Robert Browning | Page 9

was a schoolfellow of Browning's father, and occupied towards
his son something of the position of an irresponsible uncle. He was a
rotund, rosy old gentleman, fond of comfort and the courtesies of life,
but fond of them more for others, though much for himself. Elizabeth
Barrett in after years wrote of "the brightness of his carved speech,"
which would appear to suggest that he practised that urbane and precise
order of wit which was even then old-fashioned. Yet, notwithstanding
many talents of this kind, he was not so much an able man as the
natural friend and equal of able men.
Browning's circle of friends, however, widened about this time in all
directions. One friend in particular he made, the Comte de
Ripert-Monclar, a French Royalist with whom he prosecuted with

renewed energy his studies in the mediæval and Renaissance schools of
philosophy. It was the Count who suggested that Browning should
write a poetical play on the subject of Paracelsus. After reflection,
indeed, the Count retracted this advice on the ground that the history of
the great mystic gave no room for love. Undismayed by this terrible
deficiency, Browning caught up the idea with characteristic enthusiasm,
and in 1835 appeared the first of his works which he himself regarded
as representative--Paracelsus. The poem shows an enormous advance
in technical literary power; but in the history of Browning's mind it is
chiefly interesting as giving an example of a peculiarity which clung to
him during the whole of his literary life, an intense love of the holes
and corners of history. Fifty-two years afterwards he wrote Parleyings
with certain Persons of Importance in their Day, the last poem
published in his lifetime; and any reader of that remarkable work will
perceive that the common characteristic of all these persons is not so
much that they were of importance in their day as that they are of no
importance in ours. The same eccentric fastidiousness worked in him as
a young man when he wrote Paracelsus and Sordello. Nowhere in
Browning's poetry can we find any very exhaustive study of any of the
great men who are the favourites of the poet and moralist. He has
written about philosophy and ambition and music and morals, but he
has written nothing about Socrates or Cæsar or Napoleon, or Beethoven
or Mozart, or Buddha or Mahomet. When he wishes to describe a
political ambition he selects that entirely unknown individual, King
Victor of Sardinia. When he wishes to express the most perfect soul of
music, he unearths some extraordinary persons called Abt Vogler and
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. When he wishes to express the largest
and sublimest scheme of morals and religion which his imagination can
conceive, he does not put it into the mouth of any of the great spiritual
leaders of mankind, but into the mouth of an obscure Jewish Rabbi of
the name of Ben Ezra. It is fully in accordance with this fascinating
craze of his that when he wishes to study the deification of the intellect
and the disinterested pursuit of the things of the mind, he does not
select any of the great philosophers from Plato to Darwin, whose
investigations are still of some importance in the eyes of the world. He
selects the figure of all figures most covered with modern satire and
pity, the _à priori_ scientist of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

His supreme type of the human intellect is neither the academic nor the
positivist, but the alchemist. It is difficult to imagine a turn of mind
constituting a more complete challenge to the ordinary modern point of
view. To the intellect of our time the wild investigators of the school of
Paracelsus seem to be the very crown and flower of futility, they are
collectors of straws and careful misers of dust. But for all that
Browning was right. Any critic who understands the true spirit of
mediæval science can see that he was right; no critic can see how right
he was unless he understands the spirit of mediæval science as
thoroughly as he did. In the character of Paracelsus, Browning wished
to paint the dangers and disappointments which attend the man who
believes merely in the intellect. He wished to depict the fall of the
logician; and with a perfect and unerring instinct he selected a man who
wrote and spoke in the tradition of the Middle Ages, the most
thoroughly and even painfully logical period that the world has ever
seen. If he had chosen an ancient Greek philosopher, it would have
been open to the critic to have said that that philosopher relied to some
extent upon the most sunny and graceful social life that ever flourished.
If he had made him a modern sociological professor, it would