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BROWNING, ROBERT (1812-1889)
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See also:BROWNING, See also:ROBERT (1812-1889) , See also:English poet, was See also:born at See also:Camberwell, See also:London, on the 7th of May 1812. He was the son of Robert Browning (1781-1866), who for fifty years was employed in the See also:Bank of See also:England. Earlier Brownings had been settled in See also:Wiltshire and See also:Dorsetshire, and there is no ground for . the statement that the See also:family was partly of Jewish origin: The poet's See also:mother was a daughter of See also: The family was See also:united by the strongest mutual See also:affection, and the parents erred, if anything, on the See also:side of See also:indulgence. Browning was sent to a school in the neighbourhood, but See also:left it when fourteen, and had little other teaching. He had a See also:French See also:tutor for the next two years, and in his eighteenth See also:year he attended some See also:Greek lectures at the London University. At school he never won a See also:prize, though it was more difficult to avoid than to win prizes. He was more conspicuous for the love of birds and beasts, which he always retained, than for any See also:interest in his lessons. He rather despised his companions and made few See also:friends. A precocious poetical capacity, however, showed itself in extra-scholastic ways. He made his schoolfellows See also:act plays, partly written by himself. He had composed verses before he could write, and when twelve years old completed a See also:volume of poems called Incondita. His parents tried unsuccessfully to find a publisher; but his verses were admired by Sarah See also:Flower, afterwards Mrs See also: A copy made by See also:Miss Flower was in existence in 1871, but afterwards destroyed by the author. Browning had the run of his father's library, and acquired a very unusual amount of See also:miscellaneous See also:reading. See also:Quarles' Emblems was an especial favourite; and besides the Elizabethan dramatists and See also:standard English books, he had read all the See also:works of See also:Voltaire. See also:Byron was his first See also:master in See also:poetry, but about the See also:age of four-teen he See also:fell in accidentally with See also:Shelley and See also:Keats. For Shelley in particular he conceived an enthusiatic admiration which lasted for many years, though it was qualified in his later See also:life. The more aggressive side of Browning's See also:character was as yet the most prominent; and a self-willed lad, conscious of a growing ability, found himself cramped in Camberwell circles. He rejected the See also:ordinary careers. He declined the offer of a clerkship in the Bank of England; and his father, who had found the occupation uncongenial, not only approved the refusal but cordially accepted the son's decision to take poetry for his profession. For good or evil, Browning had been left very much to his own guidance, and if his intellectual training suffered in some directions, the See also:liberty permitted the development of his marked originality. The parental yoke, however, was too See also:light to provoke See also:rebellion. Browning's See also:mental growth led to no violent See also:breach with the See also:creeds of his childhood. His parents became Dissenters in See also:middle life, but often attended See also:Anglican services; and Browning, though he abandoned the dogmas, continued to sympathize with the spirit of their creed. He never took a keen interest in the politics of the day, but cordially accepted the See also:general position of contemporary Liberalism. His See also:worship of Shelley did not mean an See also:acceptance of his master's hostile attitude towards See also:Christianity, still less did he revolt against the moral discipline under which he had been educated. He frequented literary and artistic circles, and was passionately fond of the See also:theatre; but he was entirely See also:free from a coarse Bohemian-ism, and never went to See also:bed, we are told, without kissing his mother. He lived with his parents until his See also:marriage. His mother lived till 1849, and his father till 1866, and his affectionate relations to both remained unaltered. Browning's first published poem, Pauline, appeared anonymously in 1833. He always regarded it as crude, and destroyed all the copies of this edition that came within his reach. It was only to avoid unauthorized reprints that he consented with reluctance to republishing it in the collected works of 1868. The indication of See also:genius was recognized by W. J. Fox, who hailed it in the Monthly Repository asmarking the See also:advent of a true poet. Pauline contains an enthusiastic invocation of Shelley, whose See also:influence upon its See also:style and conception is strongly marked. It is the only one of Browning's works which can be regarded as imitative. In the See also:winter of 1833 he went to St See also:Petersburg on a visit to the See also:Russian See also:consul-general, Mr Benckhausen. There he wrote the earliest of his dramatic lyrics, " Porphyria's See also:Lover " and " Johannes See also: They are, as he gave See also:notice, " poems, not dramas." The interest is not in the See also:external events, but in the " development of a soul !'; but they are observations of other men's souls, not See also:direct revelations of his own. Paracelsus was based upon a study of the See also:original narrative, and Sordello was a See also:historical though a very indefinite See also:person. The background of See also:history is intentionally vague in both cases. There is one remarkable difference between them. The Paracelsus, though full of See also:noble passages, is certainly diffuse. Browning heard that See also: It was quite legitimate to subordinate the external incidents to the psychological development in which he was really interested, but to secure the subordination by making the incidents barely intelligible was not a logical consequence. We should not understand See also:Hamlet's psychological peculiarities the better if we had to infer his family troubles from indirect hints. Browning gave more time to Sordello than to any other work, and perhaps had become so See also:familiar with the story which he professed to tell that he failed to make See also:allowance for his readers' difficulties. In any See also:case it was not surprising that the ordinary reader should be puzzled and repelled, and the general recognition of his genius See also:long delayed, by his reputation for obscurity. It might, however, be expected that he would make a more successful See also:appeal to the public by purely dramatic work, in which he would have to limit his psychological See also:speculation and to See also:place his characters in See also:plain situations. Paracelsus and Sordello show so See also:great a See also:power of reading character and appreciating subtler springs of conduct that its author clearly had one, at least, of the essential qualifications of a dramatist. Before Sordello appeared Browning had tried his See also:hand in this direction. He was encouraged by outward circumstances as well as by his natural See also:bent. He was making friends and gaining some real appreciative admirers. John See also:Forster had been greatly impressed by Paracelsus. Browning's love of the theatre had led to an introduction to See also:Macready in the winter of 1835—1836; and Macready, who had been also impressed by Paracelsus, asked him for a See also:play. Browning consented and wrote See also:Strafford, which was produced at Covent See also:Garden in May 1837, Macready taking the See also:principal See also:part. Later dramas were See also: For whatever See also:reason, Browning, though he had given sufficient proofs of genius, had not found in these works the most appropriate mode of utterance.
The dramas, after Strafford, formed the greatest part of a See also:series of See also:pamphlets called Bells and Pomegranates, eight of which were issued from 1841 to 1846. The name, he explained, was intended to indicate an " See also:alternation of poetry and thought." The first number contained the fanciful and characteristic Pippa Passes. The seventh, significantly named Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, contained some of his most striking shorter poems. In 1844 he contributed six poems, among which were " The See also:Flight of the Duchess " and " The See also:Bishop orders his See also:Tomb at St Praxed's See also: The Bells and Pomegranates attracted the rising school of " pre-Raphaelites," especially D. G. See also:Rossetti, who guessed the authorship of the See also:anonymous Pauline and made a transcript from the copy in the British Museum. But his audience was still select.
Another recognition of his genius was of incomparably more personal importance and vitally affected his history. In 1844 Miss See also:Barrett (see BROWNING, See also: The state of Miss Barrett's health suggested misgivings which made Browning's parents as well as his See also:bride's disapprove of the match. She, however, appears to have become stronger for some time, though always fragile and incapable of much active exertion. She had already been recommended to pass a winter in Italy. Browning had made three previous See also:tours there, and his impressions had been turned to See also:account in Sordello and Pippa Passes, in The Englishman in Italy and See also:Home Thoughts from Abroad. For the next fifteen years theBrownings lived mainly in Italy, making their headquarters at See also:Florence in the Casa See also:Guidi. A couple, of winters were passed in See also:Rome. In the summer of 1849 they were at See also:Siena, where Browning was helpful to Landor, then in his last domestic troubles. They also visited England and twice spent some months in See also:Paris. Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Browning, was born at Florence in 1849. Browning's literary activity during his marriage semis to have been comparatively small; See also:Christmas See also:Eve and See also:Easter Day appeared in 185o, while the two volumes called Men and See also:Women (1855), containing some of his best work, showed that his power was still growing. His position involved some See also:sacrifice and imposed limitations upon his energies. Mrs Browning's health required a secluded life; and Browning, it is said, never dined out during his marriage, though he enjoyed society and made many and very warm friendships. Among their Florence friends were See also:Margaret See also:Fuller Ossoli, Isa Blagden; Charles See also:Lever and others. The only breach of See also:complete sympathy with