ABSTRACT
It is now five-and-fifty years since Robert Browning came before the world with his surprising youthful poem, Paracelsus; it is full fifty years since he put forth to his countrymen that rare poetic riddle which he called Sordello, and which remains yet an unsolved riddle for the multitude. To-day his publishers give us their Uniform Edition of his Complete Works, and show us in its sixteen compact volumes how productive have been all these long years, how full of a restless, fruitful energy; how little this poet lies open to the charge of having buried his golden talent in the earth. At least, it is not as a slothful servant that he can be condemned. Nor, among the select company of his readers, will any be found to deny the splendour of the gift so liberally put to use for the world’s service. It is not our own time that will show us a poet more royally equipped for his work. Alive to all the rich harmonies of form and colour in the poet’s sphere of working, he has the word-painter’s faculty of flashing on you what picture he will from the great gallery of his imagination. He has also, when he lists to use it patiently and with loving intensity of care and consciousness, the highly educated musical sensibility that can teach how to make verse tread with the airy foot of a dancer, swing lightly as a bird upon a bough, or move with the massive march of an army, the solemn sweep of a procession. More and better than even these, he has the quick-divining observation, the large intuitive sympathy that, looking under the human mask, discerns the truth about his fellows in their sorrow, their joy, even their guilt, and, comprehending much, scorns little; while a certain robust and sturdy common-sense, a saving salt of manliness, never allows this sympathetic tolerance to sicken into sentimentalism. The seeing eye, the hearing ear, the understanding heart, are his in sovereign measure, not less than the poet’s special dower, ‘the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love.’ To those friendly fortune has added a large and liberal culture, artistic as well as literary, comprehending alike classic lore and modern thought; and, to aid in the attaining of all needful accomplishment, there has been added to these greater
good and lasting work. Nor are we disappointed. Marvellous as are the mutations of earthly fame, large as are the poetic treasures which the world’s weary memory is ever letting slip, there is much of Robert Browning which will hardly perish while men continue to speak the language in which he has written, much which the world should not and scarcely can let die. Yet, strange as it might seem, it is true that to a large majority of the English-reading public, including not a few gifted and accomplished persons, this kingly poet remains a name only, and for certain of them not even that, being actually known to some eager thinkers and readers solely through the parodist’s sneer at him in the clever piece of mockery, where he figures as one who
Loves to dock the smaller parts of speech, As men curtail the already curtailed cur-
the imitation being ridiculously good enough to prove effective in deterring from the study of the original.
