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BROWNING AND WHITMAN a
Stubs
\\\
Democracy
to
h
Uhe i.
dilettante Xibrarp.
DANTE AND HIS IDEAL. With a
M.R.A.S. 2.
By Herbert Bavnes,
Portrait.
BROWNINGS MESSAGE TO HIS l>r.
Edward Bekdoe.
With
TIMES.
a Portrait
By
and Fac-
simile Letters. 3,
5.
4
.
THE DOCTOR. AND OTHER POEMS. By
T. K. Browne, M.A., of Clifton College, Author of " Fo'c's'le Yarns." 2 vols.
GOETHE.
By Oscak Bkowning, M.A., Tutor
King's College, Cambridge. 6.
DANTE.
By Oscar
Willi a Portra
Browning,
M.A.
of
t.
With
a
Frontispiece.
Nos.
7.
5
mid
6 are cula rgedfrow the A >iiclcs in the " Encyclopeedia Britatinica."
BROWNING'S CRITICISM CF Revell, Member With a Portrait.
S.
HENRIK
By tic Lev. Philip H. WickWith a P01 nail.
THE ART OF ACTING. With a
10.
By Percy Fitzgerald.
Portrait.
WALT WHITMAN. Cambridge.
11.
LIFE. By W. F. London Browning Society.
IBSEN.
steau, M.A. 9.
of the
With a
VICTOR HUGO.
By
By William Clarke, M.A.. Portrait. J.
Princle Nichol.
With a
Portrait. 1?.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. Tkiggs.
By Oscar
L.
Browning and Whitman H
StufcE in S)emocrac£
BY
OSCAR
L.
TRIGGS
(University of Chicago)
SWAN SONNE NSC HE IN NEW YORK: MACMILLAN 1893
& CO. & CO.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNU
123^
SANTA BARBARA
T7 PREFACE. ->$<The
volume now given
to the public
is
an expansion of a
paper read before the London Browning Society at their
May
meeting of
The purpose
27th of the present year.
of the paper was to point out the essential democracy of
Robert Browning.
The
work
intent of the present
is
to
suggest the need of an exegesis of modern prophetical
And
literature.
the endeavour
case of Browning and literature.
The
incurious.
It
result
air,
the varied
to
identify
in the
life
and
be, for a few readers, not
and parlours prove not
in the streets life
will
made
therefore
found that some poems which prove
is
well in lecture-rooms
open
is
Whitman
and workshops,
at all in the
in contact with
of man.
The thoughts which prompt the several essays may be God is a living will, who is realised by stated as follows men and women in their practical activities and creations. To realise the will of God, by whatever institutional means :
of State or church or school,
Democracy
is
the purport of democracy.
cares supremely for the soul
this,
;
laws, forms, institutions, policies, economics,
before
is
all
the one
thing worthy of conserving.
For the purposes of world-profession, be separated from the ideal,
form.
it
Art
shows the
is is
life.
Art
is
art
can no longer
the union of the real and
matter receiving
spirit,
a witness of ideality
;
it
is
at the
spirit taking-
same time
it
possibility of the realisation of highest thought.
PREFACE.
vi
Art points the way
to
life,
and stimulates the personalities
to action.
Few is
are the poets upon
Many are And what
laid.
chosen.
whom
called, is
it
the burden of prophecy
would seem, but few are
more, the sacred few are often ob-
scured by the rubbish of words which an criticism has gathered about them.
Wordsworth,
would
in the
we
If
idle, listless
believe, with
high calling of poets, their works, one
think, are not to be considered as toys, fictions,
substitutes for a cigar or a ously, as in very league with
game of dominoes, but seriThe rhymers are many,
life.
giving pleasure and entertainment
The answerers
place.
;
the whole of heart and brain
and
their
day and
demand from
readers
they
are few, and
fill
words take
soul, for their
hold on things eternal. not unfair,
It is
I
many well
New World for know not how
think, to look to the
exponents of democratic principles.
I
eyes have seen as mine, but for me, while knowing-
shortcomings, America
its
despair over, but to take hope ideality
and
yet
is
practical constructiveness.
unprecedented
faith,
God's
faith."
not a State to
America
in.
It
is
illustrates
a "land of
Its people,
it
is
true,
are engaged in material things, but, in a hopeful spirit
and with
ideal
promptings, they are turning them to
beautiful uses, building with stones
which others have
rejected the institutions of freedom for the service of the soul.
For
their future,
democracy reserves
its
crowning
triumph, the completer evolution of individual character. " O, America, because you build for mankind,
At
least
I
shall
make
this
assumption
in
I
build for you."
order to justify
— PREFACE.
Vll
the choice of American writers as exponents of democratic sentiment.
have chosen four
I
— Emerson
and Thoreau
representative of the principle of individuality, Lowell
and Whitman representing the
The
principle of union.
fusion of these two principles completes the ideal of de-
Whitman
mocracy. point of
life,
when judged from
alone,
the stand-
stands forth with a world-wide significance,
the supreme bard of the soul.
The argument which
follows speaks for
itself.
I
have
only to wonder at the criticism which looks with derision
upon the names
in juxtaposition of
An American
man.
words of Byron
The contempt
"
:
Powers
in the
eternal, such
remark
light,
Whitman.
death "
it
v.
is,
New York
as written in the
gart."
characteristic of his style
" His
poems
is
works of Whitman
in the light
Independent that
stuff ever called poetry."
the big and the brag-
is
Still, I
will
venture to affirm
take rank
great classics of the world, as truly classic
representative of
!"
one who,
are the long-winded replication of
Emerson's egoistic pantheism." that the
— like
At the time of Whitman's
he wrote the noisest, noisomest
/*"The
in the
names mingled
of course
not aware he
standing in the directed again^L
is
Browning and Whit-
has already exclaimed,
critic
among
and as
the
truly
American
heroic tales of Greece
life and sentiment as are the and Rome.
