Part 15 (1/2)

Chapter XIV

Probleau_, which appeared in December 1871, four months after the publication of _Balaustions Adventure_, ritten by Browning during a visit to friends in Scotland His interest in eneral it remained remote from his work as a poet He professed himself a liberal, but he was a liberal who because he was such, claiment He had rejoiced in the enfranchisely on the side of the North, as letters to Story, written when his private grief lay heavy upon him, abundantly show He was at one ti the parliae to women, but late in life his opinion on this question altered He was as decidedly opposed to the proposals for a separate or subordinate Parliament for Ireland as were his friends Carlyle and Tennyson and Matthew Arnold After the introduction of the Hoh requested by a friend, to write words which would have expressed or implied esteem for the statesman who had made that most inopportune experiment in opportunism[112] and whose talents he admired Yet for a certain kind of opportunisht that ht fairly be said To say this with a special reference to the fallen Eau_

Browning's instinctive sympathies are not with the ”Saviour of Society,”

whoedifice He naturally applauds the man who builds on sure foundations, or the man who in order to reach those foundations boldly removes the accumulated lumber of the past But there are times when perhaps the choice lies only between conservation of what is imperfect and the attempt to erect an airy fabric which has no basis upon the solid earth; and Browning on the whole preferred a veritable _civitas hominum_, however remote from the ideal, to a sham _civitas Dei_ or a real Cloudcuckootown ”It is true, that what is settled by custoood, yet at least it is fit; and those things, which have long gone together, are as it were confederate within theh they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their inconformity” These words, of one whose worldly wisdoht stand as a nant sentence of Bacon which follows these words should be added--”All this is true if tienious defence of the untenable, either with reference to the general thesis or its application to the French Empire

He did not, like his wife, think of the Emperor as if he were a paladin of modern roenuine service--though not the highest--to France and to the world ”My opinion of the solid good rendered years ago,” he wrote in Septeed The subsequent deference to the clerical party in France and support of brigandage is poor work; but it surely is doing little harden after the publication of his poe of his career, _et pour cause_; better afterward, on the strength of the pro to redeem I think hi a case in which a veritable _apologia_ was ad this _apologia_ in the itiive the whole the dramatic character which the purposes of poetry, as the exposition of a complex human character, required

Thechoice of such a subject Browning condeht with one arm pinioned, to exhibit the case on behalf of the ”Saviour of Society” with his brain rather than with brain and heart acting together He was to demonstrate that in the scale of spiritual colours there is a respectable place for drab This our, but hardly with enthusiastic pleasure _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is an interesting intellectual exercise, and if this constitutes a poem, a poem it is; but the the's intellectual ability became a snare by which the poet within him was entrapped The ues of Saxe-Gotha:

So your fugue broadens and thickens, Greatens and deepens and lengthens, Till one exclaims--”But where's music, the dickens!”

The mysterious Sphinx who expounds his riddle and dissertates on his that deserve to be considered; but they are addressed to our understanding in the first instance, and only in a secondary and indirect way reach our feelings and our iination The interest of the poe; to a true work of art we return again and again for renewed delight We return to _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ as to a valuable store-house of arguments or practical considerations in defence of a conservative opportunism; but if we have once appropriated these, we do not need the book There is a spirit of conservation, like that of Edht al's Prince is not a conservator possessed by this enthusias almost pathetic may be felt in his sense that the work allotted to him is work of h inspirations such as support the e the face of the world The Divine Ruler who has given him his special faculties, who has enjoined upon him his special tasks, holds no further communication with hith, such as it is; he cannothe finds; he can for a tere possible”; he can turn to good account what is already half-made; and so, he believes, he can, in a sense, co-operate with God So long as he was an irresponsible dreae in glorious drea words Now that his feet are on the earth, now that his thoughts convert themselves into deeds, he must accept the liramme and that; his business is not with them but with the present needs of the humble mass of his people--”men that have wives and woence and sympathy he will effect ”equal sustainhout society; and when the enius who is to alter the world arises, such a man most of all will approve the work of his predecessor, who left hiood hard substance of common human life

