Part 7 (1/2)

Whatever be the fate of ”Sordello,” one thing pertinent to it shall survive: the memorable sentence in the dedicatory preface--”My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study”

The poenificent failure ”Vast as night,” to borrow a siht, innumerously starred

CHAPTER VI

”Pippa Passes,” ”The Ring and the Book,” ”The Inn Albureat dramatic poems, as distinct froh the three I have named are dramas for mental and not for positive presentation Each reader es projected on his brain by the electric quality of the poet's genius: within the ken of his i, incidents not less thrilling, complexities of motive and action not less intricately involved, than upon the conventional stage

The first is a drama of an idea, the second of the ile act, the third of the tyranny of the passions

I understand the general opinion a's poetry to be that the highest peaks of his genius tower fro and the Book”; that thenceforth there was declension But Browning is not to be measured by common estimates

It is easy to indicate, in the instances of many poets, just where the music reaches its sweetest, its noblest, just where the extre like greyhounds, or steal al horizons

But with Browning, as with Shakspere, as with Victor Hugo, it is difficult for our vision to penetrate the glow irradiating the supreain, he has revealed to us a territory so vast, that while n before the sun westering athwart distant Andes, the gold of sunrise is already flashi+ng behind us, upon the shoulder of Atlas

It is certain that ”The Ring and the Book” is unique Even Goethe's masterpiece had its forerunners, as in Marlowe's ”Faustus,” and its a, as in Bailey's ”Festus” But is it a work of art?

Here is the only vital question which at present concerns us

It is altogether useless to urge, as soand the Book” is as full of beauties as the sea is of waves Undeniably it is, having been written in the poet's maturity

But, to keep to the simile, has this epical poem the unity of ocean?

Does it consist of separate seas, or is it really one, as the wastes which wash froh zones temperate and equatorial, are yet one and indivisible? If it have not this unity it is still a stupendous accoh art is but the handenius, what student of Co has survived the ruining breath of Tireatness nor any spiritual beauty, that is not clad in perfection, be it absolute or relative--for relative perfection there is, despite the apparent paradox

Theand the Book” is, in point of art, nothing

One day, after the publication of this poem, Carlyle hailed the author with enthusiastic praise in which lurked da: you have written a whole series of 'books' about what could be suraph!” Here, Carlyle was at once right and wrong The theme, looked at dispassionately, is unworthy of the monument in which it is entombed for eternity But the poet looked upon the central incident as the inventive ards the tiny pivot remote amid the intricate 's real subject is too often confounded with the accidents of the subject His triue a literaryits bulk, he has made it shapely and ireatness of the achieve poeain, in point of art, what significance has this? None There is no reason why it should not have been in nine or eleven parts; no reason why, having been deh fifteen or twenty Poetry ever looks askance at that gipsy-cousin of hers, ”Tour-de-force”

Of the twelve parts--occupying in all about twenty-one thousand lines--the most notable as poetry are those which deal with the plea of the implicated priest, Caponsacchi, with the meditation of the Pope, and with the pathetic utterance of Pompilia It is not a dramatic poem in the sense that ”Pippa Passes” is, for its ten Books (the first and twelfth are respectively introductory and appendical) areand the Book,” in a word, consists, besides the two extraneous parts, of ten e facets to a poetic Koh-i-Noor

The square little Italian volume, in its yellow parchment and with its heavy type, which has now found a haven in Oxford, was picked up by Browning for a _lira_ (about eightpence), on a second-hand bookstall in the Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence, one June day, 1865 Therein is set forth, in full detail, all the particulars of the murder of his wife Pompilia, for her supposed adultery, by a certain Count Guido Franceschini; and of that noble's trial, sentence, and doom It is much the same subject matter as underlies the dramas of Webster, Ford, and other Elizabethan poets, but subtlety of insight rather than intensity of euishes the Victorian dra, who, having in this book and elsewherethe history of the crime in a series of monodramatic revelations on the part of the individuals more or less directly concerned The reat accoan the most ambitious work of his life

An enthusiastic admirer has spoken of the poem as ”one of the most extraordinary feats of which we have any record in literature” But poetry is not ymnastics All this insistence upon ”extraordinary feats” is to be deprecated: it presents the poet as Hercules, not as Apollo: in a word, it is not criticisar fraud and crime, romantic to us only because the incidents occurred in Italy, in the picturesque Roeois couple, Pietro and Violante Cohter to a ed noble of Arezzo

They expect the exquisite repute of an aristocratic connection, and other tangible advantages He, impoverished as he is, looks for a splendid dowry No one thinks of the child-wife, Poross selfishness of the contracting parties stands revealed Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny Pompilia suffers When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave her husband, whom she now dreads as well as dislikes Since the child is to be the inheritor of her parents' wealth, she will not leave it to the tenderpriest, a canon of Arezzo, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, helps her to escape In due course she gives birth to a son She has scarce time to learn the full sweetness of her maternity ere she is done to death like a trampled flower Guido, who has held himself thrall to an imperative patience, till his hold upon the child's dowry should be secure, hires four assassins, and in the darkness of night betakes himself to Rome He and his accomplices enter the house of Pietro Co them, also ht red-handed Pompilia's evidence alone is da enough to tell her story

Franceschini is not foiled yet, however His plea is that he si done to him by his wife's adulterous connection with the priest Caponsacchi But even in the Rome of that evil day justice was not extinct Guido's motive is proved to be false; he himself is condemned to death An appeal to the Pope is futile Finally, the wretched man pays the too rand, nothing noble here: at ic pathos in the fate of the innocent child-wife Poreatness of ”The Ring and the Book” must depend even less upon its subject, its yest work is akin to that of his wife Both ”The Ring and the Book” and ”Aurora Leigh” are metrical novels The one is discursive in episodes and spiritual experiences: the other in intricacies of evidence But there the parallel ends If ”The Ring and the Book” were deflowered of its blooht interest a barrister ”getting up” a criminal case, but it would be much inferior to, say, ”The Moonstone”; its author would be insignificant beside the ingenious M Gaboriau The extraordinariness of the feat would then be but indifferently commented upon

As neither its subject, nor its extraordinariness as a feat, nor itsexamination, we must endeavour to discern if transcendent poetic merit be discoverable in the treatment

To arrive at a just estimate it is needful to free the ardliness of insight which can perceive only the s almost inevitable to any vast literary achievement, and be blind to the superb merits One must prepare oneself to listen to a new musician, with mind and body alert to the novel harmonies, and oblivious of what otherand the Book,” as I have said, was not begun in the year of its iraphical narrative, and state that the finding of the parchment-booklet happened in the fourth year of the poet's erhood, for his happy married period of less than fifteen years came to a close in 1861