of thanks--unless from myself who feel grateful to the faces I shall
never see, the voices I shall never hear. The kindest notices I have
had, or at all events those that have given me most pleasure, have been
educed by this Society--A. Sidgwick's paper, that of Professor Corson,
Miss Lewis' article in this month's 'Macmillan'--and I feel grateful for
it all, for my part,--and none the less for a little amusement at the
wonder of some of my friends that I do not jump up and denounce the
practices which must annoy me so much. Oh! my 'gentle Shakespeare', how
well you felt and said--'never anything can be amiss when simpleness and
duty tender it.' So, dear Lady, here is my duty and simplicity tendering
itself to you, with all affection besides, and I being ever yours, R.
Browning.

That general disposition of the London world which left the ranks of the
little Society to be three-fourths recruited among persons, many living
at a distance, whom the poet did not know, became also in its way
a satisfaction. It was with him a matter of course, though never of
indifference, that his closer friends of both sexes were among its
members; it was one of real gratification that they included from
the beginning such men as Dean Boyle of Salisbury, the Rev. Llewellyn
Davies, George Meredith, and James Cotter Morison--that they enjoyed the
sympathy and co-operation of such a one as Archdeacon Farrar. But he had
an ingenuous pride in reading the large remainder of the Society's lists
of names, and pointing out the fact that there was not one among them
which he had ever heard. It was equivalent to saying, 'All these people
care for me as a poet. No social interest, no personal prepossession,
has attracted them to my work.' And when the unknown name was not only
appended to a list; when it formed the signature of a paper--excellent
or indifferent as might be--but in either case bearing witness to
a careful and unobtrusive study of his poems, by so much was the
gratification increased. He seldom weighed the intrinsic merit of such
productions; he did not read them critically. No man was ever more
adverse to the seeming ungraciousness of analyzing the quality of a
gift. In real life indeed this power of gratitude sometimes defeated its
own end, by neutralizing his insight into the motive or effort involved
in different acts of kindness, and placing them all successively on the
same plane.

In the present case, however, an ungraduated acceptance of the labour
bestowed on him was part of the neutral attitude which it was his
constant endeavour to maintain. He always refrained from noticing any
erroneous statement concerning himself or his works which might appear
in the Papers of the Society: since, as he alleged, if he once began to
correct, he would appear to endorse whatever he left uncorrected, and
thus make himself responsible, not only for any interpretation that
might be placed on his poems, but, what was far more serious, for
every eulogium that was bestowed upon them. He could not stand aloof as
entirely as he or even his friends desired, since it was usual with some
members of the Society to seek from him elucidations of obscure passages
which, without these, it was declared, would be a stumbling-block to
future readers. But he disliked being even to this extent drawn into
its operation; and his help was, I believe, less and less frequently
invoked. Nothing could be more false than the rumour which once arose
that he superintended those performances of his plays which took place
under the direction of the Society. Once only, and by the urgent desire
of some of the actors, did he witness a last rehearsal of one of them.

It was also a matter of course that men and women brought together by
a pre-existing interest in Mr. Browning's work should often ignore its
authorized explanations, and should read and discuss it in the light of
personal impressions more congenial to their own mind; and the various
and circumstantial views sometimes elicited by a given poem did not
serve to render it more intelligible. But the merit of true poetry lies
so largely in its suggestiveness, that even mistaken impressions of
it have their positive value and also their relative truth; and the
intellectual friction which was thus created, not only in the parent
society, but in its offshoots in England and America, was not their
least important result.

These Societies conferred, it need hardly be said, no less real benefits
on the public at large. They extended the sale of Mr. Browning's works,
and with it their distinct influence for intellectual and moral good.
They not only created in many minds an interest in these works, but
aroused the interest where it was latent, and gave it expression where
it had hitherto found no voice. One fault, alone, could be charged
against them; and this lay partly in the nature of all friendly
concerted action: they stirred a spirit of enthusiasm in which it
was not easy, under conditions equally genuine, to distinguish the
individual element from that which was due to contagion; while the
presence among us of the still living poet often infused into that
enthusiasm a vaguely emotional element, which otherwise detracted from
its intellectual worth. But in so far as this was a drawback to the
intended action of the Societies, it was one only in the most negative
sense; nor can we doubt, that, to a certain extent, Mr. Browning's best
influence was promoted by it. The hysterical sensibilities which, for
some years past, he had unconsciously but not unfrequently aroused in
the minds of women, and even of men, were a morbid development of that
influence, which its open and systematic extension tended rather to
diminish than to increase.

It is also a matter of history that Robert Browning had many deep and
constant admirers in England, and still more in America,* long before
this organized interest had developed itself. Letters received from
often remote parts of the United States had been for many years a detail
of his daily experience; and even when they consisted of the request for
an autograph, an application to print selections from his works, or a
mere expression of schoolboy pertness or schoolgirl sentimentality, they
bore witness to his wide reputation in that country, and the high esteem
in which he was held there.** The names of Levi and Celia Thaxter of
Boston had long, I believe, been conspicuous in the higher ranks of his
disciples, though they first occur in his correspondence at about
this date. I trust I may take for granted Mrs. Thaxter's permission to
publish a letter from her.

     * The cheapening of his works in America, induced by the
     absence of international copyright, accounts of course in
     some degree for their wider diffusion, and hence earlier
     appreciation there.

     ** One of the most curious proofs of this was the
     Californian Railway time-table edition of his poems.

Newtonville, Massachusetts: March 14, 1880.

My dear Mr. Browning:

Your note reached me this morning, but it belonged to my husband, for it
was he who wrote to you; so I gave it to him, glad to put into his hands
so precious a piece of manuscript, for he has for you and all your work
an enthusiastic appreciation such as is seldom found on this planet: it
is not possible that the admiration of one mortal for another can exceed
his feeling for you. You might have written for him,

     I've a friend over the sea,
     .    .    .    .

     It all grew out of the books I write, &c.

You should see his fine wrath and scorn for the idiocy that doesn't at
once comprehend you!

He knows every word you have ever written; long ago 'Sordello' was
an open book to him from title-page to closing line, and _all_ you have
printed since has been as eagerly and studiously devoured. He reads you
aloud (and his reading is a fine art) to crowds of astonished people,
he swears by you, he thinks no one save Shakspere has a right to be
mentioned in the same century with you. You are the great enthusiasm of
his life.

Pardon me, you are smiling, I dare say. You hear any amount of such
things, doubtless. But a genuine living appreciation is always worth
having in this old world, it is like a strong fresh breeze from off the
brine, that puts a sense of life and power into a man. You cannot be the
worse for it. Yours very sincerely, Celia Thaxter.

When Mr. Thaxter died, in February 1885, his son wrote to Mr. Browning
to beg of him a few lines to be inscribed on his father's tombstone. The
little poem by which the request was answered has not yet, I believe,
been published.

'Written to be inscribed on the gravestone of Levi Thaxter.'

Thou, whom these eyes saw never,--say friends true Who say my soul,
helped onward by my song, Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too?
I gave but of the little that I knew: How were the gift requited, while
along Life's path I pace, could'st thou make weakness strong, Help me
with knowledge--for Life's old, Death's new! R. B. April 19, '85.

A publication which connected itself with the labours of the Society,
without being directly inspired by it, was the annotated 'Strafford'
prepared by Miss Hickey for the use of students. It may be agreeable to
those who use the little work to know the estimate in which Mr. Browning
held it. He wrote as follows:

19, Warwick Crescent, W.: February 15, 1884.

Dear Miss Hickey,--I have returned the Proofs by post,--nothing can be
better than your notes--and with a real wish to be of use, I read
them carefully that I might detect never so tiny a fault,--but I found
none--unless (to show you how minutely I searched,) it should be one
that by 'thriving in your contempt,' I meant simply 'while you despise
them, and for all that, they thrive and are powerful to do you harm.'
The idiom you prefer--quite an authorized one--comes to much the same
thing after all.

You must know how much I grieve at your illness--temporary as I will
trust it to be--I feel all your goodness to me--or whatever in my books
may be taken for me--well, I wish you knew how thoroughly I feel it--and
how truly I am and shall ever be Yours affectionately, Robert Browning.

From the time of the foundation of the New Shakspere Society, Mr.
Browning was its president. In 1880 he became a member of the Wordsworth
Society. Two interesting letters to Professor Knight, dated respectively
1880 and 1887, connect themselves with the working of the latter; and,
in spite of their distance in time, may therefore be given together.
The poem which formed the subject of the first was 'The Daisy';* the
selection referred to in the second was that made in 1888 by Professor
Knight for the Wordsworth Society, with the co-operation of Mr. Browning
and other eminent literary men.

     * That beginning 'In youth from rock to rock, I went.'

19, Warwick Crescent, W.: July 9, '80.

My dear Sir,--You pay me a compliment in caring for my opinion--but,
such as it is, a very decided one it must be. On every account, your
method of giving the original text, and subjoining in a note the
variations, each with its proper date, is incontestably preferable
to any other. It would be so, if the variations were even
improvements--there would be pleasure as well as profit in seeing what
was good grow visibly better. But--to confine ourselves to the single
'proof' you have sent me--in every case the change is sadly for the
worse: I am quite troubled by such spoilings of passage after passage
as I should have chuckled at had I chanced upon them in some copy
pencil-marked with corrections by Jeffrey or Gifford: indeed, they are
nearly as wretched as the touchings-up of the 'Siege of Corinth' by the
latter. If ever diabolic agency was caught at tricks with 'apostolic'
achievement (see page 9)--and 'apostolic', with no 'profanity' at all, I
esteem these poems to be--surely you may bid it 'aroint' 'about and all
about' these desecrated stanzas--each of which, however, thanks to your
piety, we may hail, I trust, with a hearty

     Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain
     Nor be less dear to future men
     Than in old time!

Believe me, my dear Sir, Yours very sincerely, Robert Browning.

19, Warwick Crescent, W.: March 23, '87.

Dear Professor Knight,--I have seemed to neglect your commission
shamefully enough: but I confess to a sort of repugnance to classifying
the poems as even good and less good: because in my heart I fear I
should do it almost chronologically--so immeasureably superior seem to
me the 'first sprightly runnings'. Your selection would appear to be
excellent; and the partial admittance of the later work prevents one
from observing the too definitely distinguishing black line between
supremely good and--well, what is fairly tolerable--from Wordsworth,
always understand! I have marked a few of the early poems, not included
in your list--I could do no other when my conscience tells me that I
never can be tired of loving them: while, with the best will in the
world, I could never do more than try hard to like them.*

     * By 'them' Mr. Browning clearly means the later poems, and
     probably has omitted a few words which would have shown
     this.

You see, I go wholly upon my individual likings and distastes: that
other considerations should have their weight with other people is
natural and inevitable. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning.

Many thanks for the volume just received--that with the correspondence.
I hope that you restore the swan simile so ruthlessly cut away from
'Dion'.

In 1884 he was again invited, and again declined, to stand for the
Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews. In the same year he
received the LL.D. degree of the University of Edinburgh; and in the
following was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of
that city.* During the few days spent there on the occasion of his
investiture, he was the guest of Professor Masson, whose solicitous
kindness to him is still warmly remembered in the family.

     * This Association was instituted in 1833, and is a union of
     literary and debating societies.  It is at present composed
     of five: the Dialectic, Scots Law, Diagnostic,
     Philosophical, and Philomathic.

The interest in Mr. Browning as a poet is beginning to spread in
Germany. There is room for wonder that it should not have done so
before, though the affinities of his genius are rather with the older
than with the more modern German mind. It is much more remarkable that,
many years ago, his work had already a sympathetic exponent in Italy.
Signor Nencioni, Professor of Literature in Florence, had made his
acquaintance at Siena, and was possibly first attracted to him through
his wife, although I never heard that it was so. He was soon, however,
fascinated by Mr. Browning's poetry, and made it an object of serious
study; he largely quoted from, and wrote on it, in the Roman paper
'Fanfulla della Domenica', in 1881 and 1882; and published last winter
what is, I am told, an excellent article on the same subject, in the
'Nuova Antologia'. Two years ago he travelled from Rome to Venice
(accompanied by Signor Placci), for the purpose of seeing him. He is
fond of reciting passages from the works, and has even made attempts at
translation: though he understands them too well not to pronounce them,
what they are for every Latin language, untranslatable.

