Again, in Saul, he burst forth with the lines: "How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ These lines, vibrant with life and joy, could not have been written by a man of failing vitality or physical weakness. Robert Browning was born in 1812 at Camberwell, whose slopes overlook the smoky chimneys of London. In this beautiful suburb he spent his early years in the companionship of a brother and a sister. A highly gifted father and a musical mother assisted intelligently in the development of their children. Browning's education was conducted mainly under his father's eye. The boy attended neither a large school nor a college. After he had passed from the hands of tutors, he spent some time in travel, and was wont to call Italy his university. Although his training was received in an irregular way, his scholarship cannot be doubted by the student of his poetry. Upon reading the poems of Shelley and Keats, the boy's soul drank in the fancy and melody of these masters of song, and he yearned to become a great poet. His father had little faith in these boyish dreams, but he wisely refrained from interfering with his son's ambitions. From this time, Browning's life was devoted to literature. His works met with little success, but he never lost faith in his power, and he continued to grow and develop along his own lines. Finally, in 1855, he published Men and Women and won an enthusiastic, if not a wide, audience. In 1846 he married the poet Elizabeth Barrett, whose reputation was then greater than his own. During the fif teen years of happy married life that followed, Browning and his wife lived in Italy, where the balmy air infused fresh life into the fragile form of Mrs. Browning. She has given expression to the deep love and joy of these years in her most beautiful work, the Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her death in 1861 was a shock from which her husband never fully recovered. There is a deeper note to the writings which followed this one great sorrow of his life. His genial nature and the constantly increasing fame which he enjoyed during his later years caused him to be the center of much of London's social life. These years were spent with his sister or his famous son, Robert HAL. ENG. LIT.-29 Barrett Browning. In December, 1889, the poet lay upon his death bed in Venice, in a beautiful room, which Robert Barrett had frescoed. Turning to his son, the poet asked if any word had come concerning his last book. A telegram, expressing the enthusiastic reception given to Asolando, was shown him. "How gratifying," he murmured. In a few moments he was dead, and both Italy and England were in mourning. Dramatic Monologues. Browning was a poet of great productivity. From the publication of Pauline in 1833 to Asolando in 1889, there were only short pauses between the appearances of his works. Unlike Tennyson, Browning could not stop to revise and recast them, but he constantly sought expression, in narratives, dramas, lyrics, and monologues, for new thoughts and feelings. The study of the human soul held an unfailing charm for Browning. He analyzes with marked keenness and subtlety the experiences of the soul, its sickening failures and its eager strivings amid complex, puzzling conditions. In nearly all of his poems, whether narrative, lyric, or dramatic, the chief interest centers about some “incidents in the development of a soul." The poetic form which he found best adapted to "the development of a soul" was the dramatic monologue. Requiring but one speaker, this form permits all the force to be concentrated upon his emotions, character, and growth. Browning is one of the greatest masters of the dramatic monologue. Most of his best monologues are to be found in the volumes known as Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), Men and Women (1855), Dramatis Persona (1864). My Last Duchess, Andrea del Sarto, and The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church are three strong representative monologues. The speaker in My Last Duchess is the widowed Duke, who is describing the portrait of his lost wife. In his blind conceit, he is utterly unconscious that he is exhibiting clearly his own coldly selfish nature and his wife's sweet, sunny disposition. The chief power of the poem lies in the astonishing ease with which he is made to reveal his own character. The interest in Andrea del Sarto is in the mental conflict of this "faultless painter." He wishes, on the one hand, to please his wife with popular pictures, and yet he yearns for higher ideals of his art. He says: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" As he sits in the twilight, holding his wife's hand, and talking in a half-musing way, it is readily seen that his love for this beautiful but soulless woman has caused many of his failures and sorrows in the past, and will continue to arouse conflicts of soul in the future. In the poem entitled The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church, Browning shows a keen insight into a luxurious, sensuous, vain nature. Even in the hour of death, the Bishop takes delight in reviewing his worldly successes, and in the thought that his tomb will be richer than his rival's, and will have a purer Latin inscription. The beautiful song of David in the poem entitled Saul shows a wonderful sympathy with the old Hebrew prophecies. Cleon expresses the views of an early Greek upon the teachings of Christ and St. Paul. The Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister describes the development of a coarse, jealous nature in monastic life. Abt Vogler, one of Browning's noblest poems, voices the exquisite raptures of a musician's soul. And that remarkable, grotesque, vul garly humorous poem, Caliban upon Setebos, transcends human fields altogether, and displays the brutelike, Satanic theology of a fiend. In these monologues, Browning interprets characters of varying faiths, nationalities, stations, and historic periods. He shows a wide range of knowledge and sympathy. One character, however, which he rarely presents, is the simple, commonplace man or woman. Browning excels in the portrayal of unusual, intricate, and difficult characters, that have complicated problems to face, weaknesses to overcome, or lofty ambitions to attain. The Ring and the Book.-Browning's most masterly study of the human soul is The Ring and the Book (1868– 1869), which is a long poem made up of a series of monologues. The tragic story is briefly told in the first and last books. In each of the ten remaining books, some one speaker or class expresses views of the incidents, and ten different versions of the tragedy are thus given. This was a bold and wholly unique plan, but it offered peculiar opportunities to such a subtle analyst as Browning. The subject of the story is an innocent girl, Pompilia, who, under the protection of a noble priest, flees from her brutal husband and seeks the home of her foster parents. Her husband wrathfully pursues her and kills both her and her parents. While this is but the barest outline, yet the story in its complete form is very simple; and, as is usual with Browning, the chief stress is laid upon the character portrayal. The four important characters - Guido, the husband; Caponsacchi, the priest; Pompilia, the girl-wife; and the Pope stand out in strong relief. The greatest development of character is seen in Guido, who starts with a defiant, insulting spirit of certain victory, but gradually |