Part 19 (1/2)

_Parleyings with Certain People of I's last voluhtest decline in his our It suffers, however, fros” are discussions--emotional, it is true, as well as intellectual--of somewhat abstract theed beyond what the subject requires, and that the ”People of Importance” are in so-boards to throw out Browning's own voice When certain aspects or principles of art are considered in _Fra Lippo Lippi_, before us stands Brother Lippo hiure, on whom our interest must needs fasten whatever may be the subject of his discourse

There is of course a propriety in connecting a debate on evil in the world as a ood with the name of the author of ”The Fable of the Bees,” there is no i a study of the philosophy of anist; but we do not s with either Avison or Mandeville This objection does not apply to all the poe _With Daniel Bartoli_ is a story of love and loss, admirable in its presentation of the heroine and the unheroic hero We are interested in Francis Furini, ”good priest, good ins to preach his somewhat portentous sermon on evolution

And in the case of Christopher Smart, the question why once and only once he was a divinely inspired singer is the question which most directly leads to a disclosure of his character as a poet The volus, has a larger proportion than its predecessors of what he hiument”; and, as if to coination and passion, as if these repressed for a time had carried away the dykes and dams, and went on their career in full flood The description of the glory of sunrise in _Bernard de Mandeville_, the description of the Chapel in _Christopher Smart_, the praise of a wo succession of ical _tours de force_ in _Gerard de Lairesse_, the delightful picture of the blackcap tugging at his prize, a scrap of rag on the garden wall, a of _Charles Avison_--these are sufficient evidence of the abounding force of Browning's genius as a poet at a date when he had passed the three score years and ten by half an added decade Nor would illingly forget that ical lyric of life and death, of the tulip beds and the daisied grave-mound--”Dance, yellows and whites and reds”--which closes _Gerard de Lairesse_ Wordsworth's daffodils are hardly a 's wind-tossed tulips; he accepts their gladness, and yet the starved grass and daisies are rass be my heart's bed-fellows On the mound wind spares and sunshi+ne mellows: Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!

Of failure in intellectual or iour of Browning's will did a certain wrong to his other powers He did not wait, as in early days, for the genuine casual inspirations of pleasure He made it his task to work out all that was in hienius is better than what is laboriously sought We ather wood for the altar, but the true fire must descend from heaven The speed and excitement kindled by one's own exertions are very different fro stress of a wind that bears one onithout the thuain if Browning's indoines had occasionally ceased to ply, and he had been compelled to wait for a propitious breeze

Philosophy, Love, Poetry, Politics, Painting (the nude, with a discourse concerning evolution), Painting again (the ical in art), Music, and, if we add the epilogue, the Invention of Printing--these are the successive thes_, and they are i themes Unfortunately the method of discussion is neither sufficiently abstract for the lucid exposition of ideas, nor sufficiently concrete for the pure communication of poetic pleasure Abstract and concrete meet and take hands or jostle, too ht in a _danse Macabre_ The spirit of acquiescence--strenuous not indolent acquiescence--with our intellectual liroan because he cannot comprehend the mind outside himself which manifests itself in the sun?

Well, did not Prometheus draw the celestial rays into the pin-point of a flame which man can order, and which does hi beside the iht, ware, who sees to bless?

Or again--it is Christopher S to David,” and fails, with all his contemporaries, in the poetry of ambitious instruction And why? Because for once he was content with the first step that poetry should take--to confer enjoy instruction--the fruit of enjoyh love and delight, not through pretentious didactics,--a truth forgotten by the whole tribe of eighteenth century versifiers And once more--does Francis Furini paint the naked body in all its beauty? Right! let hi the body, before he looks upward; let him retire from the infinite into his proper circuh, Comes penetration of the ood and evil in the world; perhaps to some transcendent vision evil may wholly disappear; perhaps we shall ourselves make this discovery as we look back upon the life on earth

Meanwhile it is as s, and even if evil be an illusion (as Browning trusts), it is a needful illusion in our educational process, since through evil we beco accepts here, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, a lie as sufficient for our present needs, with a sustaining hope which extends into the future On the other hand, if your affair is not the sincerity of thought and feeling, but a design to rule the e, you must act in a different spirit Do not, in the ton, attempt to impose upon your felloith the obvious and worn-out pretence that all you do has been undertaken on their behalf and in their interests There is a newer and a better trick than that assue”; be earnest, with all the authority of a divine purpose Play boldly this new card of statesmanshi+p, and you may have froes as ayrations the ad's irony of a cynical philosophy of statesested by his view of the procedure of a politician, whonised, but fronant aversion? However this may have been, his poems which touch on politics do not i, in masses which is a common profession with the liberal leaders of the platfor's liberalism was a form of his individualism; he, like Shakespeare, had a sympathy with the wants and affections of the huht that foolish or incoh degree deserve respect