In 1883 Mr. Browning added another link to the 'golden' chain of verse
which united England and Italy. A statue of Goldoni was about to be
erected in Venice. The ceremonies of the occasion were to include the
appearance of a volume--or album--of appropriate poems; and Cavaliere
Molmenti, its intending editor, a leading member of the 'Erection
Committee', begged Mr. Browning to contribute to it. It was also desired
that he should be present at the unveiling.* He was unable to grant
this request, but consented to write a poem. This sonnet to Goldoni also
deserves to be more widely known, both for itself and for the manner of
its production. Mr. Browning had forgotten, or not understood, how
soon the promise concerning it must be fulfilled, and it was actually
scribbled off while a messenger, sent by Signor Molmenti, waited for it.

     * It was, I think, during this visit to Venice that he
     assisted at a no less interesting ceremony:  the unveiling
     of a commemorative tablet to Baldassaro Galuppi, in his
     native island of Burano.

Goldoni,--good, gay, sunniest of souls,--Glassing half Venice in that
verse of thine,--What though it just reflect the shade and shine Of
common life, nor render, as it rolls Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for
thy shoals Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited to
that opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. There
throng the people: how they come and go Lisp the soft language, flaunt
the bright garb,--see,--On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge!
Dear king of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so,
Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!

Venice, Nov. 27, 1883.

A complete bibliography would take account of three other sonnets,
'The Founder of the Feast', 1884, 'The Names', 1884, and 'Why I am a
Liberal', 1886, to which I shall have occasion to refer; but we
decline insensibly from these on to the less important or more
fugitive productions which such lists also include, and on which it is
unnecessary or undesirable that any stress should be laid.

In 1885 he was joined in Venice by his son. It was 'Penini's' first
return to the country of his birth, his first experience of the city
which he had only visited in his nurse's arms; and his delight in it was
so great that the plan shaped itself in his father's mind of buying a
house there, which should serve as 'pied-a-terre' for the family, but
more especially as a home for him. Neither the health nor the energies
of the younger Mr. Browning had ever withstood the influence of the
London climate; a foreign element was undoubtedly present in his
otherwise thoroughly English constitution. Everything now pointed to his
settling in Italy, and pursuing his artist life there, only interrupting
it by occasional visits to London and Paris. His father entered into
negotiations for the Palazzo Manzoni, next door to the former Hotel de
l'Univers; and the purchase was completed, so far as he was concerned,
before he returned to England. The fact is related, and his own position
towards it described in a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow, written from
Venice.

Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, S. Moise: Nov. 15, '85.

My two dear friends will have supposed, with plenty of reason, that I
never got the kind letter some weeks ago. When it came, I was in the
middle of an affair, conducted by letters of quite another kind, with
people abroad: and as I fancied that every next day might bring me
news very interesting to me and likely to be worth telling to the dear
friends, I waited and waited--and only two days since did the matter
come to a satisfactory conclusion--so, as the Irish song has it, 'Open
your eyes and die with surprise' when I inform you that I have purchased
the Manzoni Palace here, on the Canal Grande, of its owner, Marchese
Montecucculi, an Austrian and an absentee--hence the delay of
communication. I did this purely for Pen--who became at once simply
infatuated with the city which won my whole heart long before he was
born or thought of. I secure him a perfect domicile, every facility for
his painting and sculpture, and a property fairly worth, even here and
now, double what I gave for it--such is the virtue in these parts of
ready money! I myself shall stick to London--which has been so eminently
good and gracious to me--so long as God permits; only, when the
inevitable outrage of Time gets the better of my body--(I shall not
believe in his reaching my soul and proper self)--there will be a
capital retreat provided: and meantime I shall be able to 'take mine
ease in mine own inn' whenever so minded. There, my dear friends! I
trust now to be able to leave very shortly; the main business cannot be
formally concluded before two months at least--through the absence of
the Marchese,--who left at once to return to his duties as commander
of an Austrian ship; but the necessary engagement to sell and buy at a
specified price is made in due legal form, and the papers will be sent
to me in London for signature. I hope to get away the week after next at
latest,--spite of the weather in England which to-day's letters report
as 'atrocious',--and ours, though variable, is in the main very
tolerable and sometimes perfect; for all that, I yearn to be at home in
poor Warwick Crescent, which must do its best to make me forget my new
abode. I forget you don't know Venice. Well then, the Palazzo Manzoni
is situate on the Grand Canal, and is described by Ruskin,--to give
no other authority,--as 'a perfect and very rich example of Byzantine
Renaissance: its warm yellow marbles are magnificent.' And again--'an
exquisite example (of Byzantine Renaissance) as applied to domestic
architecture.' So testify the 'Stones of Venice'. But we will talk about
the place, over a photograph, when I am happy enough to be with you
again.

Of Venetian gossip there is next to none. We had an admirable Venetian
Company,--using the dialect,--at the Goldoni Theatre. The acting
of Zago, in his various parts, and Zenon-Palladini, in her especial
character of a Venetian piece of volubility and impulsiveness in the
shape of a servant, were admirable indeed. The manager, Gallina, is a
playwright of much reputation, and gave us some dozen of his own pieces,
mostly good and clever. S. is very well,--much improved in health: we
walk sufficiently in this city where walking is accounted impossible by
those who never attempt it. Have I tired your good temper? No! you ever
wished me well, and I love you both with my whole heart. S.'s love goes
with mine--who am ever yours Robert Browning.

He never, however, owned the Manzoni Palace. The Austrian gentlemen*
whose property it was, put forward, at the last moment, unexpected and
to his mind unreasonable claims; and he was preparing to contest
the position, when a timely warning induced him to withdraw from it
altogether. The warning proceeded from his son, who had remained on the
spot, and was now informed on competent authority that the foundations
of the house were insecure.

     * Two or three brothers.

In the early summer of 1884, and again in 1886, Miss Browning had a
serious illness; and though she recovered, in each case completely, and
in the first rapidly, it was considered desirable that she should not
travel so far as usual from home. She and her brother therefore accepted
for the August and September of 1884 the urgent invitation of an
American friend, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, to stay with her at a villa
which she rented for some seasons at St. Moritz. Mr. Browning was
delighted with the Engadine, where the circumstances of his abode,
and the thoughtful kindness of his hostess, allowed him to enjoy the
benefits of comparative civilization together with almost perfect
repose. The weather that year was brilliant until the end of September,
if not beyond it; and his letters tell the old pleasant story of long
daily walks and a general sense of invigoration. One of these,
written to Mr. and Mrs. Skirrow, also contains some pungent remarks on
contemporary events, with an affectionate allusion to one of the chief
actors in them.

'Anyhow, I have the sincerest hope that Wolseley may get done as
soon, and kill as few people, as possible,--keeping himself safe and
sound--brave dear fellow--for the benefit of us all.'

He also speaks with great sympathy of the death of Mr. Charles Sartoris,
which had just taken place at St.-Moritz.

In 1886, Miss Browning was not allowed to leave England; and she and
Mr. Browning established themselves for the autumn at the Hand Hotel at
Llangollen, where their old friends, Sir Theodore and Lady Martin, would
be within easy reach. Mr. Browning missed the exhilarating effects of
the Alpine air; but he enjoyed the peaceful beauty of the Welsh valley,
and the quiet and comfort of the old-fashioned English inn. A new source
of interest also presented itself to him in some aspects of the life
of the English country gentleman. He was struck by the improvements
effected by its actual owner* on a neighbouring estate, and by the
provisions contained in them for the comfort of both the men and the
animals under his care; and he afterwards made, in reference to them,
what was for a professing Liberal, a very striking remark: 'Talk of
abolishing that class of men! They are the salt of the earth!' Every
Sunday afternoon he and his sister drank tea--weather permitting--on
the lawn with their friends at Brintysilio; and he alludes gracefully
to these meetings in a letter written in the early summer of 1888, when
Lady Martin had urged him to return to Wales.

     * I believe a Captain Best.

The poet left another and more pathetic remembrance of himself in the
neighbourhood of Llangollen: his weekly presence at the afternoon Sunday
service in the parish church of Llantysilio. Churchgoing was, as I have
said, no part of his regular life. It was no part of his life in London.
But I do not think he ever failed in it at the Universities or in the
country. The assembling for prayer meant for him something deeper in
both the religious and the human sense, where ancient learning and piety
breathed through the consecrated edifice, or where only the figurative
'two or three' were 'gathered together' within it. A memorial tablet now
marks the spot at which on this occasion the sweet grave face and the
venerable head were so often seen. It has been placed by the direction
of Lady Martin on the adjoining wall.

It was in the September of this year that Mr. Browning heard of the
death of M. Joseph Milsand. This name represented for him one of the few
close friendships which were to remain until the end, unclouded in
fact and in remembrance; and although some weight may be given to those
circumstances of their lives which precluded all possibility of friction
and risk of disenchantment, I believe their rooted sympathy, and Mr.
Browning's unfailing powers of appreciation would, in all possible
cases, have maintained the bond intact. The event was at the last
sudden, but happily not quite unexpected.

Many other friends had passed by this time out of the poet's life--those
of a younger, as well as his own and an older generation. Miss Haworth
died in 1883. Charles Dickens, with whom he had remained on the most
cordial terms, had walked between him and his son at Thackeray's
funeral, to receive from him, only seven years later, the same pious
office. Lady Augusta Stanley, the daughter of his old friend, Lady
Elgin, was dead, and her husband, the Dean of Westminster. So also were
'Barry Cornwall' and John Forster, Alfred Domett, and Thomas Carlyle,
Mr. Cholmondeley and Lord Houghton; others still, both men and women,
whose love for him might entitle them to a place in his Biography, but
whom I could at most only mention by name.

For none of these can his feeling have been more constant or more
disinterested than that which bound him to Carlyle. He visited him
at Chelsea in the last weary days of his long life, as often as their
distance from each other and his own engagements allowed. Even the man's
posthumous self-disclosures scarcely availed to destroy the affectionate
reverence which he had always felt for him. He never ceased to defend
him against the charge of unkindness to his wife, or to believe that in
the matter of their domestic unhappiness she was the more responsible
of the two.* Yet Carlyle had never rendered him that service, easy as it
appears, which one man of letters most justly values from another:
that of proclaiming the admiration which he privately expresses for his
works. The fact was incomprehensible to Mr. Browning--it was so foreign
to his own nature; and he commented on it with a touch, though merely a
touch, of bitterness, when repeating to a friend some almost extravagant
eulogium which in earlier days he had received from him tete-a-tete. 'If
only,' he said, 'those words had been ever repeated in public, what good
they might have done me!'

     * He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I
     believe little liking was lost between them.  He told a
     comical story of how he had once, unintentionally but rather
     stupidly, annoyed her. She had asked him, as he was standing
     by her tea-table, to put the kettle back on the fire.  He
     took it out of her hands, but, preoccupied by the
     conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the
     hearthrug.  It was some time before he could be made to see
     that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never
     ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing
     it.

In the spring of 1886, he accepted the post of Foreign Correspondent to
the Royal Academy, rendered vacant by the death of Lord Houghton. He had
long been on very friendly terms with the leading Academicians, and a
constant guest at the Banquet; and his fitness for the office admitted
of no doubt. But his nomination by the President, and the manner in
which it was ratified by the Council and general body, gave him sincere
pleasure.

Early in 1887, the 'Parleyings' appeared. Their author is still the same
Robert Browning, though here and there visibly touched by the hand
of time. Passages of sweet or majestic music, or of exquisite fancy,
alternate with its long stretches of argumentative thought; and the
light of imagination still plays, however fitfully, over statements
of opinion to which constant repetition has given a suggestion of
commonplace. But the revision of the work caused him unusual trouble.
The subjects he had chosen strained his powers of exposition; and I
think he often tried to remedy by mere verbal correction, what was a
defect in the logical arrangement of his ideas. They would slide into
each other where a visible dividing line was required. The last stage of
his life was now at hand; and the vivid return of fancy to his
boyhood's literary loves was in pathetic, perhaps not quite accidental,
coincidence with the fact. It will be well to pause at this beginning
of his decline, and recall so far as possible the image of the man who
lived, and worked, and loved, and was loved among us, during that brief
old age, and the lengthened period of level strength which had preceded
it. The record already given of his life and work supplies the outline
of the picture; but a few more personal details are required for its
completion.

Chapter 20

Constancy to Habit--Optimism--Belief in Providence--Political
Opinions--His Friendships--Reverence for Genius--Attitude towards
his Public--Attitude towards his Work--Habits of Work--His
Reading--Conversational Powers--Impulsiveness and Reserve--Nervous
Peculiarities--His Benevolence--His Attitude towards Women.