In a comparative study of poets, the endeavour should
be to establish externals
is
identities.
A
of view of personality, which progress,
all
affirms,
is
effort.
But from the point
the continuing element in
thoughts are considered as flowerings out of
Thus viewed, all poetry has, as Whit"more features of resemblance than differ-
the one principle.
man
mechanical comparison of
generally a useless
PREFACE.
viii
ence,
and becomes
itself,
compact, and orbic, and whole."
essentially like the planetary globe
The thought tendency, first
of which
Whitman
is
a part,
is
clearly revealed in English literature, as a mystical
The same
element, in the works of William Blake.
by contributions of science and philosophy and ethical truth, and informed by the spirit of romanticism, emerges again in Browning. Richard
stream, grown
Wagner
is,
I
larger
think,
more nearly
related to the
movement
by no means national) than we are wont
(which
is
pose.
Not, however, dwelling upon this aspect of
ner's works,
of revolt,
one
may
to sup-
W agT
same principle same need of emotional the cases of Browning and
discover in him the
springing from the
expression, which resulted, in
Whitman, and, indeed,
of William Blake, in an extension
of the province of
Wagner best
art.
illustrates the artistic
change, because he was conscious and
scientific
in
all
that he undertook. I
wish, in closing, to acknowledge
Dr. Frederick letters
me
who
is
my
whose work
needs no praise of mine, who
as one
come
J.
Furnivall,
is
indebtedness to
in
the service of
better
known by
ever ready to extend the hand of wel-
to the stranger within the gates.
OSCAR London,
1892.
L.
TRIGGS.
DEDICATED TO
MARTHA DAVIS TRIGGS
CONTENTS.
" Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distilled from poems pass away, The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass and leave ashes Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the
soil
of literature.
America
justifies itself, give
deceive
it
it
or conceal from
Only toward the
is
it
no
will in
no disguise can
it, it is
likes of itself will
If its poets appear,
them, there
time,
due time advance
:
The
to
meet
fear of mistake."
Whitman By " The words of
impassive enough,
advance to meet them.
it
true
Blue Ontario's Shore.
poems do not merely
please,
true poets are not followers of beauty but the
august masters of beauty."
Whitman
:
Song of the Answerer.
—
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
I.
-LITERATURE AND
Towards Democracy with
written
student of It is it
human
poems
volume of prose
a
is
peculiar
LIFE.
passionate
questions, Mr.
earnestness
Edward
by a
Carpenter.
an unique book, and but few, perhaps, can read
with perfect sympathy and understanding.
The
author, widely read in the literature of social reform,
seeks to interpret, in the light of a rare poetic insight, the
movement
which
is
towards
altogether the
democracy a movement most characteristic of our ;
time, witnessed alike in America, in England,
and
in
the older world.
"
The
We
are
all
Socialists
now "
—how came
it
about
?
present stress laid upon the social question
which
is
really a question of life
upon the earth
—
is
indicative of the wider tendency to concern ourselves
with every concrete fact relating to man.
By
a series
of inquiries respecting the supreme truths and obligalife, we have been quickened more reasonable social union.
tions of
Now
in
this
discussion,
it
to strive for a
should be noted, the A
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
2
The
poets have taken the leading part. ture of this century
higher
broadly speaking,
is,
litera-
socialistic,
way the eighteenth century would have thought Even in the poetry of Keats, though he was one of the first to be touched by the modern spirit,
in a
unworthy.
there
To
is
hardly a single allusion to contemporary
life.
use a phrase of Mrs. Browning, poets trundled back
their souls five
hundred years
Poetry was dissevered from
to live in
life,
and
for the few a kind of opium-eating.
Keats
is
Rossetti,
seen
in
an ideal
past.
its
pursuit was
The
influence of
the earlier writings of Swinburne,
and William Morris.
But there arose
at the
beginning of the century, from various sources, an earnest protest against the scorn of the present im-
by the dreamers.
plied
Mrs. Browning, in Aurora
Leigh, spoke strongly her convictions in the matter
:
" Ay, but every age Appears to souls who live in't, (ask Carlyle,) Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours The thinkers scout it, and the poets abound :
Who
A
scorn to touch
pewter age,
it
with a finger-tip
:
— mixed metal, siiver-vvashed
;
An An
age of scum, spooned oft" the richer past, age of mere transition, meaning nought Except that what succeeds must shame it quite If God please. That's wrong thinking, to my mind, And wrong thoughts make poor poems."
And '•
mine, wrote Browning earlier in Paracelsus,
Mine is no mad attempt to build a world Apart from His, like those who set themselves
—
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; LITERATURE AND To
LIFE.
find the nature of the spirit they bore,
And, taught betimes
Were
dreams
that all their gorgeous
only born to vanish in this
life,
Refused to fit them to this narrow sphere, But chose to figure forth another world And other frames meet for their vast desires, Thus was life scorned; but And all a dream !
Shall yet be crowned
While there
and
there
life,
twine amaranth
I
am
life
priest
!"
on the other hand a wide and seem-
impassable gulf between
ingly
and
life
actual
its
England, to take a case in
expression.
artistic
!
literature this return to reality
in
is
is
:
immediate horizon,
is
my
to-day in the midst of a wide-
spread democratic advance.
New
world-forces are at
work, the effect of whose action no
man
can measure;
and in revolution, the old We resisting the new, the new overcoming the old. look to art for guidance, for ideality, and for creative faculty for it is not knowledge that is wanting, but
all
things are in conflict
;
the power to clearly conceive
which
is
known.
become the
And
a
loss of
vital
externalise that
in
hand,
and a
class.
generous sympathy, which might make the
popular sentiment more endurable,
short,
modern
is
one of
production.
Art,
wants the sympathetic imagination.
For
example, that which at
and
which was once the posses-
profession of a coterie
the rarest traits of in
art,
many, and with labour went hand
sion of the
has
But
the present time
is
most
is
its
artistic
characteristic of
industrialism.
