PREFACE. Its The object of this book is to excite a wider interest in the works of Robert Browning. contents have been selected with special reference to the large number of readers who can enjoy those portions of his poetry which are clear and melodious, and do not enjoy those which tax the ingenuity and fail to please the ear. The fame of this poet is world-wide. He has inspired enthusiastic devotion in minds of the highest order; yet he is little read. Why is this? The fault is in the poet: not in the public. Let us first take a fair view of the ugly side of this subject. It must be confessed that Browning often fails to make himself understood, and that, where his mean ing is plain, it is often expressed in harsh and jagged lines. One cause of his obscurity is his fondness for out-of-the-way themes, which he treats with entire indifference to the fact that they are not so familiar to his readers as to himself; another cause is the peculiarity of his style; his habit of contraction, and his use of idiomatic forms hitherto unknown to the English language. His devotees have excused even justified and commended-his obscurity, and their loyalty has sometimes betrayed them into utterances which come dangerously near being nonsense. It has been said that he cares so much for the spirit of his work, that he is quite regardless of its form; that he has such reverence for his thought that he chooses to present it in its naked simplicity. The essential fallacy of such criticism is, that it ignores the fact that poetry is always dependent upon form, that the excellence of verse depends upon perfection of structure. needless to enlarge upon so elementary a principle of the poetic art. Mr. Nettleship, in the course of an essay upon Sordello, published in 1868, says: It is "It seems to me that we may find good reasons for the existence of these defects, so-called. He evidently considers that his first duty as a poet is to give us direct from the fountain-head, either his perceptions, so far as they can be expressed in language, or his thoughts: that his toil should be spent in digging out straight from its hiding-place the pure unalloyed perception or thought for men to see. Thus his argument would be, either that so long as the true worth of the metal is seen, any labor spent in improving or making smooth its actual visible shape is a waste of power, or that such labor if bestowed has only the effect of lessening the bulk and tarnishing the brilliancy of the untouched conception." In view of the facts of the case, ordinary, uninspired common sense revolts against this. What if the mass quarried out comes in such a questionable shape"-is so chaotic and mysterious, that men not only doubt if it be gold, but cannot even decide whether it be mineral, animal, or vegetable? Fitz Hugh Ludlow, one of the most genial and acute of critics, one, too, who loved to "pluck out the heart of a mystery," himself a warm admirer of Browning-once said of this same Sordello, -"He might as well have shuffled the words together in a hat, and tumbled them out, pell mell, upon the table. There is an old story, in the same connection, which is so good and suggestive that it will bear re-telling. Douglas Jerrold, was recovering from a severe illness; while he was still confined to his bed, Sordello, then newly published, was brought to him. In a few moments he called eagerly to his wife, who came from an adjoining room, and found the invalid sitting upright in bed, with an expression of grave anxiety and apprehension upon his face. Take this! read that page!" She obeyed, Jerrold watching her the while with intense earnestness. "Well? well?" he exclaimed, when she looked up from the volume, "Do you understand it ?-Does it convey any idea to your mind?" "No, indeed! Not the slightest !" "Thank God!" said Jerrold, sinking back upon his pillow, "Thank God! I thought I had lost my reasoning powers! Present to any chance company of twenty fairly well educated people, such lines as these: "O call him not culprit, this Pontiff ! or these: Be hard on this Kaiser ye won't if Ye take into con-si-de ration What dangers attend elevation !". "They turned on him. Dumb menace in that mouth, He cannot but intend some stroke of state Exact the cause his lips unlocked would cry." - Can there be any doubt what the general verdict would be? If poetry is indeed an art, and if the office of that art is to present worthy themes in an especially clear and attractive manner-how shall we find excuse for such work as this? The reader may think that all this is foreign to my purpose, and it does seem an odd way to recommend an author; yet, uncourteous and uncalled |