THE EARLY i LITERARY CAREER OF ROBgRT BROWNING THOMAS R.LOUNSBURY ^ <:>^ STATE NORMAL SCHOOL LOS AKGEL5:S. CAUFCRNlA THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER OF ROBERT BROWNING \ o "Letters from Robert Browning to Various Correspondents," edited by T. J. Wise, London, privately printed, 1896, vol. II, p. 58. OF ROBERT BROWNING 17 came to have an unfavorable opinion of it. He therefore largely kept to himself the secret of its existence and authorship. In the course of his intimacy, how^ever, with the woman he was soon to call his wife he had come to disclose the facts. In January, 1846, Miss Barrett wrote to him that she was anxious to have the poem, in fact determined to have it in a day or two. "Must you see 'Pauline'.?" he asked almost plaintively. If so, he begged her to wait a few days till he could correct the misprints in it and write its history. It was so evident, indeed, that he was reluctant to have her see it at all that a little later she is found priding herself upon her virtue in not sending for it to the booksellers, before she knew positively whether he would much dislike to have her read it. Browning continued to protest. The poem, he said, was altogether foolish, and it was not boy-like, and he had rather she saw real infantine efforts — verses at six years old, drawings still earlier — anything but this ambiguous, feverish production. But the thought of her buying it at a bookseller's amused him. " I smile in glori- ous security," he wrote, — "having a whole bale of sheets at the house-top. He never knew my 1 8 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER name even and I withdrew them after a httle while." ^ The outcome of it all was that Miss Barrett had to content herself with a promise that she should see the work some day. "Pauline" in fact was so thoroughly forgotten that for two decades it was hardly mentioned by any one in connection v/ith Browning's name. Some twenty years after its publication Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then a young poet and painter, came across a copy of it in the library of the Brit- ish Museum. He was profoundly struck by it. Furthermore, so confident was he that no one but the author of "Paracelsus" could have been its author that he wrote to ask Browning, who was then in Florence, if this were not the case. In his letter he stated that as the poem was not otherwise procurable he had copied the whole of it with his own hand. Browning returned an affirmative answer. This seems to have been the first discovery of the book and the poet's first acknowledgment of its authorship to any outside of his immediate circle. It was not included among his collected works until the edition of 1868. In a brief preface to it then he declared ' "Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," New York, 1899, vol. I, pp. 386, 390, 400. OF ROBERT BROWNING 19 that he retained it with extreme repugnance. It was nothing, he said, but a matter of necessity that led him to reprint it. He knew that copies of it were in existence; that sooner or later it was the intention to have it repubUshed. So he sought to forestall any action of the sort by correcting some misprints — not a single syllable had been changed, he asserted — and by intro- ducing it with an exculpatory word. ''The thing," he wrote, "was my earliest attempt at 'poetry, always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine,' which I have since written according to a scheme less extravagant and scale less im- practicable than were ventured upon in this crude preliminary sketch." This accords with the in- scription written as early as 1838 in the volume which has been already noted as commanding the price of over seven hundred dollars. Before taking into consideration his next work, it is desirable to give a brief outline of Browning's personal history up to the time of his first anony- mous publication. His education, outside of the private instruction he received and of the attend- ance upon certain schools in the vicinity, was limited to a short course of study at University 20 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER College, in Gower Street. His name appears on the registrar's books for the opening session of 1829-30. But he did not remain long. Italy, he was wont to say, was his university. It was certainly one of the best schools in which to pur- sue later study. It is more than doubtful if it was an advantageous one for a begicner possessed of his mental characteristics. 'There are many other kinds of education besides that furnished by the university, and some for some persons far better. For Browning I doubt if any would have been as good, and his failure to receive it will, it is to be feared, have in the long run a damaging effect upon his reputation. His writ- ings show throughout the lack of that final re- sult of thorough training, the ability of the com- municator of ideas to put himself in the position of the recipientj^ \_ This was clearly a defect that belonged to Browning by nature. In consequence it never could have been fully supplied. Still some of its worst results could and would have been largely corrected by severe intellectual drill. That would never have added to his greatness as a poet in those bursts of inspiration in which the poet is at his highest. It would never have given OF ROBERT BROWNING 21 Strength to his pinions for a loftier flight. But no writer, however eminent, Hves constantly, or even for any length of time, in a state of exalta- tion. Upon those lower levels on which the mind habitually moves, the rigid intellectual training of the university would have given clearness to expression, it would in particular have prevented resort to the startling abruptness of transition which causes the existence of those perplexing puzzles, those complicated knots of meaning which it is now the delight of the dis- ciple to unravel or to fancy that he has un- ravelled^ In the long run these intricacies and ambigui- ties of expression are certain to affect Browning's reputation injuriously. Indeed, there need be no hesitation in saying that from the very outset they have so affected it. But they will affect it far more in the future. When contemporary in- terest has disappeared, it is the artistic perfection of a work that will recommend it to the great body of readers. What is bizarre, what is gro- tesque, what is unnecessarily obscure will then find few apologists and fewer admirers. In our literature there is a marked illustration of this truth in the case of Donne. He was in his time. 22 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER as Ben Jonson expressed it, the great lord of wit. So far as intellectual power is concerned, he could hardly reckon a superior among his contemporaries. He still retains a band of de- voted admirers, and to me as one of the number he seems well worthy of the admiration they be- stow. But he will always be caviare to the general. The crabbed diction, the rugged rhymes, the inharmonious versification, the ob- scure phraseology, all these frequently recurring as they do would continue to repel the multitude from attempting to crack the kernel of a nut even were it to contain meat more delicious than that which Donne's own writings afford. Two years after came Browning's first ap- pearance in literature under his own name. This was then and for a long time following usually regarded as his first actual appearance. It was in the summer of 1835 that his poem came out entitled "Paracelsus." The composi- tion of it had taken up a large share of the pre- ceding winter. i/'T^o the subject he was led by his fondness for out-of-the-way learning and by his interest in mediaevahsm and mysticism which was, or had become a part of his naturej The life of the hero of the piece, who has been vari- OF ROBERT BROWNING 23 ously viewed as an adventurous quack and as a great pioneer in medical discovery, had been suggested to him by a foreign friend, Comte de Rupert-Montclar, to whom the finished work was dedicated. But on reflection the suggest- tion had been withdrawn by its maker. There was no opportunity to introduce the subject of love, and upon love, the Frenchman sagely re- marked, every young man has, of course, some- thing new to say. Browning apparently had nothing new to say. But he was not deterred from the project by this fact. He decided to take the life of Paracelsus as his subject and to treat it in his own way. The poem was finished in March, 1835. The difficulty was then to find a publisher. To Moxon all aspiring unknown poets applied, be- cause he had written poetry himself. Accord- ingly, to Moxon Browning went first. That publisher declined even inspecting the manu- script. There was no money in verse, he de- clared, and he felt that he had done his share in bringing out unprofitable ventures of that sort. After trying one or two other firms to no effect, the poem was finally taken by Effingham Wilson, the same man who brought out Tennyson's volume 24 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER of 1830. It was clearly not sought for eagerly by him, for it was Browning's father who paid the expense of the publication. It can be added that his father never got his money back from the proceeds of the sale. This, though not in the least surprising to the students of the liter- ary history of the period, seems to surprise some of the poet's biographers profoundly. But though " Paracelsus" was not a work which paid the expense of publication, its appearance announced, to all who had eyes to see, the coming of a great original poet. The form into which it was cast partook of the dramatic. It was divided into acts corresponding to five successive epochs in the life of its hero. Conversation or rather discourse goes on between the few personages that appear. But in no proper sense of that word is the poem a drama, nor did Browning so intend it. He took care, indeed, to guard against any such misinterpretation of it, though some of his later disciples have either been ignorant of his caution or have chosen to ignore it. In the preface to the original edition he gave full recog- nition to the fact that the work did not conform to the canons of stage representation and that it had not been prepared with that object in view. OF ROBERT BROWNING 25 "I have endeavored," he said, "to write a poem and not a drama." It is as a poem alone there- fore that it is entitled to be judged. Whether the picture given of the character of Paracelsus be true or no does not strictly enter into the discussion of the literary merits of the work. Certain it is, however, that the por- trayal has profoundly affected the opinion enter- tained in these latter days of the man portrayed; and if there has been a revolution of sentiment in his favor, to this one poem probably more than to any other single cause may be attributed the change, at least in the English-speaking world. It is noticeable that Browning subsequently fell into the error, pardonable, perhaps, at the time, of deriving our English word "bombast" from the name of the hero of the piece. This in full was Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombas- tus von Hohenheim. "'Bombast,' his proper name," he wrote, "probably acquired from the characteristic phraseology of his lectures that unlucky significance which it has since retained." The student of English etymology, much hard- ened to derivations of this sort, scarcely needs to be told that "bombast," like the corresponding "fustian," is a word derived from late Latin 26 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER through the Old French and designates strictly a kind of coarse cotton cloth which from its use in stuffing and padding clothes came to adopt the transferred sense of swollen or inflated lan- guage. "Paracelsus" was really the first, as it has re- mained, one of the finest of a long series of stud- ies in character and sensation in which Browning was to exhibit peculiar excellence. There is not here the time nor is this the place to give a full account of the poem. A most marked attribute of it is the high intellectual character accorded to the hero, the original loftiness of his aims, his aspirations for a success too great for mortal to achieve, with his disdain of the helps by which mortals attain to whatever success they achieve, the inevitable reaction and degradation that fol- low failure, and the final purification that comes from trial and sorrow and suff'ering. Paracel- sus learns after long experience the lesson that the pursuit of knowledge pure and simple, while setting little store on the element of human sym- pathy and love, furnishes a barren harvest even from the point of view of knowledge itself. To him, as to inferior men, as he looks back upon a career of effort which has been wasted and at- OF ROBERT BROWNING tempts which have miscarried, comes that de- spondency which haunts the heart of even those seemingly the most fortunate. It is Hfe's ever- recurring tragedy of faith that has failed, of ex- pectation that has been disappointed, and of as- piration that has died, which finds expression in the inquiry which sooner or later every thought- ful man puts to himself as he compares what is with what was desired or hoped to be — Is this all? Is this what I have longed for, struggled, for, dreamed of as worthy of being accomplished ? Such is the inquiry which Paracelsus directs to his own heart. In the moment of highest ap- parent success he does not hide his deep discon- tent with life. He had failed. He was miser- able. Yet to the outside world he had at the very time reached the summit of human achievement. His name was in every one's mouth. His lect- ures were thronged by listening crowds who hung upon his words, treasured his sayings, wor- shipped his person. Even the chosen friend of his youth who had sought to dissuade him from the career he had marked out for himself, who had forewarned him of failure, is imposed upon by this universal acclaim which hails him as the miracle of men, the deliverer of the race from 28 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER the bondage of antiquated dogma and belief. Not so Paracelsus himself. He recognizes the unsubstantiality of the basis upon which his rep- utation rests. Not in the least blinded by the glitter of present approval, he perceives plainly that the hour of his degradation is on its way, and he confesses the moral failure which fore- shadows the coming of the personal one. The general declension in the aims of Paracelsus, the substitution of inferior motives for the lofty ones by which he had originally been actuated, is typi- fied in the beautiful lyric in the fourth act begin- ning with the line, " Over the seas our galley went " So much for the character of the work; it re- mains to consider its reception by the public. The present age which has been fertile in myth- ical stories about Browning's early career, has more than once loudly proclaimed that "Paracel- sus" was received by the public unfavorably: perhaps with even less favor than was "Paul- ine"; that in truth it was a failure. If by failure is meant that it had no large sale, the assertion may be conceded to be perfectly true. But in such a fact there was at that time nothing excep- OF ROBERT BROWNING 29 tional. During the decade in which it made its appearance no poem or volume of poems pos- sessed of distinct hterary quahty had a large sale. This was true even of the "Philip Van Artevelde" of Henry Taylor, which came out in May, 1834. That work, the most successful of all the works of high grade produced during the period in question, hardly more than paid the expense of its production, if, indeed, it can be said to have done as much as that. If at any time during the nineteenth century the profession of poet deserved Milton's characterization of it as "the homely slighted shepherd's trade," it was during its fourth decade. But in every other respect, save that of sale, "Paracelsus" was the most unqualified of suc- cesses. It gave its author at once a recognized position in the world of letters. It brought him the acquaintance and regard of many men of conspicuous eminence in various fields of intel- lectual activity. With some it gave birth to in- timate friendship. The authorship of "Paul- ine" was known to but few. Accordingly by most readers this second poem was believed to be his earliest work. More and more, as time went on, this continued to be the impression. By all 3° THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER men possessed of keen critical discernment "Paracelsus/' as the first production of a man who had not yet reached his twenty-third birth- day, was looked upon as giving promise of a brill- iant future. Defects it admittedly had; but in their eyes these were far more than counterbal- anced by its merits. The feeling about the greatness of the work grew as time went on and men had had sufficient leisure to become fully acquainted with it. No one who makes himself familiar with much of the contemporary com- ment about the man and the book can hardly help discovering the steadily growing recognition of Browning's genius and the glowing anticipa- tions that were then entertained of the loftiness of the achievements he was to accomplish. For example, two anonymous sonnets addressed "to the author of 'Paracelsus,'" which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine for September, 1836, give full expression to the belief in his future greatness which even at that early period many had come to cherish. It is all the more desirable to bring out dis- tinctly the contemporary success of "Paracel- sus," in the highest sense of the word success, because Browning himself was in a measure re- OF ROBERT BROWNING 31 sponsible for the contrary belief. In his later years one gets the Impression that he was almost as eager to underrate the good fortune of his first poems as he was to contradict the reports of the 111 fortune of his plays. A disposition of this sort showed Itself at a somewhat early period. Late In 1845 he wrote to the woman he was soon to wed that as compared with the brill- iant success of Talfourd's "Ion," his "Paracel- sus" had been a dead failure. There was no real justification for a comparison of this sort. The circumstances attending the publication of the two poems were essentially different. Tal- fourd's name had been long before the public. He had appeared as an author before Browning was born. He had been a frequent contributor to periodical literature, he had made for himself a reputation at the bar. His tragedy of "Ion," previously printed for private circulation, had been produced In May, 1836. Largely through the acting of Macready It had gained a success on the stage, which had aroused a corresponding curiosity among readers. The feeling was nat- urally reflected in the sale of the work in a pub- lished form. In this same letter Browning went on to say that until Forster's notice in The Ex- 32 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER aminer every journalist that thought it worth while to allude to his poem treated it with entire contempt, beginning with The AthencBum. Out of a long string of notices which his publisher re- ceived, each one vied with its predecessor in ex- pressing disgust at his "rubbish," until some- thing of a change was effected by the article in The Examiner just mentioned. The ignorance, however great, of one man can not well be deemed sufficient to counterbalance the knowledge, however slight, of another man. It would therefore be presumptuous in me to call in question the accuracy of these assertions of Browning, because diligent search has not en- abled me to find anywhere anything to justify them. Unquestionably the earliest notices of his poem in the leading critical authorities were wholly inadequate. The limited • time they took for examination could not at best have kept them from being otherwise than unsatisfactory. "Paracelsus" was formally published on Satur- day, the fifteenth of August. On that very day two reviews of it appeared — one in The Spectator and one in The Atlas. Just a week later came out the notice in The Athenceum. Had the writers of these articles been adequate to the task OF ROBERT BROWNING 33 to which they set themselves or to which they were set, they could not on the spur of the mo- ment have produced anything worthy of con- sideration. Still, however futile their criticisms were, they were neither vituperative nor con- temptuous. The review in The Spectator, which was a column long, and silly, and the review in The AthencBum, which was only two sentences long, but just as silly, though they were unfavor- able, contained nothing abusive. In fact, all these earliest notices of the poem acknowledged the ability of the author. The Atlas, while deeming it unsatisfactory as a whole, declared that its writer possessed powers far above the ordinary level and eloquence of no common order. It cited passages from it solely on ac- count of their beauty. Even The AthencBum, which Browning mis- takenly assumed to have been the first to review "Paracelsus, "did not deny its merit. The critic conceded that there was talent in the poem, though it was dreamy and obscure — leaving us in doubt whether the critic deemed the poem dreamy and obscure or the talent. Somewhat similar observations, the result of glancing at the production and not really reading it, occur oc- 34 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER casionally even later. " There are many touches of beauty, almost Shakespearian, in the work," wrote the reviewer in The Metropolitan Magazine for October; "but its general tone is homely and its contents crude. It is a poem ambitiously un- popular." But while notices of this sort are found, especially before men had had time to read it and study it, there is nowhere any display of a contemptuous attitude in any organ of criticism of the highest grade, whatever there may have been elsewhere. Several of them — like The Literary Gazette, for instance — did not notice it at all. But Browning's assertion that the poem was laughed to scorn and was denounced as rubbish until the appearance of Forster's article receives no support from the reviews found in the then most authoritative guides of public opinion. The general attitude taken by the critics, with their hesitating and contradictory pronounce- ments, is more accurately set forth by Fox in his article on the poem which appeared about two months after its publication. "Their verdict," he wrote, "is already given in favor of its being a work of genius or else a worthless abortion — the world may find out which; and when the world has found it out, the critics will discover OF ROBERT BROWNING 35 the reasons and set them forth in learned disser- tations."