ABSTRACT
No such description as this, no description at all, is capable of conveying an adequate idea of the intricacies of fact, argument, and character through which the poet moves with the light of his genius, startling one after the other into life, casting one after the other into a doubtful existence of shadow. That faculty of Shakspeare’s which justifies the epithet ‘divine’ so freely applied to him-the faculty of looking all passions through and through with perfectly dispassionate eyes, and of dealing them here and there, each strictly after its kind, without an emotion-something of that supreme gift we discern in the intellectual candour displayed by Browning as he speaks with the mouth and mind of Guido, of Caponsacchi, of one half-Rome, the other half-Rome, and the gentleman of quality who expounds the tertium quid. It is noticeable, however, that we have a generally better workmanship when the poet speaks for those who are on the right side than when he speaks for those who are in the wrong. In mere ingenuity of reflection, inference, and argument he is splendidly impartial; but still there is enough of sympathy for one side to give a little extra warmth and colour to the verse whenever he is speaking for it. This, however, detracts but little from the poet’s claims to a share of the Shakspearian quality aforesaid. First, we have the subtlety which out of the records of a trial creates half-a-dozen several and distinct characters, each consistent with every fact and suspicion brought out by the trial. But this is obscured by the finer subtlety which shows the play of these several minds over the same facts, the same doubts and suspicions, the different magnitude and significance of the same injuries, temptations, provocations, rights and wrongs. It is useless, however, to attempt any definition of such subtleties, or to appraise in criticism what the critic cannot possibly present to view. We can only say that whereas the scheme of the poem obviously
almost wholly dramatic, there is an error in its construction which the dramatist last of all should make. It is not that the poet’s own sentiments about the story and his sympathy with certain of its personages are to be detected in the workmanship, whereas they should never show at all, but that he begins by an open declaration of them; says, to start with, that this is a villain and a liar whatever may appear in the course of the story, and that this other is at no moment to be mistaken for anything else than a suffering angel. She may run away with a young priest, and he may go off with her in the garb of a gay cavalier; but we shall find that it is all nothing. Surely this is not good art? The dramatist should have no more judgment about the character he displays and the passion he depicts than nature herself who first created them. He should never play the commentator; still less should he take sides and explain his reasons for doing so before the play begins. True it is that in this case the dramatic skill of the poet is so great that, even after we are told who really is right and who wrong, we follow every turn of the story with suspense-holding now with Pompilia, now inclining to Guido, and generally viewing the priest much as the ‘finer sense of the city’ did. Better testimony than this to the poet’s genius and fidelity can scarcely be imagined; nevertheless, that which supplies a triumphant test of his skill is itself a fault. Altogether, the introduction, which explains the story, and how it originated, and how it is to be dealt with, is the least excellent part of the book. Though all the rest of the work might lead us to hope that Browning had abandoned the indulgence of the careless writing, the obscurity, the clipt prosaic lines which unquestionably do derogate from much of his work, this preface shows that he has not done so. Sentences twenty-five lines long, and every fifth line parenthetical, are to be found there. Such liberties as-
A-smoke i’ the sunshine Rome lies gold and glad,
for ‘golden and glad’, are frequent, intolerable as they are. What would be thought of the prose which set forth that a city lay gold and glad? that certain prints exposed for sale in the highway were ‘saved by a stone from snowing broad the square’? We should call it unbearably bad English; and bad English in prose is worse in poetry. Haste or indifference leaves here, also, such torturing lines as-
Turned wrong to right-proved wolves sheep, and sheep wolves.
