English Literature
1698. He intends to mix a poet's fancy with the crude facts, and create a
beautiful and artistic work.
The result of Browning's purpose is a series of monologues, in which the
same story is retold nine different times by the different actors in the
drama. The count, the young wife, the suspected priest, the lawyers, the
Pope who presides at the trial,--each tells the story, and each
unconsciously reveals the depths of his own nature in the recital. The most
interesting of the characters are Guido, the husband, who changes from bold
defiance to abject fear; Caponsacchi, the young priest, who aids the wife
in her flight from her brutal husband, and is unjustly accused of false
motives; Pompilia, the young wife, one of the noblest characters in
literature, fit in all respects to rank with Shakespeare's great heroines;
and the Pope, a splendid figure, the strongest of all Browning's masculine
characters. When we have read the story, as told by these four different
actors, we have the best of the poet's work, and of the most original poem
in our language.
BROWNING'S PLACE AND MESSAGE. Browning's place in our literature will be
better appreciated by comparison with his friend Tennyson, whom we have
just studied. In one respect, at least, these poets are in perfect accord.
Each finds in love the supreme purpose and meaning of life. In other
respects, especially in their methods of approaching the truth, the two men
are the exact opposites. Tennyson is first the artist and then the teacher;
but with Browning the message is always the important thing, and he is
careless, too careless, of the form in which it is expressed. Again,
Tennyson is under the influence of the romantic revival, and chooses his
subjects daintily; but "all's fish" that comes to Browning's net. He takes
comely and ugly subjects with equal pleasure, and aims to show that truth
lies hidden in both the evil and the good. This contrast is all the more
striking when we remember that Browning's essentially scientific attitude
was taken by a man who refused to study science. Tennyson, whose work is
always artistic, never studied art, but was devoted to the sciences; while
Browning, whose work is seldom artistic in form, thought that art was the
most suitable subject for a man's study.
The two poets differ even more widely in their respective messages.
Tennyson's message reflects the growing order of the age, and is summed up
in the word "law." in his view, the individual will must be suppressed; the
self must always be subordinate. His resignation is at times almost
Oriental in its fatalism, and occasionally it suggests Schopenhauer in its
mixture of fate and pessimism. Browning's message, on the other hand, is
the triumph of the individual will over all obstacles; the self is not
subordinate but supreme. There is nothing Oriental, nothing doubtful,
nothing pessimistic in the whole range of his poetry. His is the voice of
the Anglo-Saxon, standing up in the face of all obstacles and saying, "I
can and I will." He is, therefore, far more radically English than is
Tennyson; and it may be for this reason that he is the more studied, and
that, while youth delights in Tennyson, manhood is better satisfied with
Browning. Because of his invincible will and optimism, Browning is at
present regarded as the poet who has spoken the strongest word of faith to
an age of doubt. His energy, his cheerful courage, his faith in life and in
the development that awaits us beyond the portals of death, are like a
bugle-call to good living. This sums up his present influence upon the
minds of those who have learned to appreciate him. Of the future we can
only say that, both at home and abroad, he seems to be gaining steadily in
appreciation as the years go by.
MINOR POETS OF THE VISTORIAN AGE
ELIZABETH BARRETT. Among the minor poets of the past century Elizabeth
Barrett (Mrs. Browning) occupies perhaps the highest place in popular
favor. She was born at Coxhoe Hall, near Durham, in 1806; but her childhood
and early youth were spent in Herefordshire, among the Malvern Hills made
famous by _Piers Plowman_. In 1835 the Barrett family moved to London,
where Elizabeth gained a literary reputation by the publication of _The
Seraphim and Other Poems_ (1838). Then illness and the shock caused by the
tragic death of her brother, in 1840, placed her frail life in danger, and
for six years she was confined to her own room. The innate strength and
beauty of her spirit here showed itself strongly in her daily study, her
poetry, and especially in her interest in the social problems which sooner
or later occupied all the Victorian writers. "My mind to me a kingdom is"
might well have been written over the door of the room where this delicate
invalid worked and suffered in loneliness and in silence.
In 1844 Miss Barrett published her _Poems_, which, though somewhat
impulsive and overwrought, met with remarkable public favor. Such poems as
"The Cry of the Children," which voices the protest of humanity against
child labor, appealed tremendously to the readers of the age, and this
young woman's fame as a poet temporarily overshadowed that of Tennyson and
Browning. Indeed, as late as 1850, when Wordsworth died, she was seriously
considered for the position of poet laureate, which was finally given to
Tennyson. A reference to Browning, in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," is
supposed to have first led the poet to write to Miss Barrett in 1845. Soon
afterwards he visited the invalid; they fell in love almost at first sight,
and the following year, against the wishes of her father,--who was
evidently a selfish old tyrant,--Browning carried her off and married her.
