24 "IN A GONDOLA." THOUGHT AND FORM IN POETRY. Note for no. 16, "In a Gondola," p. 45. The origin of this poem is shown by a note sent me by Mr. Shepherd :-DICKENS writes from Albaro (1844):-"In a certain picture called 'The Serenade,' for which Browning wrote that verse in Lincoln's-inn-fields, you, O Mac, painted a sky." To which his biographer subjoins the verse in a note "I send my heart up to thee, all my heart, In this my singing! For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; Closer to Venice' streets, to leave one space Above me, whence thy face May light my joyous heart to thee, its dwelling-place."— with the remark: Written to express Maclise's subject in the Academy Catalogue."-Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, Book Fourth, § iv. Edn. 1876, vol. ii. p. 365. I have searched the Royal Academy Catalogues from 1835 to 1847 in vain, either for the title of the picture or the verses.'-R. H. S. The picture of which Maclise painted the whole, not the sky only-is not mentiond in O'Driscoll's Memoir of Daniel Maclise, R.A., 1871, and cannot have been in the Academy. Browning wrote the stanza impromptu on Forster's report of Maclise's subject, and without seeing the picture. When he saw it, he thought it deservd fuller treatment, and accordingly added the rest of "In a Gondola" to his impromptu stanza. The reader of Browning should always bear in mind these words of Ruskin, in his Elements of English Prosody, 1880, p. 30: "The strength of poetry is in its thought, not in its form; and with great lyrists, their music is always secondary, and their substance of saying, primary, -SO much so, that they will even daringly and wilfully leave a syllable or two rough, or even mean, and avoid a perfect rhythm, or sweetness, rather than let the reader's mind be drawn away to lean too definitely on sound. p. 31: On the other hand, the lower order of singers cast themselves primarily into their song, and are swept away with it, (thinking themselves often finer folks for so losing their legs in the stream,) and are in the end little concerned though there be an extremely minute dash and infusion of meaning in the jingle, so only that the words come tuneably. p. 32: While, however, the entire family of poets may thus be divided into higher and lower orders,—the higher always subordinating their song to their saying, and the lower their saying to their song,-it is throughout to be kept in mind that the primal essence of a poet is in his being a singer, and not merely a man of feeling, judgment, or imagination.” Browning has stated in the Epilogue to Pacchiarotto, 1. 153-4, 1. 160, the subjects he has chosen: "Man's thoughts and loves and hates; "Earth is my vineyard; "Mine be Man's thoughts, loves, hates." He has declared in his Forewords to the Sordello of 1863, that little else than the development of souls is worth study. He believs strongly in God and the Immortality of the Soul. He asks every one, in relation to every pursuit, "How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?" (Rabbi ben Ezra, st. viii, 1. 48). Let those whose ends are the same as his, however different their belief, give the earnest study it dezerves, to his "stark strength, Meat for a man (Epil. to Pacch., st. ii.). N.B. All Browning's books came out and are in post 8vo, except Pauline 1833, in demy 8vo, Bells and Pomegranates in royal 8vo, double-columns, and Dramatis Persona, 1864, and the Shelley Essay, in an 8vo between post and demy (?). FOREWORDS. No one can well set to work at a man's writings till a list of them is before him, and he knows the order of their publishing. I have therefore got together somewhat hastily the following list of Browning's Works for the use of my Fellow-Members of the Browning Society. Had I been able to stay longer in Town, the lists would have containd more details, and would have been followd by a note of the chief criticisms on Browning, with short extracts from them. Some of these I had made, but our Committee thought they should be completed-so far as my time will allow-before any were issued. The Browningiana are therefore kept back for a while.1 For additions to the very imperfect list of them in the Appendix I shall be grateful. 6 In the following pages An Alphabetical List of Browning's Works' comes first, because, till Mr. George Smith will advise a Collected Edition of Browning's Works, we sha'n't get one, but we shall want a handy reference to the volume in which any Poem we need to look-up appeard. The number before the name of each poem shows whereabouts in Browning's poetic life it was written.2 His first Poem, Pauline, was publisht in 1833 before he was 21. His First-Period work ended (I suppose) in 1845 with the last of the Bells and Pomegranates (Nos. 1 to 52). His Second Period may include the works of his married life, 1846-1861, that is, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, 1850; the Shelley Essay, 1851-2; Men and Women, 1855, &c. (Nos. 53 to 106). Looking at the depth and power of some of the Dramatis Personæ, 1864, I propoze to put that, with Hervé Riel,3 and his greatest work, The Ring and the Book, 1868-9 (Nos. 107-127), into his Third Period. 