Robert Browning

Robert Browning

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by G. K.
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Title: Robert Browning
Author: G. K. Chesterton
Release Date: August 31, 2004 [EBook #13342]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ROBERT BROWNING
BY
G.K. CHESTERTON

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
BROWNING IN EARLY LIFE 1

CHAPTER II
EARLY WORKS 34

CHAPTER III
BROWNING AND HIS MARRIAGE 55

CHAPTER IV
BROWNING IN ITALY 81

CHAPTER V
BROWNING IN LATER LIFE 105

CHAPTER VI
BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 133

CHAPTER VII
"THE RING AND THE BOOK" 160

CHAPTER VIII
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BROWNING 177
INDEX 203

ROBERT BROWNING

CHAPTER I
BROWNING IN EARLY LIFE

On the subject of Browning's work innumerable things have been said
and remain to be said; of his life, considered as a narrative of facts,
there is little or nothing to say. It was a lucid and public and yet quiet
life, which culminated in one great dramatic test of character, and then
fell back again into this union of quietude and publicity. And yet, in
spite of this, it is a great deal more difficult to speak finally about his
life than about his work. His work has the mystery which belongs to the
complex; his life the much greater mystery which belongs to the simple.
He was clever enough to understand his own poetry; and if he
understood it, we can understand it. But he was also entirely
unconscious and impulsive, and he was never clever enough to
understand his own character; consequently we may be excused if that
part of him which was hidden from him is partly hidden from us. The
subtle man is always immeasurably easier to understand than the
natural man; for the subtle man keeps a diary of his moods, he practises
the art of self-analysis and self-revelation, and can tell us how he came
to feel this or to say that. But a man like Browning knows no more
about the state of his emotions than about the state of his pulse; they are
things greater than he, things growing at will, like forces of Nature.
There is an old anecdote, probably apocryphal, which describes how a
feminine admirer wrote to Browning asking him for the meaning of one
of his darker poems, and received the following reply: "When that
poem was written, two people knew what it meant--God and Robert
Browning. And now God only knows what it means." This story gives,
in all probability, an entirely false impression of Browning's attitude
towards his work. He was a keen artist, a keen scholar, he could put his
finger on anything, and he had a memory like the British Museum
Library. But the story does, in all probability, give a tolerably accurate
picture of Browning's attitude towards his own emotions and his
psychological type. If a man had asked him what some particular
allusion to a Persian hero meant he could in all probability have quoted
half the epic; if a man had asked him which third cousin of
Charlemagne was alluded to in Sordello, he could have given an
account of the man and an account of his father and his grandfather.
But if a man had asked him what he thought of himself, or what were
his emotions an hour before his wedding, he would have replied with
perfect sincerity that God alone knew.

This mystery of the unconscious man, far deeper than any mystery of
the conscious one, existing as it does in all men, existed peculiarly in
Browning, because he was a very ordinary and spontaneous man. The
same thing exists to some extent in all history and all affairs. Anything
that is deliberate, twisted, created as a trap and a mystery, must be
discovered at last; everything that is done naturally remains mysterious.
It may be difficult to discover the principles of the Rosicrucians, but it
is much easier to discover the principles of the Rosicrucians than the
principles of the United States: nor has any secret society kept its aims
so quiet as humanity. The way to be inexplicable is to be chaotic, and
on the surface this was the quality of Browning's life; there is the same
difference between judging of his poetry and judging of his life, that
there is between making a map of a labyrinth and making a map of a
mist. The discussion