Life of Robert Browning

An American friend has put on record his impressions of the two poets, and their home at this time. He had been called upon by Browning, and by him invited to take tea at Casa Guidi the same evening. There the visitor saw, "seated at the tea-table of the great room of the palace in which they were living, a very small, very slight woman, with very long curls drooping forward, almost across the eyes, hanging to the bosom, and quite concealing the pale, small face, from which the piercing inquiring eyes looked out sensitively at the stranger. Rising from her chair, she put out cordially the thin white hand of an invalid, and in a few moments they were pleasantly chatting, while the husband strode up and down the room, joining in the conversation with a vigour, humour, eagerness, and affluence of curious lore which, with his trenchant thought and subtle sympathy, make him one of the most charming and inspiring of companions."

In the autumn the same friend, joined by one or two other acquaintances, went with the Brownings to Vallombrosa for a couple of days, greatly to Mrs. Browning's delight, for whom the name had had a peculiar fascination ever since she had first encountered it in Milton.

She was conveyed up the steep way towards the monastery in a great basket, without wheels, drawn by two oxen: though, as she tells Miss Mitford, she did not get into the monastery after all, she and her maid being turned away by the monks "for the sin of womanhood." She was too much of an invalid to climb the steeper heights, but loved to lie under the great chestnuts upon the hill-slopes near the convent. At twilight they went to the little convent-chapel, and there Browning sat down at the organ and played some of those older melodies he loved so well.

It is, strangely enough, from Americans that we have the best account of the Brownings in their life at Casa Guidi: from R.H. Stoddart, Bayard Taylor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Stillman Hillard, and W.W. Story. I can find room, however, for but one excerpt:--

"Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, could hardly enter the loved rooms now, and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favoured, can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and pianoforte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour--the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning--the long room filled with plaster-casts and studies, which was Mrs. Browning's retreat--and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the iron-grey church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreary look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls, and the old pictures of saints that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large bookcases constructed of specimens of Florentine carving selected by Mr. Browning were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gaily-bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante's grave profile, a cast of Keats's face and brow taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning's good friend and relative, little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the door. A small table, strewn with writing-materials, books, and newspapers, was always by her side.... After her death, her husband had a careful water-colour drawing made of this room, which has been engraved more than once. It still hangs in his drawing-room, where the mirror and one of the quaint chairs above named still are. The low arm-chair and small table are in Browning's study--with his father's desk, on which he has written all his poems."--(W.W. Story.)

To Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, Mr. Hillard, and Mr. Story, in particular, we are indebted for several delightful glimpses into the home-life of the two poets. We can see Mrs. Browning in her "ideal chamber," neither a library nor a sitting-room, but a happy blending of both, with the numerous old paintings in antique Florentine frames, easy-chairs and lounges, carved bookcases crammed with books in many languages, bric-a-brac in any quantity, but always artistic, flowers everywhere, and herself the frailest flower of all.

Mr. Hillard speaks of the happiness of the Brownings' home and their union as perfect: he, full of manly power, she, the type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. This much-esteemed friend was fascinated by Mrs. Browning. Again and again he alludes to her exceeding spirituality: "She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl:" her frame "the transparent veil for a celestial and mortal spirit:" and those fine words which prove that he too was of the brotherhood of the poets, "Her tremulous voice often flutters over her words like the flame of a dying candle over the wick."

CHAPTER VIII.

With the flower-tide of spring in 1849 came a new happiness to the two poets: the son who was born on the 9th of March. The boy was called Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the second name, in remembrance of Browning's much-loved mother, having been substituted for the "Sarianna" wherewith the child, if a girl, was to have been christened. Thereafter their "own young Florentine" was an endless joy and pride to both: and he was doubly loved by his father for his having brought a renewal of life to her who bore him.

That autumn they went to the country, to the neighbourhood of Vallombrosa, and then to the Bagni di Lucca. There they wandered content in chestnut-forests, and gathered grapes at the vintage.

Early in the year Browning's "Poetical Works" were published in two volumes. Some of the most beautiful of his shorter poems are to be found therein. What a new note is struck throughout, what range of subject there is! Among them all, are there any more treasurable than two of the simplest, "Home Thoughts from Abroad" and "Night and Morning"?

A more significant note is struck in "Meeting at Night" and "Parting at Morning."