All this is ad, who had rejoiced with Herakles doing great deeds and purging the world of monsters, could also honour a poor provisional Atlas whose task of sustaining a poor ilobe upon his shoulders is less brilliant but not perhaps less useful Nor would it be just to overlook the fact that in three or four pages the poet asserts hie of society as a te procession of powers and beauties has in it so of the fine mysticism of Edmund Burke[113] The record of the Prince's early and irresponsible aspirations for a free Italy--

Ay, still hs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine For ever!--

hat immediately folloould have satisfied the ardent spirit of Mrs Browning[114] And the characterisation of the genius of the French nation, whose lust for war and the glory of war Browning censures as ”the dry-rot of the race,” rises brilliantly out of its sos:--

The people here, Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride Above her pride i' the race all flame and air And aspiration to the boundless Great, The incoroundward coed by a pinion all too passionate For heaven and what it holds of gloolow: Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous In Art, the--netic race To fascinate their fellows, e conceived in the sareat chaunt ”O Star of France!” written, at the sanition of both the virtues and the shames of France, by the Aau_ one other may be added--that towards the close of the poem which applies the tradition of the succession by murder of the priesthood at the shrine of the clituenius in the priesthood of the world--”The neer slays the old, but handsoau_ there is nothing enight, if he pleased, say for hiden soon after the publication of the volume

Many persons, however, have supposed that in _Fifine at the Fair_ (1872) a riddle rather than a poeiven to the world by the perversity of the writer When she corapher Mrs Orr is half-apologetic; it is for her ”a piece of perplexing cynicisestion ca one of his visits to pornic, Browning had seen the original of his Fifine, and she lived in his inative interest The internal suggestion, as Mrs Orr hints, lay in a certainfrom the fact that the encroachree a part of his co from entire fidelity to his own past The world, in fact, see the part of a Fifine If this were so, it would be characteristic of Browning that he should face round upon the world and come to an explanation with his adversary But this could not in a printed volume be done in his own person; he was not one to take the public into his confidence The discussion should be removed as far as possible fros It should be a dramatic debate on the subject of fidelity and infidelity, on the bearings of the apparent to the true, on the relation of reality in this our mortal life to illusion As he studied the subject it assunificances and opened up wider issues An actual Elvire and an actual Fifinepoints, but by-and-by Elvire shall stand for all that is per, Fifine for all that is transitory and illusive The question of conjugal fidelity is as much the subject of _Fifine at the Fair_ as the virtue of tar-water is the subject of Berkeley's _Siris_ The poehts and feelings, reaching with no break in the chain, frohts of speculation

But before all else _Fifine at the Fair_ is a poe and the Book_ it is the inative power To point out passages of peculiar beauty, passages vivid in feeling, original in thought, would here be out of place; for the brilliance and vigour are unflagging, and e have to coes of repose The joy in freedo some hidden law--of these poor losels and truants froure of Fifine in page-costuined beauties--Helen, Cleopatra, the Saint of pornic Church--the half-enolo, the praise of music as nearer to the soul than words, sunset at Saint-Marie, the play of the body in the sea at noontide (with all that it typifies), wo to the sea, woman as the dolphin that upbears Orion, the Venetian carnival, which is the carnival of huh the darkness the Druidic stones glea--all these are essentially parts of the texture of the poerave splendour of its own

