Introduction to Robert Browning [38]
Hence, one who would interpret the work of a master must summon up all his powers, and must be alive at as many points as possible. He who approaches his author as a whole, bearing upon life as a whole, is himself alive at the greatest possible number of points, will be the best and truest interpreter. For he will grasp what is central, and at the same time will be sensitive to the value of all details, which details he will perceive not isolated, but in connection with one another, and with the central life to which they belong and from which they proceed."
In his poem entitled `Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in distemper', Mr. Browning turns upon his critics, whom he characterizes as "the privileged fellows, in the drabs, blues, and yellows" (alluding to the covers of the leading British Reviews), and especially upon Alfred Austin, the author of that work of wholesale condemnation, `The Poetry of the Period', and gives them a sound and well-deserved drubbing. At the close of the onset he says: -- "Was it `grammar' wherein you would `coach' me -- You, -- pacing in even that paddock Of language allotted you ad hoc, With a clog at your fetlocks, -- you -- scorners Of me free from all its four corners? Was it `clearness of words which convey thought?' Ay, if words never needed enswathe aught But ignorance, impudence, envy And malice -- what word-swathe would then vie With yours for a clearness crystalline? But had you to put in one small line Some thought big and bouncing -- as noddle Of goose, born to cackle and waddle And bite at man's heel as goose-wont is, Never felt plague its puny os frontis -- You'd know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered, Clear `quack-quack' is easily uttered!"
In a letter written to Mr. W. G. Kingsland, in 1868, Mr. Browning says: -- "I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole I get my deserts, and something over -- not a crowd, but a few I value more." *
-- * `Browning Society Papers', III., p. 344. --
It was never truer of any author than it is true of Browning, that `Le style c'est l'homme'; and Browning's style is an expression of the panther-restlessness and panther-spring of his impassioned intellect. The musing spirit of a Wordsworth or a Tennyson he partakes not of.
Mr. Richard Holt Hutton's characterization of the poet's style, as a "crowded note-book style", is not a particularly happy one. In the passage, which he cites from Sordello, to illustrate the "crowded note-book style", occurs the following parenthesis: -- "(To be by him themselves made act, Not watch Sordello acting each of them.)"
"What the parenthesis means," he says, "I have not the most distant notion. Mr. Browning might as well have said, `to be by him her himself herself themselves made act', etc., for any vestige of meaning I attach to this curious mob of pronouns and verbs. It is exactly like the short notes of a speech intended to be interpreted afterwards by one who had heard and understood it himself." *
-- * `Essays Theological and Literary'. Vol. II., 2d ed., rev. and enl., p. 175. --
At first glance, this parenthesis is obscure; but the obscurity is not due to its being "exactly like the short notes of a speech", etc. It is due to what the "obscurity" of Mr. Browning's language, as language, is, in nine cases out of ten, due, namely, to the COLLOCATION of the words, not to an excessive economy of words. He often exercises a liberty in the collocation of his words which is beyond what an uninflected language like the English admits of, without more or less obscurity. There are difficult passages in Browning which, if translated into Latin, would present
In his poem entitled `Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in distemper', Mr. Browning turns upon his critics, whom he characterizes as "the privileged fellows, in the drabs, blues, and yellows" (alluding to the covers of the leading British Reviews), and especially upon Alfred Austin, the author of that work of wholesale condemnation, `The Poetry of the Period', and gives them a sound and well-deserved drubbing. At the close of the onset he says: -- "Was it `grammar' wherein you would `coach' me -- You, -- pacing in even that paddock Of language allotted you ad hoc, With a clog at your fetlocks, -- you -- scorners Of me free from all its four corners? Was it `clearness of words which convey thought?' Ay, if words never needed enswathe aught But ignorance, impudence, envy And malice -- what word-swathe would then vie With yours for a clearness crystalline? But had you to put in one small line Some thought big and bouncing -- as noddle Of goose, born to cackle and waddle And bite at man's heel as goose-wont is, Never felt plague its puny os frontis -- You'd know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered, Clear `quack-quack' is easily uttered!"
In a letter written to Mr. W. G. Kingsland, in 1868, Mr. Browning says: -- "I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole I get my deserts, and something over -- not a crowd, but a few I value more." *
-- * `Browning Society Papers', III., p. 344. --
It was never truer of any author than it is true of Browning, that `Le style c'est l'homme'; and Browning's style is an expression of the panther-restlessness and panther-spring of his impassioned intellect. The musing spirit of a Wordsworth or a Tennyson he partakes not of.
Mr. Richard Holt Hutton's characterization of the poet's style, as a "crowded note-book style", is not a particularly happy one. In the passage, which he cites from Sordello, to illustrate the "crowded note-book style", occurs the following parenthesis: -- "(To be by him themselves made act, Not watch Sordello acting each of them.)"
"What the parenthesis means," he says, "I have not the most distant notion. Mr. Browning might as well have said, `to be by him her himself herself themselves made act', etc., for any vestige of meaning I attach to this curious mob of pronouns and verbs. It is exactly like the short notes of a speech intended to be interpreted afterwards by one who had heard and understood it himself." *
-- * `Essays Theological and Literary'. Vol. II., 2d ed., rev. and enl., p. 175. --
At first glance, this parenthesis is obscure; but the obscurity is not due to its being "exactly like the short notes of a speech", etc. It is due to what the "obscurity" of Mr. Browning's language, as language, is, in nine cases out of ten, due, namely, to the COLLOCATION of the words, not to an excessive economy of words. He often exercises a liberty in the collocation of his words which is beyond what an uninflected language like the English admits of, without more or less obscurity. There are difficult passages in Browning which, if translated into Latin, would present