials he has faith.] "So never I miss footing in the maze; No! I have light, nor fear the dark at all.' This is the true felicity of men-to hear, amid the din and direful spectacle of the battle, the sage servant of God and soldier of humanity proclaim, not in any cry of ecstatic hope, but in the calm clear voice of conviction, his faith in the victory to come : 'No! I have light, nor fear the dark at all.' (p. 182.) This is what we meant when we said that Mr. Br. was distinguished by the serenity of his intellect; when we called him a valiant soldier of humanity; when we numbered him with those who, if they have not vanquisht, have at least not been vanquisht, by the problem of human nature.' 1869. Forster's Life of Landor,' II, 42. See also Forster's remarks, same page. J. D. C. "The Ring 1869. April 1. Bp. Thirlwall, in 'Letters to a Friend,' 1881, ii. 184. and the Book.. here and there is really difficult reading.. I am sometimes forced to read a passage 3 or 4 times before I am sure that I understand it. That is, no doubt, a fault, tho' I think it arises mainly from an exaggeration of a merit. It carries the Chinese-like condensation of English style a little too far. There is an increase of vigour as in the clenching of a fist, but it costs time and pain to open it. "It is not, however, necessary for the enjoyment of the story to stop at these knotty points; but if it was, there would be ample compensation for the exertion in the amazing ingenuity of the invention, and beauty of the execution, tho' a little marred by occasional negligences, which such a poet can well afford, as they rather produce the effect of conscious power." 1872. Fifine at the Fair: on or after June 6, reviewd in a 'Daily Telegraph' leader, the Athenæum,' Examiner,' 'Scotsman,' 'John Bull,' the Graphic,' chester Guardian, Spectator' (a fair analysis), Liverpool Mercury, North British Quarterly,' 'Illustrated London News,' 'Literary World,' 2 articles (the 'Man |