Life of Robert Browning [10]
endless, ever-changing, always novel phantasmagoria had for him
an extraordinary fascination. One of the memorable nights of his boyhood
was an eve when he found his way, not without perturbation of spirit
because of the unfamiliar solitary dark, to his loved elms.
There, for the first time, he beheld London by night.
It seemed to him then more wonderful and appalling than all the host of stars.
There was something ominous in that heavy pulsating breath:
visible, in a waning and waxing of the tremulous, ruddy glow
above the black enmassed leagues of masonry; audible,
in the low inarticulate moaning borne eastward across the crests of Norwood.
It was then and there that the tragic significance of life
first dimly awed and appealed to his questioning spirit:
that the rhythm of humanity first touched deeply in him a corresponding chord.
Chapter 2.
It was certainly about this time, as he admitted once
in one of his rare reminiscent moods, that Browning felt the artistic impulse
stirring within him, like the rising of the sap in a tree.
He remembered his mother's music, and hoped to be a musician: he recollected
his father's drawings, and certain seductive landscapes and seascapes
by painters whom he had heard called "the Norwich men", and he wished
to be an artist: then reminiscences of the Homeric lines he loved,
of haunting verse-melodies, moved him most of all.
"I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me:
. . . verse alone, one life allows me."
He now gave way to the compulsive Byronic vogue, with an occasional relapse
to the polished artificialism of his father's idol among British poets.
There were several ballads written at this time: if I remember aright,
the poet specified the "Death of Harold" as the theme of one. Long afterwards
he read these boyish forerunners of "Over the sea our galleys went",
and "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix",
and was amused by their derivative if delicate melodies.
Mrs. Browning was very proud of these early blooms of song,
and when her twelve-year-old son, tired of vain efforts
to seduce a publisher from the wary ways of business,
surrendered in disgust his neatly copied out and carefully stitched MSS.,
she lost no opportunity -- when Mr. Browning was absent --
to expatiate upon their merits. Among the people to whom she showed them
was a Miss Flower. This lady took them home, perused them,
discerned dormant genius lurking behind the boyish handwriting,
read them to her sister (afterwards to become known as Sarah Flower Adams),
copied them out before returning them, and persuaded the celebrated Rev.
William Johnson Fox to read the transcripts. Mr. Fox agreed with Miss Flower
as to the promise, but not altogether as to the actual accomplishment,
nor at all as to the advisability of publication. The originals are supposed
to have been destroyed by the poet during the eventful period when,
owing to a fortunate gift, poetry became a new thing for him: from a dream,
vague, if seductive, as summer-lightning, transformed to a dominating reality.
Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes,
a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce."
He had never heard of Shelley, nor did he learn for a long time
that the "Daemon of the World", and the miscellaneous poems appended thereto,
constituted a literary piracy. Badly printed, shamefully mutilated,
these discarded blossoms touched him to a new emotion. Pope became
further removed than ever: Byron, even, lost his magnetic supremacy.
From vague remarks in reply to his inquiries, and from one or two
casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet called Shelley;
that he had written several volumes; that he was dead.
Strange as it may seem, Browning declared once that the news
of this unknown singer's death affected him more poignantly than did,
a year or less earlier, the tidings of Byron's
an extraordinary fascination. One of the memorable nights of his boyhood
was an eve when he found his way, not without perturbation of spirit
because of the unfamiliar solitary dark, to his loved elms.
There, for the first time, he beheld London by night.
It seemed to him then more wonderful and appalling than all the host of stars.
There was something ominous in that heavy pulsating breath:
visible, in a waning and waxing of the tremulous, ruddy glow
above the black enmassed leagues of masonry; audible,
in the low inarticulate moaning borne eastward across the crests of Norwood.
It was then and there that the tragic significance of life
first dimly awed and appealed to his questioning spirit:
that the rhythm of humanity first touched deeply in him a corresponding chord.
Chapter 2.
It was certainly about this time, as he admitted once
in one of his rare reminiscent moods, that Browning felt the artistic impulse
stirring within him, like the rising of the sap in a tree.
He remembered his mother's music, and hoped to be a musician: he recollected
his father's drawings, and certain seductive landscapes and seascapes
by painters whom he had heard called "the Norwich men", and he wished
to be an artist: then reminiscences of the Homeric lines he loved,
of haunting verse-melodies, moved him most of all.
"I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me:
. . . verse alone, one life allows me."
He now gave way to the compulsive Byronic vogue, with an occasional relapse
to the polished artificialism of his father's idol among British poets.
There were several ballads written at this time: if I remember aright,
the poet specified the "Death of Harold" as the theme of one. Long afterwards
he read these boyish forerunners of "Over the sea our galleys went",
and "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix",
and was amused by their derivative if delicate melodies.
Mrs. Browning was very proud of these early blooms of song,
and when her twelve-year-old son, tired of vain efforts
to seduce a publisher from the wary ways of business,
surrendered in disgust his neatly copied out and carefully stitched MSS.,
she lost no opportunity -- when Mr. Browning was absent --
to expatiate upon their merits. Among the people to whom she showed them
was a Miss Flower. This lady took them home, perused them,
discerned dormant genius lurking behind the boyish handwriting,
read them to her sister (afterwards to become known as Sarah Flower Adams),
copied them out before returning them, and persuaded the celebrated Rev.
William Johnson Fox to read the transcripts. Mr. Fox agreed with Miss Flower
as to the promise, but not altogether as to the actual accomplishment,
nor at all as to the advisability of publication. The originals are supposed
to have been destroyed by the poet during the eventful period when,
owing to a fortunate gift, poetry became a new thing for him: from a dream,
vague, if seductive, as summer-lightning, transformed to a dominating reality.
Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes,
a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce."
He had never heard of Shelley, nor did he learn for a long time
that the "Daemon of the World", and the miscellaneous poems appended thereto,
constituted a literary piracy. Badly printed, shamefully mutilated,
these discarded blossoms touched him to a new emotion. Pope became
further removed than ever: Byron, even, lost his magnetic supremacy.
From vague remarks in reply to his inquiries, and from one or two
casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet called Shelley;
that he had written several volumes; that he was dead.
Strange as it may seem, Browning declared once that the news
of this unknown singer's death affected him more poignantly than did,
a year or less earlier, the tidings of Byron's