_ A NEW CRITICISM OF BROWNING.* IT is not to

call in question the rare natural qualities of Mr. Chesterton's critical work, if we say that the effort to

keep up a reputation for originality is perhaps a little too apparent in the case of his contribution to the "English Men of Letters" series. One may admit that Browning has suffered more than most poets from the fanaticism of his worshippers and yet be sure that there still remains for the students of his work a mass of criticism so sound, so unassailable, so conscientiously distributed, that, at least for the present, there is little on the main lines to be added to it that could be at once new and true. Remote posterity may gain a fresh perspective, " succinct, distinct," but we are still too near to Browning's time to enjoy any notable advantage over the poet's contemporaries. Yet Mr. Chesterton has set himself to correct the critics, favourable or adverse—for we are to understand that the attacks of Browning's enemies and the eulogies of his friends have hitherto been marked by an almost indistinguishable fatuity—rather than to present, faithfully and without disrespect of persons, a review of the poet's actual utterances. For the confirmed adept, suffering from a surfeit of accepted knowledge, Mr. Chesterton's work will possess a kind of stimulating piquancy; but to the un- initiated, who are concerned to know what Browning said

well rather than what his critics said badly, it will seem like a supplemental savoury in a feast from which the courses of

resistance have been arbitrarily omitted. A single common- place will serve to illustrate Mr. Chesterton's passion for eluding matters of general acceptation. If there is one feature more typical than another of Browning's method, it is , his dramatic subjectivity. Mr. Chesterton practically

ignores this. Yet Browning himself on this very subject makes a most deliberate apologia pro arte sua in his essay on

the forged Shelley letters :— "The subjective poet," he there says, "is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, the Supreme Intelligence which

apprehends all things in their absolute truth Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do, preferring to seek them in his own soul, as the nearest reflex of that absolute mind."

Again, if there is one feature more typical than another of Browning's purpose, as distinct from his method, it is his insistence upon the probational character of life on earth.

This, too, Mr. Chesterton practically ignores. He dis- approves, indeed, of the general view that Browning had a "message," a conclusion commonly based on internal evidence not only of the positive but of the negative kind; for when a great part of a poet's work is not poetry at all in the technical sense, it is only natural to assume that he desired to draw attention rather to the importance of the things he had to say than to the charm of his manner of saying them. So obvious a platitude provokes the indignation of Mr. Chesterton. He declares that so far from his preferring sense to sound, the most assertive characteristic of Browning is his perfection of form. He points, in proof, to his infinite variety of metres, as if these restless efforts after diversion were not a sign of weakness rather than strength. Out of his own mouth the poet rebukes himself in his lines on Charles Avison where he contrasts the still unstable character of form in music with the relative finality, long achieved and crystallised, of the technical standards of poetry and the plastic arts. Further, when he speaks of form, Mr. Chesterton is content to regard the general architectural design, to the almost complete neglect of execution in detail. Yet if we even concede that Browning adapted his general scheme to his purpose, it is not enough for an artist to have designed a temple, say, in the Doric style as suited to the worship of Athena, if he goes on to Model his metopes in low, and his frieze in high, relief, to crown his columns with a Corinthian acanthus, and to attach dothic gargoyles to every available coign.

No one complains that Browning should be grotesque in detail where his theme is grotesque. Much may be per- mitted to a bursting caprice if only it is tolerably congenial

to the subject. But one justly complains of the introduction of rough, obscure, and pedantic elements in purely lyrical themes. It is true that Mr. Chesterton admits Browning's • Robert Browning. By G. Chesterton. "English Men of Letters." London: at.,., ullsu and Co, [20. net.] " inability to keep a kind of demented ingenuity even out of poems in which it was quite inappropriate " ; but he asks us to recognise this "all the more because as a whole he was a very perfect artist." That Mr. Chesterton does not always appreciate the capriciousness of the poet's deviations from what is consonant with his theme is shown by his comments on " Popularity." In his anxiety to prove that the famous Hobbs-Nobbs verse at the end of this poem is an ordinary straightforward comment to any one who understands that purple comes out of the murex, he describes it as "a perfectly casual piece of sentiment at the end of a light poem." Yet you will look far in Browning before you find a more nobly serious 'prelude than the opening verses of the poem that tails off into this brilliant buffoonery.

On the subject of the beauty of ugliness (" he invented," we are told, " a particular kind of technical beauty ") Mr. Chesterton appeals to the gnarled oaks and top-heavy toad- stools of Nature. He might as well appeal to the grave- digger in Hamlet. With Shakespeare, as with Nature, these things serve in their place for relief or contrast ; of neither are they the staple produce. Browning knew all this very well indeed, though he cherished a pale hope that time would mellow his work. "Sweet for the future ; strong for the nonce." Well, we are still not out of the nonce.

There are whole pages in this book in which it would be possible to substitute the name of Walt Whitman for that of Browning and gain something by the change. Thus we read that " one of the very few critics who seem to have got near to the actual secret of Browning's optimism is Mr. Santayana.

