in Pippa Passes, and many in the gallery of Dramatis Persona and Men and Women, and the dramas generally. But with more complex or dubious natures which thoroughly interest his curiosity he becomes himself interfused. If he takes time and a large canvas, he so penetrates the subject with himself that the result is occasionally a peculiar dazzle and doubleness on the retina of the spectator. In parts, for example, how detached is Bp. Blougram; yet as we proceed with the subtle dialectic his image seems to melt into that of the author. In fact we cannot lose sight of the eager "showman," as he passes from behind this to the other chair, smiling and beckoning to us as the conversation goes on. That piece may consequently be interpreted from several different points of view equally plausible. So in parts Browning seems to overflow Mr. Sludge; for it is rather difficult to conceive a man capable quite of the union of opposites, the mean cunning and the profound philosophic spirit ascribed to the "medium." While in a few works the Subject, Browning, stands at arm's length from his Object, it seems to me that all his more important characters are, apart from accidents, distinctly reflections of his own spiritual physiognomy.

5. ON THE WHOLE A SUBJECTIVE POET.

I do not think the greater part of his works are held aloof from him to the extent that Shakespere's dramas are from their reserved author; nor perhaps as are Goethe's. Our poet is as subjective as Lucretius, Dante, or Shelley; we may know what his convictions are upon serious subjects as clearly as if he had written in straightforward prose. But if he had written in prose the same difficulty would have been found in understanding him. It is not possible to Browning to squeeze his thoughts "into a nutshell." His answers to great questions must always be "God's large ones, tardy to condense themselves into a period." 1

But the question suggests itself, In what sense we are to understand that any dramatic poetry contains merely the utterance of so many imaginary persons, not the author's? How far, I mean, is it possible for a self-contained Shakespere or an ironical Browning to play the Proteus, if we have once a determined mind to seize him? The distinction of the objective from the subjective poet, of which Browning has treated in a novel manner in his Essay on Shelley, is merely, we must remember, a relative or comparative one. It refers to the fact that in some poets more, and others less, of the man appears in the work of the artist. But no man can absolutely hide himself behind his

1 Sordello; cf. Pacchiarotto, p. 45.

work; as, on the other hand, no man can fully reveal himself without resorting to some oblique, objective, or dramatic mode of expression. Every work of art is both objective and subjective, and solves the problem of the union of mind and matter. The question therefore is merely one of degree. What is put into the mouth of one of the poet's creations is his so far as the substance of the thought is concerned. And if we compare the substance of what he has thus said through his various dramatic masks, with what he has kept silence upon, we may surely arrive at a very fair understanding of the poet's mind and thought. In the case of the most objective poetry we know, the poet is not and cannot be altogether hidden. The poet or poets of the Iliad and Odyssey keep out of sight after they have once invoked the aid of the muse; but it does not follow that we may not collect pretty clearly, from what they have said and what they have held their peace about, their convictions and opinions concerning human life. The difficulty of doing this is of course immensely greater in the case of the great objective or dramatic poets than with those who have directly spoken of what they as individuals have thought and felt.

Let us take the three great Greek tragic poets, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The younger poet is more revealed to us as a man through his work than either of his compeers. Let me remark in passing how Browning himself is illustrated by his relation to these three. He delights of course in them all, but Euripides he seems to love as a brother. The reason must lie, as in his corresponding sympathy with Shelley, in a deep spiritual affinity. And in fact it is the intense humanity of Euripides which makes him so modern and so akin to our poet. When Browning refers to the Greek as

"Our Euripides the human, with his droppings of warm tears,

1

And his touches of things common, till they rose to touch the spheres," he is describing himself. He has looked into the eyes of the great Greek and has seen his own reflection. The comparative silence of Browning about Sophocles is perhaps as significant as his enthusiasm for Euripides. Sophocles is considered the faultless poet, as Andrea del Sarto the faultless painter. And Browning distinctly prefers in a sense the artistically faulty, but morally great, to the "splendid faultlessness" (to borrow from Tennyson) which is less inspired. I refer, e. g., to the poem on Andrea del Sarto, to that on Old Pictures in Florence, and to some closing words in the Essay on Shelley for the statement of this conviction. It is another central conviction, one of the emphatic points in Browning. We hear from time to time that there are current theories of the

'Balaustion (see Mrs. Browning's Wine of Cyprus).

goal of art as identical simply and solely with the Beautiful. With Browning nothing can satisfy true art short of the morally Good and the absolutely True, or, to speak as he has spoken, with his own seriousness, nothing short of the Divine perfections can be the true ideal to which the artist strives to make his work to correspond.1