^ Further, if Forster's review established a bar- rier sufficient to withstand the raving, roaring tide of detraction which had set in against the poem, the inundation of disparagement could hardly have assumed an overwhelming character by the time he had erected it. " Paracelsus" ap- peared, as we have seen, in the middle of August, 1835. Forster's review was published in The Examiner for September 6. Consequently, two or three weeks at farthest is all the time that op- probrium had to exercise its devastating effect before Forster's review checked its further dem- onstration. This article indeed is credited by Browning himself and by his biographers with an almost astounding influence upon public opinion. It turns up with regularity in about every account of the poet's career which sets out to record the reception of this poem. "The great event in the history of ' Paracelsus,' " says Mrs. Orr, "was John Forster's article in The Examiner." A statement to the same effect is made in the "Personalia" of Mr. Gosse. "The Examiner," writes he, "contained a re- view of the poem at great length in which ^ The Monthly Repository, November, 1835. 36 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER full justice was done to Mr. Browning's gen- ius." "The Examiner," says Mr. Sharp, "ac- knowledged it to be a work of unequivocal power and predicted for its author a brilliant career." Undoubtedly Forster's article up to the date of its appearance was far the most outspoken in the praise which it gave. It must have been all the more grateful to the author, because at that time neither he nor his critic had any knowledge of each other. It was not, indeed, till late in the following December that they met. But the review itself never had the influence which Browning's friendship for its writer at- tributed to it, and w^hich later his biographers have conceded to it on his authority. It was merely one of several agencies — the greatest of which was time — that were working in favor of the production. The article in question took up three columns o( The Examiner. Much of it con- sisted of extracts from the poem itself, amount- ing in all to about one hundred and sixty lines. Nor was it unmixed laudation. It conceded that some of the passages were tedious and some were obscure. But upon the work as a whole it bestow^ed the highest praise. "Since the publi- cation of 'Philip Van Artevelde,'" began the OF ROBERT BROWNING 37 review, "we have met with no such evidence of poetical genius and of general intellectual power as are contained in this volume." The tone of what followed coincided with the opening. " It is some time since we read a work of more un- equivocal power than this," were the words of its closing passage. "We conclude that its author is a young man, as we do not recollect his having published before. If so, we may safely predict for him a brilliant career, if he continues true to the present promise of his genius. He possesses all the elements of a fine poet." This is cordial and, what is better, well-de- served praise. But to one familiar with the criti-^ cal literature of all time, and in particular the critical literature of that time, it is far from being unexampled. Essentially the same words were then used in influential journals of works of which now the literary antiquary alone knows. But Forster's convictions, like those of many others, were fortified by further familiarity with the poem; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the article of the critic which Browning came later to have in mind was not the one which appeared in The Examiner, but the long one of twenty pages which about eight months after- 38 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER ward came out in Colburn's New Monthly Maga- zine. ^ It was professedly the first number — to which no second ever succeeded — of an article entitled "Evidences of a New Genius for Dra- matic Poetry." The evidence of this genius, it asserted, was the little and scantily noticed vol- ume of "Paracelsus." The authorship of the review was not given, but was probably well known. There was no uncertainty in the utter- ance. "Without the slightest hesitation," wrote Forster, "we name Mr, Robert Browning at once with Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth. He has entitled himself to a place among the acknowl- edged poets of the age." The criticism was certainly as cordial as it was true. But long before this article appeared, heartiest eulogiums had been passed upon the work. Fox, to whom it had been shown in manuscript, was not behindhand in acknowl- edgment both of its promise and performance. In The Monthly Repository of November, 1835, he gave the fullest expression to his admiration. His testimony, sincere as it evidently was, may be thought to have been influenced by a desire to stand up for one of his own contributors; for 1 For March, 1836, vol. XXXVI. p. 288. OF ROBERT BROWNING 39 during that year and the preceding, Browning had pubHshed in this periodical several pieces of poetry. But no bias from this source can be thought to have influenced Leigh Hunt, who in this same month of November gave up nine col- umns of his Journal to a review of the poem, supplemented by copious extracts. There can be no question that this article was the work of the editor himself. "Paracelsus" was highly praised in it, and, what is better, was sensibly praised. Furthermore, the review, friendly as it assuredly was, is particularly worthy of attention for the note of warning it contained as to the danger the author was exposed to of al- lowing his peculiarities of style to degenerate into a slovenly mannerism. Two sentences of it, it may be well to quote, not merely for the general truth they convey, but for the value of their special application. "We do not object," wrote Hunt, "to his long and often somewhat intri- cately involved sentences, or to forms of phrase- ology and construction of occasional occurrence, which are apt for the moment to perplex and startle at the first reading; or to any other devia- tions of a similar kind from ordinary usage or the beaten highway presented by our books of author- 40 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER ity on grammar, rhetoric or prosody, in so far as such unusual forms are the natural and un- affected product of the writer's genius working its purposes in its own way. Such distinctive characteristics, when we have become famihar with them, and they have lost any slight repul- siveness with which they may at first have acted upon us, even acquire a power of enhancing the pleasure we receive from a composition other- wise eminently beautiful, and of riveting our love for it." L^hat Hunt deprecated was the indul- gence in these peculiarities of expression when there was nothing to justify them. These words, it seems to me, set forth adequately the varying effects of Browning's poetry. When his genius is at its loftiest, the peculiarities of expression enhance the attractiveness of the composition and give it increased hold upon our feelings. But there was always the tendency to resort to these peculiarities when there was nothing in the matter to sustain their weight. Consequently, when they were not a positive excellence, they tended to degenerate into a mere trick of expres- sion; and trickery in poetry — I do not use trick- ery in a bad sense — carries with it in the end its own death-warrant. OF ROBERT BROWNING 41 "Paracelsus" was not indeed a work to take the public by storm. For its appreciation it re- quired close reading and reflection. It would have been no wonder, therefore, if the weekly purveyors of hasty criticism had sniffed at it hesitatingly or sneered at it contemptuously, though with opinions of this latter sort it has not been my fortune to meet. Most frequently, so far as I have observed, they took the safe course of noticing it in that perfunctory way which is adopted by the writer who seeks not so much to conceal his opinions as to conceal the fact that he has no opinions. But the more fully men con- sider all great work the more fully does its great- ness grow upon them. It was so in the case of "Paracelsus." As time went on, the notices the poem received prove conclusively the increas- ing hold it was gaining over the most thoughtful class of readers. No adventitious helping hand brought this about; it was its own inherent worth. I have already asserted that Forster's criticism never had the influence upon public opinion which Browning's friendship for the critic led him to attribute to it. In the very month of March in which his second and really enthusi- astic article appeared in the New Monthly Maga- 42 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER zine^ and consequently not affected by it, came out a long, elaborate, and cordial review of " Par- acelsus" in the then far more influential Frasers Magazine, under the title of "Asinarii Scenici** ^ The poem was not only praised in the highest terms, but its superiority to Taylor's "Philip Van Artevelde" was distinctly and even some- what aggressively proclaimed; and "Philip Van Artevelde" was the one work of that decade which in general critical estimate had attained highest repute. I am not picturing the success of "Paracel- sus" as being in the slightest degree overwhelm- ing; but so far as it went the success was un- equivocal. To this there is further evidence which can hardly be gainsaid. In 1842 Richard Hengist Home contributed to a quarterly period- ical an article on Browning's poetry. ^ Its value as a truthful record of the reception accorded to this particular production is founded on the fact that the review was submitted in manuscript to the poet himself. Naturally, Home, like most men of that time, looked upon "Paracelsus" as iVol. XIII, p. 362. ' Church 0/ England Quarterly Review, October, 1842, vol. XII, p. 464. OF ROBERT BROWNING 43 his earliest work. He discoursed upon the suc- cess which had attended this supposedly first vent- ure. The restrained way in which he expresses himself is evidence that he had no disposition to exaggerate or lessen the nature or degree of the welcome which had waited upon the young poet. "His reception," wrote Home, "was compara- tively good; we may say very good. Several of those periodicals, in which the critics seem dis- posed to regard poetry of a superior kind as a thing to be respected and studied, hailed the ap- pearance of Mr. Robert Browning with all the honors which can reasonably be expected to be awarded to a new-comer, who is moreover alive. In more than one quarter the young poet was fairly crowned. The less intelligent class of critics spoke of him with praise; guarding their expressions with an eye to retreat, if necessary, at any future time, made various extracts, and set him to grow." The passages just cited from a notice which had passed before its publication under the eye of Browning himself give a view of the recep- tion of his work a good deal different from that for which in certain instances the poet was later responsible. There can be no question as to its 44 ROBERT BROWNING correctness. No volume of verse — not even ex- cepting "Philip Van Artevelde" — was published during the fourth decade of the nineteenth cen- tury which created a profounder impression than did " Paracelsus " upon that body of men who are indeed limited in number, but whose verdict is the verdict which posterity never undertakes to set aside. It led no slight proportion of the choicest spirits of the time to display at even this early period in his career warmest recog- nition of what he had already accomplished and to look with hope and expectation upon what was reserved for him to achieve in the future. It is all-important to bring out this fact sharply, because it serves to explain the disappointment with which high-wrought anticipation came to regard the works of his which immediately suc- ceeded, the retrogression that took place in the estimate which had begun to be entertained of him by the public, and the long period of neglect that was to follow. , II "STRAFFORD" AND "SORDELLO" Among the men who had been attracted to Browning by his "Paracelsus" was the famous actor Macready. He was introduced to its author at the house of Fox, late in November, 1835. Under date of December 7, he records in his diary that he had read this work. He was profoundly impressed by it. There were oc- casional obscurities, he conceded; but these were more than atoned for by the poetry of thought, feeling, and diction which pervaded it. "The writer," he added, "can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time." Subsequent pe- rusal strengthened the first conviction. It " raises my wonder the more I read it," he remarked in an entry of several months later. The acquaintance thus begun soon ripened in- to close friendship. From this time on, up to the estrangement which in 1843 attended the pro- duction of "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon," a good deal of our knowledge of Browning's doings 45 46 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER come from the references to him in the actor's diary. The intimacy that sprang up directed to the drama the attention of the young poet. Under date of February i6, 1836, Macready re- cords that he was visited by Browning in com- pany with Forster. They had come to talk with him over the plot of a play which the former had in mind. The poet told the actor that he had been hit by his performance of Othello, and the actor told the poet that he hoped that blood would come. The subject Browning was then contemplating was Narses, the famous general of Justinian. But this he gave up. On August 3, of this same year, Macready tells us that Fors- ter had informed him that Browning had settled upon Strafford. The subject chosen pleased him. "He could not have hit upon one," he wrote in his diary, "that I could more readily have concurred in." It is altogether probable — in fact, it may be said to be certain — that Browning's choice of this subject was suggested by the aid he had been led to give to his friend Forster in his life of Strafford. At that time a series of independent works were coming out under the general atle of "The Cabinet Cyclopaedia." For this series OF ROBERT BROWNING 47 Forsterhad agreed to write biographies of several of the statesmen connected with the great Puri- tan revolution of the seventeenth century. He had already completed the life of Sir John Eliot which made up the first part of one of the contemplated volumes. In it he had again shown his zeal for his friend. In the text he quoted three or four lines of verse. They were taken, he said, from "the poet whose genius has just risen amongst us." Then a note was appended clearly for the purpose of celebrating the writer of the extract. After giving the name of the author of "Paracelsus" as the poet al- luded to, he went on to say that "there would be little danger in predicting that this writer will soon be acknowledged as a first-rate poet. He has already proved himself one." ^ The life of Eliot with that of Strafford was to constitute a single volume. For this second biography Forster had already made a collection of materials and had begun its composition. Then he fell ill. The book had been promised for a certain date; to finish it at the time spec- ified was impracticable. Naturally Forster was in a despondent state of mind. In this condition ^"Eminent British Statesmen," vol. II, p. 104, London, 1836. 48 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER Browning found him. He came at once to the rescue of his friend and volunteered to do the work. The offer was accepted. Browning ac- cordingly took the materials which Forster had gathered together and proceeded to complete the life. In 1836 the volume containing the two biographies appeared, but with no hint that any one save he whose name was on the title- page had anything whatever to do with the production of the second one. The secret of Browning's share in the prepar- ation of the biography was not revealed until some years after its supposedly sole author was dead. The Browning Society came upon it in the course of their probings into all the mysteries connected with the poet's career. In 1892 it brought out that part of the volume which con- tained the life of Strafford as being mainly the composition of the poet. The facts which have just been given have been largely taken from the preface to this reprint. These have been ques- tioned by some; by others they have been strenu- ously denied. Precisely how much of the com- position of the work was Browning's own may never be exactly ascertained. But that he had nothing to do with it requires ignorance to assert OF ROBERT BROWNING 49 or to accept. Internal evidence Is sufficient of itself to make clear his participation in the un- dertaking. But with this we do not have to con- tent ourselves. Those who deny the poet any share in the production must be prepared to at- tack his veracity. Clearly it was a belief of his own that he had a good deal to do with it. Such was the impression he conveyed to his future wife as the correspondence between them proves conclusively.^ Having chosen StraffiDrd as the subject of his drama, Browning worked at it diligently. Be- fore the close of the year 1836 he had finished it and given it to Macready. At first the actor was disposed to look with distinct favor upon the play. His own attitude of approval extended to Osbaldistone, the manager of the theater, to whom it was read on March 30, 1837. He was willing to produce it without delay. The ex- pectations of its continuous popularity that pre- vailed can be inferred from the terms he offered. He agreed "to give the author £\2 per night for twenty-five nights, and ;^io per night for ten * See in particular in the correspondence of Browning and Miss Barrett the letter of Miss Barrett dated May 26, 1846, vol. II, p. 183; of May 30, ih., p. 190, and of June 6, ib., p. 284. 