Introduction to Robert Browning [69]
to himself, "Strange! -- and I, too, at such trouble, keep 'em close-nipped on the sly!" He thinks of devising means of causing him to trip on a great text in Galatians, entailing "twenty-nine distinct damnations, one sure, if another fails"; or of slyly putting his "scrofulous French novel" in his way, which will make him "grovel hand and foot in Belial's gripe". In his malignity, he is ready to pledge his soul to Satan (leaving a flaw in the indenture), to see blasted that rose-acacia Laurence is so proud of. Here the vesper-bell interrupts his filthy and blasphemous eructations, and he turns up his eyes and folds his hands on his breast, mumbling "Plena gratia ave Virgo!" and right upon the prayer, his disgust breaks out, "Gr-r-r -- you swine!"
This monologue affords a signal illustration of the poet's skill in making a speaker, while directly revealing his own character, reflect very distinctly the character of another. This has been seen in `My Last Duchess', given as an example of the constitution of this art-form, in the section of the Introduction on `Browning's Obscurity'.
"The `Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister', is a picture (ghastly in its evident truth) of superstition which has survived religion; of a heart which has abandoned the love of kindred and friends, only to lose itself in a wilderness of petty spite, terminating in an abyss of diabolical hatred. The ordinary providential helps to goodness have been rejected; the ill-provided adventurer has sought to scale the high snow-peaks of saintliness, -- he has missed his footing, -- and the black chasm which yawns beneath, has ingulfed him." -- E. J. H[asell], in St. Paul's Magazine, December, 1870.
An able writer in `The Contemporary Review', Vol. IV., p. 140, justly remarks: --
"No living writer -- and we do not know any one in the past who can be named, in this respect, in the same breath with him [Browning] -- approaches his power of analyzing and reproducing the morbid forms, the corrupt semblances, the hypocrisies, formalisms, and fanaticisms of man's religious life. The wildness of an Antinomian predestinarianism has never been so grandly painted as in `Johannes Agricola in Meditation'; the white heat of the persecutor glares on us, like a nightmare spectre, in `The Heretic's Tragedy'. More subtle forms are drawn with greater elaboration. If `Bishop Blougram's Apology', in many of its circumstances and touches, suggests the thought of actual portraiture, recalling a form and face once familiar to us, . . .it is also a picture of a class of minds which we meet with everywhere. Conservative scepticism that persuades itself that it believes, cynical acuteness in discerning the weak points either of mere secularism or dreaming mysticism, or passionate eagerness to reform, avoiding dangerous extremes, and taking things as they are because they are comfortable, and lead to wealth, enjoyment, reputation, -- this, whether a true account or not of the theologian to whom we have referred. . .is yet to be found under many eloquent defences of the faith, many fervent and scornful denunciations of criticism and free thought. . . . In `Calaban upon Setebos', if it is more than the product of Mr. Browning's fondness for all abnormal forms of spiritual life, speculating among other things on the religious thoughts of a half brute-like savage, we must see a protest against the thought that man can rise by himself to true thoughts of God, and develop a pure theology out of his moral consciousness. So far it is a witness for the necessity of a revelation, either through the immediate action of the Light that lighteth every man, or that which has been given to mankind in spoken or written words, by The WORD that was in the beginning. In the `Death in the Desert', in like manner, we have another school of thought analyzed with a corresponding subtlety. . . . The `Death in the Dessert' is worth studying in its bearing upon the mythical school of interpretation, and as a protest, we would fain hope, from Mr. Browning's own mind against the thought
This monologue affords a signal illustration of the poet's skill in making a speaker, while directly revealing his own character, reflect very distinctly the character of another. This has been seen in `My Last Duchess', given as an example of the constitution of this art-form, in the section of the Introduction on `Browning's Obscurity'.
"The `Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister', is a picture (ghastly in its evident truth) of superstition which has survived religion; of a heart which has abandoned the love of kindred and friends, only to lose itself in a wilderness of petty spite, terminating in an abyss of diabolical hatred. The ordinary providential helps to goodness have been rejected; the ill-provided adventurer has sought to scale the high snow-peaks of saintliness, -- he has missed his footing, -- and the black chasm which yawns beneath, has ingulfed him." -- E. J. H[asell], in St. Paul's Magazine, December, 1870.
An able writer in `The Contemporary Review', Vol. IV., p. 140, justly remarks: --
"No living writer -- and we do not know any one in the past who can be named, in this respect, in the same breath with him [Browning] -- approaches his power of analyzing and reproducing the morbid forms, the corrupt semblances, the hypocrisies, formalisms, and fanaticisms of man's religious life. The wildness of an Antinomian predestinarianism has never been so grandly painted as in `Johannes Agricola in Meditation'; the white heat of the persecutor glares on us, like a nightmare spectre, in `The Heretic's Tragedy'. More subtle forms are drawn with greater elaboration. If `Bishop Blougram's Apology', in many of its circumstances and touches, suggests the thought of actual portraiture, recalling a form and face once familiar to us, . . .it is also a picture of a class of minds which we meet with everywhere. Conservative scepticism that persuades itself that it believes, cynical acuteness in discerning the weak points either of mere secularism or dreaming mysticism, or passionate eagerness to reform, avoiding dangerous extremes, and taking things as they are because they are comfortable, and lead to wealth, enjoyment, reputation, -- this, whether a true account or not of the theologian to whom we have referred. . .is yet to be found under many eloquent defences of the faith, many fervent and scornful denunciations of criticism and free thought. . . . In `Calaban upon Setebos', if it is more than the product of Mr. Browning's fondness for all abnormal forms of spiritual life, speculating among other things on the religious thoughts of a half brute-like savage, we must see a protest against the thought that man can rise by himself to true thoughts of God, and develop a pure theology out of his moral consciousness. So far it is a witness for the necessity of a revelation, either through the immediate action of the Light that lighteth every man, or that which has been given to mankind in spoken or written words, by The WORD that was in the beginning. In the `Death in the Desert', in like manner, we have another school of thought analyzed with a corresponding subtlety. . . . The `Death in the Dessert' is worth studying in its bearing upon the mythical school of interpretation, and as a protest, we would fain hope, from Mr. Browning's own mind against the thought