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SEERS AND SINGERS
SEERS AND SING-
ERS : A STUDY OF
FIVE ENGLISH POETS
By ARTHUR D. INNES
L
A. D. INNES & CO.
31 AND 32 BEDFORD STREET
LONDON
Į
1893
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press.
"We come then to that great concourse of the Dead,
not merely to know from them what is true, but
chiefly to feel with them what is just.'
RUSKIN.
It is a
'All inmost things, we may say, are melodious;
naturally utter themselves in song.
man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him
a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically;
the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you
can only reach it."
CARLYLE.
-
3
To E. F. H.
BECAUSE I knew you, when I most
Had need of light, so light was given,
And through the gathered cloud-rack riven
The moon broke, and the starry host;
Because no greatest gift I brought
Were answer for a gift so great,
Nor is it mine to compensate
The grace you gave and knew it not—
This gift, so slight, I pray you take;
Seeing it pleased me just to show
Some smallest hint of all I owe,
Accept it for the giving's sake.
A. D. I.
PREFACE

PREFACE, like 'grace
before meat,' is, ac-
cording to some views,
better dispensed with
altogether, and should
in any case be as brief
as possible: but the present volume calls
for a short explanation.
The papers of which it is composed
appeared in the Monthly Packet. The
first was written without any idea of
a continuous series; but the marks of
welcome it received-as unexpected as
they were pleasant-led to other papers
xi
PREFACE
following, more or less indefinitely con-
nected, and finally to a regular series.
To give the whole something of the
unity of a book, some alteration and
rearrangement has been necessary, and
I am aware that the scrappiness and
the separateness involved in the man-
ner of their original production must
still to no small extent attach to them ;
and for this I would crave the con-
sideration of my readers.
The papers were written while Tenny-
son was still living; and I have thought
it best to leave the references to him as
they originally stood.
ARTHUR D. INNES.
xii
1
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. CHARACTERISTICS
II. TENNYSON IN PARTICULAR .
III. BROWNING IN PARTICULAR .
IV. OUT-OF-DOORS
V. THE RING AND THE BOOK
PAGE
I
26
50
75
99
VI, DRAMATIC POEMS
125
VII. THE POETS' LOVERS
152
VIII. RETROSPECTION
•
174
IX. IDEAS AND IDEALS
199
xiii
SEERS AND SINGERS
I
CHARACTERISTICS

Do not propose, in this
volume, to take my
readers far afield, to
range over many lands
and many centuries,
to propound any new
and startling theories,
or to introduce any hitherto unknown
poets. But there is a certain book-
shelf reasonably well within reach of
my hand when my feet are
on the
fender; and when there are books on
such a shelf they are apt to be read
with comparative frequency. Some of
the volumes get changed from time
to time, but others are pretty per-
manent; and among the latter are
A
I
SEERS AND SINGERS
CHARAC- included the works of Wordsworth,
TERISTICS Browning, and Tennyson.
Much has been said, and sometimes
superlatively well said, about them all.
But to one who loves the poets, it is
generally pleasant to talk of them with
another who shares, or may be led to
share, his love: and therefore I hope
some will be found to take pleasure in
this book, which aims after all at being
a sort of one-sided conversation.
It so happens, moreover, that by
taking these three poets together, the
task of getting at what I should like to
say about them is rendered compara-
tively easy. They were contemporaries,
inasmuch as both the younger poets
had produced much of their most char-
acteristic work before Wordsworth died.
They were alike in this, that each had a
strong religious element in his view of
life. If a fourth name were added-
that of Shelley-it is probable that
most readers of poetry would say that
for them one or other of the four has
been the most important poetic influ-
2
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
ence, since Milton at any rate. But CHARAC-
Shelley occupies a position so unlike TERISTICS
the others, that to include him in
what might perhaps be best described
as a study in comparative criticism
would tend rather to confusion than
to clearness.
:
Two others, however, there are who
will help materially to illustrate what has
to be said about these three,-Matthew
Arnold and Elizabeth Browning the
former, because he was at once among
the most discriminating and the most
enthusiastic of Wordsworth's disciples;
the latter, for an equally obvious reason.
There are no doubt three or four other
names which might be entitled to equal
consideration if we were about to enter
on a general study of Victorian poetry;
but these five suit the precise purpose I
have in view, which after all is not a
scientific inquiry into anything at all,
but mere leisurely discussion about a
group of poets who are in various ways
associated in my own mind.
I may as well begin, therefore, by
3
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC humbly acknowledging that no one need
TERISTICS look for scientific criticism from me,
because they will only find personal
impressions. And that must be my
excuse if the impertinent third vowel
seems to crop up with undue frequency.
Personal impressions have no business.
to be put forward with the dogmatic.
assertiveness of impersonal statements.
Further, I had better apologise at once
for any digressions I may make from
the nominal subjects of the following
chapters—they are merely labelled for
the sake of general convenience. It
was once my privilege to be a member
of a society which had but one rule-
'Discussions may be held on any point,
and at any distance from that point.'
And that rule will be strictly observed
in these pages.
If any further justification were needed
for the selection of these particular poets,
a certain essay of the late Mr. Bagehot's
would supply it. Its subject is pure,
ornate, and grotesque poetry, as exem-
plified by Wordsworth, Tennyson, and
4
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TERISTICS
Browning. The essay in question is CHARAC-
a very interesting one-Mr. Bagehot's
criticisms were always interesting, and
delightfully shrewd. Still, it now and
then befell that he was seized by the
demon of paradox, and took it into his
head to defend a thesis just for the fun
of the thing by means of the most un-
expected illustrations; which occasion-
ally had a misleading effect. Here, the
main point of his paper lay in a classi-
fication of poetry as pure: poetry, that
is, of which the subject is such that it
can be simply treated, and so treated
most effectively; ornate: such that
extraneous ornamentation is required
to render it pleasing; and grotesque:
such that the abnormal nature of the
subject makes abnormal
abnormal treatment
necessary.
But there is an obiter dictum in the
course of the essay which suggests
inquiry. Mr. Bagehot observes that
the people who have produced most of
the literature worth having-the people
whom we have to thank for the best
5
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC- books-were not the people who thought
TERISTICS much of books. If that means only that
something besides books is needed, it is
true enough. A recluse can hardly be
a dramatist; you cannot understand or
depict character unless you mix freely
with living human beings; and no one
can write much about nature without
being a good deal in the open air.
Living work does not smell of musty
folios. But most great writers have
been great, not to say voracious, readers,
and the evidence thereof is patent in
their works. The impress of much
reading is on the work of four at any
rate of these five. Robert Browning's
erudition is palpable, and to many
persons is a positive stumbling-block,
because he would take for granted that
his readers were erudite likewise. Ac-
cording to Mr. Churton Collins, the
Laureate had read and assimilated
nearly everything that does not fall
under Elia's category of books that are
not books-and a good deal of that
into the bargain. Mrs. Browning could
6
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TERISTICS
never have struck out those epigram- CHARAC-
matic descriptions of poets ancient and
modern, without having a deeper sym-
pathy with them than could be attained
by a merely superficial acquaintance.
As for Matthew Arnold, he absorbed
literature as necessarily as did Milton
or Ben Jonson. He read so much that
the critic dominated the poet, and he
suppressed 'Empedocles upon Etna'
because he had evolved a theory of
poetry which seemed to him to exclude
that work from claiming the title.
Wordsworth, indeed, conveys no im-
pression of erudition; but no member
of the Lake School' could have been
otherwise than literary, for the society
of Coleridge was in itself equivalent to
the possession of an extensive library
in which the books were not kept on
the shelves.
(
But this is not the main point of
Mr. Bagehot's essay, which is the com-
parison of three distinct poetic methods
as exemplified by Wordsworth, Tenny-
son, and Browning; more particularly
1
J
7
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC- in connection with the then recently
TERISTICS
published volumes containing respec-
tively 'Enoch Arden' and 'Caliban upon
Setebos.' Now, if Mr. Bagehot had
confined his attention to illustrating his
theories of art by those particular
poems, there would have been nothing
to complain of. The theories are very
good theories, and the poems illustrate
them admirably. But he chose to take
these poems as generally typical of the
work of their authors, and to draw in
consequence general conclusions about
them of a most misleading character;
more particularly misleading about
Browning, because, whereas at that
time most people read Tennyson for
themselves, very few read Browning;
and practically people were put off read-
ing him, and seeing for themselves that
Mr. Bagehot's remarks, as a general
criticism, were very unfair. For the
demon of paradox got hold of the
writer, and in discussing 'Dramatis Per-
sonæ' he blandly ignored 'Rabbi Ben
Ezra' and 'Abt Vogler'-not to men-
8
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TERISTICS
tion 'A Death in the Desert'-because CHARAC-
'Caliban upon Setebos' happened to
fit into his thesis, and the others didn't.
And the result is the odd conclusion
that Browning's masterpiece is the
'Pied Piper.'
The truth is you can generally patch a
label on to any one with a little artifice.
If you take out of Wordsworth 'She
was a phantom of delight,' or 'She dwelt
among the untrodden ways,' you can see
easily enough that 'pure' art chooses a
subject of such inherent beauty that the
very simplest expression is sure to be
the best. But turn to Enoch Arden on
his island:
'The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coiled around the stately stems, and ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw.'
No doubt he did, but you may be
tolerably sure that he didn't think about
9
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC- them. Speaking from the point of view
TERISTICS of Enoch, they are redundant. Ornate
art is art which dwells on redundant
gorgeous accessories, because its actual
subject is insufficient.
Next if you bring on for comparison,
'Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos,
Thinketh he dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon,'
you can get a tolerably vivid conception
of the incongruous deliberately chosen
as a subject; whereof the result must
be Grotesque treatment. But what
becomes of your classification if you
bring on 'Crossing the Bar,' 'Evelyn
Hope,' 'Peter Bell,' as your specimens ?
It is quite true that Browning is one of
the very few people who could venture
on the Grotesque without becoming
foolish; that Tennyson's mastery of the
Ornate enables him to render an inade-
quate subject interesting; that Words-
worth's finer poetry is all in the Pure
form, because when his subject is in-
adequate to the pure form, his verse
ceases to be poetry altogether. But
ΙΟ
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TERISTICS
then Browning's poetry in the main, and CHARAC-
Tennyson's in great part, are dramatic;
and unless Mr. Bagehot's terms are to
be given a very extended-and diluted
-significance, it seems to me that a
vast amount of dramatic work does not
properly fall under any of his categories,
which apply only to descriptive or nar-
rative poems.
Perhaps we shall get at a more fruit-
ful method of contrast in this way.
The prevailing characteristic of Words-
worth, which he shares with Matthew
Arnold, is a lofty serenity. That of
Robert Browning is intense energy;
that of his wife intense sensibility (not
using the term in its cant sense). These
are moral characteristics. But what
impresses one most in Tennyson is
Harmony, which is only in part moral.
Wordsworth at his dullest, Arnold at
his coldest, retain their serenity; at his
queerest, Browning is overflowing with
vitality at his weakest, Tennyson is
harmonious. I do not refer only to the
musical sound of Tennyson's verse; I
II
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TERISTICS
CHARAC- mean rather an intellectual quality of
which that is the expression; a singu-
larly fine sense of proportion, of the
harmonious combination of ideas as
well as sounds.
These characteristics run through the
whole of their work, though of course
they are not mutually exclusive, so that
we have from Wordsworth :
'Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee-she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men.
Oh, raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.'
From Tennyson's 'Ulysses':
'Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.'
12
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
From Browning's 'Abt Vogler':
'Therefore, to whom turn I, but to Thee, the in-
effable Name?
Builder and Maker Thou of houses not made with
hands;
What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever
the same?
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy
power expands?
There shall never be one lost good; what was shall
live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying
sound:
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so
much good more;
On the earth, the broken arcs; in the Heaven, a
perfect round.'
There is serenity, harmony, vigour, in
each of these; but in each the poet's
own generally characteristic quality on
the whole prevails.
In each the predominance of his
special characteristic has its distinct and
emphatic effect on the form which is con-
genial. Wordsworth and Arnold are
rarely successful except in metres which
naturally lend themselves to a stately
movement. Whenever the latter tries
CHARAC-
TERISTICS
ג'
13
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC-
TERISTICS
a variation, even though a fine result
may be obtained, it strikes one as an
experimental, not a natural, mode of
expression:
'Yes, we arraign her! but she,
The weary Titan, with deaf
Ears, and labour-dimm'd eyes,
Regarding neither to right
Nor left, goes passively by,
Staggering on to her goal.'
One wants him to go back to 'Thyrsis.'
But in Tennyson, with the infinite variety
of his moods, harmony always con-
quers, and the form is always the per-
fect expression of the particular mood.
Only you sometimes feel a lurking sus-
picion that the mood was modified to
fit the expression, instead of the ex-
pression to fit the mood. But with the
Brownings, both of them, the intense
feeling demands prompt expression, and
if the spontaneous form of it happens to
be harsh or jingly, harsh and jingly it
must remain. The vital force is there;
it won't stand checking. So the form
adopted is the one that came handy, and
14
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
·
TERISTICS
very curious it is now and then in con- CHARAC-
sequence. And you get 'Caliban upon
Setebos' cheek by jowl with Abt
Vogler' and 'a Toccata'; and the jingle
of 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship' beside
the Portuguese Sonnets. I will brave
the inevitable indignation of some critics
by affirming that in this matter Mrs.
Browning is more deserving of reproach
than her husband; because she gave
way to jingle when her subject de-
manded dignity; whereas he is rarely
really jagged, unless when in the satiri-
cal vein, save now and then when he
breaks into phrases which are too forc-
ible to be graceful. It is true that she
never does quite so much violence to
one's sense of metrical harmony as he
does-say in 'Pacchiarotto'; but then
there is generally a direct purpose to be
served by his roughnesses, while with
her the versification frequently spoils
the desired effect.
Wordsworth and Arnold are in the
main reflective; Browning and his wife
in the main dramatic or emotional; so
15
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TERISTICS
He
CHARAC that in general they cannot be brought
into direct comparison. The range of
Tennyson's method is more versatile,
so that his work may constantly be
compared with that of some one of the
others. But if you compare with Words-
worth the pieces which can reasonably
be brought into comparison with him,
Tennyson never quite reaches the same
heights of serene contemplation.
has a sweetness and a tenderness in
'In Memoriam' which you can hardly
match from the elder poet; but the
'Ode to Duty' is a step higher on the
ladder than he has attained to. On
the other hand, when you compare his
dramatic conceptions with Browning's,
the latter never gives you such tender,
graceful figures as Elaine or Enid; but
the Laureate never gives you anything
approaching the concentrated intensity
of, let us say, the speaker in 'A For-
giveness,' not to mention the gallery of
portraits in The Ring and the Book.'
The Laureate's lovers are very vehement,
very much carried away, and they talk
16
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TERISTICS
about it all very beautifully too; but CHARAC-
then-they would rather talk about it.
Browning's lovers only talk about it
because the speech is dragged out of
them. Relief may follow, but the utter-
ance is agony.
It suggests Lancelot
bidding Lavaine to wrench the spear-
head out of his wound; every word
they utter has its pang. With Tenny-
son's, every word they utter brings
immediate relief, is balm applied to
the wound. Now, that means that the
emotions and passions of the Laureate's
characters are more superficial; as
indeed are those of the majority of
mankind. Perhaps that is why the
very superficial young gentleman in
'Locksley Hall,' who wore his heart so
very much on his sleeve, and found it
such a comfort to explain that it really
was his heart that he wore there, is
so very popular. Excitement inspires
sympathy so much more readily than
the kind of feeling which so tugs at
your heart-strings, that it takes you all
your time to keep it from snapping
B
17
!
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC- them. When you are wrestling for life,
TERISTICS you can't shout about it. You want
all your breath for the struggle. But it
doesn't move the spectators so much.
Now, I am not instituting a compari-
son in the sense that I am trying to
decide which great man is half an inch
taller than the other. That kind of
sweeping comparison is pretty sure to
be misleading. You cannot rationally
compare matters which have no common
criterion. After you have admitted—
or denied that the art of the painter
appeals to a wider public than that of
the musician, you cannot make any
further comparison, unless by purely
empirical methods, of the artistic uses
of painting and music. No more can
you compare the merits of 'The Excur-
sion,' In Memoriam,' and 'The Ring
and the Book.' Their methods are
different and their ends are different.
You may say that the purpose fulfilled
by one poem is more important than
the purpose fulfilled by the others; you
may discover specific points of compari-
18
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
son; you may be entirely aware that CHARAC-
you personally have benefited much TERISTICS
more by the one than by the others;
but a general comparison is not much
more profitable or rational than would
be one between a sonata of Beethoven
and a statue of Michael Angelo. So
all I mean here is, that while in the
particular quality which we are entitled
to claim of all poets, harmonious utter-
ance, Tennyson at all times attains to
a level of excellence of which Words-
worth and Browning both frequently
fall short, in those particular regions of
artistic effort where a part of his work
comes into direct comparison with the
work of either of the other poets, each
in his own field has excelled him. There
are other regions which, so far as they
are concerned, he has to himself.
But even when no general compari-
sons are possible, there is generally a
certain amount of overlapping; you can
usually find a certain number of indi-
vidual poems by one man which you
can compare with individual poems by
19
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC- another. Mrs. Browning and Words-
TERISTICS worth, as a rule, are much too far apart;
Coleridge is the one member of the early
constellation with whom the poetess has
a sort of kinship; but you can here and
there find special characteristics very well
illustrated by looking at a poem from
each together. Take two pictures of
maidenhood, for instance: from Words-
worth, the well-known lines beginning:
'Three years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown :
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.
Set beside these 'My Kate':
'She was not as pretty as women I know,
And yet all your best made of sunshine and snow
Drop to shade, melt to nought in the untrodden ways,
While she's still remembered on warm and cold days-
My Kate.
'I doubt if she said to you much that could act
As a thought or suggestion; she did not attract
In the sense of the brilliant or wise; I infer
'Twas her thinking of others made you think of her—
My Kate.
20
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
'My dear one! when thou wast alive with the rest,
I held thee the sweetest and loved thee the best :
And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part
As thy smiles used to do for thyself, my sweet Heart-
My Kate?'
Well, there Wordsworth got an ade-
quate subject, and the result is that his
treatment is perfect. You have con-
summate piece of finished, artistic work-
manship. Mrs. Browning's conception
is not less beautiful; some people would
find the portrait they carry away from
her poem in their minds a more de-
lightful one to dwell on than the other.
But it is not a finished piece of artistic
workmanship at all; it jingles. Yet
it is the real thing for all that. Now,
if Wordsworth fails in form, you may
be pretty sure that it is not the real
thing that his matter is inadequate.
Mrs. Browning is pretty sure to fail in
form, whether her matter is adequate
or not.
:
If Mrs. Browning and Wordsworth
are far apart, the gulf between her and
Matthew Arnold is even wider; one
CHARAC-
TERISTICS
21
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TERISTICS
CHARAC- could hardly name two poets who ap-
peal to such distinct classes of readers.
No doubt they are both exceedingly
'literary' in the sense that each had
absorbed a vast amount of literature
which has left very evident marks on
their work. But there resemblance
ceases. For the absorption was in the
one an intellectual process, in the other
mainly emotional; and so it was with
them in most other respects. Nearly
always the woman's emotions domi-
nated her intellect, the man's intellect
dominated his emotions; with the re-
sult that Matthew Arnold most of all
appeals to the academic, the critical
mind, which rejoices in some classic-
ally turned phrase, takes pleasure in
polished and scholarly form, and finds
delight in what is dignified, orderly,
controlled. Such persons distrust im-
pulses; here is a poet who is never
carried away by impulse. Without
impulses, of course, he never could
have been a poet at all, but they are
held carefully in check. But the aca-
22
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TERISTICS
demic order of mind is precisely that CHARAC-
which is irritated by the untrimmed
luxuriance of Mrs. Browning, with its
disturbing effect upon orderly ideas.
For the poetess is emphatically im-
pulsive; as she is moved, so she speaks.
One observes that her favourite among
the Greeks is 'Euripides the human,
with his droppings of warm tears,' the
least classical or 'pure,' as Mr. Bagehot
would have it, of the Athenian drama-
tists. Even when Matthew Arnold
adopts the dramatic form, his passion
is of the statuesque, stately order.
Whereas, even when her theme is most
dignified, Mrs. Browning is apt to be,
not turbid or turgid, but gusty.
Now, it follows from this fact that
sustained harmonies are not to be ex-
pected from the poetess. But she does
now and then give bits of melody, and
melody is very rare in Wordsworth,
Arnold, or Robert Browning. The dis-
tinction is an exceedingly difficult one
to put into words; I doubt if it will
make my meaning much clearer to sub-
23
SEERS AND SINGERS:
CHARAC- stitute 'lilt' for 'melody.' Quotation
TERISTICS
may help us:
'Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.'
There is a music in that which thrills
one; but it is altogether different from
the music of 'Thyrsis,' or Wordsworth's
sonnet to Milton, or the invocation,
'O lyric love, half-angel and half-bird.'
Perhaps if we note that the corruption
of one style turns to jingle, and the
corruption of the other to prose, we shall
feel where the distinction comes in.
I have already remarked that Tenny-
son's most striking characteristic is har-
mony; but when that is applied specifi-
cally to the sound of his verse, it must
be modified by the addition of 'melody.'
There is a peculiar quality about Tenny-
sonian verse; it is not melodious merely
-the music is deeper than mere melody
-but even his blank verse is melodious ;
24
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TERISTICS
insomuch, that we have actual songs in CHARAC-
blank verse (and melody is the soul of
song), such as 'Tears, idle tears.' It
is not, therefore, surprising to find that
Tennyson has produced many songs
among his poems, while the others have
produced many poems, but hardly a
song. In dramatic range and force he
has been surpassed by Browning, in
moral elevation by Wordsworth; but
as a maker of songs he stands, in our
days at least, alone.
25
II
TENNYSON IN PARTICULAR

T would hardly be pos-
sible to name two
poets of equal calibre,
and so nearly contem-
poraneous, who afford
such an effective criti-
cal contrast as the
Laureate and Robert Browning, unless
indeed Wordsworth and Shelley, and
they differ in quite another fashion.
