Life and Letters of Robert Browning [18]
unrest, to which many circumstances may have contributed
besides the influence of the one mind. It had been decided
that he was to complete, or at all events continue, his education at home;
and, knowing the elder Mr. Browning as we do, we cannot doubt
that the best reasons, of kindness or expediency, led to his so deciding.
It was none the less, probably, a mistake, for the time being.
The conditions of home life were the more favourable
for the young poet's imaginative growth; but there can rarely
have been a boy whose moral and mental health had more to gain
by the combined discipline and freedom of a public school.
His home training was made to include everything which in those days went
to the production of an accomplished gentleman, and a great deal therefore
that was physically good. He learned music, singing, dancing, riding,
boxing, and fencing, and excelled in the more active of these pursuits.
The study of music was also serious, and carried on under two masters.
Mr. John Relfe, author of a valuable work on counterpoint,
was his instructor in thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupil of Moscheles,
in execution. He wrote music for songs which he himself sang;
among them Donne's `Go and catch a falling star'; Hood's `I will not have
the mad Clytie'; Peacock's `The mountain sheep are sweeter'; and his settings,
all of which he subsequently destroyed, were, I am told, very spirited.
His education seems otherwise to have been purely literary. For two years,
from the age of fourteen to that of sixteen, he studied with a French tutor,
who, whether this was intended or not, imparted to him very little
but a good knowledge of the French language and literature.
In his eighteenth year he attended, for a term or two,
a Greek class at the London University. His classical and other reading
was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme of mathematics,
or logic -- of any, in short, of those subjects which train, even coerce,
the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite for a nature in which
the creative imagination was predominant over all the other mental faculties,
great as these other faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from
this omission: since the involutions and overlappings of thought and phrase,
which occur in his earlier and again in his latest works,
must have been partly due to his never learning to follow the processes
of more normally constituted minds. It would be a great error to suppose
that they ever arose from the absence of a meaning clearly felt,
if not always clearly thought out, by himself. He was storing his memory
and enriching his mind; but precisely in so doing he was nourishing
the consciousness of a very vivid and urgent personality;
and, under the restrictions inseparable from the life of a home-bred youth,
it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he found in verse
we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may then have written.
It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and, still more,
the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towards poetic production.
It would be a relief to him to sketch out and elaborate the plan of his
future work -- his great mental portrait gallery of typical men and women;
and he was doing so during at least the later years
which preceded the birth of `Pauline'. But even this must have been
the result of some protracted travail with himself; because it was only
the inward sense of very varied possibilities of existence
which could have impelled him towards this kind of creation.
No character he ever produced was merely a figment of the brain.
It was natural, therefore, that during this time of growth he should
have been, not only more restless, but less amiable than at any other.
The always impatient temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness.
He behaved as a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believes
that he is not appreciated, because the crude or paradoxical forms
which his cleverness assumes do not recommend it to his elders' minds.
besides the influence of the one mind. It had been decided
that he was to complete, or at all events continue, his education at home;
and, knowing the elder Mr. Browning as we do, we cannot doubt
that the best reasons, of kindness or expediency, led to his so deciding.
It was none the less, probably, a mistake, for the time being.
The conditions of home life were the more favourable
for the young poet's imaginative growth; but there can rarely
have been a boy whose moral and mental health had more to gain
by the combined discipline and freedom of a public school.
His home training was made to include everything which in those days went
to the production of an accomplished gentleman, and a great deal therefore
that was physically good. He learned music, singing, dancing, riding,
boxing, and fencing, and excelled in the more active of these pursuits.
The study of music was also serious, and carried on under two masters.
Mr. John Relfe, author of a valuable work on counterpoint,
was his instructor in thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupil of Moscheles,
in execution. He wrote music for songs which he himself sang;
among them Donne's `Go and catch a falling star'; Hood's `I will not have
the mad Clytie'; Peacock's `The mountain sheep are sweeter'; and his settings,
all of which he subsequently destroyed, were, I am told, very spirited.
His education seems otherwise to have been purely literary. For two years,
from the age of fourteen to that of sixteen, he studied with a French tutor,
who, whether this was intended or not, imparted to him very little
but a good knowledge of the French language and literature.
In his eighteenth year he attended, for a term or two,
a Greek class at the London University. His classical and other reading
was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme of mathematics,
or logic -- of any, in short, of those subjects which train, even coerce,
the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite for a nature in which
the creative imagination was predominant over all the other mental faculties,
great as these other faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from
this omission: since the involutions and overlappings of thought and phrase,
which occur in his earlier and again in his latest works,
must have been partly due to his never learning to follow the processes
of more normally constituted minds. It would be a great error to suppose
that they ever arose from the absence of a meaning clearly felt,
if not always clearly thought out, by himself. He was storing his memory
and enriching his mind; but precisely in so doing he was nourishing
the consciousness of a very vivid and urgent personality;
and, under the restrictions inseparable from the life of a home-bred youth,
it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he found in verse
we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may then have written.
It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and, still more,
the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towards poetic production.
It would be a relief to him to sketch out and elaborate the plan of his
future work -- his great mental portrait gallery of typical men and women;
and he was doing so during at least the later years
which preceded the birth of `Pauline'. But even this must have been
the result of some protracted travail with himself; because it was only
the inward sense of very varied possibilities of existence
which could have impelled him towards this kind of creation.
No character he ever produced was merely a figment of the brain.
It was natural, therefore, that during this time of growth he should
have been, not only more restless, but less amiable than at any other.
The always impatient temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness.
He behaved as a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believes
that he is not appreciated, because the crude or paradoxical forms
which his cleverness assumes do not recommend it to his elders' minds.