_Asolando_, the last volu array, was published in London on the last day of Browning's life As he lay dying in Venice, telegraphed tidings reached his son of the eager demand for copies made in anticipation of its appearance and of the instant and appreciative reviews; Browning heard the report with a quiet gratification It is happy when praise in departing is justified, and this was the case with a collection of poems which to some readers seemed like a revival of the poetry of its author's best years of early and mid manhood _Asolando_ is, however, in the , a handful of flowers and fruit belonging to the Indian suue is a confession, like that of Wordsworth's great Ode, that a glory has passed away from the earth When first he set eyes on Asolo, some fifty years previously, the splendour of Italian landscape see yet unconsumed

Nohile the beauty remains, the fla finds his consolation in the belief that he has co fancies, and that his wonder and awe are more wisely directed towards the transcendent God than towards His creatures But in truth what thecalls the ”soul's iris-bow” is the loss of a substantial, a divine possession The _Epilogue_ has in it a certain energy, but the thews are those of an old athlete, and through the energy we are conscious of the strain The speaker pitches his voice high, as if it could not otherwise be heard at a distance The _Reverie_, a speculation on the time when Poill show itself fully and therefore be known as love, has sorown on Browning during the years when unhappily for his poetry he cae

An old htly values the truths which experience has ain, for they constitute the best gift he can offer to his disciples; but his utterances are not always directly inspired; they are sometimes faintly echoed fro our linorance in its contrast with the vast unknown, Browning discovers in the moral consciousness of ood over e think of as evil, a prophecy of the final reconciliation of love with power And a the laws of life is not merely submission but aspiration:

Life is--to wake not sleep, Rise and not rest, but press Fros perfected, ht, far and steep, Where amid what strifes and storms May wait the adventurous quest, Power is love

The voice of the poet of _Paracelsus_ and of _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is still audible in this latest of his prophesyings And therefore he welcomes earth in his _Rephan_, earth, with its whole array of failures and despairs, as the fit training-ground for man Better its trials and losses and crosses than a sterile uniforolden mean of excellence Nor are its intellectual errors and illusions without their educational value It is better, as _Develop's childhood, assures us that the boy should believe in Troy siege, and the combats of Hector and Achilles, as veritable facts of history, than bend his brow over Wolfs Prolegorapple hich his mind is not yet coains will reeneral iinative vigour The series of _Bad Dreainal in both pictorial and passionate power _Dubiety_ is a poem of the Indian Summer, but it has the beauty, with a touch of the pathos, proper to the tis of praise than of passion, but they are beautiful songs of praise, and that entitled _Speculative_, which is frankly a poeenuine passion of memory _White Witchcraft_ does in truth revive the manner of earlier volumes The

Infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn

told of in a poeuard it from its own excess in the admirable _Inapprehensiveness_ The speaker who may not liberate his soul can perhaps identify a quotation, and he gallantly accepts his hui-comedy of foiled passion:--

”No, the book Which noticed how the wall-groave,” said she, ”Was not by Ruskin”

I said ”Vernon Lee”

And in the uttered ”Vernon Lee” lies a vast renunciation half coic There are jests in the voluelo_, have the merit of brevity; they buzz swiftly in and out, and do not wind about us with the terror of volu is in his mood of mirth There are stories, and they are told with spirit and with skill

In _Beatrice Signorini_ the story-teller does justice to the honest jealousy of a wife and to the honest love of a husband who returns froination to the frank fidelity of his heart

Cynicisenial in the jest of _The Pope and the Net_ In _Muckle-Mouth Meg_, laughter and kisses, audible froedy in a hearty piece of comedy

_The Bean-Feast_ presents us with the latest transforood Christian Herakles, Pope Sixtus of Rome, makes common cause with his spiritual children in their humble pleasures of the senses And in contrast with this poeion of joy is the story of another ruler of Roustus, who, in the shadow of the religion of fear and sorrow, ar once a year A shi+vering thrill runs through us as we catch a sight of the supree”:

”He's God!” shouts Lucius Varus Rufus: ”Man And wor the anis seeion even of Marcus Aurelius lacked soion of the thankful Pope who feasted upon beans[144]

In the winter which followed his change of abode from Warwick Crescent to the more commodious house in De Vere Gardens, the winter of 1887-1888, Browning's health and strength visibly declined; a succession of exhausting colds lowered his vitality; yet he maintained his habitual ways of life, and would not yield In August 1888 he started ill for his Italian holiday, and travelled with difficulty and distress But the rest a the orous as he was joyous And when he returned to London in February 1889 the ith was in a considerable our which had seemed invincible was on the ebb In the early suhly valued, to Balliol College, Oxford