For whereas the two latter start from
views of the universe and its Creator,
which, superficially at least, are directly
opposed, these two poets are fundament-
ally at one. Mainly it is in their artistic
methods, their attitude towards certain
secondary questions, and generally their
26
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
treatment of the problems that present TENNYSON
themselves, that they are contrasted;
and the result, or one result, of this con-
trast is that as there is a Dickens camp
and a Thackeray camp, so there is now
-since Browning has really made his
way to a certain popularity-a Tenny-
son camp and a Browning camp; and
the votaries of either poet think it need-
ful to belittle the other in order the
more to magnify their own favourite;
and commonly give way to the inclina-
tion to turn the very faults of their bard
into merits, by way of proving that the
merits of the other are very little better
than faults. Surely there is a Round
Table of the Immortals, where Shak-
speare is indeed the king approved by
acclamation, but the rest may sit with-
out jars and disputes as to the order of
precedence. Seeing that constitutions
vary, we must all have our favourites;
but to justify ourselves we need not
deny our neighbours the like privilege.
The representatives of the newest
school sometimes shock their elders
IN PAR-
TICULAR
27
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TICULAR
TENNYSON by the criticisms they launch at the
IN PAR- Laureate. Colonel Newcome, in his
day, felt very much disturbed at hear-
ing the young men say that Byron was
no poet, and Tennyson was going to
rank far above him. The whirligig of
time is bringing its revenges; but it isn't
going to stop whirling with our genera-
tion. But perhaps some of the elders.
would be more inclined to recognise
that these things are not due to mere
fin de siècle viciousness if they remem-
bered that there was a time when they
were themselves looked at askance by
their own seniors for their revolutionary
principles. So it has been, so it is now,
and so it will be for ever till Utopia is
finally established. Every generation
thinks that the one which preceded
moved too slow, and the one coming
after it is moving too fast. So I would
suggest that Tennyson is not the less
great because he was in sympathy with
a time that is past; nor the greater
because he is in some respects out of
sympathy with the times to-day; in
28
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
other words, I have to call attention to TENNYSON
certain weaknesses which we are fre- TICULAR
quently bidden to admire, and certain
merits which we are called upon to
contemn.
Perhaps the two 'Locksley Hall'
poems present as good an example as
we can find of the wrong bases for
admiring the Laureate. I suppose that
there is no single poem in which his
marvellous command of the resources
of his metre, his almost magical capa-
city for coining a perfect phrase, show
themselves so prodigally as in 'Locksley
Hall.'
'Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I
went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the
mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver
braid.
Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in
his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden
sands.
29
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TENNYSON
IN PAR-
TICULAR
Love took
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the
chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in
music out of sight.'
For sheer splendour of diction and
glory of sound I do not know many
lines comparable to these. So again,
'In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on
the roof,
conveys the desired sense of unutter-
able dreariness and desolation so com-
pletely, that I feel almost guilty of a
bull in employing the word unutterable.
In short, so far as concerns metrical
technique and mastery of language, the
poem is one which Tennyson has never
surpassed. But when we turn to the
thought the general purport of the
poem-it is astonishing to find how
many people will rate you as a philis-
tine, a worldling, and generally no
better than you should be, if you
venture to hint that the speaker is
a decidedly egotistical and conceited
youth with a capacity for rant, and
a miscellaneous enthusiasm for ideals
30
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
which is strong in proportion to their TENNYSON
vagueness; whose sufferings are chiefly
due, not to the intensity of his devo-
tion to the shallow-hearted damsel, but
to his annoyance at her not having
thought him quite such a hero as he
expected.
But this was a poem of the writer's
youth; it is full of the spirit of youth,
of vehement if somewhat superficial
emotion; its ideals, like those of youth
generally, are vague but gorgeous; and
probably it appeals almost as strongly
to the young people of to-day as to the
young people of half a century back.
It is different with the poem of sixty
years later. This is an expression
chiefly of disillusionment; and in direct
proportion to the joyousness of the
vague youthful dreams is the dreari-
ness of the disgust of old age; while
the speaker remains in his later years
just as egotistical, just as incapable of
appreciating a different point of view,
just as partial and one-sided in his
judgments, as in the early days: and
IN PAR-
TICULAR
31
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TENNYSON just as cock-sure. Dramatically, the
TICULAR new 'Locksley Hall' is the true and
IN PAR-
necessary epilogue to the first poem,
the hero of which would inevitably
come to look upon life in the fashion
of the speaker of sixty years later; but
the one view will serve no better than
the other as a guide in human affairs.
Dramatically, the two poems are as
consistent as possible; as admirable in
their way as the Northern Farmer,' or
Browning's 'Bishop Blougram.' Nor
need we, in the face of another poem
so recent as the Ancient Sage,' feel
called upon to regard this elderly
pessimist as being merely the poet's
mouthpiece, instead of a
a dramatic
study. But we protest against having
the second poem held up to us as
the ripe wisdom of a matured mind
which had laid to heart the words of
Rabbi Ben Ezra-
'
'Young, all lay in dispute. I shall know,
being old.'
So with some others of the Laureate's
32
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
TICULAR
later poems, which are more or less TENNYSON
attacks upon modern doctrines, but are
essentially not adapted as medicine for
people who have been bitten by the
said doctrines. For this reason: the
things said may be all very true; the
errors attacked may be very pernicious;
but if you wish to convert any one from
the error of his ways, you must begin
by getting at his point of view it is
worse than waste of breath to start by
telling him that he thinks what he
doesn't think, wants what he doesn't
want, is satisfied with what doesn't
satisfy him; and then to call him
names. You must recognise the good
in him and let him see that you do so,
before you can persuade him to treat
you in like manner-for if you follow
the other plan, he will straightway
decline to listen to you, and adopt your
own method in attacking you back.
Hence, if these poems are taken as
sermons or treatises, they must be con-
demned as more likely to injure than
to aid the cause which they support:
C
33
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TENNYSON whereas if they are duly recognised as
dramatic utterances their merit is at
IN PAR-
TICULAR
once apparent.
But if there is at times to some of us
a temptation to praise the poet on the
wrong ground, there is no less tempta-
tion from another point of view to make
light of him on the wrong ground. One
finds the very perfection of his work-
manship turned against him. The thing
is so consummately done that one can
hardly believe in the power it implies.
Let us recall a certain Roundabout
Paper of Thackeray's 'Notes of a
Week's Holiday.' The critic stands
before a picture by Rubens, and dis-
courses: 'Now you know the trick,
don't you see how easy it is?
you know the trick, suppose you take a
canvas and see whether you can do it?'
There's the rub. There are dozens of
little people who have learnt the trick
to the extent that you can see well
enough it is Tennyson they are imi-
tating; but they can't do it. I have
quoted already from one of his early
•
Now
34
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
*
poems - here is a verse from one of TENNYSON
the latest:
'To sleep! to sleep! the long bright day is done,
And darkness rises from the fallen sun.
To sleep! To sleep!'
A simple trick-nothing out of the
way about it, is there? But match it
outside of Tennyson if you can.
But if such lines as these stood by
themselves; if it were only here and
there that they could be found; one
might view them as happy accidents.
The thing is that they are everywhere.
You could match them out of half the
stanzas in 'In Memoriam'; you could
match them by writing down his lyrics
miscellaneously as they happened to
come into your head. There is no
English poet, unless it be Milton or
Spenser, who displays so consistent, so
unvarying a control of his verse as the
Laureate; and neither of them ap-
proaches him in the astonishing variety
of the forms of versification he employs.
The worst that can be said is that such ex-
cellence is like his own Maud's features,
IN PAR-
TICULAR
35
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TENNYSON 'faultily faultless'; such perfection is a
IN PAR- little monotonous. There are a good
TICULAR
many people who prefer Lancelot to
Arthur.
Herein is one of the most marked
contrasts between Tennyson and Brown-
ing; for the latter abounds in those
brusque, unpolished methods of speech
which are never to be found in the
former's work. On the other hand,
exquisite as is the Laureate's phraseo-
logy, he never produces the same sense
of tremendous vigour. There is in him
something of over-refinement, over-deli-
cacy; and it seems that this is due to a
difference in their attitude. Browning
is before all things a fighter:
'I was ever a fighter-so, one fight more';
but Tennyson is far more of the dreamer.
If Browning pauses, it is in the spirit of
Rabbi Ben Ezra :
'Ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new';
whereas Tennyson pauses to contem-
plate the past for its own sake.
36
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
TICULAR
Hence it is that Tennyson is supreme TENNYSON
in a field of emotion which Browning
has left untouched; the field of retro-
spection. It is natural and right that
in this he should appeal to the young
less, and to those who are growing old
more, than does his great compeer.
Young men and maidens with their
lives before them-what have they to
do with lamenting for 'the tender grace
of a day that is dead'? They have
got to make a new day with a grace of
its own.
The battle of life is before
them; soldiers all, to forward face.'
But for those who have already borne
the brunt it is different. They, who
have seen the loved friends of their
youth pass before them to the undis-
covered country; to whom the sweet
companionship of early years has be-
come a memory, a dream full of the
sorrow that yet is touched by the dawn-
ing light of the joy which cometh in
the morning these can turn legiti-
mately to ‘In Memoriam' and to lyric
after lyric, to find the noblest expression
37
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TENNYSON of those feelings which in the young
IN PAR-
TICULAR
ought never to be more than a passing
mood, but from their own minds can
seldom be altogether absent.
Yet to souls struggling under the
burden of some overwhelming sorrow-
sorrow under which the heroic attitude
of a Rabbi Ben Ezra seems for a time
to be little better than a mockery-' In
Memoriam' must always appeal intense-
ly by its very tenderness; it is the balm
they need before they are fit for the
stimulant that adds a sting of its own.
I have implied that these poems of
retrospection are not wholly suited for
youthful minds to dwell on. It is good,
no doubt, to turn to them at times; but
though at times their attraction cannot
but be felt intensely, it is nevertheless.
to-day probably comparatively slight
for the young people. The more vigor-
ous minds are too much occupied with
looking forward; the more dreamy have
a tendency to prefer what is more intro-
spective and often more morbid. The
characteristic note of ' In Memoriam'-
1
38
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
TICULAR
the lofty fortitude, the profound, if not TENNYSON
very enthusiastic, faith which tinges its
melancholy and gives the poem an even
higher rank than would be secured to
it by its consummate melodies and the
depth of the feelings it so exquisitely
expresses-is just what makes it un-
satisfactory to latter-day pessimism.
There is a kind of determined despair,
a thirsting after the luxury of woe,
evident in the writings of some minor
authors of the day, which, while Tenny-
son is wholly free from it, is in favour
with a certain cultivated and rather
imaginative order of mind most com-
monly found in highly self-conscious
young people. For them Tennyson is
not a sufficiently vigorous antidote,
while he fails to satisfy their craving
for melancholy. Hence it is that the
whole class of his poems of which 'In
Memoriam' is the chief to a great ex-
tent fail in winning the critical approval
of the younger generation. They are
neither an inspiration to action, nor an
expression of the dismals.'
<
39
SEERS AND SINGERS:
:
TENNYSON
TICULAR
As Tennyson reigns supreme in the
IN PAR- field of these emotions which are not
indeed the most intense, but are among
the most universal and most deeply
rooted of our nature, he is also unsur-
passed as a writer of what we gene-
rally understand by Idylls, those lighter
flights of fancy which deal rather with
tender sentiments than with strong pas-
sions; where a pervading playfulness
keeps at bay any sustained seriousness.
or approach to tragic feeling: whereof
perhaps the perfect type is Shakspeare's
'As You Like It.' The most elaborate
example in Tennyson is his 'Princess';
of the Idylls of the King, 'Gareth and
Lynette' belongs to the same category,
and perhaps 'Geraint and Enid,' but no
other. The names of 'The Brook' and
the 'Gardener's Daughter' will suffice
to show the precise class of work to
which I am referring; poems in which
the larger problem, the eternal mys-
teries of Life and Death, Suffering and
Triumph, have no place; in which we
are fain to forget the cares of this world
40
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
TICULAR
and the deceitfulness of riches, in the TENNYSON
scent of the wild-flowers and the song
of the throstle, the chatter of the brook
and the flicker of woodland sunlight.
They call for no intellectual effort;
they do not send the blood leaping
through your veins-though the poet
can do that now and then when he has
a mind to-but they are full of a de-
lightful restfulness and a delicate har-
mony which are wonderfully soothing,
and render them the choicest company in
hours of weariness, or of rebellion against
the spirit of perpetual introspection.
It is a common complaint to-day
that the songs which we hear in draw-
ing-rooms are the most unmitigated
trash possible. This is so undeniable
that one would scarcely have imagined
that, for sixty years, Tennyson has been
writing songs which south of the Tweed
have hardly been matched since the
spacious days of great Elizabeth'; when
the gift of song was so common that
witness Mr. Bullen's collections
half a hundred anonymous authors
4I
SEERS AND SINGERS:
F
IN PAR-
TICULAR
TENNYSON produced lyrics of which Shakspeare
would have been proud. Is it the com-
posers that are at fault, or is there some
technical flaw in the Laureate's work
that makes his songs difficult to sing?
For he has produced any number of
songs which, judged by a purely literary
standard, are as near perfection as may
be; which you can hardly read without
finding that they are setting themselves
to music in your head. One need not go
back for examples to Break, break, break,'
or the lyrics in the 'Princess.'. To sleep'
has been quoted already; 'Romney's
Remorse' is in the '89 volume :
'Sleep, little blossom, my honey, my bliss!
For I give you this, and I give you this!
And I blind your pretty blue eyes with a kiss!
Sleep!'
I have heard people jeer at 'The
Throstle,' but it appears that folks who
do so may be confidently expected
not to know the difference between a
thrush's note and a skylark's. It has
the very warble of the bird in its
'Here again, here, here, here, happy year.'
:
42
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
TICULAR
In each of these three fields, then- TENNYSON
the Elegy, the Idyll, the Song-Tenny-
son has done work which would place
him among the great masters of his
craft. Gray is commonly reckoned
among our leading poets, mainly on
the strength of a single achievement in
one only of these fields. It has been
said that the 'Elegy' is a greater poem
than In Memoriam,' inasmuch as it
appeals to simpler and more universal
emotions. It would seem reasonable
to reply that, by parity of reasoning,
'Break, break, break' or 'Crossing the
Bar' is a greater poem than Gray's
'Elegy,' and 'Hush-a-bye Baby' greater
than any of them.
If the end of poetry were merely
enjoyment, the exercise of pleasurable
emotions in the sense commonly under-
stood by the phrase, there would be
little more to say. But we do want
something more from our great men:
most of us are hardly inclined to admit
that any one is entitled to a place at
the Round Table of the Immortals
?
43
SEERS AND SINGERS:
1
IN PAR-
TICULAR
TENNYSON unless he can do more than please us:
unless he can in some sort inspire us,
vivify our ideals, ennoble our aspira-
tions: unless the Maker has in him
something also of the Seer. Now, judg-
ment cannot be passed by one genera-
tion for the generations still to come.
The teacher who does not give just
what present conditions have made his
hearers ready to accept, is apt to meet
with hard criticism. The charm of his
verse, the clearness of his language, the
flow of his narrative insure a certain
popularity for Tennyson; they secure
for him an audience who find Browning
insuperable, Matthew Arnold unsympa-
thetic, Wordsworth dreary. But along
with the superficial affectation of moral
limpness which is supposed to be pre-
valent just now, there is a very real,
if sometimes misdirected, energy, both
moral and intellectual: even more
marked, perhaps, among girls than
among their brothers. The tendency
among the cleverer and more vigorous
spirits seems to be to depreciate Tenny-
44
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TICULAR
son on the ground that they find his TENNYSON
ideals inefficient; and for these ideals IN PAR-
we must turn to the 'Idylls of the
King.'
Now, one reason for this feeling be-
comes apparent at the outset. The
whole atmosphere of the Idylls is un-
real to an age which is very much in
touch with hard facts. The Arthurian
age never existed; the knights of the
Round Table are somewhat wanting in
everyday humanity: they are dream
figures, or persons in an allegory.
It
is not that the story is placed in the
past-Chaucer's knight and squire and
parson, and the rest of his pilgrims, have
nothing of this character-but that it is
placed in a mythical past. It is the
machinery of the Idylls which, like that
of Spenser, prevents a certain order of
mind from appreciating them. You re-
quire either more imagination, or too
little of that quality. We may appreciate
the beauty of the lines, but we fail to find
ourselves in sympathy with the charac-
ters; unless it be Guinevere, who almost
45
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TICULAR
TENNYSON alone is greatly human in her passion,
IN PAR- her sin and her repentance. They are too
much of abstractions, and hence much
of their beauty is apt to be lost upon.
us. It is a matter on which no one
can speak with certainty; we can only
give personal impressions for what they
are worth-but is not this effect to
some extent the consequence of merely
passing conditions ?
Perhaps the most remarkable criticism
that has been passed upon King Arthur
is that he is a Bourgeois ideal. It would
be less surprising almost to have him
described as Democratic. If courtesy
and kindliness, self-control and self-
sacrifice, purity and justice, make up
the Bourgeois ideal, then Arthur is
Bourgeois; and to be so described
would be a remarkably high compli-
ment. That there is a coldness about
him, some lack of sympathy, some in-
capacity for understanding the force
of passion, is undeniable; some con-
sciousness that he is called to his
work not by his brotherhood, but by
46
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
his superiority. Yet hear the oath of TENNYSON
his knights:
'I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the king as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their king,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her.'
The 'bourgeois' ideal appears to in-
volve, primarily, self-devotion in aiding
the weak against oppression, and loyalty
to the king; who was none the worse
under the circumstances for not being a
paid elective committee with a caucus.
'For indeed I know
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.'
A man might do worse than take
those lines as a motto. If he lives up
to them, he will leave a fair record.
IN PAR-
TICULAR
47
SEERS AND SINGERS:
TENNYSON And the maiden who wants to inspire
IN PAR- such a passion would need to have a
tolerably high ideal too.
TICULAR
The spirit of these lines runs through
and through the Idylls. The ideal is
not thoroughly satisfying, because one
feels that it starts too much from the
point of view of 'noblesse oblige,' and has
too little personal sympathy in it; we
are conscious of an inclination to regard
our neighbours rather as items than as
people with temptations due to circum-
stances which we don't understand, and
trials which we have never experienced.
It does not indeed follow that, because
the ideal is not altogether sympathetic,
it is not one which we require especially
to bear in mind. We are restless, im-
patient, eager for a goal; while our
ideas of the goal, and the way to it,
are vague. Patience, self-restraint, sub-
ordination, are virtues which can easily
be preached until to our indignant eyes
they assume the aspect of pusillanimity
and slavish conventionality. But they
are virtues all the same. Unduly ex-
48
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
TICULAR
aggerated or pressed upon us as if they TENNYSON
were the highest qualities of our nature,
they are the enemies of progress; but
without them, progress degenerates into
chaos. It is possible to lay too much
stress on mere graces of demeanour, the
'amiable words and courtliness,' which
are always liable to a suspicion of being
worn as a mask: but to-day we are
more apt to underrate than to over-
value them.
The Tennysonian ideal is incomplete,
as belonging to a different set of social
conditions; incomplete for men and
women alike, because the same condi-
tions which affect the masculine ideal
affect the feminine ideal likewise.
the position of women as giving men
their inspiration abides, however much
But
'The old order changeth, yielding place to new.'
And men and women alike may well
adopt the Law of the Round Table,
though their point of view in doing so
may not be the same as that of Arthur
and his knights and maidens.
D
49
3
III
BROWNING IN PARTICULAR

HERE is no poet who
inspires amongst
those who have be-
come fairly intimate
with him a keener,
not to say a more in-
tolerant, enthusiasm
than Robert Browning. His teaching
becomes an essential part of their in-
tellectual and spiritual being, an ever-
present influence in their daily lives.
But it is rather to those who have not
yet found their way to him that I seek
to appeal, and possibly to render some
assistance.
Let me then endeavour to guard
against certain possible misunderstand-
50
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
We
TICULAR
ings. In the first place, what was said BROWNING
about Tennyson a few pages back IN PAR-
applies with no less force to Browning:
to pass judgment on one who has so
lately gone from among us, one whose
work, even when written fifty years
back, belongs in effect to our own gene-
ration, is practically impossible.
know what the poet is to us; we cannot
tell what he will be to the generation
that will be growing up fifty years.
hence. Each generation has its own
problems, its own set of newly ascer-
tained facts, which have to be brought
into line with the old eternal truths,
while they seem at the first to cut at
the very root of those old truths. And
so it is that the solutions which satisfied
our grandfathers seem to us no solu-
tions at all. And it always seems as
if the old problems had been of no
account, and the new one, for the time,
is so vital; so that the man who answers
our questionings seems to us an oracle
for all time. And the worst of it is
that the problems of the generation just
1
5I
SEERS AND SINGERS:
BROWNING before our own generally seem to be
IN PAR- the most trivial of all, for the very
TICULAR
simple reason that the solutions which
have been arrived at through much
travail and conflict of soul have just
had time to become commonplace and
hackneyed. We cannot, then, 'place'
one to whom we owe so much. The
critic's part is to point out where there.
is treasure beyond price to be found; it
is not his office to draw up a class-list
of the immortals.
In the second place, if I have found
it necessary to emphasise some of the
defects in Browning's work, I trust that
the most enthusiastic and the least
discriminating of his admirers-they
are not to be identified-will not feel
hurt. But indiscriminate praise is not
the method by which those persons
will most readily be induced to study
Browning who will get most benefit
out of him. Human nature is contrary,
and if you urge a man promiscuously
to read Browning, he will inevitably
begin upon 'Sordello,' and equally in-
52
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IN PAR-
TICULAR
evitably he will refuse to try any more. BROWNING
Now, you might as well endeavour to
study geometry by starting on the
second book of Euclid as to study
Browning by starting on 'Sordello.'
An enthusiast recently declared that
our poet was faultless 'but for a certain
hardness in his blank verse.' Well, to
put it mildly, that is exaggerated praise
for the discoverer of the truly remark-
able rhymes to (let us say) ' Manchester'
and ‘Witenagemot.'
Thirdly, I am not to be understood
as in any way impugning the truth or
validity of theological doctrines or argu-
ments to be found in Browning, when I
say that a good many critics show a gene-
ral tendency to exaggerate their import-
ance as Browning's 'message.' No doubt
the author of 'Easter-Day' awakens our
tendencies to speculation in the realms
of theology, logic, and metaphysics; but
to dwell on his treatment of problems of
that class, to the exclusion of what is
poetically speaking more important, is
precisely the critical blunder which has
"
53
SEERS AND SINGERS:
BROWNING done most to produce a misleading idea
IN PAR-
TICULAR
of what he has done and can do for us.
