They want to cut and fit a man"s ability and achievement to a particular cla.s.s of work, to press him down, as it were, into a jelly-mould and say, "There, take that shape and mind, not a drop of you is to spill over!" It is a good deal like a woman when asked her age; she often says, "I am twenty"; so she is, dear thing, and frequently much more, besides. Our poet is a Victorian poet and gloriously transcends them all. "If this be treason, make the most of it." My opponent is no doubt carefully writing down this challenge with a view to crushing me later, but unlike my s.e.x in general, I do not want the last word, if I can only get the first. "He laughs best who laughs last" has always had rather a prejudiced sound in my ears; on the contrary, he who makes the first score has often a tremendous advantage. A charming young artist, a friend of mine, has thrown a certain light upon the subject of this debate: She said, "Victorian always suggests to me something housekeepery and mutton-choppy: Is Browning mutton-choppy?" I suppose that the adversary will answer this.
In one of the popular manuals of English literature, we find Tennyson and Browning described as the two masters of Victorian poetry. My definition of a poet of the Victorian School would be that he should combine a musical versification with ethical, philosophical and artistic thought. I believe that Tennyson is generally received as an example. If Sh.e.l.ley be accepted as a Victorian School poet, then it is absolutely certain that Browning, having absorbed Sh.e.l.ley until poetic inspiration was fused to a white heat, may be held to represent the Victorian School in gigantic and overwhelming form. Although it has been said that "until late years Browning has been entirely at variance with the tendencies of his time and for nearly forty years represented that opposition to the poetry of the age which has recently been made prominent by a small band of poetical innovators of whom Swinburne is the most extreme," still I feel justified in my claim. Browning incorporated the introspective philosophy of his period in his work, and also displayed in many of his writings the musical sweetness which is supposed especially to mark the Victorian poets. Think of his poem of "Saul," forceful, yet melodious, suffused with the intense interest of the Biblical story, glorified by the superb imagery of a mind dwelling in a time of psychological inquiry. Almost the whole of "Asolando" is musical. Remember the poem "Reverie":
"I know there shall dawn a day --Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away, Where the strange and new have birth That Power comes full in play?"
Note the influence which contemporary events must have on a man like Browning: in 1851 the great Exhibition, the first of the series held later in different countries, and stimulating in its effects upon the intellectual, social and spiritual culture of the poet: in 1854 the Crimean War, conducted with France against Russia who had appropriated the Turkish princ.i.p.alities of Moldavia and Wallachia, and made famous by such battles as Alma, Balaklava and Inkermann. In 1853 came Florence Nightingale with her reform in hospital service. In 1858 the Atlantic cable was laid. In 1888 came the "Philadelphia Browning Society." No one of the Victorian poets was mentally organized by these events, the last excepted, as was Browning. The critic Alexander has said "A man"s work is determined not only by the character of his genius, but also by the conditions of his age. Homer would not write a great epic, were he alive now, nor Shakespeare great dramas."
"Prospice" is another instance of melodious verse, expressing thought exalted, philosophical and spiritual.
Who is not impressed with the strength and sweep of "Cristina"?
"There are flashes struck from mid-nights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle."
We cannot ignore the graceful flow of "Confessions":
"How sad and bad and mad it was-- But then, how it was sweet!"
I must also quote what seems to me a very vital tribute to his genius:
"Browning is one of the very few men--Mr. Meredith excepted--who can paint women without idealization or degradation, not from the man"s side, but from their own; as living equals, not as G.o.ddesses or as toys." His poetry has been described as "superb landscape painting in verse." Swinburne differentiates Browning"s work as marked by decisive and incisive faculty of thought, sureness and intensity of perception, rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. "The Ring and the Book" is the masterpiece of this great Victorian master.
If then it be remembered that Browning ranks high as a humorist, that he has brilliant and subtle qualities, that he could appreciate and translate into poetry the stirring events of both sacred and profane history; that he drew Religion in all shapes to his side, that Mythology and Orientalism were his boon companions; that he moulded Art to his purpose, allured Music by his call, won Philosophy by his gaze, looked Truth in the eyes; there can be little or no doubt that he was the greatest of all the poets of the Victorian School and in his single person united all the highest characteristics of his literary contemporaries. Through him the Victorian School was raised to a height and deepened to a depth that without him it never would have had.
_Mary M. Cohen._
----Is there anything that so forcibly brings home to us the foreign point of view or rather the point of tongue and point of ear that makes a Frenchman"s expression alien to ours, than to see how he explains the proper English p.r.o.nunciation of English? Here is the way, for example, that he elaborately spells out the sound of "Much Ado About Nothing" in a dictionary of Foreign Names and Phrases: "Meutch a-dou a-boutt"
neuth" igne." And of course our point of ear is quite as droll to him.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 1: In "The Broken Heart," John Ford, 1633, Calantha, addressing the dead body of her betrothed husband, says: "Now turn I to thee, thou shadow Of my departed lord." Antony refers to his dead body as "a mangled shadow"; "Antony and Cleopatra," iv., 2, 27. Shakespeare elsewhere refers to disembodied spirits as "shadows"; as in "Richard III," i, 4, 53; _Ibid_., v, 3, 216; "Cymbeline, v, 4, 97; and "t.i.tus Andronicus," I, 1, 126.]
[Footnote 2: For "I. A Group of British Poets" see _Poet-lore_, Vol.
III. (New Series), End Year Number 1899. Pp. 610-612.]