Brownings Shorter Poems | Page 3

of men has he added to the art world? What
beauty and dignity, what light, has he created? How does he view life:

with what of hope, or aspiration, or strength? These questions may be
discussed under his sense and mastery of form, and under his views of
human life.
Browning's sense of form has often been attacked and defended. The
first impression upon reading him is of harshness amounting to the
grotesque. Rhymes often clash and jangle like the music of savages.
Such rhymes as
"Fancy the fabric...
Ere mortar dab brick,"
strain dignity and beauty to the breaking-point. Archaic and bizarre
words are pressed into service to help out the rhyme and metre; instead
of melodic rhythm there are harsh and jolting combinations; until the
reader brought up in the traditions of Shakespeare, Milton, and
Tennyson, is fain to cry out, This is not poetry!
In internal form, as well, Browning often defies the established laws of
literature. Distorted and elliptical sentences, long and irrelevant
parentheses, curious involutions of thought, and irregular or incoherent
development of the narrative or the picture, often leave the reader in
despair even of the meaning. Nor can these departures from orderly
beauty always be defended by the exigencies of the subjects. They do
not fit the theme. They are the discords of a musician who either has
not mastered his instrument or is not sensitive to all the finer effects.
Some of his work stands out clear from these faults: A Toccata of
Galuppi's_, Love Among the Ruins_, the Songs from Pippa Passes_,
_Apparitions_, Andrea del Sarto_, and a score of others might be cited
to show that Browning could write with a sense of form as true, and an
ear as delicate, as could any poet of the century, except Tennyson.
To Browning belongs the credit of having created a new poetic
form,--the dramatic monologue. In this form the larger number of his
poems are cast. Among the best examples in this volume are _My Last
Duchess_, The Bishop Orders his Tomb_, _The Laboratory, and
Confessions. One person only is speaking, but reveals the presence,
action, and thoughts of the others who are in the scene at the same time
that he reveals his own character, as in a conversation in which but one

voice is audible. The dramatic monologue has in a peculiar degree the
advantages of compression and vividness, and is, in Browning's hands,
an instrument of great power.
The charge of obscurity so often made against Browning's poetry must
in part be admitted. As has been said above he is often led off by his
many-sided interests into irrelevancies and subtleties that interfere with
simplicity and beauty. His compressed style and his fondness for
unusual words often make an unwarranted demand upon the reader's
patience. Such passages are a challenge to his admirers and a repulse to
the indifferent. Sometimes, indeed, the ore is not worth the smelting;
often it yields enough to reward the greatest patience.
Browning, like all great poets, knew life widely and deeply through
men and books. He was born in London, near the great centres of the
intellectual movements of his time; he travelled much, especially in
Italy and France; he read widely in the literatures and philosophies of
many ages and many lands; and so grew into the cosmopolitanism of
spirit that belonged to Chaucer and to Shakespeare.
In all art human life is the matter of ultimate interest. To Browning this
was so in a peculiar degree. In the epistolary preface to Sordello,
written thirty years after its first publication, he said: "My stress lay on
the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study."
This interest in "the development of a soul" is the keynote of nearly all
his work. To it are directly traceable many of the most obvious
excellences and defects of his poetry. He came to look below the
surfaces of things for the soul beneath them. He came to be "the
subtlest assertor of the Soul in Song," and like his own pair of lovers on
the Campagna, "unashamed of soul." His early preference of Shelley to
Keats indicated this bent. His readers are conscious always of
revelations of the souls of the men and women he portrays; the sweet
and tender womanhood of the Duchess, the sordid and material soul of
the old Bishop of St. Praxed's, the devoted and heroic soul of
Napoleon's young soldier, the weary and despairing soul of Andrea del
Sarto,--and a host of others stand before us cleared of the veil of habit
and convention. The souls of men appear as the victors over all material

and immaterial obstacles. Human affection transforms the bare room to
a bower of fruits and flowers; human courage and resolution carry
Childe Roland victoriously