Part 12 (1/2)
If the grotesque occupies a coiven is of capital i's art The devil of Notre Da down on Paris, is more effectively placed, but is hardly a more i in the pit's much mire,
With elboide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
while he discourses, with a half-developed consciousness, itself in thethe nature of his Creator The grotesque here is not merely of the kind that addresses the eye; the poeht; and yet fantastic as it seeewater treatise is governed by a certain logic The poe's own Christian apologetics; it stands as a burly gate-tower fro upon the heads of assailants The poet's intention is not at all to give us a chapter in the origins of religion; nor is Caliban a representative of pri is that expressed by Pope Innocent in the passage already cited; the external world proves the power of God; it proves His intelligence: but the proof of love is derived exclusively from the love that lives in the heart of man Are you dissatisfied with such a proof? Well, then, see what a God we can construct out of intelligence and poith love left out! If this world is not a place of trial and training appointed by love, then it is a scene of capricious cruelty or capricious indifference on the part of our Maker; His providence is a wanton sporting with our weakness and our ? To aence, and to becoed manifestations of His power Why is one ony from which a score of his fellows escape? Because God Setebos reseh mere caprice he lets twenty crabs march past hi not, hating not, just choosing so
If any of the phenoine some law superior to the idle artistry and reckless will of Setebos, that law is surely very far away; it is ”the Quiet” of Caliban's theology which takes no heed of hu stars
Except the short piece named _May and Death_, which like Rossetti's poee, is founded upon one of those freaks of association that make some trival object the special re poeinally published, are all poems of love _A Likeness_, skilfully contrived in the indirect directness of its acknowledgment of love, its jealous privacy of passion, and its irresistible delight in the hoe rendered by one who is not a lover, is no exception Not one of these poe happiness of lovers But the warmth and sweetness of early passion are alive under the most disastrous circumstances in _Confessions_ The apothecary with his bottles provides a chart of the scene of the boy-and-girl adventures; the professional gravities of the parson put an edge on the memory of the dear indiscretions; ”summer's distillation,” to borroord from Shakespeare, makes faint the odour of the bottle labelled ”Ether”; the mummy wheat froreen pennons _Youth and Art_ es out of the history of the encounters of prudence and passion; youth and er, prefer the prudence of worldly success to the infinite prudence of love; and they have their reward--that success in life which is failure Like the tedious brief scene of young Pyraical ically mirthful is _Dis Aliter Visum_, a variation on the sa Boheed, and lamed, but sure of the fortieth chair in the Acade beauty, who adds to her other attractions a vague, uninstructed yearning for culture and entirely substantial possessions in the three-per-cents But theoverwise, the wisdos of the heart In _Too Late_ Browning attempts to render a mood of passionate despair;--love and the hopes of love are defeated by a woe, and, last, her death; it reads, more than any other poehts” There is a fixity of grief which is ed in ice occupy a lower circle in the region of sorrow than those which are driven before the gale _The Worst of it_--another poem of the failures of love--reverses the conventional attitude of the wronged husband; he ought, according to all recognised authorities of draainst his faithless wife, and coh vainly, to transfer every stain and shauish is all on her behalf, or if on his own chiefly because he cannot restore her purity or save her froainst herself It is a poereat intensity Browning in general isolates a single moment or hts and shadows, as a living microcosm; often it is a moment of crisis, a moment of culmination For once in _James Lee's Wife_ (named in the first edition by a stroke of perversity _James Lee_), he represents in a sequence of lyrics a sequence of ular success The season of the year is autuolden wheatfields, but on a barren and rocky sea-coast; the processes of the declining year, froe to bareness everywhere, accompany and accord with those of the decline of hope in the wife's heart for any return of her love Her offence is that she has loved too well; that she has laid upon her husband too great a load of devotion; hostility ht be met and vanquished; but how can she deal with a heart which love itself only petrifies? It should be a warning to critics who translate dra, who had known so perfect a success in the one love of his life, should constantly present in work of i a little below the surface we see that he could not write directly, he could not speak effusively, of the joy that he had known But in all these poems he thinks of love as a supres which lie beyond it; as a test of character, and even as a pledge of perpetual advance in the life of the spirit
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 84: Letter to Story in Henry James's ”WW Story,” vol ii p
91 and p 97]
[Footnote 85: H James's ”WW Story,” vol ii p 100]
[Footnote 86: ”Rossetti Papers,” p 302]
[Footnote 87: In 1863 Browning gave ti his friend Story's _Roba di Roain ”braved the awful Biarritz” and stayed at Ca letter from Cambo, undated as to time, is printed in Henry James's ”WW
Story,” vol ii pp 153-156 The year--1864-- it with a letter addressed to FT Palgrave, given in Palgrave's Life, the date of this letter being Oct 19, 1864 Browning in the letter to Story speaks of ”the last two years in the dear rough Ste-Marie”]
[Footnote 89: Was the poem _Gold Hair_? If three stanzas were added to the first draft before the poem appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_ the number of lines would have been 120 Stanzas 21, 22 and 23 were added in the _Dramatis Personae_ version]
[Footnote 90: _Aristophanes' Apology_ (spoken of Euripides)]
[Footnote 91: Coue: Third Speaker_ the lines from _A Death in the Desert_:
Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death, Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread, As though a star should open out, all sides, Grow the world on you, as it is my world
[Footnote 92: State's relations to Christianity will be found on p 319 and p 373 of her Life of Browning She regarded ”La Saisiaz” as conclusive proof of his ”heterodox attitude” Robert Buchanan, in the Epistle dedicatory to ”The Outcast,” alleges that he questioned Browning as to whether he were a Christian, and that Browning ”thundered No!” The statement embodied in 's own See on _Ferishtah's Fancies_ in chapter xvi]
Chapter XII
The Ring and the Book
The publication of _Dra popularity; a second edition, in which some improvements were effected, was called for in 1864, the year of its first publication
”Alle But he was resolved to consult his own taste, to take his oay, and let popularity delay or hasten as it would--”pleasingso, and thereby, I hope, pleasing God” His life had ordered itself as see the months in which the tide flows and sparkles; then summer and autumn quietude in some retreat upon the French coast The years passed in such a unifor each of these, that they ain at Sainte-Marie, and the weather was golden; but he noticed with regret that the old church at pornic, where the beautiful white girl of his poeive space in front of a new and smart erection of brick and stucco His Florence, as he learnt, was also altering, and he lae Every detail of the Italian days lived in his round ivy on a certain old wall; the fig tree behind the Siena villa, under which his ould sit and read, and ”poor old Landor's oak” ”I never hear of any one going to Florence,” he wrote in 1870, ”butsuh the streets and between the old stone-walls--unseen co overwhelmed by recollection: ”Oh, me! to find myself some late sunshi+ny Sunday afternoon, with ate, ten minutes _home_!' I think I should fairly end it all on the spot”[93]