The following winter, when they were again at their Florentine home, Browning wrote his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," that remarkable apologia for Christianity, and close-reasoned presentation of the religious thought of the time. It is, however, for this reason that it is so widely known and admired: for it is ever easier to attract readers by dogma than by beauty, by intellectual argument than by the seduction of art. Coincidently, Mrs. Browning wrote the first portion of "Casa Guidi Windows."

In the spring of 1850 husband and wife spent a short stay in Rome. I have been told that the poem entitled 'Two in the Campagna' was as actually personal as the already quoted "Guardian Angel." But I do not think stress should be laid on this and kindred localisations. Exact or not, they have no literary value. To the poet, the dramatic poet above all, locality and actuality of experience are, so to say, merely fortunate coigns of outlook, for the winged genius to temporally inhabit. To the imaginative mind, truth is not simply actuality. As for 'Two in the Campagna': it is too universally true to be merely personal. There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognise most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits. If this were demonstratable, immortality would be a palpable fiction. The moment individuality can lapse to fusion, that moment the tide has ebbed, the wind has fallen, the dream has been dreamed. So long as the soul remains inviolate amid all shock of time and change, so long is it immortal. No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and fail to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of this insuperable isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some one or other exquisite moment. The poem tells us how the lovers, straying hand in hand one May day across the Campagna, sat down among the seeding grasses, content at first in the idle watching of a spider spinning her gossamer threads from yellowing fennel to other vagrant weeds. All around them

Let us too be unashamed of soul, the poet-lover says, even as earth lies bare to heaven. Nothing is to be overlooked. But all in vain: in vain "I drink my fill at your soul's springs."

It was during this visit to Rome that both were gratified by the proposal in the leading English literary weekly, that the Poet-Laureateship, vacant by the death of Wordsworth, should be conferred upon Mrs. Browning: though both rejoiced when they learned that the honour had devolved upon one whom each so ardently admired as Alfred Tennyson. In 1851 a visit was paid to England, not one very much looked forward to by Mrs. Browning, who had never had cause to yearn for her old home in Wimpole Street, and who could anticipate no reconciliation with her father, who had persistently refused even to open her letters to him, and had forbidden the mention of her name in his home circle.

Bayard Taylor, in his travel-sketches published under the title "At Home and Abroad," has put on record how he called upon the Brownings one afternoon in September, at their rooms in Devonshire Street, and found them on the eve of their return to Italy.

In his cheerful alertness, self-possession, and genial suavity Browning impressed him as an American rather than as an Englishman, though there can be no question but that no more thorough Englishman than the poet ever lived. It is a mistake, of course, to speak of him as a typical Englishman: for typical he was not, except in a very exclusive sense. Bayard Taylor describes him in reportorial fashion as being apparently about seven-and-thirty (a fairly close guess), with his dark hair already streaked with grey about the temples: with a fair complexion, just tinged with faintest olive: eyes large, clear, and grey, and nose strong and well-cut, mouth full and rather broad, and chin pointed, though not prominent: about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, but slender at the waist, with movements expressive of a combination of vigour and elasticity. With due allowance for the passage of five-and-thirty years, this description would not be inaccurate of Browning the septuagenarian.

They did not return direct to Italy after all, but wintered in Paris with Robert Browning the elder, who had retired to a small house in a street leading off the Champs Élysées. The pension he drew from the Bank of England was a small one, but, with what he otherwise had, was sufficient for him to live in comfort. The old gentleman's health was superb to the last, for he died in 1866 without ever having known a day's illness.

Spring came out and found them still in Paris, Mrs. Browning enthusiastic about Napoleon III. and interested in spiritualism: her husband serenely sceptical concerning both. In the summer they again went to London: but they appear to have seen more of Kenyon and other intimate friends than to have led a busy social life. Kenyon's friendship and good company never ceased to have a charm for both poets. Mrs. Browning loved him almost as a brother: her husband told Bayard Taylor, on the day when that good poet and charming man called upon them, and after another visitor had departed--a man with a large rosy face and rotund body, as Taylor describes him--"there goes one of the most splendid men living--a man so noble in his friendship, so lavish in his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known all over the world as Kenyon the Magnificent."

In the early autumn a sudden move towards Italy was again made, and after a few weeks in Paris and on the way the Brownings found themselves at home once more in Casa Guidi.