England But one
would hardly gather from contemporary literature not even from the novel, which has the field at pre-
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. sketchesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; that there
sent, save for a few light
to
lies
the north a huge, smoke-stained Black-country where
with beauty crushed out of their
lives,
without hopes and fears and
number
greater
all
human
but not
life,
strivings, the
of England's sturdy yeomanry.
travelling throughout
England
I
In
have marvelled
to
nomadic tribe of workmen called " navvies," numbering with women and children I know not how many thousands, who form a community quite find a
own
apart from civilisation, having their
peculiar laws
and customs and beliefs, almost a new speech. In the hopes and often passionate longings, the pleadings, the ideality of these
working masses, dwells,
have seen and heard aright, the
most
and enduring.
vivid, vital,
seem inclined
to
will
come
Culture and wealth
From among
effort.
To
them, with their free construc-
we must look
for a
regenerated world,
and not
to the conservatism of old privilege,
helpless
and bewildered
its
aristocracy to
which
is
midst of an epoch of
in the
ideas, of expansion, of essential
has educated
to
the work-
the builders of Utopia and prophets
of golden years. tive energy,
if I
world-spirit,
pessimism and to obstruct and
imprison thought and
men
real
democracy.
its
own harm
remain but to neglect and obstruct.
It is
England if
culture
disastrous
that the conventional fashions of culture have sepa-
rated the mass of the people from the sympathies of a
manly recorder.
Here
is,
for literature, a virgin field,
with inexhaustible resources of romantic and tragic event,
of pathos
and humour, which
rightly
micht brins the hearts and minds of our
used
toilinsr
LITERATURE AND millions into closer progress.
(It
LIFE.
5
harmony with the soul of
would
at
social
bring freshness to a
least
somewhat dulled by an abundance of writLady Windermere's Fan.) One understands why the ballads of Robin Hood and his merry men (when was England " merrie " ?) lived on
literature
ings of the quality of
among
the people
;
they stood for popular justice, for
the help of the people against the exactions of the rich
Under present conditions
and noble-born.
seems improbable that a William Langland, better
still,
themselves
a Robert Burns, ;
may
arise
or,
from the people
such an one might be the solution of the
With the exception of Whitman
whole matter.
America, not a single modern English writer has a serious
it
far
in
made
and comprehensive study of contemporary
with the intent to voice the will of the people in
life
the manly spirit of Robert Burns, the
who
still
remains
one representative British bard of democracy.
Rudyard Kipling
Barrack Ballads has touched
in his
once more the popular rhythm, depicting life
He
has created practically a
of the soldier,
ture of England,
its
new
figure in the litera-
and these ballads of
counted among the
faithfully
sentiment, pathos, and fun.
the
least precious
his will not
be
of our century's
poetry.
"
We
aren't
no thin red
guards
'eroes,
nor we aren't no black-
too,
But single men
in barricks,
most remarkable Ballads
But the modern man,
as
he
exists
:
like you."
Tommy.
under
these
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. mines and
British skies, toiling in soil,
and trading,
"Good
people," said the proud preacher of Kent, "things
never be well in England so long as there be
will
villeins
And
factories, tilling the
trading, awaits a recorder.
there
and is
gentlefolk'."
There
another side to this matter.
is
almost a total lack in criticism, of a serious study of literature
among
pace with
To
life,
but forerunners and inter-
us,
While
preters are lacking.
ture.
There
from the standpoint of the people.
are prophets
literature has
not kept
criticism has not kept pace with litera-
apply purely literary standards, suitable to
the art of the eighteenth century, to that which
modern and as
essentially prophetical,
unworthy and unprofitable.
acknowledge the
is
to discard
We
is
much
are pleased to
results of refined reslhetical criticism.
Take the writings of such a man as Walter Pater, whose essays are models of artistic interpretation, and are of value by reason of their line creative insight
and accurate
beautiful speech, even apart from the
The
subject treated.
(quoting
bom
naissance,) "regards to do,
all
works of
and human urable
life,
all
art
sensations,
own
in
his
view,
the objects with which he has
and the
fairer
forms of nature
each of a more or
This influence he
explain, analysing
ments."
critic,
as powers or forces producing pleas-
and unique kind. to
aesthetic
the preface to the essays on the Re-
it,
less
feels
and reducing
it
peculiar
and wishes to
justification,
and
all
ele-
its
This, from the point of view of beauty,
is its
are willing to consent to
its
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; LITERATURE AND But the canon of
application.
LIFE.
which Mr.
criticism
Pater has chosen, following the leading of Goethe, The is " to see the object as in itself it really is."
however, which serve to conceive and set
qualities,
the elements of the beauty of the finer
forth
seem
often
"
No
who
unfitted
report
to
prophecies of such as Whitman.
human
strenuous
my
one," warns the prophet, " gets at insists
upon viewing them
Can not an
ance."
arts,
the ruder beauty of
equally sensitive
to the consideration of
verses
as a literary perform-
mind be brought
men who have
written
for
other reasons than to produce pleasurable sensations, who write instead " for the fibre of things, and for inherent
" Divine
men and women." breadth of vision, the law of reason,
instinct,
health, rudeness of body, withdrawness,
Gaiety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are
some of
the
words of poems."
Whitman The
higher literature
cratic advance, to
And
come
is
Song of the Open Road.
:
demojudgment of the people.
destined, under our
to the
the people, I believe, will
come
to the masters
of song with serious minds, asking not for entertain-
ment, but for "
life,
What
concerning
Does
this
life
remembrancer
set
Browning Old formulas Their criticism
man.
will will
have no power
down." :
Paracelsus.
to claim
and bind.
care supremely for the soul of
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. " Art can no longer be separated from
The
old canons
fail
;
comes equivalent
life
;
her tutelage completed she beto Nature,
and hangs her curtains
continuous with the clouds and waterfalls
The form
of
man emerges
;
in all objects, baffling the
old classification and definitions."
