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VIII. MRS. ORR'S

CLASSIFICATION OF BROWNING'S POEMS.

I REGRET very much that there should be any question of classifying Mr. Browning's works; but as I have been desired to classify them in the manner I thought least open to objection, I propose the following scheme; because its divisions are natural, or answering to received general forms of mental activity; because only natural divisions supply terms large enough to cover in any degree the varied suggestions of the majority of the poems; because only such a system of division excludes all arbitrary judgment or undue emphasis of the motive or leading thought of the poems, whether displayed by them singly or as a whole,—while any judgment which gives prominence to motive, however justly recognized, in a work of art, is unjust to it as such, by ignoring the spontaneous creative impulse through which the motive has come to light; because even the partial misplacing of a poem among large mental categories fails to touch it as an artistic whole, while any mistaken attempt at specification by motive or feeling distorts it as an artistic whole. I propose this scheme, in short, because its defects are chiefly negative, not because I imagine that it is free from defects. The dramatic setting of most of the lyrics converts them into studies of character, and fits them nearly as much for the psychological group as for the lyrical, in which Mr. Browning's prefix dramatic has justified their inclusion. Several of the psychological poems are natural, though not intentional, satires. No one section, as judged by its contents, is firmly divided from the other: and I have introduced the heading "critical" with great doubt of its right to enter into the scheme at all; since all forms of criticism, not purely technical, belong to some branch of philosophy and are contained in that idea: but I have done so because Old Pictures in Florence raises too many questions to stand for anything but the expression of a generally critical mood; and I have allowed Aristophanes' Apology to keep it company, though, besides being critical in mood, it exhibits the nature of the man, and is therefore psychological,—the characteristics of his age, and is therefore historical,—an imaginary succession of incidents, and is therefore romantic,—and a philosophy of life which is at once artistic and practical.

BROWNING, 2.

S

These facts are, however, of no importance in a scheme which is meant to expose the difficulties of classifying Mr. Browning's work rather than to overcome them and in claiming a certain negative merit for this mode of grouping, I also disclaim for it any positive usefulness whatever. I put it in no sense forward as a working alternative to the rival plan. Its semi-scientific terms would alone suffice to prevent its serving as index to a popular abstract of Mr. Browning's poems. It simply conveys my sense of the dilemma in which the alleged necessity for anything calling itself a classification of these poems must land us.

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LYRICAL (continued).

Eurydice to Orpheus (a picture by | Natural Magic.

Leighton).

A Face.

Epilogue to "Dramatis Personæ." Prologue to "Pacchiarotto."

C.

Magical Nature. Numpholeptos.

Prologue to "The Two Poets of Croisic."

II. NON-LYRICAL.

1. In the Religious sense. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day. Rabbi Ben Ezra.

A Death in the Desert.

Apparent Failure.

La Saisiaz.

2. In the Moral sense.

A Light Woman.
Dîs aliter visum.
Bifurcation.

3. In the Practical sense. Earth's Immortalities (Fame). A Pretty Woman. Respectability.

The Statue and the Bust.

Pauline.

Paracelsus.

Sordello.

Pippa Passes.

The Lost Leader.

PHILOSOPHICAL.

Popularity.

How it strikes a Contemporary. Deaf and Dumb, a Group by Woolner.

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D. PSYCHOLOGICAL.

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister. The Laboratory.

Cristina.

Another way of Love.
Time's Revenges.

Incident of the French Camp.
The Patriot; an old story.
My last Duchess (Ferrara).
Instans Tyrannus.

Waring.

The last Ride Together.
A Grammarian's Funeral.

Porphyria's Lover.

An Epistle containing the strange medical experience of Karshish, the Arab physician.

Johannes Agricola in Meditation. Pictor Ignotus.

Fra Lippo Lippi.

Andrea del Sarto.

The Bishop orders his Tomb, &c. Bishop Blougram's Apology. Cleon.

In a Balcony.

James Lee's Wife.

Caliban upon Setebos.
Confessions.

A Likeness.

Sludge the Medium.

The Ring and the Book.

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.

The Inn Album.

At the "Mermaid."
House.

Fears and Scruples.
Appearances.
A Forgiveness.

PSYCHOLOGICAL (continued).

The two Poets of Croisic, and Con- | Ned Bratts.

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IX.

NOTES ON THE GENIUS OF ROBERT BROWNING.

BY JAMES THOMSON.

(Read at the 3rd Meeting of the Browning Society, on Friday, Jan. 27, 1882.)

1. Br.'s Variety and Knowledge, p. 237.
2. The Charge of Obscurity, p. 238.
3. The Charge of Harshness, p. 240, and
of Affectation, which really means
Naturalness, p. 241.

4. Br.'s Activity and Rapidity, p. 242.
5. Br.'s Manliness, p. 244.
6. Br.'s Vitality, p. 245.
7. Br.'s Christianity, p. 246.

1. BR.'s Variety and Knowledge. Perhaps a reader looking for the first time through Browning's volumes would be first struck by the remarkable number and variety of his works, though these now cover a period of fifty years. On a somewhat closer acquaintance, this reader would surely be impressed with an ever-increasing astonishment at the prodigious amount and variety of knowledge brought to bear upon so vast a range of subjects. I mean not only, nor even mainly, knowledge of literature and art, but also what I may term knowledge of things in general. Marvellous as his acquirements in the former kinds must appear to one who, like myself, is neither scholar nor connoisseur, I am yet more overwhelmed by the immensity of his acquisitions in this other kind, by what Mr. Swinburne has happily summed up as "the inexhaustible stores of his perception." Not all of us have the opportunity of mastering the contents of libraries and museums and art-galleries; but all of us have the opportunity of mastering the common facts of nature and human life; yet it is precisely in these departments of knowledge that Browning's pre-eminence appears to me most decided. With the great majority of us the senses are dull, the perceptions slow and vague and confused; Browning drinks in the living world at every pore. There exist, in fact, some men so rarely endowed that their minds are as revolving mirrors, which, without effort, reflect clearly everything that passes before them and around them in the world of life, and without effort retain all the images constantly ready for use; while we ordinary men can only with fixed purpose and long endeavour catch and keep some very small fragments of the whole. Chaucer, Rabelais, Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Goethe, Scott, Balzac, are familiar examples of this quietly rapacious, indefinitely capacious acquisitiveness, men of whom we can say, "They have learned everything and forgotten nothing"; and the star of Browning is of the first magnitude in thi constellation.

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