When Mr. Browning wrote to Miss Haworth, in the July of 1861, he had
said: 'I shall still grow, I hope; but my root is taken, and remains.'
He was then alluding to a special offshoot of feeling and association,
on the permanence of which it is not now necessary to dwell; but it
is certain that he continued growing up to a late age, and that the
development was only limited by those general roots, those fixed
conditions of his being, which had predetermined its form. This
progressive intellectual vitality is amply represented in his works; it
also reveals itself in his letters in so far as I have been allowed to
publish them. I only refer to it to give emphasis to a contrasted or
corresponding characteristic: his aversion to every thought of change. I
have spoken of his constancy to all degrees of friendship and love. What
he loved once he loved always, from the dearest man or woman to whom his
allegiance had been given, to the humblest piece of furniture which had
served him. It was equally true that what he had done once he was wont,
for that very reason, to continue doing. The devotion to habits of
feeling extended to habits of life; and although the lower constancy
generally served the purposes of the higher, it also sometimes clashed
with them. It conspired with his ready kindness of heart to make him
subject to circumstances which at first appealed to him through that
kindness, but lay really beyond its scope. This statement, it is true,
can only fully apply to the latter part of his life. His powers of
reaction must originally have been stronger, as well as freer from the
paralysis of conflicting motive and interest. The marked shrinking from
effort in any untried direction, which was often another name for his
stability, could scarcely have coexisted with the fresher and more
curious interest in men and things; we know indeed from recorded facts
that it was a feeling of later growth; and it visibly increased with the
periodical nervous exhaustion of his advancing years. I am convinced,
nevertheless, that, when the restiveness of boyhood had passed away,
Mr. Browning's strength was always more passive than active; that he
habitually made the best of external conditions rather than tried to
change them. He was a 'fighter' only by the brain. And on this point,
though on this only, his work is misleading.

The acquiescent tendency arose in some degree from two equally prominent
characteristics of Mr. Browning's nature: his optimism, and his belief
in direct Providence; and these again represented a condition of
mind which was in certain respects a quality, but must in others be
recognized as a defect. It disposed him too much to make a virtue of
happiness. It tended also to the ignoring or denying of many incidental
possibilities, and many standing problems of human suffering. The first
part of this assertion is illustrated by 'The Two Poets of Croisic',
in which Mr. Browning declares that, other conditions being equal,
the greater poet will have been he who led the happier life, who most
completely--and we must take this in the human as well as religious
sense--triumphed over suffering. The second has its proof in the
contempt for poetic melancholy which flashes from the supposed utterance
of Shakespeare in 'At the Mermaid'; its negative justification in the
whole range of his work.

Such facts may be hard to reconcile with others already known of Mr.
Browning's nature, or already stated concerning it; but it is in the
depths of that nature that the solution of this, as of more than one
other anomaly, must be sought. It is true that remembered pain dwelt
longer with him than remembered pleasure. It is true that the last great
sorrow of his life was long felt and cherished by him as a religion, and
that it entered as such into the courage with which he first confronted
it. It is no less true that he directly and increasingly cultivated
happiness; and that because of certain sufferings which had been
connected with them, he would often have refused to live his happiest
days again.

It seems still harder to associate defective human sympathy with his
kind heart and large dramatic imagination, though that very imagination
was an important factor in the case. It forbade the collective and
mathematical estimate of human suffering, which is so much in favour
with modern philanthropy, and so untrue a measure for the individual
life; and he indirectly condemns it in 'Ferishtah's Fancies' in the
parable of 'Bean Stripes'. But his dominant individuality also barred
the recognition of any judgment or impression, any thought or feeling,
which did not justify itself from his own point of view. The barrier
would melt under the influence of a sympathetic mood, as it would
stiffen in the atmosphere of disagreement. It would yield, as did in his
case so many other things, to continued indirect pressure, whether from
his love of justice, the strength of his attachments, or his power
of imaginative absorption. But he was bound by the conditions of an
essentially creative nature. The subjectiveness, if I may for once use
that hackneyed word, had passed out of his work only to root itself more
strongly in his life. He was self-centred, as the creative nature must
inevitably be. He appeared, for this reason, more widely sympathetic in
his works than in his life, though even in the former certain grounds of
vicarious feeling remained untouched. The sympathy there displayed was
creative and obeyed its own law. That which was demanded from him by
reality was responsive, and implied submission to the law of other
minds.

Such intellectual egotism is unconnected with moral selfishness, though
it often unconsciously does its work. Were it otherwise, I should have
passed over in silence this aspect, comprehensive though it is, of Mr.
Browning's character. He was capable of the largest self-sacrifice and
of the smallest self-denial; and would exercise either whenever love
or duty clearly pointed the way. He would, he believed, cheerfully have
done so at the command, however arbitrary, of a Higher Power; he often
spoke of the absence of such injunction, whether to endurance or action,
as the great theoretical difficulty of life for those who, like himself,
rejected or questioned the dogmatic teachings of Christianity. This
does not mean that he ignored the traditional moralities which have so
largely taken their place. They coincided in great measure with his own
instincts; and few occasions could have arisen in which they would not
be to him a sufficient guide. I may add, though this is a digression,
that he never admitted the right of genius to defy them; when such a
right had once been claimed for it in his presence, he rejoined
quickly, 'That is an error! _noblesse oblige_.' But he had difficulty in
acknowledging any abstract law which did not derive from a Higher Power;
and this fact may have been at once cause and consequence of the special
conditions of his own mind. All human or conventional obligation appeals
finally to the individual judgment; and in his case this could easily be
obscured by the always militant imagination, in regard to any subject
in which his feelings were even indirectly concerned. No one saw
more justly than he, when the object of vision was general or remote.
Whatever entered his personal atmosphere encountered a refracting medium
in which objects were decomposed, and a succession of details, each held
as it were close to the eye, blocked out the larger view.

We have seen, on the other hand, that he accepted imperfect knowledge as
part of the discipline of experience. It detracted in no sense from his
conviction of direct relations with the Creator. This was indeed the
central fact of his theology, as the absolute individual existence had
been the central fact of his metaphysics; and when he described the
fatal leap in 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' as a frantic appeal to the
Higher Powers for the 'sign' which the man's religion did not afford,
and his nature could not supply, a special dramatic sympathy was at
work within him. The third part of the epilogue to 'Dramatis Personae'
represented his own creed; though this was often accentuated in the
sense of a more personal privilege, and a perhaps less poetic mystery,
than the poem conveys. The Evangelical Christian and the subjective
idealist philosopher were curiously blended in his composition.

The transition seems violent from this old-world religion to any system
of politics applicable to the present day. They were, nevertheless,
closely allied in Mr. Browning's mind. His politics were, so far as they
went, the practical aspect of his religion. Their cardinal doctrine was
the liberty of individual growth; removal of every barrier of prejudice
or convention by which it might still be checked. He had been a Radical
in youth, and probably in early manhood; he remained, in the truest
sense of the word, a Liberal; and his position as such was defined in
the sonnet prefixed in 1886 to Mr. Andrew Reid's essay, 'Why I am a
Liberal', and bearing the same name. Its profession of faith did not,
however, necessarily bind him to any political party. It separated him
from all the newest developments of so-called Liberalism. He respected
the rights of property. He was a true patriot, hating to see his country
plunged into aggressive wars, but tenacious of her position among the
empires of the world. He was also a passionate Unionist; although the
question of our political relations with Ireland weighed less with him,
as it has done with so many others, than those considerations of law and
order, of honesty and humanity, which have been trampled under foot in
the name of Home Rule. It grieved and surprised him to find himself on
this subject at issue with so many valued friends; and no pain of Lost
Leadership was ever more angry or more intense, than that which came to
him through the defection of a great statesman whom he had honoured and
loved, from what he believed to be the right cause.

The character of Mr. Browning's friendships reveals itself in great
measure in even a simple outline of his life. His first friends of
his own sex were almost exclusively men of letters, by taste if not by
profession; the circumstances of his entrance into society made this a
matter of course. In later years he associated on cordial terms with
men of very various interests and professions; and only writers of
conspicuous merit, whether in prose or poetry, attracted him as such. No
intercourse was more congenial to him than that of the higher class of
English clergymen. He sympathized in their beliefs even when he did not
share them. Above all he loved their culture; and the love of culture in
general, of its old classic forms in particular, was as strong in him as
if it had been formed by all the natural and conventional associations
of a university career. He had hearty friends and appreciators among the
dignitaries of the Church--successive Archbishops and Bishops, Deans
of Westminster and St. Paul's. They all knew the value of the great
freelance who fought like the gods of old with the regular army. No
name, however, has been mentioned in the poet's family more frequently
or with more affection than that of the Rev. J. D. W. Williams, Vicar
of Bottisham in Cambridgeshire. The mutual acquaintance, which was made
through Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett,
was prepared by Mr. Williams' great love for his poems, of which he
translated many into Latin and Greek; but I am convinced that Mr.
Browning's delight in his friend's classical attainments was quite as
great as his gratification in the tribute he himself derived from them.

His love of genius was a worship: and in this we must include his whole
life. Nor was it, as this feeling so often is, exclusively exercised
upon the past. I do not suppose his more eminent contemporaries ever
quite knew how generous his enthusiasm for them had been, how free from
any under-current of envy, or impulse to avoidable criticism. He could
not endure even just censure of one whom he believed, or had believed
to be great. I have seen him wince under it, though no third person was
present, and heard him answer, 'Don't! don't!' as if physical pain were
being inflicted on him. In the early days he would make his friend, M.
de Monclar, draw for him from memory the likenesses of famous writers
whom he had known in Paris; the sketches thus made of George Sand and
Victor Hugo are still in the poet's family. A still more striking
and very touching incident refers to one of the winters, probably the
second, which he spent in Paris. He was one day walking with little Pen,
when Beranger came in sight, and he bade the child 'run up to' or 'run
past that gentleman, and put his hand for a moment upon him.' This was
a great man, he afterwards explained, and he wished his son to be able
by-and-by to say that if he had not known, he had at all events touched
him. Scientific genius ranked with him only second to the poetical.

Mr. Browning's delicate professional sympathies justified some
sensitiveness on his own account; but he was, I am convinced, as free
from this quality as a man with a poet-nature could possibly be. It may
seem hazardous to conjecture how serious criticism would have affected
him. Few men so much 'reviewed' have experienced so little. He was by
turns derided or ignored, enthusiastically praised, zealously analyzed
and interpreted: but the independent judgment which could embrace at
once the quality of his mind and its defects, is almost absent--has been
so at all events during later years--from the volumes which have been
written about him. I am convinced, nevertheless, that he would have
accepted serious, even adverse criticism, if it had borne the impress of
unbiassed thought and genuine sincerity. It could not be otherwise with
one in whom the power of reverence was so strongly marked.

He asked but one thing of his reviewers, as he asked but one thing of
his larger public. The first demand is indicated in a letter to Mrs.
Frank Hill, of January 31, 1884.

Dear Mrs. Hill,--Could you befriend me? The 'Century' prints a little
insignificance of mine--an impromptu sonnet--but prints it _correctly_.
The 'Pall Mall' pleases to extract it--and produces what I enclose:
one line left out, and a note of admiration (!) turned into an I, and
a superfluous 'the' stuck in--all these blunders with the correctly
printed text before it! So does the charge of unintelligibility attach
itself to your poor friend--who can kick nobody. Robert Browning.

The carelessness often shown in the most friendly quotation could hardly
be absent from that which was intended to support a hostile view; and
the only injustice of which he ever complained, was what he spoke of
as falsely condemning him out of his own mouth. He used to say: 'If a
critic declares that any poem of mine is unintelligible, the reader
may go to it and judge for himself; but, if it is made to appear
unintelligible by a passage extracted from it and distorted by
misprints, I have no redress.' He also failed to realize those
conditions of thought, and still more of expression, which made him
often on first reading difficult to understand; and as the younger
generation of his admirers often deny those difficulties where they
exist, as emphatically as their grandfathers proclaimed them where they
did not, public opinion gave him little help in the matter.

