Part 15 (1/2)

IV. So far we have only treated of conclusions which, by comparison with other poems obviously dramatic, and with his more avowedly confessed opinions elsewhere, we have felt ourselves justified in accepting as Browning's own. Turning to the questions yet remaining for consideration, we are upon more debatable ground. But here, too, pursuing similar methods, we may expect the results to be also decisive in so far as our means of investigation will allow. To what extent did personal feeling influence the criticism of Roman Catholic ritual contained in _Christmas Eve_? In what degree may Browning be held to have sympathized with the final decision in favour of the creed of Zion Chapel? An answer to the first question involves at least a partial answer to the second.

Browning's att.i.tude, could it be accurately estimated, towards Roman Catholicism, might be decisive as to how far it was possible for him to concur in the conclusions attributed to the soliloquist as the result of his night's experience.

With regard to external evidence touching Browning's opinions on any given question, it is usually of so conflicting a character as to leave us still in the condition of mental indecision in which we began the enquiry. In the present instance we have the report to which reference has been already made of the author's own a.s.sertion respecting _Bishop Blougram's Apology_; that he intended no hostility, and felt none towards the Roman Catholic Church. On the other side of the argument has to be reckoned the reply to Miss Barrett's wish, expressed in the early days of their acquaintance, that he would give direct utterance to his own opinions, not sheltering himself behind his various _dramatis personae_. Whilst promising to accede to the request, he adds, ”I don't think I shall let _you_ hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and imaginative religions that I must say.” This correspondence took place five years before _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ was published. To the year of publication is to be referred the author's satirical observation on the premature proclivities evinced by his infant son, during a visit to Siena, towards church interiors and ritual. ”It is as well,” he remarked, ”to have the eye-teeth and the Puseyistical crisis over together.” Of this comment writes Professor Dowden, to whom we have been recently indebted for so much valuable light on Browning's life and work: ”Although no more than a pa.s.sing word spoken in play [it] gives a correct indication of Browning's feeling, fully shared by his wife, towards the religious movement in England, which was altering the face of the Established Church. 'Puseyism' was for them a kind of child's play, which unfortunately had religion for its playground; they viewed it with a superior smile, in which there was more of pity than of anger.”[78] It was, indeed, as we have already had occasion to notice, in the nature of things unlikely that Browning should have remained uninfluenced by the spirit of anxiety and unrest, agitating the minds of English churchmen of all grades of thought during the years which succeeded the Tractarian movement. That this should have led him to a.s.sume an att.i.tude of distrust towards the Roman Catholic Church is hardly matter for surprise; that it was one of hostility he himself denies. And it is a satisfaction to believe that _The Pope_ section of _The Ring and the Book_ was the more matured expression of his feeling in this connection. The most valuable _internal_ evidence on the subject is probably to be derived from a comparison of this poem and _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, with Section X-XII, and XXII of _Christmas Eve_.

In _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, as in _The Pope_, all direct reference to the Church is made from _within_, not from _without_. The speaker is no critical onlooker, but, as we have seen, a prelate noted alike for his ultramontane tendencies, and for the breadth of his views with regard to the adaptability of his Church to the developments of contemporary intellectual life. This man is a leading member of the religious community for which Browning is accused of having in _Christmas Eve_ expressed his aversion. But, although a leading member, he is not therefore to be judged as a typical representative; his marked individuality being doubtless a main cause of the author's choice of subject. And what does this man say in defence of his Church? He points out that a profession before the world of faith, clearly defined and absolute, is essential to his influence and authority. Whatever the searchings of heart, the doubts and questionings inevitable to a keenly logical and a.n.a.lytic intellect, these must be concealed, lest the priest should be accounted a pretender, his profession a cloak of hypocrisy. His belief in the latest ecclesiastical miracle must be as avowedly absolute as that in a G.o.d as Creator and Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Thus he stands firm upon the ground which he has chosen. The question is throughout a personal one, and the implication is clearly not intended that the Roman Catholic Church would _necessarily_ demand of its members this implicit credence, would thus closely fetter the intellectual faculties.