1 The 'while' may be a long one, as I see now (Aug. 27) that the money wanted for these old criticisms may perhaps be better spent in printing new ones from our Members' point of view. See 2 In the Collections of the Poems and the Selections from them, the numbers call attention to the difference of date between poems put next to one another. on p. 63 in Romances, (99), (4), (97) . . . (73), (3), (70). 3 Hervé Riel was written in 1867, tho not publisht till 1871. See p. 65, b His Fourth Period I begin with Balaustion (No. 128) in 1871.1 Long may it be before that ends! Unless indeed he will close it now, and begin a Fifth Period of mainly un-dramatic work, speaking straight out to us in 1882 the message of his three-score years and ten. That he has much still to say to the world for its behoof, none of us can doubt. And we can only hope that it will come to us in poems of the kind of Rabbi ben Ezra, Prospice, Saul, Easter-Eve,' which have lately cald forth to me such witnesses as these: 1. "I bow down before Mr. Browning because I know that he has made me a better woman than I used to be. I never read his writings without feeling stronger, more earnest, more real, truer to my better self Ithan I was before." 2. "I daily admire him more and more. He doesn't pick out the difficulties and doubts and failures of life, and raise a mighty howl over them, like and. He has an intelligible theory of life, which, not shirking the difficulties, scatters them all to the winds; and not blinking the failures, steps across them and over them, ahead to honest, healthy work, and effort and success. I do like a man who tells us to be cheery and trust and strive, and use the light we have; instead of the men who are always groaning over the light they think they ought to have and have not, and who let all life be hampered and paralysed by the want. Browning has been more to me for the last two years than all the Sermons. . . . To me he is everything that is strong and out The only outside classification of Browning's Poems that I've seen, is in The Contemporary Review of Jan. 1867, p. 11 : 'I. Poems dramatic in their structure. [Instances: Paracelsus, Pippa Passes, Ir. a Balcony, and the Plays.] 'II. Lyrics and Romances, dramatic in character though not in structure, and dealing chiefly with passions which have man, as such, for their object. [Specimens (58) Up at a Villa-Down in the City, (37) The Englishman in Italy, (62) By the Fireside, (12) My last Duchess, (87) Old Pictures in Florence, (82) Andrea del Sarto, (93) The Guardian Angel--a Picture at Fano, (98) Two in the Campagna, (66) A Serenade at the Villa, (63) Any Wife to any Husband, (59) A Woman's last Word, (86) In a Year, (107) James Lee's Wife, (9-11) Cavalier Tunes, (38) The Lost Leader, (99) A Grammarian's Funeral, (30) Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, (22) The Pied Piper, (23) Flight of the Duchess, (18) Waring. 'III. Poems representing forms, true or false, healthy or morbid, of religious life.' [Samples (4) Johannes Agricola in Meditation, (97) The Heretic's Tragedy, (80) Bishop Blougram's Apology, (121) Mr. Sludge the Medium, (115) Caliban upon Setebos, (114) A Death in the Desert, (108) A Legend of Pornic, (64) An Epistle of Karshish, (48) Saul, (122) Apparent Failure, (113) Rabbi ben Ezra, (123) The Epilogue to Dramatis Persona, (53) Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day.] But I am not satisfied with this classification, as many of III might fairly be claimd for II, and some of II for III,-tho I do not know the Poems well enough to propose a better scheme. The reviewer says of Browning's own classification of his shorter poems under 'Lyrics,' 'Romances,' 'Men and Women,' it "does not seem to us a very felicitous one. The Romances and Lyrics might change place almost ad libitum, and every one of them might legitimately come under the last title," Men and Women. 2 Tho men like Mr. James Thomson and myself don't care for the special Christian or doctrinal side of Browning's work, we can yet feel the worth of his teaching as a man and thinker, and admire his imaginative power, his strength and subtlety. spoken, and healthy and Christian, without a taint of "goodyism"; and the reason I like his view of life better than any one else's is, that he lumps time and eternity together, and works them as a whole, instead of separating the two and working the first alone, which, if there is an Eternity, as I doubt not there is, must be a mistaken starting-point. Whether man has 70 years, or "man has For Ever," must make an entire difference in the whole dealing with life; but most religious people divide time and eternity into two in a manner that Browning certainly doesn't.” These writers know who is right: Browning, who said, in 