his wife was due to his contempt for " spiritualists "and " mediums," in whom she fully believed. His portrait of See also:Daniel Dunglas Home as " Sludge the See also:Medium " only appeared after her death. This domestic happiness, however, remained essentially unbroken until she died on 29th See also:June 1861. The whole love-story had revealed the singular See also:nobility of his character, and, though crushed for a time by the See also:blow, he See also:bore it manfully. Browning determined to return to England and superintend his boy's See also:education at home. He took a See also:house at 19 See also:Warwick See also:Crescent; See also:Paddington, and became gradually acclimatized in London. He resumed his work and published the Dramatis Personae in 1864. The publication was well enough received to See also:mark the growing recognition of his genius, which was confirmed by The See also:Ring and the Book, published in four volumes in the winter of 1868—1869. In 1867 the university of See also:Oxford gave him the degree of M.A. by diploma," and Balliol See also:College elected him as an honorary See also:fellow. In 1868 he declined a virtual offer of the rectorship of St See also:Andrews. He repeated the refusal on -a later occasion (1884) from a dislike to the delivery of a public address. The rising See also:generation was now beginning to buy his books; and he shared the See also:homage of thoughtful readers with See also:Tennyson, though in general popularity he could not approach his friendly See also:rival. The Ring and the Book has been generally accepted as Browning's masterpiece. It was based on a copy of the pieces verbal of Guido Fran ceschini's case discovered by him at Florence. The audacity of the See also:scheme is surprising. To tell the story of a hideous See also:murder twelve times over, to versify the arguments of counsel and the See also:gossip of quidnuncs, and to insist upon every detail with the minuteness of a See also:law See also:report, could have occurred to no one else. The poem is so far at the opposite See also:pole from Sordello. Vagueness of environment is replaced by a photographic distinctness, though the psychological interest is dominant in both. Particular phrases may be crabbed, but nothing can be more distinct and vivid in thought and conception. If some of those " dramatic monologues " of which the book is formed fail to be poetry at all, some of them—that of Pompilia the victim, her See also:champion Caponsacchi, and the See also:pope who gives judgment—are in Browning's highest mood, and are as impressive from the ethical as from the poetical point of view. I Pompilia was no doubt in some respects an idealized portrait of Mrs Browning. Other pieces may be accepted as a background of See also:commonplace to throw the heroic into the stronger. See also:relief. The Ring and the Book is as powerful as its method is unique. Browning became gentler and more urbane as he See also:grew older. His growing fame made him welcome in all cultivated circles, and he accepted the homage of his admirers with dignity and simplicity. He exerted himself to be agreeable in private society, though his nervousness made him invariably decline ever to make public speeches. He was an admirable talker, and took pains to talk his best. A strong memory supplied him with abundant anecdotes; and though occasionally pugnacious, he allowed a See also:fair See also:share of the conversation to his companions. Superficial observers sometimes fancied that the poet was too much sunk in the man of the See also:world; but the See also:appearance was due to his characteristic reluctance to See also:lay See also:bare his deeper feelings. When due occasion offered, the underlying tenderness of his affections was abundantly See also:manifest. No one could show more delicate sympathy. He made many warm personal friendships in his later years, especially with women, to whom he could most easily confide his feelings. In the early years of this See also:period he paid visits to See also:country houses, but afterwards preferred to retire farther from the London See also:atmosphere into secluded regions. He passed some holidays in remote French villages, Pornic, Le Croisic and St Aubyn, which have left traces in his poetry. See also:Gold See also:Hair is a See also:legend of Pornic, and Herzig See also:Riel was written at Le Croisic. At St Aubyn he had the society of See also:Joseph Milsand, who had shown his warm appreciation of Browning 's poetry by an See also:article in the Revue See also:des Deux Mondes, which in 1852 had led to a personal friendship lasting till Milsand's death in 1886. Browning sent to him the See also:proof-sheets of all his later works for revision. In 1877 Browning was at La Saisiaz on the Saleve, near See also:Geneva, where an old friend, Miss See also:Egerton See also: His later writings covered a very great variety of subjects, and were See also:cast in many different forms. They show the old characteristics and often the old genius. Browning's marked peculiarity, the See also:union of great speculative acuteness with intense poetical insight, involved difficulties which he did not always surmount. He does not seem to know whether he is writing poetry or when he is versifying See also:logic; and when the speculative impulse gets the upper hand, his work suggests the doubt whether an imaginary