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INTRODUCTION

I. BIOGRAPHICAL

ROBERT BROWNING was born in Camberwell, a Lon

don suburb, in May, 1812. His father was a clerk in the Bank of England, a highly cultivated man, acquainted with foreign and classical, as well as English literature, himself a poet, and interested in music and art. His mother was described by Carlyle as "the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman”; she was a woman of strong religious convictions, and the home atmosphere was that of a cultivated Nonconformist family. The boy spent a happy childhood, surrounded by healthy and uplifting influences. In his poem Development, beginning—

My father was a scholar and knew Greek,

it is probable that he recalls some of the incidents of his early home training. He read extensively, especially the great Elizabethans, and at the age of twelve wrote verses after the style of Byron. But his poetic development dates from a day in May, 1826, when his mother, at his request, brought him the works of Shelley and Keats. The spirit of revolt in Queen Mab took such hold of his youthful mind that for two years he was a vegetarian and professed atheist. His recovery did not shake his faith in his new-found seer, and the influence of Shelley is clearly discernible in his early work. In the little poem Memorabilia, and in the preface he wrote in middle life to some supposed letters of Shelley's which had been discovered, he pays a high tribute to the genius of his predecessor.

Browning attended some classes at University College, London in continuation of his home education, and decided to devote himself to literature. His father not only left him free

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to make his own choice, but bore all the expenses of Paracelsus (1835), Sordello (1840), and Bells and Pomegranates (1841-6). It is pleasant to think that this generosity was appreciated by the youthful poet, who wrote of his father afterwards: "It would have been quite unpardonable in my case not to have done my best. My dear father put me in a condition most favorable for the best work I was capable of. When I think of the many authors who have had to fight their way through all sorts of difficulties, I have no reason to be proud of my achieveMy good father sacrificed a fortune to his convictions. He could not bear with slavery, and left India [the West Indies], and accepted a humble banking-office in London. He secured for me all the ease and comfort that a literary man needs to do good work. It would have been shameful if I had not done my best to realize his expectations of me."

ments.

The publication of Browning's first work was, however, due to the generosity of an aunt, who heard that he had written a poem and offered to meet the expense of printing it. Pauline, the Fragment of a Confession was completed on October 22, 1832, and published early in 1833, without the name of its author. It is interesting for several reasons: in the first place, for its indebtedness to Shelley, which is everywhere apparent and is openly acknowledged; in the second place, for the evidence it gives of the interests which were then occupying Browning's mind; and in the third place, for its autobiographical character. Arnould, one of Browning's friends in early manhood, says that the poem reflects the author's "own early life as it presented itself to his own soul viewed poetically." Browning signed the poem "V. A. XX.," which he afterwards interpreted "vixi annos viginti”—“I have lived twenty years."-He was afterwards inclined to make fun of his youthful hero, and said five years later that the poem was "written in pursuance of a foolish plan I forget, or have no wish to remember; involving the assumption of several distinct characters; the world was never to guess that such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech, proceeded from the same notable person. Mr. V. A. was Poet of the party, and predestined to cut no inconsiderable figure. 'Only this crab' remains of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Para

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dise." Later in life he took a more lenient view of his youthful effort, and it is now included in the collected editions of his works. It was favorably reviewed by some of the leading critics of the day at the time of its appearance, though one notice described it briefly as "a piece of pure bewilderment," —a foretaste of much misunderstanding of the same kind the poet was to meet with in after life.

In the winter of 1833-4 Browning spent three months at St. Petersburg, nominally in the consular service, actually on the personal invitation of a friend who was consul-general at the Russian capital. His visit had effect in a five-act drama of Russian life, Only a Player Girl, written in 1842-3 and never published. His next important work, written during the six months preceding March, 1835, was Paracelsus—a study of the life and character of the famous sixteenth century physician, whose ideas had something in common with those of the Christian Scientists and Theosophists of the present day. The poem is cast in dramatic form, though it is not, strictly speaking, a drama; it is chiefly remarkable for the expression of thoughts and views of life which Browning developed more clearly and fully in his maturer work.

