Life of Robert Browning. Sharp William
"Pauline; a Fragment of a Confession; a piece of pure bewilderment"--a "criticism" which anticipated and thus prevented the insertion of a highly favourable review which John Stuart Mill voluntarily wrote.
Browning must have regarded his first book with mingled feelings. It was a bid for literary fortune, in one sense, but a bid so handicapped by the circumstances of its publication as to be almost certainly of no avail. Probably, however, he was well content that it should have mere existence. Already the fever of an abnormal intellectual curiosity was upon him: already he had schemed more potent and more vital poems: already, even, he had developed towards a more individualistic method. So indifferent was he to an easily gained reputation that he seems to have been really urgent upon his relatives and intimate acquaintances not to betray his authorship. The Miss Flower, how ever, to whom allusion has already been made, could not repress her admiration to the extent of depriving her friend, Mr. Fox, of a pleasure similar to that she had herself enjoyed. The result was the generous notice in the Monthly Repository. The poet never forgot his indebtedness to Mr. Fox, to whose sympathy and kindness much direct and indirect good is traceable. The friendship then begun was lifelong, and was continued with the distinguished Unitarian's family when Mr. Fox himself ended his active and beneficent career.
But after a time the few admirers of "Pauline" forgot to speak about it: the poet himself never alluded to it: and in a year or two it was almost as though it had never been written. Many years after, when articles upon Robert Browning were as numerous as they once had been scarce, never a word betrayed that their authors knew of the existence of "Pauline." There was, however, yet another friendship to come out of this book, though not until long after it was practically forgotten by its author.
One day a young poet-painter came upon a copy of the book in the British Museum Library, and was at once captivated by its beauty. One of the earliest admirers of Browning's poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti--for it was he--felt certain that "Pauline" could be by none other than the author of "Paracelsus." He himself informed me that he had never heard this authorship suggested, though some one had spoken to him of a poem of remarkable promise, called "Pauline," which he ought to read. If I remember aright, Rossetti told me that it was on the forenoon of the day when the "Burden of Nineveh" was begun, conceived rather, that he read this story of a soul by the soul's ablest historian. So delighted was he with it, and so strong his opinion it was by Browning, that he wrote to the poet, then in Florence, for confirmation, stating at the same time that his admiration for "Pauline" had led him to transcribe the whole of it.
Concerning this episode, Robert Browning wrote to me, some seven years ago, as follows:--
"St. Pierre de Chartreuse,
Isère, France.
"Rossetti's 'Pauline' letter was addressed to me at Florence more than thirty years ago. I have preserved it, but, even were I at home, should be unable to find it without troublesome searching. It was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether unknown to me, had come upon a poem in the British Museum, which he copied the whole of, from its being not otherwise procurable--that he judged it to be mine, but could not be sure, and wished me to pronounce in the matter--which I did. A year or two after, I had a visit in London from Mr. (William) Allingham and a friend--who proved to be Rossetti. When I heard he was a painter I insisted on calling on him, though he declared he had nothing to show me--which was far enough from the case. Subsequently, on another of my returns to London, he painted my portrait, not, I fancy, in oils, but water-colours, and finished it in Paris shortly after. This must have been in the year when Tennyson published 'Maud,' for I remember Tennyson reading the poem one evening while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, from one obscure corner of vantage, which I still possess, and duly value. This was before Rossetti's marriage."[8]
[8] The highly interesting and excellent portrait of Browning here alluded to has never been exhibited.
As a matter of fact, as recorded on the back of the original drawing, the eventful reading took place at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square, on the 27th of September 1855, and those present, besides the Poet-Laureate, Browning, and Rossetti, were Mrs. E. Barrett Browning and Miss Arabella Barrett.
When, a year or two ago, the poet learned that a copy of his first work, which in 1833 could not find a dozen purchasers at a few shillings, went at a public sale for twenty-five guineas, he remarked that had his dear old aunt been living he could have returned to her, much to her incredulous astonishment, no doubt, he smilingly averred, the cost of the book's publication, less £3 15s. It was about the time of the publication of "Pauline" that Browning began to see something of the literary and artistic life for which he had such an inborn taste. For a brief period he went often to the British Museum, particularly the Library, and to the National Gallery. At the British Museum Reading Room he perused with great industry and research those works in philosophy and medical history which are the bases of "Paracelsus," and those Italian Records bearing upon the story of Sordello. Residence in Camberwell, in 1833, rendered night engagements often impracticable: but nevertheless he managed to mix a good deal in congenial society. It is not commonly known that he was familiar to these early associates as a musician and artist rather than as a poet. Among them, and they comprised many well-known workers in the several arts, were Charles Dickens and "Ion" Talfourd. Mr. Fox, whom Browning had met once or twice in his early youth, after the former had been shown the Byronic verses which had in one way gratified and in another way perturbed the poet's father, saw something more of his young friend after the publication of "Pauline." He very kindly offered to print in his magazine any short poems the author of that book should see fit to send--an offer, however, which was not put to the test for some time.
Practically simultaneously with the publication of "Pauline" appeared another small volume, containing the "Palace of Art," "Oenone," "Mariana," etc. Those early books of Tennyson and Browning have frequently, and somewhat uncritically, been contrasted. Unquestionably, however, the elder poet showed a consummate and continuous mastery of his art altogether beyond the intermittent expressional power of Browning in his most rhythmic emotion at any time of his life. To affirm that there is more intellectual fibre, what Rossetti called fundamental brain-work, in the product of the younger poet, would be beside the mark. The insistence on the supremacy of Browning over all poets since Shakspere because he has the highest "message" to deliver, because his intellect is the most subtle and comprehensive, because his poems have this or that dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other active minds, is to be seriously and energetically deprecated. It is with presentment that the artist has, fundamentally, to concern himself. If he cannot present poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet, though he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. Browning's eminence is not because of his detachment from what some one has foolishly called "the mere handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet." It is the delight of the true artist that the product of his talent should be wrought to a high technique equally by the shaping brain and the dexterous hand. Browning is great because of his formative energy: because, despite the excess of burning and compulsive thought--
"Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain
Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells,
Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight ----"
he strikes from the furor of words an electric flash so transcendently illuminative that what is commonplace becomes radiant with that light which dwells not in nature, but only in the visionary eye of man. Form for the mere beauty of form, is a playing with the wind, the acceptance of a shadow for the substance. If nothing animate it, it may possibly be fair of aspect, but only as the frozen smile upon a dead face.
We know little of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834. It was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one certain pinnacles of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away. He began to realise the first disenchantment of the artist: the sense of dreams never to be accomplished. That land of the great unwritten poems, the great unpainted pictures: what a heritance there for the enfranchised spirits of great dreamers!
In the autumn of 1833 he went forth