A scientific discussion either in rhyme
or blank verse may be interesting, but
it is rarely convincing. It is the func-
tion of the poet to appeal through the
emotions, the logician's appeal is purely
intellectual; and the logician is apt to
break the poetical spell, as the poet is
apt to introduce a disturbance in the
logician's syllogism.
It will be found to be something very
like a universal rule that the people
who depreciate Browning are those who
have not been at the trouble to read
him. The phrase is used advisedly, for,
to begin with, you must be at some
trouble to read him. Here are no com-
monplace thoughts such as we all think
every day, decked out in graceful lan-
guage. The demon of the circulating
library is not incited to scribble How
true!' about the margin of The Ring
and the Book.' Here is none of the
tawdry pessimism which captivates the
too numerous unfortunates who mistake
54
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IN PAR-
TICULAR
dyspepsia for Weltschmerz.' Again, BROWNING
there is hardly a story, a ballad, or a
song to be found among all the volumes.
In short, Browning did little work in
those fields of poetry where it is easiest
to read. Chiefly he is concerned with.
states of feeling which are both very
intense and highly complex; out of the
ken of those who never feel very deeply
and are rarely actuated by complex
motives, and requiring considerable emo-
tional and intellectual effort to be appre-
ciated even by the others.
To the natural difficulty presented by
his favourite subjects is added, for the
ordinary reader, the obstacle of certain
idiosyncrasies of form, mannerisms, and
eccentricities, which will probably be
always found irritating, and are especi-
ally so to an age which has revelled
in the somewhat excessive graces and
amazing mastery of form displayed by
the Laureate and a variety of lesser
poets. A habit of using exceedingly
colloquial words and phrases, and
rhymes which are remarkable rather for
55
SEERS AND SINGERS:
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TICULAR
BROWNING ingenuity than melody, of leaving out
relatives, of compressing a sentence till
at first sight the meaning seems con-
densed away altogether, of inserting
parentheses marked only by a method
of punctuation peculiar to the author,
of throwing in a casual allusion to some
event or place or person familiar to this
exceedingly erudite writer but quite
incomprehensible to the unlearned-all
this must be charged to Browning, and
materially increases the difficulty, and
diminishes the pleasure, of reading him,
to any one not thoroughly inured to his
ways.
These defects, in a greater or less
degree, are to be met with very nearly
throughout Browning's work; it is only
here and there that a poem can be found
entirely free from some touch of them.
Yet, when once you come to know the
bulk of the poems, these things sink
into entire insignificance. They hardly
affect our enjoyment; nay, to many
persons they positively enhance it.
Many a truth with which we have all
56
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
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TICULAR
been familiar-so familiar that we have BROWNING
mentally shoved it into the background
as not worth bearing in mind—comes
upon us with a fresh and startling sense
as of a new discovery, when it is pre-
sented in an unaccustomed dress; for
the first time it becomes real and living,
the words in which it was presented
become the only possible method of
expressing it, the very faultiness of
the form becomes a virtue. It is only
before we are sufficiently habituated—
only while we are still ready to be
scared by a superficial roughness—that
these defects are of consequence.
(
But a more serious matter is Brown-
ing's affection for subjects which are of
little interest except to psychological
anatomists. It is to this that we owe
'Fifines' and Inn Albums,'' Red-
Cotton Nightcap-Country' and 'Prince
Hohenstiel Schwangau'; as well as
other shorter productions. Writing in
the character of a sort of sign-post for
those who have never attempted to read
Browning, or have tried and failed, I
57
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IN PAR-
TICULAR
BROWNING should say that the volumes I have
named here ought never to be attempted
save by the enthusiast. They have an
interest of their own; they could never
have been produced but by a brain
of the most astonishing subtlety and
power; but just as the average raw
youth who tries to make his fortune
by gold-digging is apt to find that he
has an exceedingly unpleasant time,
and nothing to show for it at the end,
so to ordinary mortals the process of
delving in Browning's most abstruse
expositions of abnormal human nature
is productive only of bad temper and
a general unreasoning bias against the
poet and all his works.
It ought to be superfluous to tell be-
ginners to avoid those works of their
author which are declared on all hands
to be the least attractive, the hardest of
comprehension, and the dullest which
he has given to the world. We do not
begin Æschylus with the 'Seven against
Thebes'; nor Wordsworth with the
'Excursion.' But human nature is so
58
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
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TICULAR
perverse that an extraordinary number BROWNING
of people persist in making their first
attempt on 'Sordello'; and, finding that
ten pages of that has left them thor-
oughly befogged, they proceed to tell
you that people only say they like
Browning because they like to show
off. That is, of course, mere nonsense.
Some of his keenest admirers, who have
derived an infinity of courage and con-
solation from his poems, whose sym-
pathies have been enlarged and their
ideals ennobled by them, who have been
strengthened by them in heart and brain
-are people whom their best friends
or worst enemies would never dream of
describing as either clever or conceited.
It is no very long time since the
'Shilling Browning' was issued to an
expectant public, and was received
generally with an indignant chorus.
No one could pretend to say that it is
an adequate or thoroughly satisfactory
collection; but though it might have
been a great deal better-every lover
of the poet probably feels that he or
59
SEERS AND SINGERS:
BROWNING she would have made something much
IN PAR- better of it—it might assuredly have
TICULAR
been a great deal worse. Personally, it
appeared to me that the most flagrantly
inexcusable omissions were those of
'Saul' and 'Love among the Ruins.'
For 'Saul' at least is one of the very
first poems which I should put in the
hands, let us say, of a girl who wanted
to be introduced to Browning. But
apart from this, and from the fact that
'Mr. Sludge' is utterly out of place in
such a collection, the 'Shilling Brown-
ing' is the simplest introduction that
can well be given. From it the student
will realise that the poet is not always
so very ungainly and so dreadfully
hard to understand after all. Let any
good reader pronounce these lines from
'Abt Vogler':
'All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good
shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor
good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for
the melodist
When Eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
60
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth BROWNING
too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in
the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the Lover and the
Bard;
Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it
by-and-by.'
Or this, from 'One Word More,' by way
of contrast:
'But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross the step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush, and bless myself with silence.'
Or this, out of 'Home Thoughts from
Abroad':
'Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there!
And whoever wakes in England
Sees some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!'
It is sufficient to refer to these lines,
recalled at random, to for ever refute
IN PAR-
TICULAR
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SEERS AND SINGERS:
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BROWNING the doctrine that if music is a necessary`
quality in poetry, Browning is no poet.
Others (all, if I remember rightly, in
the selection) rise readily to the mind:
'The Lost Leader'; 'A Toccata';
'Summum Bonum'; 'The Last Ride';
'Evelyn Hope.' Or again, some which
have been, alas! omitted: 'There's a
woman like a dew-drop'; 'Over the
sea our galleys went'; 'Saul'; 'Love
among the Ruins'; that grand passage
from 'The Ring and the Book':
'O Lyric Love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire.'
If we have to admit that there are too
many harsh lines, crabbed passages, and
surprising rhymes among the selected
poems, as elsewhere, we can assuredly
claim that there are also not only lines
and stanzas, but whole poems of the
most splendid verse.
It would, however, seem probable that
the initial difficulty caused by defects
of style, insignificant as we may learn.
in time to account them, must always
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A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
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act as a check on any really widely BROWNING
extended popularity. This, however,
can hardly be regarded as a drawback
on the author's greatness. For it is
not by the number, but by the moral
and intellectual calibre of his readers
that the influence of a great writer must
be measured; it may often be that vast
numbers who have not read a line of
one man's works are his unconscious
disciples, while another, whose volumes
are in the hands of 'every one,' shall
hardly have availed to influence one
solitary act in the lives of all his
readers.
If we wish duly to understand Brown-
ing, it is of vital importance to keep
one fact constantly in mind—that most
of his poems are spoken by men and
women,
'Live or dead, or fashioned to his fancy,'
and that their opinions are not neces-
sarily the opinions of the author. He
has pronounced clearly enough in 'One
Word More' on this point, when he is
63
SEERS AND SINGERS'
BROWNING Speaking avowedly for himself and no
IN PAR- one else, to his wife :
TICULAR
'Love, you saw me gather men and women
Live or dead, or fashioned to my fancy :
Enter each and all and use their service,
Speak from every mouth,—the speech a poem.
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving.
I am mine and yours-the rest be all men's,
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the Fifty;
Let me speak this once in my true person.'
It is true that Browning speaks through
his characters, but the thought is modi-
fied by the point of view of the person
uttering it, so that we have Evelyn
Hope's lover implying a clear belief
in a series of lives in a series of worlds;
and the speaker of 'Old Pictures in
Florence' repudiating the same idea.
So thorough is the poet's capacity for
sympathising with his characters, that
he has even succeeded in imparting a
kind of sincerity to the sophistries of
Mr. Sludge and Bishop Blougram. But
we must beware always of proclaiming
that Browning held this or that doctrine
64
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TICULAR
because one of his characters has given it BROWNING
expression; as I have known people who IN PAR-
supposed that Bishop Blougram stands
as Browning's apologist for Christianity
- whereas the Bishop is simply Mr.
Worldly Wiseman compounding for the
chance of eternal life.
The range of Browning's sympathies
-his power of entering into, under-
standing, accounting for, the most
diverse characters-has rarely, if ever,
been surpassed. For a poet whose
chief subject-matter was to be human
nature in its more emotional and more
complex phases, he was magnificently
equipped. Unlike Wordsworth, he deals
comparatively little with Nature apart
from man. But this is due to no
neglect or lack of appreciation on his
part. There are descriptive passages,
only too rare, which show at once the
minuteness of his observation and the
intensity of his enjoyment, as in the
'Englishman in Italy,'' Home Thoughts
from Abroad,' and 'By the Fireside.'
On the other hand, a picture has rarely
E
65
SEERS AND SINGERS:
BROWNING been painted at once with strokes so
IN PAR- few and with such completeness of effect
as in this, 'Meeting at Night':
TICULAR
'The grey sea and the long black land,
And the yellow half-moon large and low,
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.'
A reference has already been made.
to the theological poems. These serve
particularly well to point the distinction
between teacher and poet; for it is
essentially the function of the latter to
appeal through the emotions. It follows
that, whereas the teacher may resort to
close reasoning and elaborate logic, the
poet convinces us not so much by his
irrefutable syllogisms as by the vivid
expression of intense conviction.
must distinguish, therefore, between the
theological and the religious; between
the intellectual and the emotional treat-
ment of the relation between God and
man. Now and then, in that group of
pieces which I class as theological-
We
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A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
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TICULAR
'A Death in the Desert'; 'Christmas BROWNING
Eve'; 'Easter Day'; 'La Saisiaz';
'Cleon'; 'Karshish'; the body of
'Ferishtah,' and some others-the poet
breaks out:
"For life, with all it yields of joy, and woe,
And hope, and fear-believe the aged friend-
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is,
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth; that is all.'
But for the most part the value of them
is mainly intellectual: admirable as
they are, they stand on a lower poetical
plane than the rest. We turn from
them to 'Saul' to find the true basis of
the faith that is in us-the intense con-
viction of the Creator's transcendent
love; an inspiration, an intuition, which
we must indeed reconcile with the rest
of the 'facts,' but which is not derived
from them. From this, and not from
any evidences, as the Robert Elsmeres
would seem to suppose, of miraculous
powers-valuable as these may be to
1
!
67
SEERS AND SINGERS:
BROWNING Support and prop a wavering faith-is
real conviction of the neces-
TICULAR
IN PAR- derived
any
sity for the Incarnation, in whatever
way we may understand the doctrine.
Without this, the evidences are nothing;
with it, they are even superfluous.
In the answer that he gives to the in-
tellectual problem, Browning addresses
his own age-our age; for the problem
itself is one that is ever taking fresh
forms, and needing a fresh statement
of its solution. But the faith itself—
realised through the emotions and the
imagination as a vital fact and not a
mere logical formula-is one for all
time. Hence, many of the conceptions.
which rest on it are not more important,
if we can judge the matter, for us than
they will be for our great-grandchildren.
This faith itself is present, equally pro-
found and equally real, in the Hebrew
boy, the Jewish Rabbi, and the Apostle ;
in Karshish, and Pompilia, and Pippa;
and out of it spring those grand ideals
of life and thought and action which
Browning has set before us.
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A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
TICULAR
For out of his conception of the BROWNING
Divine Love springs his conception of IN PAR-
human love; not as a passion, not as a
sentimental or romantic affection: but
as the emotion which stirs the very
depth of our being, which completes us
here, as it finds its own completion in the
life hereafter; the witness to the divine
in man.
And this not only when it is
crowned with bliss here, as in 'By the
Fireside,' or 'Count Gismond,' but also
when it fails of its reward, as in ‘The
Last Ride,' 'Evelyn Hope,' or 'One Way
of Love.' And involved with this is
the conception of life on this planet as
just an episode in the soul's develop-
ment. So that death is not a thing to
be greatly cared for or feared, for our-
selves or for others; but is to be looked
on rather as the entry upon a new phase
of life where the souls that belong to
each other shall find each other.
'Think, when our one soul understands
The great Word which makes all things new,
When earth breaks up, and heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you
In the house not made with hands?
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SEERS AND SINGERS:
BROWNING
IN PAR-
TICULAR
Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the divine!'
Another aspect of the same concep-
tion is presented in 'Prospice,' where
the speaker is facing the idea of Death :
'I was ever a fighter, so-one fight more,
The best and the last! .
•
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a voice, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!'
And a third phase in Evelyn Hope,'
where the lover stands by the side of
his lost love-the girl who had died
before she was old enough to know:
'God above
Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love;
I claim you still for my own love's sake.'
And this idea has its counterpart in
the general attitude of the man to life.
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TICULAR
Just as there is no sympathy with mere BROWNING
sentimental longings or conventional IN PAR-
skin-deep affections, so all slothfulness
and indolence, all whining and shirking,
all emotional posturing, is utterly abhor-
rent. Life here is a stage of develop-
ment, and we have to develop ourselves
body and soul to the best of our power;
and development comes of a healthy
energy, a dauntless activity of heart and
body and brain; not from coddling-
moral, physical, or intellectual.
courage, determination, and constancy,
even misdirected, there is always hope;
the unpardonable sin is his who sets hist
hand to the plough and looks back.
'Let a man contend to the uttermost
for his life's set prize, be it what it
will'; because it is the intensity of a
man's feeling that is the measure of
his capabilities, the test of the divine
spark within him.
'All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
For
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher
shaped.'
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IN PAR-
TICULAR
So when his energies are nobly
directed, whether he attains or fails, the
man has accomplished the task for
which he was placed in this world,
which is the
'Machinery, just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.'
This, then, is the most completely
characteristic doctrine of Browning, the
thought which is the key to poem after
poem: never despair, never lose heart,
never turn aside from the great aim;
because the mere failure in achieve-
ment is not in truth failure at all. "Tis
not what man Does which exalts him,
but what man Would do.' 'For what
is our failure here but a triumph's evi-
dence for the fulness of the days?'
It is worth being at some pains to
learn that lesson.
So in Browning we have little paus-
ing to look back and dream with a sigh
of 'The tender grace of a day that is
dead'; none of the idle tears' for 'the
72
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TICULAR
days that are no more'; instead, there BROWNING
is a constant looking forward to an
eternity of activity and development, a
going from strength to strength: 'We
fall to rise, are baffled to fight better.'
This is the true meaning of that
optimism' which some people are said
to find 'too robust.' In truth, the only
sense of the word in which we can have
an excess of it is, where we apply it to
those too fortunate persons who live in
a lotus-land of 'calm rest and dreamful
ease,' untroubled by care themselves.
and ignoring the pain of others. But
that is a wholly different thing from the
magnificent dauntlessness which flings.
out Rabbi Ben Ezra's grand challenge:
'Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids not sit nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain!
Learn, nor account the pang: dare, never grudge
the throe!'
Those are not the words of one who
has escaped the wear and tear of life,
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SEERS AND SINGERS
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TICULAR
BROWNING and makes light of its rubs; rather, no
man could have dared to utter them
but one who had suffered keenly and
endured nobly, a foremost fighter in the
ranks of God's army.
74
r
IV
OUT-OF-DOORS

HERE is no less variety
in the methods of look-
ing at Nature and the
wild things of the earth
than in the methods of
looking at men and
women. And it is cer-
tain that every great poet has the out-
of-door feeling on him at times.
Wordsworth, however, may fairly
claim to be par excellence the Poet of
Nature because all that is best in his
work is more vitally dependent on his
love of Nature than is that of any other
poet of the first rank. His mind is at
the farthest remove from that of the
dramatist, to whom the central interest
75
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OUT-OF-
DOORS
must always be human passion, human
loves and hates; to whom the beauty
of the world is mainly a setting for the
men that live and move in it. The
dramatist dwells among the haunts of
men; he derives his inspiration from
the rough-and-tumble of everyday life,
however he may glorify it. But Words-
worth is at his happiest when the
clamour of men's tongues is hushed;
when the voices of the mountains are
in his ears, and overhead the
'broad open eye
Of the solitary sky.'
The sense of vastness does not have
the same effect upon every one, or at
all times; it is occasionally too over-
whelming, and occasionally positively
dreary. It has to be combined with a
corresponding consciousness of supreme.
beauty; and even then something more
is wanting before one can derive much
comfort from it. The Eternal and the
Infinite are impressive; but the Inter-
minable is annoying. Even if Enoch
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A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
DOORS
Arden had been thoroughly, vividly out-of-
conscious of the glories of his solitary
island, the contemplation of boundless
sea and sky would have altogether
failed to soothe him, or relieve the
intolerable weariness; it would have
been more likely to add to it. But that
is just because ordinary human nature
craves for human fellowship; and to
make solitude tolerable, it must be
varied by sufficient human fellowship.
But, given the right conditions, the
frame of mind in which vastness is not
maddening but grand, Wordsworth is
its high priest, its noblest interpreter.
'What soul was his, when from the naked top
Of some bold headland he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light! He
looked-
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay
Beneath him -Far and wide the clouds were
touched,
And in their silent faces could he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle; sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him; they swallowed up
?
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OUT-OF-
DOORS
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed; he proffered no request:
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him; it was blessedness and love.'
This elevation of spirit, greater or
less in degree, born of the contempla-
tion of Nature in her grander aspects,
is the distinguishing note of Words-
worth; the quality which sets him apart
from other poets. For his delight in
beauties of detail-a lesser celandine,
a daisy, a bank of daffodils-though
essentially part of the man, is shared
in an equal degree by many others.
Stand under the canopy of heaven on
a starlit night, when the moon is low;
you will draw from it a sense of power
and of peace which nothing else can
give. But the effect of Wordsworth's
poetry is something analogous. It is
the peace at the heart of the universe
78
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
DOORS
which he felt so deeply, and has helped oUT-OF-
so many to feel. This is the source of
his own serenity, and of that 'healing
power' which Arnold names as his
chief gift. One is aware of it not only
in passages where Nature is directly
described, like the above; one feels
that the same influence is at work on
him all through his noblest productions.
It is vividly present in the Intimations
of Immortality'; the spirit which in-
forms the whole of the 'Ode to Duty' is
in the lines of the fifth stanza :
'Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient Heavens through thee are
fresh and strong.'
That last line leaves on your mind
the consciousness that Duty-the poet's
idea of Duty, that is-owes quite as
much to the 'most ancient Heavens' as
they owe to her.
The sonnets 'On Westminster Bridge,'
'Two voices are there,' 'The world is too
much with us,' all among the noblest
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SEERS AND SINGERS:
DOORS
OUT-OF- examples of Wordsworth's exalted mood,
are familiar even to many whose ac-
quaintance with the poet is limited, from
their presence in anthologies; and such
lines imprint themselves on the mind
with comparative readiness. But pas-
sages of the same order are far from
rare, amid the monotonous wastes which
all candid persons who are not devotees
own to finding in the long poems-'The
Excursion' and 'The Prelude.' But none,
perhaps except, it may be, the lines
quoted above from 'The Excursion'—so
fitly, so finely, sums up Wordsworth's
attitude towards Nature, the sympathy
which gives him such unrivalled power
as her interpreter, as this from 'Tintern
Abbey':
'I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
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A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit that imbues
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am
I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,--both what they half create
And what perceive.'
The influence of Nature in moulding
those who love her is presented in per-
fection in the 'Three years she grew';
there is a touch of exaggeration, no
doubt, if one presses the sense unduly,
for we all know that the mere fact of
rearing a child among beautiful scenery
will not guarantee perfection of feature
as a result; but we know and may very
well recognise that the 'silent sympathy'
can do a good deal towards developing
a real beauty. Our souls do something
towards making our bodies, and when
Nature does say, 'Myself will to my
darling be both law and impulse,' that
goes a good way in the development of
the soul. But I refer to this poem now,
OUT-OF-
DOORS
F
81
LI
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DOORS
OUT-OF- chiefly as an example of the way in
which Wordsworth's love of Nature and
sympathy with her penetrates through
and through all his strongest feelings,
and permeates them, instead of being
more or less accidentally associated
here or there with this or that particu-
lar thought.
We have seen how Wordsworth is
affected-and we through him-by the
majesty, the expanse of Nature, as
bodying forth the 'something far more
deeply interfused'; how his very being
is pervaded by the sense of it, so that
his expression is so convincing that
almost unconsciously we are raised in
the reading to something like the same
spiritual level. This is that kind of
vivid emotional consciousness which
turns formal belief into vital realisa-
tion; whereby is marked the distinction
between the poet who teaches by feeling
primarily, and the logician who teaches
through the intellect. It is on this
larger aspect of Nature-the glory of
the overarching sky, the grandeur of
82
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
the everlasting hills, the charm of the OUT-OF-
outstretched valleys,
'The sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours'-
that Wordsworth chiefly loves to dwell;
and for this we love him most.
No doubt there is too much inclina-
tion to distort this sympathy and its
expression into a system. A system
may be more or less involved or implied
in a fancy, but it does not do to press a
fanciful phrase to its logical conclusion,
and we are not bound to any meta-
physical doctrines by the remark that
"tis my faith that every flower enjoys
the air it breathes.' If you must analyse
a phrase of that kind, it means little
more than that the poet enjoys see-
ing the flower breathing; it is on a
par almost with one's belief in fairies.
