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

“My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.

When I was five years old, I asked him once

‘What do you read about?’

‘The siege of Troy.’

‘What is a siege, and what is Troy?’

Whereat

He piled up chairs and tables for a town,

Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat

—Helen, enticed away from home (he said)

By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close

Under the footstool....

········

This taught me who was who and what was what;

So far I rightly understood the case

At five years old; a huge delight it proved

And still proves—thanks to that instructor sage

My Father....”

The poet’s mother was a true gentlewoman, characterized by fervent religious feeling, delicacy of perception, and a great love for music. She was reared in the Scottish kirk, and her husband in the Church of England, but they both connected themselves after their marriage with an “Independent” body that held their meetings in York Street, where the Robert Browning Hall now stands. They were, however, greatly attached to the Rev. Henry Melvill (later Canon at St. Paul’s), whose evening service they habitually attended. While the poet’s mother had little training in music, she was a natural musician, and was blessed with that keen, tremulous susceptibility to musical influence that was so marked a trait in her son. William Sharp pictures a late afternoon, when, playing softly to herself in the twilight, she was startled to hear a sound in the room. “Glancing around, she beheld a little white figure distinctly outlined against an oak bookcase, and could just discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment the child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not what, but, as his paroxysm of emotion subsided, whispering over and over,‘Play! Play!’”

The elder Browning was an impassioned lover of medieval legend and story. He was deeply familiar with Paracelsus, with Faust, and with many of the Talmudic tales. His library was large and richly stored,—the house, indeed, “crammed with books,” in which the boy browsed about at his own will. It was the best of all possible educations, this atmosphere of books. And the wealth of old engravings and prints fascinated the child. He would sit among these before a glowing fire, while from the adjoining room floated strains “of a wild Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling cadences.” It is recorded as his mother’s chief happiness,—“her hour of darkness and solitude and music.” Of such fabric are poetic impressions woven. The atmosphere was what Emerson called the “immortal ichor.” The boy was companioned by the “liberating gods.” Something mystic and beautiful beckoned to him, and incantations, unheard by the outer sense, thronged about him, pervading the air. The lad began to recast in English verse the Odes of Horace. From his school, on holiday afternoons, he sought a lonely spot, elm-shaded, where he could dimly discern London in the distance, with the gleam of sunshine on the golden cross of St. Paul’s,—lying for hours on the grass whence, perchance, he

“Saw distant gates of Eden gleam

And did not dream it was a dream.”

Meantime the boy read Junius, Voltaire, Walpole’s Letters, the “Emblems” of Quarles (a book that remained as a haunting influence all his life), and Mandeville’s “Fable of the Bees.” The first book of his own purchase was a copy of Ossian’s poems, and his initial effort in literary creation was in likeness of the picturesque imaginations that appealed with peculiar fascination to his mind.

“The world of books is still the world,” wrote Mrs. Browning in “Aurora Leigh,” and this was the world of Robert Browning’s early life. The genesis of many of his greatest poems can be traced directly to this atmosphere of books, and their constant use and reference in his childhood. Literature and life, are, indeed, so absolutely interpenetrated and so interdependent that they can almost invariably be contemplated as cause and effect, each reacting upon the other in determining sequences. By the magic of some spiritual alchemy, reading is transmuted into the qualities that build up character, and these qualities, in turn, determine the continued choice of books, so that selection and result perpetuate themselves, forming an unceasing contribution to the nature of life. If with these qualities is united the kindling imagination, the gift that makes its possessor the creative artist, the environment of books and perpetual reference to them act as a torch that ignites the divine fire. Browning’s early stimulus owes much, not only to the book-loving father, but to his father’s brother, his uncle Reuben Browning, who was a classical scholar and who took great interest in the boy. Preserved to the end of the poet’s life was a copy of the Odes of Horace, in translation, given to him as a lad of twelve, with his uncle’s autograph inscription on the fly-leaf. This was the translation made by Christopher Smart, whose “Song of David” soon became one of the boy’s favorites, and it is curious to trace how, more than sixty years later, Browning embodied Smart in his “Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day,” as one with whom

“... truth found vent

In words for once with you....”

Browning, with the poet’s instant insight, read the essential story of his boyhood into the lines:

“... Dreaming, blindfold led

By visionary hand, did soul’s advance

Precede my body’s, gain inheritance

Of fact by fancy...?”

No transcription of the poet’s childhood could even suggest the fortunate influences surrounding him that did not emphasize the rare culture and original power of his father. The elder Browning was familiar with old French and with both Spanish and Italian literature. “His wonderful store of information might really be compared to an inexhaustible mine,” said one who knew him well.

It is easy to see how out of such an atmosphere the future poet drew unconsciously the power to weave his “magic web” of such poems as the “Parleyings,” “Abt Vogler,” “Ferishtah’s Fancies,” and was lured on into that realm of marvelous creation out of which sprang his transcendent masterpiece, “The Ring and the Book.”

The elder Browning’s impassioned love of books was instanced by the curious fact that he could go in the dark to his library, and out of many hundreds of volumes select some particular one to which conversational reference had incidentally been made regarding some point which he wished to verify. He haunted all the old book-stalls in London, and knew their contents better than did their owners.

Books are so intimately associated with the very springs of both character and achievement that no adequate idea of the formative influences of the life and poetry of Robert Browning could be gained without familiarity with this most determining and conspicuous influence of his boyhood. The book with which a man has lived becomes an essential factor in his growth. “None of us yet know,” said Ruskin, “for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought, proof against all adversity, bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts,... houses built without hands for our souls to live in.” These houses for the soul, built in thought, will be transposed into outer form and semblance.

There is a nebulous but none the less pernicious tradition that great literature is formidable, and presents itself as a task rather than as a privilege to the reader. Devotion to the best books has been regarded as something of a test of mental endurance, for which the recompense, if not the antidote, must be sought in periods of indulgence in the frivolous and the sensational. Never was there a more fatal misconception. It is the inconsequential, the crude, the obtuse, that are dull in literature, as in life; and stupidity in various languages might well be entitled to rank among the Seven Deadly Sins of Dante. Even in the greatest literature there is much that the child may easily learn to appreciate and to love.