50 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER nights beyond," So far everything was favor- able. But the more Macready studied the play, the less confidence he felt in its excellence for stage representation. It became clear to him, as time went on, that nothing could save it but the acting. That this might possibly carry it to the end without disapprobation was the far from glowing anticipation of success he set down in his diary before the piece was performed. In the comments he made there upon the play he in- cidentally brings out with distinctness the funda- mental difference between the methods adopted by Browning and the treatment of a similar sub- ject for stage purposes by the supreme English dramatist. "In all the historical plays of Shakespeare," he observes, "the great poet has only introduced such events as act on the indi- viduals concerned, and of which they are them- selves a part; the persons are all in direct relation to each other, and the facts are present to the audience. But in Browning's play we have a long scene of passion — upon what .? A plan des- troyed, by whom or for what we know not, and a parliament dissolved, which merely seems to inconvenience Strafford in his arrangements." ^ * Diary, April 28, 1837. OF ROBERT BROWNING 51 Macready's fears were realized. Only the acting could save it, he thought, and the acting did not save it. The characters of Strafford and Lady Carhsle were taken respectively by him and Helen Faucit. The combination of these two, it might seem, would suffice to score a triumph for almost any play. Without their support "Strafford" would assuredly have been the com- pletest of failures. But even with their support it was far from being a success. It was chosen by Macready for his benefit, and naturally there was that night a full house. He seems to have made the most that could be made of his part. Browning himself was more than satisfied. He assured the actor after the rehearsal that it was to him "a full recompense for having written the play, inasmuch as he had seen his utmost hopes of character perfectly embodied." ^ It was well that the poet had this feeling; for it was the principal recompense he received. The twenty-five nights of performances, for which the manager had agreed to pay twelve poun Ibid., p. 28. OF ROBERT BROWNING 107 Examiner the work met a somewhat cool recep- tion from the leading critical organs of that day. This review in The Examiner — which is found in the number for October 2, 1841 — is notice- able, because it is evident from it that Brown- ing's faithful partisan, Forster, had been sorely- tried by the production of "Sordello." It is in- teresting to read his words for the effort he made to put a good face upon what in his inmost heart he felt to be a failure. " ' Paracelsus,' " he wrote, "announced a new and original poet — one of the rarest things met with in these days; much cried out for, much sought after, and when found much objected to. We dare say 'Paracelsus' did not succeed; we never heard of a second edi- tion." Then he went on to express himself in regard to the huge obstruction which the poet had raised in the way of his own fame, and the oblivion which in the space of less than two years had overtaken the work upon which he had staked his hopes of renown. "Mr. Browning," he continued, "has published since then; in our opinion not so well. But yet not so as to falsify- any anticipation formed of the character of his genius. To write a bad poem is one thing; to write a poem on a bad system is another and io8 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER very different. When a greater curiosity about the writer shall hereafter disentomb 'Sordello/ it will not be admired for its faults, but in spite of them its power and its beauty will be per- ceived. Forster warmly praised "Pippa Passes"; but his is the only unmixed tribute of admiration which can be found in the leadingweekly dispen- sers to the public of ready-made literary judg- ments. The poem must have been published in April, for The Spectator reviewed it in the number which appeared on the seventeenth of that month. In that periodical the critic had reached the conclusion that the production, so far as it had then come out, was the first number of a drama, which was called "Bells and Pomegran- ates." Such was his solution of the problem of the title. Accordingly, as this preliminary por- tion exhibited only part of a play, allowance must be made for it, as it w^ould necessarily be the least stirring in its action and the least inter- esting in its passion. "Pippa Passes," there- fore, it was the sapient conclusion, was not itself a drama, but scenes in dialogue without cohe- rence and action. It was not devoid of good thoughts poetically expressed, was the conde- OF ROBERT BROWNING 109 scending admission, but these were perfectly ineffective from being in a wrong place. Crude as is this comment, its interest as a specimen of critical imbecility yields to the superior density of apprehension exhibited by the reviewer in The Atlas} Why Pippa kept passing puzzled this literary judge sadly. He supposed it must be for some sinister purpose to be revealed later. Both these critics assumed the poem not to be an independent whole, but part of a larger work concealed under the general title of "Bells and Pomegranates," of the meaning of which they frankly acknowledged they had not the most re- mote suspicion. The Literary Gazette^ whose influence, how- ever, was now dying out, did not notice the work at all; and The Athenceum delayed its criticism till about the end of the year. The reviewer had not wasted this long period of preparation. He really understood and appreciated the scheme of the poem which he justly characterized as re- markably beautiful. One gets from his notice, indeed, a fairly clear conception of the idea run- ning through it. But even in his case the effect which had been wrought by "Sordello" was ' Number for May i, 1841. no THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER plainly visible. He began his criticism in a somewhat truculent way; yet his words are worth heeding, not for their truth, but for the ex- hibition they afford of the point of view which had begun to prevail even among those who had at first been disposed to regard the poet favorably. "Mr. Browning," he wrote, "is one of those authors, whom, for the sake of an air of original- ity and an apparent disposition to thinks as a motive for writing, we have taken more than common pains to understand, or than it may perhaps turn out that he is worth. Our faith in him, however, is not yet extinct — but our pa- tience IS. More familiarized as we are, now, with his manner — having conquered that rudi- ment to the right reading of his productions — we yet find his texts nearly as obscure as ever — getting, nevertheless, a glimpse, every now and then, of meanings which it might have been well worth his while to put into English." ^ These are the kind of notices which this most exquisite of poems received from the leading con- temporary arbiters of public opinion. The es- timate taken by the smaller fry of critics may eas- ily be guessed. But there had now begun to •Number for December ii, 1841. OF ROBERT BROWNING iii operate against the reputation of the poet some- thing far worse than bitter attack. It was indif- ference. He was not censured, he was simply ignored. Not even that most powerful provoca- tive to sale, a denunciation of the morality of "Pippa Passes," had any perceptible effect in increasing its circulation. The scene between Sebald and Ottima has always made a certain class of persons look askance upon the poem. At the time of its appearance, it awakened an occasional protest. The feelings of some of the critics were indeed profoundly outraged, "Nor does the moral tone," said the reviewer in The Spectator, "appear to be the kind likely to be tolerated on the stage and approved of anywhere. In one scene a young wife and her paramour dis- cuss their loves, and the murder of the 'old hus- band' needlessly, openly, wantonly, tediously, and without a touch of compunction, sentiment, or true passion." This was the way in which appeared to this astute literary guide that tre- mendous scene in which sin, suddenly shown its own grossness, seeks death as the only expiation for guilt. It may be worth while, in consequence, to record the prophetic insight of the same gifted intellectual luminary who had discovered that 112 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER "Pippa Passes" was the first part of a play. The future story, he told us, was to turn upon the endeavor of monslgnor, the prelate, to get his niece, brought up as a peasant, inveigled to Rome as a prostitute, in order that he might get possession of her property. Well was he entitled to add that the plot was a novelty. The recognition which was given at the time to "Pippa Passes" was not essentially different from that which came to most of the seven other parts which made up the series of " Bells and Pomegranates." There was then, as always, a small band of devoted admirers. But the gen- eral public, even of the highly educated, was, and continued to remain, indifferent. In the numbers which followed were printed six regular plays — all, indeed, that Browning henceforth ever wrote. They were entitled " King Victor and King Charles," published early in 1842; *'The Return of the Druses," published in April, 1843; *'A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon" acted and printed earlier in the same year; "Colombe's Birthday," which appeared in the spring of 1844; and finally the plays of "Luria" and "A Soul's Tragedy," which made up the eighth and last number of the series. This came out in the OF ROBERT BROWNING 113 spring of 1846. Only two of these pieces have ever been represented on the regular stage. One v^as "Colombe's Birthday" which was acted seven times at the Haymarket Theater by Helen Faucit, during April and May, 1853, and later in the provinces. The other was "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon," the story of which demands de- tailed exammation. A trustworthy account of the fortunes of this play is all the more important because the gross- est misstatements about it have become current. They have indeed, become so current that there is no little danger of their permanent embodi- ment in literary history. The pity of it is that these misstatements owe their origin largely to Browning himself — I need hardly add, with no idea on his part of their fictitious nature. The production of "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon" was in one respect an event in his life. It led to an estrangement between him and Macready. The great actor in consequence had no share in the performance of this tragedy, though it was brought out at his theater. The part he would naturally have taken was assumed by Samuel Phelps. According to Brow^ning's statement it was his own personal dissatisfaction with the re- 114 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER luctance shown at first by Macready to appear in it which led him to insist upon the actor's substitute retaining his place in the play instead of yielding it to the manager who had apparently repented of his unwillingness. This manifest reluctance to bring out the play accords little with the assertion now fre- quently made that Macready was constantly be- seeching the poet to write plays for him to act. This on the surface is improbable, after his pre- vious experience with "Strafford." It certainly receives no countenance from anything to be found in the actor's own diary. Browning's conduct on this occasion, as he afterward con- fessed, showed ignorance of the proper course to be pursued. But as he himself reports the cir- cumstances, it evinced something more than ig- norance. In the accounts given neither he nor any of his admirers seem to be struck by the as- surance, to call it by the least oflfensive name, of a dramatic author presuming to dictate to a manager, who chanced also to be the leading English actor of his time, who should take the principal part in a piece brought out at the thea- ter under his direction. To Macready himself it must have seemed unparalleled impudence. OF ROBERT BROWNING 115 But, whatever may be the opinion we hold as to the propriety of this action, there can be no dis- pute as to its impoHcy. To have a new play brought out at Macready's theater, without Ma- cready in it, was courting failure, no matter whether much or little money was spent on the accompaniments of its representation. We are further to bear in mind in discussing this whole story that Macready's side of the dif- ferences which arose has never been given. In his diary there is little recorded beyond the fact that the play appeared. No comment, what- ever, is made upon it. It looks as if all reflec- tions in regard to it or to the incidents connected with its production had been carefully edited out of the work as published. On the other hand, Browning's side has appeared at least twice in what may be called an official form. One of these is in the shape of two private letters written by him in 1884 to the editor of the London Daily News. These were printed in full in Mrs. Sutherland Orr's life of the poet. The other is the "Personalia" of Mr. Gosse which originally came out as a contribution to the Century Maga- zine for December, 1881, but was reprinted in book form in 1890. This, we are assured, "was ii6 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER inspired and partly dictated, was revised and ap- proved of by (Browning) himself." It was read by him as published and received an acknowl- edgment implying its correctness. These two sources of information may in con- sequence be properly looked upon as the author's own relation of certain incidents in his career. Both are therefore to be treated as of equal valid- ity. There are, indeed, between them one or two irreconcilable discrepancies in regard to particular matters; but in the main the two authorities agree. In the "Personalia" Brown- ing says that he was wont to be amused at the mixture of fact and fable given in what purported to be the story of his life. For it he had doubt- less ample reason: yet the most ill-informed of contemporary biographers never succeeded in furnishing a more misleading report of any event in his career than he did himself in these two authorized accounts of one of his theatrical vent- ures. Southey used to spend a great deal of his time in explaining why his various epics had never had a sale. The very obvious reason seemed never to occur to him that men did not care to read them and consequently did not buy them. Much after the same fashion Browning OF ROBERT BROWNING 117 in his later years used to explain why his dramas had failed upon the stage; or rather he used to insist that they had not failed; that it was due to purely accidental causes that their career of triumph had been prematurely cut short. This was especially true of the fortunes of the tragedy called "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon." Accordingly let us contrast some of the asser- tions about this one play as made by Browning himself in the two authorities just mentioned with the facts as they really occurred. In con- sidering them it is important to keep in mind that Macready closed his engagement at the Haymarket Theater on the 7th of December, 1841. Before doing so he had agreed to under- take the management of Drury Lane. This position he assumed and held for two seasons. It is evident from both the accounts which come from Browning that these two seasons were com- pletely confused in his own mind. It is the first of ^ which he is thinking; it is of the second he actually speaks. All this comes out distinctly the moment his assertions are compared w^ith the facts. Browing tells us that Macready accepted the play of "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon" while he was engaged at the Haymarket and retained it for Ii8 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER Drury Lane. It was toward the close of 1841 — precisely speaking, on the night of December 27 — that the actor opened his first season at the latter theater. If the poet's recollections can be trusted, his own play must accordingly have been written some time that year before the beginning of the first of these two seasons. He further tells us that when the season began at the latter theater, the manager informed him that he should produce his play when he had brought out two others — "The Patrician's Daughter" and "Plighted Troth." The former was the work of Westland Marston, the latter of a brother of George Darley. Yet we know from Ma- cready's diary that he never even read the drama entitled "The Patrician's Daughter" until August 29, 1842. He consequently could not have told Browning in 1841 that his own play must wait for one which the manager had never seen, if, indeed, at that time, it had itself an act- ual being. Browning tells us that after Macready took Drury Lane under his management he opened it on December 10. The year which he had in mind though not specified could have been no other than 1842. But in neither of his two sea- OF ROBERT BROWNING 119 sons did the manager open the theater on that date. As just mentioned, the first began on December 27, 1841; as for the second, it began October i, 1842. Browning also tells us that the season was opened with Marston's "Patri- cian's Daughter." But "The Patrician's Daugh- ter" was brought out during his second season, not his first. So far, too, was he from beginning this second season with it, that there had been nearly sixty performances before it came on. The date of December 10, 1842, given by him for this particular occurrence, is correct; but it is about the only correct thing to be found in the two accounts for which he is responsible. Browning tells us that "The Patrician's Daughter" was removed from the stage to make way for "Plighted Troth." The last repre- sentation of the former play was the 20th of January, 1843. But "Plighted Troth" had been brought out during Macready's first Drury Lane season — precisely speaking, on April 20, 1842. Then it was most effectually damned. Though given out for the following night, it seems never to have been heard of again. It hardly needs to be said that neither Marston's play nor that of any one else could have given I20 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER way to one which had disappeared from the stage fully nine months before. Browning tells us that "The Patrician's Daughter" had but a moderate success — a suc- cess of esteem, it is phrased. Macready wrote to him that it had failed in money-getting. Still it was acted at least ten times before it was with- drawn. Here it is to be said that under Ma- cready's management an interval of one or more nights — more than one, as a rule — took place be- tween successive performances of the same piece. Browning further gives us to understand that his own play, in spite of the manager's coldness, which had caused it to be maimed and mutilated and deprived of every advantage, was much more than a success of esteem. According to him, it was "a complete success" — as Macready him- self declared it to be. He tells us that it was an- nounced to be played "three times a week until further notice," and, moreover, that it "was per- formed with entire success to crowded houses until the final collapse of Macready's schemes brought it abruptly to a close." This, we are exultingly assured by his devotees, is the true story of a real triumph which erring critics, one after another, have chronicled as a defeat. OF ROBERT RBOWNING 121 To confirm further this view Browning tells us that the play had the usual run. The facts are that it was brought out on Saturday, Febru- ary II, and was further acted on Wednesday and Friday of the week following. Then it was withdrawn permanently. Accordingly it was performed but three nights in all. But not even in the eighteenth century, when there were only two theaters, was three nights the usual run of a successful play. It was a distinct mark of an unsuccessful one. If the fortunes of Marston's play, which held the stage for ten nights, could be termed no more than respectable, what epi- thet ought to be applied to those of the one which lasted through three performances only } Browning tells us his tragedy gave way to Ma- cready's benefit. That benefit took place on Friday, February 24, 1843. The third and final performance of "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon," was on Friday, February 17. There was