Carpenter
The festly
ture.
first
:
Towards Democracy.
result of democratic criticism will
be an emphasis of the prophetical side of
manilitera-
William Morris has recorded his experience to
the effect that an audience of working-men thinks
more concretely than the towards John Ruskin they can
rich.
"
I
have been
sur-
has said, " to find such a hearty feeling
prised," he
see the
among
prophet
fantastic rhetorician as
working-class audiences in
:
him rather than the
more superfine audiences do."
Myself have heard Walt Whitman quoted by workmen in Victoria Park in London, passages respecting the dignity of the
"
common man,
one a thought
Of Equality â&#x20AC;&#x201D;-as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same."
Eloquent
Tom
Mann,
at the recent University
Ex-
tension Conference at Oxford, with a face aglow with passion, spoke of the yearning of working-men, " not for
happiness," he said, but for higher
life,
of culture, even of "sweetness and light," and
the
life
among
:
LITERATURE AND
LIFE.
the jewels of his speech he read as the inspiration of his
as the
life,
were striving
end
for
which himself and comrades
in their Industrial
Unions, as the creed,
Matthew Arnold and Anarchy, words which sounded strangely prophetical when read by one from the people
indeed, of social progress, the words of in Culture
" And because men are members of one great whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature will
member
not allow one
to
be indifferent
to the rest,
or to have a perfect welfare independent of the rest, the expansion of our humanity to suit the idea of perfection which culture forms,
expansion.
must be a general
Perfection, as culture conceives
it,
is
not possible while the individual remains isolated. The individual is required, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his
own development
he disobeys, to carry others along with him
if
in his
all
perfection, to be continually doing he can to enlarge and increase the volume of
the
human stream sweeping
march towards
It is
thitherward."
easy to see what side the people will take in
this matter.
"
I
see brains
and
lips closed,
tympans and temples un-
struck,
Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose."
Whitman To the
:
seek for prophecy in poetry
is
Bivulets.
a protest against
mere beauty, rime, and "Poetry," said Poe, "has no dependence,
tendency to find in
rhythm.
Autumn
it
DROWNING AND WHITMAN.
10
upon
unless incidentally,
own
Poe's
Ulalume,
is
reduction of this philosophy of beauty.
Mr. Arnold in protest,
And
life."
is
essentially
the absurd Poetry, said
" a criticism of
Ruskin, suiting the action to the word,
from
passed
and
either duty or truth;"
such as
poetry,
defence of the pre-Raphaelitcs to
his
then to defend the truth of
vindicate
all art;
in
various manifestations, arguing that "great
art
all is
its
life itself
nothing else than the type of strong and noble
A
life."
character
Shelley would say,
poet,
the
of
of legislator that
unites with the
prophet
latest time."
In the case of the greatest
artist
indeed, under a kind of necessity to ask what criticism of life
;
for the
highest art
is
a
" his
;
thoughts are the germs of the flower and the
more
of
fruit
we is
are,
their
or less
definite expression of the ultimate personal criticism
of a great sympathising mind.
The judgment partial.
Art,
for art's
sake"
of philosophy has
too, is
its
is,
of course,
high claims, though
but " art
a formula as vain as any other,
if
But, certainly, among uncompromisingly applied. those the key to whose interpretation is given by
a comprehensive survey of
Tolstoi in Europe
;
itself,
life
the great artists of our century
:
are
numbered
Wagner, Ibsen, and
Browning, William Morris, Tenny-
Memoriam), the pre-Raphaelite school of painters in England in America, Walt Whitman. In the case of William Morris, art and life, the poet and socialist, meet in a remarkable relationship. Between the Earthly Paradise and New& from Novihere son
(In
;
there seems at
first
sight
no intimate connection.
The
LITERATURE AND is
first
written,
in
LTFE.
I
I
exquisite melodious verse, for a
summer's day to be spent the roar of the present.
dreaming away from
idly
The
likewise, but written in pure
latter
work, a half-dream
and simple
the concrete problems of the
life
prose, grasps
and
of our day,
is
concerned with the future and an England re-created. "
Then
a
man
shall
work and bethink him, and
rejoice in
the deeds of his hand."
Morris
Chants.
:
Really the later and the earlier works interpene-
The
trate. art,
within a
grew out of
poet's socialism
his love of
which inflamed him with a desire to bring its
all
men
domain, while the Earthly Paradise reveals
man who chose
to live before
he wrote.
He
invites
us to " Forget six centuries overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke, Forget the spreading of the hideous town
;
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down, And dream of London, small and white and clean, The clear Thames bordered by its garden green."
And shows
us Chaucer's
that he may recover which made possible the
London
for us the conditions of life
peculiar spring-tide quality of Chaucer's poems.
And
before he wrote he repeated for himself the principles of living, only from which pure art can spring. latter
work announces the prophecy implied
The in the
former.
William Morris, especially of art
and
in
his
combined claim
labour, stands in the position of a prophet
— BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
12
For plainly the coming
day and future days.
to his
be waged
struggle
is
Having
practically
to
the world
liberty,
freedom of industry.
for the
achieved political preparing
is
and
yea,
for,
it
religious in
is
the
—
and most momentous war last, because most difficult of greatest moment, because it has to do with the emancipation of the very creative midst
of,
its
last
;
Industrial freedom
genius of men. to agree
?
— can never mean
in labour, just as political
— why are we loth
freedom from labour, but liberty means not freedom
from law, but under law, and religious liberty means no: freedom from worship, but in worship. is
the prophecy
" It
is
This then
:
and necessary that all men should have work do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-
right to
;
wearisome nor over-anxious." It
is
a
canon of
life
Art and Socialism.
as simple as plain, yet
upon
its
depend the future of labour and the future and it is amazing that anyone, who has at
realisation
of
art,
heart the welfare of literature, can be indifferent to
However, the
of literary culture,
aristoi
now
it.
that
Morris has ceased to write rimes for their idle day, pass
him by without a word. A more generous sympathy with the hopes, the passions, the
criticism in
needs of our time may find room
for
A Dream
of John
Ball and Art and Socialism.
