American friend and hostess at Venice and Asolo. 'My Kirkup,' who appears in a parenthesis on the first page of Pacchiarotto, was a Florentine acquaintance, the discoverer of Giotto's portrait of Dante in the Bargello. John Relfe, apostrophised in Charles Avison, had been one of Browning's music-masters in boyhood. In 1872, Browning's popularity was proved and furthered by the issue of two volumes in the Tauchnitz edition of poems selected from his works. Browning was made Honorary Fellow of Balliol in 1868, and honorary degrees have been given him by Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. Browning took great pride in his artist son, and that son's marriage to an American lady, Miss Fanny Coddington, meant yet another affectionate bond to the old man. Browning, by character and career, stands among the sane and well-ordered representatives of a high civilisation, which allows of 'placid lives, leisurely works.'1 It was a part of his transcendentalism to insist that the soul, instead of aging like the body, grows and gains, and certainly he lived out his own belief. The last works of 'Rabbi' Browning are mellow, and have none of the spleen of advanced years. Browning had not learnt from his Greeks their cruel worship of youth and abhorrence of age. In the passage in Aristophanes' Apology in which Aristo 2 4 1 XIV. 239. The Two Poets of Croisic. 2 XI. 245. Fifine at the Fair. 3 3 XIII. 272. Agamemnon. 4 XIII. 40, 41. phanes depicts a poet in and out of the world, there seems a likeness to the poet who was so fond of, and yet so independent of society, able to dispense himself prodigally because conscious of the colossal strength which he had only to shut his study door upon the silken company to renew. Browning's personal appearance was expressive to those who could see deep enough. His eyes wonderfully combined searching scrutiny with the meditative far-off regard. Landor, long ago describing Browning's exterior personality, spoke of the spruce, hale man, with 'active step,' inquiring eye,' and 'tongue so varied in discourse.' In the autumn of 1889, after spending some time at Asolo, Browning moved on to Venice, to the Rezzonico Palace, the property of his daughter and son. There, late in November, he was attacked by bronchitis, aggravated by asthma, and rendered serious by weak action of the heart. On December 12th, after a short illness, he died at the age of seventy-seven. It was thought that what was mortal of the poet would lie by his wife in the Florentine cemetery, but this was not to be. England claimed her poet for Westminster Abbey. On December 31st, 1889, the body of Browning was interred in Poets' Corner, amid a great throng of witnesses, representative of England's best. CHAPTER II. BROWNING'S CHARACTERISTICS. 1. Universality.-No criticism on Browning has surpassed those lines written by his wife, then Miss Barrett, wherein she individualised him by his 'veined humanity," and added that his works, 'pomegranates' indeed, need cutting deep to come at the red heart within. The greatest passion and the utmost power of Browning are spent in depicting men and women. His poems are full of incidents; he ransacks history and the world for curious and effective stories; but to Browning, unlike Scott or Homer, incident alone is meaningless, valuable only as an opportunity for revealing character. Browning is most at home with complexity, outward and inward. The more exceptional the incident, the more exceptional and interesting the character, according to him. That is why his works are so full, and ever increasingly so, of the out-of-the-way, occasionally the repellent. With every poet matter and manner are wedded, and with none more indissolubly than with Browning. Every thing in Browning, his ideas, especially those which at first seem contradictory, his beliefs, his selection of subjects, his defects and untowardnesses prove on close inspection to be parts of the most immutable, welded whole. His continuous unity of thought and purpose is extraordinary. Browning's penetrative sympathy delights to enter all the various forms of life, to try to look through each man's eyes, and describe in his character how his outside world is affecting the individual within. In Browning's harvesting all ranks afford an equally rich yield of humanity. He shows the husk, only to remove it and present us with the soul. He is as interested in psychologising a Paris jeweller as a queen. The soul in each is his great object of study, the soul testing itself on circumstances,1 strong if it aims, grows, fights on,2 despicable if it shirks conflict.3 2. Courage. In nothing is Browning more remarkable than in the second light he will throw on actions and motives, and in his new treatment of old episodes. After every one else has comfortably acquiesced in some 'obvious' verdict and fancied that further appeal is over, how poor and crude that verdict appears under the illumination of this mind, late in time, but fresh as the primal morning! Take, for instance, in The Ring and the Book, the unconventional summing-up of the Pope on Guido, with that sublime illustrative storm,* only excelled by the matchless tempest in Pippa Passes. The same electric light flashes out in Ivàn Ivanovitch, in the old priest's judgment, swift and 5 1 VII. Rabbi ben Ezra. Et passim. 2 IV. 266. Bishop Blougram's Apology. The Pope. 4 X. 147, 148. The Ring and the Book. ›2 overturning as one of Christ's.1 Similar originality and fearlessness come out in The Glove and Clive. Then what an unusual view of death there is in Prospice! Browning ever sides with the fighter, eager to grapple danger whereby souls grow strong," as in his view of temptation, which he would wish to have dragged up by its hair in order to do battle with it.3 The second light he throws on character appears in his reasoning too, as in the opulent re-inforcement in Two Camels to the argument against asceticism. A curious extra argument, entirely Browning's own, is to be found. in Fifine at the Fair, XI. cxxviii. Another instance occurs in Fust's dilemma of conscience in the Epilogue to Parleyings.5 There is not one line of fluff or claptrap in Browning. 4 3. Philosophy and Religion.-Browning is not solely a poetic artist, he is besides that a 'thinker,' with so persistent an answer to the ultimate question of life that few of his poems can be appraised without reference to it. He would have thought his work of little worth if it only served to mirror the chance and scattered experience of many men, or give artistic satisfaction by its mere perfection of utterance. If he did not originate the broadest expression of nineteenth century belief, at least he transmutes it, so that through his poetry it re-enters many a soul 1 XV. 50-54. Ivàn Ivànovitch. 2 X. 116. The Pope, line 1302. 3 X. 111. The Pope, lines 1185-1192. 4 XVI. 49, 50. 5 XVI. 252, 273-274. C |