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

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СКАЧАТЬ world he was held to the orbit of his poetic gift. Diplomacy has an abundance of recruits without devastating poetic genius to furnish them. The winter of 1834 found him deeply absorbed in “Paracelsus.” This poem is dedicated to the Marquis Amédée de Ripert-Monclar, who was a great friend of Browning at this time. The Marquis was four years his senior; he was in England as a private agent for the Duchesse de Berri and the Royalist party in France to the English government. The subject of the poem is said to have been suggested by the Marquis, although the fact that all this medieval lore had been familiar to Browning from his earliest childhood must be accounted the pre-determining factor in its creation. William Sharp quotes Browning as having once said of his father: “The old gentleman’s brain was a storehouse of literary and philosophical antiquities. He was completely versed in medieval legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic personages, personally,” and his son assimilated unconsciously this entire atmosphere.

Both “Paracelsus” and “Sordello” seem to spring, as by natural poetic evolution, from “Pauline”; all three of these poems are, in varying degree, a drama of the soul’s progress. They all suggest, and “Paracelsus,” especially, in a great degree embodies, the Hegelian philosophy; yet Mr. Barrett Browning expresses his rather positive conviction that his father never read Hegel at any period of his life. Dr. Corson regarded these early poems of Browning as of peculiar value in showing his attitude toward things. “We see in what direction the poet has set his face,” said Dr. Corson, “what his philosophy of life is, what soul-life means with him, what regeneration means, what edification means in its deepest sense of building up within us the spiritual temple.” Dr. Corson further illuminated this attitude of the poet by pointing out that he emphasized the approach to perfection as something that cannot be brought out through what is born and resides in the brain; but it must be by “the attracting power of magnetic personalities, the ultimate, absolute personality being the God-man, Christ. The human soul is regarded in Browning’s poetry,” continued Dr. Corson, “as a complexly organized, individualized, divine force, destined to gravitate toward the Infinite. How is this force with its numberless checks and counter-checks, its centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, best determined in its necessarily oblique way? How much earthly ballast must it carry to keep it sufficiently steady, and how little, that it may not be weighed down with materialistic heaviness?” Incredibly enough, in the revelations of the retrospective view, “Paracelsus” made little impression on the literary critics of the day; the Athenæum devoting to it less space even than to “the anonymous Pauline,” while the “Philip van Artevelde” of Henry Taylor (now hardly remembered) received fifteen columns of tribute, in which the critic confided to the public his enthusiastic estimate of that production. Neither Blackwood’s, the Quarterly, nor the Edinburgh even mentioned “Paracelsus”; the Athenæum admitted that it had talent, but admonished the poet that “Writers would do well to remember that though it is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him—not because of these characteristics, but in spite of them.” The one gleam of consolation to the young poet in all this general neglect or unfavorable comment was that of a three-column article from the pen of John Forster in the Examiner, then conducted by Leigh Hunt, and on whose staff were Sergeant Talfourd and Proctor (Barry Cornwall) beside Forster, who was then a rising young journalist of twenty-three, only one month the senior of Browning. But Forster spoke with no uncertain note; rather, with authority, and in this critique he said:

      “Since the publication of ‘Philip van Artevelde’ we have met with no such evidences of poetical genius ... and we may safely predict for its author a brilliant career, if he continues true to the present promise of his genius.”

      The immediate effect of the publication of “Paracelsus” was of a social rather than of a literary character, for something in it seemed magnetic to the life of the day, and the young poet found himself welcomed by a brilliant literary circle. He met Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor, Dickens, Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton), Proctor (Barry Cornwall), Horne, Sergeant Talfourd, Leigh Hunt, and others. Hunt was then domiciled in Cheyne Row, in close proximity to the Carlyles, with whom Browning had already formed a friendship.

      Rev. William Johnson Fox, one of Browning’s earliest friends, was at this time living at Craven Hill, Bayswater, and on an evening when Macready had dined with him, Browning came in. This evening (November 27, 1835) is noted in Macready’s diary, and after speaking of Mr. Fox as an “original and profound thinker,” he adds:

“Mr. Robert Browning, the author of ‘Paracelsus,’ came in after dinner; I was very much pleased to meet him. His face is full of intelligence.... I took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed to improve my acquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by the proposal, wished to send me his book. We exchanged cards, and parted.”

      Later (under date of December 7), Mr. Macready records:

      “Read ‘Paracelsus,’ a work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, diction, but occasionally obscure. The writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of the time.”

      On New Year’s Eve Mr. Macready invited a little house party, among whom were Forster and Browning. “Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party,” writes Mr. Macready in his journal; “his simple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention and won golden opinions from all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw.”

      Browning’s personal appearance, “slim, and dark, and very handsome,” as Mary Cowden Clarke said, is pictured by many of his friends of that time. “As a young man,” writes William Sharp, “he seems to have had a certain ivory delicacy of coloring ... and he appeared taller than he really was, partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation.... His hair was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque waves as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle personal charm, was his voice, then with a rare, flute-like tone, clear, sweet, and resonant.”

Macready was not only a notable figure on the stage at this period, but he was also (what every great actor must be) a man of thought, intense sensibility, and wide culture. Soon after Macready had appeared in Talfourd’s “Ion” (the première being on the playwright’s birthday), Talfourd gave a supper at his house, at which Browning for the first time met Wordsworth and Landor. Macready himself sat between these two illustrious poets, with Browning opposite to him. The guests included Ellen Tree, Miss Mitford, and Forster. Macready, recording this night in his diary, writes of “Wordsworth who pinned me.” Landor, it seems, talked of constructing drama, and said he “had not the faculty,” that he “could only set persons to talking; all the rest was chance.” But an ever remembered moment came for the young poet when the host proposed a toast to the author of “Paracelsus,” and Wordsworth, rising, said: “I am proud to drink to your health, Mr. Browning,” and Landor bowed with his inimitable, courteous grace, raising his glass to his lips. For some years, whenever Wordsworth visited London, Forster invited Browning to meet him. The younger poet was never an enthusiast in his mild friendship for the elder, although in after years (1875) he replied to a question by Rev. A. B. Grosart, the editor of Wordsworth’s works, that while in hasty youth he did “presume to use the great and venerated personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter’s model,” he intended in “The Lost Leader” no portrait of the entire man. While Wordsworth’s political attitude did not please the young disciple of Shelley, for Landor he conceived the most profound admiration and sympathetic affection. It was a striking sequel to this youthful attraction that in Landor’s desolate old age it should be Browning who tenderly cared for him, and surrounded his last days with unfailing comfort and solicitude.

At this memorable supper, just as Browning was about to take his leave, Macready laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, saying earnestly: “Write a play for me, and keep me from going to America.” The thought appealed to the poet, who replied: “Shall it be historical and English? What do you say to ‘Strafford’ for a subject?” СКАЧАТЬ