Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning. Robert Browning

His sister in commenting on this period said, "The fact was, poor boy, he had outgrown his social surroundings. They were absolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he chafed under them." Furthermore, the youth, before he had found his real work as a poet, was restless, irritable, and opinionated; and an ever-present cause of friction was the fact that there were few subjects of taste on which he and his father did not disagree. Their poetic tastes were especially at variance. The father counted Pope supreme in poetry, and it was many years before he could take pleasure in the form in which his son's genius expressed itself. All the more noteworthy, then, is the generosity with which Mr. Browning looked after his son's interests through the unprofitable early years of his poetic career, a generosity never lost sight of by the son. Mr. Sharp in his Life of Browning records some words uttered by Mr. Browning a week or two before his death, which show how permanent was his sense of indebtedness to his father. "It would have been quite unpardonable in my case," he said, "not to have done my best. My dear father put me in a condition most favorable for the best work I was capable of. When I think of the many authors who have had to fight their way through all sorts of difficulties, I have no reason to be proud of my achievements.... He secured for me all the care and comfort that a literary man needs to do good work. It would have been shameful if I had not done my best to realize his expectations of me."

      After it was determined that Robert should "commence poet," he and his father came to the conclusion that a university training had many elements foreign to the aim the youth had set before him, and that a richer and more directly available preparation could be gained from "sedulous cultivation of the powers of his mind" at home, and from "seeing life in the best sense" at home and abroad. Mrs. Orr tells us that the first qualifying step of the zealous young poet was to read and digest the whole of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.

      Browning's first published poem, Pauline, appeared anonymously in January, 1833, when he was twenty years old. This poem is of especial autobiographical interest. Its enthusiastic praise of Shelley recalls his early devotion to that poet, and in many scattered passages we find references to his own personality or experiences. The following lines show with what intensity he recreated the lives and scenes in the books he read:

      And I myself went with the tale—a god

       Wandering after beauty, or a giant

       Standing vast in the sunset—an old hunter

       Talking with gods, or a high-crested chief

       Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.

       I tell you, naught has ever been so clear

       As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives:

       I had not seen a work of lofty art,

       Nor woman's beauty, nor sweet nature's face,

       Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those

       On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea,

       The deep groves and white temples and wet caves;

       And nothing ever will surprise me now—

       Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,

       Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair.

      There is true and powerful self-analysis in the lines beginning:

      I am made up of an intensest life;

and the invocation in lines 811-854 reveals the passionately religious nature of the young poet. In The Early Writings of Robert Browning[1] Mr. Gosse gives an account of the impression made by this poem upon men so diverse as the Rev. William Johnson Fox, John Stuart Mill, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to all of whom, in spite of its crudities and very evident immaturity, it seemed a production of exceptional promise.

      After an interval of two years Browning published, this time under his own name, a second long poem. The subject, Paracelsus, had been suggested by the friend, Amédeé de Ripert-Monclar, to whom the poem is dedicated. In pursuance of his purposed rehabilitation of a vanished age Browning made extensive researches in the British Museum into the history of Paracelsus, the great leader in sixteenth century medical science; but in the poem the facts are subordinated to a minute analysis of the spiritual history of Paracelsus. The poem was too abstruse in subject and style to bring Browning popularity, but his genius was recognized by important critics, and, though he was but twenty-three, he was admitted into the foremost literary circles of London. One of his most distinguished new friends was Mr. Macready, the great actor. It was at his house that Browning first met Mr. Forster, who had already written favorable critiques of Paracelsus, one for The Examiner and one for The New Monthly Magazine. Other literary associates of this period were Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Sergeant Talfourd, Dickens, and Walter Savage Landor. There were not infrequent dinners and suppers to which the young poet was welcomed. He is described as being at this period singularly handsome. "He looks and acts," said Mr. Macready, "more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw." He had sculpturesque masses of dark wavy hair, a skin like delicate ivory, deep-set, expressive eyes, and a sensitive mouth. He was slender, graceful, and most attractive in manner, and he was something of a dandy in his attention to dress. He is said to have made an especially good impression on one occasion when the circumstances must have been as trying as they were exhilarating. In May, 1836, a group of poets had assembled at Mr. Talfourd's to celebrate Macready's successful production of Talfourd's Ion. Browning sat opposite Macready, who was between Wordsworth and Landor. When Talfourd proposed a toast, "The Poets of England," he spoke in complimentary terms of Wordsworth and Landor, but called for a response from "the youngest of the Poets of England, the author of Paracelsus." Landor raised his cup to the young man, and Wordsworth shook hands with him across the table, saying, "I am proud to know you, Mr. Browning."

Browning's third literary venture was a tragedy, Strafford, dedicated to Macready, at whose request it was written. The drama presents the impeachment, condemnation, and execution of the Earl of Strafford, a statesman who, according to the play, loved the unworthy King Charles the First and sacrificed everything, even to life itself, in his blind loyalty to a master who treacherously deserted him in the hour of need. It was a topic to which Browning had already given much thought, for he had the preceding year completed, from materials supplied by Mr. John Forster, a Life of Strafford begun by Forster for Lardner's Eminent British Statesmen.[2] The question of the historic truthfulness of the drama is discussed by the historian Gardiner in the Introduction to Miss Emily H. Hickey's edition of Strafford. He shows that the play is in its details and "even in the very roots of the situation" untrue to fact, and yet he maintains that in the chief characters there is essential truth of conception. "Every time that I read the play," says Gardiner, "I feel more certain that Browning has seized the real Strafford ... Charles, too, with his faults, perhaps exaggerated, is nevertheless the real Charles." The play was produced at Covent Garden Theater in May, 1837, with Macready as Strafford and Miss Helen Faucit as Lady Carlisle, and was successful in spite of poor scenery and costuming and poor acting in some of the parts. But owing to the financial condition of the theater and the consequent withdrawal of one of the important actors after the fifth night, the play had but a brief run. It was presented again in 1886 under the auspices of the Browning Society, and its power as an acting play "surprised and impressed" the audience.

      Before the composition of Strafford Browning had begun a long poem, Sordello, which he completed after his first visit to Italy in 1838, and published in 1840. No one of his poems is more difficult to read, and many are the stories told of the dismay occasioned by its various perplexities. The effect of this poem on Browning's fame was disastrous. In fact, after Sordello there began a period, twenty years long, of almost complete indifference in England to Browning's work. The enthusiasm over the promise of his early poems died quite away. Late in life Mr. Browning commented on this period of his literary career as a time of "prolonged desolateness." Yet the years 1841-1846 are the years in which he attained his poetic maturity, and years in which he did some of his best work. During this period he brought out the series somewhat fancifully called Bells and Pomegranates. The phrase