There are a good many people who
don't believe in fairies and fairyland—
and happily there are a good many who
do. These things will not bear press-
ing. I believe devoutly in fairies, when
DOORS
83
SEERS AND SINGERS:
ry
DOORS
OUT-OF- the conditions are favourable; and I
take it that a good many of Words-
worth's beliefs about flowers were of the
same order.
Still, when Mr. Morley
says that the statement,
'One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach us more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can,'
is merely a playful sally, there seems
to be something wrong. Wordsworth
undoubtedly felt that emotions which
are at the root of morality may be
stirred, and are stirred, by 'one impulse
from a vernal wood.' That seems to be
the obvious meaning of his lines; they
are not the exposition of a system; but
they are the statement of a fact.
This direct inspiration from Nature,
this habit not merely of feeling how she
harmonises with his graver moods, but
of finding in her the actual source of his
highest emotions and richest thoughts,
is what especially distinguishes Words-
worth from others, even from Matthew
Arnold, who is of all poets most dis-
2
84
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
DOORS
tinctly the product of Wordsworth, OUT-OF-
most evidently influenced and moulded
by his study of the master. Thyrsis
is the work of a man who loved the
open air and knew the country-side
intimately:
'Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
I know the wood which hides the daffodil,
I know the Fyfield tree,
I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields
Above by Ensham, down by Sanford, yields,
And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries.'
But though he has the feel of the
country, it is a secondary thing with
him; an accompaniment; the result
less of instinct than of cultivated taste.
And so his similes or illustrations
derived from rural life appear with an
air less of being the thing that was
suggested to him by the circumstances
than of being the sort of thing which
he thought probably would have been
suggested by similar circumstances to
Homer or Virgil. I am not sure that
this manner has not a charm of its own
85
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DOORS
OUT-OF- to the literary mind; but it is not the
living charm of green turf and blue sky.
Still less is it the 'Presence that disturbs
me with the joy of elevated thoughts.'
One has a suspicion that when Words-
worth went out on the hillside, Mr.
Arnold may have done so too; but
he went with Marcus Aurelius in his
pocket. Now and then we have a deli-
cately touched picture, as of
'The mowers, who as the tiny swell
Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass,
Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass;
but the literary flavour has a habit of
predominating.
The poet to whom 'the meanest
flower that blows can bring thoughts
that do often lie too deep for tears,'
was not one who forgot the parts in the
whole, or inclined to despise a blossom
for not being a mountain. Daffodil
and daisy and small celandine, he could
sing their praises as well as those of
the 'glory beyond all glory ever seen,'
when the mist broke on the hills. But
in this field he has been often equalled
86
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
DOORS
and sometimes excelled. His daisy has OUT-OF-
not the tenderness of Burns's; his lark
falls short of the harmonious madness
of Shelley's. Perhaps he found the
temptation to improve the occasion too
strong, except when he was too much
moved to remember about it. Any-
how, most people probably find that he
moralises too much over these things,
and is not sufficiently content with pure
enjoyment. It is rather curious that
instead of being satisfied with trying to
reproduce the 'impulse from the vernal
wood,' he should set about trying to
teach 'of moral evil and of good' after
the comparatively unworthy manner of
'all the sages.' If the reputation of the
primrose, at home on its own bank,
were not beyond the reach of calumny,
it is to be feared that it would have
suffered seriously from Peter Bell.
Robert Browning is a poet to whom
nothing is of the same account as the
individual man, the development of this
or that particular soul. And this so
outweighs all else in his work, that we
87
SEERS AND SINGERS:
OUT-OF-
DOORS
are apt to overlook the fact that he
was a keen and delighted observer and
recorder of the sights and sounds of
Nature of the world in which men live,
the concomitants of human life. Cer-
tainly he never wrote an ode to a sky-
lark or a daisy; but he was very much, and
joyously, aware of them, as witness, let.
us say, ' Home Thoughts from Abroad."
His description of the thrush is almost
the only really hackneyed thing he
wrote it does duty annually in the
newspaper articles. His May morning
when,
"Though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,'
is instinct with the very spirit of spring.
Even in the 'Parleyings' there is a
sunrise, characteristically different from
Wordsworth's, but throbbing with the
life of the new day's dawn:
'Boundingly up through night's wall dense and dark,
Embattled crags and clouds, out broke the Sun
Above the conscious earth, and one by one
Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark
88
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge
Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,
Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold
On fold of vapour-swathing, like a bridge
Shattered beneath some giant's stamp.'
C
The sunset in Home Thoughts from
the Sea' could only have been painted
by one who felt a genuine delight in its
glories. But what especially marks
Browning, when he does begin to talk
about natural objects, is the detailed
variety of what he has noticed. Nothing
escapes him on a mountain walk-the
'Dark rosemary ever a-dying that, spite the
wind's wrath,
So loves the salt rock's face to seaward,'
or the
'Fairy-cupped, elf-needled mat of moss,'
no more than
'How sharp the silver spear-heads charge,
Where Alps meets heaven in snow.'
The lover in the 'Lost Mistress' re-
marks how
'The leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that to-day;
One day more bursts them open fully—
You know, the red turns grey.'
OUT-OF-
DOORS
89
SEERS AND SINGERS:
OUT-OF-
DOORS
The triviality of the matter is hardly
more pathetic than its accuracy, in the
context. There is rather a curious differ-
ence between Wordsworth and Brown-
ing which is worth noting-the former
has a vivid sense of what Mr. Morley
calls an Animated Presence in the
mountains and woods; but Browning
has a way of speaking of them as indi-
vidually alive :
"The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play.
They had mingled us so for once and good,
Their work was done-we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood.'
No doubt it is the outcome of the
stress the poet always does lay on in-
dividuality, while Wordsworth dwells.
rather on the unity of the whole. It
would be a rather curious study to try
and trace whether Browning's delight
in detail and Wordsworth's delight in
expanse are attributable to the same
sources.
The younger poet was only incident-
ally a poet of Nature-reversing the
୨୦
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
DOORS
phrase about loving 'not man the less.' OUT-OF-
He is so much more interested in
men and women; but his own intense
vitality gives him a joyous sympathy
with all that has life, and all that gives
life. Apart from his acute observation,
the out-of-door feeling, the physical
exhilaration (not the Wordsworthian
moral elevation) of being in the open
is very marked in him. His horse-
back poems have it, of course; 'James
Lee's Wife' is chiefly readable—I speak
for myself - because of it; but per-
haps it reaches about its highest pitch
in the out-door bit of 'Pauline,' at the
lines :
'Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden
With light.
Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air,
The clear dear breath of God that loveth us,
Where small birds reel, and winds take their
delight!
Water is beautiful, but not like air.'
As might be expected, the Laureate
stands somewhat as a link between the
two in his way of looking at Nature.
91
SEERS AND SINGERS:
OUT-OF- She is more intimately bound up with
DOORS his thoughts than with Browning's, but
is less exclusively responsible for the
best of them than with Wordsworth.
He presents her with an accuracy and
an unfailing felicity of phrase unrivalled
except by the universal rival Shakspeare,
and by Keats. He can be lavish in joy-
ous detail, as in Enoch Arden'; but
he can call up a complete picture in a
couple of lines:
'What sound was dearest in his native dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells,
Far-far-away.'
There is a whole landscape in that,
or in such a phrase as 'the long grey
fields at night' (in the 'May Queen'),
just as clear as Wordsworth gives us
in 'Tintern Abbey.' He has, above all,
the art of putting clearly before you
the salient features which of themselves
suggest the background; the art of not
saying the superfluous thing; so that
in a few lines you have a picture of
infinite suggestiveness. The scene of
92
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS.
the Passing of Arthur is a perfect piece OUT-OF-
of painting, with its ruined chapel :
'A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land;
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.'
There Sir Bedivere left the King, and
"From the ruined shrine he stepped,
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind rang,
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping
down,
By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake':
and so
'Heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds.'
In this purely picturesque treatment
of Nature, Tennyson's mastery of happy
phrase, though at times the hypercritical
may feel it a trifle forced, aids his
artistic skill in selecting what needs to
be presented to make the picture which
he wishes you to see, so as to produce
an extraordinarily visible effect. But
DOORS
93
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DOORS
OUT-OF- you feel in such a case as this that the
scene was painted for the sake of the
story enacted in it. Whereas in Words-
worth, if you got such a fine piece of
painting, you would feel that if any-
thing was going on, it was a superfluous
thing to which you needn't pay much
attention the scene itself would be the
important matter. On the other hand,
'The Higher Pantheism' is not in the
least Wordsworthian, but it is the out-
come of a comparatively Wordsworthian
way of looking at Nature: not the
mood of the painter, or of the dramatic
artist in search of a suitable back-
ground; but of one contemplating the
embodied glories of the universe, and
endeavouring to realise the Eternal
Being shadowed forth in them.
But it is in that close observation,
without which it would be impossible
to attain such perfection of presentment,
such felicity in the application of de-
scriptive epithets, that the Laureate
excels; as of the eagle who 'clasps the
rock with crooked hands,' or the 'sea-
94
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
DOORS
blue bird of March.' In this particular re- out-of-
spect the difference between his method
and Browning's seems to lie somewhat
in this that what Tennyson records is
the thing that the rest of the world has
half-noticed; what is only vaguely a
part of the picture or idea in their minds,
but forces the whole into vivid view
when brought before them in a flash;
whereas what Browning records is apt
to be the thing that ordinary folk have
not noticed at all. We are commonly
more pleased by such a line as the
earliest pipe of half-awakened birds,'
than by being reminded that the thrush
'sings each song twice over,' or that the
cuckoo's cry is sometimes in a minor
third. Both of them use their remini-
scences of Nature by way of casual allu-
sion or illustration; but scenery, birds,
flowers, are much oftener in the mind
of the Laureate, and are set before us
in more familiar guise.
If it is the majesty of Nature that
most of all impresses itself on the mind
of Wordsworth, and her vitality that
95
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DOORS
OUT-OF- most strikes Browning, it is in her every-
day garb of quiet beauty that Tennyson
chiefly loves to present her; it is in the
pastoral and the idyll that we find his
most characteristic delineations-as in-
deed it is in such pieces that his most dis-
tinctive work is generally to be looked for.
One may doubt the permanent interest
of King Arthur and his knights; one may
question the philosophic merits of 'Vast-
ness,' and the value of Despair'; but while
summer suns are warm, and woodland
breezes are fragrant, it is difficult to ima-
gine that such verses as these will lose
their delight:
'All the land in flowery squares
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward; but all else of heaven was pure
Up to the sun, and May from verge to verge,
And May with me from head to heel. And now
As tho' 'twere yesterday, as though it were
The hour just flown, that morn with all its sound,
(For those old Mays had thrice the life of these),
Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze,
And where the hedge-row cuts the pathways, stood
Leaning his horns into the neighbour field,
And lowing to his fellows. From the woods.
Came voices of the well-contented doves.
96
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,
But shook his song together as he neared
His happy home, the ground. To left and right
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills;
The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm ;
The red-cap whistled; and the nightingale
Sang loud as tho' he were the bird of day.'
Apropos of the last line, by the way,
it is interesting to note the manful dis-
regard of that poetic tradition which
insists on making the female bird the
musician. It is rather difficult to under-
stand why the 'Philomel' theory has
taken such hold on the literary imagina-
tion. Probably the pensive associations
of the evening hour are largely respon-
sible; for the nightingale's song in broad
day is not very suggestive of a ‘plaint.'
Wordsworth and Tennyson have both
been more regardful of the fact than of
the tradition.
In this connection we may remark the
Laureate's peculiarly felicitous rendering
of the voices of birds, as in the much
misunderstood 'Throstle':
'Summer is coming, Summer is coming,
I know it, I know it, I know it.'
OUT-OF-
DOORS
G
97

SEERS AND SINGERS
DOORS
OUT-OF- I shall have occasion later on to
quote another very striking instance
from 'Maud,' the point of which is often
overlooked, though it might be con-
sidered sufficiently obvious.
But if we want to feel the poet's real
and constant intimacy with Nature, we
shall perhaps find it most convincingly
presented, not so much in his deliberate
description of scenes, whether chiefly
for their own sakes (as in the 'Gardener's
Daughter'), or for their effect as acces-
sories (as in the 'Passing of Arthur'),
as in the incidental touches which serve
to illustrate some idea with which they
are only imaginatively associated.
'Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea.
'But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless
deep
Turns again home.'
98

V
'THE RING AND THE
BOOK'

T would be an inter-
esting subject for
inquiry, what pro-
portion of the Brit-
ish public is prepared
to face a really long
poem. Browning's
popularity has increased enormously in
the last few years: but even among
those who are thoroughly at home in
the selections there are probably large
numbers who have never attempted to
read The Ring and the Book,' and
large numbers also who have never got
beyond the first book.
6
It is not surprising that this should
be so; because for some reason
or
Dor M
99
SEERS AND SINGERS:
AND THE
BOOK'
'THE RING other a long poem, whoever the author
may be, is rather alarming. And 'The
Ring and the Book' is a very long
poem; with print enough in it to make
up quite a good-sized, three-volume
novel; longer than the 'Iliad' or the
'Eneid'; longer than any English poem
by a master hand, except the 'Faerie
Queene.' On a hasty estimate, it ap-
pears that Don Juan' and Paradise
Lost' are only about three-fourths of
its length, The Excursion' about half.
It would probably afford some food for
reflection, if we could ascertain precisely
how many per million of the popula-
tion have read either 'Paradise Lost'
or 'The Excursion' right through even
once. As for the numbers who have
read both right through twice, except
perhaps for really professional purposes.
-well, they wouldn't need the Albert
Hall to hold them.
<
In fact, it does not take much con-
sideration to show that a very long
poem has practically no chance of being
popular. It is a pity. There are a
100
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
(
AND THE
BOOK
good many things, in 'The Excursion' "THE RING
for instance, which are worth the trouble
of digging for. However, there is the
fact. But it is worth while trying to
persuade a few more people to make up
their minds to read The Ring and the
Book,' although I am inclined to believe
that, considering its size and the unpro-
mising character of the first books, it
has already found a quite surprising
number of admirers.
Let us begin by examining the case
against the poem-merely premising
that what is an obstacle to the general
reader is not necessarily a legitimate
ground of critical objection—for it is
no use to make light of obstacles, or
to deny that they exist when they are
staring you in the face.
To start with, then, there is the length
of the poem. If people shrink back
before the length of 'Paradise Lost,'
they can hardly be expected to regard
'The Ring and the Book' with equani-
mity. Nevertheless, the objection on
the score of length is a little unreason-
ΙΟΙ
SEERS AND SINGERS:
AND THE
BOOK'
"THE RING able. It is very nearly a matter of
course that a novel should be in three
volumes; nobody shrinks from reading
one of Mr. Besant's books because there
is such a lot to get through; nay, there
are plenty of people who think that
unless in prose a story is told in three
volumes it can only be a book for
boys' or 'a book for girls.' No doubt
the poet demands a higher pitch of
attention, but there seems to be no
adequate reason for making so marked
a distinction between the amount of
verse and of prose that one is prepared
to face.
Secondly, the scheme of the book is
against it; that is, it sounds as if it
must be exhausting to have the same
story told a dozen times over, partly by
the actors in it, partly by lookers-on.
The poet takes a story, nowise a pretty
one, abounding in cruelty, deception,
and bloodshed, unredeemed by any act
of heroic self-sacrifice; gives you the
bare outline of the complicated facts;
and then sets nine different people to
102
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
If 'THE RING
tell you how the facts strike them.
the interest of the book lay in the story
itself, the method of telling it would cer
tainly be thoroughly inartistic; but it
does not. It lies in the characters of the
actors and the speakers; the motives
by which they are stirred; the heights
and depths of human passion, of nobility
and degradation, which they gauge: so
that the last speaker is not a whit the
less interesting because he comes at the
end; and what is more, you feel at the
end that by no other method could the
same completeness of vision have been
attained.
There is, however, from the point of
view of a reader coming to 'The Ring
and the Book' for the first time, a par-
ticular obstacle inherent in the scheme
of the poem namely, that the open-
ing books are the least inviting. When
once you know the poem, you know that
each of the parts is in its proper place,
and there is sound artistic reason for
the arrangement; but it does at first
tend to make one give up the attempt
AND THE
BOOK'
103
SEERS AND SINGERS:
AND THE
BOOK '
"THE RING to read. The views expressed by the
onlookers, who represent the general
public, have to precede the more illumi-
nating discourses of the three principals
in the drama; but in the nature of
things they are not so interesting as the
latter. In the nature of things, also,
the poet's own introduction suffers from
a certain baldness. Yet it was hardly
necessary-and this is a critical fault
as well as an obstacle to the general
reader- that Browning should have
written that first book, as he seems
to have done, in a mood of defiance
towards the 'British Public, you who
like me not,' which led him to indulge
with exceptional freedom in those idio-
syncrasies of style, sudden colloquial-
isms, and allusive forms of expression,
which are responsible for the popular
impression that nobody can really enjoy
him, and that the pretence of doing so
is a mere affectation.
But now let us examine this trouble of
'Browningese' a little more closely; for
it appears to me that the defect is one
I04
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
AND THE
BOOK'
which has been gravely exaggerated, 'THEe ring
and that some of the poet's most devoted
admirers are in no small degree respon-
sible. If you really cannot be expected
to appreciate Browning without having
the illumination of lectures from a
society; and if, when your society is
dissolved, you can't get along without
a cyclopædia specially designed to
make him intelligible; if, after years of
reading, you need all this-why, clearly
you can hardly complain if people say
that Browning may be very fine, but
the game isn't worth the candle. The
truth is, that all this paraphernalia of
interpretation, useful as it may be for
specific purposes and in specific cases,
tends greatly to force into prominence
whatever is obscure and difficult in the
poet's work; to make one tackle him
in the spirit which should be reserved
for studying the Secret of Hegel or a
corrupt chorus in Eschylus; to thrust
into the background the simple fact
that, outside of one or two of the early
poems and a few late ones, most of
105
SEERS AND SINGERS:
"THE RING Browning is plain sailing enough, or
AND THE made difficult mainly by the unexpected
BOOK
character of an idea—and an unexpected
-
idea is always difficult to grasp at first
sight the suddenness with which a
fresh point of view is caught, or the
depth of the thought presented.
Now, we all know that we can live
peacefully with a clock ticking until the
unhappy hour comes when somebody
calls attention to it, and the everlasting
tick gets on our nerves, though it may
be a perfectly harmless, well-conducted
tick all the time. Well, in just the same
way, if somebody stirs you up and gets
you to be perpetually on the look-out
for difficulties, the difficulties will turn
up of themselves where it would never
have occurred to you to be troubled by
them. Once I made an unfortunate
discovery in a book which I greatly
admire and once enjoyed. It is a novel :
but I found that most of it runs into
metre. I can't read it now without
getting frenzied by the tick, tick of the
metrical parts, and the desire to make
106
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
The 'THE RING
BOOK'
the other sentences scan too.
habit of talking about the 'difficulties' AND THE
in Browning has a precisely similar
effect: everything that you don't re-
cognise at first sight makes you feel
fidgety, and you fancy that every
casual allusion is the key to a hidden
inner meaning; whereas the plain,
palpable meaning is staring you in
the face. In 'The Ring and the Book'
there are two typical problems of this
preposterous order which have evoked
reams of correspondence. One refers
to 'the sole joke in Thucydides,' and
the other to 'The Tract de Tribus.
One would have gathered from the
papers that these two little puzzles
made a vital difference to the inter-
pretation of the poem. Somebody has
solved them with more or less plausi-
bility, I believe; but neither puzzle nor
solution matters a solitary straw. The
point of the passage in each case is
perfectly clear without any application
of erudition. When Lord Tennyson
makes an allusion, it doesn't strike us
107
SEERS AND SINGERS:
"THE RING to inquire whether he is thinking of a
AND THE
BOOK
passage in Apuleius: at least, it didn't
until an erudite critic wrote a book to
show that the Laureate never says any-
thing to which you can't find a passage
more or less parallel, or, anyhow, in
some degree similar, somewhere in
somebody or other. As long as people
come to Browning with a steady resolu-
tion to find things they can't under-
stand, those things will manufacture
themselves with surprising readiness.
Still, when all is said and done, it
must be admitted that Browning is not
always easy to follow at sight, though
it is easy to make too much of the
difficulties, and easy also to forget that
we don't always take in exactly what
Shakespeare, or Milton, or Wordsworth,
or Tennyson mean, without thinking
about it pretty hard. That bit of Lyci-
das, for instance, which Ruskin examines
in 'Sesame and Lilies '-what problems
and what solutions might have been
extracted from that, if only Browning
had written it! Of course, there are
108
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
AND THE
BOOK'
allusions, and reminiscences of other 'THE RING
writers, which convey a quite erroneous
impression until we have detected what
was in the poet's mind. For instance,
in Old Pictures in Florence,' he calls
Margheritone of Arezzo
'You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot,'
which I will venture to say that every
one misinterprets-not that it matters
much-until he remembers 2 Henry IV.:
'Look if the hoary elder have not his poll clawed
like a parrot.'
'Saturn and Venus in conjunction!'
But, speaking broadly, it may fairly be
said that the mere difficulties of style
and expression in Browning are nothing
like so great as they are often made out
to be; and in view of the good you
can get by setting them at defiance, it
is positively foolish to be daunted by
them.
Nevertheless, in the first book of this
great work, Browning does seem to
have gone out of his way to indulge
in every practice for which critics had
109
SEERS AND SINGERS:
AND THE
BOOK
THE RING reproached him. It is the natural incli-
nation of any man who feels himself
addressing a hostile audience whom he
does not care to conciliate. There is
compensation in some very noble pas-
sages; but there is some justification
for feeling exhausted by the time you
are nearing the end, when the grand
invocation to his wife bursts upon you
suddenly like sunlight breaking through
a storm almost :
'O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire,-
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face-
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched
their blue,
And bared them of their glory-to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die,—
This is the same voice; can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!'
And so to the end; and even here it is
possible to be puzzled if you fail to
observe that in line 5 'kindred' means
'kindred to the sun,' and 'his face''the
IIO
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
sun's face.'
BOOK
But this is not, in truth, a ‘THE RING
kind of obscurity which we are justified AND THE
in objecting to, because the phrase, when
it is understood, conveys the sense with
a perfection otherwise unattainable.
So ends the prologue, in which the
poet tells how he came upon the story,
the dry bones of it, in the old report of
a trial; how, as he meditated on it, the
dry bones became alive, and by the
application of the alloy of his thought,
his fancy, it became possible to mould
the gold of the facts into an artistic
whole, a ring, through and through the
pure gold of Truth.
