It was long the FASHION—and that fashion has not yet passed away —with skimming readers and perfunctory critics to charge Mr. Browning with being “wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless, and perversely harsh.”
There are readers and readers. One class, constituting, perhaps, not more than one-tenth of one per cent, or a thousandth part of the whole number, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”; the remaining ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent, through a habit of loose and indiscriminate reading, are unequal to the sustained concentration of mind demanded by the higher poetry, the language of which is characterized by a severe economy of expression—a closeness of texture, resulting from the elliptical energy of highly impassioned thought.
Reading is, perhaps, more superficial at the present day than it ever was before. There is an almost irresistible temptation to reverse the “multum legendum esse non multa” of Quintilian, overwhelmed as we are with books, magazines, and newspapers, which no man can number, and of which thousands and tens of thousands of minds endeavor to gobble up all they can; and yet, from want of all digestive and assimilating power, they are pitiably famished and deadened.
Sir John Lubbock has lately been interested in the preparation of a list of the best hundred books, and to that end has solicited the aid of a number of prominent scholars. Prof. Edward Dowden remarks thereupon, in an article on ‘The Interpretation of Literature’, “It would have been more profitable for us had we been advised how to read any one of the hundred; for what, indeed, does it matter whether we read the best books or the worst, if we lack the power or the instinct or the skill by which to reach the heart of any of them? Books for most readers are, as Montaigne says, ‘a languid pleasure’; and so they must be, unless they become living powers, with a summons or a challenge for our spirit, unless we embrace them or wrestle with them.”
To return from this digression to the charge against Browning of obscurity. And, first, it should be said that Browning has so much material, such a large thought and passion capital, that we never find him making a little go a great way, by means of EXPRESSION, or rather concealing the little by means of rhetorical tinsel. We can never justly demand of him what the Queen in ‘Hamlet’ demands of Polonius, “more matter with less art”. His thought is wide-reaching and discursive, and the motions of his mind rapid and leaping. The connecting links of his thought have often to be supplied by an analytic reader whose mind is not up to the required tension to spring over the chasm. He shows great faith in his reader and “leaves the mere rude explicit details”, as if he thought,
“‘tis but brother’s speech
We need, speech where an accent’s change gives each
The other’s soul.” *
— * ‘Sordello’. —
A truly original writer like Browning, original, I mean, in his spiritual attitudes, is always more of less difficult to the uninitiated, for the reason that he demands of his reader new standpoints, new habits of thought and feeling; says, virtually, to his reader, Metanoei^te; and until these new standpoints are taken, these new habits of thought and feeling induced, the difficulty, while appearing to the reader at the outset, to be altogether objective, will really be, to a great extent, subjective, that is, will be in himself.
Goethe, in his ‘Wahrheit und Dichtung’, says:—
“Wer einem Autor Dunkelheit vorwerfen will, sollte erst sein eigenes Innere besuchen, ob es denn da auch recht hell ist. In der Daemmerung wird eine sehr deutliche Schrift unlesbar.” *
—
* He who would charge an author with obscurity, should first look
into his own mind, to know whether it is quite clear there.
In the dusk a very distinct handwriting becomes illegible.
—
And George Henry Lewes, in his ‘Life of Goethe’, well says:—
“A masterpiece excites no sudden enthusiasm; it must be studied much and long, before it is fully comprehended; we must grow up to it, for it will not descend to us. Its emphasis grows with familiarity. We never become disenchanted; we grow more and more awe-struck at its infinite wealth. We discover no trick, for there is none to discover. Homer, Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, Mozart, never storm the judgment; but once fairly in possession, they retain it with unceasing influence.”
And Professor Dowden, in the article from which I have just quoted, says:—
“Approaching a great writer in this spirit of courageous and affectionate fraternity, we need all our forces and all our craft for the friendly encounter. If we love ease and lethargy, let us turn in good time and fly. The interpretation of literature, like the interpretation of Nature, is no mere record of facts; it is no catalogue of the items which make up a book— such catalogues and analyses of contents encumber our histories of literature with some of their dreariest pages. The interpretation of literature exhibits no series of dead items, but rather the life and power of one mind at play upon another mind duly qualified to receive and manifest these. Hence, one who would interpret the work of a master must summon up all his powers, and must be alive at as many points as possible. He who approaches his author as a whole, bearing upon life as a whole, is himself alive at the greatest possible number of points, will be the best and truest interpreter. For he will grasp what is central, and at the same time will be sensitive to the value of all details, which details he will perceive not isolated, but in connection with one another, and with the central life to which they belong and from which they proceed.”