The second (unspoken) request was in some sense an antithesis to the
first. Mr. Browning desired to be read accurately but not literally. He
deprecated the constant habit of reading him into his work; whether in
search of the personal meaning of a given passage or poem, or in the
light of a foregone conclusion as to what that meaning must be. The
latter process was that generally preferred, because the individual mind
naturally seeks its own reflection in the poet's work, as it does in the
facts of nature. It was stimulated by the investigations of the Browning
Societies, and by the partial familiarity with his actual life which
constantly supplied tempting, if untrustworthy clues. It grew out of the
strong personal as well as literary interest which he inspired. But the
tendency to listen in his work for a single recurrent note always struck
him as analogous to the inspection of a picture gallery with eyes blind
to every colour but one; and the act of sympathy often involved in this
mode of judgment was neutralized for him by the limitation of his genius
which it presupposed. His general objection to being identified with
his works is set forth in 'At the Mermaid', and other poems of the same
volume, in which it takes the form of a rather captious protest against
inferring from the poet any habit or quality of the man; and where also,
under the impulse of the dramatic mood, he enforces the lesson by saying
more than he can possibly mean. His readers might object that his
human personality was so often plainly revealed in his poetic utterance
(whether or not that of Shakespeare was), and so often also avowed by
it, that the line which divided them became impossible to draw. But he
again would have rejoined that the Poet could never express himself with
any large freedom, unless a fiction of impersonality were granted to
him. He might also have alleged, he often did allege, that in his case
the fiction would hold a great deal of truth; since, except in
the rarest cases, the very fact of poetic, above all of dramatic
reproduction, detracts from the reality of the thought or feeling
reproduced. It introduces the alloy of fancy without which the fixed
outlines of even living experience cannot be welded into poetic form. He
claimed, in short, that in judging of his work, one should allow for the
action in it of the constructive imagination, in the exercise of which
all deeper poetry consists. The form of literalism, which showed itself
in seeking historical authority for every character or incident which he
employed by way of illustration, was especially irritating to him.

I may (as indeed I must) concede this much, without impugning either
the pleasure or the gratitude with which he recognized the increasing
interest in his poems, and, if sometimes exhibited in a mistaken form,
the growing appreciation of them.

There was another and more striking peculiarity in Mr. Browning's
attitude towards his works: his constant conviction that the latest must
be the best, because the outcome of the fullest mental experience, and
of the longest practice in his art. He was keenly alive to the necessary
failings of youthful literary production; he also practically denied to
it that quality which so often places it at an advantage over that, not
indeed of more mature manhood, but at all events of advancing age. There
was much in his own experience to blind him to the natural effects of
time; it had been a prolonged triumph over them. But the delusion, in so
far as it was one, lay deeper than the testimony of such experience, and
would I think have survived it. It was the essence of his belief that
the mind is superior to physical change; that it may be helped or
hindered by its temporary alliance with the body, but will none the less
outstrip it in their joint course; and as intellect was for him the life
of poetry, so was the power of poetry independent of bodily progress and
bodily decline. This conviction pervaded his life. He learned, though
happily very late, to feel age an impediment; he never accepted it as a
disqualification.

He finished his work very carefully. He had the better right to
resent any garbling of it, that this habitually took place through
his punctuation, which was always made with the fullest sense of its
significance to any but the baldest style, and of its special importance
to his own. I have heard him say: 'People accuse me of not taking pains!
I take nothing _but_ pains!' And there was indeed a curious contrast
between the irresponsible, often strangely unquestioned, impulse to
which the substance of each poem was due, and the conscientious labour
which he always devoted to its form. The laborious habit must have grown
upon him; it was natural that it should do so as thought gained the
ascendency over emotion in what he had to say. Mrs. Browning told Mr.
Val Prinsep that her husband 'worked at a great rate;' and this fact
probably connected itself with the difficulty he then found in altering
the form or wording of any particular phrase; he wrote most frequently
under that lyrical inspiration in which the idea and the form are least
separable from each other. We know, however, that in the later editions
of his old work he always corrected where he could; and if we notice
the changed lines in 'Paracelsus' or 'Sordello', as they appear in the
edition of 1863, or the slighter alterations indicated for the last
reprint of his works, we are struck by the care evinced in them for
greater smoothness of expression, as well as for greater accuracy and
force.

He produced less rapidly in later life, though he could throw off
impromptu verses, whether serious or comical, with the utmost ease.
His work was then of a kind which required more deliberation; and other
claims had multiplied upon his time and thoughts. He was glad to have
accomplished twenty or thirty lines in a morning. After lunch-time, for
many years, he avoided, when possible, even answering a note. But he
always counted a day lost on which he had not written something; and in
those last years on which we have yet to enter, he complained bitterly
of the quantity of ephemeral correspondence which kept him back from
his proper work. He once wrote, on the occasion of a short illness which
confined him to the house, 'All my power of imagination seems gone. I
might as well be in bed!' He repeatedly determined to write a poem every
day, and once succeeded for a fortnight in doing so. He was then in
Paris, preparing 'Men and Women'. 'Childe Roland' and 'Women and Roses'
were among those produced on this plan; the latter having been suggested
by some flowers sent to his wife. The lyrics in 'Ferishtah's Fancies'
were written, I believe, on consecutive days; and the intention renewed
itself with his last work, though it cannot have been maintained.

He was not as great a reader in later as in earlier years; he had
neither time nor available strength to be so if he had wished; and he
absorbed almost unconsciously every item which added itself to the
sum of general knowledge. Books had indeed served for him their most
important purpose when they had satisfied the first curiosities of his
genius, and enabled it to establish its independence. His mind was made
up on the chief subjects of contemporary thought, and what was novel or
controversial in its proceeding had no attraction for him. He would read
anything, short of an English novel, to a friend whose eyes required
this assistance; but such pleasure as he derived from the act was more
often sympathetic than spontaneous, even when he had not, as he often
had, selected for it a book which he already knew. In the course of his
last decade he devoted himself for a short time to the study of Spanish
and Hebrew. The Spanish dramatists yielded him a fund of new enjoyment;
and he delighted in his power of reading Hebrew in its most difficult
printed forms. He also tried, but with less result, to improve his
knowledge of German. His eyesight defied all obstacles of bad paper and
ancient type, and there was anxiety as well as pleasure to those about
him in his unfailing confidence in its powers. He never wore spectacles,
nor had the least consciousness of requiring them. He would read an
old closely printed volume by the waning light of a winter afternoon,
positively refusing to use a lamp. Indeed his preference of the faintest
natural light to the best that could be artificially produced was
perhaps the one suggestion of coming change. He used for all purposes
a single eye; for the two did not combine in their action, the right
serving exclusively for near, the left for distant objects. This was why
in walking he often closed the right eye; while it was indispensable
to his comfort in reading, not only that the light should come from
the right side, but that the left should be shielded from any luminous
object, like the fire, which even at the distance of half the length of
a room would strike on his field of vision and confuse the near sight.

His literary interest became increasingly centred on records of the
lives of men and women; especially of such men and women as he had
known; he was generally curious to see the newly published biographies,
though often disappointed by them. He would also read, even for his
amusement, good works of French or Italian fiction. His allegiance to
Balzac remained unshaken, though he was conscious of lengthiness when he
read him aloud. This author's deep and hence often poetic realism was,
I believe, bound up with his own earliest aspirations towards dramatic
art. His manner of reading aloud a story which he already knew was
the counterpart of his own method of construction. He would claim his
listener's attention for any apparently unimportant fact which had a
part to play in it: he would say: 'Listen to this description: it will
be important. Observe this character: you will see a great deal more of
him or her.' We know that in his own work nothing was thrown away; no
note was struck which did not add its vibration to the general utterance
of the poem; and his habitual generosity towards a fellow-worker
prompted him to seek and recognize the same quality, even in productions
where it was less conspicuous than in his own. The patient reading which
he required for himself was justified by that which he always demanded
for others; and he claimed it less in his own case for his possible
intricacies of thought or style, than for that compactness of living
structure in which every detail or group of details was essential to the
whole, and in a certain sense contained it. He read few things with so
much pleasure as an occasional chapter in the Old Testament.

Mr. Browning was a brilliant talker; he was admittedly more a talker
than a conversationalist. But this quality had nothing in common with
self-assertion or love of display. He had too much respect for the
acquirements of other men to wish to impose silence on those who
were competent to speak; and he had great pleasure in listening to a
discussion on any subject in which he was interested, and on which
he was not specially informed. He never willingly monopolized the
conversation; but when called upon to take a prominent part in it,
either with one person or with several, the flow of remembered knowledge
and revived mental experience, combined with the ingenuous eagerness to
vindicate some point in dispute would often carry him away; while his
hearers, nearly as often, allowed him to proceed from absence of any
desire to interrupt him. This great mental fertility had been prepared
by the wide reading and thorough assimilation of his early days; and it
was only at a later, and in certain respects less vigorous period, that
its full bearing could be seen. His memory for passing occurrences, even
such as had impressed him, became very weak; it was so before he had
grown really old; and he would urge this fact in deprecation of any want
of kindness or sympathy, which a given act of forgetfulness might seem
to involve. He had probably always, in matters touching his own life,
the memory of feelings more than that of facts. I think this has been
described as a peculiarity of the poet-nature; and though this memory
is probably the more tenacious of the two, it is no safe guide to the
recovery of facts, still less to that of their order and significance.
Yet up to the last weeks, even the last conscious days of his life,
his remembrance of historical incident, his aptness of literary
illustration, never failed him. His dinner-table anecdotes supplied,
of course, no measure for this spontaneous reproductive power; yet some
weight must be given to the number of years during which he could
abound in such stories, and attest their constant appropriateness by not
repeating them.

This brilliant mental quality had its drawback, on which I have already
touched in a rather different connection: the obstacle which it created
to even serious and private conversation on any subject on which he was
not neutral. Feeling, imagination, and the vividness of personal points
of view, constantly thwarted the attempt at a dispassionate exchange of
ideas. But the balance often righted itself when the excitement of
the discussion was at an end; and it would even become apparent that
expressions or arguments which he had passed over unheeded, or as it
seemed unheard, had stored themselves in his mind and borne fruit there.

I think it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined
impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually
reticent where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness
and the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human
temperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other
their sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have
modified each other. But the partial secretiveness had also occasionally
its conscious motives, some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and from
this point of view it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the more
expansive quality. He never, however, intentionally withheld from others
such things as it concerned them to know. His intellectual and religious
convictions were open to all who seriously sought them; and if, even
on such points, he did not appear communicative, it was because he took
more interest in any subject of conversation which did not directly
centre in himself.

Setting aside the delicacies which tend to self-concealment, and for
which he had been always more or less conspicuous; excepting also the
pride which would co-operate with them, all his inclinations were in
the direction of truth; there was no quality which he so much loved
and admired. He thought aloud wherever he could trust himself to do so.
Impulse predominated in all the active manifestations of his nature. The
fiery child and the impatient boy had left their traces in the man; and
with them the peculiar childlike quality which the man of genius never
outgrows, and which, in its mingled waywardness and sweetness, was
present in Robert Browning till almost his dying day. There was also a
recurrent touch of hardness, distinct from the comparatively ungenial
mood of his earlier years of widowhood; and this, like his reserve,
seemed to conflict with his general character, but in reality harmonized
with it. It meant, not that feeling was suspended in him, but that it
was compressed. It was his natural response to any opposition which his
reasonings could not shake nor his will overcome, and which, rightly
or not, conveyed to him the sense of being misunderstood. It reacted in
pain for others, but it lay with an aching weight on his own heart, and
was thrown off in an upheaval of the pent-up kindliness and affection,
the moment their true springs were touched. The hardening power in his
composition, though fugitive and comparatively seldom displayed, was in
fact proportioned to his tenderness; and no one who had not seen him
in the revulsion from a hard mood, or the regret for it, knew what that
tenderness could be.

Underlying all the peculiarities of his nature, its strength and its
weakness, its exuberance and its reserves, was the nervous excitability
of which I have spoken in an earlier chapter. I have heard him say:
'I am nervous to such a degree that I might fancy I could not enter a
drawing-room, if I did not know from long experience that I can do it.'
He did not desire to conceal this fact, nor need others conceal it for
him; since it was only calculated to disarm criticism and to
strengthen sympathy. The special vital power which he derived from this
organization need not be reaffirmed. It carried also its inevitable
disablements. Its resources were not always under his own control; and
he frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind which would
seize him on any conventional emergency not included in the daily social
routine. In a real one he was never at fault. He never failed in a
sympathetic response or a playful retort; he was always provided with
the exact counter requisite in a game of words. In this respect indeed
he had all the powers of the conversationalist; and the perfect ease and
grace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, arose probably
far more from his innate human and social qualities than from even his
familiar intercourse with the world. But he could not extemporize a
speech. He could not on the spur of the moment string together the
more or less set phrases which an after-dinner oration demands. All his
friends knew this, and spared him the necessity of refusing. He had
once a headache all day, because at a dinner, the night before, a false
report had reached him that he was going to be asked to speak. This
alone would have sufficed to prevent him from accepting any public
post. He confesses the disability in a pretty note to Professor Knight,
written in reference to a recent meeting of the Wordsworth Society.

19, Warwick Crescent, W.: May 9, '84.

My dear Professor Knight,--I seem ungracious and ungrateful, but am
neither; though, now that your festival is over, I wish I could have
overcome my scruples and apprehensions. It is hard to say--when kind
people press one to 'just speak for a minute'--that the business,
so easy to almost anybody, is too bewildering for oneself. Ever truly
yours, Robert Browning.

