2. Charge of Obscurity. But we have heard of great scholars who could only communicate a plentiful lack of ideas in many languages, of very learned men who were simply Dryasdusts, of people with keen perceptiveness and tenacious memories whose minds or no-minds were of the Dame Quickly order, though I do not remember any combination of both the scholar and the keen retentive observer with the dullard. The heaped-up knowledge is as heaped-up fuel: the questions occur, Is the fire intense enough to kindle the whole mass through and through into clear glow of light and heat? or but strong enough to smoulder smokily under it? or so relatively weak as to be crushed out by it? Here the admirers of Browning directly join issue with the common critics, and the public led or misled by them, who assert that his fire is of the second or smoky species. As he himself puts it with humorous contempt in the Pacchiarotto (1876) "Then he who directed the measure An old friend-put leg forward nimbly, Is confident oft she detects you In bringing more filth into my house I shall not attempt to argue this issue here, as Mr. Swinburne in his excellent Critical Essay on George Chapman has discussed it with admirable power and eloquence, and to my mind conclusively, in general vindication of the great poet against the small critics“ as sweeps out his chimbly." I will venture to add but one remark of my own on this matter. Many years since, in 1864 or '5, I wrote: "Robert Browning, a true and splendid genius, though his vigorous and restless talents often overpower and run away with his genius, so that some of his creations are left but half-retrieved from chaos." This now seems to m put much too strongly, save perhaps in reference to Sordello and a very few of the minor poems; but I still think that it points to a real fault in his art a fault, however, be it observed, of overplus, not of insufficiency. Such overpowering talents are almost as rare as the sometimes overpowered genius. Landor, writing it is true about twenty years earlier, said similarly of Browning: "I only wish he would atticise a little. Few of the Athenians had such a quarry on their property, but they constructed better roads for the conveyance of the material." And such comments but mark what Coleridge has noted in a certain stage of the development of Shakspere: "The intellectual power and the creative energy wrestle as in a war-embrace." And the wrestling is mighty when both the athletes are Titanic. Admitting that Sordello is very hard, if not obscure, I would observe that the difficulty is not so much in the mere language, as in the abrupt transitions, the rapid discursions, and the continual recondite allusions to matters with which very few readers can be familiar.1 The yet young fire, struggling with its enormous mass of gnarled and intertangled fuel, burns murkily with fitful sheets of splendid flame, and the mass of metal is not thoroughly fused for the mould; the result differing herein decisively from the magnificent Sordello of the Purgatorio (VI.), defined, solid, massive, as if cast colossal in bronze, the most superb figure, I think, in all Dante; him who leaps from his haughty impassibility to embrace Virgil at the one word 'Mantuan,' kindling the Florentine to the fulgurant invective Ahi serva Italia; the Sordello of that noble passage, not to be rendered into English :--- "Ma vedi là un anima che posta Sola soletta versa noi riguarda ; Ma laciavene gir, solo guardando A guisa di leon quando si posa." "But look and mark that spirit posted there He will instruct us how we best may fare. We came to him: O Lombard spirit, lo, What pride and scorn thy bearing then expressed, No word at all he unto us addressed, But let us pass, only regarding still Yet no good judge who watched how strenuously this still youthful genius was wrestling with the difficult and almost indomitable subjectmatter of Sordello, could help foreseeing its triumphant mastery over whatever it might undertake when its slow strong growth should be fully mature. To my mind this thorough maturity was reached in the two volumes of Men and Women, published in 1855. There had been previous poems mature as well as great; but in this collection, distributed under various headings in the 6 vol. edition of 1868, I found, and find, all the leading pieces mature; the fire burns intensely clear, 1 Mr. J. T. Nettleship gives a very careful analysis of the poem in his volume. completely consuming its own smoke. To name a score of the fifty : Karshish and Cleon, Andrea del Sarto and Fra Lippo Lippi, A Toccata of Galuppi's, Bishop Blougram, In a Balcony, Childe Roland, Two in the Campagna, A Serenade at the Villa, Memorabilia, Respectability, Instans Tyrannus, Holy Cross Day, The Statue and the Bust, Evelyn Hope, The Guardian Angel, By the Fireside (whose Greek promise has already been so amply fulfilled), Any Wife to Any Husband, One Word More, and, higher than the rest, as its hero was higher than any of the people from the shoulders and upward, the complete Saul; these are not only noble in conception and aspiration, they are each in its befitting style consummate in achievement; not one of them unworthy of a great country's greatest living poet. Of the wonderful works that have followed I need not say anything here; not even of that stupendous masterpiece The Ring and the Book, concerning which I have recently had the opportunity of saying something elsewhere.1 3. Charge of Harshness. Allied to the common charge of obscurity is that of harshness; variously attributed to negligence, wilfulness, lack of inborn melody and harmony, or, as I have been somewhat surprised to hear pretty often, deliberate affectation, this last evil propensity being made responsible for the obscurity also. As to the negligence and wilfulness, Browning has himself told us that he has always done his best; and I, for one, would take his word, even did I not find it—as I do find it manifestly confirmed by the sincerity, the earnestness, the thoroughness of all his work. As to the lack of innate melody and harmony, how can such a charge be maintained in the face of the poems just cited, not to mention others later and still greater? But let us distinguish. His strong, intensely original, and many-sided individuality