In his poem entitled ‘Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in distemper’, Mr. Browning turns upon his critics, whom he characterizes as “the privileged fellows, in the drabs, blues, and yellows” (alluding to the covers of the leading British Reviews), and especially upon Alfred Austin, the author of that work of wholesale condemnation, ‘The Poetry of the Period’, and gives them a sound and well-deserved drubbing. At the close of the onset he says:—
“Was it ‘grammar’ wherein you would ‘coach’ me—
You,—pacing in even that paddock
Of language allotted you ad hoc,
With a clog at your fetlocks,—you—scorners
Of me free from all its four corners?
Was it ‘clearness of words which convey thought?’
Ay, if words never needed enswathe aught
But ignorance, impudence, envy
And malice—what word-swathe would then vie
With yours for a clearness crystalline?
But had you to put in one small line
Some thought big and bouncing—as noddle
Of goose, born to cackle and waddle
And bite at man’s heel as goose-wont is,
Never felt plague its puny os frontis—
You’d know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered,
Clear ‘quack-quack’ is easily uttered!”
In a letter written to Mr. W. G. Kingsland, in 1868, Mr. Browning says:—
“I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole I get my deserts, and something over—not a crowd, but a few I value more.” *
—
* ‘Browning Society Papers’, III., p. 344.
—
It was never truer of any author than it is true of Browning, that ‘Le style c’est l’homme’; and Browning’s style is an expression of the panther-restlessness and panther-spring of his impassioned intellect. The musing spirit of a Wordsworth or a Tennyson he partakes not of.
Mr. Richard Holt Hutton’s characterization of the poet’s style, as a “crowded note-book style”, is not a particularly happy one. In the passage, which he cites from Sordello, to illustrate the “crowded note-book style”, occurs the following parenthesis:—
“(To be by him themselves made act,
Not watch Sordello acting each of them.)”
“What the parenthesis means,” he says, “I have not the most distant notion. Mr. Browning might as well have said, ‘to be by him her himself herself themselves made act’, etc., for any vestige of meaning I attach to this curious mob of pronouns and verbs. It is exactly like the short notes of a speech intended to be interpreted afterwards by one who had heard and understood it himself.” *
—
* ‘Essays Theological and Literary’. Vol. II., 2d ed., rev.
and enl., p. 175.
—
At first glance, this parenthesis is obscure; but the obscurity is not due to its being “exactly like the short notes of a speech”, etc. It is due to what the “obscurity” of Mr. Browning’s language, as language, is, in nine cases out of ten, due, namely, to the COLLOCATION of the words, not to an excessive economy of words. He often exercises a liberty in the collocation of his words which is beyond what an uninflected language like the English admits of, without more or less obscurity. There are difficult passages in Browning which, if translated into Latin, would present no difficulty at all; for in Latin, the relations of words are more independent of their collocation, being indicated by their inflections.
The meaning of the parenthesis is, and, independently of the context, a second glance takes it in (the wonder is, Mr. Hutton didn’t take it in),—
“To be themselves made by him {to} act,
Not each of them watch Sordello acting.”
There are two or three characteristics of the poet’s diction which may be noticed here:—
1. The suppression of the relative, both nominative and accusative or dative, is not uncommon; and, until the reader becomes familiar with it, it often gives, especially if the suppression is that of a subject relative, a momentary, but only a momentary, check to the understanding of a passage.
The following examples are from ‘The Ring and the Book’:—
“Checking the song of praise in me, had else
Swelled to the full for God’s will done on earth.”
I. The Ring and the Book, v. 591.
i.e., which had (would have) else swelled to the full, etc.
“This that I mixed with truth, motions of mine
That quickened, made the inertness malleolable
O’ the gold was not mine,”—
I. The Ring and the Book, v. 703.
“Harbouring in the centre of its sense
A hidden germ of failure, shy but sure,
Should neutralize that honesty and leave
That feel for truth at fault, as the way is too.”
I. The Ring and the Book, v. 851.
“Elaborate display of pipe and wheel
Framed to unchoak, pump up and pour apace
Truth in a flowery foam shall wash the world.”
I. The Ring and the Book, v. 1113.
“see in such
A star shall climb apace and culminate,”
III. The Other Half Rome, v. 846.
“Guido, by his folly, forced from them
The untoward avowal of the trick o’ the birth,
Would otherwise be safe and secret now.”