Next we hear the story as coloured
by the representatives amongst the out-
side public of the two factions which
are called into being by any great trial :
men with superficial knowledge of the
facts, judging them in the light of the
kind of superficial acquaintance with
average human nature which we all
possess; the one-the married man—
having a natural bias to accept the
husband's version; the other, the un-
III
SEERS AND SINGERS:
"THE RING married man, with an equally natural
AND THE bias in favour of youth and beauty in
BOOK'
distress. The unconscious skill with
which each of them, giving himself
credit all the time for merely drawing
quite indisputable inferences from ob-
vious facts, shirks the points which do
not fall in comfortably with his precon-
ceived theory, and proves entirely to his
own satisfaction that nothing but the
most grotesque wrong-headedness could
possibly account for anybody taking a
different view, forms a truly admirable
exposition of ordinary human nature,
and of the common method of setting
about finding truth-namely, to decide
first what we want to be true, and
then squeeze the facts into the theory.
There was a gentleman who thought
he could settle the problem of squaring
the circle by filling a vessel with shot.
But he forgot the chinks. The facts
will generally fit into a theory if you
forget the chinks. The two speakers
belong to a single intellectual and
moral type; but it is only by the con-
II2
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
trast between them that the type itself 'THE RING
is manifested.
More entertaining, but somewhat
irritating, is the speaker of Book IV.,
'Tertium Quid,' the man who prides
himself on the nicety of his critical
discrimination; a superior person, who
moves amongst Excellencies, and has
the lowest opinion of all meaner folk;
a cynic of the basest order. His chief
difficulty in arriving at a decision on
any given point lies in the necessity
for admitting that if the one party is as
black as you would like to believe, the
other must be a great deal whiter than
-with your subtle knowledge of human
depravity—you can credit for a moment.
His sympathies are with the husband,
as a matter of policy, as being of a
noble house; but he cannot go so far
as to believe that even the husband was
much better than the worst you can
picture him. In the result he leaves
every question open, though—as a
matter of policy-favouring the Count's
acquittal.
AND THE
BOOK
H
113
SEERS AND SINGERS:
1
"THE RING It may be an heretical opinion, but I
AND THE should incline to advise people coming
BOOK
to 'The Ring and the Book' for the'
first time to pass over these three books
after mastering Book I., and proceed
direct to the three which follow, the
speeches of the three chief actors in
the tragedy. For it is in their character
that the interest of the whole centres.
Hitherto we have only had them pre-
sented by people who at best only half
understand them, and it is possible to
be bored by 'The Half Rome,' 'The
Other Half Rome,' and 'Tertium Quid.'
In any one who has not learnt by ex-
perience how thoroughly worth while
it is to refuse to be daunted by the
initial difficulties, and who is not en-
dowed with a more than average interest
in psychological problems, these three
books are apt to produce a distaste for
further investigation, a disinclination to
keep up the close attention which is
necessary to full appreciation. But if
you come to Count Guido compara-
tively fresh, the interest chains you at
:
114
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
AND THE
BOOK'
once. For Guido is a villain of an in- 'THE RING
tensely dramatic (not melodramatic)
type, whose nearest parallel in English
literature is to be found in Iago. Plaus-
ible, persuasive, shifty, with just the
occasional appearance of being carried
away by righteous indignation, the air
of an honest victim first of his supreme
regard for law, and secondly, of a high-
souled illegality when duty to his kind
bade him overstep the limits of law—
he stands before his judges; leaving
no stone unturned to save the life for
which he is fighting desperately, yet
failing utterly to convince. For he
fawns the least trifle too palpably; his
righteous indignation is a fraction over-
done-just enough to set the stamp of
insincerity on the whole performance.
The skill with which he lies is con-
summate; but you never feel a doubt
that he is lying.
And then in splendid contrast comes
Caponsacchi, magnificently sincere alike
in his vindication of what he had done,
and in his self-reproach for what he had
115
SEERS AND SINGERS:
1
'THE RING not done, with never a thought of him-
AND THE
BOOK' self, how he would look, what would be
deemed of him; only always before
him the wonderful white soul,' the
pure pale face with 'the beautiful, sad,
strange smile' of the girl who had been
to him a revelation of the pettiness, the
pitiful inefficiency of his own life, the
grandeur of what life may be. Merci-
lessly the tempestuous, scornful words
smite the judges, who had counted for
the jest of a gallant the most sacred
experience of his life-passionate words
in fine contrast to the pathos of these
which follow:
Why, had there been in me the touch of taint,
I had picked up so much knave's-policy
As hide it, keep one hand pressed on the place
Suspected of a spot would damn us both.
Or no, not her !-not even if any of you
Dares think that I, i' the face of death, her death
That's in my eyes and ears and brain and heart,
Lie-if he does, let him! I mean to say,
So he stop there, stay thought from smirching her,
The snow-white soul that angels fear to take
Untenderly.'
It is not that the man had done any-
116
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
AND THE
BOOK
thing on the face of it heroic. There "THE RING
was no great self-sacrifice in his act;
only he had dared to understand what
he was called upon to do—to face a
tremendous temptation which he might
have shirked; and had passed through
it not scatheless only, but purified and
ennobled, as one who has looked upon
the San Greal. He had learnt his lesson,
and attained to the joy that is three
parts pain. To realise with your whole
soul what holiness means is an experi-
ence worth a good deal of suffering.
The dramatic force of the whole
speech is admirable. It is the unpre-
pared sincerity of it, the bursts of fierce
indignation, the depths of tenderness,
the passionate humility, which make it
irresistible; and last, but not least, the
moment of gathered calm, of controlled
resignation, at the close, suddenly break-
ing into the one last sob of overwhelm-
ing anguish :
"O great, just, good God! Miserable me!'
From him we turn to the self-revelation
117
SEERS AND SINGERS:
1
AND THE
BOOK
'THE RING of the 'wonderful white soul,' Pompilia,
on her deathbed, with kind faces and
tender hands about her for once, and
the noble head of the Augustinian in
the background-a picture of innocence
that nothing could smirch, of faith that
never dreamed of wavering, of courage
that no suffering could quell, of charity
which could forgive the worst of wrong,
such as I know not where else to find.
From the first line to the last, whether
she is recalling some memory of child-
hood, or something in that dream of
desolateness which has become to her
so shadowy and unreal; or letting her
thoughts turn to contemplate the noble
spirit of the man who had tried to save
her, and speaking them with the fear-
less sincerity of stainless innocence; all
is lighted up with a light not of this
world. She is passing to the substance.
from the shadows, to the light from the
darkness, from the strangeness and con-
fusion to knowledge. Through all the
tenderness and the pathos, the pain and
the pity and the childlike trustfulness,
118
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
AND THE
BOOK
there runs a note of victory. I think it 'THE RING
is just from the stainlessness of her
soul that one feels it; for these lines
are among the last-some of them are
the very last-spoken by this child,
this seventeen-year-old girl, into whose
short span of life enough misery had
been crowded to furnish forth a score
of ordinary octogenarians:
'O lover of my life, O soldier saint,
No work begun shall ever pause for death!
Love will be helpful to me more and more
I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,
My weak hand in Thy strong hand, strong for that!
So, let him wait God's instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty! Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise.'
The two lawyers who follow supply
the element of comedy for which we are
not ungrateful. And it is decidedly a
stroke of artistic skill which gives the
jovial Don Giacinto, with his genia
mind running on his little boy's birth-
119
SEERS AND SINGERS:
"THE RING day, while he proves white black, to be
AND THE Guido's counsel; while the defence of
BOOK'
Pompilia is intrusted to Bottini, who is
absolutely devoid of any capacity for
understanding her-who is, in fact, on
about the same moral level as the critic
in 'Tertium Quid,' and takes his stand
wholly and solely on legal technicali-
ties. But both the lawyers are weari-
some; Don Giacinto is exceedingly
entertaining for some time, but he
palls, and the amount of canine Latin
he talks is exhausting. And Bottini is
too contemptible to be tolerable for
long. But after the tension of the
three great speeches these come as
something of a relief before the wise,
judicial deliverance of the Pope, in
whom, as in Pompilia, shines some-
thing of that fore-gleam of light from
the other world to whose threshold he
stands so near.
Of this book of 'The Pope' I find it
singularly difficult to speak. It is so
full of understanding, of insight, of sym-
pathy, so tender yet so unfaltering, so
120
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
AND THE
BOOK'
utterly free from cant or commonplace 'THE RING
methods of shirking the eternal pro-
blems, and withal so reverent and so
fearless. If I begin to pick out pas-
sages I can hardly stop. Take this, for
instance, from his picture of Pompilia :
Everywhere
I see in the world the intellect of man,
That sword; the energy, his subtle spear;
The knowledge which defends him like a shield;
Everywhere-but they make not up, I think,
The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower
She holds up to the softened gaze of God.'
Or this, as he meditates on the part
Caponsacchi had played:
"Was the trial sore,
Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time!
Why comes temptation but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray
"Lead us into no such temptation, Lord!”
Yea, but, O Thou whose servants are the bold,
Lead such temptations by the head and hair,
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,
That so he may do battle and have praise!'
There is no particular reason why
these passages should be quoted, rather
121
SEERS AND SINGERS:
"THE RING than a dozen others no less fine, no
AND THE less penetrating, no less rich with all
BOOK'
wisdom.
Not least at the end does the Pope
show his insight with the words:
'So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.'
For the second 'Guido'—Guido at
bay, turning on his fellows and cursing
them and God, as he lays his own soul
bare before the priests sent to receive.
his confession—is about as lurid as any-
thing well could be. He is an utter
coward, with the cowardice that has no
spark to redeem it; but he is a coward
turned desperate, and the fear and the
fury are about equal. Mostly the fury
predominates till the finishing moment
arrives, and then the fear, sheer terror
of death, carries the day. Only in the
last line do we get the sudden revela-
tion that he had known good from evil,
that he knew his wife for what she was,
the means of grace which had been
offered to him and spurned by him. In
122
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
that last despairing cry the truth flashes 'THE RING
from him:
'Abate-Cardinal-Christ-Maria-God-
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?'
The last book is in fact epilogue; it
tells something more of the fate of sur-
viving actors in the drama, and rounds
all off with something of explanation,
and something of a moral. A book
must be finished off somehow, and this
finishing off-unavoidably, perhaps-has
some of the baldness and poorness of
the First Book. Yet there is in it a
passage the Augustinian's sermon-
which may well be set beside some of
the finest parts of 'The Pope' without
suffering in the comparison.
My purpose in this chapter has chiefly
been to induce some of those who have
not already read 'The Ring and the
Book' to do so at an early opportunity.
I believe that it is the function of the
Higher Criticism not to seek for beauty,
except in what is essentially ugly, but
rather to set about proving that if any-
AND THE
BOOK'
123
SEERS
AND SINGERS
AND THE
BOOK'
"THE RING thing seems beautiful the supposition is
sure to be 'bourgeois.' So many people
find satisfaction in Browning nowadays,
that admiration for him is becoming a
mark of Philistinism. We may hope
that the number of Philistines is still
susceptible of increase.
I
124
VI
DRAMATIC POEMS

C
O define what you mean
by dramatic' is not
easy at the best of
times; perhaps what
I mean by a dramatic
poem just now is more
than anything else a
poem which aims at expressing a char-
acter or characters; whereas the cap-
tious may remark that I ought to mean
one which expresses an action. And
forthwith there is opened out an inter-
minable vista of arguments as to what
constitutes an action, which might be
entertaining to the arguers, but would
be distinctly irritating to every one
else. So we will take the argument
125
SEERS AND SINGERS:
POEMS
DRAMATIC for granted, and proceed on Humpty
Dumpty's principles, when he explained
that by 'glory' he meant 'a nice knock-
down argument.'
Now, what we commonly mean by a
drama is a poem which takes the form
of dialogue: which would limit us un-
duly-apart from the fact that you can
have the dialogue form without the
poem being really dramatic in the sense
intended. Browning's 'A Forgiveness,'
for instance, would be shut out; and
Empedocles on Etna, which is really a
poem of meditation, would be included.
As usual, you cannot really draw a
scientific line, any more than you can
say how many grains of sand make a
heap. The accuracy of the application
of the term 'dramatic' may be ques-
tioned, but its present convenience is
more important.
Periodically an old discussion crops
up as to whether a play can possibly be
a good play unless it is good to put on
the stage. It would seem to be merely
a question of words. If a play is in-
126
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
tended for the footlights, but is not DRAMATIC
adapted to them, it obviously fails in
its purpose. But supposing it was not
written for the footlights-that is, not
written under conditions which suit it
to the boards of a London theatre ?
The rule would land one in the curious
paradox that Sophocles was not a
writer of good plays. He wrote plays.
that were adapted for scenic represen-
tation before an Athenian audience, and
which can still fill a small theatre for
nearly a week at Oxford or Cambridge;
but the stage manager who tried to put
a translation, say of the 'Electra,' before
a London audience would make a con-
siderable loss out of his venture. A
story may be told in the form of dia-
logue, with the paraphernalia of acts
and scenes, and very well told too;
if you choose to say that it is not a
good play because it won't 'act,' you
may; but it is a good something; and
if the term 'play' is forbidden, what
are you to do?
What are you to
call it?
127
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DRAMATIC
POEMS
(
Three of our poets have written plays
-for Wordsworth's Borderers' hardly
claims serious consideration. As stage
performances, Arnold's 'Merope'is ob-
viously impossible, as it is simply an
imitation of the Greek play, utterly
unadapted to modern arrangements;
Browning's would, in all probability, be
absolute failures; Tennyson's alone are
perhaps capable of really holding the
stage as acting plays; and they need to
be put on as elaborately as Mr. Irving
can do it. Yet in the strength of the
characters drawn, in moral and emotional
interest, the Cup' will not for a moment.
stand comparison with, say, 'Strafford,'
while such a piece as 'Robin Hood' is
a bit of prettiness, a pastoral, a masque;
it is not a drama, for it has neither story
nor characters.
<
Superficial emotions are readily caught
and sympathised with; vehemence car-
ries one away much more readily than
concentration; it is much more effec-
tive, at sight, to be touching than to
be heart-breaking. If you know your
128
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
Shakspeare intimately, a noble interpre- DRAMATIC
tation by a great actor will appeal to
you throughout; if you do not know
him well-if you go to the theatre just
to get an idea of the play-it is the
superficial effects that will appeal to
you. Shakspeare's range of sympathies
is so wide that the superficialities are as
skilfully presented as the rest, and you
can feel as if you had seen a good play,
when to some one who knows it the
effective rendering of the minor points
may have altogether failed to com-
pensate for the hopelessly inadequate
treatment of the greater parts. A clever
actor may make Shakspeare popular,
even when his impersonation makes the
critic feel most vividly that Shakspeare
on the stage is spoilt; and a great
actor, whose energies are concentrated
on the nobler parts, may fail because
the significance, to an uncritical audi-
ence, of the slighter parts is overlooked.
That is to say, that Shakspeare was a
great stage-play writer, but his real,
greatest greatness is not recognisable in
I
129
SEERS AND SINGERS:
POEMS
DRAMATIC the hurry of a stage performance. In
Tennyson's plays, the chances are that
the best there is in them will be shown
on the stage. In Browning's, the minor
interests are insufficient for stage popu-
larity, the greater interests are on that
higher level of intensity with which
intimacy alone can place you in real
sympathy. To an audience already in-
timate with Strafford,' an artistic stage
rendering of it would be delightful: to
any one else it would be-a bore.
<
For the central figure in Browning's
'Strafford,' which may conveniently be
regarded as a typical drama of his,
belongs to a class which he is fond of
treating, and with which it requires a
certain effort to bring oneself in sym-
pathy: a character essentially noble,
but which has suffered a wrench, and
is driven to the adoption of naturally
alien methods in consequence. Went-
worth, endowed with strength, courage,
and intense loyalty, with every quality
befitting a leader, and devoted to the
cause of liberty, becomes a sudden apos-
130
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
tate, the champion of the very king who DRAMATIC
is endeavouring to abolish liberty alto-
gether. Whether the picture Browning
has given is one which can be reconciled
with the approved facts is a question
which does not concern us, any more
than whether Richard III. was a hunch-
back. The facts for the playwright may
be fictions. The problem is to reconcile
Strafford the Apostate with Wentworth
the Patriot. The key to the situa-
tion lies in Wentworth's overwhelm-
ing personal devotion to the king; its
supreme tragedy in his knowledge of
that king's utter baseness.
'What, the face was masked?
I had the heart to see, sir! Face of flesh,
But heart of stone-of smooth, cold, frightful
stone!'
Terrible words to have hurled at you,
when every word is blazing with truth.
Yet they are hardly out of Strafford's
mouth when he turns on the Commons'
deputation, and claims for himself the
responsibility for the very measures
Uor M
131
SEERS AND SINGERS:
POEMS
DRAMATIC he had loathed, which the king had
adopted in his absence by the advice of
his worst enemies. To save this man
from his own folly and the intrigues of
the self-seeking courtiers, Wentworth
attempted the impossible: desperately
striving to win him to act reasonably
and wisely; and his advice accepted
time after time only to be flung aside
and trampled on by the Saviles and
Vanes-desperately drawing on himself
the odium for the acts he hated, and
plunging into a new hopeless effort
to retrieve the disaster which his own
policy would have averted. Never, be
it noted, is it Strafford's aim to carry
out the policy of the Queen and the
Court party, which is the establishment
of an absolute monarchy; he seeks only
to save Charles from the destruction
which must be the only possible termi-
nation of that policy. Very pathetic,
too, is the irony which keeps Strafford
all unconscious of the love that lives for
him in one human heart; that blind-
ness, born of his love for the king, which
132
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
allows him to be deceived into taking DRAMATIC
Lady Carlisle's superficial Court-beauty-
manners for the true expression of her.
'That voice of hers-
You'd think she had a heart, sometimes. His voice
Is soft too.'
At the same time, it is easy enough
to see that such a play as this could
hardly be popular: hardly find even
any very large number of interested
readers. There is no relief, no relaxa-
tion of the emotional tension. Unless
one is familiar with the whole history
of Charles's reign, it is not easy to
follow the conversation of the Parlia-
mentarian leaders. Unless you have
already grasped Strafford's character
very thoroughly, the sudden changes
of passion, e.g. in Act II., scene 2, are
bewildering. I have quoted from that
scene above; let me quote another pas-
sage from it before we leave the play.
Strafford, about to undertake the new
task that the king's last, worst blunder
has forced upon him, is alone with Lady
,
133
SEERS AND SINGERS.
DRAMATIC Carlisle, 'the slight graceful girl, tall for
POEMS a flowering lily':
'Straf.
Ah! you know?
Well. I shall make a sorry soldier, Lucy!
All knights begin their enterprise, we read,
Under the best of auspices: 'tis morn,
The Lady girds his sword upon the Youth
(He's always very young)—the trumpets sound,
Cups pledge him and, why, the king blesses him—
You need not turn a page of the romance
To learn the Dreadful Giant's fate. Indeed,
We've the fair lady here: but she apart,-
A poor man rarely having handled lance,
And rather old, weary, and far from sure
His squires are not the Giant's friends. All's one.
Let us go forth.
Lady C.
Straf.
Go forth?
What matters it!
We shall die gloriously-as the book says.
The king stood there, 'tis not so long ago,
-There; and the whisper, Lucy, "Be my friend
Of friends!"-My king! I would have .
Lady C.
Died for him?
Straf. Sworn him true, Lucy. I can-die
for him.'
That last line seems to me to sum
the whole tragedy. The entire play is
sombre, terrible: but for the heroic
heart in the chief character, it would be
134
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
almost dreary; as it is, the pain of it is DRAMATIC
less than the grandeur.
The main characteristics of Strafford
mark most of Browning's plays: notably
the continuous strain of emotions at a
high pitch of intensity, and with very
little relief; and the complexity of
motive in the principal personages.
Luria, by the way, differs from the rest
in this respect, most of the characters
being actuated almost entirely by some
one dominating purpose; but even
there, except in the case of the Moor
himself, the purpose — different with
each one-has by each one to be care-
fully concealed, so that the difficulty of
finding out the point of view, and so
following the working of the different
minds, remains. In fact, the chances.
are that no actors could make a Brown-
ing play fully intelligible to an audience
who had not studied the text first.
It is curious to turn from these plays,
with their freedom from convention,
their formal roughness, their Sturm und
Drang, to Matthew Arnold's 'Merope,'
POEMS
135
SEERS AND SINGERS:
POEMS
DRAMATIC With its statuesque figures, its conven-
tional emotions, its clear, musical, regu-
lated expression. The beauty shows so
differently that one is almost tempted
to say that if present in one it cannot
be present in the other. There is in
fact no comparison, as presentations of
living human beings, between the strong,
passionate souls of Browning's dramas
and the graceful, carefully draped forms
of 'Merope,' with their neatly turned
proverbs in the Greek manner. In-
deed, one would have little difficulty in
believing that 'Merope' really was a
translation, so skilful is the imitation ;
but, for whatever reason, it fails to pro-
duce the effect of an original.
characters all talk very like the people
in a Greek play-but in the real thing
they are alive; and in Matthew Arnold
they are not. All the same, you cannot
read without recognising that the work
has a beauty of its own apart from the
mere metrical and verbal craftsmanship
it displays; but it is the beauty, not of
flesh and blood, but of marble.
The
136
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
(
POEMS
Merope,' however, is a solitary ex- DRAMATIC
periment. Arnold's strong point did
not lie in his character-drawing-which
is pretty nearly the same as saying, in
the strength and range of his human
sympathies. But the Laureate, within
certain limits, is a master in this re-
spect. The limits are not very wide,
but that does not affect the perfection.
of the workmanship within them. The
'Northern Farmer,' for instance-old
style:
'But Parson a comes an' a goos, an' a says it easy
an' freeä.
"The amoighty's a taäkin' o' you to 'issen', my
friend," says 'eä.
I weänt saay men be loiars, thaw summun said it
in 'aäste :
But 'e reads wonn sarmin a weeäk, an' I'a stubb'd
Thurnaby waäste.
'Do godamoighty know what a 's doing ataäkin' o'
meä?
I beänt wonn as saws 'ere a beän an' yonder a peä;
An' Squoire 'ull be sa mad an' all-a' dear a' dear!
An' I 'a managed for Squoire coom Michaelmas
thutty year.'
