The Atlantic Monthly Part 21
"He doth his worst in this our life, Giving just respite lest we die through pain, Saving last pain for worst,--with which, an end."
The grave irony of this poem so bespatters the theologian's G.o.d with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is the faith of his whole soul in the excellence of that world whose beauty he interprets, of the human nature whose capacity he does so much to "keep in repute," and of the Infinite Love.
"Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design, I, who saw Power, shall see Love perfect too: Perfect I call thy plan: Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"
We find in this new volume more distinct and tranquil expressions of Mr.
Browning's thought upon the relation of the finite to the infinite than he has given us before. And his pen has turned with freedom and satisfaction towards these things, as if the imagination had broken new outlets for itself through the world's beautiful horizon into the great sea. How "like one entire and perfect chrysolite" is the little piece called "Prospice"! But we are all the more surprised to see occasionally a touch of the genuine British denseness, whenever he recollects that there are such people as Strauss, Bishop Colenso, and the men of the "Essays and Reviews" prowling around the preserve where the ill-kept Thirty-Nine Articles still find a little short gra.s.s to nibble. When we read the last three verses of "Gold Hair," we set him down for a High-Church bigot: the English discussions upon points of exegesis and theology appear to him threatening to prove the Christian faith false, but for his part he still sees reasons to suppose it true, and this, among others, that it taught Original Sin, the Corruption of Man's Heart! We escape from this to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" for rea.s.surance, not greatly minding the inconsistency that then appears, but confirmed in an old opinion of ours, that John Bull, in this matter of theology, has his mumps and scarlatina very late, and they are likely to go hard with a const.i.tution that is weaned from the pure truth of things.
"Gold Hair," notwithstanding its picturesque lines, is weak and inconclusive. Its moral is conventional, while the incident is too far-fetched for sympathy. The series of little poems called "James Lee"
is full of beauties, but it is too vague to make a firm impression. We suppose it tells the story of love that exaggerates a common nature, clings to it, and shrivels away. What can be finer than the way in which an unsatisfied heart makes the wind the interpreter of its pain and dread? This is the sixth poem, "Under the Cliff."
"Or wouldst thou rather that I understand Thy will to help me?--like the dog I found Once, pacing sad this solitary strand, Who would not take my food, poor hound, But whined and licked my hand."
But in this very poem the figure of the nun is artificial, and interrupts the pathetic feeling. And we cannot make anything out of the piece, "Beside the Drawing-Board," unless we first detach it from its position in the series, and like it alone. On the whole, many fine lines are here, but no real person and no poetic impression.
Neither the dramatic nor the lyrical quality appears in this volume as it did once in the splendid "Bells and Pomegranates," which gave us such vivid shapes, and emotions so consistent and sustained, even though they were so often flawed by over-reflection. In this volume the purposes are less palpable, and the pen seems to have pursued them with less tenacity than usual. It has the air of having been sc.r.a.ped together. Yet how charming is "Confessions," and "Youth and Art," and "A Likeness"!
Besides these, the best pieces are those which touch upon the highest themes.
"Mr. Sludge, the Medium," cannot be called a poem. It would not be possible to write satire, epic, idyl, not even elegy, upon that "rat-hole philosophy," as Mr. Emerson once styled the new fetichism of the mahogany tables. It has not one element that asks the sense of beauty to incorporate it, or challenges the weapon of wit to transfix it. It is humiliating, but not pathetic, not even when yearning hearts are trying to pretend that their first-born vibrates to them through a stranger's and a hireling's mind. It is not even grotesque, but it is gross, and flat, and stale; its messages are fatuous, its machinery the rickety heirlooms of old humbugs of Greece and Alexandria. No thrill, no terror, no true awe, nothing but "goose-flesh" and disgust, creep from the medium's presence. Pegasus need not be saddled; summon, rather, the police.
Yet this composition, which Mr. Browning must have undertaken in a moment of high indignation, with the motive of self-relief, is full of common sense. Mr. Sludge's vindication of his career turns upon the point that people like on the whole to be deceived, especially in matters relating to the invisible world. Sludge must be right in this; otherwise the theologians would not have had such a successful run. The facile and eager "circle" betrays the imaginative medium into reporting what it appears most to desire. The superst.i.tion of the people excites and feeds his own. He is only one against a crowd which deluges him with its expectation, and resents a scarcity of the supernatural. Mr. Sludge is not so much to blame: the people at length push the thing so far that he is obliged to cheat in self-defence. And when a man tasks his wits successfully, if it be only to mislead the witless, he has a sense of satisfaction in the effort akin to that of the rhetorician and the quack.
But shrewdness and good sense cannot make a poem by a.s.suming the measure of blank verse. And a few Yankee phrases are pasted into Mr. Sludge's talk, such as "stiffish c.o.c.k-tail," "V-notes," "sn.i.g.g.e.ring," allusions to "Greeley's newspaper," Beacon Street, etc.: there is no character in them at all. Mr. Sludge is a bad Yankee, as well as impudent pleader.
The lines never sparkle, even with the poet's indignation, but they seem to be all the time blown into a forced vivacity and heat. Nemesis attends the poet who plunges his arm for a subject into this burrow of Spiritualism.
Let us pa.s.s from this to note the n.o.ble lesson that the last poem, ent.i.tled "Epilogue," conveys. Three speakers tell in turn their feeling of the Divine Presence. The first intones the old Hebrew notion, loved by the childhood of all races and countries, that the Lord's Face fills His earthly temple at stated periods, culminating with the human glory of psalms and hallelujahs, to absorb and shine in the rejoicing of the worshippers, to sink back again into the invisible upon the dying strain. The second speaker describes the reaction, when the enthusiastic belief of early times is replaced by a dull sense that no Face shines, by a doubt if beyond the darkness and the distance there be yet a G.o.d who will answer to the old rapture, a sun to rise when man's heart rises, a love corresponding to his ecstasy:--
"Where may hide what came and loved our clay?
How shall the sage detect in yon expanse The star which chose to stoop and stay for us?
Unroll the records!"
But the third speaker bids the records be closed, that man may worship the G.o.d who lives, instead of regretting that He lived of old. Take the least man, observe his head and heart, find how he differs from every other man; see how Nature by degrees grows around him, to nourish, infold, and set him off, to enrich him with opportunities, as if he were her only foster-child, and to flatter thus every other man in turn, making him her darling as though in expectation of finding no other, till, having extorted all his worth and beauty, and cherished him to the utmost of his possible life, she rolls away elsewhere, continually keeping up this pageant of humanity:--
"Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet-calls?
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows!"
This is the true religion, hallowing the poet's gifts and inviting them to celebrate and express it. We wish that the lines would let their meaning meet us with a more level gaze. In the poems of this cla.s.s there is riper thought and a clearer intuition, toward which all the previous poems of Mr. Browning appear to have struggled, faring from the East to contribute myrrh, frankincense, and gems to this simplicity.
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