has, among finer savours, a keen relish for the odd, the peculiar, the quaint, the grotesque; and when these offer themselves in the subjectmatter, his guiding genius is apt to throw the reins on the necks of the vigorous talents and eager perceptions, which run risky riot in language as quaint and grotesque as the theme. Students will recall Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, Old Pictures at Florence, the Lawyers in The Ring and the Book. Let us admit further that, perhaps too often and inopportunely, a perplexing patter or harsh jingle has irresistible seduction for him. Thus, such lines as, "While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks-" cruelly remind one of "Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper"; and the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th stanzas in Mesmerism, clever and true as they are in themselves, appear to me not only incongruous with the main theme, 1 'Gentleman's Magazine,' Dec. 1881. but absolutely untrue in relation to the speaker, who, with his whole mind absorbed in his self-set task, would not have noticed the petty distractions they describe. For other instances I need but mention Waring, Christmas-Eve, and The Flight of the Duchess; in which last splendidly original and vigorous poem, by the way, while much of the audacious grotesque of the diction is consonant with the rough forester who tells the story, much is quite incompatible with him. In many of these cases it may be fairly contended on behalf of the poet that he but asserts and vindicates his own artistic sovereignty over the subject by holding it aloof and beneath him; by now and then good-naturedly laughing at it, as Richter, I think, says one must be able to laugh at or sport with one's faith in order to really possess it. But whatever may be the ultimate judgment on this matter, it may be fearlessly affirmed that whenever the subject is so great and solemn as to possess the poet instead of him possessing it, be its supremacy of terror or pathos, beauty or awe, he ever rises in expression as in conception with his theme; and he has a most noble natural affinity with noble themes. Then not the mere talents or the piercing perceptions are in the ascendant, but the divine genius holds imperial sway; then pure imagination, or imaginative reason, or imaginative passion, incarnates itself in its own proper language of majestic rhythm, tenderest melody, orchestral harmony-orchestral because comprehensive and manifold with the complex simplicity and integrity of a high organism. For the rest, we do not in the grandeur of fortress or cathedral look for the minute finish and polish of carvings in gems or ivory. Affectation means Naturalness. Lastly, as to the affectation, I have come to learn that it usually means, when objected, even by persons of superior intelligence, against any great artist of whatever kind, the direct contrary of what it is commonly supposed to mean. It means that he is supremely and exquisitely unaffected, being scrupulously true to his own individuality. It means that he wears the garb befitting his peculiar stature and complexion, and does not affect the passing fashions which uniform the undistinguished multitudes. If he is a writer or orator, it means that he stamps with vigorous clearness his own image and superscription on his word-mintage, affirming thus his true sovereign prerogative, instead of issuing the common currency with the common image and superscription half-effaced by multitudinous usage, not to speak of debasement by sweating and clipping-the demonetized, vulgarized vocabulary of the newspapers. Browning himself expresses just as much esteem for the public that accuses him of harshness as for the critics who accuse him of obscurity. In the Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto volume (1876), written in the same spirit as a certain famous high-minded Ode to Himself by Ben Jonson, he bursts out with jolly scorn : ""Tis said I brew stiff drink, But the deuce a flavour of grape is there. "Don't nettles make a broth Wholesome for blood grown lazy and thick? A magnum for friends who are sound! the sick- Yet he could write in the Preface to the Selections, dated May, 1872: "Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh." 4. Activity and Rapidity. Let us now consider some of the dominant characteristics of this wonderful genius, as manifested in its slowly-developed, long-enduring maturity. First, one cannot help remarking the restless activity and almost unique rapidity of his intellect. Swift and keen as are his perceptions, his thoughts are swifter and keener yet. We ordinary readers are soon breathless in trying to keep up with them, and must be content to travel with relays, by easy stages, the journeys he makes at a single rush. As Mr. Swinburne excellently puts it, " He never thinks but at full speed; and the rate of his thought is to that of another man's as the speed of a railway to that of a waggon, or the speed of a telegraph to that of a railway." As I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, these analogies are peculiarly felicitous, inasmuch as the railway train not only runs ten times faster than the waggon, but also carries more than ten times the weight; the telegraph is not only incomparably swifter than the railway, but also incomparably more subtle and pregnant with intellect and emotion. The restless activity and rapidity and subtlety. of intellect which confound the "general reader" (who has been termed the laziest and haziest of human animals), accustomed to the too-easy sauntering through popular novels and periodicals, are apt at first to perplex even the student, as perturbing the exquisite calm of the simply idyllic conceptions with which he has been familiarized by less intellectual poets. As our French neighbours say, one must have the defect of one's qualities"; and in Browning these mental qualities or faculties are so pre-eminently rare and valuable, so delightful and informing and suggestive, that an intelligent and athletic student soon willingly surrenders the serenest tranquillity in order to pursue their subtle and multiplex workings, finding this pursuit an intellectual gymnastic of the most exhilarating as well as bracing character. But it must be |