But before this, probably indeed before they had left Paris for London, Mr. Moxon had published the now notorious Shelley forgeries. These were twenty-five spurious letters, but so cleverly manufactured that they at first deceived many people. In the preceding November Browning had been asked to write an introduction to them. This he had gladly agreed to do, eager as he was for a suitable opportunity of expressing his admiration for Shelley. When the letters reached him, he found that, genuine or not, though he never suspected they were forgeries, they contained nothing of particular import, nothing that afforded a just basis for what he had intended to say. Pledged as he was, however, to write something for Mr. Moxon's edition of the Letters, he set about the composition of an Essay, of a general as much as of an individual nature. This he wrote in Paris, and finished by the beginning of December. It dealt with the objective and subjective poet; on the relation of the latter's life to his work; and upon Shelley in the light of his nature, art, and character. Apart from the circumstance that it is the only independent prose writing of any length from Browning's pen, this is an exceptionally able and interesting production.

Dr. Furnivall deserves general gratitude for his obtaining the author's leave to re-issue it, and for having published it as one of the papers of the Browning Society. As that enthusiastic student and good friend of the poet says in his "foretalk" to the reprint, the essay is noteworthy, not merely as a signal service to Shelley's fame and memory, but for Browning's statement of his own aim in his own work, both as objective and subjective poet. The same clear-sightedness and impartial sympathy, which are such distinguishing characteristics of his dramatic studies of human thought and emotion, are obvious in Browning's Shelley essay. "It would be idle to enquire," he writes, "of these two kinds of poetic faculty in operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. If the subjective might seem to be the ultimate requirement of every age, the objective in the strictest state must still retain its original value. For it is with this world, as starting-point and basis alike, that we shall always have to concern ourselves; the world is not to be learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and reclaimed."

Of its critical subtlety--the more remarkable as by a poet-critic who revered Shelley the poet and loved and believed in Shelley the man--the best example, perhaps, is in those passages where he alludes to the charge against the poet's moral nature--"charges which, if substantiated to their wide breadth, would materially disturb, I do not deny, our reception and enjoyment of his works, however wonderful the artistic qualities of these. For we are not sufficiently supplied with instances of genius of his order to be able to pronounce certainly how many of its constituent parts have been tasked and strained to the production of a given lie, and how high and pure a mood of the creative mind may be dramatically simulated as the poet's habitual and exclusive one."

The large charity, the liberal human sympathy, the keen critical acumen of this essay, make one wish that the author had spared us a "Sludge the Medium" or a "Pacchiarotto," or even a "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," and given us more of such honourable work in "the other harmony."

Glad as the Brownings were to be home again at Casa Guidi, they could not enjoy the midsummer heats of Florence, and so went to the Baths of Lucca. It was a delight for them to ramble among the chestnut-woods of the high Tuscan forests, and to go among the grape-vines where the sunburnt vintagers were busy. Once Browning paid a visit to that remote hill-stream and waterfall, high up in a precipitous glen, where, more than three-score years earlier, Shelley had been wont to amuse himself by sitting naked on a rock in the sunlight, reading Herodotus while he cooled, and then plunging into the deep pool beneath him--to emerge, further up stream, and then climb through the spray of the waterfall till he was like a glittering human wraith in the middle of a dissolving rainbow.

Those Tuscan forests, that high crown of Lucca, must always have special associations for lovers of poetry. Here Shelley lived, rapt in his beautiful dreams, and translated the Symposium so that his wife might share something of his delight in Plato. Here, ten years later, Heine sneered, and laughed and wept, and sneered again--drank tea with "la belle Irlandaise," flirted with Francesca "la ballerina," and wrote alternately with a feathered quill from the breast of a nightingale and with a lancet steeped in aquafortis: and here, a quarter of a century afterward, Robert and Elizabeth Browning also laughed and wept and "joyed i' the sun," dreamed many dreams, and touched chords of beauty whose vibration has become incorporated with the larger rhythm of all that is high and enduring in our literature.