Mr. Havelock 1
Ellis,
The New
1
in studying the
Spirit,
new spirit as
by Havelock
Ellis.
pre-
3
LITERATURE AND
LIFE.
1
sented in modern literature, worked out for himself a
new method
comparatively
of literary criticism.
brought to his task endowments of mind rare students of letters,
for, in
addition to critical
He
among
abilities,
he
With his conThe volume in question
has the scientific and social imagination. clusions
we may
differ utterly.
purpose of
interesting, for the
is
of
introduction.
its
It is
this study, in the light
one of the
first
attempts to
The
review literature from the social point of view.
noteworthy
results are
works of Heine
eminently
is
A volume one
in
Clarke.
a
new
light
the chapter on
;
adequate criticism scientific aspect
:
;
of
the
is
thrown upon the
Whitman was
poet,
especially
the treatment, of Ibsen
the
first
in
his
and Tolstoi
just.
somewhat similar lines is the the present series on Walt Whitman, by William
A
following
single chapter
the stress being laid
is
upon
given to the poet's
art;,
democracy and
his
his
spiritual creed.
A is
very helpful work in the interpretation of Browning
by
Prof.
Henry
Jones, which has only reference to
the poet as a teacher of philosophy.
Others have
dis-
cussed the science of Browning and his theology.
That such studies are possible shows that we are today confronted by new questions in art, questions Verily social, religious, philosophic, human. "
Who
is a poet [or critic] needs must apprehend Alike both speech and thoughts which prompt to speak."
Browning
:
Bed Cotton Night-Carp Country.
II.
Democracy
is
significance.
word both of material and spiritual employed here in its wider inclusive
a
It is
may
sense that there
which
-DEMOCRACY.
contained
is
to it the real meaning somewhat conventional
attach in
the
phrase, We, the People. Liberty, whether considered in the light of religious,
has final reference to the
political, or industrial history,
soul of man.
Through
we advance
ways of practical
in
law of expression
For the universe
is
is
religions,
inner
The
ever from the ideal to the
real.
one of thought and conscience, and
the problem for the soul spiritual
politics, industries,
self-realisation.
is
the projection of
its
own
freedom into the objective external
world.
"Yes!
I
see
now â&#x20AC;&#x201D; God
is
the Perfect Poet
Who
in creation acts his
Shall
man
own
conceptions.
refuse to be aught less than
God
?"
Aprille, in Paracelsus.
Institutions, laws, all visible forms, are therefore ever
shaped anew in response to the invisible creative " Freedom," Lowell says, is re-created thought. 'â&#x20AC;˘
year by jear in hearts wide open on the
Godward
side."
Democracy, considered
as a form of government,
M
is
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
5
DEMOCRACY.
1
a result in the order of time of the evolution of the intelligence of men and of their power of associative
In other words,
expression.
is
it
the outcome, even
from an institutional point of view, of the development But government is of man's consciousness of himself.
The
but a single phase of democracy.
soul
is
below
all.
"All
religion, all solid things, arts,
was or
is
apparent upon
niches and corners before the procession
falls into
of souls along the
grand roads of the universe." Song of the Open Ruad.
Whitman "
Underneath
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
governments all that globe or any globe,
this
all
:
now comes
word [Democracy]
this
turning the edges of the other words where they
meet
it.
commerce, religion, customs and methods of daily life, the very outer shows and
Politics, art, science,
semblances, ordinary objects
The
rose in the garden, the axe hanging behind the
door
in the
outhouse
Their meaning must this
now
word, or else
all
fall
be absorbed and recast
off like
dry husks before
in its
disclosure."
Carpenter Properly, democracy all
;
Towards Democracy.
not a form of government at
not a government by the one, or by the few, or
by the many.
and
is
:
It is
self-government or the absolute
free control of one's self.
the one
human
personality.
Beneath
The
therefore twofold, the development
institutions
social
problem
is is
and federation of
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
6
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
1
Federation, as an institutional
sovereign individuals.
government,
In a democracy the State and society be-
self-rule.
come
however, but the working principle of
is,
being but a mechanism, while
distinct, the State
society
is
must be
the living organic unity, whose
internal
and
spiritual
Federation, in other words,
bond of union
and between
is
Men
terms of the idea of an organic society. free
individuals.
a statement in political are not
because they have erected a republic; but a
when men become
public follows
honours the union, laws, really
officers
he has helped to
re-
Who
free.
first
create,
honours himself and the society of which he
is
a
part.
Democracy
then, on the one hand,
is
the introduc-
tion in a fuller form than hitherto of personal responsi-
own
one's
bility to
nature.
It
is
opportunity for the
Bonds of
development of personality.
prejudice, con-
ventions, whatever tends to repress, are to be taken
away.
emancipation.
It is It is
live.
Sometimes be but
It is
character and essential
do that; the German equality of democracy
level.
drill-sergeant
strife.
"
Why am
W hy T
?
;
I
it
because
All that
I
am
does
all
now,
I
hope
The
and demands
?
I
that.
rights
haply can and do,
all
men
and of Democracy is the
invites difference
a Liberal
insight can
But monarchies
one of human
is
opportunity to achieve inequality.
sphere of struggle
whose
democratic nation,
commonplace
to
life.
asserted by those
it is
superficial, that, in a
are reduced to a
chance and room
to
be
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;7 DEMOCRACY.
1
Whence comes it, save from fortune setting Body and soul the purpose to pursue, God traced for both."
free
The cardinal, political doctrine which writers like Browning favour is the removal of every barrier which might check the liberty of individual development.
On
the other hand, the problem of federation
manner solved by
like
self-control.
is
in
For when the
external bonds of society cease to have meaning, unity
must be won
in its strongest citadel
Were you looking a constitution "
thing.
