"Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud, "Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!" Our allegorical friends were united as one man or one woman in the conviction that "Lyric Love" personfied "Inspiration" "the Heavenly Muse," etc., and grappled with perfect success with such expressions as "Boldest of hearts that ever braved the "sun," and "human at the red-ripe of the heart,” “the summons "from the darkling earth, "to suffer or to die," "reached thee amid thy chambers," etc.--while we Realists insisted that it was an invocation to the spirit of Mrs. Browning in Heaven. The debate was long and loud, and it was adjourned with divided honors, as we only possessed the first volume. Before the next meeting, however, the second had come to hand, and to a crowded club in breathless silence, I read the concluding words of the poem: "....Lyric Love, Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) "Linking our England to this Italy!" The uncommon candor of our Allegorical friends was never more clearly shown than at that moment, when they one and all gracefully surrendered. When, however, we came to Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came there was once more a gathering of the clans, and a beautiful paper was read from “Unity,” which explained in the most complete manner the exact inward significance of the "Cripple," "The old lean horse;" the barren land, etc., and reached a magnificent climax in the undoubted fact, that the "Little bitter brook" meant " Alcohol!" The genius of Browning, then, is dramatic. When Pippa passes, it is just a pure, fresh, loving maiden that passes, and it is just her sweet young maidenhood that causes her presence and her voice to charm away the ill demons of lust and hate as she passes. And above all, our Pompilia is just God's highest and best gift to this earth, a pure and noble woman. Our Caponsacchi is a brave and true man awakening from an ignoble sleep. Our Pope is a good and grand old man, giving to the world the deep lessons learned in a life spent in doing good. I cannot even attempt in ten minutes to name those poems of Browning which are dramatic in form. I will simply say a few words about his dramas that are translated from the Greek or are Greek in substance. One conspicuous failure is Agamemnon. Two erroneous ideas seem to have been at the bottom of this; one that Eschylus's stately iambics can possibly be represented by the incessant jig of an eleven-syllabled verse, the fact being that our ordinary blank verse is an almost perfect representation of the Greek iambic; the other is the impossible attempt at exact literalness, which, coupled with the use of fantastic words, makes the translation quite as difficult as the original. On the other hand, Balaustion's Adventure and Aristophanes's Apology must be pronounced a great success. The second reason for our permanence, which I gave to the younger club, was, that we assigned to each person his work, and that we resolved to pass over no allusion and to leave no difficulty unexplained. In our work on Aristophanes's Apology we found that Browning had not only prepared himself for writing by the careful reading of all Aristophanes's plays and all his fragments, but that he had also carefully read the Greek Scholiasts, with their notes on the plays. It was only such thorough work as this, that enabled him to give that astonishing reproduction of Greek life, manners and thought, which renders this part of our poet's work so unique. S. R. CALTHROP. SOME OF BROWNING'S BELIEFS. We meet to-night to commemorate the death of the greatest English writer since Shakspere, the only English writer who can be compared with Shakspere. "Shakspere was not our poet, but the world's: “Therefore on him no speech; and brief for thee, Browning. Since Chaucer was alive and hale "No man hath walked along our roads with step "So varied in discourse."-Landor. "By far the richest nature of our times," says James Russell Lowell." It is plain truth to say that no other English poet, "living or dead, Shakspere excepted, has so heaped up human "interest for his readers as has Robert Browning," says the author of "Obiter Dicta." "Mr. Browning exhibits....a "wealth of intellect and a profusion of spiritual insight which we "have been accustomed to find in the pages of Shakspere, and "in those pages only," says Robert Buchanan, in his essays on "Master Spirits."-"We must record at once our conviction "not merely that The Ring and the Book is beyond parallel the supremest poetical achievement of our time," wrote a critic in the Athenæum, “but that it is the most precious and profound "spiritual treasure that England has produced since the days of "Shakspere. Its intellectual greatness is as nothing compared "with its transcendent spiritual teaching." Or, as Archdeacon Farrar puts it: "He has produced not a book but a literature. To have stud"ied and understood him is a liberal education. With the ex"ception of Shakspere there is literally no poet, living or dead, 66 "in whom we can find so marvellous a portrait-gallery of living "characters. He has borrowed his jewels from the East and "from the West; from art, from nature, and from the schools; "from the classics, the Rabbis, the Renaissance; from Greece, Italy, Palestine, France, England, Bagdad, America, Russia; "from legend and history, from fancy and imagination, from “kings, paupers, revolutionists, factory-girls, mystic dreamers, gay cavaliers, Jews, noble and base, duchesses, musicians, "poets, painters, dervishes, saints, reformers, heretics; from "every passion that could ennoble or debase, dilate or contract, "elevate or ruin the human soul; above all from love; from "love in every one of its manifestations." .66 The time has passed for criticisms upon his style, and jokes as to his intelligibility. "Better say to the first fool who says he "cannot understand Browning," remarked the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, "I am sorry for you, but I think I can." Beethoven was in his time called no musician; Chopin said of him that he had stretched his art to express subjects beyond its range, till his art ceased to be art. He was told of a certain passage in one of his works that it was not allowed.” "Then," said he, "I allow it; let that be its justification." Wagner contended all his life with such criticism, but who now cares to argue with those who think the pretty twinklings of Bellini more melodious? One of Wagner's disciples has drawn a just parallel between his art and Browning's: 66 66 * * * "It seems to me that each speaks in a language that he him"self has created as a fitting vehicle for the conveyance of his thoughts. Each has an individual method of composing and "working out his theme, and each by his contribution to art has "substantially widened its sphere and range. One "more analogy between them is their exaltation, their extasy, "and the clairvoyance of their unconscious creature instinct that "was their salient characteristic. They wrote just as this in"stinct prompted them; you might disagree with them or agree "with them, what they sung might be congenial or uncongenial, "but it must be written or sung. This is what differentiates “such men of genius from men of talent. An idea seizes hold of “them, and it will not relax its grasp until it is worked out."-B. L. Mozeley. Browning himself wrote in 1872: "Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh. Having "hitherto done my utmost in the art to which my life is a devotion, I cannot engage to increase the effort; but I conceive that "there may be helpful light, as well as re-assuring warmth, in "the attention and sympathy I gratefully acknowledge."1 As has been so often demonstrated, the difficulties in Browning are not in the expression but in the thought. His are no poems "To turn the page, and let the senses drink "A lay that shall not trouble them to think."" "One word on the obscurity of Sordello," says Edward Dowden. "It arises not so much from the peculiarities of style. as from the unrelaxing demand which is made throughout upon "the intellectual and imaginative energy and alertness of the "reader."--Speaking of the Tomb in St. Praxed's Ruskin says: "I know of no other piece of modern English prose or poetry, in "which there is so much told as in these lines of Renaissance "spirit. It is nearly all that I have said of the central "Renaissance in thirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice.' "8— Swinburne is indignantly emphatic : 66 "Now if there is any great quality more perceptible than an"other in Mr. Browning's intellect, it is his decisive and incisive 'quality of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, his "rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him with "obscurity is about as correct as to call Lynceus purblind, or com1 Preface to Selections. 2 Quoted in "Obiter Dicta." 3 "Modern Painters," IV. 379. |