But to return to the distinction of the objective and subjective in poetry. Of modern poets Shakespere is regarded as the very type of the objective, and is so referred to by Browning. It is supposed, that is, that the personality of Shakespere is absorbed or concealed in his dramatic creations. Amidst his marvellous wealth of fancy and thought we do not find that iteration of a few leading ideas which would lead us to say, "These were Shakespere's convictions; here his flowing imagination crystallizes into the forms of personal belief; here the man is discernible through the poetic haze surrounding him.” But though we cannot do this, it may be theoretically maintained that the man Shakespere is distinctly revealed in the poet Shakespere, and this both positively and negatively, in what he has left unsaid as well as in what he has expressed. May it not be argued in brief, that we have in Shakespere a man who possessed the vastest intelligence both of the physical and of the metaphysical world; but that contemplation sufficed him, that he felt life to be a profound enigma, was no prophet, had no special burden on his mind with reference to religion, politics, or the conduct of life? His own life confirms this view. Beyond a certain point, if we press our inquiry, we seem to hear again and again the echo of the impressive last words of Hamlet: "the rest is silence." In clear contrast to this reserve of Shakespere is the passionate and outspoken utterance, glowing with personal conviction, on the great matters of religion and social conduct and politics, in such as the great Hebrew poets, and, again, Lucretius and Dante and Shelley. It is our own fault if we do not know what these men thought and felt; the fire of conviction glows in their verse. Equally so is it with Browning. The best way of deciding the matter perhaps is to ask ourselves, Who are the poets that most distinctly impress us with their personality in reading their works, who cannot, if they would, "keep themselves out of view"? 2

If these are called for convenience' sake subjective poets, then Browning belongs to the class as distinctly as any that can be named. But the distinction means nothing sharp or absolute. It is a question of degree. And when Browning labels most of his poems as utterances of imaginary persons, not mine," we are at liberty, I

V

believe, to understand this in a paradoxical or ironical sense. In his later works, as far as I know them, the "dramatic" disguise seems very slight. The incidents he seizes upon are parables or ironical pretexts for discussion; and he stands forth, as what he has all along been, a Philosopher-Poet, with a zest for dialectic applied to the highest themes like that of Socrates, and an elasticity of fancy like that of Socrates' disciple.

If we drop the words objective and subjective, and distinguish poets according to the degree in which each is absorbed in his work, a delightful study of this point occurs in Sordello. The amiable Eglamor, a sort of small Virgil perhaps, is completely absorbed in his craft, is nothing apart from his verses, as his verses are nothing apart from him. He only exists in what he loves, and when his poetry is killed, he himself is finished and done with. Sordello, on the other hand, has the distinct self-consciousness which holds him sharply separate from his works. He finds in his own soul so distinctly the reflection of all beauty and power, that he looks upon all his work as inferior to himself.1 A certain reserve, therefore, will characterize the poet who knows and delights in the endless resources of his all-reflecting soul. His "power and consciousness and self-delight" 2 Browning notes as characteristic of Shakespere. With such a poet his works are mere episodes in his life." As the country people say, "there's plenty more where they came from."

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Now Sordello is, I believe, our poet himself, except in the accident of his life, the weakness and the failure. I venture at least upon the view that the history of Sordello as the history of a soul is that of Browning up to date; while the long life-work of the latter proves that he had learned to vanquish by moral energy the moods that enervated his hero.

3

One of the most remarkable things in Browning is his constant habit of mirroring himself in the minds of other men. This is what the dramatic method really means. What is all that splendid gallery of portraits in Men and Women, &c. but a series of pictures in which the accessories, the costume, the surroundings, and the background are contrived with consummate skill; where the illusion is all but perfect; but where no one who gazes at these portraits with close attention will fail to meet the piercing glance and the expression which shines from all, that of the arch-magician, whose creations they are. These are his splendid puppets.

'Sordello, pp. 21, 97.

2 Bp. Blougram.

I am told that this is confirmed by Mrs. Orr in Preface to F. M. Holland's Stories from Browning.

It can easily, I believe, be shown that dramatic verisimilitude is departed from, and historical perspective neglected, in these wonderful construc tions of the poet's genius. Cleon, Karshish, and St. John, e. g., could not live in the first century and the nineteenth at the same time. These men all think our thoughts, that is, Browning's; for he believes that if we would only clear up our thoughts it would be found that we all think essentially alike, that is, as he does. No matter what be his object, he is not content until he has glorified it with the inner light from his own soul. How many faces haunt us from this gallery! Like those plain faces of Dutchmen which follow us from the canvas of Rembrandt, rich with the mystic meaning the master shed upon them, are Browning's unrivalled portraits. As men and women seem taller and nobler after we have been reading Homer, so does human life wear an air of deeper meaning and mystery as we rise from the pages of Browning. Again, he has found himself in the great poets; has insisted that Eschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, King David, Dante, Shakespere, and others meant what he means; and one would suppose that they must all be grateful to him, for he has certainly shed an additional lustre on them all, and has enabled us to see them better. To take the example that lies nearest to us, do we not feel that we know Shakespere better after listening to his conversation “at the Mermaid" 2 with Ben Jonson which Browning has reported for us; that at last the Sphinx has spoken, and to good purpose?

6. ANALYSIS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN PAULINE.

But again to revert to Pauline. Many intensely interesting spiritual problems are suggested, in connection with the poetic mood and ecstasy. The poem describes a self-consciousness heightened to the last degree, painfully awake, and struggling towards the last secret of existence and "crowning-point of life." It trembles on the border-line of madness; so does the dreamer seem at points about to be unhinged by the violence of contending passions. However, he can always collect himself; he discovers in the extreme of exhaustion rest beneath " some better essence" than the soul's self; reason and faith still anchor him amidst the tempestuous agitation of the sea of fancy. We are reminded here and in many passages of the theory of Plotinus: that Reason (vous) both is and knows all things if it knows itself, and conversely it knows One Word More, vol. v. 318. 2 Pacchiarotto; cf. House, ib. C