Part 20 (1/1)
There is little of repose in Browning's poetry He feared lethargy of heart, the supine mood, more than he feared excess of passion Once or twice he utters a sigh for rest, but it is for rest after strife or labour Broad spaces of repose, of e, in his poetry It is not a high table-land, but a range, or range upon range, of sierras In single poems there is often a point or moment in which passion suddenly reaches its culht upon the retina; he does not spread truth abroad like a h thesword-blade And therefore he does not always distribute the poetic value of what he writes equally; one vivid reat orous, becomes intensely luminous at the needful points and then relapses, to its well-hest poetical qualities The inal, and so various are its kinds, so complex often are its effects that it cannot be briefly characterised Its attack upon the ear is often by surprises, which, corresponding to the sudden turns of thought and leaps of feeling, justify thehtful Yet he sometimes embarrasses his verse with an excess of suspensions and resolutions Browning made many metrical experiments, some of which were unfortunate: but his failures are rather to be ascribed to teenuity than to the absence of
His chief influence, other than what is purely artistic, upon a reader is towards establishi+ng a connection between the known order of things in which we live and er order of which it is a part
He plays upon the will, suy to activity He spiritualises the passions by showing that they tend through what is huns to the intellect a sufficient field for exercise, but attaches more value to its efforts than to its attains creates a hope which persists through the apparent failures of earth In a true sense he may be named the successor of Wordsworth, not indeed as an artist but as a teacher Substantially the creed maintained by each was the same creed, and they were both more emphatic proclaimers of it than any other conte that creed were far apart Wordsworth enunciated his doctrines as if he had neverof theht to a school of disciples gathered together to be taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it He feared chiefly not a counter creed but theeffects of the industrialno contradiction, Wordsworth did not care to quit his own standpoint in order that heside He did not argue but let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy spoken in presence of an audience but not always directly addressed to the's manner of speech was very unlike this He seems to address it often to unsy attitude he could not lose sight The beliefs for which he pleaded were not in his day, as they had been in Wordsworth's, part of a progressive wave of thought He occupied the disadvantageous position of a conservative thinker The later poet of spiritual beliefs had totide of conte's influence as a teacher will extend over a far shorter space of time than that of Wordsworth For Wordsworth is self-contained, and is complete without reference to the ideas which oppose his own His work suffices for its own explanation, and will always commend itself to certain readers either as the syste's thought where it is estures, unless we see what they are directed against, seeht, as far as it is polemical, will probably cease to interest future readers New methods of attack will call forth new methods of defence Tis And the portion which seems most likely to survive is that which presents in true forms of art the per interest
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 144: Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the _Asolando_ poenorini_ and _Flute-Music_ ritten in the winter of 1887-1888 Two or three of the _Bad Dreaned to the sa the next autu in Venice”) ”_White Witchcraft_ had been suggested in the same summer (1888) by a letter from a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there”
_The Cardinal and the Dog_, written with the _Pied Piper_ for Macready's son, is a poe in Asolo” (_Century Magazine_, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889 of _The Lady and the Painter_]
[Footnote 145: Mrs Orr, _Life_, p 414]
[Footnote 146: WM Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i, _Magazine of Art_, 1890, p 182 Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period]
[Footnote 147: ”The Nation,” vol 1, where reminiscences by Moncure Conway may also be found]
[Footnote 148: ”My father died without pain or suffering other than that of weakness or weariness”--so Mr R Barrett Browning wrote to Mrs Blooht to be, but rarely is--so said the doctor” (Quoted in an article on Browning by Mrs Blooazine--Jan--June 1890, p 690)]
[Footnote 149: A grave in the Abbey was at the sa's wife; the reainst both the wishes of Browning and of the people of Florence It was therefore declined by Mr R Barrett Browning See his letter in Mrs Blooazine, vol
xiv]
[Footnote 150: ED West in the first of two papers, ”Browning as a Preacher,” in _The Dark Blue Magazine_ Browning esteehly and in what follows I appropriate, with soe from the first of them The writer has consented to the use here e towards the close]