IV. Tertium Quid, v. 1599.
“so I
Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill
Into the ecstasy and outthrob pain.”
VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi, v. 972.
“blind?
Ay, as a man would be inside the sun,
Delirious with the plentitude of light
Should interfuse him to the finger-ends”—
X. The Pope, 1564.
“You have the sunrise now, joins truth to truth.”
X. The Pope, 1763.
“One makes fools look foolisher fifty-fold
By putting in their place the wise like you,
To take the full force of an argument
Would buffet their stolidity in vain.”
XI. Guido, 858.
Here the infinitive “To take” might be understood, at first look, as the subject of “Would buffet”; but it depends on “putting”, etc., and the subject relative “that” is suppressed: “an argument {that} would buffet their stolidity in vain.”
“Will you hear truth can do no harm nor good?”
XI. Guido, 1915.
“I who, with outlet for escape to heaven,
Would tarry if such flight allowed my foe
To raise his head, relieved of that firm foot
Had pinned him to the fiery pavement else!”
XI. Guido, 2099.
i.e., “that firm foot {that} had (would have) pinned.”
. . ."ponder, ere ye pass,
Each incident of this strange human play
Privily acted on a theatre,
Was deemed secure from every gaze but God’s,”—
XII. The Book and the Ring, v. 546.
“As ye become spectators of this scene—
—A soul made weak by its pathetic want
Of just the first apprenticeship to sin,
Would thenceforth make the sinning soul secure
From all foes save itself, that’s truliest foe,”—
XII. The Book and the Ring, v. 559.
i.e., “sin, {that} would.”
“Was he proud,—a true scion of the stock
Which bore the blazon, shall make bright my page”—
XII. The Book and the Ring, v. 821.
2. The use of the infinitive without the prepositive “to”, is frequently extended beyond present usage, especially in ‘Sordello’ and ‘The Ring and the Book’. The following are examples:—
“Who fails, through deeds howe’er diverse, RE-TRACK
My purpose still, my task?”
Sordello, p. 168.
“failed Adelaide SEE then
Who was the natural chief, the man of men?”
Sordello, p. 175.
“but when
‘Twas time expostulate, attempt withdraw
Taurello from his child,” . . .
Sordello, p. 180.
Here are two infinitives, with the prepositive omitted, “expostulate” and “attempt”, both dependent on the noun “time”, and another, “withdraw”, without the prepositive, dependent on “attempt”: “but when ‘twas time {to} expostulate, {to} attempt {to} withdraw”, etc.
“For thus he ventured, to the verge,
Push a vain mummery.” . . .
Sordello, p. 190.
i.e., for thus he ventured {to} push to the verge a vain mummery.
“as yet
He had inconsciously contrived FORGET
I’ the whole, to dwell o’ the points”. . .
Sordello, p. 190.
“Grown bestial, dreaming how BECOME divine.”
Sordello, p. 191.
“And the whole music it was framed AFFORD,”—
Sordello, p. 203.
“Was such a lighting-up of faith, in life,
Only allowed initiate, set man’s step
In the true way by help of the great glow?”
R. and B. X. The Pope, v. 1815.
i.e. only allowed {to} initiate, {to} set man’s step, etc.
“If I might read instead of print my speech,—
Ay, and enliven speech with many a flower
Refuses obstinately blow in print.”
R. and B. IX. Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, v. 4.
Here the subject relative of “refuses” is omitted, and the verb followed by an infinitive without the prepositive: “many a flower {that} refuses obstinately {to} blow in print.”
3. Instead of the modern analytic form, the simple form of the past subjunctive derived from the Anglo-Saxon inflectional form, and identical with that of the past indicative, is frequently employed, the context only showing that it is the subjunctive. (See Abbott’s ‘Shakespearian Grammar’, 361 et seq.)
“Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!”
Rabbi Ben Ezra, St. xi.
i.e., as we should do best.
“Thus were abolished Spring and Autumn both,”
I. The Ring and the Book, 1358.
i.e., would be abolished.
“His peevishness had promptly put aside
Such honor and refused the proffered boon,” . . .
II. Half Rome (R. and B.), 369.
i.e., would have promptly put aside.
“(What daily pittance pleased the plunderer dole.)”
X. The Pope (R. and B.), 561.
i.e., as the context shows, {it} might please the plunderer {to} dole.
“succession to the inheritance
Which bolder crime had lost you:”
IV. Tertium Quid (R. and B.), 1104.
i.e., would have lost you.
