Part 2 (1/2)
”God has conceded two sights to a man-- One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan, The other, of the minute's work, man's first Step to the plan's coned him by the divine law of justice and pity he accepts as his whole life's task It is true that though he now clearly sees the end, he has not perhaps recognised the means If Sordello conte that minute's work, he ed, that not thus can a poet live in his highest faculty, or render his worthiest service The poet--and speaking in his own person Browning makes confession of his faith--can adequately serve hisHu the highest thoughts and aspirations of Italy; but Dante was to follow and was not to fail The minstrel's last act--his renunciation of selfish power and pleasure, his devotion to what he held to be the cause of the people, the cause of humanity, was indeed his best piece of poetry; by virtue of that act Sordello was not a beaten ed studies--_Paracelsus, Sordello_, and, on a more contracted scale, _Pauline_--each a study in ”the developh the iht only certain of his faculties into play, or, at least, he had not as yet connected with his art certain faculties which become essential characteristics of his later work There is no humour in these early poems, or (since Naddo and the critic tribe of _Sordello_ came to qualify the assertion) but little; there is no wise casuistry, in which falsehood is used as the vehicle of truth; the psychology, however involved it es are too abstract--knowledge and love and volition do not exhaust the soul; action and thought are not here incorporated one with the other; a deed is not the interpreter of an idea; an idea is first exhibited by the poet and the deed is afterwards set forth as its consequence; the conclusions are too patently didactic or doctrinaire; we suspect that they have beenthe action; our scepticism as to the disinterested conduct of the story is aroused by its too plainly deduced ht to be invisible; we fiddle with the works of the clock till it ceases to strike Yet if only a part of Browning's ht into exercise are the less impeded by one another; the love of beauty is not tripped up by a delight in the grotesque And there is a certain pleasure in attending to prophecy which has not learnt to hide itself in casuistry The analysis of a state of mind, pursued in _Sordello_ with an effort that is so and not always successful, is presently followed by a superb portrait--like that of Salinguerra--painted by the artist, not the analyst, and so admirable is it that in our infir and dissection alters the person of a man or woman as Swift has said, considerably for the worse
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 15: The supposition of Mr Sharp and Mr Gosse that Browning visited Italy after having seen St Petersburg is an error His first visit to Italy was that of 1838 I may note here that in a letter to EBB (vol ii 443) Browning refers to having been in Holland soust 18, 1846]
[Footnote 16: Mrs Bronson; Browning in Venice _Cornhill Magazine_, Feb
1902 pp 160, 161]
[Footnote 17: Mrs Orr's ”Handbook to Browning,” pp 10, 11]
Chapter III
The Maker of Plays
The publication of _Paracelsus_ did not gain for Browning a large audience, but it brought hihtful expansion in its social relations John Forster, the critic, biographer and historian, then unknown to hinition of its power and pro friendshi+p with Forster, nearly a score of years later, in the dedication of the 1863 edition of his poetical works Mrs Orr recites the nah Hunt, Procter, Monckton Milnes, dickens, Wordsworth, Landor, auished persons who beca at this period[18] His ”simple and enthusiastic manner” is referred to by the actor Macready in his diary; ”he looks and speaks 's face was one of rare intelligence and full of changing expression He was not tall, but in early years he was slight, was graceful in hisin wavy masses upon his neck His voice had in early manhood a quality, afterwards lost, which Mr Sharp describes as ”flute-like, clear, sweet and resonant” Slim, dark, and very handsome are the words chosen by Mrs Bridell-Fox to characterise the youthful Browning as he reappeared to her memory; ”And--may I hint it?”--she adds, ”just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to lelass of fashi+on and the er for fame, and, what is more, determined to conquer fame and to achieve success” Yet the correct and conventional Browning could also fire up for lawlessness--”frenetic to be free” He was hail-felloell-end?--with trah devout sympathy or curiosity of mood we know not, into Little Bethels and other tents of spiritual Ish's fatherrows of books, together with those many volumes which lay still unwritten in the ”celle fantastyk” of his son
”There is a vast view froh Wordsworth had scorned the Londoner's hill--”Hill? _we_ call that, such as that, a _rise_” Here he read and wrote, enjoyed his rides on the good horse ”York,” and cultivated friendshi+p with a toad in the pleasant garden, for he had a peculiar interest, as his poems show, in creatures that live a shy, mysterious life apart from that of man, and the claim of beauty, as co's eye was an instrument made for exact and minute records of natural phenomena ”I have heard hi of his earlier years--”his faculty of observation would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole or an Iroquois” Such activity of the visual nerve differs widely fro power of the Wordsworthian 's life was never that of a recluse who finds in nature and communion with the anima mundi a counterpoise to the attractions of huued hih why it should be so is hard to say--does not ordinarily affect le of Mrs Bridell-Fox's recollection The 's te of positive facts, but by pushi+ng through these to the light beyond theht piercing the denseness, which was serviceable as the sheathe or foil And of course it was aestions for soinal studies
An introduction to Macready which took place at Mr Fox's house towards the close of Nove was Macready's guest at Elstree, the actor's resting-place in the country His fellow-traveller, then unknown to him, in the coach fro-room the poet and his critic first for been e, but only as a spectator His iination now turned towards dramatic authorshi+p with a view to theatrical performance A play on a subject froht of and was cast aside The success of Talfourd's _Ion_, after the first perfor supped in the author's rooh hopes of a like or a greater success for so,” said Macready, as they left the house, ”and keep lish?” Browning questioned, as the incident is related by Mrs Orr, ”What do you say to a drama on Strafford?” The life of Stafford by his friend Forster, just published, which during an illness of the author had been revised in , probably deterust the poet had pledged himself to achieve this first dramatic adventure The play was produced at Covent Garden on May 1st, 1837, by Macready, who himself took the part of Strafford Helen Faucit, then a novice on the stage, gave an adequate rendering of the difficult part of Lady Carlisle For the rest, the co describes it, after one of the latest rehearsals, was ”perfect gallows”