That northern farmer is as thoroughly
137
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DRAMATIC alive as any one could be, and his portrait
POEMS has been painted without a superfluous
stroke of the brush. His 'New Style'
successor is equally finished, equally
real, and his philosophy is undoubtedly
practical:
'Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er
munny too,
Maakin' 'em grä togither as they 've good right to do.
Couldn't I luvv thy muther by cause o' 'er munny
laäid by?
Naäy-for I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it:
reason why!'
The same type of work appears in
all the Laureate's dialect poems
sketches of characters rough, homely,
simple, sturdy, with narrow horizons and
limited ideas, but exceedingly shrewd
and genuine, and generally with a touch
of tenderness which sweetens them very
pleasantly. I incline to think that the
nearest artistic parallel to them is to be
found in Miss Wilkins's New England
stories. One can fancy the 'Spinster's
Sweet-'Arts' transformed into one of
those tales without much difficulty.
138
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
Of certain feminine types of a quite DRAMATIC
different class Tennyson has also given
admirable portraits: rather the tender,
clinging type of soft womanhood which
is very charming and to some minds.
constitutes the true ideal; though with
an occasional spice of wilfulness which
is no doubt reprehensible but not with-
out its own attraction the charac-
ter summed up in the Lilia of 'The
Princess':
'A rose-bud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she.'
This type of damsel, with the variant,
who is equally sweet, but perhaps a
trifle irritating in her submissiveness-
Lynette and Enid are about the most
perfect specimens of the two - the
Laureate has drawn many times with
a tender and loving hand. We have all
met such women outside of his poems,
and in everyday life they make the
world a much pleasanter and brighter
place than it would be without them.
Still, one has a suspicion that sweet-
139
SEERS AND SINGERS:
POEMS
DRAMATIC ness is hardly the be-all and end-all.
There is room for a grander type, and
Tennyson has not given it us.
For it is just when we come to the
mightier passions that work in a strong
nature that he fails us. It is strength
that is wanting. The weaker natures,
where they have a moral struggle and
are victorious, vanquish not passions but
emotions, something superficial that is
not rooted in their being; when they
are carried away, it is by emotions.
The lovers in Maud' and 'Locksley
Hall' are carried away very much; but
you do not feel that it took very much
to do it. It is a kind of atmospheric
disturbance, very exciting while it lasts;
but there is a certain want of grit about
the sufferers. Speaking generally, there
are many admirable representations of
rather weak characters acted upon by
vehement emotions; but, except Lance-
lot and Guinevere, none of the stronger
type; and even those two are not of
the strongest. Somehow, with them,
as with Arthur, one feels that there is
140
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
something defective in the portraiture: DRAMATIC
the thing conveyed is not quite what
was intended to be conveyed; as if the
poet himself had not fully grasped the
character he wished to present.
For intensity of feeling, singleness
of purpose, and indomitable resolution
through fierce anguish are needed in
making up a heroic figure.
Even a
great villain must have those qualities
after a sort. And just this heroic note
Tennyson never strikes quite clearly
and firmly. Whether in the plays or
the other pieces, the one character
which really approaches this type is, to
my mind, Queen Mary; because, for all
her distorted vision, her ideal is noble,
and she never ceases to strive after it.
Elsewhere, the accessories are beautiful;
the workmanship is consummate; the
figures themselves are fine; but the
sympathetic, imaginative grip of the
characters is lacking.
The contrast between the Tenny-
sonian dramatis persona, with all the
finished delicacy of their presentation,
141
SEERS AND SINGERS:
POEMS
DRAMATIC and the defiant vigour of Browning's
portrait-gallery, is very striking. With
these latter you are conscious at once
that they are men and women who
feel through and through with the
whole concentrated strength of natures.
not easily stirred, but with immense
capacities for feeling. The Italian in
England' is a thoroughly simple and
straightforward poem; not one of those
elaborate expositions of a complex in-
tellectual nature which so often, but by
no means so invariably as is commonly
supposed, attracted the poet. For the
most part it moves quietly, calmly,
steadily; without any piling up of
adjectives, or rush of rhetorical and
poetical expression, or vehemence of
language. But the intensity of feeling
is brought out all the more vividly by
the one concentrated flash of deadly
hatred that blazes out suddenly in the
midst of the calm-half a dozen lines
out of some hundred and thirty:
'How very long since I have thought
Concerning-much less wished for—aught
142
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
:
Beside the good of Italy,
For which I live and mean to die!
I never was in love; and since
Charles proved false, what shall now convince
My inmost heart I have a friend?
However, if I wished to spend
Real wishes on myself-say, three-
I know at least what one should be.
I would grasp Metternich until
I felt his red wet throat distil
In blood thro' these two hands. And next,
-Not much for that am I perplexed-
Charles, perjured traitor, for his part,
Should die slow of a broken heart
Under his new employers. Last
-Ah, there, what should I wish? For fast
Do I grow old and out of strength. . .
I think, then, I should wish to stand
This evening in that dear, lost land,
Over the sea the thousand miles,
And know if yet that woman smiles
With the calm smile.'
You feel that the man has become a
sort of embodiment of one single, utterly
absorbing passion-the love of Italy;
all his loves and hates centre on that.
He hates Metternich, not for hunting
him 'from hill to plain, from shore to
sea,' but because he is Italy's foe. He
hates Charles, not for betraying him,
DRAMATIC
POEMS
143
SEERS AND SINGERS:
POEMS
DRAMATIC but for deserting the cause. He loves
the memory of the woman who helped
him, because it was for Italy's sake the
help was given; that Italy 'for which I
live and mean to die.' So he puts it, in
the fewest and simplest words possible
--but they are spoken from the bottom
of his soul. It is not every one who can
realise such concentration of feeling, or
perhaps even recognise that the words
mean much.
This stillness, which belongs only
to feeling at white-heat, hardly attain-
able except through suffering of which
natures either shallow or coarse are
incapable, is a frequent note of Brown-
ing's characters. They have their out-
bursts too, but they have their periods
of tremendous self-control. I need not
refer to The Ring and the Book,' as
that was dealt with at some length
separately. But you find it all through
the dramas in Strafford,' 'Valence,'
'Luria'; in many of the shorter pieces
-in the 'Lost Mistress' as well as 'The
Patriot,' 'A Forgiveness,' or 'After.'
144
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
'Ha, what avails Death to erase
His offence, my disgrace?
I would we were boys as of old
In the field, by the fold.
'His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn
Were so easily borne !
I stand here now, he lies in his place.
Cover the face."
It is a nature of the same kind that is
drawn in 'Muléykeh'; Hóseyn, whose
steed was stolen, and who in the act
of capturing her again purposely spoke
the words that taught the thief how to
make her double her speed and escape.
In the morning the neighbours found
him weeping, and heard his story.
'And they jeered at him, one and all: "Poor Hóseyn
is crazed past hope!
How else had he wrought himself his ruin, in
fortune's spite?
To have simply held his tongue were a task for
a boy or a girl,
And here were Muléykeh again, the eyed like an
antelope,
The child of his heart by day, the wife of his
breast by night!"
“And the beaten in speed!" wept Hóseyn:
"You never have loved my Pearl."
DRAMATIC
POEMS
K
145
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DRAMATIC
POEMS
There is some truth in the proposi-
tion that Browning deals with abnormal
characters; but in the main that means
really that they are normal characters in-
tensified. The Italian in England is not
a kind of person you expect to meet out
at dinner, chiefly because people you
meet out at dinner are not generally
wholly absorbed in a single idea; nor
even perhaps, as a rule, capable of be-
coming so absorbed. Still, it would have
been interesting to ascertain whether Mr.
Bagehot would have classified that too as
'grotesque' art, when not engaged in
defending a thesis.
That is an instance, however, of the
abnormality being due to intensified
feeling; in a large number of cases the
special interest lies in abnormal intel-
lectual development. It is a pity that
in selecting specimens of this class the
editor of the shilling volume should
have chosen Mr. Sludge, while ignoring
Bishop Blougram, Fra Lippo Lippi, and
Caliban. Not that these might not have
had their places more satisfactorily filled
146
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
up from among the other omissions, for DRAMATIC
general purposes; but for this special
purpose these would have been more
effective. Caliban in particular, be-
cause, with the other bishop, him of
St. Praxed's, it is an extreme repre-
sentative and at the same time conveni-
ently short. Neither Caliban nor the
bishop, if they were average samples,
would be justified; the point is that
they are extreme cases, marking the
possible limits. The bishop is drawn.
with a vigour which makes him actively
repulsive instead of merely nasty, as
he would have been in most people's
hands, with the result that both artistic-
ally and ethically he is valuable instead
of offensive. But nothing can possibly
make either him or Caliban agreeable.
The picture of that evil monster evolv-
ing out of his own inner consciousness
an idea of the Creator as a Being just
like himself on a large scale is ex-
ceedingly powerful, and exceedingly
instructive.
Caliban speaks in the third person;
147
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DRAMATIC in the second section, in the first person.
But he steadily omits the personal pro-
POEMS
noun.
Setebos is the Creator.
Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.
'Thinketh, He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that;
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease:
He hated that He cannot change His cold,
Nor cure its ache.
"Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,
Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong, and Lord.
'Am strong myself, compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea :
'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
'Say the first straggler that boasts purple spots
Shall join the file one pincer twisted off;
'Say, This bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
And two worms he whose nippers end in red ;
As it likes me, each time, I do so He.'
It has been said that no one could
have written 'Lear' and remained sane
except the author of 'As You Like
It.' One might say that no one could
148
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
have created this Caliban and remained DRAMATIC
human except the creator of Pompilia.
On the other hand, as an example of
light and humorous characterisation, it
would be hard to beat that 'Italian
person of quality,' who distinguishes
between the joys of life in the city
square and the monotony of existence
up at a villa; with his
'Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle
the fife :
Oh, a day in the city square, there's no such
pleasure in life.'
<
There are, however, later pieces, such
as Fifine' and 'Prince Hohenstiël,'
coming under the same category of
semi-satirical dissection, which appear
to me to be out of court altogether;
although the orthodox, as I am told,
pin their faith to them, and say that if
you really want to know what Brown-
ing thought, you must go to them. In
that case, I for one don't want to know.
I am content with what he has said
elsewhere.
POEMS
149
SEERS AND SINGERS:
DRAMATIC
POEMS
Browning can draw commonplace,
ordinary good folks, and knaves, and
betwixt-and-between people, when he
chooses like the parents in 'The Ring
and the Book'; the Saviles, Vanes,
and Rudyards; Tresham; D'Ormea;
there are plenty more, but they do not
greatly interest him. What one does
note especially is the immense range.
from the pure heights of Pompilia and
Pope Innocent, the grandeur of Capon-
sacchi, Luria, and Strafford, the inno-
cence of Pippa, down through types
so different as Lippo, Andrea, Cleon;
through Ogniben and Djabal, Berthold
and Chiappino and Braccio, to the un-
speakable depths of Guido, and finally
Caliban; every one alive, complete,
what they were meant to be. They
may be noble, they may be hateful, but
they are flesh and blood through and
through. The vivid force and truth of
the portraiture never fails. The man
or woman depicted may be one with
whom you are incapable of bringing
yourself in sympathy-whom you can't
150
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
POEMS
understand; but you may be tolerably DRAMATIC
certain in the first place that the por-
traiture is true, in the second that the
subject is worth understanding, and in
the third that if you cannot or will not
understand, it may not be your own
fault, but it most undoubtedly is your
misfortune.
151
VII
THE POETS' LOVERS

HE test of a poet's true
greatness, dramatic-
ally at any rate, is
mainly to be found in
his treatment of vital
emotions; those emo-
tions, that is, by which
the course of the individual life is most
deeply affected; most of all, the love of
man and maiden, or man and wife.
Two of our poets, however, have not
had overmuch to say on the subject.
Neither Wordsworth nor Arnold had
the dramatic gift, and neither of them
chose to unlock the chambers of his
own heart, unless Wordsworth's 'Lucy'
poems are to be regarded as an instance
152
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
LOVERS
to the contrary, or Arnold's 'Marguerite' THE POETS’
series. Beautiful as the former are, they
can scarcely be regarded as the expres-
sion of any very strong feeling; and the
kind of scholarly emotion after the best
and most imperturbable models in the
latter can scarcely be dignified with the
name of love. Arnold's emotions, as
exhibited in his writings, were schooled
to a pitch of philosophic placidity which
to less patient or reserved mortals is
apt to prove irritating. And if 'Mar-
guerite' is cold, Tristram and Iseult'
is positively frosty. Wordsworth's near-
est approach to a poem with love for
its central interest is 'Laodamia'; and
there, admirable as is the teaching of
the lines which give the keynote,
'the gods approve
The depth and not the tumult of the soul,'
the whole poem is characterised much
more by gravity than intensity; there
is more head than heart in it.
But with Tennyson and Browning
things are altogether different. With
153
SEERS AND SINGERS:
LOVERS
THE POETS' their wide and varied human sympa-
thies, they have between them presented
us with what one might almost call a
museum of lovers of every possible
:
type lovers fickle, and lovers loyal;
hopeful, despairing, triumphant, de-
feated, diffuse, concentrated, indignant,
joyful; lovers like Merlin, the victims
of a strange and awful witchery; like
Guinevere, with her great repentance;
like Pompilia, with her stainless white-
ness; dramatic studies in which one
supplements the other so that the whole
field seems to be covered, Browning's
greatest powers coming into play just
where Tennyson's limitations bound
him.
I have already observed that, while
Tennyson's portrayal of certain dra-
matic types approaches perfection as
nearly as may be, the range within
which this holds good is not a very
wide one.
At the same time, its whole
scope is within the sympathetic capa-
cities, so to speak, of average folk: we
do not feel it any effort to understand
154
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
i
LOVERS
how people could feel like that, because THE POETS'
we can imagine ourselves feeling like
that without any very great difficulty.
Applying this to love-songs and poems
about lovers, it means that Tennyson is
particularly successful in treating the
idyllic and tender, or the superficial and
vehement examples, which may be con-
veniently grouped together under the
heading of 'sentimental.' I am not sure
that the word is altogether a fair one,
because it is apt to convey a sugges-
tion of unreality, of theatrical claptrap,
which is not intended. On the contrary,
the emotions expressed are perfectly
genuine, and carefully to be distin-
guished from the unwholesome sham
excitement for the sake of effect of the
herd of poseurs who selected Byron's
worst characteristics to take model by.
Tennyson's lovers do not indulge in
tinsel heroics; they do not profess senti-
ments which they do not feel, and meta-
phorically present pistols at their own
heads with a cheerful consciousness that
they are unloaded. Nor, on the other
155
SEERS AND SINGERS:
LOVERS
THE POETS' hand, are they the limp, consumptive
creatures of the era of 'Sensibility.'
But words get so maltreated that classi-
fication which shall not be misleading is
exceedingly difficult, and the word which
I am driven to as covering the range
of genuine passion outside the Tenny-
sonian field requires at least equally
careful guarding. That word is Intense.
For, a few years ago, the slang usage of
a clique gave such a hopelessly corrupt
sense to it, that for a long time it could
hardly be used without conveying a
sense as nearly as possible the opposite
of what it ought to be. Vigour, con-
centration, virile energy ought to be
implied in it; it came to mean limp,
futile, and gushing. It is sufficiently
obvious that Browning, the most robust
of writers and a born fighter, was not
'intense' in that preposterous use of the
word; but intensity, in its proper sense,
is the most marked characteristic of the
emotions of his characters, as it is not
of Tennyson's.
I have divided Tennyson's poems for
156
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
the present purpose into two classes: THE POETS’
the idyllic, and the vehement.
Now, it
is an essential note of the idyll that its
atmosphere shall be peaceful; and that
prohibits the introduction of stormy
emotions. But what is entirely and
perfectly appropriate is that tender and
thoroughly real feeling which we find in
'The Gardener's Daughter':
'So home I went, but could not sleep for joy,
Reading her perfect features in the gloom,
Kissing the rose she gave me o'er and o'er,
And shaping faithful record of the glance
That graced the giving-such a noise of life
Swarmed in the golden present, such a voice
Called to me from the years to come, and such
A length of bright horizon rimmed the dark.'
Every word there rings true; any
suspicion of posing, of pretending to a
feeling not really present, would jar
on one at once and ruin the harmony.
Tenderness, not force, is what is wanted
and what we get; the force may be
latent, but is not expressed; to ex-
press it would be an artistic blunder,
because it would be exciting instead of
LOVERS
157
SEERS AND SINGERS:
THE POETS' Soothing.
LOVERS
There is no tragedy in the
air; no stern endurance, no tremendous
sacrifice. There are peaceful idyllic
lives in this world, and they are very
pleasant and healthy to contemplate;
some of us are inclined to rate their
value something too low, for one reason
or another. Sometimes it is a hope-
lessly wrong reason, the craving for ex-
citement for its own sake which is apt
to develop into morbid and fantastic
forms of intellectual dram-drinking; but
this is probably rare. Much oftener I
take it to be the outcome of a genuine
eagerness and vigour; of an unrest
which is the condition of all forward
and upward movement, but fails to find
sufficient outlet in placid sylvan sur-
roundings. While we are thirsting for
the fray, or in the thick of it, with tense
nerves and bounding pulses, the picture
of these peaceful scenes excites a certain
indignant impatience. But at an earlier
stage, and when in the pauses of the
battle we have time to feel exhausted,
we can realise that they have their own
158
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
delight, and that by no means a con- THE POETS’
temptible one. The pipe has its uses
as well as the trumpet. We don't much
want to play the part of Corin and
Sylvia ourselves, but we are obliged to
the poet for giving us a glimpse of
them-and even now and then it is
borne in upon us that Corin and Sylvia
don't have such a very inefficient life of
it after all.
But, indeed, these comments only
apply to the point of view of a minority.
All of us at times, most of us as a rule,
find a readier pleasure in these tender
sentiments than, perhaps, we are quite
disposed to own. It is only when they
become unreal and tricky that they be-
come also unwholesome and twaddly;
and that these idyllic lovers of Tenny-
son's never are, seeing that they have in
them all a characteristic which takes
them out of the field of mere triviality,
in the unfailing reverence of the man
for the maiden-not spoken in so many
words, but conveyed in every word.
Gareth is, perhaps, hardly a fully
LOVERS
159
SEERS AND SINGERS:
LOVERS
THE POETS' developed lover in the story, but his atti-
tude towards Lynette well illustrates my
meaning-enshrined in King Arthur's
memorable words concerning a 'maiden.
passion for a maid.' And something of
the same is to be found in Geraint's
speech to Yniol-the Geraint of the
first part, of course; not the amazingly
contemptible Geraint the husband, of
the second part, who has no claim to
the sacred name of lover at all.
'To whom Geraint with eyes all bright replied,
Leaning a little toward him, "Thy leave!
Let me lay lance in rest, O noble host,
For this dear child, because I never saw,
Tho' having seen all beauties of our time,
Nor can see elsewhere anything so fair.
And if I fall, her name will yet remain
Untarnished as before; but if I live,
So aid me Heaven when at mine uttermost,
As I will make her truly my true wife."'
Whether Enid's love is entirely satis-
factory is a question to which different
people would doubtless give different an-
swers. It is accompanied by a degree
of self-suppression which is certainly not
emulated by her spouse, and seems to
160
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
sum up the whole duty of woman as THE POETS'
adoration plus obedience. Tennyson's LOVERS
heroines are altogether lacking in that
initiative which is so pre-eminently char-
acteristic of Shakspeare's, who are quite
as likely as not to be the guiding spirits
in the partnerships. The conception is
that which is commonly supposed to be
favoured by the masculine mind, which
lays a somewhat excessive stress on
sweetness and pliability, and scarcely
fits into that ideal of
'The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command,'
which Wordsworth describes, and a good
deal more of which there would need
to be about the maiden who should
awaken in her lover that passion which
King Arthur would have to make him
'worship her by years of noble deeds.'
Geraint himself serves a double capa-
city first as the lover in an idyll, and
secondly as a worse specimen of the
same type as those in 'Maud' and
L
161
SEERS AND SINGERS:
LOVERS
THE POETS' ' Locksley Hall,' who have the common
note, that they think about themselves
a good deal too much. They are not
absorbed in their love.
'Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the
chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in
music out of sight.'
Yes; but it would seem that the
speaker is not accurately describing
his own experience. He cannot forget
what a very superior person he is; and
one has a dim suspicion that perhaps
the shallow-hearted Amy had begun to
think he was more interested in his
own superiority than in hers before she
decided
' to decline
On a lower range of feeling, and a narrower heart
than mine.'
In like manner, the hero of 'Maud' is
too much possessed with his own wrongs
to be absorbed in his love, or to keep
his head for Maud's own sake under an
insult. He is as vehement in his loath-
ing for her brother as in his passion for
162
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
LOVERS
her; not a strong man absorbed by a THE POETS'
master passion, but a weak man tossed
between passions of which now one,
now another, gets the control over him.
The real strong man we never seem to
get. Still, it must be remembered that
this poem is a study of a character who
starts with a distempered brain, never
very far from the borderland between
sanity and madness.
But these hot-headed lovers with their
gusts of feeling give us the daintiest of
fancies in the daintiest of phrases, when
the controlling feeling happens to be
delight in the thought of the lady-love:
'Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling.'
These of course are the rooks: just
as in the next verse we evidently have
thrushes, with the germ of 'The Throstle'
in the third line :
'Birds in our wood sang,
Ringing through the valleys,
Maud is here, here, here,
In among the lilies.
163
SEERS AND SINGERS:
THE POETS'
LOVERS
'I know the way she went
Home with her maiden posy,
For her feet have touched the meadows
And left the daisies rosy.'
Surely as foolishly charming a fancy
as ever poet conceived.
'There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear,
She is coming, my life, my fate.
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near";
And the white rose weeps, 66 She is late";
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear";
And the lily whispers, "I wait."
If I have spoken with a certain
depreciation, I cannot pass on from
Tennyson without making some atone-
ment by quoting one passage more in
which he does effectually strike a note
far above the wild vehemence or the
tender grace of those poems to which I
have referred as showing the normal
limits of his effective range. If to
us King Arthur is something of a
phantom, it is no phantom that is
:
164
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
present to the mind of the repentant THE POETS'
Queen:
'Gone-my Lord!
Gone through my sin, to slay and to be slain !
And he forgave me, and I could not speak.—
I thought I could not breathe in that fine air,
That pure severity of perfect light—
I wanted warmth and colour, which I found
In Lancelot-now I see thee what thou art,
Thou art the highest and most human too,
Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none
Will tell the King I love him, tho' so late?