mani- festly no reason on this account for the hurried withdrawal from the stage of a successful piece. Furthermore, during this interval of a week, four plays had been performed. These were "She Stoops to Conquer," "Macbeth," "The Lady of Lyons," and "As You Like It." 122 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER Browning tells us that the theater closed a fortnight after Macready's benefit. This asser- tion would have been absolutely correct if for two weeks he had said sixteen. Macready's second Drury Lane season closed on the 14th of June with the performance of "Macbeth." To make the discrepancy of the facts with Browning's statement of the facts still more glar- ing, it is to be added that during this interval of four months the manager had tried his fort- unes with two new plays. One of them was "The Secretary" of the veteran dramatist, James Sheridan Knowles, which was brought out on April 28; and the other the "Athelwold" of Mr. William Smith, which, printed a year before, had been chosen by Miss Faucit for her benefit on May 18. Both plays were received with tu- multuous applause the first night. Both failed to attract audiences. Both were speedily with- drawn. Macready all this time was struggling with pecuniary difficulties. It is not likely that a manager so beset, whatever might be his per- sonal feelings, would risk the chances with two new and untried plays while a third one, with which he could be sure of attracting large audi- ences, was suffered to remain unacted. OF ROBERT BROWNING 123 Browning tells us that until its withdrawal, "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon" was performed to crowded houses. Contemporary evidence is so far from supporting this assertion that it con- tradicts it absolutely. There is a general agree- ment among the periodicals of all sorts then ap- pearing as to the little favor with which the play was received. One quotation may be given which practically represents the universal opin- ion. This is from the review of the theatrical season just ended which can be found in the London Times o{ June 13, 1843. "On the nth of February," it says, "2. three-act play called *A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon' made its appear- ance and was moderately successful the first night while it totally failed in attraction." This is essentially the view taken by the other peri- odicals, not even excluding The Examiner. But a feeling seems to prevail among the mod- ern partisans of Browning that anybody who is not wholly for him, not merely in the estimate of his genius but in the account of the incidents of his life, is so much against him that his words can not be trusted at all. Accordingly it may be ad- visable to cite here the testimony of one who at that period belonged to the inner circle of his 124 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER personal friends. This man is Joel Arnould, who subsequently went out to India to take the position of Judge of the Supreme Court at Bom- bay. He was equally a friend of another one be- longing to this same circle, that Alfred Domett who was the subject of Browning's poem en- titled "Waring." To him residing then in New Zealand, Arnould, in an undated letter, but mani- festly belonging to 1843, furnished an account of the reception this particular play had met. In it he followed the accepted Browning view, now become traditional, which represents Macready as the devil behind the scenes who was mali- ciously bent on contriving the ruin of a play which thereby would have the effect of contributing fur- ther to his own financial ruin. "He did his best to wreck it," says one of the poet's biographers.^ Arnould gives a description of the first per- formance which I select particularly because it is far more favorable than that contained in any other contemporary record as yet published. "The first night," he wrote, "was magnificent. There could be no mistake about the honest en- thusiasm of the audience. . . . Altogether the first night was a triumph. The second night * "Robert Browning," by C. H. Herford, New York, 1905, p. 52. OF ROBERT BROWNING 125 was evidently presided over by the spirit of the manager. I was one of about sixty or seventy in the pit, and yet we seemed crowded when com- pared to the desolate emptiness of the boxes. The gallery was again full. The third night I again took my wife to the boxes. It was evident at a glance that it was to be the last. My own delight and hers too in the play was increased at this third representation and would have gone on increasing to a thirtieth; but the miserable great chilly house with its apathy and emptiness produced in us both the painful sensation which made her exclaim that she 'could cry with vexa- tion at seeing so noble a play so basely marred.'"^ Yet this enthusiastic friend who could have kept on going to the same performance thirty times pointed out that a new play produced at Ma- cready's theater, with the foremost English actor taking no part in it, was foredoomed to failure. That one fact would suffice to repel numbers. Arnould further conceded that even had Ma- cready taken part, the piece could never have be- come permanently popular. I have brought here into sharp contrast Brown- ing's statement of facts about the production of * "Robert Browning and Alfred Domett," p. 66. 126 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon" with the facts as they actually are. Further minor conflicts with the eternal verities; further minor discrepancies be- tween the two accounts for which he is respon- sible, lack of time and space compels me to disregard. In one of the two authorities here fol- lowed he is represented as asserting that he had kept silence for forty years while the stories of the failure of his play were in circulation. It would have been far better had he kept silence the rest of his life. From the intentional false witness of the wicked truth can be protected. How can we shield it from the unintentional false witness of the good } It is hardly possible to secure bet- ter evidence than that which came from Brown- ing to establish the truth of what is demonstrably false. For he himself was simply incapable of making a statement which he knew to be un- trustworthy, and especially one that would re- dound unjustly to his own credit. Yet we have had here to deal with a tissue of assertions of his, all honestly made and all having no foundation in fact. Yet because they have come from a man of highest character as well as of genius, his par- tisans have exhibited their loyalty at the expense of their judgment in accepting his contradictions OF ROBERT BROWNING 127 of previously accepted beliefs not only without question, but without the slightest attempt at verification. It has, indeed, been more than once exultingly proclaimed that these inaccurate assertions furnish proof positive that the com- mon accounts of the ill success of his plays, once current, have received their death-blow and that all inferences derived from their assumed failure must be henceforth treated as erroneous and misleading. No one, in truth, who has had occasion to refer to the history of this particular play, seems ca- pable of making an accurate statement about it. From author down to auditor they tell us the most easily exposed untruths with a full convic- tion of their perfect conformity to fact. Let us take two striking illustrations of this condition of things. Mrs. Bridell-Fox, the daughter of the early friend and patron of Browning, gave in The Argosy of February, 1890, an account of the first performance of "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon." She gave it, to use her own words, as she vividly recalled it. " In the play," she wrote, " Macready took the part of Lord Thorold, the elder brother, on the first night of its representation only. I well remember his noble bearing and dignified 128 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER grace. It was, however, produced by him in the later days of his management of Drury Lane, when worn out with fatigue and anxiety, he was unable to sustain the part, and handed it over to Mr. Phelps for the remainder of the nights the play ran." Here is a woman of unquestionable integrity and truthfulness recalling vividly the sight of something which she had never seen at the time specified nor at any time whatever; for Macready never in his life took the part of Thorold Lord Tresham. Let us turn to another creation of the imagina- tion, though in this instance based upon a foun- dation of fact. In 1844 Phelps, who was the original Lord Tresham, took upon himself the management of the Sadler's Wells Theater in Islington. There he made a great success, and there he remained nearly a score of years. In the fifth year of his management — specifically in November, 1848 — he revived "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon." His nephew and biographer gave to the Browning Society, in 1888, a glowing ac- count of the favor it met at its reproduction. " It was played," he wrote, "four nights for an en- tire month (the run he usually gave a play pro- duced by him at this period) to large and en- OF ROBERT BROWNING 129 thusiastic audiences, as I can testify, having been at the theatre the greatest part of each evening." ^ This, if true, would make at least sixteen per- formances during the period immediately fol- lowing the revival. Yet records which can not be disputed show that it did not run for a month, but for two weeks only; and that during these two weeks it was acted not four times a week but three. Later in February, 1849, it was acted twice. This made eight performances in all during the whole season.^ Here accordingly is testimony given in fullest sincerity by a man present who was in a position peculiarly favora- ble for ascertaining precisely what had occurred. Yet to the truth of what actually occurred, his statements have only a remote relation. If we can not trust his testimony as to the easily verified number of performances given, what confidence can we have in his testimony as to the largeness and enthusiasm of the audience assembled \ The further fact that Phelps did not during his long management produce again ^ Letter of W. May Phelps, dated March 3, 1888. Proceedings of Browning Society, Notes No. 147, p. 243. ^ The play was acted at the Sadler's Wells Theater, Nov. 27, 28, and 29; and Dec. 7, 8, 9, in 1848; and on February 2 and 3, 1849. 130 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER the piece, in which at its first representation at Drury Lane he was generally regarded as having achieved distinct success, seems to indicate that he did not share in his nephew's view as to the number and zeal of those who were present at this revival. There is indeed no question that the play, so far from being the complete success which Browning termed it, was a failure. Such was the view taken of its fortunes in all contemporary notices, whether friendly or hostile. In The Examiner Forster justly praised the tragedy as a work of rare beauty and as unutterably tender and passionate. Still he did not venture to pre- dict for it anything but a short existence on the stage. That it succeeded fairly well the first night may be freely admitted. But the same thing is to be said of many pieces that then failed — in particular of the very two already mentioned which followed it the same season at the same theater. If contemporary evidence can be trust- ed, each of these was received the first night with more enthusiasm than was Browning's play. Yet each failed to attract audiences, each was speedily withdrawn. Their fate was the very one which befell "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon." OF ROBERT BROWNING 131 At its original performance there was present a strong body of admirers, brought thither by per- sonal regard for the author or impressed by the power and passion displayed in the poetry. But there was also a distinct minority of dissen- tients. We know that even on this first repre- sentation hisses were heard. "The author," says the report in The Times y "was called for at the conclusion, but there was quite enough of disapprobation expressed to account for his un- willingness to appear." Up to this point the success of the play has been considered. Enough has been said to show that at its original representation "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon" was a failure. The further question now arises. Ought it to have been a success ? It must be kept in mind that we are not here discussing the work as a contribution to literature, but as an attempt at the dramatic representation of real life. We can concede willingly the fervor and fire and passion which characterize it in numerous places and drew from Dickens his enthusiastic tribute. We can further concede the opportunities which it af- fords and improves for affecting and tragic situations. But we are treating it here simply 132 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER as a work of art, as an exemplification of that drama, the aim of which, as its greatest exponent has told us, is to hold the mirror up to nature. This involves as a fundamental consideration the representation of hfe as it is, and of the men living it conducting themselves in the way we have reason and right to expect. The story taken as the groundwork of the drama may be as unreal and impossible as one found in the Arabian Nights. But that once accepted, what is required is that the personages should act as they would were it probable and true. But in no work produced by any great poet have these principles been more systematically violated, or rather defied, than in the play under discussion. The characters are influenced by motives no one could deem natural. They perform acts no one in his senses would look upon as rational. To begin at the beginning, the plot itself of this play, dealing, as it does, with modern feelings and conventions, is something more than in- credible. It outrages all conceptions of the prob- able, not to say the possible. Events that are represented as occurring have undoubtedly oc- curred and perhaps often; but they have never occurred under the conditions here given. There OF ROBERT BROWNING 133 is absolute incongruity between the characters of the persons portrayed and their acts. This comes out clearly the moment we detach our- selves from the play considered as literature, and contemplate it as a picture of human Hfe. Take the very initial conception. Mildred, Lord Tres- ham's sister, a young and beautiful girl, has been concerned in a criminal intrigue with the young earl of Merton. They are intending to condone their guilt by marriage. At the very outset we have two persons depicted as possessed of the loftiest character and animated by the noblest feelings, furthermore desperately in love with each other, acting in a way that could never have happened in real life, had they been such as they are represented to be. There has been and there is nothing to prevent their union. They both belong to the same station in life. No differ- ences exist between their families. There is no disparity of age. The alliance is not only a natural one, but suitable from every other point of view besides that of mutual love. There is no reason why the hero should not from the out- set have wooed the heroine in the way of honor- able marriage as he is represented as doing at the time the play opens. 134 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER Accordingly it may be fairly asked, why should the two have engaged in an intrigue of this sort ? Why, before being concerned in it, has not this lofty-minded lover applied for the hand of the woman he cherished ? In real life this would have been the inevitable course to follow. In the drama only one reason is given for his failure to take it. In his dying moments the earl tells the man who has slain him that it was fear of him, and of his surpassing reputation, of him the all- courted, the all-accomplished scholar and gentle- man, that has deterred him from presuming to venture upon the daring step of asking for the hand of the woman he loved. Unfortunately this fear had not extended to another member of the family where it would have been much more in place. The timidity which trembled before man's austerity stood in no awe of woman's purity. What had kept him from seeking from the brother that which could have been had for the asking did not prevent him from engaging and succeeding in the effort to overcome the vir- tue of the sister. Let us now turn to the other party in the affair. She is portrayed as an embodiment of purity. Such at least she is in the eyes of her OF ROBERT BROWNING 135 lover and of her nearest of kin. She is filled with most agonizing remorse for her guilt. Yet no more than her suitor could she have been ig- norant of the fact that there v^ere no insurmount- able obstacles in the way of their union. Cer- tainly the experiment of asking for her hand might have seemed to her well worth trying be- fore sacrificing her honor. A woman perfectly pure at heart can indeed be made the victim of overpowering passion. But she would never be likely to cast aside maidenly reserve and virginal modesty on a slight pretext — least of all, on one so attenuated as this, that her lover felt a certain timidity about making an application for her hand in regular form. Had the situation been different; had there existed between the two a passionate love to which circumstances had opposed an impregna- ble barrier; had there been between the families a hostility so bitter that the obstacles raised by mutual enmity were or appeared unsurmount- able; had their positions in life been so different that a proposition of marriage on the part of the suitor would have seemed to her natural guard- ians to partake of the nature of unwarrantable presumption if not of actual insult: in such cir- 136 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER cumstances there would have been palliation for the conduct of the two in the eyes of the austerest, even though they refused to grant pardon. But not a single one of these mitigating details ex- isted. The only defence the heroine makes for herself is conveyed in the simple phrase, " I had no mother." This, as it appears in the acting, is effective and tragic. But the point to be in- sisted upon in looking at this play as the work of a great dramatic exponent of human nature, and not merely as the work of a great poet, is that had the heroine been really of the character ascribed to her, she would not here have needed a mother. So far from yielding to the solicitations of her lover under the conditions represented as exist- ing, it would have required nothing more than ordinary womanly reserve and purity to repel any proposition of the sort with something more than indignation. To take any other view is an insult to womanhood. No argument can explain away this violation of the truth of life, no sophistry can reconcile the action of these two principal personages of the drama with the characters ascribed to them. Had the suitor been the sort of man he is repre- sented to be, he would never have taken advan- OF ROBERT BROWNING 137 tage of the innocence and ignorance of a loving and trustful girl. Had in turn the heroine been the sort of woman she is represented to be, the temptation proffered would have been no temp- tation at all. Accordingly their previous con- duct, as depicted by Browning himself, does not give the impression of persons hurried into the commission of sin by the stress of circumstances but rather of a wanton falling into it from the lack of principle. At the very outset therefore we are confronted by the fact that the whole ac- tion of the play hinges upon a situation for the existence of which there is no adequate reason. As if this were not enough, the behavior of the various personages of the drama is equally with- out reason. There is indeed a close consistency between the unreality of the plot and the fatuity of those who are employed to carry it on. The characters act throughout with a defiance of ordinary sense that it is almost impossible to conceive manifested by rational beings in real hfe. Let us take one of the early incidents of the play. The lover has overcome his dread of Mil- dred's brother sufficiently to venture to apply for her hand in due form. He has been graciously, 138 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER even warmly, received. His addresses have been sanctioned by the head of the house. Nothing more is needed save formal acceptance of them by the woman who has yielded herself to him already. Both therefore are now fully assured that it is in their power to atone, so far as in them lies, for the past; that henceforth the earl can visit Mildred as her accepted and ac- knowledged lover. Only two days must pass — one day is all that is really necessary — and he can then claim openly, as his promised bride, the woman he loves. Certainly it would seem that during this brief interval they might refrain for the sake of their common future from doing the slightest act that would tend to bring about the revelation of their secret. The meeting in her chamber must always have been hazardous — so hazardous that its having remained so long undiscovered is one of the inherent improbabili- ties of the play which is lost to consideration in the view of the many greater improbabilities which abound in it. But now that perfect safety is in sight, there is surely no need of running fur- ther risk, no justification for it. In real life, refraining from such further risk would unquestionably have been the course OF ROBERT BROWNING 139 adopted. In the play the thought of so common- sense a procedure seems never to have occurred to either of the lovers. The earl takes the occa- sion of the night succeeding the day of his ac- ceptance by Mildred's brother to visit Mildred herself in her own chamber. As secrecy was all important, he would, in real life, have made his way to his destined haven in the profoundest silence. Instead he comes singing a song. The stage direction tell us that it is to be sung in as low a voice as possible. But however repressed in the delivery, if it reached the ears of the one to whom it was addressed, it was necessarily liable to reach the ears of others. Therefore, in real life it would never have been sung at all. It was poetry that demanded its utterance, not dra- matic propriety. For it is a beautiful lyric. Too much can not be said in praise of its pas- sionate intensity. Only it is not appropriate to the occasion. In the drama which sets out to represent life as it is, this was the time above all to avoid singing it. Furthermore, the song, while not appropriate to the occasion, can not be regarded as altogether appropriate to the characters. It must have grated upon the feelings of some of the audience I40 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER — as a matter of fact we know that on the first night it did — to have the lover about to make a secret midnight visit to the chamber of the hero- ine salute her with its opening line, "There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest." Pure at heart she may be conceded to be in spite of all that has happened. It would have been right for her lover to have so assured her in the privacy of the interview. But the song is as much addressed to the audience as it is to her it celebrates. Accordingly the view expressed in it could hardly have been deemed a compliment to the character of the women present. They might justifiably resent having it chanted to them almost defiantly that the girl who is repre- sented as having been concerned in an illicit in- trigue is actually purer than the purest to be found among them. It is no wonder that on the first night of its performance the play came near being wrecked on this particular scene. In spite of the fervor and beauty of the lyric there was manifested among the irreverent scattered through the audience a perceptible disposition to scoff. OF ROBERT BROWNING 141 But the untruthfulness of the play as a repre- sentation of real life does not stop at this point. To Lord Tresham is revealed the terrible fact that night after night Mildred has been visited in her chamber by an unknown man. She is re- proached for her course by her agonized brother. She makes no attempt to deny her guilt, but absolutely refuses to disclose the name of her accomplice. At the same time she expresses her v^illingness to receive the Earl as her affianced bridegroom. Naturally her brother is horrified at the apparent intention to inflict an atrocious w^rong upon an unsuspecting suitor, to commit an act which would bring dishonor upon him who suff'ered it and dishonor of a graver kind upon those who had carried it into execution. One can understand Mildred's refusal to reveal her lover's name, if she had made up her mind to expiate her sin by leading henceforth a life of solitary contrition. But this she has not the slightest thought of doing. So long therefore as she purposes to persist in her determination to marry the man who has offered himself, why not reveal the actual facts of the situation ^ Why not make it known that the applicant for her hand and the nightly visitor to her chamber are 142 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER one and the same person ? It is not merely the natural course for her to pursue, in the circum- stances it is the only one; and she resolutely re- fuses to pursue it. Several defences have been pleaded for her un- w^illingness to make a revelation which is morally obligatory if she intends to enter into the pur- posed union. They have been put forth from the point of view^ of high art, and again from a profound philosophic view of human nature. The moment any one of these is scrutinized, it is felt to be an effort, futile as it is labored, to ex- plain the unexplainable. But looked at from the author's point of view there is no difficulty in accounting for her silence. Had she revealed the name of her lover, the play would have had to come at once to an untimely end, or would have had to be furnished with an entirely dif- ferent denouement. The grossest improbabili- ties were therefore to be accepted to prevent the otherwise inevitable result. Take again the next night. Mildred now knows that her secret has been discovered. She knows in consequence that any attempt to renew the visit to her chamber will be watched and will be watched by hostile eyes. She not only rec- OF ROBERT BROWNING I43 ognizes the danger, the author makes us aware that she recognizes it. When Guendolen, who has surprised her secret, mentions the renewed coming of her lover as possible, she exclaims, "he is lost." To prevent this calamity she could certainly have refrained from any act which would have the effect of luring him on to the destruction which in that event she foresees to be certain. In real life not to give the signal for his coming would have been the least thing she could do in order to avert the threatened peril. But in the drama an expedient so simple as this seems not to have occurred to her or to her adviser. So at midnight Mildred proceeds to transfer the lamp from the red square in the pointed glass higher up to the small dark blue pane. This is the appointed signal for her lover to come. He obeys and the result follows which any one above the capacity of an idiot would have foreseen must follow. Nor do the other personages of the drama dis- play the qualities which are supposed to charac- terize rational human beings. Guendolen, for instance, is represented as possessing fully a soundness of judgment which is mainly con- spicuous by its absence in the acts of the rest. 144 '^HE EARLY LITERARY CAREER She discovers by her own intuitive sagacity that Mildred's midnight visitor and her suitor are one and the same person. She knows that the brother has gone off in an agony of" desperation and is lost to direct communication. Still she has her own lover, Austin, at command. To a certain extent therefore she is mistress of the situation. But she makes not the slightest effort to utilize the advantage of her position. Now that the truth is known, it is all-important that the earl should not repeat his absurd conduct of the night before in visiting Mildred's chamber. What does she do to prevent this visit ? What effort does she put forth to warn the lover of what she must have recognized as his deadly peril .? None at all. She takes no steps to hinder Mil- dred from setting the signal, she takes no steps to inform the earl of the risk he runs in obeying it. Her lack of resource has its counterpart in the conduct of the head of the house in forcing on the duel after he has learned that his sister's suitor is the real midnight visitor. Though his behavior is more explicable, it is not flattering to his sense. He further contributes an addi- tional luster to his scutcheon by slaying a man who makes, as he recognizes himself, no real OF ROBERT BROWNING 145 attempt at defence. This is the final irrational act of a series of irrational acts in which each character has to conduct himself as unnaturally as possible to prevent the play from ending naturally. All this violation of the truth of life was apparent to most men at the time, though it occasionally escaped the attention of some of the most keen-sighted. The necessities of the drama at times exact, or at any rate permit, the neglect of probability in the conduct of the char- acters. Still they do not require unhesitating and persistent defiance of it. Yet such is the course unflinchingly followed in this play. The possibility of the existence of the condition of things described in it at its opening puts of itself a sufficiently severe strain upon belief, or rather upon credulity, without the further persistent demands made upon it during the course of the action. As a matter of fact, we are in a world of unreal beings, powerfully portrayed, it is true; for the situations are often exciting, and the pathos of the piece is undeniable to him who can keep out of his mind the preposterous conduct of the characters. But the action all through lies out of the realm of probability, not to say possibility. 146 ROBERT BROWNING It is therefore out of the realm of the highest art. So Httle is there of that in it that the tragedy con- sists largely of a series of narrow escapes from arriving at a happy termination, and thereby be- coming a comedy. From this fate nothing could have saved it, if a single one of the leading characters had chosen to act as he or she would have acted in real life. Those who dwell in the rarefied air of the emotional, or rather the hys- terical, may find the behavior of the personages of the play worthy of approbation. Assuredly cold-blooded, hard-headed, and hard-hearted men of the world will feel that people who display so little sense ought to die, for they are not fit to live in any society made up of rational or even semirational beings. IV "BELLS AND POMEGRANATES" "A SOUL'S TRAGEDY"— "LYRICS"— DECLINE AND REVIVAL OF BROWNING'S REPUTATION Whatever may be the theoretical estimate privately entertained of the value of Browning's plays in themselves, the facts given in the previ- ous lectures prove beyond dispute that as con- tributions to the acting drama the verdict of the public has never been in their favor. Not one of them has ever attained genuine success on the stage. You may, if you please, attribute this inferiority in drawing power to the superiority these pieces display as literature; though, it must be confessed that this Is something of a reflection upon the continuous attraction for theater-goers which Shakespeare, adequately and even inad- equately interpreted, has exerted for more than three centuries. Yet, even as literature most of Browning's plays do not occupy a high rank. Some of them are tender and delicate as is "Co- 147 148 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER lombe's Birthday"; some of them are tedious as is " Strafford." One of them — "The Return of the Druses" — has the excitement of a starthng denouement. But as a rule they interest the reader as Httle in the closet as those did the hearer which were acted upon the stage. To this general criticism there is one excep- tion. I refer to "A Soul's Tragedy," which with " Luria" made up the eighth and last number of the series of "Bells and Pomegranates." This is a drama which the poet had written two or three years before publication, apparently at a heat. Browning rivalled and even occas- sionally surpassed his most thorough-going parti- sans in the tendency he exhibited to prefer his poorest work to his best. For this particular play he naturally therefore had no great regard — an opinion which need not weigh heavily upon us, coming as it does from one who never ceased to think highly of " Sordello." Before showing the manuscript of it to his future wife, he described it to her as all sneering and disillusion. He was reluctant to print it; indeed, he was perfectly ready to destroy it and assured her in the fullest sincerity that if she said the word, it should be burned. OF ROBERT BROWNING 149 In truth, it gives one a most puzzling idea of Browning's mental processes to find that he thought this drama, which is conspicuous among his works for its clearness, was so obscure — so much more obscure than " Luria," for instance — that he declared that if the latter was clearish, the printing of the former would be an unneces- sary troubling of the waters. He re-read it in February, 1846. His previous impressions about it were then fully confirmed. In consequence, he hesitated about including it in the series of "Bells and Pomegranates." Though there were several points in it which struck him as suc- cessful in design and execution, he came to the conclusion that it would be preferable to post- pone its publication. Subject-matter and style, he thought, were alike unpopular. This was true, he said, even ''for the literary grex that stands aloof from the purer plehs, and uses that privilege to display and parade an ignorance which the other is altogether unconscious of."^ He was therefore disposed to reserve from publi- cation, for the time being, this unlucky play, as he called it. In the case of a possible second * "Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," New York, 1899, vol. I, p. 470. I50 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER edition of the series it could then be quietly in- serted in its proper place. Great therefore was Miss Barrett's astonish- ment when the work was submitted to her for perusal. She was almost disposed to be indig- nant with its author for misleading her. " Now," she wrote, "I shall know what to believe when you talk of very bad and indifferent doings of yours." ^ She recognized at once the great ex- cellence of the play. The correspondence be- tween the two makes it clear that at heart she preferred it to " Luria," though she felt bound to defer sufficiently to her lover's judgment to accord to the latter a nominal superiority. But even so much concession as this was wrung from her, rather than cheerfully granted. "It is a work," she wrote, "full of power and significance, and I am not at all sure (not that it is wise to make comparisons, but that I want you to understand how I am impressed!) — I am not at all sure that if I knew you now first and only by these two productions — 'Luria' and 'The Tragedy' — I should not involuntarily attribute more power^ and a higher faculty to the writer of the last." ^ ' " Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," New York, 1899, ^o^- I> P- 54°- ^ Ibid., vol. 11, p. 13. OF ROBERT BROWNING 151 In the conflict that went on between the duty of heeding her own judgment and the desire that urged her to defer to the taste of her lover, she felt compelled to qualify this admission. "Yet 'Luria' is the completer work — I know it very well," she added. Under the circumstances, it would be unjust to reckon up against her this in- dulgence in a mild form of mendacity. The more familiar Miss Barrett became with the play, the more she was impressed with its vividness and vitality. She could at first hardly forgive Browning for terrifying her about its poorness and its obscurity. "The worst thing is," she wrote, "that I half believed you, and took the manuscript to be something inferior — for you — and the advisableness of its publica- tion a doubtful case." ^ Later she gave renewed expression to her opinion. " It delights me," she wrote, "and must raise your reputation as a poet and thinker — must." ^ Browning himself was perfectly sincere in his depreciatory estimate of the work. He was equally sincere in the sur- prise he expressed at the liking she manifested for it. Fortunately this liking compelled its pub- lication at the time. Unfortunately it was not 1 " Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," New York, 1899, vol. I, p. 541. ^ Ibid., vol. II, p. 34. 152 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER permitted to precede "Luria" in the number in which it was printed, and suffered then and perhaps has always suffered since from the in- fluence of that somewhat depressing forerunner. As it further presents no difficulties of compre- hension or construction, as it is a faithful por- trayal of human nature, the poor opinion which Browning entertained of it has extended to many of his devotees, some of whom seem hardly aware of its existence. "A Soul's Tragedy" deserves fully the praise which Miss Barrett gave it. Of all the dramatic writings of Browning, it is the one that unites consistency of plot with clearness of expression and a course of action that follows a line of nat- ural development and is, therefore, in full accord- ance with the truth of life. The characters in it are characters we can all understand and appre- ciate. They are acted upon by influences we all recognize as potent, they are swept along by im- pulses which are daily affecting the lives of those about us. The general deterioration in conduct and motive of the hero, which constitutes the tragedy of the play, is the inevitable outcome to be expected of a character which had raised be- fore itself an ideal up to which it was not fitted OF ROBERT BROWNING 153 to live; and its lofty pretension contrasted with its pitiful performance hardly needs to be accent- uated by the cynical words of the papal legate, cool, sarcastic, piercing at a glance the shallow nature which strove to persuade itself that it was animated by high purposes. From the very out- set of his appearance he intimates the inevitable failure and dishonor which are to wait upon the man who assumes the attitude of a lover of his country, while all the time he is eaten up with love of himself. Before taking leave of the plays, it may be well to note that Browning, in no respect a follower of any school, in many respects a law unto him- self, in his method of expression almost defiantly free from the trammels of the conventional — that Browning of all men should have been the only great writer of our day, at all events of our race, to deliver himself of his own accord into the bondage of the unities, and if not to accept fully that antiquated superstition, to be profoundly affected by it. He did not observe it indeed in his first play; he sometimes strained its require- ments in his later ones; but in his secret soul he had a distinct hankering after it. It was some- times impossible to carry through the action of 154 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER his drama within the hmits required by this doc- trine. Accordingly, he divided into two parts — as in "King Victor and King Charles" and in "A Soul's Tragedy" — what is really one play. So an artificial unity is gained at the expense of a natural one; for in each of these parts the action is limited to a single day. But this is really a concession to an outworn creed rather than the observance of any principle of art — for the plays as they are, are organic wholes, and neither part has any justification for its own existence without the existence of the other. In the case of "The Return of the Druses," " Co- lombe's Birthday," and " Luria " the action in each instance is limited to one day and one place. In "A Blot i' the 'Scutcheon" the stress of cir- cumstances compels the extension of the time somewhat beyond the prescribed twenty-four hours. In general, the difficulties in which he involves himself by encumbering his motions with these fetters have been successfully sur- mounted; though in certain of them, anH espec- ially so in "Luria," there is always present to the mind the perpetually recurring flaw in the ob- servance of the unities, the moral impossibility of the events taking place in the limited time in OF ROBERT BROWNING 155 which they are described as happening, and too often the physical impossibihty. Why Browning should have voluntarily