See also:dialogue in See also:prose would not have been a more effective medium. He is analysing at length when he ought to be presenting a See also:concrete type, while the necessities of See also:verse complicate and obscure the reasoning. A curious example is the See also:Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871),. an See also:alias for See also: The Dramatic Idyls (1879 and 188o) are a collection of direct narratives, with less See also:analytical disquisition, which surprised his readers by their sustained vigour. In the last volumes, Jocoseria (1883), Ferishtah's Fancies (1884), Parleyings with Certain See also:People (1887) and Asolando (1889), the old power is still apparent but the hand is beginning to fail. They contain discussions of metaphysical problems, such as the origin of evil, which are interesting as indications of his creed, but can scarcely be regarded as successful either poetically or philosophically. Another group of poems showed Browning's interest in Greek literature. Balaustion's See also:Adventure (1871) includes a " transcript froth See also:Euripides," a See also:translation, that is, of part of the See also:Alcestis. See also:Aristophanes' See also:Apology (1875) included another translation from the Heracles, and in 1877 he published a very literal translation of the See also:Agamemnon. This, it seems, was meant to disprove the See also:doctrine that IEschylus was a See also:model of literary style. Browning shared his wife's admiration for Euripides, and takes a phrase from one of her poems as a See also:motto for Balaustion's Adventure. In the Aristophanes' Apology this leads characteristically to a long exposition by Aristophanes of his unsatisfactory reasons for ridiculing Euripides. It recalls the apologies of "Blougram and Louis Napoleon, and contains some interesting indications of his poetical theory. Browning was to many readers as much See also:prophet as poet. His religious position is most explicitly, though still not very clearly, set forth in the Christmas Eve and Easter Day (185o). Like many eminent contemporaries, he combined a disbelief in orthodox See also:dogma with a profound conviction of the importance to the religious instincts of the symbols incorporated in accepted creeds. See also:Saul (1845), A Death in the See also:Desert (1864), and similar poems, show his strong sympathy with the spirit of the old belief, though his argumentative works have a more or less sceptical turn. It was scarcely possible, if desirable, to be original on such topics. His admirers hold that he shows an See also:affinity to German metaphysicians, though he had never read their works nor made any See also:express study of metaphysical questions. His distinctive tendency is to be found rather in the doctrine of life and conduct which both suggests and is illustrated by his psychological analyses. A very characteristic thought emphatically set forth in the See also:Rabbi See also:Ben See also:Ezra (1864) and the Grammarian's Funeral (1855) is that a man's value is to be measured, not by the work done, but by the character which has been moulded. He delights in exhibiting the high moral See also:instinct which dares to override ordinary convictions, or which is content with See also:discharge of obscure duties, or See also:superior to vulgar ambition and capable of self-sacrifice, because founded upon pure love and sympathy for human suffering. Browning's limitations are characteristic of the poetry of strong ethical preoccupations. His strong See also:idiosyncrasy, his. sympathy with the heroic See also:sand hatred of the See also:base, was hardly to be combined with the Shakespearian capacity for sympathizing with the most varied types of character. Though he deals with a great variety of motive with singularly keen See also:analysis, he takes almost exclusively the moral point of view. That point of view, however, has its importance, and his morality is often embodied in poetry of surpassing force. Browning's love of the grotesque, some. times even of the horrible, creates many most graphic and indelible portraits. The See also:absence of an exquisite sense for t.4 right word is compensated by the singular power of striking the most brilliant flashes out of obviously wrong words, and forcing comic rhymes to express the deepest and most serious thoughts. Though he professed to care little for motive as apart from human interest, his incidental touches of description are unsurpassably vivid. 11 The appreciation of Browning's genius became general in his later years, and zeal was perhaps a little heightened by the complacency of disciples able to penetrate a supposed mist of obscurity. The Browning Society, founded in 1881 by Dr F. J. See also:Furnivall and Miss E. H. Hickey, was a product of this appreciation, and helped to extend the study of the poems. Browning accepted the homage in a See also:simple and friendly way, though he avoided any See also:action which would make him responsible for the publications. He received various honours: LL.D. degree from See also:Cambridge in 1879, the D.C.L. from Oxford in 1882, and LL.D. from See also:Edinburgh in 1884. He became See also:foreign correspondent to the Royal See also:Academy in 1886. His son, who had settled at Venice, married in 1887, and Browning moved to De See also:Vere Gardens. In the autumn of 1889 he went with his See