1851, that Poets should strive to see things as God sees them, and tell men how that is; Arnold, who said, later, that Poetry is a criticism of Life; or Jingle, who says that 'the object of Poetry is to please'; and, so long as he gets his lines musical and his rymes right, is content to let thought be out of them or in, base or poor, as the whim takes him. Well, after the Alphabetical List comes the Chronological one, of the Works in their order of time. Its few notes from contemporary sources are mainly due to Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Carson, diligent collectors of Browning scraps. Any sent to me hereafter shall be printed in a Supplement. The great variety of Browning's metres I am not able to describe properly, but the schemes of his rymes, and the number of measures in his lines, I have noted. The words 'iambic,' 'dactylic,' &c., occasionally include their opposites as well as their equivalents. Very little collation of the different texts of the Poems have I made.' Reprints from stereotype-plates I have not notist as separate editions. The 4 volumes of Selections, and the first Trial-List of Criticisms on Browning, are shunted into an Appendix, with the ryme-changed 2 and fresh lines in the revized Sordello of 1863, Books V and VI of which our Member, the Rev. T. W. Carson of Dublin has kindly done for me. As the Society will have hardly any money for printing Papers this year, I shall give it this Bibliography' and the Reprint of Browning's 1 Only by rymes, The King, Porphyria, Johannes Agricola, The Boy and Angel, Saul, Part I, James Lee, Gold Hair, and Sordello. More collation is needed. A writer says in 1869: “it would only be necessary to take up an early work of the author and trace it through the editions from first to last, to find that he [R. B.] frequently revises [see (7') The King, and (31) The Boy and Angel, below]-touching out slight blemishes, and amending here and there obscure places. Nor does this remark apply to early works only: it is evidently the habit of the poet to touch and retouch his poems. Many of the Men and Women have been very considerably altered since their publication in 1855; and in the Dramatis Persona, published in 1864, several important changes were made when a second edition was printed the same year last year again, some of the poems were altered and beautified, and this not only in minor details-a section of James Lee's Wife, for instance, being greatly amplified and improved [see (107) below]."-London Quarterly Review, July 1869, vol. xxxii, p. 326-7, note. The same note says a selection from Shelley's poetry, announced by Messrs. Moxon some years ago as forthcoming with a preface by Browning, has never made its appearance.' 66 2 Many lines, whose rymes are unchanged, are alterd in their earlier parts. VAR, DER VOld be of very PEWII mud be prepared and pra se v sala dire mana 1 the number of the Souety's Members A 21000 pried by sen the tố then vii an FET ELT MIGHT W Lave VW Tree whether they are only a grizes a year fie ENG tead they feel they are more they should an in their enavis There le much so be done befice all the needful helps are provided by the mudy of the males and thoughtles of or modem English Jute woon we are tied so brosc Felp in the present Eltorphy. I thank Mr. Rithari Garnett, Mr. Avain Loin, Mr. J. T. Nettleship Miss E. H. Hickey, Mr. W. G. von Prof Johnson3 Prof Corson, Mr. F. G. Stephens, Mr. Kirkman, and other friends. My special thanks are due to the Rev. 1 W. Carson of Dublin, for his numerous 21a, and sollating Sordello, Boe. V and VI, also to Mr. Rishard Herne Shepherd, the well-known Wongrapher of Ruskin, Tennyson, &2, for the copy of Karsbook, the wise on Pauline, Hercé Riel, the notice of Balaustion, for looking thro my proofs, and aiding the many Ana and bits of information to which "" is put. Above all I have to acknowledge the kindness of Robert Browning himself, for answering such questions as I felt free to ask him, and for his leave to reprint his Karshook, p. 56, below. But it will of course be understood that he is in no way bound by any statement or opinion of mine. 66 F. J. FURNIVALL. Castell Form, Beddgelert, North Wales, July 31, 1881; and 3 St. George's Sq., N. W., Oct. 1. The P.8. The counting of the lines of the poems before 1863 has been done in the edition of the Works in 1863 or in that of 1863. whole number of Browning's lines I reckon at 93,323. Shakspere has unrymed lines among the couplets in his plays, as Browning has in his ростя, The latter, Mr. Nettleship has kindly undertaken to make. The former, I hope to get volunteers and an Editor for, among our Members. He has counted the lines of Pauline, Fifine, Inn-Album. # he has counted La Saisiaz, Croisic, and Dramatic Idyls i and ii, and added some metrical details. 4 He has counted Pippa Passes and Strafford. He has counted Aristophanes Apology, Agamemnon, and Hohenstiel-Schwangau. He gave me the Orpheus and Deaf and Dumb references. |