Life of Robert Browning [9]
from the stars to save her."
One of his own early recollections was that of sitting on his father's knees
in the library, and listening with enthralled attention to the Tale of Troy,
with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in the fireplace;
with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment --
from the neighbouring room where Mrs. Browning sat "in her chief happiness,
her hour of darkness and solitude and music" -- of a wild Gaelic lament,
with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning
his poetic precocity has been circulated, but is not worth repeating.
Most children love jingling rhymes, and one need not be a born genius
to improvise a rhyming couplet on an occasion.
It is quite certain that in nothing in these early poemicules,
in such at least as have been preserved without the poet's knowledge
and against his will, is there anything of genuine promise.
Hundreds of youngsters have written as good, or better,
Odes to the Moon, Stanzas on a Favourite Canary, Lines on a Butterfly.
What is much more to the point is, that at the age of eight he was able
not only to read, but to take delight in Pope's translation of Homer.
He used to go about declaiming certain couplets with an air
of intense earnestness highly diverting to those who overheard him.
About this time also he began to translate the simpler odes of Horace.
One of these (viii. Bk. II.) long afterwards suggested to him
the theme of his "Instans Tyrannus". It has been put on record
that his sister remembers him, as a very little boy, walking round and round
the dining-room table, and spanning out the scansion of his verses
with his hand on the smooth mahogany. He was scarce more than a child when,
one Guy Fawkes' day, he heard a woman singing an unfamiliar song,
whose burden was, "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!" This refrain
haunted him often in the after years. That beautiful fantastic romance,
"The Flight of the Duchess", was born out of an insistent memory
of this woman's snatch of song, heard in childhood. He was ten when,
after several `passions malheureuses', this precocious Lothario plunged
into a love affair whose intensity was only equalled by its hopelessness.
A trifle of fifteen years' seniority and a husband complicated matters,
but it was not till after the reckless expenditure of a Horatian ode upon
an unclassical mistress that he gave up hope. The outcome of this was what
the elder Browning regarded as a startling effusion of much Byronic verse.
The young Robert yearned for wastes of ocean and illimitable sands,
for dark eyes and burning caresses, for despair that nothing could quench
but the silent grave, and, in particular, for hollow mocking laughter.
His father looked about for a suitable school, and decided
to entrust the boy's further education to Mr. Ready, of Peckham.
Here he remained till he was fourteen. But already he knew
the dominion of dreams. His chief enjoyment, on holiday afternoons,
was to gain an unfrequented spot, where three huge elms re-echoed
the tones of incoherent human music borne thitherward by the west winds
across the wastes of London. Here he loved to lie and dream.
Alas, those elms, that high remote coign, have long since passed
to the "hidden way" whither the snows of yester year have vanished.
He would lie for hours looking upon distant London --
a golden city of the west literally enough, oftentimes,
when the sunlight came streaming in long shafts from behind
the towers of Westminster and flashed upon the gold cross of St. Paul's.
The coming and going of the cloud-shadows, the sweeping of sudden rains,
the dull silvern light emanating from the haze of mist
shrouding the vast city, with the added transitory gleam of troubled waters,
the drifting of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils
constantly being moved forward and then slowly withdrawn,
as though some sinister creature of the atmosphere were casting a net among
all the dross and debris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its own
-- all this
One of his own early recollections was that of sitting on his father's knees
in the library, and listening with enthralled attention to the Tale of Troy,
with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in the fireplace;
with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment --
from the neighbouring room where Mrs. Browning sat "in her chief happiness,
her hour of darkness and solitude and music" -- of a wild Gaelic lament,
with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning
his poetic precocity has been circulated, but is not worth repeating.
Most children love jingling rhymes, and one need not be a born genius
to improvise a rhyming couplet on an occasion.
It is quite certain that in nothing in these early poemicules,
in such at least as have been preserved without the poet's knowledge
and against his will, is there anything of genuine promise.
Hundreds of youngsters have written as good, or better,
Odes to the Moon, Stanzas on a Favourite Canary, Lines on a Butterfly.
What is much more to the point is, that at the age of eight he was able
not only to read, but to take delight in Pope's translation of Homer.
He used to go about declaiming certain couplets with an air
of intense earnestness highly diverting to those who overheard him.
About this time also he began to translate the simpler odes of Horace.
One of these (viii. Bk. II.) long afterwards suggested to him
the theme of his "Instans Tyrannus". It has been put on record
that his sister remembers him, as a very little boy, walking round and round
the dining-room table, and spanning out the scansion of his verses
with his hand on the smooth mahogany. He was scarce more than a child when,
one Guy Fawkes' day, he heard a woman singing an unfamiliar song,
whose burden was, "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!" This refrain
haunted him often in the after years. That beautiful fantastic romance,
"The Flight of the Duchess", was born out of an insistent memory
of this woman's snatch of song, heard in childhood. He was ten when,
after several `passions malheureuses', this precocious Lothario plunged
into a love affair whose intensity was only equalled by its hopelessness.
A trifle of fifteen years' seniority and a husband complicated matters,
but it was not till after the reckless expenditure of a Horatian ode upon
an unclassical mistress that he gave up hope. The outcome of this was what
the elder Browning regarded as a startling effusion of much Byronic verse.
The young Robert yearned for wastes of ocean and illimitable sands,
for dark eyes and burning caresses, for despair that nothing could quench
but the silent grave, and, in particular, for hollow mocking laughter.
His father looked about for a suitable school, and decided
to entrust the boy's further education to Mr. Ready, of Peckham.
Here he remained till he was fourteen. But already he knew
the dominion of dreams. His chief enjoyment, on holiday afternoons,
was to gain an unfrequented spot, where three huge elms re-echoed
the tones of incoherent human music borne thitherward by the west winds
across the wastes of London. Here he loved to lie and dream.
Alas, those elms, that high remote coign, have long since passed
to the "hidden way" whither the snows of yester year have vanished.
He would lie for hours looking upon distant London --
a golden city of the west literally enough, oftentimes,
when the sunlight came streaming in long shafts from behind
the towers of Westminster and flashed upon the gold cross of St. Paul's.
The coming and going of the cloud-shadows, the sweeping of sudden rains,
the dull silvern light emanating from the haze of mist
shrouding the vast city, with the added transitory gleam of troubled waters,
the drifting of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils
constantly being moved forward and then slowly withdrawn,
as though some sinister creature of the atmosphere were casting a net among
all the dross and debris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its own
-- all this