61 ROBERT BROWNING. ROBERT BROWNING, the author of some of the most singular poems in the English language, was born at Camberwell, a village near London, in 1812. His father, who is a clerk in the Bank of England, seems to have had prophetic impression of his son's poetical genius, for he resolved to set him apart for a life of study. His family abound with little anecdotes of the poet's precocity, and we were told by his mother that at four years old, when compelled by her to take some medicine, he said, with much heroic gravity, "Good people, if you wish to see A boy take physic, look at me." These little anecdotes may be considered as trifling, but they show the current of the early mind, and are sure evidences of the existence of the poetical vein. Till his fourteenth year he was educated at a daily school in Dulwich, where he made great progress in his studies. Even in his eighth year some of his translations from Horace are remarkable for that peculiarity of mirth which he has since carried out to a fatal mannerism. From this school he was removed to the London University, where he completed his routine of clas sical education. So far as our recollection serves, he is the only man of genius that college can boast. In his twentieth year he published a poem called " "Pauline," which he has never acknowledged, and of which he now appears to be ashamed. It has little merit beyond a certain faint evidence of sensuous feeling running through it; that kind of murmuring music which ever accompanies a poet in his walk through life. In 1836 his first acknowledged poem appeared, called "Paracelsus," and it is the opinion of many of the critics of the day that this will be the work by which he will be the most remembered. A critic has remarked, that one of the finest thoughts of modern times is embalmed in three lines in this poem. "There are two points in the adventure of a diver, First when a beggar he prepares to plunge, Then when a prince he rises with his pearl. An eminent poet remarked that Mr. Browning had lost the chief force of the thought by the first line, which he maintained was very prosaic; he suggested that it ought to be altered, as "There are two moments in a diver's life," &c. We named this to This is a point for the author. Mr. Browning, who acknowledged his own line was feeble. Mr. Browning's Paracelsus excited little attention. Mr. Forster, of the Examiner, praised it, Mr. Fox, of the Montly Repository, and Heraud's New Monthly Magazine-and there was an end of the matter. It, however, gave the poet a quiet pedestal for his future station, and he is now so proud of his young creation that he generally places it as his peculiar characteristic, and calls himself author of Paracelsus. To Paracelsus succeeded a tragedy, called Strafford, which, owing to Mr. Forster's influence with Mr. Macready, was performed. The great tragedian acted Strafford-but all his efforts were unavailing. It was the tragedy of spasms; the want of personal interest is too deeply felt to allow of any doubt, and the work of a strong mentality went to the tomb of the Capulets for want of a physical Romeo. We fear it will be found to be the verdict of the public, that the author of Sordello is a noble abstraction; a great spirit, but he lacks the flesh and blood of Shakspere, and the milk of human kindness. Four years afterwards Sordello astonished his friends, and amazed the world-of this work we shall speak more anon, contenting ourselves here with the relation of an anecdote we heard of Douglas Jerrold, when the work first appeared. He was recruiting himself at Brighton after a long illness. In the progress of his convalescence a parcel arrived from London, which contained, among other things, this new volume of Sordello; the medical attendant had forbidden Mr. Jerrold the luxury of reading, but, owing to the absence of his conjugal "life guards" he indulged in the illicit enjoyment. A few lines put Jerrold in a state of alarm. Sentence after sentence brought no consecutive thought to his brain. At last the idea crossed his mind that in his illness his mental faculties had been wrecked. The perspiration rolled from his forehead, and smiting his head, he sat down in his sofa, crying, "O, God, I am an idiot!" When his wife and her sister came, they were amused by his pushing the volume into their hands, and demanding what they thought of it. He watched 66 them intently while they read-at last his wife said;" I don't understand what the man means; it is gibberish." The delighted humourist sank in his seat again: "thank God I am not an idiot." Mr. Browning, to whom we told this, has often laughed over it, and then endeavoured to show that Sordello was the clearest and most simple poem in the English language. We know only one person who pretends to understand Sordello, and this is Mrs. Marston, the poet's wife. 66 Mr. Browning's next work was Pippa Passes, the first of a series which he has called "Bells and Pomegranates." Here begins the real poetic life of Browning, so far as the public know him, and out of these singular productions we hope to justify our faith to the world. The idea of Pippa, a poor factory girl, purifying human nature as she passes about on her vocation, is a fine conception, and it is to be lamented that it is not made so intelligible to the common mind as to be capable of a wider appreciation. To the poet, however, it remains what Keats said of Beauty, a joy for ever." After a time Mr. Macready produced another play, and the reception which the Blot in the 'Scutcheon had at Drury Lane in 1843, and at Sadler's Wells in 1848, seems to justify the current opinion that the author is only a dramatist for the poet and the critic. He cannot touch the hearts of the million. That he abounds in the esthetic, may be presumed, but the world at large care little for the subtler and more minute workings of the human heart. They demand a broader, wider range, a rougher "guess" at their nature; when it is borne in mind how many words are not heard in a large theatre; how few of the actors know how to deliver a speech intelligibly; it is evident that a tortuous, obscure and condensed style must be so much Greek to a mixed audience who hear a drama for the first time; when, however, you add to these disadvantages, a plot not springing from the every day impulses of the heart, but evolved from some peculiar idiosyncracy of the mind, it is evident you make a very fatiguing and ingenious puzzle, and not a drama to move our tears or smiles. A rapid comparison between three acted dramatists may help the reader to a somewhat better idea of Mr. Browning's "fallings short" in this particular. While Mr. Browning's plays are chiefly metaphysical or psychological dialogues continued until one of the speakers falls a victim to some special peculiarity, which concludes the affair :while Mr. Marston takes some common-place wrong, or makes the hero, who is going to redress the evil, some minor poet, who invariably manages to break his own heart and the reader's patience; Mr. Sheridan Knowles goes altogether to the other side of the question. Our readers may think it is inconsistent to blame both extremes-but we do not ask for a profile view—we want the full countenance; this we get in Shakspere. The modern playwrights give us but one side of the face; we see it is onesided, we ask for a fuller, bolder, broader view; they then present to us the other profile; they seem afraid to look human nature full in the face: or do they think truth is a Medusa, and that we shall be turned into stone by its Gorgon look? Mr. Browning's plots are singularly deficient also in human interest; with the exception of "Strafford" and the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon," they are all founded on subjects which make no appeal to the masses; he is truly caviare to the million. He is the poet of the exception, not the rule! He will be highly prized by the one, but E |