It is strange that any reader should have supposed either the Prologue or the Epilogue to be uttered by the iinary speaker of the poe; the prologue tells of the gladness he still found both in the world of iination and the world of reality, over which hovers the spirit that had once been so near his own, the spirit that is near hi at or pitying this life of his, which yet he accepts with cheer and will turn to the best account; the epilogue veils behind its griain as a householder in this house of life, for behind the happiness which he strenuously reat desolation But the last word of the epilogue--”Love is all and Death is nought” is a word of sustain out of sorrow These poe cynicism,” nor has the poe's idea in the poem he declared in reply to a question of Dr Furnivall, ”was to show ht justify himself, partly by truth, somewhat by sophistry” No more unhappy misnomer than this ”Don Juan” could have been devised for the curious, ingenious, learned experiar sense of the word, but a deliberate explorer of thoughts and things, who argues out his case with so much fine casuistry and often with the justest conceptions of hu line between his truth and his sophistry, we ht discover also that the poey is required, but of a piece with his other writings and in harh the advanced in years he more and more distrusted the results of the intellect in its speculative research; he relied h or is embodied in love Love by its very nature implies a relation; what is felt is real for us But the intellect, which aspires to know things as they are, forever lands us in illusions--illusions needful for our education, and therefore far from unprofitable, to be forever replaced by fresh illusions; and the only truth we thus attain is the conviction that truth there assuredly is, that we rasp its shadow Theologies, philosophies, scientific theories--these change like the shi+fting and shredding clouds before our eyes, and are forever succeeded by clouds of another shape and hue But the knowledge involved in love is veritable and is verified at least for us who love While in his practice he grew more scientific in research for truth, and less artistic in his desire for beauty, such was the doctrine which Browning upheld

The speaker in _Fifine at the Fair_ is far e than he is a lover And he has learnt, and learnt aright, that by illusions the intellect is thrown forward towards what h shadows it advances upon reality When he argues that philosophies and theologies are the fizgigs of the brain, its Fifines the false which lead us onward to Elvire the true, he expresses an idea which Browning has repeatedly expressed in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and which, certainly, was an idea he had made his own And if a man approaches the other sex prie, with a view to confirm and to extend his own self-consciousness and to acquire experience of the strength and the weakness of womanhood, it is true that he will be instructed more widely, if not more deeply, by Elvire supplemented by Fifine than by Elvire alone The sophistry of the speaker in Browning's poee and love, and in asserting as true of love what Browning held to be, in the profoundest sense, true of knowledge The poet desires, as Butler in his ”analogy” desired, to take lower ground than his own; but the curious student ofhis intellect--is cos, to work out his proble's own lines, and he beco's own conclusions Saul, before the poe, ”God and the soul stand sure” He sees, as Browning sees, ious theories, philosophical systems, scientific hypotheses, artistic methods, scholarly attainments--to the Divine The pornic fair has becorown to the vision of man's life, in which the wanton and coquette naipsy in tricot The speaker 's doctrine concerning knowledge And yet, even so, he is forced to confess, however inconsistent his action may be with his belief, that the perle, central point of huh any vain atteether a ht Was--”Froiven point evolve the infinite!”

Not--”Spend thyself in space, endeavouring to joint Together, and so make infinite, point and point: Fix into one Elvire a Fair-ful of Fifines!”

If he continues his experiments, they are experiments of the senses or of the intellect, which he knows can bring no profit to the heart: ”Out of thine own e thee, thou wicked servant” He will undoubtedly--let this be frankly acknowledged--grow in a certain kind of knowledge, and as certainly he will dwindle in the higher knowledge that co's own deepest convictions and highest feelings[115]

Although in his later writings Browning rendered everpower of the affections, his methods unfortunately became, as has been said, more and more scientific, or--shall we say?--pseudo-scientific Art jealously selects its subjects, those which possess in a high degree spiritual or material beauty, or that more complete beauty which unites the two Science accepts any subject which pro after psychological truth, became too indifferent to the truth of beauty Or shall we say that his vision of beauty beca bare by dissection the anato the enlacements of veins and nerves? To say this is perhaps to cheat oneself ords His own defence would, doubtless, have been a development of two lines which occur near the close of _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_:

Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and e truth, love crush itself

And he would have pleaded that art, which he styles

The love of loving, rage Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things For truth's sake, whole and sole,