Now-ere he goes to the great Battle? None :
Myself must tell him in that purer life,
But now it were too daring. Ah my God,
What might I not have made of Thy fair world
Had I but loved Thy highest creature here?
It was my duty to have loved the highest:
It surely was my profit had I known :
It would have been my pleasure had I seen.
We needs must love the highest when we see it,
Not Lancelot, nor another.'
I have not here to speak of that other
kind of love whereof 'In Memoriam'
gives us so beautiful a presentment.
So it is noteworthy that, concerning
love in its special sense, it is through a
woman's lips that the poet has uttered
his noblest words: a woman whose
LOVERS
165
SEERS AND SINGERS:
THE POETS' great sin was matched by her great
repentance.
LOVERS
If love of one kind or another plays
an important part in Tennyson's poems,
its influence in Browning is assuredly
not less vital. But it is not often
marked by the grace and tenderness of
the Laureate; the fervour is too intense,
the emotion too absorbing. Yet it is
not altogether absent; and indeed, it is
rather curious that the most marked
examples of it, apart from Pompilia,
are perhaps to be found among the
poet's last lyrics: Summum Bonum,'
for instance, which one critic suc-
ceeded in discovering to be unreal
and gushing:
'All the breath and the bloom of the year in the
bag of one bee;
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the
heart of one gem ;
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine
of the sea;
Breath and bloom, wonder, wealth, shade and
shine-and, how far above them,
Truth that's brighter than gem,
Trust that's purer than pearl;
166
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, all THE POETS'
were for me
In the kiss of one girl.'
But indeed, if we come to consider,
we find that these qualities are present
in plenty of cases, only we forget them
because of others more striking. In
'Evelyn Hope' the prominent concep-
tion is that of eternal endeavour; it
is the potency, the vast reach of the
speaker's love, that impress us; yet
what could be more tender in thought
or in expression than such lines as
these?
'Till God's hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.
'So, hush; I will give you this leaf to keep;
See, I shut it inside the sweet, cold hand.
There that is our secret-go to sleep;
:
You will wake, and remember, and understand'
Perhaps it is in those poems where,
as it seems, love has 'failed of its pur-
pose here,' that Browning's most char-
acteristic work, and the work by which
he has won most positive gratitude, was
LOVERS
167
SEERS AND SINGERS:
LOVERS
THE POETS' done: inasmuch as they are instinct
with the belief that failure here is not
failure for good and all; that God
creates the love to reward the love.'
There is no difficulty in understanding
the position in such cases as Evelyn
Hope or Prospice, where the love on
earth is disappointed by death. But
the problems suggested both by 'Any
Wife to any Husband,' and 'The Last
Ride Together,' are very much more.
complex. I do not propose to enter
upon them; to do so would make it
necessary to trench on theological and
metaphysical matters, which are outside
the scope of this volume. And apart
from that, it may reasonably be ques-
tioned whether the logical attitude of a
lover is a profitable subject of investiga-
tion. People will fall in love, and, being
in, will behave themselves with a com-
plete disregard for logical propriety,
which all the sages may succeed in
affecting at much about the same date
as they may hope to discover the philo-
sopher's stone.
168
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
LOVERS
We shall not, therefore, inquire what THE POETS'
A, if a logical person, would think
about his correct relation to B in the
case where A loves B and B entirely
declines to return his affections. But
we shall observe that the pain which
the lover in Browning's poems suffers is
something ennobling and purifying. I
suppose that if one wished to name two
poems in the language which present
a really complete contrast, 'Locksley
Hall' and 'The Lost Mistress' would
be about as effective a pair as could be
found. The one poem is gorgeous with
magnificent accessories, splendid with
music, voluble, tempestuous; the other
perfectly simple, direct, unadorned. But
the one lover has been hurt mainly in his
self-respect; the other is heart-stricken.
Time and pluck may heal such a wound;
but there is no comparison between the
pain of it and the pain of the other.
And when Browning's poem is coupled
with The Last Ride Together,' the
spirit which animates the speakers is
revealed in its steadfast nobility.
169
SEERS AND SINGERS:
THE POETS'
LOVERS
"I said, "Then, Dearest, since 'tis so;
Since now at length my fate I know;
Since nothing all my love avails;
Since all my life seemed meant for fails-
Since this was written, and needs must be-
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness."
In proportion to the seriousness of
true love as Browning understood it
is his scorn for the merely superficial
or sensuous emotions which pass in
common parlance under the same title e;
it is a degradation of the word that
Caponsacchi and the Venetians of
Galuppi's Toccata' should be alike
classified as lovers.
'The soul doubtless is immortal-where a soul can
be discerned.'
'As for Venice and her people, merely born to
bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage: mirth and
folly were the crop.
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing
had to stop?'
For love, as he conceives it, is something
that thrills every fibre of our being;
170
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
LOVERS
no transitory emotion that comes and THE POETS'
goes like the breeze, casually awakened
and casually quenched. Such emotions
there are, the marks of human weak-
ness and deficiency, the outcome either
of undeveloped or effete humanity;
emotions which we may take for love,
through ignorance :
'This was a heart the Queen leant on, thrilled in a
moment erratic,'
as he sings in 'Misconceptions'; but
love they are not.
For the love which is indeed worthy
of the name is something altogether
different, having its source in whatever.
is noblest of our nature. Nearer we
hold of God who gives, than of His
tribes that take, I must believe'; and
in virtue of that fact, the love of man
and wife is an attribute of humanity. It
is an aspect of religion, enabling us to
understand the meaning of the Divine,
being itself the most Divine possession
we have. In 'By the Fireside,' where
the husband, in 'an age so blest that by
171
SEERS AND SINGERS:
LOVERS
THE POETS' its side youth seemed the waste instead,'
meditates on that past when 'the bar
was broken between life and life,' he
gives expression to the thought:
'Think, when our one soul understands
The great word which makes all things new,
When Earth breaks up and Heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you
In the house not made with hands?
'Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart ;
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the Divine.'
:
This is the love which lifts the lover,
not into a fictitious paradise which
vanishes at the first brush of adver-
sity, but into an atmosphere of strength
and life a light which illumines the
soul with a glory growing always fuller.
Through the mouths of his many men
and women, Browning set forth these
conceptions; of his own love he has
spoken in the Invocation in 'The Ring
and the Book,' and 'once and only
once, and for One only' in 'One Word
172
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
More.' With lines written by that One THE POETS'
we may fitly conclude.
They are from the 'Portuguese Son-
nets,' a series which assuredly ranks.
among the most perfect love-poems in
the language, as they are incomparably
their author's finest work:
'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 every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
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.'
LOVERS
173
VIII
RETROSPECTION
'Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Can never come back to me.'

WONDER if there is
any time in our lives
when those words fail
entirely to appeal to
us: save in those mo-
ments-rare moments
-of supreme happi-
ness when the past and the future are
forgotten in a present that seems an
eternity of bliss? In childhood, I sup-
pose, when the infinite possibilities of
being 'grown up' are so impressive, we
did not think much about the past; but
174
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
as the cares of life thicken round us,
there is generally a kind of fictitious
glow about the halcyon days before this
or that particular trouble began to vex
our souls.
Is it that
"The past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not when we walked therein '?
The very griefs we suffered in the
days that are no more are invested with
a tender halo-haec olim meminisse
juvabit: 'some day we shall enjoy the
memory of these things,' said the storm-
tossed Æneas. There are plenty of
men who honestly believe that their
school-days were the happiest time of
their lives, though the school-boy to
whom they make the airy and time-
honoured statement for the most part
puts it down as 'rot.' He refuses to
believe that his predecessors who sat on
the same hard benches, and carved their
unseemly initials on the same desk,
had the positive preference for frequent
RETRO-
SPECTION
175
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO- canings which their words seem to
SPECTION imply. His own impression is that he
Still, I
found life much jollier when he was
controlled only by a governess suffi-
ciently anxious for her own peace of
mind to be disinclined to challenge con-
tests which might be avoided.
am bound to say that if you described
that reminiscence to the young gentle-
man as 'the tender grace of a day that
is dead,' he would probably repeat the
above vulgar but expressive monosyl-
lable, with increased energy.
But school-boys, as is well known,
share Hotspur's views on poetry, save
such as is of a martial order. If you
quote to them
'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair,
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking on the days that are no more,'
they will regard you with a scornful
pity. I will not be responsible for the
views of the average school-girl on the
subject, but I should rather expect her
176
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
SPECTION
to say,' How lovely!' and then depart RETRO-
to read 'King Solomon's Mines' privily.
I don't believe she dwells upon the
days that are no more, as a rule; at
least, in the sense of the song. Still, I
was recently informed by a lady who
ought to know, that there never was a
time in her own life when she didn't
regret that the last section of it had
come to an end. Coming to the end
of anything is rather melancholy.
But even when the actual school-days
are over, it may be doubted whether
the poetry of retrospection finds very
much favour with young and healthy
minds. Time was when it was the
correct thing to be occupied in fading
away, and the tear of sensibility was
ever ready to flow. Brooding over the
past was quite en règle; and if you
hadn't a past to brood over, you could
manufacture one, which did very nearly
as well. The fashion has changed, and,
with the development of outdoor life
and physical exercise, activity is the
order of the day. There is so much to
M
177
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO- do, and a mere indulgence in the luxury
SPECTION of woe-especially imaginary woe-is
waste of time. Besides which, when
you are still young enough to be hurt.
at being considered young, the future-
unless in exceptional cases-is really
ever so much more interesting than the
past.
All the same, there are times when
the past comes back upon our minds
with an irresistible attraction; even for
those who are most persistently en-
gaged on thoughts of the future. When
the maiden sang 'Tears, idle tears' in
'The Princess,' Ida commented on the
song, very much as young and impatient.
enthusiasts generally will :
'If, indeed, there haunt
About the moulder'd lodges of the Past
So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men,
Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool
And so pass by: but thine are fancies hatch'd
In silken-folded idleness; nor is it
Wiser to weep a true occasion lost,
But trim our sails, and let old bygones be.'
Nevertheless, it was no such long
て
​178
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
time before there was a very different RETRO-
scene, when
'Her voice
Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands,
And her great heart thro' all the faultful Past
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break.'
That mood, however, was not very
long-lived. It is not much use crying
over spilt milk, though it is not much
use, either, to try and persuade our-
selves that the milk was never spilt
at all. The temples of the future are
built out of the ruins of the past, and
we may lament the vanished glories
without harm if we are steadily re-
solved to match them in the days to
come; more than that, the memory of
what has been will often help to en-
rich our conception of what may be,
of what it lies with us to do for our
own generation and the generations.
that are to follow. But the doing of
that is the main thing, after all.
'There has passed away a glory from
the earth.' It was in no mood of
emasculate lamentation that Words-
SPECTION
179
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO- worth wrote the ode on the 'Intima-
SPECTION tions of Immortality.' A certain regret
there is for the glory and the dream'
(which many people are in the habit
of declaring to be altogether fictitious,
or contrary to common experience).
But regret is not the dominant feel-
ing; rather it is an almost triumphant
expectation.
While I am on the subject of the
Ode, I should like to indulge in a
brief digression on a point in regard
to which Wordsworth has been sub-
jected to severe criticism-by Mr. John
Morley amongst others. The critics
positively deny the 'glory and the
dream' theory. They say that as a
matter of fact we enjoy Nature in
after years much more than we did in
childhood; and that the poet in look-
ing back invested the past with de-
lights which had never existed. On the
other hand, Mr. Ruskin has affirmed
the essential truth of Wordsworth's
view. My own belief is that Words-
worth and Mr. Ruskin are right not
180
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
as
SPECTION
only as concerns themselves, but also RETRO-
concerns a very large number of
us-though not, perhaps, the majority.
A child will often find a vivid delight
in a bit of rich colouring, especially
colouring which has much light in it,
like certain gems; water, mountains,
and sky will affect him intensely. He
has not learnt to analyse the feeling;
he cannot tell you what it is that sets
him
Singin' out for the happy he feels inside,'
as the author of 'Fo'c's'le Yarns' has it;
and his delight will anyhow be less criti-
cal-much more crude in its source as
well as in its expression-than in after
days. Our satisfaction in a noble land-
scape is more educated, more definite, as
time goes on, no doubt; but the question
is whether it is really keener, whether
the beauty of the external world really
acts upon us more. Of course, when
Mr. Morley says the view opposed to
his own is 'contrary to notorious fact,
experience, and truth,' there is not much
181
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO-
SPECTION
room left for argument. When so sober
a critic is so positive, one feels that to
question his assertion requires courage.
But it appears to me that, as a matter of
authority, Wordsworth and Mr. Ruskin
know as much about it as their critic;
and as a matter of experience, many
children are alive to the 'glory and
the dream,' who cease to be so in after
years. The power of analysing the
glory, the child lacks and the man
often gains; the power of feeling it,
the child often has and the man loses.
But that is not the important point
here. What the poet emphatically felt
was, that the 'tender grace of a day
that is dead' is not the source of a
weak-kneed despair, but an earnest of
splendour to come. And that is a
position which you cannot weaken by
saying that life is fuller now than it
was before. You may be too much
occupied with the future to think of
the past—that is the natural tendency
of young and vigorous souls into which
the iron has not yet entered. You may
182
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
SPECTION
take to exaggerating the goodness of RETRO-
the past and refusing to believe that
the future can hold in store anything
worth having-in which case you are
not likely to be much of a comfort to
yourself or anybody else, and retrospec-
tion becomes an unmixed evil. That
is an attitude which deserves sympathy
only when it is the outcome of excep-
tionally bitter experiences. But it is
not the attitude of Wordsworth or any
other of our poets. As a passing mood
it finds in them frequent expression;
but a passing mood is another matter
from a constant mental attitude.
None of these writers takes so consis-
tently forward a view of life as Brown-
ing. Now and then, however, he too
looks back on the past; notably in
'By the Fireside' and in 'Rabbi Ben
Ezra.' But it is not a dead past that he
looks on in them, but a past which con-
tained the germ of the present, and of a
nobler development to come.
'Come back with me to the first of all,
Let us lean and love it over again ’—
183
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO- yes; but
SPECTION
'If I traced
This path back, is it not in pride
To think how little I dreamed it led
To an age so blest that by its side
Youth seems the waste instead?'
And so in 'Rabbi Ben Ezra,' under
the metaphor of the Cup and the
Potter's Wheel:
'What though the earlier grooves
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Scull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
Look not thou down, but up!'
Of course, there are poems which
take a very different line, when his
dramatis persona go back to the past
in various moods of a temporary char-
acter; the passionate grief of 'May
and Death':
'I wish that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three parts of spring's delightful things;
Ay, and, for me, the fourth part, too';
184
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
the bitter disappointment of wasted RETRO-
lives, in 'Dis Aliter Visum' or 'Youth SPECTION
and Art'; the frenzy of 'The Con-
fessional,' and the semi-madness of
(
• Confessions.'
But these are drama-
tic, and can never be felt as any-
thing but dramatic; expressions of
an accidental mood in the life of this
or that individual. For the most
part, Browning lets the past alone;
at any rate, he does not allow its haunt-
ing echoes to take the place of the
harmonies that the future holds in
store. And when he does go back
to it, it is less for its own sake than
because the promise it contained has
been fulfilled.
Neither Wordsworth nor Mrs. Brown-
ing are much given to musings on the
past, but not a few critics are of opinion
that the Laureate's best title to fame
rests precisely on his achievement in
this field and in this field also Matthew
Arnold is undoubtedly at his best.
'Thyrsis' and 'Rugby Chapel' and
the 'Memorial Lines' will live, though
185
SEERS AND SINGERS
RETRO- 'Sohrab and Rustum' and Merope'
be forgotten. The sob of
SPECTION
'Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O sea,’
the sighing of 'Tears, idle tears,' the
tender cadences and the proud restraint.
of 'In Memoriam,' will linger in the ears
of men and in the hearts of the sorrow-
laden, though Arthur and his knights
should melt away and vanish like the
towers and pinnacles of Camelot.
As to the beauty of those two songs,
'wild with all regret' as they are, the
most impatient critic can have no evil
to say, save that they are deceptive and
fatal siren-songs, the more demoralising
for their alluring charm. And that is
a criticism which time will assuredly
cause the critic to swallow, with apolo-
gies, and with gratitude to the poet for
having given such perfect expression to
feelings that sooner or later, though it
may be for a short time only, we all
must own to. And at such times it is
better to let the tears flow.
•
186
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
Tennyson has his bits of dramatic re-
trospection, too. The hero of 'Locksley
Hall' moralises, sixty years after, very
much as one would have expected. As
the young man had a general opinion
that he and his contemporaries held
the key of all progress, so the old one
thinks that progress became a headlong
rush downhill when he ceased to take
-or fancy he was taking-an active
part in it. The octogenarian prophet
of pessimism has usually started life as
a revolutionary. We are so prone to
generalise from our personal disap-
pointments! The spinster with her
Tommies is a very different kind of
person, whose mind dwells on casual
events, which she reverts to with a
humorous enjoyment and without re-
gret. Laurence Aylmer's reminiscences
have their tinge of sadness, such as is
awakened in every one who looks upon
the scenes from which the old familiar
faces have gone for ever; but there are
more smiles than tears in the poem.
The hero of The Gardener's Daughter'
RETRO-
SPECTION
187
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO- is capable of making the assertion that
SPECTION those old Mays had thrice the life of
these '-a conviction which most folks
attain to some time or other, only we
date the 'old Mays' differently. These
are all individual moods, however. The
mood of the songs is universal, inas-
much as it comes upon all men, and
not once only in a lifetime to most.
One sometimes wonders, in reading
Matthew Arnold's poems, whether he
ever was really young at all-young and
foolish. Everything he wrote bears
such an impress of trained gravity. He
is more like Laurence Aylmer than
anything else in Tennyson. In his
elegiac poems, as in those which are
more or less dramatic, there is no note
of passion, no wildness of regret. Once
or twice, as in the poem called 'Grow-
ing Old,' there is a bitter taste of dust
and ashes; but usually, when he turns
to the past, it is to dwell with serene
melancholy on the disillusionment that
years have brought-to contrast the
bright dreams of yore with the fading
188
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
SPECTION
hopes of to-day. When he retraces the RETRO-
paths on which he had rambled with
'Thyrsis,' the change that most im-
presses him is that now
'Long the way appears which seemed so short
To the less practised eye of sanguine youth;
And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,
The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,
Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!
Unbreachable the fort
Of the long-battered world uplifts its wall;
And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,
And near and real the charm of thy repose,
And night as welcome as a friend would fall.'
Now, the young man or maiden who
is prepared to echo the sentiment of
those lines, as a matter of his or her
own personal experience, must be either
out of sorts, or the victim of some kind
of intellectual malady. When
'round us too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade,'
it is another matter. When we have
been through the brunt of the battle, it
is legitimate to say we are tired. But
when we have got the brunt of the
1
189
SEERS AND SINGERS:
SPECTION
RETRO- battle in front of us, it is unwise to
remind ourselves too often that it's
going to be a very fatiguing affair. It
is better to risk disappointment at the
end than to be disheartened at the out-
set. If, to escape the pain of disillu-
sion, we steadily decline the joy of
anticipation, we are no very great
gainers. Hope to-day is not merely
the source of bitterness to-morrow.
There are some folks who reach their
fourscore years without being disillu-
sioned at all. There are different ways
of taking experience. You may
'Welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,'
though it is an uncommonly difficult
thing to do. Or you may take the
rebuff with a shrug, and say it was only
what you ought to have expected. Or
you may cry out against fate for having
raised your hopes only to dash them,
regarding your woes as a specially
designed insult to your important per-
sonality, like Marie Bashkirtseff. But
190
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
there is no doubt which course of the
three is the noblest-and the hardest.
It would seem that it is precisely this
absence of passion, this austere serenity,
which constitutes the fascination exer-
cised over certain minds by Arnold's
poems, coupled with their scholarly
manner and purity of expression. One
reason, perhaps, why this is the case
may be found in the very opposite
character of so much of the contem-
porary poetry which found admirers-
never perhaps very numerous, but vehe-
mently enthusiastic; poetry which was
emotional and glowing, whatever its
faults were, to a somewhat fatiguing
degree. One can imagine people turn-
ing from that overheated, scent-laden
atmosphere, with a sense of relief, to
this clear, still air; finding their sense
of form, their literary desires, satisfied
without being called upon to feel any
exciting emotions, their consciousness
of the inefficiency of mortal things con-
firmed without bitterness and with a
calm which is very nearly cheerful,
RETRO-
SPECTION
24
191
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO-
SPECTION
But it is the sort of thing which must
appeal mainly to people who are tired,
whether from the exhaustion of some
struggle brief but fierce, or from the
weariness of long endurance, or from
a certain moral lassitude. To admire,
even to sympathise with it, is one thing;
to turn to it habitually for consolation
is another. It makes looking forward
the reverse of attractive, whereas it is
best for us to go on looking forward
until the play is played out. This atti-
tude is all very well if we have found
life bitter; to assume it, perhaps, gives
us a certain sense of superiority to illu-
sion if as a matter of fact we have found
life sweet, but it will not help us much
towards making it sweeter.
Therefore I find in 'Rugby Chapel'
a higher note than in 'Thyrsis,' despite
the superiority of poetical form in the
latter poem, or in 'Empedocles,' though
there the dramatic fitness of the thoughts
justifies them. It is one thing to take
joy in thoughts for their own sake, and
another to find satisfaction in seeing
192
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
SPECTION
what a particular person will think RETRO-
under given circumstances. In 'Rugby
Chapel,' however, the memory of a
heroic spirit triumphs over egoistic
melancholy, and for once we have a
poem in which hope predominates-
hope derived from the thought of those
who
'Souls tempered with fire,
Fervent, heroic, and good,
Helpers and friends of mankind';
'Move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, re-inspire the brave!
Order, courage, return.
Eyes rekindling, and prayers
Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files,
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march,
On, to the bound of the waste,
On, to the city of God.'
The son may help us to put up with
life, but the father helped men to make
it.
The Laureate's greatest work-if one
may speak as if the relative merits of
N
193
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO-
his greater works can be yet decided
SPECTION is altogether different in tone. For
the key to it is distinctly the loss of an
individual friend; whereas, in 'Thyrsis,'
Arnold's 'In Memoriam A. H. Clough,'
the loss of the individual friend is very
much less prominent than the general
idea of change. With Tennyson the
one face that he loved most is gone for
ever, and every thought turns on that.