He describes the poetry of Browning most truly as the poetry of barbarism For the barbarian is the

man who regards his passions as their own excuse for being, who does not domesticate them either by understanding their cause, or by conceiving their ideal goal." Yet this is not a comment upon the noble savage who wrote Leaves of Grass, but upon the author of the defence of Caponsacchi ! Which brings us to "The Ring and the Book." Of this Mr. Chester- ton says that "it is the great epic of the nineteenth century" —so far, good—" because it is the great epic of the enormous importance of small things." The difference between the modern and the ancient epic poets is, he tells us, " the whole difference between an age that fought with dragons and an age that fights with microbes,"—a really admirable epigram, but almost entirely impertinent to the subject. Yet to strain it to his purpose he has to contend that Browning's theme is here a mean and sordid story, and intentionally emphasised as such by the poet when he insists upon the contemptible character of the curios from which he picked it; and he contrasts the position of Browning in his attempt to show "the relations of man to heaven by telling a story out of a dirty Italian book of criminal trials, from which he selects one of the meanest," with that of Homer trying to do the same thing with a "great legend of love and war." Yet are we to say that the main episode of " The Ring and the Book," the rescue of Pompilia by the priest. is so much more mean and sordid than the origin of the Trojan War P or does the story based on Helen's adultery keep its higher caste by never being found on second-hand Florentine bookstalls P In any case, of a poem that has a plot sufficiently melo- dramatic to embrace a supposititious infant, a child- marriage, an elopement with a priest, and a series of murders with executions to follow, it is too much to ask us to believe that it represents " the apotheosis of the insignificant." Browning himself, who may be supposed to have known what he was after, very plainly states the reason why he wrote " The Ring and the Book " ; why he " took the artistic way to prove so much." The very title sets forth his purpose,—the addition of alloy to gold, the admixture of fancy with fact, for the better rounding of the Ring of Truth. As for what one may call his moral and personal, as opposed to his literary, object, the writer of this review remembers hearing from the novelist, Miss Ogle, to whom Browning offered the plot, that he said to her : " It's all about love, but there's not a word of love in it." And no doubt, as Mr. Chesterton very happily suggests, the unconventional action of Caponsacchi seemed to the poet to recall that adventure of his own, in the recklessness of which he retained so profound and touching a belief. When we further remember that the life-failures which may result from a supine lethargy of the spirit, or from a dull obedience

to convention, are among Browning's favourite themes (witness " Cristina," " D9s aliter visum," " By the Fireside," " The Statue and the Bust "), we have a sufficient array of reasons for the writing of " The Ring and the Book " without regarding it as "the apotheosis of the insignificant."

Mr. Chesterton has not many charges to bring against Browning's work; but in the one specific charge which he does bring his own judgment seems badly at fault. His method of bringing the charge is characteristic for its claim to originality. " There is one definite literary mistake, a glaring one," he says, " 'Pippa Passes' ; and, as far as I know, no critic has ever thought enough of Browning as an artist to point it out.

To make Pippa in the end turn out to be a niece of one of them " (he refers to " the grand folk whose lives she troubles and transforms ") "is like a whiff from an Adelphi melodrama." One may afford to disregard the sneer at melo- drama (Adelphi or other) in this last act, seeing that all the previous acts are melodrama of much the same sort. But it is easy to explain why no critics have pointectout the defect which Mr. Chesterton is the first to remark. It is because they have had too much, and not too little, respect for Brown- ing " as an artist" It is because the relationship of Pippa to one of the characters in the last act is of the very essence of the poet's design. His purpose was to show how this brave child who goes through life singing, not only is the un- conscious cause of salvation to others, but—and there is a finer touch still in this corollary—unconsciously saves herself.

In conclusion, it was impossible within the narrow limits allowed him for Mr. Chesterton to give an exhaustive account both of Browning's life and his work. But his book lacks balance, and too much space is given to digressive philosophy of the writer's own. There was real need for a chapter on " Sordello." Yet the author contents himself with retailing a few hoary anecdotes in illustration of its obscurity, and reserves a vastly larger space for his analysis of the character of Mr. Barrett and a description of the dare-devil hardihood which enabled Browning to marry a middle-aged lady without her father's consent. Again, Mr. Chesterton might have spared some space from his rather extended discussion of " Sludge the Medium " for such a poem as " Andrea del Sarto," which embodies nearly all the poet's characteristic virtues, enhanced by an almost total absence of his characteristic vices. Perhaps for that reason it offered Mr. Chesterton no scope for epigram. It remains, however, to admit, when all is said againsi his habit of straining after original judgments, that Mr. Chesterton's freshness and charm, both of thought and ex- pression, are incontestable. What faults he has are of the kind that age will correct. His present volume contains many illuminating truths that shine even through the somewhat out- worn guise of paradox. Speaking of " Bishop Blougram's Apology," he says that Browning " breaks the first mask of good- ness in order to break the second mask of evil, and gets to the real goodness at last ; he dethrones a saint in order to humanise

a scoundrel There is no pessimism, however stern, that is so stern as this optimism; it is as merciless as the mercy of God." This is a fine thing to have said, and it is only one among many great thoughts that should win for his book an abiding place in the literature of criticism.