Men and Women | Page 2

that among these
poems there are some with footholds firmly rooted in the earth and
others whose proper realm is air. These have wings for alighting, for
flitting thither and hither, or for pursuing some sudden rapt whirl of
flight in Heaven's face at fancy's bidding. They are certainly not less
original than those other solider, earth-fast poems, but they are less
unique. Being motived in transient fancy, they are more akin to poems
by other hands, and could be classed more readily with them by any
observer, despite all differences, as little poetic romances or as a
species of lyric.
They were probably first found praiseworthy, not only because they
were simpler, but because, being more like work already understood
and approved, adventurous criticism was needed to taste their quality.
The other longer poems in blank verse, graver and more dignified, yet
even more vivid, and far more life- encompassing, which bore the
rounded impress of the living human being, instead of the shadowy
motion of the lively human fancy--these are the birth of a process of
imaginative brooding upon the development of man by means of
individuality throughout the slow, unceasing flow of human history.
Browning evidently grew aware that whatever these poems of
personality might prove to be worth to the world, these were the ones
deserving of a place apart, under the early title of "Men and Women,"
which he thought especially suited to the more roundly modelled and
distinctively colored exemplars of his peculiar faculty.
In his next following collection, under the similar descriptive title of
"Dramatis Personae," he added to this class of work, shaping in the
mould of blank verse mainly used for "Men and Women" his
personifications of the Medium Mr. Sludge, the embryo theologian
Caliban, the ripened mystical saint of "A Death in the Desert"; while
Abt Vogler, the creative musician, Rabbi ben Ezra, the intuitional
philosopher, and the chastened adept in loving, James Lee's wife,
although held within the embrace of their maker's dramatic conception
of them, as persons of his stage, were made to pour out their speech in
rhyme as Johannes Agricola in the earlier volume uttered his creed and

Rudel his love- message, as if the heat of their emotion-moved
personality required such an outlet. Some such general notion as this of
the scope of this volume, and of the design of the poet in the
construction, classification, and orderly arrangement of so much of his
briefer work as is here contained seems to be borne out upon a closer
examination. On the threshold of this new poetic world of personality
stands the Poet of the poem significantly called "Transcendentalism,"
who is speaking to another poet about the too easily obvious,
metaphor-bare philosophy of his opus in twelve books. That the
admonishing poet is stationed there at the very door-sill of the Gallery
of Men and Women is surely not accidental, even if Browning's habit
of plotting his groups of poems symmetrically by opening with a
prologue-poem sounding the right key, and rounding the theme with an
epilogue, did not tend to prove it intentional. It is an open secret that
the last poem in "Men and Women," for instance, is an epilogue of
autobiographical interest, gathering up the foregoing strains of his lyre,
for a few last chords, in so intimate a way that the actual fall of the
fingers may be felt, the pausing smile seen, as the performer turns
towards the one who inspired "One Word More." The appropriateness
of
"Transcendentalism" as a prologue need be no more of a secret
than that of "One Word More" as an epilogue, although it is left to
betray itself. Other poets writing on the poet, Emerson for example, and
Tennyson, place the outright plain name of their thought at the head of
their verses, without any attempt to make their titles dress their parts
and keep as thoroughly true to their roles as the poems themselves. But
a complete impersonation of his thought in name and style as well as
matter is characteristic of Browning, and his personified poets playing
their parts together in "Transcendentalism" combine to exhibit a little
masque exemplifying their writer's view of the Poet as veritably as if he
had named it specifically "The Poet." One poet shows the other, and
brings him visibly forward; but even in such a morsel of dramatic
workmanship as this, fifty-one lines all told, there is the complexity and
involution of life itself, and, as ever in Browning's monologues, over
the shoulder of the poet more obviously portrayed peers as livingly the
face of the poet portraying him. And this one--the admonishing poet--is
set there with his "sudden rose," as if to indicate with that symbol of
poetic magic what kind of spell was sought to be exercised