entered into a bondage which France had then flung off, it is not easy to say. So much for the plays. But in the series of "Bells and Pomegranates" were two parts which have done more to make Browning's name a household word than perhaps nearly all his other poetry combined — at least, not more than one exception can be found in his later pro- duction. These two were the sixteen pages of "Dramatic Lyrics "which made up No. Ill, and the twenty-four pages of *' Dramatic Romances and Lyrics " which made up No.VIL The former contained some of the best-known minor poems. These gave at the time to those who were begin- ning to lose faith in him a renewed assurance that his poetic power was of the highest quality, and needed only right direction to place him in the very front rank of authors then living. Forster's review in The Examiner of the first of these two numbers is so clear a proof of the harm which had been wrought to his reputation by the work upon which he had prided himself, that a few sentences of it are worth quoting. "If poetry," 156 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER he wrote, "were exactly the thing to grind pro- fessors of metaphysics on, we should pray to Mr. Browning for perpetual ' Sordellos.' As it is, we are humble enough and modest enough to be more thankful for * Dramatic Lyrics/ The col- lection before us is welcome for its own sake, and more welcome for the indication of the poet's advance in a right direction. Some of this we saw and thanked him for in his ' Victor and Charles,* much more in his delightful 'Pippa Passes,' and in the simple and manly strain of some of these 'Dramatic Lyrics' we find proof of the firmer march and steadier control. We were the first to hail his noble start in 'Paracelsus'; the 'Strafford' and 'Sordello' did not shake our faith in him; and we shall see him reach the goal." ' In this collection appeared that favorite poem for children as well as for persons of riper growth, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." It had been written in May, 1842, for Macready's child. It is manifest that Browning himself either did not think much of it, or that he believed that it was not likely to increase his reputation. It was added at the last moment only because there were ' Examiner, Nov. 26, 1843. OF ROBERT BROWNING 157 some columns that had to be filled up for this particular number. It is under the circum- stances a singular coincidence that "Lady Gerald- ine's Courtship," one of the most popular pieces by his future wife, was written at a heat to meet corresponding and similar unpoetical conditions. This same part also included several of his con- trasted pieces of which the two entitled "Camp" and "Cloister" are perhaps the most familiar to readers. Here likewise appeared some perpet- ual favorites as "In a Gondola," "Waring," and "Through the Metidja to Abdel Kader." Indeed, there was hardly a piece in it not worth reading and remembering. But fine as was this collection, it was even surpassed by the seventh number of the series, which bore as its title "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." There are very few individual books of any author in our tongue which contain so many pieces of such sustained excellence. By Browning himself it was never surpassed as a whole. Outside certainly of the later collection entitled "Men and Women," no volume of his ever appealed to so wide a circle of readers of different tastes and temperaments. Six of the poems appearing in it had been published previ- 158 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER ously. Browning for some reason was always averse to bringing out his work in periodicals. Gratitude to Fox had induced him to contribute some of his early pieces to the Monthly Reposi- tory. He was now again led to overcome his dis- like to this method of publication because of the sympathy he felt for the misfortunes of a fellow craftsman. Thomas Hood, already under the shadow of death, had established at the begin- ning of 1844 a magazine which bore his own name. Before six months had gone by, hemor- rhage of the lungs had brought him almost to the grave. Though he rallied subsequently to some extent, he broke down completely at the end of the year and never left his bed till in May, 1845, he was taken from it to his tomb. In this condi- tion of things, several friends of the dying man had come to his aid. Among these was Brown- ing. During the year preceding Hood's dc^-h he contributed several pieces to his magazine. The last of these which appeared in the number for April, 1845, was "The Flight of the Duchess"; for with the death of the editor, the following month, the poet felt himself relieved from any further obligation. It was part only of "The Flight of the Duch- OF ROBERT BROWNING 159 ess " which was then printed — exactly speaking, the first nine stanzas of the completed poem which now includes sixteen in all. Not till the publication of the "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics" was added the part containing the hunt and the scene with the gipsy. Curiously enough, we know from Browning's own words that not a line of this production as it first appeared, was written as he originally intended to write it. *'As I conceived the poem," he said, "it con- sisted entirely of the Gipsy's description of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover — a real life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only — as the main subject has become now." ^ For one I confess to being delighted that Browning was somehow prevented from carrying out his original intention; that the de- scription of the unreal life with the Duke has been actually portrayed, and has not to be de- duced from something else; for the vivid de- scription of it given by himself is worth far more ' "Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," New York, 1899, vol. I, p. 139. i6o THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER than all the deductions that could have been made by all the members of all the Browning societies that ever have existed or ever will exist. Few there are of the nineteen pieces — or if the contrasted poems be counted separately — of the twenty-four pieces which constitute this collec- tion that are unfamiliar not merely to special students of Browning, but to all lovers of Eng- lish literature. They were shown to Miss Bar- rett in proof. ^ Their beauty and power sur- prised even her, disposed as she was to admire, and ready to find things admirable. "Now," she wrote, "if people do not cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?" That they should cry out there was no question; that they would cry out, there was every reason to expect; that they did not cry out, we know. There was even more than lack of appreciation; there was sometimes positive condemnation. Along with the censure of some professional re- viewers, indeed, praise was bestowed upon them by others; but it was always praise accom- panied with qualifications. Still notice of them, favorable or unfavorable, had Httle weight with the public. Working against Browning's rep- ' " Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," New- York, 1899, vol. I, p. 252. OF ROBERT BROWNING i6i utation was the indifference which I have previ- ously pointed out as being something far more baleful than hostile criticism. If people had only been willing to read, they could not have failed to cry out; but they simply refused to read. It is in truth hard for us now to comprehend how low for a long time was the estimate taken of Browning's achievement; how small was the cir- culation of his writings, especially in his own country; and how completely his reputation was then overshadowed by that of his wife. Mrs. Browning died in June, 1861. She is now as un- duly depreciated as she was then unduly ex- alted; for up to the day of her death and for a number of years after she stood far higher in the estimation of the reading pubHc than did her husband. This was true even of America, where his poetry met with much greater favor than it did in his own land. A singular and striking proof of how much larger was the meas- ure she filled even here in the public eye deserves mention. Poe was not only one of the acutest of critics then living, but he had exceptional acquaintance with contemporary literature. In his review of Miss Barrett's volumes of 1844, he accorded to her superiority over every poet then i62 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER living with the single exception of Tennyson, One, indeed, would almost infer from his words that of her future husband he either knew noth- ing or thought little. "That Miss Barrett," he wrote, "has done more in poetry than any wom- an living or dead, will scarcely be questioned; and that she has surpassed all of her poetical contemporaries of either sex (with a single ex- ception) is our deliberate opinion — not idly enter- tained, we think, nor founded on any visionary basis." At the preference exhibited by readers for the poetry of his wife, Browning did not grieve. There were a few who then ranked him much above her; but in that limited number he was not himself included. He fully agreed with the gen- eral public as to the superiority ^^ her work to his own. Doubtless his intense affection blinded his judgment; for there can be no question as to his sincerity. "The true creative power is hers, not mine," he said. In the abounding love and admiration he felt for her, and in his generous and unselfish devotion to the extension of her name and fame, he was perfectly content to take a second place in the estimation of the public. But what he resented and what he had a right OF ROBERT BROWNING 163 to resent was that he was accorded no place at all. In England the ignorance of his work and the poor opinion there entertained of it at that time seems now almost incredible. Not but in the worst of days he received that lofty praise from the few which is the sure forerunner of the large praise of the many. But among the many who gave him no recognition were comprised then the great majority of the most highly edu- cated class. It included even those distinguished in letters. One can understand and forgive the neglect of certain of his productions. But not to these alone did men at that time turn a deaf ear. They turned as deaf a one to the magnifi- cent pieces which had already been brought out and to others to be brought out later during the period of his unpopularity. The proof of this condition of things does not consist merely in the small sale his works then had; though necessarily that is evidence not to be gainsaid or undervalued. Not one of his in- dividual volumes ever went then into a second edition. It is, however, the incidental remarks of persons of high literary and social position that give us fuller glimpses of the absolute failure of Browning's contemporaries to recognize his 1 64 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER greatness as a poet. One or two pieces of testi- mony may be worth citing. Mary Russell Mit- ford was an intimate friend of Miss Barrett. In 1846 she wrote to a correspondent an account of her marriage to Browning. After speaking of the genius of the wife she went on to discourse in the following way of the husband. "He is a poet also," she said, "but I believe that his ac- quirements are more remarkable than his poetry, though that has been held to be of high prom- " 1 ise. ^ This was the sort of lukewarm appreciation which Browning received from even the most favorably disposed of the cultivated class, and that too after the series of " Bells and Pomegran- ates" had been published. Furthermore, the ignorance of him and the indifference to him seem to have increased as the years went by, instead of diminishing. The meager returns of sale furnished by his publishers Chapman and Hall, point very unmistakably to this fact. But we have even more direct evidence. In i860 the noted philanthropist, Frances Power Cobbe, was staying at Florence. There she was in con- stant contact with the Brownings. While she felt * "Life of Mary Russell Mitford," London 1870, vol. Ill, p. 204. OF ROBERT BROWNING 165 the highest admiration for the literary achieve- ment of the wife, we have her own testimony that it never occurred to her or to any of her circle of associates that the husband was a poet worth considering. In her autobiography she records the obtuseness of herself and her friends. "At that time," she says, "I do not think that any one, certainly no one of the society which sur- rounded him, thought of Mr, Browning as a great poet, or as an equal one to his wife, whose ' Au- rora Leigh' was then a new book. The utter un- selfishness and generosity wherewith he gloried in his wife's fame perhaps helped to blind us, stupid that we were! to his own claims." ^ We know now that Browning felt keenly the injustice with which he was treated. We learn much about his attitude from his wife's corre- spondence. Her resentment of the neglect he experienced was greater than his own; at least it has reached us more definitely. "To yow," she wrote to Browning's sister in i860, "I may say, that the blindness, deafness, and stupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing. Robert is. All England can't prevent his exist- ence, I suppose. But nobody there, except a * "Life of Frances Power Cobbe," Boston, 1890, vol. II, p. 343. i66 THE EARLY LITERjiRY CAREER small knot of pre-Raffaelite men, pretends to do him justice. Mr. Forster has done the best in the press. As a sort of lion, Robert has his range in society, and, for the rest, you should see Chap- man's returns; while in America, he's a power, a writer, a poet. He is read — he lives in the hearts of the people." The contrast between the estimate in which she and her husband were held in their own country and the feeling enter- tained about them in this, she expressed with a good deal of bitterness. "For the rest," she continued, "the English hunt lions too, but their favorite lions are chosen among 'lords' chiefly, or 'railroad kings.' 'It's worth eating much dirty said an Englishman q^ high family and character here, 'to get to Lady 's soiree.' Americans will eat dirt to get to us. There's the difference." ^ A year later Mrs. Browning records an instance of the ignorance prevailing about her husband and his work which, did it come from any other source than herself, it would be hard to credit. It occurs in a letter sent to her sister-in-law from Rome in 1 86 1. In it she speaks again of the atti- ' "Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," New York, 1898, vol. II, p. 370. OF ROBERT BROWNING 167 tude of his countrymen toward her husband and his sense of its injustice. "His treatment in England," she wrote, "affects him naturally — and for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public — no other word. He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which, I acknowledge, I always try to prevent him from repeating to any one. I wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady of rank, an acquaintance of ours (observe that!) asked, the other day, the American Minis- ter whether Robert was not an American. The Minister answered, "Is it possible that you ask me this? Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were very sorry that he was not an American.' Very pretty of the American Minis- ter — was it not .? — and literally true besides." ^ Undoubtedly the popularity of Browning in this country was exaggerated by his wife to give point to the contrast. But there is no question that the reading public in England remained for a long time scandalously indifferent to his '•'Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," New York, 1898, vol. II, p. 436. i68 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER achievement and showed but sHght appreciation of its greatness. The fact of the neglect must be conceded. Is there any explanation of it, any palliation for it ? Is there in particular any ground for the charge of unnecessary and wilful obscurity of meaning and harshness of versifica- tion, which whether really existing or merely asserted to exist militated constantly against the acceptance of the poet as poet .^ Browning him- self was from the beginning well aware of his reputation for lack of clearness. In a letter sent in April, 1845, to ^^^ future wife he remarked that something he had written to her previously was ** pretty sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings — ^you will ask what it means." At times this complaint of obscurity afforded him matter for jest. He was fond of repeating a remark of Wordsworth about his marriage to Miss Barrett. *' I hope," said the veteran poet, "that these young people will make themselves intelligible to each other, for neither of them will ever be intelligible to anybody else." The woman soon to be his wife admitted her own liability to this charge of obscurity. Occasionally too she herself found her future husband unintelligible. "People say of you and me," she wrote to him in the begin- OF ROBERT BROWNING 169 ning of their acquaintance, "that we love the darkness and use a Sphinxine idiom in our talk." She went on to make a personal application of this view to something which he had been writ- ing to her. "Really," she said, "you do talk a little like a Sphinx." * But Browning, though in a modified way he conceded his obscurity, denied that it was inten- tional. Occasionally, indeed, he resented an accusation of this sort. "I can have but little doubt," he remarked in a private letter belong- ing to 1868, "but that my writing has been, in the main, too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never de- signedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed." ^ Later, in 1872, in the preface to the selection then published of his poetical works, he declared himself innocent of "the charge of being wilfully obscure, uncon- scientiously careless and perversely harsh." There is indeed, no justification for the belief that these faults were intentional; but though unintentional, that they might be and were un- ' "Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," vol. I, P- 53- ^"Letters of Robert Browning," London, privately printed, 1895, vol. I, p. 26. 