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

Trust in signs and omens.

Very beautiful garlands were now piled about his bier, offerings of friendship and affection. Conspicuous among these was the ceremonial structure of metallic foliage and porcelain flowers, inscribed ‘Venezia a Roberto Browning’, which represented the Municipality of Venice. On the coffin lay one comprehensive symbol of the fulfilled prophecy: a wreath of laurel-leaves which his son had placed there.

A final honour was decreed to the great English Poet by the city in which he had died; the affixing of a memorial tablet to the outer wall of the Rezzonico Palace. Since these pages were first written, the tablet has been placed. It bears the following inscription:

A

ROBERTO BROWNING

MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO

IL 12 DICEMBRE 1889

VENEZIA

POSE

Below this, in the right-hand corner appear two lines selected from his works:

Open my heart and you will see

Graved inside of it, ‘Italy’.

Nor were these the only expressions of Italian respect and sympathy. The municipality of Florence sent its message of condolence. Asolo, poor in all but memories, itself bore the expenses of a mural tablet for the house which Mr. Browning had occupied. It is now known that Signor Crispi would have appealed to Parliament to rescind the exclusion from the Florentine cemetery, if the motive for doing so had been less promptly removed.

Mr. Browning’s own country had indeed opened a way for the reunion of the husband and wife. The idea had rapidly shaped itself in the public mind that, since they might not rest side by side in Italy, they should be placed together among the great of their own land; and it was understood that the Dean would sanction Mrs. Browning’s interment in the Abbey, if a formal application to this end were made to him. But Mr. Barrett Browning could not reconcile himself to the thought of disturbing his mother’s grave, so long consecrated to Florence by her warm love and by its grateful remembrance; and at the desire of both surviving members of the family the suggestion was set aside.

Two days after his temporary funeral, privately and at night, all that remained of Robert Browning was conveyed to the railway station; and thence, by a trusted servant, to England. The family followed within twenty-four hours, having made the necessary preparations for a long absence from Venice; and, travelling with the utmost speed, arrived in London on the same day. The house in De Vere Gardens received its master once more.

‘Asolando’ was published on the day of Mr. Browning’s death. The report of his illness had quickened public interest in the forthcoming work, and his son had the satisfaction of telling him of its already realized success, while he could still receive a warm, if momentary, pleasure from the intelligence. The circumstances of its appearance place it beyond ordinary criticism; they place it beyond even an impartial analysis of its contents. It includes one or two poems to which we would gladly assign a much earlier date; I have been told on good authority that we may do this in regard to one of them. It is difficult to refer the ‘Epilogue’ to a coherent mood of any period of its author’s life. It is certain, however, that by far the greater part of the little volume was written in 1888-89, and I believe all that is most serious in it was the product of the later year. It possesses for many readers the inspiration of farewell words; for all of us it has their pathos.

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets’ Corner, on the 31st of December, 1889. In this tardy act of national recognition England claimed her own. A densely packed, reverent and sympathetic crowd of his countrymen and countrywomen assisted at the consignment of the dead poet to his historic resting place. Three verses of Mrs. Browning’s poem, ‘The Sleep’, set to music by Dr. Bridge, were sung for the first time on this occasion.

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A few words must still be said upon that purport and tendency of Robert Browning’s work, which has been defined by a few persons, and felt by very many as his ‘message’.

The definition has been disputed on the ground of Art. We are told by Mr. Sharp, though in somewhat different words, that the poet, qua poet, cannot deliver a ‘message’ such as directly addresses itself to the intellectual or moral sense; since his special appeal to us lies not through the substance, but through the form, or presentment, of what he has had to say; since, therefore (by implication), in claiming for it an intellectual — as distinct from an aesthetic — character, we ignore its function as poetry.

It is difficult to argue justly, where the question at issue turns practically on the meaning of a word. Mr. Sharp would, I think, be the first to admit this; and it appears to me that, in the present case, he so formulates his theory as to satisfy his artistic conscience, and yet leave room for the recognition of that intellectual quality so peculiar to Mr. Browning’s verse. But what one member of the aesthetic school may express with a certain reserve is proclaimed unreservedly by many more; and Mr. Sharp must forgive me, if for the moment I regard him as one of these; and if I oppose his arguments in the words of another poet and critic of poetry, whose claim to the double title is I believe undisputed — Mr. Roden Noel. I quote from an unpublished fragment of a published article on Mr. Sharp’s ‘Life of Browning’.

‘Browning’s message is an integral part of himself as writer; (whether as poet, since we agree that he is a poet, were surely a too curious and vain discussion;) but some of his finest things assuredly are the outcome of certain very definite personal convictions. “The question,” Mr. Sharp says, “is not one of weighty message, but of artistic presentation.” There seems to be no true contrast here. “The primary concern of the artist must be with his vehicle of expression” — no — not the primary concern. Since the critic adds — (for a poet) “this vehicle is language emotioned to the white heat of rhythmic music by impassioned thought or sensation.” Exactly — ”thought” it may be. Now part of this same “thought” in Browning is the message. And therefore it is part of his “primary concern”. “It is with presentment,” says Mr. Sharp, “that the artist has fundamentally to concern himself.” Granted: but it must surely be presentment of something… . I do not understand how to separate the substance from the form in true poetry… . If the message be not well delivered, it does not constitute literature. But if it be well delivered, the primary concern of the poet lay with the message after all!’

More cogent objection has been taken to the character of the ‘message’ as judged from a philosophic point of view. It is the expression or exposition of a vivid a priori religious faith confirmed by positive experience; and it reflects as such a double order of thought, in which totally opposite mental activities are often forced into cooperation with each other. Mr. Sharp says, this time quoting from Mr. Mortimer (‘Scottish Art Review’, December 1889):

‘His position in regard to the thought of the age is paradoxical, if not inconsistent. He is in advance of it in every respect but one, the most important of all, the matter of fundamental principles; in these he is behind it. His processes of thought are often scientific in their precision of analysis; the sudden conclusion which he imposes upon them is transcendental and inept.’

This statement is relatively true. Mr. Browning’s positive reasonings often do end with transcendental conclusions. They also start from transcendental premises. However closely his mind might follow the visible order of experience, he never lost what was for him the consciousness of a Supreme Eternal Will as having existed before it; he never lost the vision of an intelligent First Cause, as underlying all minor systems of causation. But such weaknesses as were involved in his logical position are inherent to all the higher forms of natural theology when once it has been erected into a dogma. As maintained by Mr. Browning, this belief held a saving clause, which removed it from all dogmatic, hence all admissible grounds of controversy: the more definite or concrete conceptions of which it consists possessed no finality for even his own mind; they represented for him an absolute truth in contingent relations to it. No one felt more strongly than he the contradictions involved in any conceivable system of Divine creation and government. No one knew better that every act and motive which we attribute to a Supreme Being is a virtual negation of His existence. He believed nevertheless that such a Being exists; and he accepted His reflection in the mirror of the human consciousness, as a necessarily false image, but one which bears witness to the truth.