A Rectorial Address need probably not have been extemporized, but it
would also have been irksome to him to prepare. He was not accustomed
to uttering himself in prose except within the limits, and under
the incitements, of private correspondence. The ceremonial publicity
attaching to all official proceedings would also have inevitably been a
trial to him. He did at one of the Wordsworth Society meetings speak a
sentence from the chair, in the absence of the appointed chairman,
who had not yet arrived; and when he had received his degree from the
University of Edinburgh he was persuaded to say a few words to the
assembled students, in which I believe he thanked them for their warm
welcome; but such exceptions only proved the rule.

We cannot doubt that the excited stream of talk which sometimes flowed
from him was, in the given conditions of mind and imagination, due to
a nervous impulse which he could not always restrain; and that the
effusiveness of manner with which he greeted alike old friends and new,
arose also from a momentary want of self-possession. We may admit this
the more readily that in both cases it was allied to real kindness
of intention, above all in the latter, where the fear of seeming cold
towards even a friend's friend, strove increasingly with the defective
memory for names and faces which were not quite familiar to him. He was
also profoundly averse to the idea of posing as a man of superior
gifts; having indeed, in regard to social intercourse, as little of the
fastidiousness of genius as of its bohemianism. He, therefore, made it
a rule, from the moment he took his place as a celebrity in the London
world, to exert himself for the amusement of his fellow-guests at a
dinner-table, whether their own mental resources were great or small;
and this gave rise to a frequent effort at conversation, which converted
itself into a habit, and ended by carrying him away. This at least was
his own conviction in the matter. The loud voice, which so many persons
must have learned to think habitual with him, bore also traces of this
half-unconscious nervous stimulation.* It was natural to him in anger
or excitement, but did not express his gentler or more equable states
of feeling; and when he read to others on a subject which moved him,
his utterance often subsided into a tremulous softness which left it
scarcely audible.

     * Miss Browning reminds me that loud speaking had become
     natural to him through the deafness of several of his
     intimate friends: Landor, Kirkup, Barry Cornwall, and
     previously his uncle Reuben, whose hearing had been impaired
     in early life by a blow from a cricket ball. This fact
     necessarily modifies my impression of the case, but does not
     quite destroy it.

The mental conditions under which his powers of sympathy were exercised
imposed no limits on his spontaneous human kindness. This characteristic
benevolence, or power of love, is not fully represented in Mr.
Browning's works; it is certainly not prominent in those of the later
period, during which it found the widest scope in his life; but he has
in some sense given its measure in what was intended as an illustration
of the opposite quality. He tells us, in 'Fifine at the Fair', that
while the best strength of women is to be found in their love, the best
product of a man is only yielded to hate. It is the 'indignant wine'
which has been wrung from the grape plant by its external mutilation. He
could depict it dramatically in more malignant forms of emotion; but he
could only think of it personally as the reaction of a nobler feeling
which has been gratuitously outraged or repressed.

He more directly, and still more truly, described himself when he said
at about the same time, 'I have never at any period of my life been deaf
to an appeal made to me in the name of love.' He was referring to an
experience of many years before, in which he had even yielded his better
judgment to such an appeal; and it was love in the larger sense for
which the concession had been claimed.

It was impossible that so genuine a poet, and so real a man, should be
otherwise than sensitive to the varied forms of feminine attraction. He
avowedly preferred the society of women to that of men; they were, as
I have already said, his habitual confidants, and, evidently, his most
frequent correspondents; and though he could have dispensed with woman
friends as he dispensed with many other things--though he most often won
them without knowing it--his frank interest in their sex, and the often
caressing kindness of manner in which it was revealed, might justly
be interpreted by individual women into a conscious appeal to their
sympathy. It was therefore doubly remarkable that on the ground of
benevolence, he scarcely discriminated between the claim on him of a
woman, and that of a man; and his attitude towards women was in this
respect so distinctive as to merit some words of notice. It was large,
generous, and unconventional; but, for that very reason, it was not,
in the received sense of the word, chivalrous. Chivalry proceeds on
the assumption that women not only cannot, but should not, take care
of themselves in any active struggle with life; Mr. Browning had no
theoretical objection to a woman's taking care of herself. He saw no
reason why, if she was hit, she should not hit back again, or even
why, if she hit, she should not receive an answering blow. He responded
swiftly to every feminine appeal to his kindness or his protection,
whether arising from physical weakness or any other obvious cause of
helplessness or suffering; but the appeal in such cases lay first to his
humanity, and only in second order to his consideration of sex. He would
have had a man flogged who beat his wife; he would have had one flogged
who ill-used a child--or an animal: he was notedly opposed to any
sweeping principle or practice of vivisection. But he never quite
understood that the strongest women are weak, or at all events
vulnerable, in the very fact of their sex, through the minor traditions
and conventions with which society justly, indeed necessarily,
surrounds them. Still less did he understand those real, if impalpable,
differences between men and women which correspond to the difference
of position. He admitted the broad distinctions which have become
proverbial, and are therefore only a rough measure of the truth. He
could say on occasion: 'You ought to _be_ better; you are a woman; I ought
to _know_ better; I am a man.' But he had had too large an experience of
human nature to attach permanent weight to such generalizations; and
they found certainly no expression in his works. Scarcely an instance of
a conventional, or so-called man's woman, occurs in their whole range.
Excepting perhaps the speaker in 'A Woman's Last Word', 'Pompilia' and
'Mildred' are the nearest approach to it; and in both of these we
find qualities of imagination or thought which place them outside the
conventional type. He instinctively judged women, both morally and
intellectually, by the same standards as men; and when confronted by
some divergence of thought or feeling, which meant, in the woman's case,
neither quality nor defect in any strict sense of the word, but simply
a nature trained to different points of view, an element of perplexity
entered into his probable opposition. When the difference presented
itself in a neutral aspect, it affected him like the casual
peculiarities of a family or a group, or a casual disagreement between
things of the same kind. He would say to a woman friend: 'You women are
so different from men!' in the tone in which he might have said, 'You
Irish, or you Scotch, are so different from Englishmen;' or again, 'It
is impossible for a man to judge how a woman would act in such or such
a case; you are so different;' the case being sometimes one in which
it would be inconceivable to a normal woman, and therefore to the
generality of men, that she should act in any but one way.

The vague sense of mystery with which the poet's mind usually invests
a being of the opposite sex, had thus often in him its counterpart in
a puzzled dramatic curiosity which constituted an equal ground of
interest.

This virtual admission of equality between the sexes, combined with his
Liberal principles to dispose him favourably towards the movement for
Female Emancipation. He approved of everything that had been done for
the higher instruction of women, and would, not very long ago,
have supported their admission to the Franchise. But he was so much
displeased by the more recent action of some of the lady advocates of
Women's Rights, that, during the last year of his life, after various
modifications of opinion, he frankly pledged himself to the opposite
view. He had even visions of writing a tragedy or drama in support of
it. The plot was roughly sketched, and some dialogue composed, though I
believe no trace of this remains.

It is almost implied by all I have said, that he possessed in every mood
the charm of perfect simplicity of manner. On this point he resembled
his father. His tastes lay also in the direction of great simplicity of
life, though circumstances did not allow of his indulging them to the
same extent. It may interest those who never saw him to know that he
always dressed as well as the occasion required, and always with great
indifference to the subject. In Florence he wore loose clothes which
were adapted to the climate; in London his coats were cut by a good
tailor in whatever was the prevailing fashion; the change was simply
with him an incident of the situation. He had also a look of dainty
cleanliness which was heightened by the smooth healthy texture of the
skin, and in later life by the silvery whiteness of his hair.

His best photographic likenesses were those taken by Mr. Fradelle in
1881, Mr. Cameron and Mr. William Grove in 1888 and 1889.

Chapter 21

1887-1889

Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning--Removal to De Vere Gardens--Symptoms
of failing Strength--New Poems; New Edition of his Works--Letters to Mr.
George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady Martin--Primiero and Venice--Letters
to Miss Keep--The last Year in London--Asolo--Letters to Mrs.
Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith.

The last years of Mr. Browning's life were introduced by two auspicious
events, in themselves of very unequal importance, but each in its own
way significant for his happiness and his health. One was his son's
marriage on October 4, 1887, to Miss Fannie Coddington, of New York, a
lady towards whom Mr. Barrett Browning had been strongly attracted when
he was a very young man and she little more than a child; the other, his
own removal from Warwick Crescent to De Vere Gardens, which took place
in the previous June. The change of residence had long been with him
only a question of opportunity. He was once even in treaty for a piece
of ground at Kensington, and intended building a house. That in which
he had lived for so many years had faults of construction and situation
which the lapse of time rendered only more conspicuous; the Regent's
Canal Bill had also doomed it to demolition; and when an opening
presented itself for securing one in all essentials more suitable, he
was glad to seize it, though at the eleventh hour. He had mentally fixed
on the new locality in those earlier days in which he still thought his
son might eventually settle in London; and it possessed at the same time
many advantages for himself. It was warmer and more sheltered than any
which he could have found on the north side of the Park; and, in that
close vicinity to Kensington Gardens, walking might be contemplated as a
pleasure, instead of mere compulsory motion from place to place. It was
only too soon apparent that the time had passed when he could reap much
benefit from the event; but he became aware from the first moment of his
installation in the new home that the conditions of physical life had
become more favourable for him. He found an almost pathetic pleasure
in completing the internal arrangements of the well-built, commodious
house. It seems, on looking back, as if the veil had dropped before his
eyes which sometimes shrouds the keenest vision in face of an impending
change; and he had imagined, in spite of casual utterances which
disclaimed the hope, that a new lease of life was being given to him. He
had for several years been preparing for the more roomy dwelling which
he would probably some day inhabit; and handsome pieces of old furniture
had been stowed away in the house in Warwick Crescent, pending the
occasion for their use. He loved antiquities of this kind, in a manner
which sometimes recalled his father's affection for old books; and most
of these had been bought in Venice, where frequent visits to the
noted curiosity-shops had been his one bond of habit with his tourist
countrymen in that city. They matched the carved oak and massive
gildings and valuable tapestries which had carried something of Casa
Guidi into his first London home. Brass lamps that had once hung inside
chapels in some Catholic church, had long occupied the place of the
habitual gaselier; and to these was added in the following year one of
silver, also brought from Venice--the Jewish 'Sabbath lamp'. Another
acquisition, made only a few months, if indeed so long, before he left
London for the last time, was that of a set of casts representing the
Seasons, which were to stand at intervals on brackets in a certain
unsightly space on his drawing-room wall; and he had said of these,
which I think his son was procuring for him: 'Only my four little heads,
and then I shall not buy another thing for the house'--in a tone of
childlike satisfaction at his completed work.

This summer he merely went to St. Moritz, where he and his sister were,
for the greater part of their stay, again guests of Mrs. Bloomfield
Moore. He was determined to give the London winter a fuller trial in the
more promising circumstances of his new life, and there was much to
be done in De Vere Gardens after his return. His father's six thousand
books, together with those he had himself accumulated, were for the
first time to be spread out in their proper array, instead of crowding
together in rows, behind and behind each other. The new bookcases, which
could stand in the large new study, were waiting to receive them. He did
not know until he tried to fulfil it how greatly the task would tax his
strength. The library was, I believe, never completely arranged.

During this winter of 1887-8 his friends first perceived that a change
had come over him. They did not realize that his life was drawing to a
close; it was difficult to do so when so much of the former elasticity
remained; when he still proclaimed himself 'quite well' so long as he
was not definitely suffering. But he was often suffering; one terrible
cold followed another. There was general evidence that he had at last
grown old. He, however, made no distinct change in his mode of life. Old
habits, suspended by his longer imprisonments to the house, were resumed
as soon as he was set free. He still dined out; still attended the
private view of every, or almost every art exhibition. He kept up his
unceasing correspondence--in one or two cases voluntarily added to it;
though he would complain day after day that his fingers ached from
the number of hours through which he had held his pen. One of the
interesting letters of this period was written to Mr. George Bainton, of
Coventry, to be used, as that gentleman tells me, in the preparation of
a lecture on the 'Art of Effective Written Composition'. It confirms the
statement I have had occasion to make, that no extraneous influence ever
permanently impressed itself on Mr. Browning's style.

29, De Vere Gardens: Oct. 6, '87.

