INTRODUCTION.

13

1880, Dramatic Idylls (11.). 1883, Jocoseria.

1885, Ferishtah's Fancies.

III. HELPS TO THE STUDY OF BROWNING.

The most important works for consultation are, of course, the publications of the Browning Society. If not all are obtainable, the Papers for 1881-4, Parts I. and II., are the most essential. The lists and references given in these are really indispensable.

A Handbook to Robert Browning, by Mrs. S. Orr, is a good book in its way. It conveys many valuable facts about the poems. It explains allusions accurately. Mrs. Orr's acquaintance with Mr. Browning gives her a certain reliability in such matters. But as an interpreter of the poet she is "still far out." In matters of opinion or even of appreciation there could be no guide less safe.

Studies in Literature, by Edward Dowden, and Victorian Poets, by E. C. Stedman, have excellent chapters on Browning.

Literary Studies, by Walter Bagehot, has an article comparing Browning and Tennyson.

The following are the most valuable reviews in periodicals, in addition to those from which our Introduction quotes. All of the latter, except, perhaps, M. Milsand's, will repay a complete reading.

The Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1878 (Hon. and Rev. Arthur Lyttleton).

The London Quarterly Review, July, 1869.

The Contemporary Review, Jan. and Feb. 1867.

The Victoria Magazine, Feb. 1864 (Moncure D. Conway). Finally, the student should not fail to read carefully Browning's own Essay on Shelley. It was prefixed to a volume of Letters supposed to be by Shelley, but which afterwards proved to be spurious. The essay is none the less valuable,

and has been reprinted by the Browning Society in the Papers for 1881-4, Part 1. p. 3 fol. It defines exactly Browning's poetic ideals, and gives us generously his own standard by which to measure him.

IV. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON BROWNING.

[From the Introductory Address to the Browning Society, by Rev. J. Kirkman, M.A., October 28, 1881.*]

Browning is undoubtedly the profoundest intellect, with widest range of sympathies, and with universal knowledge of men and things, that has arisen as a poet since Shakespeare. In knowledge of many things he is necessarily superior to Shakespeare, as being the all-receptive child of the century of science and travel. In carefulness of construction, and especially in the genius of constructing drama, he claims no comparison with Shakespeare. But his truly Shakespearian genius pre-eminently shines in his power to throw his whole intellect and sympathies into the most diverse individualities; to think and feel as one of them would, although undoubtedly glorified by Browning's genius within. . . . I said that his profound acquaintance with men and things was Shakespearian. I should have emphatically said with men, women, and things. Browning's women are as wonderful a class almost as Shakespeare's. He understands women with perfecter intuition and less uniform rose-color than Richter, of whom Browning often reminds us. . . .

I must claim for Browning the distinction of being preeminently the greatest Christian poet we have ever had. Not in a narrow and dogmatic sense, but as the teacher who is thrilled through with all Christian sympathies as with artistic or musical. . . . I hold very light that solicitude to know and tabulate what his own system of truth is. I can not sympathize with the intrusive deduction as to what Browning himself is. . . . How can you get at Shakespeare,

*Browning Society Papers, Part 11. (London, 1882).

who is as truly Falstaff as he is King Lear; Iago as much as Othello? He is humanity. So is Browning religion; with all forms of art, philosophy, and experience as her ministers.

[From Richard Grant White's Introduction to“ Selections from Browning.”*]

A poet real and strong is always phenomenal, but Browning is the intellectual phenomenon of the last half-century, even if he is not the poetical aloe of modern English literature. His like we have never seen before. He is not what he is by mere excelling. No writer that ever wrought out his fretted fancies in English verse is the model of him, either in large, or in one trait or trick of style. Of the poets of the day we can easily see, for example, that William Morris is a modern Chaucer; that Tennyson has kindred with all the great English verse-makers, and is the ideal maker of correct, high-class English poetry of the Victorian era, having about him something of the regularity and formality and conventional properness of an unexceptionable model-a beauty like that of a drawing-master's head of a young woman, but informed and molded by the expression of noble thoughts; that pagan Swinburne is Greek in feeling and Gothic in form, and so forth; but we can not thus compass or classify Browning. Were his breadth and his blaze very much less than they are, we should still be obliged to look at him as we look at a new comet, and set ourselves to considering whence he came and whither he is going amid the immensities and the eternities. . . In purpose and in style Browning was at the very first the Browning he has been these twenty years. He has matured in thought, grown richer in experience, and obtained by practice a greater mastery over his materials, without, however, as I think, using them of late in so pleasing or even so impressive a manner as of old; but otherwise he is now as a poet, and it would seem as a man, much the *New York, 1883.

same Robert Browning whose first writings were received with little praise and much scoffing, and were pronounced harsh, uncouth, affected, and obscure.

[From a Review of "The Ring and the Book," by John Morley.*] We have this long while been so debilitated by pastorals, by graceful presentation of the Arthurian legend for drawingrooms, by idyls, not robust and Theocritean, but such little pictures as might adorn a ladies' school, by verse directly didactic, that a rude inburst of air from the outside welter of human realities is apt to spread a shock which might show in what simpleton's paradise we have been living. The little ethics of the rectory-parlor set to sweet music, the respectable aspirations of the sentimental curate married to exquisite verse, the everlasting glorification of domestic sentiment in blameless princes and others, as if that were the poet's single province and the divinely appointed end of all art, as if domestic sentiment included and summed up the whole throng of passions, emotions, strife, and desire; all this would seem to be turning us into flat valetudinarians. Our public is beginning to measure the right and possible in art by the superficial probabilities of life and manners within a ten-mile radius of Charing Cross. Is it likely, asks the critic, that Duke Silva would have done this, that Fedalma would have done that? Who shall suppose it possible that Caponsacchi acted thus, that Count Guido was possessed by devils so? The poser is triumphant, because the critic is tacitly appealing to the normal standard of probabilities at Bayswater or Clapham; as a man who, having never thought of anything mightier or more turbulent than the village brook or horse

*Fortnightly Review, March, 1869. This powerful review by Mr. Morley is based upon The Ring and the Book, but the general introduction characterizes so well Browning's work as a whole, that I insert it here. It might be applied almost verbatim to Men and Women or to Pippa Passes.