1 70 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER necessary, it never entered his mind to conceive; for while he did not purpose to be obscure, he felt under no obhgation to strive to make himself intelligible, at least easily intelligible. In a further passage of the privately printed letter just cited. Browning exhibited his utter inability to comprehend the nature of the prob- lem which even the greatest of geniuses must solve who desires the suffrages of the public. " I never pretended," he wrote, "to offer such litera- ture as should be a substitute for cigars or a game of dominoes to an idle man." The self-suffi- ciency of this view is as astounding as its futility. He may not so have intended it; but it is the natural, almost the inevitable inference from the words, that those who gave him up because they found him difficult to comprehend must belong to the class who look upon literature as merely the amusement of an idle hour. At times, in- deed, one gets the impression from some of his utterances that he was almost disposed to resent having said anything that could be understood at once. This is indeed a view largely taken by his disciples. But if they do not know it. Brown- ing himself could hardly have failed to see that no charges of such a nature have been brought OF ROBERT BROWNING 171 against poets as great as he and even greater. For instance, no one has found fault for a reason of this sort with Chaucer or Milton or Words- worth, No one further ever spoke or thought of their poetry as a substitute for a cigar or a game of dominoes. The subject is so important and the treatment of it has often been so confused that it may be well to have the nature of this problem distinctly presented. Obscurity in an author arises from two causes. It may be owing first to the novelty, depth or loftiness of his speculations which either range outside of the common track, or ascend to regions up to which the ordinary intellect finds it difficult to follow. Clearness of comprehen- sion always assumes, too, a certain amount of special knowledge or a certain degree of mental development on the part of the hearer or reader. What to one man may require the most labored explanation and then be only imperfectly under- stood, may convey its meaning to another at a glance. As the current of our life deepens and broadens, as it absorbs into itself new experiences and new sensations, as it gains new perceptions and enters into new states of mind, things which once seemed vague or incomprehensible come to 172 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER Stand out before us in distinctest outline. They do so because they express precisely what we have at last come to learn or to feel. Through mental growth or perhaps more often through sad experience meanings previously obscure are clearly revealed to the inner consciousness. This is to say that we always have to be pre- pared, intellectually or morally, for what we re- ceive. The greatness of Shakespeare grows upon us as we advance in years, because we find in him so much that in earlier days we had passed over without regard or comprehension for the reason that it was beyond the reach of our intel- lects or outside of the lessons of our experience. Accordingly, that in any given instance we did not or do not enter into the full meaning of his words or of those of any other profound writer, is no more an argument against the art or genius dis- played or the clearness and intelligibility of its utterance than the inability of a child to under- stand a philosopher is proof that he is incom- prehensible; or of a beginner in mathematics to understand the integral calculus is satisfactory evidence that it is absurd. Either the intellect is not sufficiently developed, or the requisite pre- liminary knowledge of the subject treated is OF ROBERT BROWNING 173 lacking; or both these may contribute to the fail- ure to perceive. In such cases the writer must not merely seem obscure, he must be obscure. But in neither case is it any fault of his own. But there is another kind of obscurity arising from the inability or neglect of the author to render himself intelligible. The thought, as he has come to see it, may strike him as perfectly clear; but he fails to fulfil the first duty of a writer, which is to take mentally the place of the reader whom he addresses; to have distinctly in his mind how what has been uttered will ap- pear to him who necessarily lacks the subtle chain of association which in his own case has connected thought and expression. That which has come uninvited to the one in flashes of in- spiration must be supplied to the other by the agency of reflection and study. All exertion of this kind which is unnecessary ought to be spared to the reader. The author who is unwillino- to perform his duty in this respect has no right to complain when those, even of highest cultiva- tion, refuse to do for him the labor which he has no business to impose. In a world full of choicest literature that is comprehensible, it is inevitable that men will meet the difiiculty of 174 i'^-E EARLY LITERARY CAREER understanding such a writer by the easy device of not reading him. In Browning's case the obscurity is due to the operation of both these agencies. Both have acted and will continue to act as hindrances to famiharity with his writings and consequently to the extension of his popularity. There is no question as to his profound intellectual power. He was, as Tennyson called him, "the greatest- brained poet in England." He therefore de- mands special study. He demands it the more because it is not depth of thought which so pe- culiarly characterizes his utterance as its many- sidedness and unexpectedness. The entirely novel point of view from which old ideas are presented, the entirely new light in which things familiar are made to show themselves, these con- stantly impress the mind and not infrequently startle it, utterly overthrowing, as they do, all pre- conceived opinion. Yet the moment any one of these revelations is brought fully to our knowl- edge, we feel something more than its justness. The sense of its obviousness comes over us at the same time. Though we should never have dreamed of it ourselves, we are, none the less, surprised that it has not occurred to us. OF ROBERT BROWNING 175 Out of many illustrations let us take for ex- amples three such well-known poems as "The Glove," and "Clive," and "Bishop Blougram's Apology." In the first the suitor leaps into the arena full of hungry wild beasts and at the risk of his life picks up the glove his mistress has purposely dropped. He secures it, returns in safety, and flings it in her face. We sympathize at first with the act of the man in thus publicly rebuking the heartless selfishness of the woman who exposes her lover to the needless risk of death for the sake of gratifying her vanity. But how unexpectedly and yet convincingly the poet shows the woman's intention to test and reveal the shallowness of the devotion professed by the suitor who avows his readiness to run all con- ceivable risks for her sake and then resents being called upon to do no more than the poor captors of the beasts are willing to encounter for a mere pittance of money. Take again the duel between Clive and the officer whose cheating at cards he has denounced. We admire the courage of the young clerk who looks death defiantly in the face, but refuses to retract his accusation. To Browning alone could have occurred the recognition of the 176 THE EARLY LITERERY CAREER ground which the conscience-stricken gamester could have assumed; and instead of doing as he did, of what he could have said but did not say; but which if he had said would, as Clive himself confesses, have left him no other alternative than to atone for his accusation by taking his own life. Or consider the conversation or rather mono- logue in which Bishop Blougram discusses the question of faith with Gigadibs, the literary man, who had publicly doubted the former's genuine acceptance of the belief he avowed and preached. One can not well get rid of the feeling that in this marvellous piece of dialectics there is lurking a fallacy. The poet himself implies it in his final words. But to most of us it is a feeling, not a conviction. To the ordinary intellect there seems no escape from the remorseless logic with which the great bishop rolls out his mind and overwhelms Gigadibs. There are those indeed who profess to have unravelled the strands of falsehood which are interwoven with the truth in this remarkable poem; but they have done little else than reveal their inability to answer difficulties whose existence they do not per- ceive. They seem possessed by the belief that denunciation of Blougram's motives and char- OF ROBERT BROWNING 177 acter is an all-sufficient answer to his reason- ing. For the sake of the numerous surviving mem- bers of the never-dying family of Gigadibses, I can not but regret that Browning was not led to set forth in another poem the opposite point of view, A criticism of the work in which this par- ticular piece occurred came out in a Roman CathoHc review not long after its publication. It was thought by the poet to have been written by Bishop Blougram himself, that is by Cardinal Wiseman. ^ The ascription of it to him is a good deal more than doubtful; in fact it is highly im- probable. But while the Cardinal's authorship of it would assuredly add to the interest taken by the reader, it would add little to the interest of what was written. The reviewer termed this poem satirical and impertinent. He resented the unworthy motives imputed to the bishop and the defence he is made to give of a self-indulgence which every honorable man would feel to be dis- graceful. None the less was he impressed and even secretly pleased by the triumphant way in which the prelate is made to dispose of his critic. ' "Letters of Robert Browning," privately printed, London, 1895, vol. I, p. 68. 178 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER The work as a whole led him indeed to take a hopeful view of the poet's spiritual condition. His article concluded with this specially chari- table utterance: *'If Mr. Browning," he wrote, "is a man of will and action, and not a mere dreamer and talker, we should never feel sur- prise at his conversion." ^ But there is something else essential to the equipment of the poet besides greatness of in- tellect. There is something else essential to poetry besides novelty or profundity of thought. Important as these are, there are other charac- teristics just as important. The poetry created to endure must have felicity and charm of ex- pression, independently of the ideas it seeks to convey. Otherwise it has no superiority to prose. In some of these needed qualities Browning is often lacking to an extent rarely exhibited in the case of any other writer of the first rank. If his virtues are extraordinary, so are his limitations. There is comparatively little in him of that flaw- lessness of form, that propriety of diction, that use of words to clothe the idea not to disguise it, that horizon clear from haze which a modern ' The Rambler, a Catholic Journal and Review, new series, vol. V, p. 54, January, 1856. OF ROBERT BROWNING 179 poet has designated as the distinctive quahties which have rendered the hterature of Athens immortal. With Browning strength was but rarely accompanied with grace. To his failure in these respects was largely due the failure of his general acceptance. As if the variety and profundity of his ideas were not enough to pre- vent the ordinary reader from giving them the painful attention they need for their full compre- hension, he frequently constructed his sentences so as to render difficult, if not to thwart wholly, the efforts of the reader to get any understanding of their purport. The involved constructions, the dislocated sentences, the abrupt transitions, all impose a burden upon him which makes it hard for him to follow easily the train of thought. Furthermore, the mind is apt to be called away from the consideration of the meaning by hav- ing its attention distracted by rugged versifica- tion, by out-of-the-way rymes, by peculiarities of expression that even in the more perfect pieces jar now and then upon the literary sense and de- tract from the exquisiteness of the workmanship displayed. This formlessness, this ruggedness, this ob- scurity are faults lying on the surface. They are i8o THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER SO obtrusive that no one can miss them, so re- pellent to many that they are deterred from pur- suing farther a quest which opens so unprom- isingly. For years these characteristics of his poetry worked steadily against the recognition of the poet. They cause the same attitude to be taken toward him now save with those who have come to consider and celebrate his uncouthness as art of the highest order; for there is no limit to the intrepidity of a Browning enthusiast. His thought, always worth considering, often pro- found, frequently failed to get itself clothed in adequate expression. This peculiarity is most noticeable in the pieces in which the intellect is acting as the pure intellect and not under the stress of emotion. You are interested in the idea, you are at times lured on by the quaint manner in which the idea is expressed or illus- trated. But this ought not to be the aim of the poet as poet. His business is not to startle and surprise, still less to puzzle and perplex, but to instruct and inspire; and he will never do the last work effectively, he will never be recognized for all time as having done it effectively who fails to appreciate the fact, and to act upon it, that an essential characteristic of the highest poetry is OF ROBERT BROWNING i8i the form which gives it distinction. Gold found in quartz rock may have as much intrinsic value as when it has been smelted and coined; but it can never come into general current use. This view of Browning does not represent the attitude of hostile critics, but of personal friends. Take the case of Mrs. Browning herself. In love for the man and in admiration for the poet she could hold her own with the most ardent of the present generation of his female disciples. But neither depth of affection nor loftiness of esti- mate deprived her of her critical faculty. More than once she charged him with perplexing read- ers by presuming their knowledge of what he knew, but which in some cases they could not possibly know, or in other cases could not fairly be assumed to know. She objected also to the frequent roughness of his versification. There was in him a tendency — almost a habit, she ob- served — to make his lines difficult to read. "Not that music is required everywhere," she wrote, "but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the reader's mind off the rail a.nd interrupts his prog- ress with you and your influence with him." * ^"Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett," New York, 1899, vol. I, p. 134. l82 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER A critical view, essentially of the same sort, was expressed by Landor, one of the warmest of his friends and one of the first to recognize his genius. As early as 1836, in his "Satire upon Satirists," he had hailed Browning as a poet. Yet he found the same difficulty in his writings which has caused perplexity to the rest of man- kind. " I only wish he would atticize a little," he wrote early in the forties. " Few of the Atheni- ans have such a quarry on their property, but they constructed better roads for the convey- ance of the material." This tendency to roughness and awkwardness of expression seems to have been inherent in Browning's nature. It would certainly have been lessened and might perhaps have been ex- tirpated by rigid training in his early years. In- stead it was confirmed by the desultory education he received. As a result it became in time prac- tically impossible for him to effect any genuine correction of his own works. What changes he made — and in some pieces they were fairly nu- merous — were of the nature of slight additions or omissions, or of variations, none of which con- tributed anything worth speaking of to clearness of comprehension. For the most part, the ideas OF ROBERT BROWNING 183 once put forth, no matter how vaguely or crudely or clumsily expressed, continued to remain in the form in which they originally appeared. Jowett, with whom Browning stayed at the Ox- ford Commemoration in 1887, in commenting upon him to a correspondent, pointed out clearly the nature and origin of the distinguishing peculiarities of his style. "Fie is a very ex- traordinary man," wrote the Master of Balliol, "very generous and truthful, and quite incapable of correcting his literary faults, which at first sprang from carelessness and an uncritical habit, and now are born and bred in him. He has no form, or has it only by accident when the subject is limited. His thought and feeling and knowl- edge are generally out of all proportion to his powers of expression." ^ Along with this carelessness went the most extraordinary self-confidence, and, it is to be added, a self-satisfaction which never hesitated at self-assertion. His sensitiveness to criticism became keener as time went on. It kept pace indeed with the continuing if not growing crab- bedness and roughness of his later verse. It al- * Letter to Lady Tennyson in, "Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir by his Son," New York, 1889, vol. II, p. 344. i84 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER most seems at times as if this were resorted to as a sort of proclamation of defiance to those who had found fault with him for the manifestation of these qualities. He affected, indeed, to scoff at his censurers. Had he been really indifferent, he would never have gone to the trouble of pa- rading his scorn. The resentment he felt was in- deed distinctly visible and sometimes lamentably displayed. Tennyson, as we all know, was abnor- mally sensitive to criticism; but he never made any such deplorable public exhibition of the feel- ing as did Browning in "Pachiarotto." It must always remain a marvel how any man in full possession of his senses, let alone a man of genius, could have perpetrated the dreadful doggerel of that poem, where the wretchedness of the reason- ing finds its fitting counterpart in the wretched- ness of the expression. Not much better is the shallow defence he made for his method of writ- ing in the epilogue to the volume bearing that title. It is one of the highest of tributes to Browning's essential greatness that his reputa- tion could emerge unscathed from those two dis- tressing struggles to be jocose and satirical. Many, perhaps most, of the things which stood in the way of his immediate and general accept- OF ROBERT BROWNING 185 ance by his contemporaries were remediable. Yet he was almost disposed to resent the sug- gestion that he should take any steps to remedy them. When Tennyson occasionally rallied him upon the harshness of his rhythm and the length and obscurity of his poems, he had but one answer. " I cannot alter myself," he would say; "the people must take me as they find me." This is a perfectly justifiable attitude for him to assume who is totally indifferent to the opinion of the publit; but he who assumes it has no right to complain if the public chooses not to take him at all. It is assuredly not the attitude of him who fixes his eye on either present or future fame; and Browning was far from being indif- ferent to either. So little indeed was he regard- less of contemporary popularity that he craved it and felt the denial of it to himself as a grievance and an injustice. He was fortunate enough, however, to outlive this period of neglect. The reputation of a gen- uinely great poet may be delayed; but it is cer- tain to come at last. Men could not remain for- ever indifferent to the genius displayed in Brown- ing's work, whatever fault they might find with its methods of manifestation. As time went on 1 86 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER he steadily made his way into the appreciation of a slowly enlarging circle of admirers; and his greatness was conceded even by those who cen- sured most severely his shortcomings. The welcome which waited upon the publication of "The Ring and The Book" in 1868-69 proved clearly the increase of the estimation in which he had come to be held. Browning seemed to think that the comparative success of this work, the result of a slowly but steadily rising reputation, was due mainly to its length. He said at the time that he had gained at last the ear of the public, but he had done so by vigorously assault- ing it, and telling his story four times over.