Dear Sir,--I was absent from London when your kind letter reached
this house, to which I removed some time ago--hence the delay in
acknowledging your kindness and replying, in some degree, to your
request. All I can say, however, is this much--and very little--that,
by the indulgence of my father and mother, I was allowed to live my own
life and choose my own course in it; which, having been the same from
the beginning to the end, necessitated a permission to read nearly all
sorts of books, in a well-stocked and very miscellaneous library. I had
no other direction than my parents' taste for whatever was highest and
best in literature; but I found out for myself many forgotten fields
which proved the richest of pastures: and, so far as a preference of
a particular 'style' is concerned, I believe mine was just the same
at first as at last. I cannot name any one author who exclusively
influenced me in that respect,--as to the fittest expression of
thought--but thought itself had many impulsions from very various
sources, a matter not to your present purpose. I repeat, this is
very little to say, but all in my power--and it is heartily at your
service--if not as of any value, at least as a proof that I gratefully
feel your kindness, and am, dear Sir Yours very truly, Robert Browning.

In December 1887 he wrote 'Rosny', the first poem in 'Asolando', and
that which perhaps most displays his old subtle dramatic power; it was
followed by 'Beatrice Signorini' and 'Flute-Music'. Of the 'Bad Dreams'
two or three were also written in London, I think, during that winter.
The 'Ponte dell' Angelo' was imagined during the next autumn in Venice.
'White Witchcraft' had been suggested in the same summer by a letter
from a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads
to be seen there. In the spring of 1888 he began revising his works for
the last, and now entirely uniform edition, which was issued in monthly
volumes, and completed by the July of 1889. Important verbal corrections
were made in 'The Inn Album', though not, I think, in many of the later
poems; but that in which he found most room for improvement was, very
naturally, 'Pauline'; and he wrote concerning it to Mr. Smith the
following interesting letter.

29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Feb. 27, '88.

My dear Smith,--When I received the Proofs of the 1st. vol. on Friday
evening, I made sure of returning them next day--so accurately are they
printed. But on looking at that unlucky 'Pauline', which I have not
touched for half a century, a sudden impulse came over me to take the
opportunity of just correcting the most obvious faults of expression,
versification and construction,--letting the _thoughts_--such as they
are--remain exactly as at first: I have only treated the imperfect
expression of these just as I have now and then done for an amateur
friend, if he asked me and I liked him enough to do so. Not a line
is displaced, none added, none taken away. I have just sent it to the
printer's with an explanatory word: and told him that he will have less
trouble with all the rest of the volumes put together than with this
little portion. I expect to return all the rest to-morrow or next day.

As for the sketch--the portrait--it admits of no very superior
treatment: but, as it is the only one which makes me out youngish,--I
should like to know if an artist could not strengthen the thing by a
pencil touch or two in a few minutes--improve the eyes, eyebrows, and
mouth somewhat. The head too wants improvement: were Pen here he could
manage it all in a moment. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning.

Any attempt at modifying the expressed thoughts of his twenty-first year
would have been, as he probably felt, a futile tampering with the work
of another man; his literary conscience would have forbidden this, if it
had been otherwise possible. But he here proves by his own words what I
have already asserted, that the power of detail correction either was,
or had become by experience, very strong in him.

The history of this summer of 1888 is partly given in a letter to Lady
Martin.

29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Aug. 12, '88.

Dear Lady Martin,--The date of your kind letter,--June 18,--would affect
me indeed, but for the good conscience I retain despite of appearances.
So uncertain have I been as to the course we should take,--my sister and
myself--when the time came for leaving town, that it seemed as if
'next week' might be the eventful week when all doubts would
disappear--perhaps the strange cold weather and interminable rain made
it hard to venture from under one's roof even in fancy of being better
lodged elsewhere. This very day week it was the old story--cold--then
followed the suffocating eight or nine tropical days which forbade any
more delay, and we leave to-morrow for a place called Primiero, near
Feltre--where my son and his wife assure us we may be comfortably--and
coolly--housed, until we can accompany them to Venice, which we may stay
at for a short time. You remember our troubles at Llangollen about the
purchase of a Venetian house . . . ? My son, however, nothing daunted,
and acting under abler counsels than I was fortunate enough to obtain,*
has obtained a still more desirable acquisition, in the shape of the
well-known Rezzonico Palace (that of Pope Clement 13th)--and, I believe,
is to be congratulated on his bargain. I cannot profess the same
interest in this as in the earlier object of his ambition, but am quite
satisfied by the evident satisfaction of the 'young people'. So,--by the
old law of compensation,--while we may expect pleasant days abroad--our
chance is gone of once again enjoying your company in your own lovely
Vale of Llangollen;--had we not been pulled otherwise by the inducements
we could not resist,--another term of delightful weeks--each tipped
with a sweet starry Sunday at the little church leading to the
House Beautiful where we took our rest of an evening spent always
memorably--this might have been our fortunate lot once again! As it is,
perhaps we need more energetic treatment than we should get with you
--for both of us are more oppressed than ever by the exigencies of
the lengthy season, and require still more bracing air than the
gently lulling temperature of Wales. May it be doing you, and dear Sir
Theodore, all the good you deserve--throwing in the share due to us, who
must forego it! With all love from us both, ever affectionately yours
Robert Browning.

     * Those of Mr. Alexander Malcolm.

He did start for Italy on the following day, but had become so ill, that
he was on the point of postponing his departure. He suffered throughout
the journey as he had never suffered on any journey before; and during
his first few days at Primiero, could only lead the life of an invalid.
He rallied, however, as usual, under the potent effects of quiet,
fresh air, and sunshine; and fully recovered his normal state before
proceeding to Venice, where the continued sense of physical health
combined with many extraneous circumstances to convert his proposed
short stay into a long one. A letter from the mountains, addressed to a
lady who had never been abroad, and to whom he sometimes wrote with more
descriptive detail than to other friends, gives a touching glimpse of
his fresh delight in the beauties of nature, and his tender constant
sympathy with the animal creation.

Primiero: Sept. 7, '88.

. . . . .

'The weather continues exquisitely temperate, yet sunny, ever since the
clearing thunderstorm of which I must have told you in my last. It is, I
am more and more confirmed in believing, the most beautiful place I
was ever resident in: far more so than Gressoney or even St.-Pierre de
Chartreuse. You would indeed delight in seeing the magnificence of the
mountains,--the range on either side, which morning and evening, in
turn, transmute literally to gold,--I mean what I say. Their utterly
bare ridges of peaks and crags of all shape, quite naked of verdure,
glow like yellow ore; and, at times, there is a silver change, as the
sun prevails or not.

'The valley is one green luxuriance on all sides; Indian corn, with
beans, gourds, and even cabbages, filling up the interstices; and the
flowers, though not presenting any novelty to my uninstructed eyes,
yet surely more large and purely developed than I remember to have seen
elsewhere. For instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here must be
above ten feet high, every bloom faultless, and, what strikes me as
peculiar, every leaf on the stalk from bottom to top as perfect as if no
insect existed to spoil them by a notch or speck. . . .

'. . . Did I tell you we had a little captive fox,--the most engaging
of little vixens? To my great joy she has broken her chain and escaped,
never to be recaptured, I trust. The original wild and untameable nature
was to be plainly discerned even in this early stage of the whelp's
life: she dug herself, with such baby feet, a huge hole, the use
of which was evident, when, one day, she pounced thence on a stray
turkey--allured within reach by the fragments of fox's breakfast,--the
intruder escaping with the loss of his tail. The creature came back one
night to explore the old place of captivity,--ate some food and retired.
For myself,--I continue absolutely well: I do not walk much, but for
more than amends, am in the open air all day long.'

No less striking is a short extract from a letter written in Venice to
the same friend, Miss Keep.

Ca' Alvise: Oct. 16, '88.

'Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my
mind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom
window commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the few seagulls
flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a
long purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till
presently all the rims are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb
sends before it a long column of its own essence apparently: so my day
begins.'

We feel, as we read these late, and even later words, that the lyric
imagination was renewing itself in the incipient dissolution of other
powers. It is the Browning of 'Pippa Passes' who speaks in them.

He suffered less on the whole during the winter of 1888-9. It was
already advanced when he returned to England; and the attacks of cold
and asthma were either shorter or less frequent. He still maintained
throughout the season his old social routine, not omitting his yearly
visit, on the anniversary of Waterloo, to Lord Albemarle, its
last surviving veteran. He went for some days to Oxford during the
commemoration week, and had for the first, as also last time, the
pleasure of Dr. Jowett's almost exclusive society at his beloved Balliol
College. He proceeded with his new volume of poems. A short letter
written to Professor Knight, June 16, and of which the occasion speaks
for itself, fitly closes the labours of his life; for it states his view
of the position and function of poetry, in one brief phrase, which might
form the text to an exhaustive treatise upon them.

29, De Vere Gardens, W.: June 16, 1889.

My dear Professor Knight,--I am delighted to hear that there is a
likelihood of your establishing yourself in Glasgow, and illustrating
Literature as happily as you have expounded Philosophy at St. Andrews.
It is certainly the right order of things: Philosophy first, and Poetry,
which is its highest outcome, afterward--and much harm has been done by
reversing the natural process. How capable you are of doing justice
to the highest philosophy embodied in poetry, your various studies of
Wordsworth prove abundantly; and for the sake of both Literature and
Philosophy I wish you success with all my heart.

Believe me, dear Professor Knight, yours very truly, Robert Browning.

But he experienced, when the time came, more than his habitual
disinclination for leaving home. A distinct shrinking from the fatigue
of going to Italy now added itself to it; for he had suffered when
travelling back in the previous winter, almost as much as on the outward
journey, though he attributed the distress to a different cause: his
nerves were, he thought, shaken by the wearing discomforts incidental
on a broken tooth. He was for the first time painfully sensitive to
the vibration of the train. He had told his friends, both in Venice and
London, that so far as he was able to determine, he would never return
to Italy. But it was necessary he should go somewhere, and he had no
alternative plan. For a short time in this last summer he entertained
the idea of a visit to Scotland; it had indeed definitely shaped itself
in his mind; but an incident, trivial in itself, though he did not think
it so, destroyed the first scheme, and it was then practically too late
to form another. During the second week in August the weather broke.
There could no longer be any question of the northward journey without
even a fixed end in view. His son and daughter had taken possession of
their new home, the Palazzo Rezzonico, and were anxious to see him and
Miss Browning there; their wishes naturally had weight. The casting vote
in favour of Venice was given by a letter from Mrs. Bronson, proposing
Asolo as the intermediate stage. She had fitted up for herself a little
summer retreat there, and promised that her friends should, if they
joined her, be also comfortably installed. The journey was this time
propitious. It was performed without imprudent haste, and Mr. Browning
reached Asolo unfatigued and to all appearance well.

He saw this, his first love among Italian cities, at a season of the
year more favourable to its beauty than even that of his first visit;
yet he must himself have been surprised by the new rapture of admiration
which it created in him, and which seemed to grow with his lengthened
stay. This state of mind was the more striking, that new symptoms of his
physical decline were now becoming apparent, and were in themselves of a
depressing kind. He wrote to a friend in England, that the atmosphere
of Asolo, far from being oppressive, produced in him all the effects of
mountain air, and he was conscious of difficulty of breathing whenever
he walked up hill. He also suffered, as the season advanced, great
inconvenience from cold. The rooms occupied by himself and his sister
were both unprovided with fireplaces; and though the daily dinner with
Mrs. Bronson obviated the discomfort of the evenings, there remained
still too many hours of the autumnal day in which the impossibility of
heating their own little apartment must have made itself unpleasantly
felt. The latter drawback would have been averted by the fulfilment of
Mr. Browning's first plan, to be in Venice by the beginning of October,
and return to the comforts of his own home before the winter had quite
set in; but one slight motive for delay succeeded another, till at last
a more serious project introduced sufficient ground of detention. He
seemed possessed by a strange buoyancy--an almost feverish joy in life,
which blunted all sensations of physical distress, or helped him to
misinterpret them. When warned against the imprudence of remaining where
he knew he suffered from cold, and believed, rightly or wrongly, that
his asthmatic tendencies were increased, he would reply that he was
growing acclimatized--that he was quite well. And, in a fitful or
superficial sense, he must have been so.

His letters of that period are one continuous picture, glowing with
his impressions of the things which they describe. The same words will
repeat themselves as the same subject presents itself to his pen; but
the impulse to iteration scarcely ever affects us as mechanical.
It seems always a fresh response to some new stimulus to thought or
feeling, which he has received. These reach him from every side. It is
not only the Asolo of this peaceful later time which has opened before
him, but the Asolo of 'Pippa Passes' and 'Sordello'; that which first
stamped itself on his imagination in the echoes of the Court life of
Queen Catharine,* and of the barbaric wars of the Eccelini. Some of his
letters dwell especially on these early historical associations: on the
strange sense of reopening the ancient chronicle which he had so deeply
studied fifty years before. The very phraseology of the old Italian
text, which I am certain he had never glanced at from that distant time,
is audible in an account of the massacre of San Zenone, the scene of
which he has been visiting. To the same correspondent he says that
his two hours' drive to Asolo 'seemed to be a dream;' and again, after
describing, or, as he thinks, only trying to describe some beautiful
feature of the place, 'but it is indescribable!'