A
?
by
spiritual
means.
be held together by agreements,
to
constitution by itself
Despotism/' says
De
is
Tocqueville,
a dead " may
govern without Faith, but liberty cannot."
Spiritual
between
man and
and only thing which makes
for unity.
consciously
relationship,
man
is
"These
the one
shall tie
existing
you and band you stronger than hoops
of iron, I,
ecstatic, tie
O
partners
!
O lands
with the love of lovers
!
you."
Whitman The purpose "
To
of democracy
is,
as
:
Calamus.
Whitman
states,
illustrate the doctrine that
man, properly trained
in
sanest, highest freedom,
may and must become
a
law and series of laws unto himself, surrounding
and providing for not only but
all his
his
own personal
relations to other individuals
control,
and
to the
State.
Democratic Vistas. B
8
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
1
The
government begins and ends with the
truest
individual.
we know,
Carlyle,
The
"Liberty?
defined liberty in other terms
:
man, you would say,
true liberty of a
consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find
and to walk thereon. ... If know better than I what is good and right, conjure thee, in the name of God, force me to do
out, the right path,
thou do I it
;
were
by never such brass
it
hand-cuffs, leave
Democracy, he
said,
me
is
Since, however, Carlyle's dictum
word upon the
understand what
is
is
subject,
We yield all due reverence
He
is
to
insulting to a
man.
regarded by
many
will
it
be well to
the basis for such reasoning.
is
to Carlyle.
has been creative and inspiring. his teaching
" !
the liberty of the Saturni-
ans; the definition of democracy
as the last
and
meant despair of finding heroes
But such
to govern us.
collars, whips,
not to walk over precipices
To
His influence
be imbued with
have a nobler view of human
life.
has stood for the spiritual side of the universe
"The
:
Invisible world
is near us, or rather it is here, in us were the fleshly coil removed from the glories of the Unseen were even now
and about us our soul,
around
;
us, as the ancients fabled of
the spheral
music." Carlyle believed in the spiritual world, in the unity of nature, in the organic
hood of man.
compact of
To him
society, the brother-
no other we owe conThus far he is at duty.
as to
ceptions of private and social
one with the foremost democrats, among
whom
I
9
DEMOCRACY.
1
number Browning and Whitman, representing with them the passage from an old creed to a new faith. But, while believing in God, he was an infidel as to
man
;
here he
is
at variance.
man and God had
In former philosophies
For the Puritan there was no place
asunder.
for
fallen
man.
In the philosophy of the corrupt court of Charles the
The
Second, there was no room for God.
came
tion
reconcilia-
the guise of an idealistic philosophy,
in
beginning with
German Kant,
and Hegel, who life of man and
Fichte,
revealed the universal element in the
gave new dignity to the individual by reason of his relations to the universal.
The movement was art
and
for
many
to
and
life,
generations.
ment was both
immense
of
its
significance both to
effects will
On
continue to be
the side of
individualistic
and
life
felt
the move-
socialistic.
The
individual was seen to be neither the master nor the slave of the universe, but destined to live in perfect
freedom under life
social law.
The
individual derived his
from the race, and the race in turn lived
Each
individual.
neither
is
is
thus seen to be an organism deriving
member
again cannot live
in the system.
solely unto
highest realisation in the Carlyle was
among
the
life
;
Society was
complete without the other.
that of each
in the
possible only through the other
its
health from
Each member
himself, but finds his
of the race.
first
to bring into
England
German philosophy and literaHe had worked his way through the despair
the poetic idealism of ture.
which followed upon the disruption of the old system,
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
20
saw, with his clear insight, bility
We
And
for the organic unity of society.
and stood
We
thrown upon men.
a
rise or fall together.
he
the tremendous responsiare all
It is
bound
together.
a mathematical fact,"
Carlyle said, " that the casting of this pebble from
my
alters the centre of gravity of the universe."
If
hand
the spiritual affected.
of
life
The
of one be lessened, the
life
Either
we
death
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or
or
elevate the race
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
life
it is
of
all
is
a struggle
be degraded with the lowest.
present social duty of each
is
to share with the
weakest the wealth, the culture, the opportunity, the
which we have inherited or acquired.
civilisation
We
what we are by virtue of the humanity within us, however poor, weak, perverted that may be. There are
was no doubt
in Carlyle's
And
brothel's keeper. fact
became the reason
brethren, hence laid
my
upon men was
saw them as shooting
fools
mind but
his intense realisation of this for
his despair
rage and sorrow."
:
"
Ye
own
bowed down
walking.
my
He
The people were but Seeing
duty, he strove alone, like Elijah, un-
to Baal.
godhead
the
are
For the duty
greater than they could bear.
mindful of the seven thousand
felt
was his
the " Niagara " of social disaster.
clearly his
he
that each
men who had
not
Like Julian, in Ibsen's drama,
in himself, and, like him,
was to
be vanquished by the Galilean who could see the god-
head
in others.
Carlyle's special mission in
the whole duty of man.
of duty.
England was
But consider
his
to declare
conception
Duty was a necessity imposed on man by infinite power. The law was given as on
an external
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; DEMOCRACY. stone tablets, with an awful "
Man
shalt not."
Thou
21
and " Thou and
shalt,"
soldier, alien to the field
was a
Obedience was the only virtue. He who command was far removed in the
cause.
gave the law and
God was
heavens, an eternal Judge.
man
manifest to
was
therefore,
;
Man,
thus far the reconciliation had been wrought.
But within man there was noHe was
spirit.
thing to correspond to the divinity without.
a wanderer, a blind giant, capable of spiritual yearnings,
but incapable of receiving satisfaction.
finite
burden was
upon a
laid
finite being,
An
in-
andCarlyle,
having never gained the standpoint of Browning, that
" The truth
in
God's breast
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed,"
could only cry out, in the words of Caponsacchi, 'â&#x20AC;˘'
O
great, just,
good God
!
Miserable
me
!"
