CHAPTER XII BROWNING BROWNING acknowledged that he loved a full life-a life that could "see, know, taste, feel all." He longed, as Tennyson did, to pile fresh life on life, and dull The sharp desire of knowledge still with knowing! As my own soul is full, to overflowing. As we turn over Browning's works we feel how intensely and fully Browning lived his intellectual life. All sorts of themes, thoughts, peoples, incidents appeal to him. He has sympathy with life in all its forms. Every expression of life interests him. He will find subject for speculation and poetic treatment in life mediæval or modern, eastern or western. He will dig out of the obscure lore of the past some forgotten tale of Italian life and intrigue, and will reclothe it and reveal its abiding human attractiveness. He will follow the strange or subtle workings of religious thought in Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian minds. He delights in art, and in the struggles, defeats and triumphs of the artistic soul. All who labour for self-expression find a sympathetic exponent in him. He realises the intensity of the passion of self-expression: he sees the dangers and temptations which wait upon this passion. He delights in picturing the self-communings of these artist souls as they try to measure their achievements against their ideals. So he gives us pictures of these solemn tribunals of life and soul-now it is the Painter, as in “Andrea del Sarto," or in "Pictor Ignotus": now it is the Musician, as in "Abt Vogler." These self-communings interest us; they are dramatic in feeling. But they interest us, because they stand for more than dramatic monologues, or the mere artist's attempt to measure his life's work; they suggest, if we may so express it, principles of life-measurement. Or, to put it in another way. Every man is a lifeartist: : every man can take himself to task, and measure his life against some ideal or dream of what was once possible to him. To follow Browning truly, however, we must fix our thoughts on the artist, his desire of self expression, and the snares and difficulties which hinder his utterance. The first and obvious difficulty lies in the oppositions which seem to develop between the thought and the form, between the idea and the conditions of the material in which it must be It is the difficulty which Dante expressed. realised: Ver' è che, come forma non s'accorda PAR. i. 127-9. 'Tis true, that often-as from artist's hand [WRIGHT'S Translation.] Out of this lack of ready responsiveness in the material springs the temptation to allow the material somewhat to modify the idea. For instance, the artist in words is tempted to accept for rhyme or rhythm's sake a word which is not exactly fitted to his thought. He is tempted to allow his thought to be swayed by the exigencies of sound. The material depraves the idea. The choice before him is either to allow this or to wait and search for the true word which fits both sense and sound. The great artist will find it, but the lesser or the impatient will not wait. He may then take one of two courses. He may acquiesce in the victory of the material, and sacrifice sense to sound; or he may insist on the sense and allow the discord or roughness in the music of his verse. The temptation is a test of the artist's soul. Cheap success may be won by sacrificing his thought to smoothness of diction; but such a man is no longer true to his mistress, and whatever he may achieve in the way of technical success, he will always feel himself as somehow less and lower than men who, more obstinately truthful, are accounted failures. In all walks of art there have been the men whose souls lived upon plains lower than their reputation, and who have won contemporary applause. But the few who refused to follow fashion have pierced below the surface, and seen the poverty of soul which technical skill has vainly sought to cover. One illustration may serve. It is found in Diderot's criticism on the works of the French poet, Saint-Lambert. SaintLambert was a well-known figure in Paris society. His chief work-a poem, entitled "Les Saisons -was well received in the fashionable world, and gained in public esteem by the approval of Voltaire. Voltaire was lavish in his promises of immortality to those poets who had eulogised his own writings. Nevertheless he may have been sincere in his admiration of SaintLambert's chief work, for more than once he declares that the poem will go down to posterity as a great literary monument. It is, in fact, like a flash of ancient glory redeeming the dulness of a decadent age. Diderot (cited by Sainte-Beuve) writes in very different terms. "You will tell me," he says, "that M. de Saint-Lambert is well educated. I admit it: he is more so than most men of letters, though perhaps less so than he imagines. He has mastery of his language? Yes, to a wonderful extent. He thinks? I can believe it. He has feeling? Certainly. He has technical capacity? Yes, such as few possess. He has an ear? Undoubtedly. He is musical? Always. What then is lacking to make him a poet? What he lacks is a self-inquiring soul, an ardent spirit, a strong and overflowing imagination, more strings to his lyre; his has too few. Ah! a great poet is indeed rare." For a moment reflect upon this criticism. Here is a man who possesses knowledge, skill, thought, musical quality, mastery of harmony and numbers, but who lacks the strong, ardent |