Life of Robert Browning [4]
was but a twelvemonth older;
Heine, a lad of twelve, was already enamoured of the great Napoleonic legend.
The foremost literary critic of the century was running about the sands
of Boulogne, or perhaps wandering often along the ramparts of the old town,
introspective even then, with something of that rare and insatiable curiosity
which we all now recognise as so distinctive of Sainte-Beuve. Again,
the greatest creative literary artist of the century, in prose at any rate,
was leading an apparently somewhat indolent schoolboy life at Tours,
undreamful yet of enormous debts, colossal undertakings, gigantic failures,
and the `Comedie Humaine'. In art, Sir Henry Raeburn, William Blake,
Flaxman, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Crome, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Constable,
Sir David Wilkie, and Turner were in the exercise of their happiest faculties:
as were, in the usage of theirs, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Spohr,
Donizetti, and Bellini.
It is not inadvisedly that I make this specification of great names,
of men who were born coincidentally with, or were in the broader sense
contemporaries of Robert Browning. There is no such thing
as a fortuitous birth. Creation does not occur spontaneously,
as in that drawing of David Scott's where from the footprint of the Omnipotent
spring human spirits and fiery stars. Literally indeed,
as a great French writer has indicated, a man is the child of his time.
It is a matter often commented upon by students of literature, that great men
do not appear at the beginning, but rather at the acme of a period.
They are not the flying scud of the coming wave, but the gleaming crown
of that wave itself. The epoch expends itself in preparation
for these great ones.
If Nature's first law were not a law of excess, the economy of life
would have meagre results. I think it is Turgeniev
who speaks somewhere of her as a gigantic Titan, working in gloomy silence,
with the same savage intentness upon a subtler twist of a flea's joints
as upon the Destinies of Man.
If there be a more foolish cry than that poetry is on the wane, it is that
the great days had passed away even before Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson
were born. The way was prepared for Browning, as it was for Shakespeare:
as it is, beyond doubt, for the next high peer of these.
There were `Roberts' among the sons of the Browning family
for at least four generations. It has been affirmed, on disputable authority,
that the surname is the English equivalent for Bruning, and that the family
is of Teutonic origin. Possibly: but this origin is too remote
to be of any practical concern. Browning himself, it may be added,
told Mr. Moncure Conway that the original name was De Bruni.
It is not a matter of much importance: the poet was,
personally and to a great extent in his genius, Anglo-Saxon.
Though there are plausible grounds for the assumption, I can find nothing
to substantiate the common assertion that, immediately, or remotely,
his people were Jews.*
--
* Fairly conclusive evidence to the contrary, on the paternal side,
is afforded in the fact that, in 1757, the poet's great-grandfather
gave one of his sons the baptismal name of Christian.
Dr. Furnivall's latest researches prove that there is absolutely
"no ground for supposing the presence of any Jewish blood
in the poet's veins."
--
As to Browning's physiognomy and personal traits, this much may be granted:
if those who knew him were told he was a Jew they would not be much surprised.
In his exuberant vitality, in his sensuous love of music and the other arts,
in his combined imaginativeness and shrewdness of common sense,
in his superficial expansiveness and actual reticence,
he would have been typical enough of the potent and artistic race
for whom he has so often of late been claimed.
What, however, is most to the point is that neither to curious acquaintances
nor to intimate friends, neither to Jews nor Gentiles,
did he ever admit more than that he was a good Protestant,
and sprung of a Puritan stock. He
Heine, a lad of twelve, was already enamoured of the great Napoleonic legend.
The foremost literary critic of the century was running about the sands
of Boulogne, or perhaps wandering often along the ramparts of the old town,
introspective even then, with something of that rare and insatiable curiosity
which we all now recognise as so distinctive of Sainte-Beuve. Again,
the greatest creative literary artist of the century, in prose at any rate,
was leading an apparently somewhat indolent schoolboy life at Tours,
undreamful yet of enormous debts, colossal undertakings, gigantic failures,
and the `Comedie Humaine'. In art, Sir Henry Raeburn, William Blake,
Flaxman, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Crome, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Constable,
Sir David Wilkie, and Turner were in the exercise of their happiest faculties:
as were, in the usage of theirs, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Spohr,
Donizetti, and Bellini.
It is not inadvisedly that I make this specification of great names,
of men who were born coincidentally with, or were in the broader sense
contemporaries of Robert Browning. There is no such thing
as a fortuitous birth. Creation does not occur spontaneously,
as in that drawing of David Scott's where from the footprint of the Omnipotent
spring human spirits and fiery stars. Literally indeed,
as a great French writer has indicated, a man is the child of his time.
It is a matter often commented upon by students of literature, that great men
do not appear at the beginning, but rather at the acme of a period.
They are not the flying scud of the coming wave, but the gleaming crown
of that wave itself. The epoch expends itself in preparation
for these great ones.
If Nature's first law were not a law of excess, the economy of life
would have meagre results. I think it is Turgeniev
who speaks somewhere of her as a gigantic Titan, working in gloomy silence,
with the same savage intentness upon a subtler twist of a flea's joints
as upon the Destinies of Man.
If there be a more foolish cry than that poetry is on the wane, it is that
the great days had passed away even before Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson
were born. The way was prepared for Browning, as it was for Shakespeare:
as it is, beyond doubt, for the next high peer of these.
There were `Roberts' among the sons of the Browning family
for at least four generations. It has been affirmed, on disputable authority,
that the surname is the English equivalent for Bruning, and that the family
is of Teutonic origin. Possibly: but this origin is too remote
to be of any practical concern. Browning himself, it may be added,
told Mr. Moncure Conway that the original name was De Bruni.
It is not a matter of much importance: the poet was,
personally and to a great extent in his genius, Anglo-Saxon.
Though there are plausible grounds for the assumption, I can find nothing
to substantiate the common assertion that, immediately, or remotely,
his people were Jews.*
--
* Fairly conclusive evidence to the contrary, on the paternal side,
is afforded in the fact that, in 1757, the poet's great-grandfather
gave one of his sons the baptismal name of Christian.
Dr. Furnivall's latest researches prove that there is absolutely
"no ground for supposing the presence of any Jewish blood
in the poet's veins."
--
As to Browning's physiognomy and personal traits, this much may be granted:
if those who knew him were told he was a Jew they would not be much surprised.
In his exuberant vitality, in his sensuous love of music and the other arts,
in his combined imaginativeness and shrewdness of common sense,
in his superficial expansiveness and actual reticence,
he would have been typical enough of the potent and artistic race
for whom he has so often of late been claimed.
What, however, is most to the point is that neither to curious acquaintances
nor to intimate friends, neither to Jews nor Gentiles,
did he ever admit more than that he was a good Protestant,
and sprung of a Puritan stock. He