also:sister to visit his son, and stayed on the way at Asolo, which he had first seen in 1838, when it supplied the scenery of Pippa Passes. He was charmed with the place, and proposed to buy a piece of ground and to build upon it a house to be called " Pippa's See also:Tower "—in memory of his early heroine. While his proposal was under See also:consideration he went to his son at Venice. His health had been breaking for some time, and a See also:cold, aggravated by weakness of the See also:heart, brought on a fatal attack. He died on the 12th of See also:December 1889. He was buried, in See also:Westminster See also:Abbey on 31st December. It was suggested that his wife's See also:body should be removed from Florence to be placed beside him; but their son rightly decided that her See also:grave should not be disturbed. Browning's personal characteristics are so strongly stamped upon all his works that it is difficult to assign his place in See also:con-temporary thought. He is unique and outside of all See also:schools. His style is so See also:peculiar that he is the easiest of all poets to See also:parody and the most dangerous to imitate. In spite of his early Shelley worship he is in certain respects more closely related to Words-See also:worth. Both of them started by accepting the poet's See also:mission as quasi-prophetical or ethical. In other respects they are diametrically contrasted. See also:Wordsworth expounded his See also:philosophy by writing a poetical autobiography. Browning adheres to the dramatic method of which Wordsworth was utterly incapable. He often protested against the supposition that he put himself into his books. Yet there is no writer whose books seem to readers to be clearer revelations of himself. Nothing, in fact, is more characteristic of a man than his judgments of other men, and Browning's are keen and unequivocal. The revolutionary impulse had died out, and Browning has little to say either of the See also:political questions which had moved Shelley and Byron, or of the social problems which have lately become more prominent. He represents the thought of a quieter See also:epoch. He was little interested, too, in the historical or " romantic " aspect of life. He takes his subjects from a great variety of scenes and places—from See also:ancient See also:Greece, See also:medieval Italy and modern France and England; but the interest for him is not in the picturesque surroundings, but in the human being who is to be found in all periods. ' Like See also:Balzac, whom he always greatly admired, he is interested in the eternal tragedy and See also:comedy of life. His problem is always to show what are the really noble elements which are eternally valuable in spite of failure to achieve tangible results. He gives, so far, another version of Words-worth's doctrine of the cultivation of the " moral being." The psychological acuteness and the subtle analysis of character are, indeed, peculiar to himself. Like Carlyle, with whom he had certain points of affinity, he protests, though rather by implication than direct denunciation, against the utilitarian or materialistic view of life, and funds the divine See also:element in the instincts which See also:guide and animate every noble character. When he is really inspired by sympathy for such emotions he can make, his most grotesque fancies and his most far-fetched analyses subservient to poetry of the highest order. It can hardly be denied that his intellectual ingenuity often tempts him to deviate from his true See also:function, and that his observations are not to be excused because they result from an excess, instead of a deficiency, of intellectual acuteness. But the variety of his interests—aesthetic, philosophical and ethical—is astonishing,and his successes are poems which stand out as unique and unsurpassable in the literature of his time. The Life and Letters of Browning, by Mrs See also:Sutherland Orr (1891), one of his most intimate friends in later years, and The Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845–1846, published by his son in 1899, are the main authorities. A collection of Browning's poems in 2 vols. appeared in 1849, another in 3 vols. in 1863, another in 6 vols. in 1868, and a revised edition in 16 vols. in 1888–1889; in 1896 Mr See also:Augustine See also:Birrell and Mr F. G. Kenyon edited a complete edition in 2 vols.; another two-volume edition was issued by Messrs Smith, Elder in 1900. Among commentaries on Browning's works, Mrs Sutherland Orr's Handbook to the Works of Browning was approved by the poet himself. See also the Browning Society's Papers; and Mr T. J. See also:Wise's Materials for a Bibliography of the Writings of Robert Browning, included in the Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth See also:Century (1895), by W. See also:Robertson See also:Nicoll and T. J. Wise; Mr. See also:Edmund See also:Gosse's Robert Browning: Personalia (189o), from notes supplied by Browning himself. Among See also:biographical and See also:critical authorities may be mentioned: J. T. See also:Nettleship, Essays (1868); See also:Arthur See also:Symons, An Introduction to the Study of Browning (1886); Stopford See also:Brooke, The Poetry of Robert Browning (1902); G. K. See also:Chesterton, Browning (1908) in the " English Men of Letters " series. (L. 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