     * Catharine Cornaro, the dethroned queen of Cyprus.

A letter addressed to Mrs. FitzGerald, October 8, 1889, is in part a
fitting sequel to that which he had written to her from the same spot,
eleven years before.

'. . . Fortunately there is little changed here: my old
Albergo,--ruinous with earthquake--is down and done with--but few
novelties are observable--except the regrettable one that the silk
industry has been transported elsewhere--to Cornuda and other places
nearer the main railway. No more Pippas--at least of the silk-winding
sort!

'But the pretty type is far from extinct.

'Autumn is beginning to paint the foliage, but thin it as well; and
the sea of fertility all round our height, which a month ago showed
pomegranates and figs and chestnuts,--walnuts and apples all rioting
together in full glory,--all this is daily disappearing. I say nothing
of the olive and the vine. I find the Turret rather the worse for
careful weeding--the hawks which used to build there have been "shot for
food"--and the echo is sadly curtailed of its replies; still, things
are the same in the main. Shall I ever see them again, when--as I
suppose--we leave for Venice in a fortnight? . . .'

In the midst of this imaginative delight he carried into his walks the
old keen habits of observation. He would peer into the hedges for what
living things were to be found there. He would whistle softly to the
lizards basking on the low walls which border the roads, to try his old
power of attracting them.

On the 15th of October he wrote to Mrs. Skirrow, after some preliminary
description:

Then--such a view over the whole Lombard plain; not a site in view, or
_approximate_ view at least, without its story. Autumn is now painting all
the abundance of verdure,--figs, pomegranates, chestnuts, and vines, and
I don't know what else,--all in a wonderful confusion,--and now glowing
with all the colours of the rainbow. Some weeks back, the little town
was glorified by the visit of a decent theatrical troop who played in a
theatre _in_side the old palace of Queen Catharine Cornaro--utilized also
as a prison in which I am informed are at present full five if not six
malefactors guilty of stealing grapes, and the like enormities. Well,
the troop played for a fortnight together exceedingly well--high tragedy
and low comedy--and the stage-box which I occupied cost 16 francs. The
theatre had been out of use for six years, for we are out of the way
and only a baiting-place for a company pushing on to Venice. In fine, we
shall stay here probably for a week or more,--and then proceed to Pen,
at the Rezzonico; a month there, and then homewards! . . .

I delight in finding that the beloved Husband and precious friend
manages to do without the old yoke about his neck, and enjoys himself as
never anybody had a better right to do. I continue to congratulate him
on his emancipation and ourselves on a more frequent enjoyment of his
company in consequence.* Give him my true love; take mine, dearest
friend,--and my sister's love to you both goes with it. Ever
affectionately yours Robert Browning.

     * Mr. Skirrow had just resigned his post of Master in
     Chancery.

The cry of 'homewards!' now frequently recurs in his letters. We find it
in one written a week later to Mr. G. M. Smith, otherwise very
expressive of his latest condition of mind and feeling.

Asolo, Veneto, Italia:  Oct. 22, '89.

My dear Smith,--I was indeed delighted to get your letter two days ago--
for there _are_ such accidents as the loss of a parcel, even when it has
been despatched from so important a place as this city--for a regular
city it is, you must know, with all the rights of one,--older far than
Rome, being founded by the Euganeans who gave their name to the
adjoining hills.  'Fortified' is was once, assuredly, and the walls
still surround it most picturesquely though mainly in utter ruin, and
you even overrate the population, which does not now much exceed 900
souls--in the city Proper, that is--for the territory below and around
contains some 10,000.  But we are at the very top of things, garlanded
about, as it were, with a narrow line of houses,--some palatial, such as
you would be glad to see in London,--and above all towers the old
dwelling of Queen Cornaro, who was forced to exchange her Kingdom of
Cyprus for this pretty but petty dominion where she kept state in a
mimic Court, with Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, for her secretary--who has
commemorated the fact in his 'Asolani' or dialogues inspired by the
place:  and I do assure you that, after some experience of beautiful
sights in Italy and elsewhere I know nothing comparable to the view from
the Queen's tower and palace, still perfect in every respect.  Whenever
you pay Pen and his wife the visit you are pledged to, * it will go hard
but you spend five hours in a journey to Asolo.  The one thing I am
disappointed in is to find that the silk-cultivation with all the pretty
girls who were engaged in it are transported to Cornuda and other
places,--nearer the railway, I suppose: and to this may be attributed
the decrease in the number of inhabitants. The weather when I wrote last
_was_ 'blue and blazing--(at noon-day)--' but we share in the general
plague of rain,--had a famous storm yesterday: while to-day is blue and
sunny as ever.  Lastly, for your admonition: we _have_ a perfect
telegraphic communication; and at the passage above, where I put a * I
was interrupted by the arrival of a telegram: thank you all the same for
your desire to relieve my anxiety. And now, to our immediate business--
which is only to keep thanking you for your constant goodness, present
and future:  do with the book just as you will.  I fancy it is bigger in
bulk than usual. As for the 'proofs'--I go at the end of the month to
Venice, whither you will please to send whatever is necessary. . . . I
shall do well to say as little as possible of my good wishes for you and
your family, for it comes to much the same thing as wishing myself
prosperity:  no matter, my sister's kindest regards shall excuse mine,
and I will only add that I am, as ever, Affectionately yours Robert
Browning.

A general quickening of affectionate impulse seemed part of this last
leap in the socket of the dying flame.

Chapter 22

1889

Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo--Venice--Letter to Mr. G.
Moulton-Barrett--Lines in the 'Athenaeum'--Letter to Miss
Keep--Illness--Death-- Funeral Ceremonial at Venice--Publication
of 'Asolando'--Interment in Poets' Corner.

He had said in writing to Mrs. FitzGerald, 'Shall I ever see them' (the
things he is describing) 'again?'  If not then, soon afterwards, he
conceived a plan which was to insure his doing so. On a piece of ground
belonging to the old castle, stood the shell of a house. The two
constituted one property which the Municipality of Asolo had hitherto
refused to sell.  It had been a dream of Mr. Browning's life to possess
a dwelling, however small, in some beautiful spot, which should place
him beyond the necessity of constantly seeking a new summer resort, and
above the alternative of living at an inn, or accepting--as he sometimes
feared, abusing--the hospitality of his friends.  He was suddenly
fascinated by the idea of buying this piece of ground; and, with the
efficient help which his son could render during his absence, completing
the house, which should be christened 'Pippa's Tower'.  It was evident,
he said in one of his letters, that for his few remaining years his
summer wanderings must always end in Venice.  What could he do better
than secure for himself this resting-place by the way?

His offer of purchase was made through Mrs. Bronson, to Count Loredano
and other important members of the municipality, and their personal
assent to it secured.  But the town council was on the eve of
re-election; no important business could be transacted by it till after
this event; and Mr. Browning awaited its decision till the end of
October at Asolo, and again throughout November in Venice, without fully
understanding the delay.  The vote proved favourable; but the night on
which it was taken was that of his death.

The consent thus given would have been only a first step towards the
accomplishment of his wish.  It was necessary that it should be ratified
by the Prefecture of Treviso, in the district of which Asolo lies; and
Mr. Barrett Browning, who had determined to carry on the negotiations,
met with subsequent opposition in the higher council.  This has now,
however, been happily overcome.

A comprehensive interest attaches to one more letter of the Asolo time.
It was addressed to Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George
Moulton-Barrett.

Asolo, Veneto:  Oct. 22, '89.

My dear George,--It was a great pleasure to get your kind letter; though
after some delay.  We were not in the Tyrol this year, but have been for
six weeks or more in this little place which strikes me,--as it did
fifty years ago, which is something to say, considering that, properly
speaking, it was the first spot of Italian soil I ever set foot upon--
having proceeded to Venice by sea--and thence here.  It is an ancient
city, older than Rome, and the scene of Queen Catharine Cornaro's exile,
where she held a mock court, with all its attendants, on a miniature
scale; Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, being her secretary.  Her palace is
still above us all, the old fortifications surround the hill-top, and
certain of the houses are stately--though the population is not above
1,000 souls: the province contains many more of course.  But the immense
charm of the surrounding country is indescribable--I have never seen its
like--the Alps on one side, the Asolan mountains all round,--and
opposite, the vast Lombard plain,--with indications of Venice, Padua,
and the other cities, visible to a good eye on a clear day; while
everywhere are sites of battles and sieges of bygone days, described in
full by the historians of the Middle Ages.

We have a valued friend here, Mrs. Bronson, who for years has been our
hostess at Venice, and now is in possession of a house here (built into
the old city wall)--she was induced to choose it through what I have
said about the beauties of the place: and through her care and kindness
we are comfortably lodged close by. We think of leaving in a week or so
for Venice--guests of Pen and his wife; and after a short stay with them
we shall return to London. Pen came to see us for a couple of days:  I
was hardly prepared for his surprise and admiration which quite equalled
my own and that of my sister.  All is happily well with them--their
palazzo excites the wonder of everybody, so great is Pen's cleverness,
and extemporised architectural knowledge, as apparent in all he has done
there; why, _why_ will you not go and see him there? He and his wife are
very hospitable and receive many visitors. Have I told you that there
was a desecrated chapel which he has restored in honour of his mother--
putting up there the inscription by Tommaseo now above Casa Guidi?

Fannie is all you say,--and most dear and precious to us all. . . .
Pen's medal to which you refer, is awarded to him in spite of his
written renunciation of any sort of wish to contend for a prize. He will
now resume painting and sculpture--having been necessarily occupied with
the superintendence of his workmen--a matter capitally managed, I am
told.  For the rest, both Sarianna and myself are very well; I have just
sent off my new volume of verses for publication. The complete edition
of the works of E. B. B. begins in a few days.

The second part of this letter is very forcibly written, and, in a
certain sense, more important than the first; but I suppress it by the
desire of Mr. Browning's sister and son, and in complete concurrence
with their judgment in the matter. It was a systematic defence of the
anger aroused in him by a lately published reference to his wife's
death; and though its reasonings were unanswerable as applied to the
causes of his emotion, they did not touch the manner in which it had
been displayed. The incident was one which deserved only to be
forgotten; and if an injudicious act had not preserved its memory, no
word of mine should recall it.  Since, however, it has been thought fit
to include the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald' in a widely circulated
Bibliography of Mr. Browning's Works,* I owe it to him to say--what I
believe is only known to his sister and myself--that there was a moment
in which he regretted those lines, and would willingly have withdrawn
them. This was the period, unfortunately short, which intervened between
his sending them to the 'Athenaeum', and their appearance there. When
once public opinion had expressed itself upon them in its too extreme
forms of sympathy and condemnation, the pugnacity of his mind found
support in both, and regret was silenced if not destroyed.  In so far as
his published words remained open to censure, I may also, without
indelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. That which to the merely
sympathetic observer appeared a subject for disapprobation, perhaps
disgust, had affected him with the directness of a sharp physical blow.
He spoke of it, and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such.
The events of that distant past, which he had lived down, though never
forgotten, had flashed upon him from the words which so unexpectedly met
his eye, in a vividness of remembrance which was reality.  'I felt as if
she had died yesterday,' he said some days later to a friend, in half
deprecation, half denial, of the too great fierceness of his reaction.
He only recovered his balance in striking the counter-blow.  That he
could be thus affected at an age usually destructive of the more violent
emotions, is part of the mystery of those closing days which had already
overtaken him.

     * That contained in Mr. Sharp's 'Life'.  A still more recent
          publication
     gives the lines in full.

By the first of November he was in Venice with his son and daughter; and
during the three following weeks was apparently well, though a physician
whom he met at a dinner party, and to whom he had half jokingly given
his pulse to feel, had learned from it that his days were numbered. He
wrote to Miss Keep on the 9th of the month:

'. . . Mrs. Bronson has bought a house at Asolo, and beautified it
indeed,--niched as it is in an old tower of the fortifications still
partly surrounding the city (for a city it is), and eighteen towers,
more or less ruinous, are still discoverable there: it is indeed a
delightful place. Meantime, to go on,--we came here, and had a pleasant
welcome from our hosts--who are truly magnificently lodged in this
vast palazzo which my son has really shown himself fit to possess, so
surprising are his restorations and improvements: the whole is all but
complete, decorated,--that is, renewed admirably in all respects.

