Life and Letters of Robert Browning [69]
conscience --
or say -- the conscience of the intellect, in a higher degree than I ever saw
in any man of any country -- and this is no less Robert's belief than mine.
When we hear the brilliant talkers and noisy thinkers
here and there and everywhere, we go back to Milsand with a real reverence.
Also, I never shall forget his delicacy to me personally,
nor his tenderness of heart about my child. . . .'
==
The criticism was inevitable from the point of view of Mrs. Browning's
nature and experience; but I think she would have revoked part of it
if she had known M. Milsand in later years. He would never
have agreed with her as to the authority of `impulse and passion',
but I am sure he did not underrate their importance as factors in human life.
M. Milsand was one of the few readers of Browning with whom
I have talked about him, who had studied his work from the beginning,
and had realized the ambition of his first imaginative flights.
He was more perplexed by the poet's utterance in later years.
`Quel homme extraordinaire!' he once said to me; `son centre
n'est pas au milieu.' The usual criticism would have been that,
while his own centre was in the middle, he did not seek it in the middle
for the things of which he wrote; but I remember that, at the moment
in which the words were spoken, they impressed me as full of penetration.
Mr. Browning had so much confidence in M. Milsand's linguistic powers
that he invariably sent him his proof-sheets for final revision,
and was exceedingly pleased with such few corrections
as his friend was able to suggest.
With the name of Milsand connects itself in the poet's life
that of a younger, but very genuine friend of both, M. Gustave Dourlans:
a man of fine critical and intellectual powers, unfortunately neutralized
by bad health. M. Dourlans also became a visitor at Warwick Crescent,
and a frequent correspondent of Mr. or rather of Miss Browning.
He came from Paris once more, to witness the last sad scene
in Westminster Abbey.
The first three years of Mr. Browning's married life had been unproductive
from a literary point of view. The realization and enjoyment of
the new companionship, the duties as well as interests of the dual existence,
and, lastly, the shock and pain of his mother's death,
had absorbed his mental energies for the time being. But by the close of 1848
he had prepared for publication in the following year a new edition
of `Paracelsus' and the `Bells and Pomegranates' poems. The reprint
was in two volumes, and the publishers were Messrs. Chapman and Hall;
the system, maintained through Mr. Moxon, of publication
at the author's expense, being abandoned by Mr. Browning when he left home.
Mrs. Browning writes of him on this occasion that he is paying
`peculiar attention to the objections made against certain obscurities.'
He himself prefaced the edition by these words: `Many of these pieces
were out of print, the rest had been withdrawn from circulation,
when the corrected edition, now submitted to the reader, was prepared.
The various Poems and Dramas have received the author's most careful revision.
December 1848.'
In 1850, in Florence, he wrote `Christmas Eve and Easter Day';
and in December 1851, in Paris, the essay on Shelley,
to be prefixed to twenty-five supposed letters of that poet,
published by Moxon in 1852.*
--
* They were discovered, not long afterwards, to be spurious,
and the book suppressed.
--
The reading of this Essay might serve to correct the frequent misapprehension
of Mr. Browning's religious views which has been based on the literal evidence
of `Christmas Eve', were it not that its companion poem has failed to do so;
though the tendency of `Easter Day' is as different from that of its precursor
as their common Christianity admits. The balance of argument
in `Christmas Eve' is in favour of direct revelation of religious truth
and prosaic certainty regarding it; while the `Easter Day' vision makes
a tentative and unresting attitude the first condition of the religious
or say -- the conscience of the intellect, in a higher degree than I ever saw
in any man of any country -- and this is no less Robert's belief than mine.
When we hear the brilliant talkers and noisy thinkers
here and there and everywhere, we go back to Milsand with a real reverence.
Also, I never shall forget his delicacy to me personally,
nor his tenderness of heart about my child. . . .'
==
The criticism was inevitable from the point of view of Mrs. Browning's
nature and experience; but I think she would have revoked part of it
if she had known M. Milsand in later years. He would never
have agreed with her as to the authority of `impulse and passion',
but I am sure he did not underrate their importance as factors in human life.
M. Milsand was one of the few readers of Browning with whom
I have talked about him, who had studied his work from the beginning,
and had realized the ambition of his first imaginative flights.
He was more perplexed by the poet's utterance in later years.
`Quel homme extraordinaire!' he once said to me; `son centre
n'est pas au milieu.' The usual criticism would have been that,
while his own centre was in the middle, he did not seek it in the middle
for the things of which he wrote; but I remember that, at the moment
in which the words were spoken, they impressed me as full of penetration.
Mr. Browning had so much confidence in M. Milsand's linguistic powers
that he invariably sent him his proof-sheets for final revision,
and was exceedingly pleased with such few corrections
as his friend was able to suggest.
With the name of Milsand connects itself in the poet's life
that of a younger, but very genuine friend of both, M. Gustave Dourlans:
a man of fine critical and intellectual powers, unfortunately neutralized
by bad health. M. Dourlans also became a visitor at Warwick Crescent,
and a frequent correspondent of Mr. or rather of Miss Browning.
He came from Paris once more, to witness the last sad scene
in Westminster Abbey.
The first three years of Mr. Browning's married life had been unproductive
from a literary point of view. The realization and enjoyment of
the new companionship, the duties as well as interests of the dual existence,
and, lastly, the shock and pain of his mother's death,
had absorbed his mental energies for the time being. But by the close of 1848
he had prepared for publication in the following year a new edition
of `Paracelsus' and the `Bells and Pomegranates' poems. The reprint
was in two volumes, and the publishers were Messrs. Chapman and Hall;
the system, maintained through Mr. Moxon, of publication
at the author's expense, being abandoned by Mr. Browning when he left home.
Mrs. Browning writes of him on this occasion that he is paying
`peculiar attention to the objections made against certain obscurities.'
He himself prefaced the edition by these words: `Many of these pieces
were out of print, the rest had been withdrawn from circulation,
when the corrected edition, now submitted to the reader, was prepared.
The various Poems and Dramas have received the author's most careful revision.
December 1848.'
In 1850, in Florence, he wrote `Christmas Eve and Easter Day';
and in December 1851, in Paris, the essay on Shelley,
to be prefixed to twenty-five supposed letters of that poet,
published by Moxon in 1852.*
--
* They were discovered, not long afterwards, to be spurious,
and the book suppressed.
--
The reading of this Essay might serve to correct the frequent misapprehension
of Mr. Browning's religious views which has been based on the literal evidence
of `Christmas Eve', were it not that its companion poem has failed to do so;
though the tendency of `Easter Day' is as different from that of its precursor
as their common Christianity admits. The balance of argument
in `Christmas Eve' is in favour of direct revelation of religious truth
and prosaic certainty regarding it; while the `Easter Day' vision makes
a tentative and unresting attitude the first condition of the religious