On returning to Florence (Browning with the MS. of the greater part of his splendid fragmentary tragedy, "In a Balcony," composed mainly while walking alone through the forest glades), Mrs. Browning found that the chill breath of the tramontana was affecting her lungs, so a move was made to Rome, for the passing of the winter (1853-4). In the spring their little boy, their beloved "Pen,"[22] became ill with malaria. This delayed their return to Florence till well on in the summer. During this stay in Rome Mrs. Browning rapidly proceeded with "Aurora Leigh," and Browning wrote several of his "Men and Women," including the exquisite 'Love among the Ruins,' with its novel metrical music; 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' where the painter, already immortalised by Landor, has his third warrant of perpetuity; the 'Epistle of Karshish' (in part); 'Memorabilia' (composed on the Campagna); 'Saul,' a portion of which had been written and published ten years previously, that noble and lofty utterance, with its trumpet-like note of the regnant spirit; the concluding part of "In a Balcony;" and 'Holy Cross Day'--besides, probably, one or two others. In the late spring (April 27th) also, he wrote the short dactylic lyric, 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom.' This little poem was given to a friend for appearance in one of the then popular Keepsakes--literally given, for Browning never contributed to magazines. The very few exceptions to this rule were the result of a kindliness stronger than scruple: as when (1844), at request of Lord Houghton (then Mr. Monckton Milnes), he sent 'Tokay,' the 'Flower's Name,' and 'Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis,' to "help in making up some magazine numbers for poor Hood, then at the point of death from hemorrhage of the lungs, occasioned by the enlargement of the heart, which had been brought on by the wearing excitement of ceaseless and excessive literary toil." As 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom,' though it has been reprinted in several quarters, will not be found in any volume of Browning's works, and was omitted from "Men and Women" by accident, and from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here. Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for a thistle.

It was in this year (1855) that "Men and Women" was published. It is difficult to understand how a collection comprising poems such as "Love among the Ruins," "Evelyn Hope," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "A Toccata of Galuppi's," "Any Wife to any Husband," "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," "Andrea del Sarto," "In a Balcony," "Saul," "A Grammarian's Funeral," to mention only ten now almost universally known, did not at once obtain a national popularity for the author. But lovers of literature were simply enthralled: and the two volumes had a welcome from them which was perhaps all the more ardent because of their disproportionate numbers. Ears alert to novel poetic music must have thrilled to the new strain which sounded first--"Love among the Ruins," with its Millet-like opening--

Soon after the return to Florence, which, hot as it was, was preferable in July to Rome, Mrs. Browning wrote to her frequent correspondent Miss Mitford, and mentioned that about four thousand lines of "Aurora Leigh" had been written. She added a significant passage: that her husband had not seen a single line of it up to that time--significant, as one of the several indications that the union of Browning and his wife was indeed a marriage of true minds, wherein nothing of the common bane of matrimonial life found existence. Moreover, both were artists, and, therefore, too full of respect for themselves and their art to bring in any way the undue influence of each other into play.

By the spring of 1856, however, the first six "books" were concluded: and these, at once with humility and pride, Mrs. Browning placed in her husband's hands. The remaining three books were written, in the summer, in John Kenyon's London house.

It was her best, her fullest answer to the beautiful dedicatory poem, "One Word More," wherewith her husband, a few months earlier, sent forth his "Men and Women," to be for ever associated with "E.B.B."

The transference from Florence to London was made in May. In the summer "Aurora Leigh" was published, and met with an almost unparalleled success: even Landor, most exigent of critics, declared that he was "half drunk with it," that it had an imagination germane to that of Shakspere, and so forth.

The poem was dedicated to Kenyon, and on their homeward way the Brownings were startled and shocked to hear of his sudden death. By the time they had arrived at Casa Guidi again they learned that their good friend had not forgotten them in the disposition of his large fortune. To Browning he bequeathed six thousand, to Mrs. Browning four thousand guineas. This loss was followed early in the ensuing year (1857) by the death of Mr. Barrett, steadfast to the last in his refusal of reconciliation with his daughter.

Winters and summers passed happily in Italy--with one period of feverish anxiety, when the little boy lay for six weeks dangerously ill, nursed day and night by his father and mother alternately--with pleasant occasionings, as the companionship for a season of Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family, or of weeks spent at Siena with valued and lifelong friends, W.W. Story, the poet-sculptor, and his wife.

So early as 1858 Mrs. Hawthorne believed she saw the heralds of death in Mrs. Browning's excessive pallor and the hectic flush upon the cheeks, in her extreme fragility and weakness, and in her catching, fluttering breath. Even the motion of a visitor's fan perturbed her. But "her soul was mighty, and a great love kept her on earth a season longer. She was a seraph in her flaming worship of heart." "She lives so ardently," adds Mrs. Hawthorne, "that her delicate earthly vesture must soon be burnt up and destroyed by her soul of pure fire."