Paracelsus had important consequences. In the first place it was read by an older poet, already established in popular favor, Elizabeth Barrett, who recognized in it "the expression of a new mind." John Forster, a well-known man of letters of the time, pronounced it the work of "a man of genius, who has in himself all the elements of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic." It led, moreover, to Browning's introduction to the great actor-manager of the day, Macready, and his invitation to be present at a supper given after the performance of a successful tragedy of the time-Talfourd's Ion. The toast of "The Poets of England" was proposed, and it was expected that either Wordsworth or Walter Savage Landor would be called upon to respond to it, for both were present; but instead there arose an unknown young man whose name many of the company learned for the first time as that of Robert Browning. In conversation after supper Macready said to the young poet, "Write me a play, and keep me from going to America,

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that being apparently regarded by the great English actor as the last desperate resource to save his falling fortunes. It was agreed that same evening that the subject of the drama should be historical and English, and in accordance with the arrangement then made Strafford was written. It was produced on May 1, 1837-just before Queen Victoria came to the throne. Macready himself took the leading part, and Helen Faucit (a delightful actress of Shakespearean heroines, who later became Lady Martin), achieved a brilliant triumph in the part of Lady Carlisle. The drama was successful, but not sufficiently so to restore the already ruined fortunes of Covent Garden Theatre. The withdrawal of one of the principal actors precipitated a financial crisis, and the theatre was closed. The play was, however, judged of sufficient merit for Messrs. Longman to publish it at their own expense, and the loss incurred fell, in this instance, upon the publishers, and not upon the poet himself, or his relatives.

An incidental criticism of Paracelsus greatly affected the form of Browning's next work, Sordello, and ultimately injured his poetical reputation for a quarter of a century. Paracelsus was thought by some critics to be diffuse, and a charming Quakeress of the time, Caroline Fox, wrote to one of Browning's friends, "Doth Mr. Browning know that Wordsworth will devote a fortnight or more to the discovery of a single word that is the one fit for his sonnet?" In deference to these criticisms, Browning aimed in his next poem at the greatest possible condensation; "if an exclamation would suggest his meaning, he substituted this for a whole sentence." The result was a poem of very deep interest, but not at all easy to follow. Its difficulty is chiefly due to the extreme conciseness of the style, but partly to the unfamiliarity of the subject—the story of a medieval troubadour and predecessor of Dante, and the strife between the imperial and the papal or popular party in North Italy in the thirteenth century. Browning found in it an outlet for the expression of his political and religious, as well as his literary, aspirations, but at the time it failed almost altogether to be understood. The early Victorians with one accord made up their mind that it was incomprehensible. Mrs. Carlyle could

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not, she said, make out whether the hero was a man, a city, or a book. Tennyson said he only understood two lines of it-the first

"Who will may hear Sordello's story told,”

and the last line

"Who would has heard Sordello's story told,"

and both were lies. The best story, however, of the British public's inability to appreciate Sordello is that told of Douglas Jerrold by Thomas Powell in his "Living Authors of England.” The distinguished contributor to Punch was recruiting at Brighton after a long illness. In the course of his convalescence a parcel arrived from London which contained, among other things, this new volume of Sordello. The doctor had forbidden Jerrold the luxury of reading, but in the absence of his wife and her sister, who were nursing him, he indulged in the illicit enjoyment. A few lines put Jerrold in a state of alarm. Sentence after sentence brought no consecutive thought to his brain. At last the idea crossed his mind that in his illness his mental faculties had been wrecked. The perspiration rolled from his forehead, and smiting his head, he sat down on his sofa, crying, "O God, I am an idiot!" When his wife and her sister came back, he pushed the volume into their hands and demanded what they thought of it. He watched them intently while they read; at last his wife said, "I don't understand what the man means; it is gibberish." The delighted humorist sank back in his seat with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I am not an idiot!" In order to complete the studies for Sordello, which the poet had begun in the British Museum Library, he in 1838 paid his first visit to Italy. He went by sea from London to Venice, and on the voyage wrote two short poems included in this volume, Home Thoughts, from the Sea and "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." The reception of Sordello, published after his return home, did not increase the publishers' confidence in his work, and he determined to issue his poems in a cheap form on his own responsibility. This was the origin of the Bells and Pomegranates series, cheap issues in yellow

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