Great historical personages were presented by actors who strutted or slouched, himpered or drawled The financial distress at Covent Garden forbade any splendour or even dignity of scenery or of costumes[19] The text was considerably altered--and not always judiciously--from that of the printed play, which had appeared before its production on the stage Yet on the first night _Strafford_ was not damned, and on the second it armly applauded[20] After the fifth perforland even oncedeclared to his friends that never again, as long as heto his taste, he averted his eyes and set himself resolutely to work upon _Sordello_
”I sail thiswrote to a friend on Good Friday, 1838 He voyaged as sole passenger on a h kindly captain For the first fortnight the sea was storh the Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided hi of hoin to the patriotic lines beginning, ”nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the north-west died away” Under the bulwark of the _Norhaallop on his Uncle Reuben's horse suddenly presented itself in pleasant contrast with the tedium of the hours on shi+pboard, he wrote in pencil, on the flyleaf of Bartoli's Silory of ood news froe was the discovery of an Algerine pirate shi+p floating keel upperhted suddenly under the stress of ropes frohastly and intolerable dead--Algerines and Spaniards--could not scare the British sailors eager for loot; at last the battered hulk was cast loose, and its blackness was seen reeling slowly off ”into thevisited Venice, Vicenza and Padua--cities and ave their war returned hoe and Antwerp It was his first visit to Italy and was a time of enchantment
Fifty years later he recalled theinsubstantial, ical in it, and the vision was half perceived with the eye and half projected from within:--
How many a year my Asolo, Since--one step just from sea to land-- I found you, loved yet feared you so-- For natural objects sees soon after his return to London Mrs Bridell-Fox writes: ”He was full of enthusiasm for Venice, that Queen of Cities He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, theup a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle, ently till it was cloudily s the darker smears for clouds, shadoater, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the forondola on the vague and dreaenius had already produced a finer etching than any of these, in those lines of marvellous swiftness and intensity in _Paracelsus_, which describe Constantinople at the hour of sunset
[Illustration: MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE
_Fro by_ Miss D NOYES]
The publication of _Sordello_ (1840) did not i's position with the public The poe of an aspirant reader, and the challengea poerateful to so infir as man And, indeed, a prophet, if prudent, ible until he has secured a considerable number of disciples of both sexes
The reception of _Sordello_ orous will than Browning; he merely marched breast forward, and let _Sordello_ lie inert, until a new generation of readers had arisen The dra Charles_ and _The Return of the Druses_ (at first nahts
Short lyrical pieces were growing under his hand, and began to forroup And one fortunate day as he strolled alone in the Dulood--his chosen resort ofthus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it”[22] In other words Pippa had suddenly passed her poet in the wood
A cheap ested to Browning by the publisher Moxon They le sheet printed in double-coluht be discontinued at any tieneral title _Bells and Poranates_ was chosen; ”beneath upon the heranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the heold between the, as he explained to his readers in the last nu like an alternation, or , sound with sense, poetry with thought”--such having been, in fact, one of the ned to expound the symbolism of this priestly decoration prescribed in ”Exodus” Froranates_ successively appeared; with the eighth the series closed The first nu Victor and King Charles_ was published in the following year (1842), the price was raised to one shi+lling The third and the seventh numbers were made up of short pieces--_Dramatic Lyrics_ (1842), _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845) _The Return of the Druses_ and _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--Numbers 4 and 5--followed each other in the same year 1843 _Colombe's Birthday_--the only number which is known to survive in manuscript--came next in order (1844) The last to appear was that which included _Luna_, Browning's favourite aedy_[23] His sister, except in the instance of _Coloe he is na ”Author of Paracelsus”--the ”wholly unintelligible” _Sordello_ being passed over Talfourd, ”Barry Cornwall,” and John Kenyon (the cousin of Elizabeth Barrett) were honoured with dedications In these paold were certainly not presented to the public in pictures or baskets of silver; yet the possessor of the eight parts in their yellow paper wrappers ratulated Only one of the numbers--_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_--attained the distinction of a second edition, and this probably because the drama as published was helped to a coe
This tragedy of young love and death ritten hastily--in four or five days--for Macready Browning while at work on his play, as we learn frohaoing to see him ”was each day received boisterously and cheerfully with the words: 'I have done another act, father'”[24] Forster read the tragedy aloud from the manuscript for dickens, rote of it with un only when printed after the lapse of so's play has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow I know no love like it, no passion like it, noafter its conception like it” Things had gone ill with Macready at Drury Lane, and when the time for _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ drew near it is evident that he feared further losses and would gladly have been released fro failed to divine the true state of affairs The tragedy was read to the coed and red-nosed prohter To make amends, Macready himself undertook to read it aloud, but he declared himself unable, in the disturbed state of his mind, to appear before the public: his part--that of Lord Tresham--must be taken by Phelps Froh illness Macready who read his lines on these occasions, noas caught by the play, and saw possibilities in the part of Treshaination He chose, aler and less distinguished colleague