Yet, notwithstanding, she still sailed the seas of life, like one of those fragile argonauts in their shells of foam and rainbow-mist which will withstand the rude surge of winds and waves. But slowly, gradually, the spirit was o'erfretting its tenement. With the waning of her strength came back the old passionate longing for rest, for quiescence from that "excitement from within," which had been almost over vehement for her in the calm days of her unmarried life.

It is significant that at this time Browning's genius was relatively dormant. Its wings were resting for the long-sustained flight of "The Ring and the Book," and for earlier and shorter though not less royal aerial journeyings. But also, no doubt, the prolonged comparatively unproductive period of eight or nine years (1855-1864), between the publication of "Men and Women" and "Dramatis Personæ," was due in some measure to the poet's incessant and anxious care for his wife, to the deep sorrow of witnessing her slow but visible passing away, and to the profound grief occasioned by her death. However, barrenness of imaginative creative activity can be only very relatively affirmed, even of so long a period, of years wherein were written such memorable and treasurable poems as 'James Lee's Wife,' among Browning's writings what 'Maud' is among Lord Tennyson's; 'Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic;' 'Dis Aliter Visum;' 'Abt Vogler,' the most notable production of its kind in the language; 'A Death in the Desert,' that singular and impressive study; 'Caliban upon Setebos,' in its strange potency of interest and stranger poetic note, absolutely unique; 'Youth and Art;' 'Apparent Failure;' 'Prospice,' that noble lyrical defiance of death; and the supremely lofty and significant series of weighty stanzas, 'Rabbi Ben Ezra,' the most quintessential of all the distinctively psychical monologues which Browning has written. It seems to me that if these two poems only, "Prospice" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," were to survive to the day of Macaulay's New Zealander, the contemporaries of that meditative traveller would have sufficient to enable them to understand the great fame of the poet of "dim ancestral days," as the more acute among them could discern something of the real Shelley, though time had preserved but the three lines--

something of the real Catullus, through the mists of remote antiquity, if there had not perished the single passionate cry--

At the beginning of July (1858), the Brownings left Florence for the summer and autumn, and by easy stages travelled to Normandy. Here the invalid benefited considerably at first: and here, I may add, Browning wrote his 'Legend of Pornic,' 'Gold-Hair.' This poem of twenty-seven five-line stanzas (which differs only from that in more recent "Collected Works," and "Selections," in its lack of the three stanzas now numbered xxi., xxii., and xxiii.) was printed for limited private circulation, though primarily for the purpose of securing American copyright. Browning several times printed single poems thus, and for the same reasons--that is, either for transatlantic copyright, or when the verses were not likely to be included in any volume for a prolonged period. These leaflets or half-sheetlets of 'Gold Hair' and 'Prospice,' of 'Cleon' and 'The Statue and the Bust'--together with the "Two Poems by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning," published, for benefit of a charity, in 1854--are among the rarest "finds" for the collector, and are literally worth a good deal more than their weight in gold.

In the tumultuous year of 1859 all Italy was in a ferment. No patriot among the Nationalists was more ardent in her hopes than the delicate, too fragile, dying poetess, whose flame of life burned anew with the great hopes that animated her for her adopted country. Well indeed did she deserve, among the lines which the poet Tommaseo wrote and the Florence municipality caused to be engraved in gold upon a white marble slab, to be placed upon Casa Guidi, the words fece del suo verso aureo anello fra Italia e Inghilterra--"who of her Verse made a golden link connecting England and Italy."

The victories of Solferino and San Martino made the bitterness of the disgraceful Treaty of Villafranca the more hard to bear. Even had we not Mr. Story's evidence, it would be a natural conclusion that this disastrous ending to the high hopes of the Italian patriots accelerated Mrs. Browning's death. The withdrawal of hope is often worse in its physical effects than any direct bodily ill.

It was a miserable summer for both husband and wife, for more private sorrows also pressed upon them. Not even the sweet autumnal winds blowing upon Siena wafted away the shadow that had settled upon the invalid: nor was there medicine for her in the air of Rome, where the winter was spent. A temporary relief, however, was afforded by the more genial climate, and in the spring of 1860 she was able, with Browning's help, to see her Italian patriotic poems through the press. It goes without saying that these "Poems before Congress" had a grudging reception from the critics, because they dared to hint that all was not roseate-hued in England. The true patriots are those who love despite blemishes, not those who cherish the blemishes along with the virtues. To hint at a flaw is "not to be an Englishman."

