Robert Browning - The Complete Works of Robert Browning - Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition

The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the natural imagery of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy instead of the direct poetic vision of the author’s later work.

‘Pauline’ received another and graceful tribute two months later than the review. In an article of the ‘Monthly Repository’, and in the course of a description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, the following passage occurs:

‘Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place… . They are natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surely as a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. ‘Probatum est.’ Last autumn L — — dropped a poem of Shelley’s down there in the wood, *amongst the thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found a delicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with ‘Pauline’ hanging from its slender stalk. Unripe fruit it may be, but of pleasant flavour and promise, and a mellower produce, it may be hoped, will follow.’

*Mr. Browning’s copy of ‘Rosalind and Helen’, which he had lent to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic.

This and a bald though well-meant notice in the ‘Athenaeum’ exhaust its literary history for this period. *

*Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words, Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract from the ‘Literary Gazette’ of March 23, 1833:

‘Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession’, pp. 71. London, 1833.

Saunders and Otley.

‘Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual, and not a little unintelligible, — this is a dreamy volume, without an object, and unfit for publication.’

The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reason why it should be. But ‘Pauline’ was, from the first, little known or discussed beyond the immediate circle of the poet’s friends; and when, twenty years later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon it in the library of the British Museum, he could only surmise that it had been written by the author of ‘Paracelsus’.

The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning’s visit to Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. The Russian consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, and being sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed that he should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary. The letters written to his sister during this, as during every other absence, were full of graphic description, and would have been a mine of interest for the student of his imaginative life. They are, unfortunately, all destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscences of what they had to tell; but we know how strangely he was impressed by some of the circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endless monotony of snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companion rushed for days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, without seeming to move from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, and was fortunate enough, before his return, to witness the breaking-up of the ice on the Neva, and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremony of drinking the first glass of water from it. He was absent about three months.

The one active career which would have recommended itself to him in his earlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desired for his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post of activity and responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman. Soon after his return from Russia he applied for appointment on a mission which was to be despatched to Persia; and the careless wording of the answer which his application received made him think for a moment that it had been granted. He was much disappointed when he learned, through an interview with the ‘chief’, that the place was otherwise filled.

In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the ‘Monthly Repository’, extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. The earliest of these was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr. Browning’s works, and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse’s article in the ‘Century Magazine’, December 1881; now part of his ‘Personalia’. The second, beginning ‘A king lived long ago’, was to be published, with alterations and additions, as one of ‘Pippa’s’ songs. ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’ were reprinted together in ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ under the heading of ‘Madhouse Cells’. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning ‘Still ailing, Wind? wilt be appeased or no?’ afterwards introduced into the sixth section of ‘James Lee’s Wife’. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the poet’s future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most essential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems.

This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction, of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning’s friends; foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with Alfred Domett. The magazine was called the ‘Trifler’, and published in monthly numbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-money on the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it one letter, February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled ‘Some strictures on a late article in the ‘Trifler’.’ This boyish production sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses of some obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was ‘A Dissertation on Debt and Debtors’, where the subject was, I imagine, treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing that indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all his sophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his life a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have preferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may be forgiven for quoting some passages from it.

For to be man is to be a debtor: — hinting but slightly at the grand and primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hard for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do with nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralists have concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed an uninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place as represented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodge most commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce, *and those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot to discharge — or, as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it —

He’s most in debt who lingers out the day,

Who dies betimes has less and less to pay.

So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that

Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c.

as thou pratest, ’tis plain that they have willed on the very outset to inculcate this truth on the mind of every man, — no barren and inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productive rule of life, — that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor — aye, friend, and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander, — no recreant as thou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true — remark, as did his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast ‘paid the debt of nature’? Ha! I have thee ‘beyond the rules’, as one (a bailiff) may say!

*Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies is identical with that expressed in these words of ‘Prospice’, … in a minute pay glad life’s arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold.