Life of Robert Browning [3]
that his urban brother has the manner of Omniscience
and the knowledge of a parish beadle. Nevertheless,
though the strongest blood insurgent in the metropolitan heart
is not that which is native to it, one might well be proud
to have had one's atom-pulse atune from the first with the large rhythm
of the national life at its turbulent, congested, but ever ebullient centre.
Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of his being a Londoner,
much less to deny his natal place. He was proud of it: through good sense,
no doubt, but possibly also through some instinctive apprehension of the fact
that the great city was indeed the fit mother of such a son.
"Ashamed of having been born in the greatest city of the world!"
he exclaimed on one occasion; "what an extraordinary thing to say!
It suggests a wavelet in a muddy shallow grimily contorting itself
because it had its birth out in the great ocean."
On the day of the poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey,
one of the most eminent of his peers remarked to me that Browning came to us
as one coming into his own. This is profoundly true.
There was in good sooth a mansion prepared against his advent.
Long ago, we should have surrendered as to a conqueror: now, however,
we know that princes of the mind, though they must be valorous and potent
as of yore, can enter upon no heritance save that which naturally awaits them,
and has been made theirs by long and intricate processes.
The lustrum which saw the birth of Robert Browning,
that is the third in the nineteenth century, was a remarkable one indeed.
Thackeray came into the world some months earlier than the great poet,
Charles Dickens within the same twelvemonth, and Tennyson three years sooner,
when also Elizabeth Barrett was born, and the foremost naturalist
of modern times first saw the light. It is a matter of significance
that the great wave of scientific thought which ultimately bore forward
on its crest so many famous men, from Brewster and Faraday to Charles Darwin,
had just begun to rise with irresistible impulsion. Lepsius's birth
was in 1813, and that of the great Flemish novelist, Henri Conscience,
in 1812: about the same period were the births of Freiligrath,
Gutzkow, and Auerbach, respectively one of the most lyrical poets,
the most potent dramatist, the most charming romancer of Germany:
and, also, in France, of Theophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset.
Among representatives of the other arts -- with two of which
Browning must ever be closely associated -- Mendelssohn and Chopin were born
in 1809, and Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner within the four succeeding years:
within which space also came Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet.
Other high names there are upon the front of the century.
Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, John Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, by the way,
to recognise the genius of Browning), Alexandre Dumas, George Sand,
Victor Hugo, Ampere, Quinet, Prosper Merimee, Sainte-Beuve,
Strauss, Montalambert, are among the laurel-bearers who came into existence
betwixt 1800 and 1812.
When Robert Browning was born in London in 1812, Sheridan had still
four years to live; Jeremy Bentham was at the height
of his contemporary reputation, and Godwin was writing glibly
of the virtues of humanity and practising the opposite qualities,
while Crabbe was looked upon as one of the foremost of living poets.
Wordsworth was then forty, Sir Walter Scott forty-one, Coleridge forty-two,
Walter Savage Landor and Charles Lamb each in his forty-fifth year.
Byron was four-and-twenty, Shelley not yet quite of age,
two radically different men, Keats and Carlyle, both youths of seventeen.
Abroad, Laplace was in his maturity, with fifteen years more yet to live;
Joubert with twelve; Goethe, with twenty; Lamarck, the Schlegels,
Cuvier, Chateaubriand, Hegel, Niebuehr (to specify some leading names only),
had many years of work before them. Schopenhauer was only four-and-twenty,
while Beranger was thirty-two. The Polish poet Mickiewicz
was a boy of fourteen, and Poushkin
and the knowledge of a parish beadle. Nevertheless,
though the strongest blood insurgent in the metropolitan heart
is not that which is native to it, one might well be proud
to have had one's atom-pulse atune from the first with the large rhythm
of the national life at its turbulent, congested, but ever ebullient centre.
Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of his being a Londoner,
much less to deny his natal place. He was proud of it: through good sense,
no doubt, but possibly also through some instinctive apprehension of the fact
that the great city was indeed the fit mother of such a son.
"Ashamed of having been born in the greatest city of the world!"
he exclaimed on one occasion; "what an extraordinary thing to say!
It suggests a wavelet in a muddy shallow grimily contorting itself
because it had its birth out in the great ocean."
On the day of the poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey,
one of the most eminent of his peers remarked to me that Browning came to us
as one coming into his own. This is profoundly true.
There was in good sooth a mansion prepared against his advent.
Long ago, we should have surrendered as to a conqueror: now, however,
we know that princes of the mind, though they must be valorous and potent
as of yore, can enter upon no heritance save that which naturally awaits them,
and has been made theirs by long and intricate processes.
The lustrum which saw the birth of Robert Browning,
that is the third in the nineteenth century, was a remarkable one indeed.
Thackeray came into the world some months earlier than the great poet,
Charles Dickens within the same twelvemonth, and Tennyson three years sooner,
when also Elizabeth Barrett was born, and the foremost naturalist
of modern times first saw the light. It is a matter of significance
that the great wave of scientific thought which ultimately bore forward
on its crest so many famous men, from Brewster and Faraday to Charles Darwin,
had just begun to rise with irresistible impulsion. Lepsius's birth
was in 1813, and that of the great Flemish novelist, Henri Conscience,
in 1812: about the same period were the births of Freiligrath,
Gutzkow, and Auerbach, respectively one of the most lyrical poets,
the most potent dramatist, the most charming romancer of Germany:
and, also, in France, of Theophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset.
Among representatives of the other arts -- with two of which
Browning must ever be closely associated -- Mendelssohn and Chopin were born
in 1809, and Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner within the four succeeding years:
within which space also came Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet.
Other high names there are upon the front of the century.
Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, John Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, by the way,
to recognise the genius of Browning), Alexandre Dumas, George Sand,
Victor Hugo, Ampere, Quinet, Prosper Merimee, Sainte-Beuve,
Strauss, Montalambert, are among the laurel-bearers who came into existence
betwixt 1800 and 1812.
When Robert Browning was born in London in 1812, Sheridan had still
four years to live; Jeremy Bentham was at the height
of his contemporary reputation, and Godwin was writing glibly
of the virtues of humanity and practising the opposite qualities,
while Crabbe was looked upon as one of the foremost of living poets.
Wordsworth was then forty, Sir Walter Scott forty-one, Coleridge forty-two,
Walter Savage Landor and Charles Lamb each in his forty-fifth year.
Byron was four-and-twenty, Shelley not yet quite of age,
two radically different men, Keats and Carlyle, both youths of seventeen.
Abroad, Laplace was in his maturity, with fifteen years more yet to live;
Joubert with twelve; Goethe, with twenty; Lamarck, the Schlegels,
Cuvier, Chateaubriand, Hegel, Niebuehr (to specify some leading names only),
had many years of work before them. Schopenhauer was only four-and-twenty,
while Beranger was thirty-two. The Polish poet Mickiewicz
was a boy of fourteen, and Poushkin