The autumn brought a new sadness in the death of Miss Arabella Barrett--a dearly loved sister, the "Arabel" of so many affectionate letters. Once more a winter in Rome proved temporally restorative. But at last the day came when she wrote her last poem--"North and South," a gracious welcome to Hans Christian Andersen on the occasion of his first visit to the Eternal City.

Early in June of 1861 the Brownings were once more at Casa Guidi. But soon after their return the invalid caught a chill. For a few days she hovered like a tired bird--though her friends saw only the seemingly unquenchable light in the starry eyes, and did not anticipate the silence that was soon to be.

By the evening of the 28th day of the month she was in sore peril of failing breath. All night her husband sat by her, holding her hand. Two hours before dawn she realised that her last breath would ere long fall upon his tear-wet face. Then, as a friend has told us, she passed into a state of ecstasy: yet not so rapt therein but that she could whisper many words of hope, even of joy. With the first light of the new day, she leaned against her lover. Awhile she lay thus in silence, and then, softly sighing "It is beautiful!" passed like the windy fragrance of a flower.

CHAPTER IX.

It is needless to dwell upon what followed. The world has all that need be known. To Browning himself it was the abrupt, the too deeply pathetic, yet not wholly unhappy ending of a lovelier poem than any he or another should ever write, the poem of their married life.

There is a rare serenity in the thought of death when it is known to be the gate of life. This conviction Browning had, and so his grief was rather that of one whose joy has westered earlier. The sweetest music of his life had withdrawn: but there was still music for one to whom life in itself was a happiness. He had his son, and was not void of other solace: but even had it been otherwise he was of the strenuous natures who never succumb, nor wish to die--whatever accident of mortality overcome the will and the power.

It was in the autumn following his wife's death that he wrote the noble poem to which allusion has already been made: "Prospice." Who does not thrill to its close, when all of gloom or terror

There are few direct allusions to his wife in Browning's poems. Of those prior to her death the most beautiful is "One Word More," which has been already quoted in part: of the two or three subsequent to that event none surpasses the magic close of the first part of "The Ring and the Book."

Thereafter the details of his life are public property. He all along lived in the light, partly from his possession of that serenity which made Goethe glad to be alive and to be able to make others share in that gladness. No poet has been more revered and more loved. His personality will long be a stirring tradition. In the presence of his simple manliness and wealth of all generous qualities one is inclined to pass by as valueless, as the mere flying spray of the welcome shower, the many honours and gratifications that befell him. Even if these things mattered, concerning one by whose genius we are fascinated, while undazzled by the mere accidents pertinent thereto, their recital would be wearisome--of how he was asked to be Lord Rector of this University, or made a doctor of laws at that: of how letters and tributes of all kinds came to him from every district in our Empire, from every country in the world: and so forth. All these things are implied in the circumstance that his life was throughout "a noble music with a golden ending."

In 1866 his father died in Paris, strenuous in life until the very end. After this event Miss Sarianna Browning went to reside with her brother, and from that time onward was his inseparable companion, and ever one of the dearest and most helpful of friends. In latter years brother and sister were constantly seen together, and so regular attendants were they at such functions as the "Private Views" at the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery, that these never seemed complete without them. A Private View, a first appearance of Joachim or Sarasate, a first concert of Richter or Henschel or Hallé, at each of these, almost to a certainty, the poet was sure to appear. The chief personal happiness of his later life was in his son. Mr. R. Barrett Browning is so well known as a painter and sculptor that it would be superfluous for me to add anything further here, except to state that his successes were his father's keenest pleasures.

Two years after his father's death, that is in 1868, the "Poetical Works of Robert Browning, M.A., Honorary Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford," were issued in six volumes. Here the equator of Browning's genius may be drawn. On the further side lie the "Men and Women" of the period anterior to "The Ring and the Book": midway is the transitional zone itself: on the hither side are the "Men and Women" of a more temperate if not colder clime.