^ Knowledge of many abstruse things Browning possessed; but he never discovered that men accepted him in spite of his faults and not be- cause of them. It was not remarkable success indeed that he then gained; but as compared with the neglect he had previously endured, it was distinctly noticeable. The acceptance he had at last se- cured would have continued to strengthen and extend itself of its own accord; but owing to ad- * "Personal Remembrances of Sir Frederick Pollock," London, 1887, vol. II, p. 202. Diary under date of April 3, 1869. OF ROBERT BROWNING 187 ventitious circumstances popularity came to him, a little more than half-a-score of years later, with a fulness which he had no reason to expect and which as a matter of fact we know that he did not expect. His last days were cheered by the ample if tardy recognition which was given to his genius. I have said that from the beginning he had been the favorite of a few. He was now to become a favorite of the many. The way had been slowly preparing for him when the one agency came into play that effectually broke up the indifference of the general public. This was the formation of the Browning Society in 1881, established mainly by the efforts of the late Fred- erick James Furnivall. This society with the innumerable branches which sprang from it all over England and America, worked not merely a reform in the poet's favor, but a revolution. It caused his name to be carried far and wide as a household word to every place where litera- ture was known at all, and, it must be added, to no small number of places where it had never been known before, and with the gradual decay of the temporary interest aroused has never been heard of since. There are authors to whom it would seem a 1 88 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER questionable compliment to have societies or- ganized under their name, whose duty it was, among other things, to ascertain the meaning of what they had been saying. Such a society, in the case of a living writer, seems to partake of the nature of an anachronism. Its very existence tends to prove in him who is made the subject of comment and investigation the existence of the very faults from the possession of which he is to be defended. Clearly no thought of this na- ture ever presented itself to Browning's mind. He was delighted with the efforts taken in his be- half as well as astounded by their success. "You very well know," he wrote to Furnivall, in Octo- ber, 1881, "I can say nothing about this extraor- dinary halo of rainbow hues with which your wonder-working hand has suddenly surrounded my dark orb. As with the performances of the mosaicists I see at work here — all sorts of shining stones, greater and smaller, which hardly took the eye by their single selves — suddenly coalesce and make a brilliant show when put ingeniously together — as my dazzled eyes acknowledge, pray believe." ^ ' Letter of Oct. 21, 1881, in "Letters of Robert Browning," pri- vately printed, 1895, vol. I, p. 86. OF ROBERT BROWNING 189 We can all rejoice that this late deferred trib- ute of recognition came to cheer the closing years of the poet. He was no longer obliged to address the English public, as he did near the be- ginning of "The Ring and The Book," with the words '*Ye, who like me not." Browning died rejoicing in the fulness of his fame. Gratifying as is the fact, there is hardly any question that much of the sudden and wide-spread popularity secured by the agency just described, was due to something else than appreciation of his genius as a poet. Accordingly, the reputation he thus acquired was largely factitious. As far as it is such, it has no element of permanence. It was not based primarily upon regard for his writings as literature. The rapid growth of the interest taken in them, after once being set in motion, owed its existence and extension to the men who looked upon them as furnishing materials for investigation and decipherment and not as a source of delight and inspiration. For Browning is supremely the poet of intel- lectually acute but unpoetical natures. Not but there are men possessed of exquisite literary taste with whom he is not merely a favorite author but the favorite author. What I am try- I90 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER ing to bring out is that a very large proportion of the ablest of his thorough-going partisans are much more remarkable for general mental activ- ity than for special literary sensitiveness. The things they admire in him are not those which appeal to the feelings, but those which deal with the reason. No one will deny the value of the poems in which this latter characteristic is pre- dominant — sometimes so predominant in his case as practically to exclude the former. But there are many who will deny their supreme value. Striking thoughts are often in them which impress the mind; fine passages, some- times, which linger in the memory. But too generally lacking in them is that intense fire, that passion which fuses thought and feeling in- to felicity of expression which is the envy and despair of the imitator. The verse which exer- cises and delights the intellect but fails to touch or inspire the heart may in many respects be worthy of the greatest admiration; but it will never take rank as the highest form of poetry. It is not to be denied, however, that the hazi- ness which envelops much of Browning's utter- ance piques curiosity in many minds of a high order and imparts to much of his work a peculiar OF ROBERT BROWNING 191 interest of its own. There is, furthermore, a cer- tain class of men who fully believe that obscur- ity is an essential element of profundity. Brown- ing's frequent ambiguity and uncertainty of meaning renders it possible for such persons to find in his words whatever acute intellect or addled brain chooses to look for. They are thereby enabled to read into his work their per- sonal conclusions and beliefs, and make him give his sanction to views of their own which they deem peculiarly profound. The proceedings of the various Browning Societies furnish inter- minable and inconclusive discussions of what he might have meant but did not mean inevitably. One of them, duly recorded, is worth citing as an illustration. A member of the original Browning Society — one conspicuous enough to be chosen to preside at its first meeting — read later a paper before it in which he set forth a certain interpre- tation of the poem entitled ''Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." This was called in question by the founder of the Society. On this very matter he said that he had consulted the poet himself who had three times uttered an em- phatic "No" to the theory which had just been propounded. Against any such method of as- 192 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER certaining the author's sense, the proclaimer of the controverted view protested. If they were to adopt the poHcy of consulting the poet himself as to the meaning he sought to convey, there would be, he insisted, no need of any Browning Society at all.^ But efforts to give clearness of outline to what is doubtful and perplexing neither implies nor necessitates enjoyment of Browning's poetry as poetry. Still less is such appreciation of it in- volved in the many vague discourses written about it or certain portions of it by men who find a natural outlet for thoughts above the reaches of their souls in language beyond the compre- hension of the ordinary mind. Not even is it necessarily indicated in much of the valuable work which has been given up to the explanation of his words and phrases, to the disclosure of recondite allusion, to the clearing up of difficul- ties of construction. Too much cannot be said in praise of the utility and importance of labor of this nature. But it is in no proper sense the study of literature. It is the same sort of study as that which leads men to the perusal of the * Monthly Abstract of Proceedings of the Browning Society. Meeting of May 24, 1882, p. 26. OF ROBERT BROWNING 193 works of Homer and Virgil, not for the sake of their poetry but for the hght they throw upon dis- puted points of inflection and syntactical con- struction. A great deal of the interest that has been manifested in Browning investigation is far higher in degree, indeed, but it is not essentially different in kind from that displayed in guessing the answers to riddles or deciphering the enigmat- ical representation of words in the figures found in rebuses; or, if a more dignified comparison be desired, from that employed in the solution of intricate mathematical problems. All this is to say that much of the study given to the poet is not the study of literature. In it exercise of the understanding has been demanded, not gra- tification of the taste nor appreciation of the work of the creative imagination. If there be justice in this view it follows that a good deal of the vogue which Browning's poetry suddenly gained was not due to the at- traction which it exercised as literature. That was a subject to which a large proportion of his new admirers were comparatively indifferent. They were not specially susceptible to the charm of poetry as poetry. In the best representatives of this class the intellect had been developed out 194 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER of all proportion to the taste. Such men are not especially drawn to writers in whom loftiness of speculation has found its fitting counterpart in clearness and beauty of expression. To this class belongs the large number of active but un- formed minds. Accordingly, with a body of young and promising students, it would as a general rule be much easier to arouse interest in Browning than in almost any other great author of our speech. The genuine enjoyment of Mil- ton or Wordsworth or Tennyson presupposes, as a fundamental condition, the existence of a certain degree of fondness for literature as Htera- ture. But this is ordinarily one of the last results of cultivation. Naturally, for it such persons are in general unprepared. Unquestionably, enjoyment of this precise sort is inspired by Browning's best production. But he presents also a body of poetiy of which this cannot be said. The study of it does not demand nor does it develop literary appreciation. But it does re- quire keen intellectual acuteness. The exercise of the latter is the sort of work in which young men of quick minds but undeveloped taste can easily be made to take delight. It is all the more satisfactory to them because while they are do- OF ROBERT BROWNING 195 ing little more than unravelling the meaning of linguistic puzzles or dragging an idea to light from its misty hiding-place, they honestly be- lieve that the interest they take in what they are reading is due to their enjoyment of it as poetry pure and simple. The formation of the Browning Society there- fore counteracted to some extent the good it did to the extension of his reputation by placing an obstacle in the way of its permanence. As his poorest work was generally his obscurest, to that much of the attention of his professed disciples was devoted. It was largely diverted from that portion of his production which does not need the exploitation of organized bodies to discover and appreciate its beauty and power. Brown- ing's best poems occasionally present puzzles; his poorest frequently present little else; at all events, the most interesting thing about them is the puzzles. Accordingly, these are the pieces which arouse the enthusiasm of certain of his partisans. To them disproportionate importance is attached. To the explanation of the hidden meaning found in them painful research is given up. The disciples celebrate the poet not for what is clearly and vividly expressed but for 196 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER what is vague and perplexing. Hence mere Browning societies were found inadequate; so Sordello societies were formed and flourished. Commentaries were produced which, so far as I can judge from my own struggles with some of them, possess a peculiar interest of their own in having achieved the seemingly impossible task of being more difficult to understand than the texts they set out to interpret. In fact, com- mentaries on Browning generally bear a close resemblance to foghorns. They proclaim the existence of fog; but they do not disperse it. It need not be denied, however, that obscurity has its advantages for the idolater, if not for the being idolized. It constitutes those who devote themselves to the interpretation and exploitation of the generally unintelligible a class by them- selves. Nothing so conducive to the sense of superiority has ever been devised. The mem- bers of this inner circle of disciples intimate always and sometimes assert that it is only for mental and spiritual athletes like themselves to grapple with the problems of life and conduct which Browning sets before us. Accordingly, they feel justified in assuming an air of compas- sionate condescension to the grosser denizens of OF ROBERT BROWNING 197 the lower literary world, the intellectual outcasts who prize most in the poet what is comparatively easy to read and to understand. They look upon themselves as an elect body. To them be- longs a higher mental development, a clearer spiritual vision. The more puzzling the pro- duction, the keener is their enjoyment of it, the loftier is their estimate of it. It is in works of this character that Browning reserves himself for them. In these he does not lower himself to the mean capacities of the common mind. To the chosen band alone is it given to recognize him there as he is, the seer, the revealer of the mysteries of nature and of life, the bearer of a divine message to his generation. It must always remain a matter of regret, however, that the ability given to these esoteric disciples to penetrate into the mystery of Browning's mean- ing has not been accompanied with a corre- sponding ability to put into intelligible speech what they have brought back from that upper air of speculation to which their strong-winged thought has enabled them to soar. If in these lectures I may seem to some to have laid too much stress upon what is imperfect and unsatisfactory in the art and achievement of a 198 THE EARLY LITERARY CAREER great poet, it is because I sincerely believe that the exaggerated and unwarranted praise which has been given to a good deal of his work will set in motion a reaction which in turn will have the tendency to bring back the deplorable conditions of indifference to it and consequent neglect of it that waited upon it during a large share of his own life. A great author has a right to demand that he shall be judged by his best. If his poor- est is forced upon us as peculiarly representa- tive by those who set themselves up as his cham- pions, disregard of the former is sure in time to follow. As coming generations recede more and more from Browning's day, they will tend more and more to revolt from the doctrine which des- ignates a portion of his work as supremely in- tellectual and profound, because it is couched in uncouth verse and obscure phraseology. If this be made a point of belief, the circle of his readers will be steadily narrowed. The general acknowl- edgment of the greatness of his genius will never be threatened by the attacks of hostile critics; but it stands in some danger from the constant exaltation of his least satisfactory work by the most vociferous of his extreme partisans. The contemporary indifference manifested toward OF ROBERT BROWNING 199 him was largely his own fault; if in time coming there be return of this indifference, for it the un- wisdom of his advocates will be mainly respon- sible. For, as I look at it, so all-important in poetry is the expression of the thought, that when the thought is great but the expression unsatisfac- tory, that very fact removes it out of the realm of the highest literary achievement. Accordingly, I venture to take the ground that in the future a great mass of Browning's verse will have but a very limited body of readers and a still more limited body of admirers. It is because I do not believe that there is any lasting pleasure in formlessness, any genuine vitality in inarticulate phraseology, that I express here a view which is opposed to that which has of late had wide ac- ceptance. Poems of his there are which will never cease to be cherished so long as English literature endures. Still with his works as with those of ether writers nature in the end will as- sert her rights. The verse of his which will last longest, which will reach the widest circle, which will meet everywhere with the keenest apprecia- tion will be, as it has been, that which offers fewest difficulties either in the way of compre- 200 ROBERT BROWNING hension or of diction. The poems of Browning that will carry his name down to remotest poster- ity will be those that are the least representative of him in the eyes of no small number of his pres- ent admirers. INDEX Adams, Sarah Flower, 8. Argosy, The, 127. Arnould, Joel, 124. AthencBum, The, 13, 32, 33, 83, 97, 109. Atlas, The, 12, 13, 32, 33, 82, 93, 109. Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett (see Elizabeth Barrett Brown- ing). Barrett, Lawrence, 61. bombast, 25. Bridell-Fox, Mrs., 127. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 14, 17, 49, 69, 80, 88, 97, 98, 99, 148-152, 157, 160, 161, 164, 167, 168, 181. Browning, Robert, birth of, 3; education of, 19; formless- ness and ruggedness of expression of, 178-183; obscur- ity of, 5, 20, 62, 75-84, 168-174; observance of the Unities of, loi, 153-155; popularity of, in America, 93, 166, 167; position of, as a dramatist, 24, 60-72, loi; prose of, 105; unpopularity of, in England, 163-167; writings of : Bells and Pomegranates, 96-101, 109, 112, 148, 149, _i55» 164. Bishop Blougram's Apology, 175-178. Bloti'the'Scutcheon,A, 45, 61,70, 112, 154; charac- ter of, as a drama, 1 31-146; stage history of, 113- 131- Camp and Cloister, 157. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, 191. Clive, 175. 201 202 INDEX Colombe's Birthday, 6i, 112, 113, 148, 154. Dramatic Lyrics, 155, 156. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 155, 157, 159-161. Flight of the Duchess, The, 158-160. Glove, The, 175. In a Balcony, 59. In a Gondola, 157. Incondita, 9. King Victor and King Charles, 154, 156. Luria, 68-72, 112, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154. Men and Women, 157. Pachiarotto, 184. Paracelsus, appearance and reception of, 22-44, 47, 55. 56, 57. 73. 74, 75. 77, 82, loi, 107, 156. PauHne, appearance and reception of, 7-19, 28, 29. Pied Piper of Hamelin, The, 156. Pippa Passes, appearance and reception of, 59, loi- 112, 156. Return of the Druses, The, 112, 148, 154. Ring and the Book, The, 186, 189. Sordello, appearance and reception of, 73-93, 95, 106, 107, 108, 109, 148, 156. Soul's Tragedy, A, 105, 112, 148-153, 154- Strafford, reception of play of, 46-59, 64, 72, 73, 74, 82, 114, 148, 156; Browning, joint author with Forster of biography of, 47-49. Through the Metidja to Abdel Kader, 157. Waring, 124, 157. Browning Society and Societies, the, 16, 48, 128, 160, 187-192, 195. Byron, Lord, 4. Carlyle, Jean Welsh, 76, 86. Carlyle, Thomas, 76. Century Magazine, The, 115. INDEX 203 Chapman, George, 76, 81. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 171. Cobbe, Frances Power, 164. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 38. Dante, 74. Barley's "Plighted Troth," 118, 119. Dickens, Charles, 131. Domett, Alfred, 124. Donne, John, 21. Drury Lane Theater, 11 7-1 19, 128. Edinburgh Review, The, 57. Eliot, Sir John, 47. Examiner, The, 12, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 52, 53, 83, 107, 123, 130, 155- Faucit, Helen (Lady Martin), 51, 52, 58, 113, 122. Flower, Eliza, 8, 9. Fonblanque, Albany, 12. Forster, John, 12, 31, 34, 35, 36-38, 42, 46, 47, 48, 52, SZ, 54, 83, 107, 130, 155, 166. Fox, William Johnson, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 34, 38, 45, 158. Eraser's Magazine, 15, 42. Furnivall, Frederick James, 187, 188, 191. fustian, 25. Gosse, Edmund, 35, 115. Haymarket Theater, 117. Herford, Charles Harold, 124. Hood, Thomas, 158. Horace, 102. Home, Richard Hengist, 42, 43. Hunt, John Henry Leigh, 12, 39, 55. 204 INDEX Jerrold, Douglas, 76, 78. Jowett, Benjamin, 183. Kenyon, John, 97, 98. Kingsley, Charles, 78. Knowles, James Sheridan, 122, 130. Lander, Walter Savage, 182. Literary Gazette, The, 12, 14, 34, 83, 109. London Daily News, The 115. London Times, The, 123, 131. Lowell, James Russell, 79. Macready, William Charles, 31, 45, 46, 49-54, 57, 5^, 7°, 113-115, 117-125, 127, 156. Marston, Westland, 118, 119, 120, 121. Martineau, Harriet, 73, 77. Metropolitan Magazine, The, 34. Mill, John Stuart, 14. Milton, John, 29, 85, 171, 194- Mitford, Mary Russell, 164. Monthly Repository, The, 8, 11, 35, 38, 158. Moxon, Edward, 23, 96. New Monthly Magazine, The, 30, 38, 42. North American Review, The, 79. Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, 35, 115. Phelps, Samuel, 113, 128-130. Phelps, W. May, 129. Poe, Edgar Allan, 161. Pollock, Sir Frederick, 186. Rambler, The, 178. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 18. INDEX 205 Sadler's Wells Theater, 128-130. Scott, William Bell, 55. Shakespeare, William, 50, 60, 68-71, 147, 172. Sharp, William, 36, 76, 77. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 5, 38, 87. Smith, William, 122, 130. Southey, Robert, 116. Spectator, The, 12, 32, 33, 81, 108, iii. Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 76, 77, 81. TaWs Edinburgh Magazine, 14. Talfourd, Sir Thomas Noon, 31. Taylor, Sir Henry, 29, 36, 42, 44. Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 4, 11, 23, 57, 76, 79, 162, 174, 184, 185, 194. Vandenhoff, John, 53. Westminster Review, The, 11. Wilson, Effingham, 23. Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick Stephen, 177. Wordsworth, William, 38, 79, 168, 171, 194. j^i , y This book is DUE on the last date stamped below JAN 1 li^Sa" APR i la^i MAY 20 1^31 NOV 4 19^^ \m ^ 0S my 1 3 idtt OCT 2 1 1944JUL MAY 16 1S4S MAY 3 19^ ^ JUN15 31986 aaniJ H '9371 Form L-9-35»)i-8,'28 APR 2 t94t JUN7 _^ ^«i^* ,^1 7 MAC *^ RECD ID-URt NOV 1 1 1984 J^ 3 1158 00039 143; T. Fc MAL SCHOOL ^ mm fw»^ Siyp'^s ..■■M ■»:f*'3 * •^' .-'!< *%?i'*. f^^ "^JVl ... ^ - ' ■. '^t ■'- ■'*'■; *''>