But the verbs “be” and “have” are chiefly so used, and not often beyond what present usage allows. *
—
* Tennyson uses “saw” = ‘viderem’, in the following passage:—
“But since I did not see the Holy Thing,
I sware a vow to follow it till I saw.”
Sir Percivale in ‘The Holy Grail’.
—
4. The use of the dative, or indirect object, without “to” or “for”.
Such datives are very frequent, and scarcely need illustration. The poet has simply carried the use of them beyond the present general usage of the language. But there’s a noticeable one in the Pope’s Monologue, in ‘The Ring and the Book’, vv. 1464-1466: The Archbishop of Arezzo, to whom poor Pompilia has applied, in her distress, for protection against her brutal husband, thinks it politic not to take her part, but send her back to him and enjoin obedience and submission. The Pope, in his Monologue, represents the crafty Archbishop as saying, when Pompilia cries, “Protect me from the wolf!”
“No, thy Guido is rough, heady, strong,
Dangerous to disquiet: let him bide!
He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse
The darkness of his den with: so, the fawn
Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies,
—Come to me daughter!—thus I throw him back!”
i.e., thus I throw back {to} him the fawn which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies. The parenthesis, “Come to me, daughter”, being interposed, and which is introduced as preparatory to his purpose, adds to the difficulty of the construction.
There are, after all, but comparatively few instances in Browning’s poetry, where these features of his diction can be fairly condemned. They often impart a crispness to the expressions in which they occur.
The contriving spirit of the poet’s language often results in great complexity of construction. Complexity of construction may be a fault, and it may not. It may be justified by the complexity of the thought which it bears along. “Clear quack-quack is easily uttered.” But where an author’s thought is nimble, far-reaching, elliptical through its energy, and discursive, the expression of it must be more or less complex or involved; he will employ subordinate clauses, and parentheses, through which to express the outstanding, restricting, and toning relations of his thought, that is, if he is a master of perspective, and ranks his grouped thoughts according to their relative importance.
The poet’s apostrophe to his wife in the spirit-world, which closes the long prologue to ‘The Ring and the Book’ (vv. 1391-1416), and in which he invokes her aid and benediction, in the work he has undertaken, presents a greater complexity of construction than is to be met with anywhere else in his works; and of this passage it may be said, as it may be said of any other having a complex construction, supposing this to be the only difficulty, that it’s hard rather than obscure, and demands close reading. But, notwithstanding its complex structure and the freight of thought conveyed, the passage has a remarkable LIGHTSOMENESS of movement, and is a fine specimen of blank verse. The unobtrusive, but distinctly felt, alliteration which runs through it, contributes something toward this lightsomeness. The first two verses have a Tennysonian ring:—
“O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,—
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
5 And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory—to drop down,
10 To toil for man, to suffer or to die,—
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
15 Except with bent head and beseeching hand—
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile:
20 —Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on,—so blessing back
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
25 Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!” *
—
* In the last three verses of ‘The Ring and the Book’
the poet again addresses his “Lyric Love” to express the wish
that the Ring, which he has rounded out of the rough ore
of the Roman murder case, might but lie “in guardianship”
outside hers,
“Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.”
The reference is to the inscription on Casa Guidi,
Via Maggiore, 9. Florence:
QUI SCRISSE E MORI
ELISABETTA BARRETT BROWNING
CHE IN CUORE DI DONNA CONCILIAVA
SCIENZA DI DOTTO E SPIRITO DI POETA
E FECE DEL SUO VERSO AUREO ANELLO
FRA ITALIA E INGHILTERRA
PONE QUESTO MEMORIA
FIRENZE GRATA
1861.
—
“his”, v. 5, the sun’s. “Yet human”, v. 6: though ‘kindred’ to the sun, yet proved ‘human’. . .‘when the first summons’, etc. “This is the same voice”, v. 11, i.e., a voice of the same import as was “the first summons”—one invoking help. The nouns “interchange”, “splendour”, “benediction”, vv. 17, 18, 19, are appositives of “what”, v. 17. “Never conclude”, v. 20, to be construed with “commence”, v. 13: “Never {may I} conclude”. “Their utmost up and on”, v. 23, to be construed with “yearn”, v. 21. “so”, v. 23, looks back to “raising hand and head”, etc. “Some whiteness” . . . v. 25, “Some wanness” . . . v. 26, to be construed with “blessing back”.