Turning to _Christmas Eve_, we find the case reversed, and the soliloquist occupying the position of one of those outsiders to whom the Bishop believed himself compelled to present an unquestioning and unquestionable orthodoxy. For the Prelate is subst.i.tuted the man of active critical instinct, inclined to pa.s.s judgment with data insufficient to prove a satisfactory basis for the decision: of perceptions readily responsive to the glories of nature and their inspiration: but, we surely are not wrong in adding, of imaginative faculty unequal to the realization of those spiritual suggestions afforded to minds of different calibre by the symbolism of a ritualistic wors.h.i.+p. The solemn silence of the vast crowd a.s.sembled in the cathedral makes stronger appeal to his sympathies than does the gorgeous display of ritual following. Hence it is a not illogical outcome of the position that he will but hear in the music of the service ”hog-grunts and horse-neighings” that he will but see in the ceremonial observed ”buffoonery--posturings and petticoatings.” This man of spiritual and intellectual capacity so far developed is yet numbered amongst the congregation of the Calvinistic meeting-house, where the preacher is without erudition, the flock of mental outlook metaphorically as limited as the s.p.a.ce bounded by the four walls within which they are a.s.sembled.

How is the presence of this presumably unsympathetic personality to be accounted for in their midst? How otherwise than by the recognition of this peculiar deficiency in the nature which, whilst leaving it capable of looking directly upwards to the G.o.d of all creeds, yet renders it unable, in looking downwards, to see below the surface, and realize the worth of symbolism in wors.h.i.+p where spiritual insight is not of the keenest. The utterance of the _Third Speaker_ of the _Epilogue_[79] may well be his as he awaits the coming of the Vision on the common without the Chapel:

Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls O' the world are that?

And in his anxiety to avoid the ”narrow shrines” of man's erection, he is ultimately driven to wors.h.i.+p at one of the narrowest, chosen because the veil of ritual there interposed between the wors.h.i.+pper and his G.o.d is of the thinnest. The urgency of the desire to be freed from all outward ceremonial causes him to overlook the real faults of spiritual pride and exclusiveness characteristic of the Calvinistic congregation. True of heart, he would reject all shows of things; but there is in his nature a Puritanic strain which refuses to be eradicated, and this it is which finally leads him to become a member of the religious community whose failings he at first unsparingly condemned.

V. No stronger proof of the dramatic power of the poem is, perhaps, to be found than that afforded by the criticism quoted below, to which it has seemed almost impossible to avoid reference, bearing as it does the highest literary authority. Browning appears here to be regarded as occupying the position a.s.signed by him to the soliloquist, so completely has he succeeded in identifying himself with his _dramatis persona_. ”Of English nonconformity in its humblest forms Browning can write, as it were, from within” [the soliloquist has become a member of the Calvinistic congregation when he narrates his experiences]; ”he writes of Roman Catholic forms of wors.h.i.+p as one who stands outside” [the position literally and metaphorically a.s.signed to the critic on the threshold-stone of St. Peter's]; ”his sympathy with the prostrate mult.i.tude in St. Peter's at Rome is of an impersonal kind, founded rather upon the recognition of an objective fact than springing from an instinctive feeling” [May not the sympathy capable of inspiring the closing lines of Section X be taken as indicative of something deeper than this?]. ”For a moment he is carried away by the tide of their devout enthusiasms; but he recovers himself to find, indeed, that love is also here, and therefore Christ is present, but the wors.h.i.+ppers fallen under 'Rome's gross yoke,' are very infants in their need of these sacred buffooneries and posturings and petticoatings.... And this, though the time has come when love would have them no longer infantile, but capable of standing and walking, 'not to speak of trying to climb.' Such a short and easy method of dealing with Roman Catholic dogma and ritual cannot be commended for its intelligence; it is quite possible to be on the same side as Browning without being as crude as he is in misconception. He does not seriously consider the Catholic idea which regards things of sense as made luminous by the spirit of which they are the envoys and the ministers. It is enough for him to declare his own creed, which treats any intermediary between the human soul and the Divine as an obstruction or a veil.” Then after quoting the pa.s.sage describing the soliloquist's final choice: ”This was the creed of Milton and of Bunyan; and yet with both Milton and Bunyan the imagery of the senses is employed as the means, not of concealing, but revealing the things of the spirit.”[80] Was it not just this inability to seriously consider the things of sense as made luminous by the spirit which Browning wishes to represent as accounting for the otherwise unaccountable presence of the man of culture and intellect in Zion Chapel? Surely to the characteristic weaknesses of the soliloquist, not to the crude misconception of the author, is attributable the intolerance of the criticism, whether directed, as in the earlier Sections, against the congregation of Zion Chapel, or, in the later, against that of St.