'What strikes me as most noteworthy is the cheerfulness and comfort of
the huge rooms.

'The building is warmed throughout by a furnace and pipes.

'Yesterday, on the Lido, the heat was hardly endurable: bright sunshine,
blue sky,--snow-tipped Alps in the distance. No place, I think, ever
suited my needs, bodily and intellectual, so well.

'The first are satisfied--I am _quite_ well, every breathing inconvenience
gone: and as for the latter, I got through whatever had given me trouble
in London. . . .'

But it was winter, even in Venice, and one day began with an actual fog.
He insisted, notwithstanding, on taking his usual walk on the Lido. He
caught a bronchial cold of which the symptoms were aggravated not only
by the asthmatic tendency, but by what proved to be exhaustion of the
heart; and believing as usual that his liver alone was at fault, he took
little food, and refused wine altogether.*

     * He always declined food when he was unwell; and maintained
     that in this respect the instinct of animals was far more
     just than the idea often prevailing among human beings that
     a failing appetite should be assisted or coerced.

He did not yield to the sense of illness; he did not keep his bed. Some
feverish energy must have supported him through this avoidance of every
measure which might have afforded even temporary strength or relief. On
Friday, the 29th, he wrote to a friend in London that he had waited thus
long for the final answer from Asolo, but would wait no longer. He would
start for England, if possible, on the Wednesday or Thursday of the
following week. It was true 'he had caught a cold; he felt sadly
asthmatic, scarcely fit to travel; but he hoped for the best, and would
write again soon.' He wrote again the following day, declaring himself
better. He had been punished, he said, for long-standing neglect of
his 'provoking liver'; but a simple medicine, which he had often taken
before, had this time also relieved the oppression of his chest; his
friend was not to be uneasy about him; 'it was in his nature to get
into scrapes of this kind, but he always managed, somehow or other, to
extricate himself from them.' He concluded with fresh details of his
hopes and plans.

In the ensuing night the bronchial distress increased; and in the
morning he consented to see his son's physician, Dr. Cini, whose
investigation of the case at once revealed to him its seriousness. The
patient had been removed two days before, from the second storey of the
house, which the family then inhabited, to an entresol apartment just
above the ground-floor, from which he could pass into the dining-room
without fatigue. Its lower ceilings gave him (erroneously) an impression
of greater warmth, and he had imagined himself benefited by the change.
A freer circulation of air was now considered imperative, and he was
carried to Mrs. Browning's spacious bedroom, where an open fireplace
supplied both warmth and ventilation, and large windows admitted all
the sunshine of the Grand Canal. Everything was done for him which
professional skill and loving care could do. Mrs. Browning, assisted
by her husband, and by a young lady who was then her guest,* filled the
place of the trained nurses until these could arrive; for a few days
the impending calamity seemed even to have been averted. The bronchial
attack was overcome. Mr. Browning had once walked from the bed to
the sofa; his sister, whose anxiety had perhaps been spared the full
knowledge of his state, could send comforting reports to his friends
at home. But the enfeebled heart had made its last effort. Attacks
of faintness set in. Special signs of physical strength maintained
themselves until within a few hours of the end. On Wednesday, December
11, a consultation took place between Dr. Cini, Dr. da Vigna, and Dr.
Minich; and the opinion was then expressed for the first time
that recovery, though still possible, was not within the bounds of
probability. Weakness, however, rapidly gained upon him towards the
close of the following day. Two hours before midnight of this Thursday,
December 12, he breathed his last.

     * Miss Evelyn Barclay, now Mrs. Douglas Giles.

He had been a good patient. He took food and medicine whenever they were
offered to him. Doctors and nurses became alike warmly interested in
him. His favourite among the latter was, I think, the Venetian, a widow,
Margherita Fiori, a simple kindly creature who had known much sorrow. To
her he said, about five hours before the end, 'I feel much worse. I
know now that I must die.' He had shown at intervals a perception, even
conviction, of his danger; but the excitement of the brain, caused by
exhaustion on the one hand and the necessary stimulants on the other,
must have precluded all systematic consciousness of approaching death.
He repeatedly assured his family that he was not suffering.

A painful and urgent question now presented itself for solution: Where
should his body find its last rest? He had said to his sister in the
foregoing summer, that he wished to be buried wherever he might die: if
in England, with his mother; if in France, with his father; if in Italy,
with his wife. Circumstances all pointed to his removal to Florence; but
a recent decree had prohibited further interment in the English Cemetery
there, and the town had no power to rescind it. When this was known
in Venice, that city begged for itself the privilege of retaining the
illustrious guest, and rendering him the last honours. For the moment
the idea even recommended itself to Mr. Browning's son. But he felt
bound to make a last effort in the direction of the burial at Florence;
and was about to despatch a telegram, in which he invoked the mediation
of Lord Dufferin, when all difficulties were laid at rest by a message
from the Dean of Westminster, conveying his assent to an interment in
the Abbey.* He had already telegraphed for information concerning the
date of the funeral, with a view to the memorial service, which he
intended to hold on the same day. Nor would the further honour have
remained for even twenty-four hours ungranted, because unasked, but for
the belief prevailing among Mr. Browning's friends that there was no
room for its acceptance.

     * The assent thus conveyed had assumed the form of an offer,
     and was characterized as such by the Dean himself.

It was still necessary to provide for the more immediate removal of the
body. Local custom forbade its retention after the lapse of two days and
nights; and only in view of the special circumstances of the case could
a short respite be granted to the family. Arrangements were therefore at
once made for a private service, to be conducted by the British Chaplain
in one of the great halls of the Rezzonico Palace; and by two o'clock of
the following day, Sunday, a large number of visitors and residents had
assembled there. The subsequent passage to the mortuary island of San
Michele had been organized by the city, and was to display so much of
the character of a public pageant as the hurried preparation allowed.
The chief municipal officers attended the service. When this had been
performed, the coffin was carried by eight firemen (pompieri), arrayed
in their distinctive uniform, to the massive, highly decorated municipal
barge (Barca delle Pompe funebri) which waited to receive it. It was
guarded during the transit by four 'uscieri' in 'gala' dress, two
sergeants of the Municipal Guard, and two of the firemen bearing
torches: the remainder of these following in a smaller boat. The barge
was towed by a steam launch of the Royal Italian Marine. The chief
officers of the city, the family and friends in their separate gondolas,
completed the procession. On arriving at San Michele, the firemen again
received their burden, and bore it to the chapel in which its place had
been reserved.

When 'Pauline' first appeared, the Author had received, he never learned
from whom, a sprig of laurel enclosed with this quotation from the poem,

     Trust in signs and omens.

Very beautiful garlands were now piled about his bier, offerings of
friendship and affection. Conspicuous among these was the ceremonial
structure of metallic foliage and porcelain flowers, inscribed 'Venezia
a Roberto Browning', which represented the Municipality of Venice. On
the coffin lay one comprehensive symbol of the fulfilled prophecy: a
wreath of laurel-leaves which his son had placed there.

A final honour was decreed to the great English Poet by the city in
which he had died; the affixing of a memorial tablet to the outer wall
of the Rezzonico Palace. Since these pages were first written, the
tablet has been placed. It bears the following inscription:

     A
     ROBERTO BROWNING

     MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO
     IL 12 DICEMBRE 1889
     VENEZIA
     POSE

Below this, in the right-hand corner appear two lines selected from his
works:

     Open my heart and you will see
     Graved inside of it, 'Italy'.

Nor were these the only expressions of Italian respect and sympathy. The
municipality of Florence sent its message of condolence. Asolo, poor
in all but memories, itself bore the expenses of a mural tablet for
the house which Mr. Browning had occupied. It is now known that Signor
Crispi would have appealed to Parliament to rescind the exclusion
from the Florentine cemetery, if the motive for doing so had been less
promptly removed.

Mr. Browning's own country had indeed opened a way for the reunion of
the husband and wife. The idea had rapidly shaped itself in the public
mind that, since they might not rest side by side in Italy, they
should be placed together among the great of their own land; and it was
understood that the Dean would sanction Mrs. Browning's interment in
the Abbey, if a formal application to this end were made to him. But
Mr. Barrett Browning could not reconcile himself to the thought of
disturbing his mother's grave, so long consecrated to Florence by her
warm love and by its grateful remembrance; and at the desire of both
surviving members of the family the suggestion was set aside.

Two days after his temporary funeral, privately and at night, all that
remained of Robert Browning was conveyed to the railway station; and
thence, by a trusted servant, to England. The family followed within
twenty-four hours, having made the necessary preparations for a long
absence from Venice; and, travelling with the utmost speed, arrived in
London on the same day. The house in De Vere Gardens received its master
once more.

'Asolando' was published on the day of Mr. Browning's death. The report
of his illness had quickened public interest in the forthcoming work,
and his son had the satisfaction of telling him of its already realized
success, while he could still receive a warm, if momentary, pleasure
from the intelligence. The circumstances of its appearance place it
beyond ordinary criticism; they place it beyond even an impartial
analysis of its contents. It includes one or two poems to which we would
gladly assign a much earlier date; I have been told on good authority
that we may do this in regard to one of them. It is difficult to refer
the 'Epilogue' to a coherent mood of any period of its author's life. It
is certain, however, that by far the greater part of the little volume
was written in 1888-89, and I believe all that is most serious in it
was the product of the later year. It possesses for many readers the
inspiration of farewell words; for all of us it has their pathos.

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, on the 31st
of December, 1889. In this tardy act of national recognition England
claimed her own. A densely packed, reverent and sympathetic crowd of his
countrymen and countrywomen assisted at the consignment of the dead poet
to his historic resting place. Three verses of Mrs. Browning's poem,
'The Sleep', set to music by Dr. Bridge, were sung for the first time on
this occasion.

Conclusion

A few words must still be said upon that purport and tendency of Robert
Browning's work, which has been defined by a few persons, and felt by
very many as his 'message'.

The definition has been disputed on the ground of Art. We are told by
Mr. Sharp, though in somewhat different words, that the poet, qua poet,
cannot deliver a 'message' such as directly addresses itself to the
intellectual or moral sense; since his special appeal to us lies not
through the substance, but through the form, or presentment, of what he
has had to say; since, therefore (by implication), in claiming for it
an intellectual--as distinct from an aesthetic--character, we ignore its
function as poetry.

It is difficult to argue justly, where the question at issue turns
practically on the meaning of a word. Mr. Sharp would, I think, be the
first to admit this; and it appears to me that, in the present case, he
so formulates his theory as to satisfy his artistic conscience, and yet
leave room for the recognition of that intellectual quality so peculiar
to Mr. Browning's verse. But what one member of the aesthetic school may
express with a certain reserve is proclaimed unreservedly by many more;
and Mr. Sharp must forgive me, if for the moment I regard him as one of
these; and if I oppose his arguments in the words of another poet
and critic of poetry, whose claim to the double title is I believe
undisputed--Mr. Roden Noel. I quote from an unpublished fragment of a
published article on Mr. Sharp's 'Life of Browning'.

'Browning's message is an integral part of himself as writer; (whether
as poet, since we agree that he is a poet, were surely a too curious
and vain discussion;) but some of his finest things assuredly are the
outcome of certain very definite personal convictions. "The question,"
Mr. Sharp says, "is not one of weighty message, but of artistic
presentation." There seems to be no true contrast here. "The primary
concern of the artist must be with his vehicle of expression"--no--not
the primary concern. Since the critic adds--(for a poet) "this vehicle
is language emotioned to the white heat of rhythmic music by impassioned
thought or sensation." Exactly--"thought" it may be. Now part of this
same "thought" in Browning is the message. And therefore it is part of
his "primary concern". "It is with presentment," says Mr. Sharp, "that
the artist has fundamentally to concern himself." Granted: but it must
surely be presentment of _something_. . . . I do not understand how
to separate the substance from the form in true poetry. . . . If the
message be not well delivered, it does not constitute literature. But
if it be well delivered, the primary concern of the poet lay with the
message after all!'

More cogent objection has been taken to the character of the 'message'
as judged from a philosophic point of view. It is the expression or
exposition of a vivid a priori religious faith confirmed by positive
experience; and it reflects as such a double order of thought, in which
totally opposite mental activities are often forced into co-operation
with each other. Mr. Sharp says, this time quoting from Mr. Mortimer
('Scottish Art Review', December 1889):

'His position in regard to the thought of the age is paradoxical, if not
inconsistent. He is in advance of it in every respect but one, the most
important of all, the matter of fundamental principles; in these he
is behind it. His processes of thought are often scientific in their
precision of analysis; the sudden conclusion which he imposes upon them
is transcendental and inept.'