The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning

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      Chapter 5

       Table of Contents

      1833-1835

      ‘Pauline’ — Letters to Mr. Fox — Publication of the Poem; chief Biographical and Literary Characteristics — Mr. Fox’s Review in the ‘Monthly Repository’; other Notices — Russian Journey — Desired diplomatic Appointment — Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of Appearance — ’The Trifler’ — M. de Ripert-Monclar — ’Paracelsus’ — Letters to Mr. Fox concerning it; its Publication — Incidental Origin of ‘Paracelsus’; its inspiring Motive; its Relation to ‘Pauline’ — Mr. Fox’s Review of it in the ‘Monthly Repository’ — Article in the ‘Examiner’ by John Forster.

      Before Mr. Browning had half completed his twenty-first year he had written ‘Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession’. His sister was in the secret, but this time his parents were not. This is why his aunt, hearing that ‘Robert’ had ‘written a poem,’ volunteered the sum requisite for its publication. Even this first instalment of success did not inspire much hope in the family mind, and Miss Browning made pencil copies of her favourite passages for the event, which seemed only too possible, of her never seeing the whole poem again. It was, however, accepted by Saunders and Otley, and appeared anonymously in 1833. Meanwhile the young author had bethought himself of his early sympathizer, Mr. Fox, and he wrote to him as follows (the letter is undated):

      Dear Sir, — Perhaps by the aid of the subjoined initials and a little reflection, you may recollect an oddish sort of boy, who had the honour of being introduced to you at Hackney some years back — at that time a sayer of verse and a doer of it, and whose doings you had a little previously commended after a fashion — (whether in earnest or not God knows): that individual it is who takes the liberty of addressing one whose slight commendation then, was more thought of than all the gun drum and trumpet of praise would be now, and to submit to you a free and easy sort of thing which he wrote some months ago ‘on one leg’ and which comes out this week — having either heard or dreamed that you contribute to the ‘Westminster’.

      Should it be found too insignificant for cutting up, I shall no less remain, Dear sir, Your most obedient servant, R. B.

      I have forgotten the main thing — which is to beg you not to spoil a loophole I have kept for backing out of the thing if necessary, ‘sympathy of dear friends,’ &c. &c., none of whom know anything about it.

      Monday Morning; Rev. — Fox.

      The answer was clearly encouraging, and Mr. Browning wrote again:

      Dear Sir, — In consequence of your kind permission I send, or will send, a dozen copies of ‘Pauline’ and (to mitigate the infliction) Shelley’s Poem — on account of what you mentioned this morning. It will perhaps be as well that you let me know their safe arrival by a line to R. B. junior, Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell. You must not think me too encroaching, if I make the getting back ‘Rosalind and Helen’ an excuse for calling on you some evening — the said ‘R. and H.’ has, I observe, been well thumbed and sedulously marked by an acquaintance of mine, but I have not time to rub out his labour of love. I am, dear sir, Yours very really, R. Browning. Camberwell: 2 o’clock.

      At the left-hand corner of the first page of this note is written: ‘The parcel — a “Pauline” parcel — is come. I send one as a witness.’

      On the inner page is written:

      ‘Impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T. R. — pronounced “heavy” —

      ‘A heavy sermon! — sure the error’s great, For not a word Tom uttered had its weight.’

      A third letter, also undated, but postmarked March 29, 1833, refers probably to the promise or announcement of a favourable notice. A fourth conveys Mr. Browning’s thanks for the notice itself:

      My dear Sir, — I have just received your letter, which I am desirous of acknowledging before any further mark of your kindness reaches me; — I can only offer you my simple thanks — but they are of the sort that one can give only once or twice in a life: all things considered, I think you are almost repaid, if you imagine what I must feel — and it will have been worth while to have made a fool of myself, only to have obtained a ‘case’ which leaves my fine fellow Mandeville at a dead lock.

      As for the book — I hope ere long to better it, and to deserve your goodness.

      In the meantime I shall not forget the extent to which I am, dear sir, Your most obliged and obedient servant R. B. S. & O.’s, Conduit St., Thursday m-g.

      I must intrude on your attention, my dear sir, once more than I had intended — but a notice like the one I have read will have its effect at all hazards.

      I can only say that I am very proud to feel as grateful as I do, and not altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, your most generous ‘coming forward’. Hazlitt wrote his essays, as he somewhere tells us, mainly to send them to some one in the country who had ‘always prophesied he would be something’! — I shall never write a line without thinking of the source of my first praise, be assured. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and obliged, Robert Browning. March 31, 1833.

      Mr. Fox was then editor of a periodical called the ‘Monthly Repository’, which, as his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writes in her graceful article on Robert Browning, in the ‘Argosy’ for February 1890, he was endeavouring to raise from its original denominational character into a first-class literary and political journal. The articles comprised in the volume for 1833 are certainly full of interest and variety, at once more popular and more solid than those prescribed by the present fashion of monthly magazines. He reviewed ‘Pauline’ favourably in its April number — that is, as soon as it had appeared; and the young poet thus received from him an introduction to what should have been, though it probably was not, a large circle of intelligent readers.

      The poem was characterized by its author, five years later, in a fantastic note appended to a copy of it, as ‘the only remaining crab of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool’s Paradise.’ This name is ill bestowed upon a work which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning’s genius, contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor, its faults of exaggeration and confusion; and it is of these that Mr. Browning was probably thinking when he wrote his more serious apologetic preface to its reprint in 1868. But these faults were partly due to his conception of the character which he had tried to depict; and partly to the inherent difficulty of depicting one so complex, in a succession of mental and moral states, irrespectively of the conditions of time, place, and circumstance which were involved in them. Only a very powerful imagination СКАЧАТЬ