The first part of "The Ring and the Book" was not published till November. In September the poet was staying with his sister and son at Le Croisic, a picturesque village at the mouth of the Loire, at the end of the great salt plains which stretch down from Guérande to the Bay of Biscay. No doubt, in lying on the sand-dunes in the golden September glow, in looking upon the there somewhat turbid current of the Loire, the poet brooded on those days when he saw its inland waters with her who was with him no longer save in dreams and memories. Here he wrote that stirring poem, "Hervé Riel," founded upon the valorous action of a French sailor who frustrated the naval might of England, and claimed nothing as a reward save permission to have a holiday on land to spend a few hours with his wife, "la belle Aurore." "Hervé Riel" (which has been translated into French, and is often recited, particularly in the maritime towns, and is always evocative of enthusiastic applause) is one of Browning's finest action-lyrics, and is assured of the same immortality as "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," or the "Pied Piper" himself.

In 1872 there was practical proof of the poet's growing popularity. Baron Tauchnitz issued two volumes of excellently selected poems, comprising some of the best of "Men and Women," "Dramatis Personæ," and "Dramatic Romances," besides the longer "Soul's Tragedy," "Luria," "In a Balcony," and "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"--the most Christian poem of the century, according to one eminent cleric, the heterodox self-sophistication of a free-thinker, according to another: really, the reflex of a great crisis, that of the first movement of the tide of religious thought to a practically limitless freedom. This edition also contained "Bishop Blougram," then much discussed, apart from its poetic and intellectual worth, on account of its supposed verisimilitude in portraiture of Cardinal Wiseman. This composition, one of Browning's most characteristic, is so clever that it is scarcely a poem. Poetry and Cleverness do not well agree, the muse being already united in perfect marriage to Imagination. In his Essay on Truth, Bacon says that one of the Fathers called poetry Vinum Dæmonum, because it filleth the imagination. Certainly if it be not vinum dæmonum it is not Poetry.

In this year also appeared the first series of "Selections" by the poet's latest publishers: "Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson. In Poetry--illustrious and consummate: In Friendship--noble and sincere." It was in his preface to this selection that he wrote the often-quoted words: "Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh." At or about the date of these "Selections" the poet wrote to a friend, on this very point of obscurity, "I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and something over--not a crowd, but a few I value more."

In 1877 Browning, ever restless for pastures new, went with his sister to spend the autumn at La Saisiaz (Savoyard for "the sun"), a villa among the mountains near Geneva; this time with the additional company of Miss Anne Egerton Smith, an intimate and valued friend. But there was an unhappy close to the holiday. Miss Smith died on the night of the fourteenth of September, from heart complaint. "La Saisiaz" is the direct outcome of this incident, and is one of the most beautiful of Browning's later poems. Its trochaics move with a tide-like sound.

At the close, there is a line which might stand as epitaph for the poet--

In the following year "La Saisiaz" was published along with "The Two Poets of Croisic," which was begun and partly written at the little French village ten years previously. There is nothing of the eight-score stanzas of the "Two Poets" to equal its delightful epilogue, or the exquisite prefatory lyric, beginning

Extremely interesting--and for myself I cannot find "The Two Poets of Croisic" to be anything more than "interesting"--it is as a poem distinctly inferior to "La Saisiaz." Although detached lines are often far from truly indicative of the real poetic status of a long poem, where proportion and harmony are of more importance than casual exfoliations of beauty, yet to a certain extent they do serve as musical keys that give the fundamental tone. One certainly would have to search in vain to find in the Croisic poem such lines as

Or these of Mont Blanc, seen at sunset, towering over icy pinnacles and teeth-like peaks,

Or, again, this of the sun swinging himself above the dark shoulder of Jura--

Or, finally, this sounding verse--

The other poems later than "The Ring and the Book" are, broadly speaking, of two kinds. On the one side may be ranged the groups which really cohere with "Men and Women." These are "The Inn Album," the miscellaneous poems of the "Pacchiarotto" volume, the "Dramatic Idyls," some of "Jocoseria," and some of "Asolando." "Ferishtah's Fancies" and "Parleyings" are not, collectively, dramatic poems, but poems of illuminative insight guided by a dramatic imagination.[23] They, and the classical poems and translations (renderings, rather, by one whose own individuality dominates them to the exclusion of that nearness of the original author, which it should be the primary aim of the translator to evoke), the beautiful "Balaustion's Adventure," "Aristophanes' Apology," and "The Agamemnon of Aeschylus," and the third group, which comprises "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," and "Fifine at the Fair"--these three groups are of the second kind.