See an elaborate analysis of this Invocation, by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, read at the forty-eighth meeting of the Browning Society, February 25, 1887, being No. 39 of the Society’s Papers.
But, after all, the difficulties in Browning which result from the construction of the language, be that what it may, are not the main difficulties, as has been too generally supposed. THE MAIN DIFFICULTIES ARE QUITE INDEPENDENT OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE LANGUAGE.
Many readers, especially those who take an intellectual attitude toward all things, in the heavens above and in the earth beneath, suppose that they are prepared to understand almost anything which is understandable if it is only PUT right. This is a most egregious mistake, especially in respect to the subtle and complex spiritual experiences which the more deeply subjective poetry embodies. What De Quincey says in his paper on Kant,* of the comprehension of the higher philosophical truths, can, with still better reason, be said of the responsiveness to the higher spiritual truths: “No complex or very important truth was ever yet transferred in full development from one mind to another: truth of that character is not a piece of furniture to be shifted; it is a seed which must be sown, and pass through the several stages of growth. No doctrine of importance can be transferred in a matured shape into any man’s understanding from without: it must arise by an act of genesis within the understanding itself.”
—
* ‘Letters to a Young Man’. Letter V.
—
And so it may be said in regard to the responsiveness to the higher spiritual truths—I don’t say COMPREHENSION of the higher spiritual truths (that word pertains rather to an intellectual grasp), but RESPONSIVENESS to the higher spiritual truths. Spiritual truths must be spiritually responded to; they are not and cannot be intellectually comprehended. The condition of such responsiveness it may require a long while to fulfil. New attitudes of the soul, a meta/noia, may be demanded, before such responsiveness is possible. And what some people may regard in the higher poetry as obscure, by reason of the mode of its presentation on the part of the poet, may be only relatively so —that is, the obscurity may be wholly due to the wrong attitudes, or the no attitudes, of their own souls, and to the limitations of their spiritual experiences. In that case “the patient must minister to himself”.
While on the subject of “obscurity”, I must notice a difficulty which the reader at first experiences in his study of Browning’s poetry —a difficulty resulting from the poet’s favorite art-form, the dramatic or psychologic monologue.* The largest portion of his voluminous poetry is in this form. Some speaker is made to reveal his character, and, sometimes, by reflection, or directly, the character of some one else—to set forth some subtle and complex soul-mood, some supreme, all-determining movement or experience of a life; or, it may be, to RATIOCINATE subtly on some curious question of theology, morals, philosophy, or art. Now it is in strictly preserving the monologue character that obscurity often results. A monologue often begins with a startling abruptness, and the reader must read along some distance before he gathers what the beginning means. Take the monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi for example. The situation is necessarily left more or less unexplained. The poet says nothing ‘in propria persona’, and no reply is made to the speaker by the person or persons addressed. Sometimes a look, a gesture, or a remark, must be supposed on the part of the one addressed, which occasions a responsive remark. Sometimes the speaker IMPUTES a question; and the reader is sometimes obliged to stop and consider whether a question is imputed by the speaker to the one he is addressing, or is a direct question of his own. This is often the case throughout ‘The Ring and the Book’. But to the initiated, these features of the monologue present little or no difficulty, and they conduce to great compactness of composition— a closeness of texture which the reader comes in time to enjoy, and to prefer to a more loosely woven diction.
— * The dramatic monologue differs from a soliloquy in this: while there is but one speaker, the presence of a silent second person is supposed, to whom the arguments of the speaker are addressed. Perhaps such a situation may be termed a novelty of invention in our Poet. It is obvious that the dramatic monologue gains over the soliloquy in that it allows the artist greater room in which to work out his conception of character. We cannot gaze long at a solitary figure on a canvas, however powerfully treated, without feeling some need of relief. In the same way a soliloquy (comp. the great soliloquies of Shakespeare) cannot be protracted to any great length without wearying the listener. The thoughts of a man in self-communion are apt to run in a certain circle, and to assume a monotony. The introduction of a second person acting powerfully upon the speaker throughout, draws the latter forth into a more complete and varied expression of his mind. The silent person in the background, who may be all the time master of the situation, supplies a powerful stimulus to the imagination of the reader.—Rev. Prof. E. Johnson’s “Paper on ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’” (‘Browning Soc. Papers’, Pt. III., p. 279). —
The monologue entitled ‘My Last Duchess. Ferrara’ is a good example of the constitution of this art-form. It is one of the most perfect in artistic treatment, and exhibits all the features I have just noticed. Originally, this monologue and that now entitled ‘Count Gismond. Aix in Provence’, had the common title, ‘Italy and France’, the former being No. I. Italy; the latter, No. II. France. The poet, no doubt, afterward thought that the Duke of the one monologue, and the Count of the other, could not justly be presented as representatives, respectively, of Italy and France. In giving the monologues new titles, ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Count Gismond’, he added to the one, ‘Ferrara’, and to the other, ‘Aix in Provence’, thus locally restricting the order of character which they severally represent.