Peter's?

This belief in the strength of the dramatic element in _Christmas Eve_ is confirmed when we turn to _The Ring and the Book_, and the question suggests itself--Would the critic of the earlier poem have been capable of representing any member of the Church which he condemns in the light in which Browning gives us Innocent XII? A nature to which is possible in age the purity and simplicity of a childlike personal faith.

O G.o.d, Who shall pluck sheep Thou holdest, from Thy hand?

(_The Pope_, ll. 641-642.)

Of a tenderness which yearns in memory over the defenceless member of his flock, lately the victim of brutality and disappointed avarice.

Pompilia, then as now Perfect in whiteness.... (ll. 1005-1006.)

... My flower, My rose, I gather for the breast of G.o.d. (ll. 1046-1047.)

With tenderness is coupled that humility which can say to this child of the Faith:

Go past me And get thy praise,--and be not far to seek Presently when I follow if I may! (ll. 1092-1094.)

Stoop thou down, my child, Give one good moment to the poor old Pope Heart-sick at having all his world to blame. (ll. 1006-1008.)

Yet, in spite of the heart-sickness, is present also the moral rect.i.tude which refuses to shrink from the task demanding fulfilment--the censure of ”all his world”--from the archbishop who repulsed the injured wife's appeal for protection, ”the hireling who did turn and flee,” through the entire list of offenders to the ”fox-faced, horrible priest, this brother-brute, the Abate,” and the chief criminal, Guido, for whom also his friends would claim clerical immunity from the penalty attaching to his offence. Realizing to the full the character of his office, the weight of authority and historical continuity lying behind, the old Pope might well be tempted to grant to the miscreants that shelter which they crave.

But the very fact which leads him to magnify the dignity of his official position, ”next under G.o.d,” leads him also to recognize the immensity of personal responsibility attaching thereto. The sentence to be pa.s.sed is the outcome of a _personal_ decision.

How should I dare die, this man let live?

Yet whilst laying bare before his mental vision the evils existent in his Church, obvious alike in the individual even though he should himself ”have armed and decked him for the fight”; and in the communal life of convent and monastery; whilst rejoicing that Caponsacchi should have had the necessary courage to break through ecclesiastical convention and

Let light into the world Through that irregular breach o' the boundary: (ll. 1205-1206.)

he yet points to the strength of the Church as safeguarding, by her rule as ”a law of life,” those whose natural impulses may not be relied on to lead them to follow the course of Caponsacchi, and to whom it would not be safe to grant the permission: ”Ask _your_ hearts as _I_ asked mine.” To these and such as these the law of life laid down by the Church's rule is essential. Whatever the traditions of the past, whatever the possibilities of ecclesiastical modifications and developments in the future, in the present no considerations of personal interest or compa.s.sion must be permitted to warp the judgment of him who is armed

With Paul's sword as with Peter's key.