ABSTRACT
Has the lapse of years made Browning any more attractive to the masses, or even to the judicious few? He is said to have ‘succeeded by a series of failures,’ and so has, as far as notoriety means success, and despite the recent increase of his faults. But what is the fact which strikes the admiring and sympathetic student of his poetry and career? Distrusting my own judgment, I asked a clear and impartial thinker,—‘How does Browning’s work impress you?’ His reply, after a moment’s considera tion, was: ‘Now that I try to formulate the sensation which it always has given me, his work seems that of a grand intellect painfully striving for adequate use and expression, and never quite attaining either.’ This was, and is, precisely my own feeling. The question arises, What is at fault? Browning’s genius, his chosen mode of expression, his period, or one and all of these? After the flush of youth is over, a poet must have a wise method, if he would move ahead. He must improve upon instinct by experience and common-sense. There is something amiss in one who has to grope for his theme and cannot adjust himself to his period; especially in one who cannot agreeably handle such themes as he arrives at. More than this, however, is the difficulty in Browning’s case. Expression is the flower of thought; a fine imagination is wont to be rhythmical and creative, and many passages, scattered throughout Browning’s works, show that his is no exception. It is a certain caprice or perverseness of method, that, by long practice, has injured his gift of expression; while an abnormal power of ratiocination, and a prosaic regard for details, have handicapped him from beginning. Besides, in mental arrogance and scorn of authority, he has insulted Beauty herself, and furnished too much excuse for small offenders. What may be condoned in one of his breed is intolerable when mimicked by every jackanapes and self-appointed reformer. A group of evils, then, has interfered with the greatness of his poetry. His style is that of a man caught in a morass of ideas through which he has to travel,—
more apt than a woman with some reason for what he does,—that poetry is valuable only for the statement which it makes, and must always be subordinate thereto.