Change for itself is the thing that the
Oxford poet mourns, and loss of a
friend as part of the change. It is in
the hour of overwhelming grief that 'In
Memoriam' appeals to us most of all;
'Thyrsis' is rather the expression of a
general weariness to which a particular
occasion has given voice. If I should
attempt to pick out the verses on which
the whole argument of 'In Memoriam '
hangs, they would be these:
VI
'O, what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.'
194
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
XXVII
'I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.'
LIV
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last-far-off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.'
It is not, therefore, a poem expressing
the feeling aroused by contemplation of
the past generally, but of the past as
associated with one particular person,
never again to be seen on this side of
the gates of death; the cry of bereave-
ment, not of disappointment; the voice
of weakness, but of one crying for the
light, and trusting that the light will
come.
To one who has never known such a
loss it will be easy to agree with the
critic, and say:
'This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.'
RETRO-
SPECTION
195
SEERS AND SINGERS:
RETRO- To whom the answer is given very
SPECTION sufficiently:
'Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust.'
Another, to whom the poet's faith,
sustaining him through his grief, is a
vain thing, may speak impatiently, say-
ing that such consolation is as a house
built upon the sand-empty and de-
ceptive as a bubble; that it is better to
face the worst and harden your heart.
And indeed, if the poet's faith be vain,
that would seem to be about the best
thing to be done; only, it would have
been as well to begin hardening your
heart beforehand.
But to one to whom comes such and
so great a loss-a loss which for the
time empties the world of light-to
whom the faith has been given, but
for whom, at the time, it seems to be
swallowed up in the darkness—to such
a one the knowledge that another has
borne the like grief, has given it such
expression, and has held fast to the
196
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
SPECTION
faith through it, is a source of unspeak- RETRO-
able consolation. When as yet the pain
is too recent and too keen for him to
hail it as a message from Heaven, to
welcome it as the 'sting that bids not
sit nor stand, but go,' he will find com-
fort in the words that utter his own
sorrow, a voice for his unspoken cry
for help in that invocation :
'Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die ;
And Thou hast made him : Thou art just.'
The moods of sorrow are many and
various. Part at least of the fascination
of 'In Memoriam' lies in the range of
moods which it covers, so that one can
hardly fail to find the moment's feel-
ing expressed somewhere or other in
the poem-the inarticulate grief made
articulate with a strange perfection that
197
SEERS AND SINGERS
SPECTION
RETRO- brings with it a wonderful relief. 'I
would that my tongue could utter the
thoughts that arise in me.' It is the
poet's gift to men to have uttered what
they could only feel before.
198
IX
IDEAS AND IDEALS

STARTED out with
the intention of talk-
ing about five poets,
and about one of the
five hardly a word has
been said. Because,
in many ways, Mrs.
Browning stands curiously apart from
the rest; it is harder to find common
ground for the purposes of comparison.
The reason of this appears to me to be,
that she deals more in abstract ideas;
that her thoughts are rarely self-centred,
as is so much the case with Arnold, and
with much of Wordsworth and some of
Tennyson; and her sympathies are less
for individuals than for classes. The
Portuguese Sonnets, one of which was
i
199
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEAS AND quoted in a previous chapter, are a
IDEALS
marked exception to this general state-
ment; but it accounts for the absence
from her work of anything of high
dramatic quality on the one hand, and
of egoistic meditation on the other.
For her poetry shows both the sus-
ceptibility to strong feeling on her own
part, and the ready sympathy, the power
of understanding other people, which
might have been expected to result in
outbursts of lyrical passion or dramatic
characterisation.
Lyrical passion of a sort we have
from her:
'Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their
mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing towards the west:
But the young young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the play-time of the others,
In the country of the free.'
200
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
There is a cry of passionate pity IDEAS AND
running all through The Cry of the
Children'; but if Tennyson had de-
sired to stir the sympathies which are
aroused by it, he would have set to
work with a poem after the manner of
the Children's Hospital,' and similarly
Browning would have made the interest
centre on the sufferings of some indi-
vidual child. The voice, so to speak,
would have come not from the poet
but from the child. Not the poet, but
one of the children, would have inter-
preted the cry of the rest; the method
would have been dramatic.
One may
say that with Robert Browning the
method is always dramatic even when
the form is lyrical; even if there is an
abstract idea to be dealt with, it is done
by 'Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,' and the
treatment of it is full of the personality
of the imagined speaker. On the other
hand, The Cry of the Children' is not
an expression of the poet's own personal
mood, as 'In Memoriam' is, or Words-
worth's Ode, or 'Thyrsis.' So that the
201
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEALS
IDEAS AND point of the distinction is, that whereas
what I must lamely call the Lyrical as
opposed to the Dramatic method is
used by the other poets for the expres-
sion of a personal mood, and is almost
confined to that, Mrs. Browning uses it
instead of the Dramatic method; while,
like her husband, she rarely expresses
her personal mood at all.
The habit of mind which has led to
this result seems to come out also when
she does intend to be dramatic. Her
speakers do not really retain their in-
dividuality, but become mouthpieces for
the declamation of some generalisation ;
some broad observations which go alto-
gether outside the immediate range of
the individual's interest. Imagine any
one talking at large after the manner
of the lover in 'Lady Geraldine's Court-
ship'! No man would ever have dreamed
of saying all that. The poet proclaims
the ideas which the situation suggests
to her. She forgets the individual
feeling of the moment, and generalises,
just when generalising is dramatically
202
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
absurd.
Now, he of 'Locksley Hall,' IDEAS AND
concerning whom I have said sundry IDEALS
hard things, talks a good deal of
nonsense and proves himself rather a
poor creature; but his generalising is
dramatically right. Whereas Lady
Geraldine's lover makes exactly the
sort of speech that he might have com-
posed for himself a week later as the
proper thing for him to have said under
the circumstances; but it is just what
he never would have said at the time.
Mrs. Browning's sense of dramatic fit-
ness is overturned by her pursuit of
abstract ideas. The ideas may be fine,
but they are out of place just where
they come.
Hence her finest effects are pro-
duced when she is not attempting to
be dramatic, but is interpreting some
comparatively abstract conception: the
feeling of a whole class, as in 'The Cry
of the Children'; the idea of liberty, as
in 'Casa Guidi'; the idea of patriotism,
as in 'The Forced Recruit'-a Vene-
tian, forced to serve in the Austrian
203
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEAS AND ranks against his countrymen at Sol-
IDEALS
ferino:
'By your enemy tortured and goaded
To march with them, stand in their file,
His musket (see) never was loaded,
He facing your guns with that smile.
'As orphans yearn on to their mothers
He yearned to your patriot bands :—
"Let me die for our Italy, brothers,
If not in your ranks, by your hands."..
"Twas sublime. In a cruel restriction
Cut off from the guerdon of sons,
With most filial obedience, conviction,
His soul kissed the lips of her guns.
'That moves you? Nay, grudge not to show it,
While digging a grave for him here;
The others who died, says your poet,
Have glory :-let him have a tear.'
In her right perception of what is
base, in her ready response to what is
noble, in her tender sympathy for suf-
fering, in her high conception of the
ideals at which a pure nature must aim,
Mrs. Browning was a true poet, and a
true woman. Her artistic capacity fell
very far short of her poetic feeling, and
the defectiveness of her versification, as
well as the other demerits of her man-
204
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
ner of composition (as in the dramatic IDEAS AND
pieces criticised above), makes her work
much less effective and convincing than
it deserved to be; always with the ex-
ception of the Portuguese Sonnets, which
stand alone as the genuine outpouring
of her own heart. Apart from these
(and from ‘Aurora Leigh,' which is not
included for the purpose of this volume),
it is in the 'Vision of Poets' that the
highest qualities of the poet, the best
gift she has given us, are to be found
There at least we find that courageous
acceptance of pain, that assurance of
holiness, that triumph through suffer-
ing, which make men into martyrs and
heroes; and to make men ready to be
martyrs and heroes would seem to be
among the highest functions of the
poets. The lines which follow are in
form characteristic of the writer; their
spirit is closely akin to much in the
noblest poems of her husband:
'I laid my soul before thy feet
That images of fair and sweet
Might walk to other men on it,
205
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEAS AND
IDEALS
'I am content to feel the step
Of each pure image: let those keep
To Mandragore, who care to sleep.
'I am content to touch the brink
Of the other goblet, and I think
My bitter drink a wholesome drink.
I know-is all the mourner saith,
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And Life is perfected by Death.'
Heroism and martyrdom are not as
a rule suggested by Matthew Arnold,
but rather that calm and unemotional
attitude towards what we have got to
put up with which is perhaps as good
an antidote as may be found for the
hysterical raptures and equally hysteri-
cal despair that sometimes play havoc.
with reason and feeling. Nevertheless,
when he betakes himself to barbaric
realms, although Thor and Rustum
would hardly know themselves in their
polished and stately half-Hellenised por-
traits, the poet is in sufficient sympathy
with his subject to give a sense of emo-
tion controlled, instead of emotion edu-
cated away altogether.
206
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
In 'Balder' there is an element alto- IDEAS AND
gether wanting in Arnold's latter-day
meditations: a something which is in
curious contrast with his usually very
academic habit of mind. The grim
old Norse world, with its gods and
heroes loving and hating, feasting and
fighting, fearing nothing, dauntless and
stubborn, with Ragnarok, 'the Twilight
of the Gods,' to end it all for most of
them; and in the midst of the tur-
bulent, bloodstained crowd, the strange
pure figure of Balder the Beautiful,
the Beloved, the Reconciler, captive
among the strengthless dead, one day
to reappear spreading peace amid new
heavens and a new earth-I find this
infinitely more stirring, more instinct
with life. For the idea is heroic. Per-
haps the reeds did have a better time
of it than the oak when the storm
came; but one's sympathies are with.
the oak, for all that. The conception is
grim enough; barbaric if you will; but
at any rate not effete. If we have not
the higher inspiration of the confidence
207
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEALS
IDEAS AND that the struggle is after all but purifica-
tion, we have at least the stern triumph
of fighting it out, and falling with all
our wounds in front.
Moreover, in this poem Arnold has
touched, strangely enough, a note of
tenderness which is wanting in him
as a rule; whether from sheer force of
contrast between Balder and his fellow-
gods, or just because in that barbaric
atmosphere the poet was for once con-
strained to loose the bonds in which
for the most part he kept his emotions.
fettered. The nearest thing to tears in
his poems is to be found in the speech.
of Hoder-the blind Hoder who all un-
witting had dealt the fatal blow where-
by the halls of Heaven had been reft of
that gracious presence-when he meets
Hermod on the outer bounds of the
realms of gloom:
'For this I died, and fled beneath the gloom,
Not daily to endure abhorring gods,
Nor with a hateful presence cumber Heaven:
And canst thou not, even here, pass pitying by?
No less than Balder have I lost the light
208
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
Of Heaven and communion with my kin;
I, too, had once a wife, and once a child,
And substance, and a golden house in Heaven-
But all I left of my own act, and fled
Below, and dost thou hate me even here?
Balder upbraids me not, nor hates at all,
Though he has cause, have any cause; but he,
When that with downcast looks I hither came,
Stretched forth his hand, and with benignant voice,
Welcome, he said, if there be welcome here,
Brother, and fellow-sport of Lok with me.'
The man who does the best service
to mankind is he who, whatever his
particular function may be, most helps
us to live nobler lives. The ideal of
suppressed emotion, of a calm above.
perturbation by the ordinary freaks of
fate, which in general Matthew Arnold
seems to me to set before us, is a fine
one in its way; but it is fatalistic. If
we have just to take what fortune sends
us, and bear it as best we may, this atti-
tude would seem to be about the best to
strive after; at least it is far better than
wasting our time on vain complaints
against the cruelty of Fortune which is
not only blind but deaf. But something
IDEAS AND
IDEALS
O
209
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEALS
IDEAS AND more is wanted if we are to be roused
to activity instead of mere passivity.
If we are to take our own share in
making our own lot-more, if we can
take a part in the making of our neigh-
bour's lot for weal or woe-we want
something beyond the capacity for sit-
ting still with folded hands and ob-
serving 'Kismet,' while our neighbours
right and left are being shot down and
we are ourselves receiving an occasional
wound. We want to be roused to go
and stop the shooting; we want to be-
lieve that it is worth while to try. Now,
that is just the effect which the cry of
self-commiseration which sundry minor
poets have loved to raise-and for the
matter of that will go on raising-does
not produce. It makes us feel that we
have quite as good a right as they to
call upon gods and men to pity us.
The cry of sympathetic pity is another
matter, and rouses the chivalrous in-
stincts in him who hears it. There is
no whining about Matthew Arnold, but
there is not much sympathy either.
210
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
The effect of most great poetry is to IDEAS AND
stir the emotions, and to give them
a worthy object; the effect of Arnold
is to calm them, if not to suppress
them.
Wordsworth holds an altogether ex-
ceptional place as an influence, for he
generally lets the fighting emotions at
any rate alone. When we read him
the stress of the struggle passes away
from our minds; a great peace is over
all things, and yet not the peace of
the Lotus Eaters, which is a weari-
ness. This is a healing and refreshing
calm.
'But where will Europe's later hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel:
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly—
But who, like him, will put it by?'
Perhaps it is really because he re-
stores our mental and moral balance by
211
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEALS
IDEAS AND getting things into their right propor-
tion. When you get into a hill-country,
in the valleys the low hills obscure the
great peaks. In the rough-and-tumble
of everyday life, the little things affect
us to the forgetting of the larger things.
Wordsworth takes you up among the
tops, where things recover their right
level; not because he makes you de-
spise the little things-it is he who
speaks of
'That best portion of a good man's life,
The little nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.'
Those are what we look upon as little
things all along. It is the hillocks
which we have magnified into moun-
tains that resume their proper dimen-
sions in the landscape. He sounds no
trumpet-call to action, but he restores
us to that state of mental health which
is the condition of any action worth
taking. Things that are petty, and
paltry, and mean, sordid personal
motives and selfish cares, lose the sham
mean,
212
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
significance with which we have in- IDEAS AND
vested them; in the presence of the
Infinite we bow our heads and feel the
blessing. And when we rise again to
face the struggle anew, we do so with
clearer perceptions, purer aims; looking
forward through the battle-smoke to the
infinite peace beyond, the
'central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.'
In the early stages of life, no doubt,
one is inclined to be rather impatient:
not over-anxious about seeing things
in their true proportions; not, indeed,
greatly desirous of peace at all. There
is joy in fighting for its own sake.
'Then Gareth, "Here be rules. I know but one-
To dash against mine enemy, and to win."
And Gareth was a very valiant youth,
and won a scornful damsel's heart by
his valiancy; all the same, he did not
understand the noble art of demolishing
his enemies quite so well as Lancelot.
But one likes him all the better for his
213
SEERS AND SINGERS:
23
IDEALS
IDEAS AND impetuosity. And it must be confessed
that Wordsworth does not encourage
impetuosity; therefore the elder folk
love him, and the younger folk do after
the manner of young folk, and are
something disposed to 'put him by.'
The influence of Tennyson is chiefly
felt in his power of stirring those softer
emotions which the everyday lives of
most of us call or ought to call into
constant play. The kindly affections
of kinsfolk and friends, the chivalry of
the strong towards the weak: the
beauty of these things and the ugliness
of their opposites are what he most.
loves to dwell on, and dwells on with
most success. His phases are so various
that curiously opposite criticisms are
often passed upon him. One critic
cannot tolerate his pessimism (having
in mind, I suppose, such pieces as the
second 'Locksley Hall'), while another
complains of his 'rose-water optimism';
one applauds his noble ideals, while
another sneers at his country-parsonage
ethics. Country-parsonage ethics are
214
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
no such contemptible matter, but they IDEAS AND
are apt to be framed within limited
horizons, and to leave us stranded and
without a guide when unexpected com-
plications appear. Hence we are some
of us a little apt to forget that life is
mostly made up of the minor relations,
and that living harmoniously in them.
will occupy most of our time, if our
lives are to be profitable to ourselves or
to anybody else. Now and then we
are brought up face to face with some
great problem, suddenly and awfully
thrust upon us; a part of the riddle of
our own lives, which must be unravelled,
instead of a vague something of which
we may be content with supposing
there is a vague solution somewhere;
and it seems to me that for the hardest
problems of the younger generation-
the problems which they feel to be for
them the most pressing-Tennyson fails.
to provide the key; whereas he did
supply just the key which the previous
generation wanted. The movement of
science, of criticism, of democracy, has
215
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEALS
IDEAS AND produced new conditions which do not
affect the mental attitude of people who
had made up their minds before these
complications arose, but which do make
all the difference to those who are still
occupied in making up their minds.
When the new facts have been brought
into line with the old truths, it is likely
enough-though prophesying be vanity
-that Tennyson will recover much of
the ground which it seems that he is
losing to-day. But, as it is, the problems
are apt to take a form in which his aid
is deficient.
Therefore it is not in the great crises of
our lives that we turn to the Laureate;
unless it be in the hour of anguish when
some great blow has so prostrated us
that the process of recuperation must
be very gradual and slow, when we
are too weak for a more stimulating
medicine. But what may be called his
everyday ideals are singularly beautiful;
to a certain type of mind, more attrac-
tive and inspiring than any other, and
perhaps demanding most attention pre-
216
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
cisely from that other type of mind IDEAS AND
which inclines to make light of them—
the type in which energy not seldom
becomes turbidity, and tenderness is
often taken for weakness; one which
the intellectual turmoil of to-day has
made rather common. The dignity,
the loyalty, the chivalrous self-suppres-
sion and large-hearted pitifulness, to
fail in which meant failure in all to
the Knights of the Round Table, are not
qualities to be lightly scorned, or even
to be set on one side as mere social
graces. The simulation of them is con-
temptible enough, but their essence is
the spirit of self-sacrifice. No doubt
there are artificial flowers in the market,
but the wilding hedge-rose is not the
less lovely.
But there are fiercer temptations,
sharper emotions, sterner trials to be
faced than those in which Tennyson
most avails us. To some people they
hardly come at all, to most at very
rare intervals. And, partly for that
reason, the poet who has dealt with
217
SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEALS
IDEAS AND them most habitually, most courage-
ously, most truly, finds comparatively
few readers; because either you must.
have experienced those emotions your-
self- and that depends mainly upon
outside circumstances or you must
have the imaginative capacity for
really realising their existence in other
people before you can understand the
poet's treatment of them. That has
a good deal to do with Browning's
' unintelligibility'; in spite of which,
whatever Browning's permanent posi-
tion in literature may be, he appears to
me to be emphatically now, at least for
the younger generation, the most valu-
able moral and intellectual force of the
century.
Even with this limitation to a particu-
lar generation, that is making a pretty
strong statement: especially when a sec-
tion of the said younger generation is
engaged in relegating Browning to the
category of intellectual gymnasts, and in-
viting us to draw our inspiration from the
superior sanity, force, and insight of-
218
A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
Ibsen. If any one finds himself the IDEAS AND
better for reading Ibsen, by all means
let him read; but to claim him as the
truest guide, philosopher, and friend for
a humanity which wants perhaps more
than anything else to be assured that
life is worth going through with, sym-
pathy worth feeling, and pain worth en-
during, has a certain absurdity about it.
For the key to Browning lies in the
intensity of his conviction that life is
worth living just because pain is worth
suffering.
'For what is our failure here but a triumph's
evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered
and agonised?
Why else was the pause prolonged, but that singing
might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony
should be prized?'
We start on life's journey with all the
sanguine pride of youth; others have
failed, but the victory will be reserved
for us! And then, alas, when the looked-
for fruit does not drop into our out-
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SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEALS
IDEAS AND stretched hands, or it may be we find
that the tree is guarded by a very pesti-
lent dragon on which we can make no
ostensible impression at all, whereas it
can, and does, make a very disagreeable
impression on us-then we sometimes
begin to despair. Failure is very dis-
heartening; and when we begin further
to conclude that on the whole failure is
the rule, not the exception-to
'Look at the end of work, contrast
The petty done, the undone vast,
This present of theirs with the hopeful past
But
the natural man turns pessimistic.
Browning felt all this to the full, and
it did not make a pessimist of him.
Now, there is a certain kind of optimism
which under the consciousness of failure
we find merely enraging-the optimism
of the 'successful' man who, because he
has aimed low, has reached his mark,
and is thoroughly contented; who is
unconscious that all success is so far
failure that there must ever be a beyond.
This is the optimism which does not
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A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
even know that there is an ideal; it is IDEAS AND
blankly unsympathetic from sheer want
of imagination.
But there is another
kind of optimism: the optimism of one
who knows what failure means, has
tasted the bitterness of the bitter drink,
has felt the sting with all its keen-
ness; the optimism that refuses to be
daunted. And this is possible only
as the outcome of a very intense con-
viction that "tis not what man does
which exalts him, but what man would
do'; failure is in the things done,
that took the eye, and had the price';
and the things done are of small
account at best.
'What I aspired to be
(
And was not comforts me;
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i'
the scale.'
To have an ideal and to strive after
it at any cost of suffering, and, if it
prove actually attainable, to realise a
new ideal beyond and above; so seek-
ing always something higher than that
IDEALS
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SEERS AND SINGERS:
IDEAS AND to which we have attained, and, whether
we achieve or not, to go on striving—
IDEALS
"Tis but to keep the nerves at a strain,
Dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again;
So the chase takes up one's life—that's all'-
this is what makes life worth having,
and without this it is a poor sort of
affair. And with Browning this con-
viction rested on other convictions so
vigorously and intensely expressed, so
vitally bound up with everything that
he spoke most convincingly, that one
can only stand amazed at the sugges-
tion, which has been soberly made by
admirable but surprising persons, that
he is a dangerous' writer. This is not,
however, either the time or the place
to enter on a discussion of Browning's
theological ideas.
Browning's life was a long one; for
him, as for Wordsworth, the struggle
too was long, and the defeats many;
but in the fulness of the days' the
triumph came to him. The epilogue to
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A STUDY OF FIVE POETS
IDEALS
'Asolando' was indeed a fitting legacy IDEAS AND
to mankind from the strongest, the
most dauntless soul that our times have
known. In those last lines he summed
up what he was, and what he has done
for us and helped us to be:
'One who never turned his back, but marched
breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong
might triumph,
Held, we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.'
Through the veil we greet him, with
the greeting he himself taught us:
""Strive and thrive!" cry
cry "Speed,-fight on, fare
ever
There as here! ""
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press.
120

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