In ‘My Last Duchess’, the speaker is a soulless VIRTUOSO— a natural product of a proud, arrogant, and exclusive aristocracy, on the one hand, and on the other, of an old and effete city, like Ferrara, where art, rather than ministering to soul-life and true manliness of character, has become an end to itself— is valued for its own sake.
The Duke is showing, with the weak pride of the mere virtuoso, a portrait of his last Duchess, to some one who has been sent to negotiate another marriage. We see that he is having an entertainment or reception of some kind in his palace, and that he has withdrawn from the company with the envoy to the picture-gallery on an upper floor. He has pulled aside the curtain from before the portrait, and in remarking on the expression which the artist, Fra Pandolf, has given to the face, he is made to reveal a fiendish jealousy on his part, occasioned by the sweetness and joyousness of his late Duchess, who, he thought, should show interest in nothing but his own fossilized self. “She had,” he says, “a heart— how shall I say?—too soon made glad, too easily impressed; she liked whate’er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, ‘twas all one! My favour at her breast, the dropping of the daylight in the West, the bough of cherries some officious fool broke in the orchard for her, the white mule she rode with round the terrace—all and each would draw from her alike the approving speech, or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody’s gift.”
Her fresh interest in things, and the sweet smile she had for all, due to a generous soul-life, proved fatal to the lovely Duchess: “Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, whene’er I passed her; but who passed without much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together.”
He succeeded, and he seems to be proud of it, in shutting off all her life-currents, pure, and fresh, and sparkling, as they were, and we must suppose that she than sank slowly and uncomplainingly away. What a deep pathos there is in “then all smiles stopped together”! *
—
* “I gave commands” certainly must not be understood to mean
commands for her death, as it is understood by the writer of the
articles in ‘The Saint Paul’s Magazine’ for December, 1870, and
January, 1871. {See Preface: Note to the Third Edition.}
—
The contemptible meanness and selfishness of jealousy were never exhibited with greater power, than they are exhibited in this short monologue—a power largely due to the artistic treatment. The jealousy of Leontes, in ‘The Winter’s Tale’, of Shakespeare, is nobility itself, in comparison with the Duke’s. How distinctly, while indirectly, the sweet Duchess is, with a few masterly touches, placed before us! The poet shows his artistic skill especially in his indirect, reflected portraitures.
This short composition, comprising as it does but fifty-six lines, is, of itself, sufficient to prove the poet a consummate artist. Tennyson’s TECHNIQUE is quite perfect, almost “faultily faultless”, indeed; but in no one of his compositions has he shown an equal degree of art-power, in the highest sense of the word.
{‘My Last Duchess’}
“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said,
‘Fra Pandolf’ by design: for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ‘twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say ‘Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much’, or ‘Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat’: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ‘twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! *
—
* Claus of Innsbruck and also Fra Pandolf (v. 3) are imaginary
artists.
—
The last ten verses illustrate well the poet’s skilful management of his difficult art-form. After the envoy has had his look at the portrait, the Duke, thinking it time to return to his guests, says “Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet the company below, then.” His next speech, which indicates what he has been talking about, during the envoy’s study of the picture, must be understood as uttered while they are moving toward the stairway. The next, “Nay, we’ll go together down, sir”, shows that they have reached the head of the stairway, and that the envoy has politely motioned the Duke to lead the way down. This is implied in the “Nay”. The last speech indicates that on the stairway is a window which affords an outlook into the courtyard, where he calls the attention of the envoy to a Neptune, taming a sea-horse, cast in bronze for him by Claus of Innsbruck. The pride of the virtuoso is also implied in the word, “though”.
It should be noticed, also, that the Duke values his wife’s picture wholly as a picture, not as the “counterfeit presentment” and reminder of a sweet and lovely woman, who might have blessed his life, if he had been capable of being blessed. It is to him a picture by a great artist, and he values it only as such. He says, parenthetically, “since none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you, but I.” It’s too precious a work of art to be entrusted to anybody else.
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