The exquisite romance of their love is reflected in Mrs. Browning's
_Sonnets from the Portuguese_ (1850). This is a noble and inspiring book of
love poems; and Stedman regards the opening sonnet, "I thought once how
Theocritus had sung," as equal to any in our language.
For fifteen years the Brownings lived an ideally happy life at Pisa, and at
Casa Guidi, Florence, sharing the same poetical ambitions. And love was the
greatest thing in the world,--
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Mrs. Browning entered with whole-souled enthusiasm into the aspirations of
Italy in its struggle against the tyranny of Austria; and her _Casa Guidi
Windows_ (1851) is a combination of poetry and politics, both, it must be
confessed, a little too emotional. In 1856 she published _Aurora Leigh_, a
novel in verse, having for its hero a young social reformer, and for its
heroine a young woman, poetical and enthusiastic, who strongly suggests
Elizabeth Barrett herself. It emphasizes in verse precisely the same moral
and social ideals which Dickens and George Eliot were proclaiming in all
their novels. Her last two volumes were _Poems before Congress_ (1860), and
_Last Poems_, published after her death. She died suddenly in 1861 and was
buried in Florence. Browning's famous line, "O lyric love, half angel and
half bird," may well apply to her frail life and aerial spirit.
ROSSETTI. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), the son of an exiled Italian
painter and scholar, was distinguished both as a painter and as a poet. He
was a leader in the Pre-Raphaelite movement[238] and published in the first
numbers of _The Germ_ his "Hand and Soul," a delicate prose study, and his
famous "The Blessed Damozel," beginning,
The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
These two early works, especially "The Blessed Damozel," with its
simplicity and exquisite spiritual quality, are characteristic of the
ideals of the Pre-Raphaelites.
In 1860, after a long engagement, Rossetti married Elizabeth Siddal, a
delicate, beautiful English girl, whom he has immortalized both in his
pictures and in his poetry. She died two years later, and Rossetti never
entirely recovered from the shock. At her burial he placed in her coffin
the manuscripts of all his unpublished poems, and only at the persistent
demands of his friends did he allow them to be exhumed and printed in 1870.
The publication of this volume of love poems created a sensation in
literary circles, and Rossetti was hailed as one of the greatest of living
poets. In 1881 he published his _Ballads and Sonnets_, a remarkable volume
containing, among other poems, "The Confession," modeled after Browning;
"The Ballad of Sister Helen," founded on a mediæval superstition; "The
King's Tragedy," a masterpiece of dramatic narrative; and "The House of
Life," a collection of one hundred and one sonnets reflecting the poet's
love and loss. This last collection deserves to rank with Mrs. Browning's
_Sonnets from the Portuguese_ and with Shakespeare's _Sonnets_, as one of
the three great cycles of love poems in our language. It has been well said
that both Rossetti and Morris paint pictures as well in their poems as on
their canvases, and this pictorial quality of their verse is its chief
characteristic.
MORRIS. William Morris (1834-1896) is a most interesting combination of
literary man and artist. In the latter capacity, as architect, designer,
and manufacturer of furniture, carpets, and wall paper, and as founder of
the Kelmscott Press for artistic printing and bookbinding, he has laid us
all under an immense debt of gratitude. From boyhood he had steeped himself
in the legends and ideals of the Middle Ages, and his best literary work is
wholly mediæval in spirit. _The Earthly Paradise_ (1868-1870) is generally
regarded as his masterpiece. This delightful collection of stories in verse
tells of a roving band of Vikings, who are wrecked on the fabled island of
Atlantis, and who discover there a superior race of men having the
characteristics of ideal Greeks. The Vikings remain for a year, telling
stories of their own Northland, and listening to the classic and Oriental
tales of their hosts. Morris's interest in Icelandic literature is further
shown by his _Sigurd the Volsung_, an epic founded upon one of the old
sagas, and by his prose romances, _The House of the Wolfings, The Story of
the Glittering Plain_, and _The Roots of the Mountains_. Later in life he
became deeply interested in socialism, and two other romances, _The Dream
of John Ball_ and _News from Nowhere_, are interesting as modern attempts
at depicting an ideal society governed by the principles of More's
_Utopia_.
SWINBURNE. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) is, chronologically, the
last of the Victorian poets. As an artist in technique--having perfect
command of all old English verse forms and a remarkable faculty for
inventing new--he seems at the present time to rank among the best in our
literature. Indeed, as Stedman says, "before his advent we did not realize
the full scope of English verse." This refers to the melodious and
constantly changing form rather than to the content of Swinburne's poetry.
At the death of Tennyson, in 1892, he was undoubtedly the greatest living