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

The dialogue between Fancy and Reason is not only an admission of uncertainty as to the future of the Soul: it is a plea for it; and as such it gathers up into its few words of direct statement, threads of reasoning which have been traceable throughout Mr. Browning’s work. In this plea for uncertainty lies also a full and frank acknowledgment of the value of the earthly life; and as interpreted by his general views, that value asserts itself, not only in the means of probation which life affords, but in its existing conditions of happiness. No one, he declares, possessing the certainty of a future state would patiently and fully live out the present; and since the future can be only the ripened fruit of the present, its promise would be neutralized, as well as actual experience dwarfed, by a definite revelation. Nor, conversely, need the want of a certified future depress the present spiritual and moral life. It is in the nature of the Soul that it would suffer from the promise. The existence of God is a justification for hope. And since the certainty would be injurious to the Soul, hence destructive to itself, the doubt — in other words, the hope — becomes a sufficient approach to, a working substitute for it. It is pathetic to see how in spite of the convictions thus rooted in Mr. Browning’s mind, the expressed craving for more knowledge, for more light, will now and then escape him.

Even orthodox Christianity gives no assurance of reunion to those whom death has separated. It is obvious that Mr. Browning’s poetic creed could hold no conviction regarding it. He hoped for such reunion in proportion as he wished. There must have been moments in his life when the wish in its passion overleapt the bounds of hope. ‘Prospice’ appears to prove this. But the wide range of imagination, no less than the lack of knowledge, forbade in him any forecast of the possibilities of the life to come. He believed that if granted, it would be an advance on the present — an accession of knowledge if not an increase of happiness. He was satisfied that whatever it gave, and whatever it withheld, it would be good. In his normal condition this sufficed to him.

‘La Saisiaz’ appeared in the early summer of 1878, and with it ‘The Two Poets of Croisic’, which had been written immediately after it. The various incidents of this poem are strictly historical; they lead the way to a characteristic utterance of Mr. Browning’s philosophy of life to which I shall recur later.

In 1872 Mr. Browning had published a first series of selections from his works; it was to be followed by a second in 1880. In a preface to the earlier volume, he indicates the plan which he has followed in the choice and arrangement of poems; and some such intention runs also through the second; since he declined a suggestion made to him for the introduction or placing of a special poem, on the ground of its not conforming to the end he had in view. It is difficult, in the one case as in the other, to reconstruct the imagined personality to which his preface refers; and his words on the later occasion pointed rather to that idea of a chord of feeling which is raised by the correspondence of the first and last poems of the respective groups. But either clue may be followed with interest.

Table of Contents

1878-1884

He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. FitzGerald — Venice — Favourite Alpine Retreats — Mrs. Arthur Bronson — Life in Venice — A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre — Mr. Cholmondeley — Mr. Browning’s Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow — ’Dramatic Idyls’ — ’Jocoseria’ — ’Ferishtah’s Fancies’.

The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter in Mr. Browning’s habits and experience. It impelled him finally to break with the associations of the last seventeen autumns, which he remembered more in their tedious or painful circumstances than in the unexciting pleasure and renewed physical health which he had derived from them. He was weary of the ever-recurring effort to uproot himself from his home life, only to become stationary in some more or less uninteresting northern spot. The always latent desire for Italy sprang up in him, and with it the often present thought and wish to give his sister the opportunity of seeing it.

Florence and Rome were not included in his scheme; he knew them both too well; but he hankered for Asolo and Venice. He determined, though as usual reluctantly, and not till the last moment, that they should move southwards in the August of 1878. Their route lay over the Spluegen; and having heard of a comfortable hotel near the summit of the Pass, they agreed to remain there till the heat had sufficiently abated to allow of the descent into Lombardy. The advantages of this first arrangement exceeded their expectations. It gave them solitude without the sense of loneliness. A little stream of travellers passed constantly over the mountain, and they could shake hands with acquaintances at night, and know them gone in the morning. They dined at the table d’hote, but took all other meals alone, and slept in a detached wing or ‘dependance’ of the hotel. Their daily walks sometimes carried them down to the Via Mala; often to the top of the ascent, where they could rest, looking down into Italy; and would even be prolonged over a period of five hours and an extent of seventeen miles. Now, as always, the mountain air stimulated Mr. Browning’s physical energy; and on this occasion it also especially quickened his imaginative powers. He was preparing the first series of ‘Dramatic Idylls’; and several of these, including ‘Ivan Ivanovitch’, were produced with such rapidity that Miss Browning refused to countenance a prolonged stay on the mountain, unless he worked at a more reasonable rate.

They did not linger on their way to Asolo and Venice, except for a night’s rest on the Lake of Como and two days at Verona. In their successive journeys through Northern Italy they visited by degrees all its notable cities, and it would be easy to recall, in order and detail, most of these yearly expeditions. But the account of them would chiefly resolve itself into a list of names and dates; for Mr. Browning had seldom a new impression to receive, even from localities which he had not seen before. I know that he and his sister were deeply struck by the deserted grandeurs of Ravenna; and that it stirred in both of them a memorable sensation to wander as they did for a whole day through the pinewoods consecrated by Dante. I am nevertheless not sure that when they performed the repeated round of picture-galleries and palaces, they were not sometimes simply paying their debt to opportunity, and as much for each other’s sake as for their own. Where all was Italy, there was little to gain or lose in one memorial of greatness, one object of beauty, visited or left unseen. But in Asolo, even in Venice, Mr. Browning was seeking something more: the remembrance of his own actual and poetic youth. How far he found it in the former place we may infer from a letter to Mrs. FitzGerald.

Sept. 28, 1878.

And from ‘Asolo’, at last, dear friend! So can dreams come false. — S., who has been writing at the opposite side of the table, has told you about our journey and adventures, such as they were: but she cannot tell you the feelings with which I revisit this — to me — memorable place after above forty years’ absence, — such things have begun and ended with me in the interval! It was too strange when we reached the ruined tower on the hill-top yesterday, and I said ‘Let me try if the echo still exists which I discovered here,’ (you can produce it from only one particular spot on a remainder of brickwork — ) and thereupon it answered me plainly as ever, after all the silence: for some children from the adjoining ‘podere’, happening to be outside, heard my voice and its result — and began trying to perform the feat — calling ‘Yes, yes’ — all in vain: so, perhaps, the mighty secret will die with me! We shall probably stay here a day or two longer, — the air is so pure, the country so attractive: but we must go soon to Venice, stay our allotted time there, and then go homeward: you will of course address letters to Venice, not this place: it is a pleasure I promise myself that, on arriving I shall certainly hear you speak in a letter which I count upon finding.