But whence, Carlyle, came the sorrow and the condemnation
Pessimism
?
power
to
rise,
itself
The
presence of ideality.
is
a witness
very cry
is
of the
proof of the
and a promise of man's worth and
dignity.
The eye can
To know
the need of reform, to have aspirations
faiths, is far
see but what the heart prompts.
on the road
to attainment.
and
For man
is
the
" Facet and
On
reflection of
God."
the one hand, Carlyle never fully conceived the
idea of the solidarity of illustrated
by
human
his attitude
life.
His error
is
well
towards the American Civil
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. He
War.
working
had not
realised the
power of social forces, by the action and
for the correction of evil,
reaction of individuals in a social union "
How
and
society waits unform'd,
is
:
between
for a while
things ended and things begun."
Whitman:
Songs of Parting.
And, on the other hand, he ignored the only solution which can be had.
Liberty
but to that law which has
obedience,
is
it
true,
is
human
seat in the
its
con-
Liberty has value only as the threshold of a
science.
Only by transference of the outer law can duty become at all imperative.
willing service.
to the inner motive
" Into another I
state, under new rule knew myself was passing swift and
Sirs,
I
obeyed.
sure.
.
Obedience was too strange,
.
.
to
dare
disobey
The
first
authoritative word.
CAPONSACCHI,
complete synthesis, ended
Carlyle, failing in the
The complete
despair and pessimism.
has
'Twas God's." Ring and the Book.
in
in
reconciliation
been made by Browning and Whitman, who
identify the inner
and outer
law,
" All's love, yet
"The
all's
find
law."
whole universe," argues Whitman, "is ab-
solute Law. license
who
Freedom only opens
under the law.
.
.
.
We
entire activity
and
escape by a paradox
DEMOCRACY. into free
We
will.
23
only attain to freedom by a know-
ledge of and implicit obedience to Law. Will
— the
free Soul
The
can attain freedom. Liberty will,
Great
is
the
Only obeying the laws
of man.
highest law
the
is
Law
of
— the fusion and combination of the conscious
with
all
unconscious
eternal
universal
the
which run through
Time, pervade
history,
ones
prove
immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world,
and the
" For him I
last dignity to
human
life."
I sing.
raise the present
on the past,
(As some perennial tree out of
its
on
roots, the present
the past,)
With time and space
I
him
dilate
and
fuse the im-
mortal laws,
To make
himself by them the law unto himself."
Whitman Finally, the
Inscriptions.
:
end and purpose of democracy
is
de-
clared by Paracelsus. " Progress
is
The law of life, man is not man as yet. Nor shall I deem his object served, his end Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth,
While only here and there a star dispels The darkness, here and there a towering mind O'erlooks Is out at
its
prostrate fellows
When
all
Equal
in full-blown
I
:
when
the host
once to the despair of niyht,
mankind
say, begins
alike
is
powers
perfected,
— then,
not
till
then,
man's general infancy."
Browning
:
Paracelsus.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
III.-DBMOCRACY IN AMERICA.
We
must look,
America
for the
think,
I
to
the United
most consistent
tural expression of
of
States
and
spiritual
struc-
That the United
democratic ideas.
States has a peculiar significance in history the whole
course of world-events goes to show.
American system of government historical evolution, that
of
all
the past, that
its
to
structure
its
completion
is
We
believe the
be a product of
was the purport the aim of the
future.
" Fresh come, I
to a
new world
indeed, yet long prepared,
see the genius of the modern, child of the real
and
ideal,
Clearing the ground
for
broad humanity, the
true
America, heir of the past so grand,
To
build a grander future."
Whitman "
A
:
Song of the open land.
newer garden of Creation, no primal solitude
Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions,
cities
and
farms,
With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Freedom's and Law's and Thrift's society,
The crown and teeming
To justify
paradise, so far, of Time's,
the past."
Whitman Autumn :
24
Rivulets.
DEMOCRACY Federal union historical
IN AMERICA.
the last
is
progress, last
in
25
and highest attainment of the order of time, and
highest, since requiring in the sovereignties comprising
the
it
highest
degree
of political
morality
and of
Previous to the United States there
social ideality.
existed but three examples of federated peoples, the
ancient Acheean League, the Swiss Republic, and the
United Netherlands, none of which served as a complete guide to Hamilton and his coadjutors in their task as architects of the Union.
The problem
before
them was the completer fusion of sovereignties. 1 They were to compromise two equally sacred rights, that of the one and of the many. The unit of the American society is the individual.
The
right of self-government
was the new principle en-
tering into the constitution of nations with the spread of Christianity.
The
pre-Christian league had
little
or no-
Wherever the
thing analagous to the Christian State.
Protestant and Puritan pilgrim has gone he has affirmed, in political terms, the ideal truth of Christianity, the
self-sovereignty of
The American
man.
State starts
with the individual as a political unit, acknowledges his
right
to
self-rule,
mutual helpfulness
groups him
in ever
for
purposes of
wider constituencies, in the
ascending series of town, county, State, and nation,
each with delegated powers from the central source, "
We, the People."
In spite of the corruptions which
have gathered round 1
A
it,
the practical basis
problem not solved by Switzerland
constitution of 1874.
had been much
Previous to
this,
of
until the
the
model
Swiss democracy
allied with the spirit of feudal times.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. American nation
is
That
the individual conscience.
which was external has become
internal.
And
is
it
European misjudgment arises. " Burn your books," warned De Tocqueville, for democracy requires new standpoints. The American compact is altogether with individuals. Did you think that the States are bound together by a constitution ? Did you think that the source of supreme
at
point
this
that
authority or law resided at Washington, or
the
in
Did you think
legislatures of
any one of the States?
that the noisy
brood of orators and professional
poli-
and wire-pullers constituted the government of the States ? But
ticians
"
see this day the People beginning their landmarks
I
Never was average man, like a
his soul,
more
energetic,
;
more
God."
Whitman Beneath every external
lies
concealed, but alert and
ever secure, the great national
animus of
activity, the
all
Songs of Parting.
:
will,
liberty.
the source of
all
Mr. Bryce well
warns the readers of the American Commonwealth to
harmony with
this
European] probably
fails
adjust their judgments in fact
:
"
What he
[the
to realise the existence in the
reserve force
sweep away to
make
do is American people of a
and patriotism more than
all
the evils which are
the politics
material grandeur
America
now
of the country
and of the
hidden to
sufficient to
tolerated,
and
worthy of
private virtues of
its
its in-
which must upon the spot to be understood." " Greatness," agrees Matthew Arnold, "is a spiritual condition
habitants.
be
felt
excites an admiration
— DEMOCRACY worthy to excite love, real point at issue
"A
great city
women If
it
is
IN AMERICA.
2"J
The
and admiration."
interest,
then the people themselves.
is
men and
which has the greatest
that
;
be a few ragged huts
is
it
still
the greatest city in
the whole world."
Whitman Among found.
:
Song of the Open Road.
the people democratic justification
Statistics of
is
to
be
corn and cotton, iron and gold,
numbers of population, in no way indicate Formation of character the true wealth of a country. I am repeating no child's homily, but truest Now economic doctrine is of real concern.
transactions
in
tables of values
estate,
real
and wages
—
— these
—
character
is
not reported in newspapers,
latable for foreign
readers in books,
it is
it
is
not trans-
hidden
in
homes and daily affairs, is seen in the face and manner, and must be gathered, as Mr. Bryce suggests, upon the spot. That America has greatness of character
is
not for
we understand
me
that in
to affirm, but its
character
it
its
will
be well
greatness
is
if
to
That the tendency of democracy is to reand commonplaces I feel free to Monarchy builds a pyramid of rank, but levels deny. but builds a character; democracy levels rank, be found.
duce
men
to levels
pyramid of character. great
men
at
another bears witness
any
In the gallery of portraits of
Versailles,
—
is
the
most
face
In
gallery of monarchs, statesmen, orators, the face of
Lincoln would attract attention for its
striking
that of Daniel Webster.
wisdom,
its
simplicity.
A
its
very
strength,
its faith,
common
face, re-
DROWNING AND WHITMAN.
2S
no doubt from the fusion in America of the and the land of snows,
suiting
races from the land of the vine is
one marked by
energy
it is
;
ideality
common,
and
practical constructive
but not commonplace.
Matthew Arnold once said that America had solved the political and social problems, but not the human problem. What is the human problem ? Does art or beauty solve the
human problem? Wagner,
in
answer, wrote to
"I cannot help thinking that if we had real life we should need no art. Art begins just there where when there is nothing more before us real life ends, I cannot conceive then we cry out to art, I wish how a truly happy man can ever think of art." Who his friend,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
;
'
'
!
can doubt that Wagner
world culture
?
For
the secret of
tells
art is often the
yearning to escape from
highest
house.
prison
its
western world has not highest
much
of old
witness of the soul's
art,
it
may
If the
yet have
life.
" Have you reckon'd that the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture? "
Whitman
A
:
Sony for Occupations.
" Mightier than Egypt's tombs, Fairer than Grecia's, Roma's temples, Prouder than Milan's statued, spired cathedral,
More
We Thy
A
picturesque than Rhenish castled^eep,
plan even
now
to raise,
beyond them
all
great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb,
keep
for life for practical invention.''
WHITMAN The problem grander, larger,
:
Song of
the Exposition.
for America is the development of a more generous humanity combined
:
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA. democratic forms.
vital
The elements
29
of new-world
Ann Arbor
sentiment, as analysed for the students of
by Ex-President Cleveland, are these *'
A
reverent belief in God, a sincere recognition of the
value and power of moral principle and those qualities of heart
which make a noble manhood,
devotion to unreserved patriotism, love for man's equality, unquestionable truth in popular rule, the
exaction of civic virtue and honesty, faith in the
saving quality of universal education, protection of
and unperverted expression of the popular and an insistence upon a strict accountability
a free will,
of public officers as servants of the people."
The common charge brought civilisation true,
is
that
it is
against the western
materialistic.
If
the days of democracy (which
spirit) are
But the charge
numbered.
it
be largely
the rule of
is
falsified
is
by
the witness of the presence of an equal and surpassing spirituality
its
own
until
now,
which moulds the material to
ends.
Since the discovery of the
New World
the people have been engaged in the struggle with
Nature ialistic
for a strife
home.
But the necessities of a mater-
unceasing have developed
participant an energy, a persistency, a
human
in the
practical
in-
genuity, a power of moulding matter to finer ends, of
turning rudeness to beautiful uses alising material things, to a
history of the past.
Does the
Does the hand which
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
in short, of spiritu-
degree unparalleled clay
mould the
in the
potter
?
fashions a thought in marble
partake of the nature of matter or of
mind?
The
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. astonishing uplift of the stone spire on the cathedral at Salisbury,
human
which seems to crown the victory of the not more indicative of the con-
spirit, is really
quest of matter by the
of
spirit
man
were called upon
among
search
to
creations for an illustration of this aspect of
should
I
enter
not
in
1
the midst of what was once a waste.
civilisation,
industry,
human home and garden
or even the presence of a
If I
than are the
commerce and
engines and instruments of
the
poetic
American
dreamland of
Keats, not the freedom-land of Shelley, but the realideal-land of Browning, poet's crowning work,
few crude
are
facts
and should name
The Ring and
as the latter
the Booh,
whose
permeated by the poet-thought
and made to live again, showing forth the beauty of and the meaning of life in forms of completest
life
art.
It is is
such a materialism and such a
illustrated
On with
the side of the past, incidents
Two
wars
material
American faith
and
gain
;
one
The tendency
for
The in
replete
settled
in hope.
independence and one for
of the present
view of the future.
door
is
The con-
have been waged, neither of them for
union, ideas only yet furiously fought
1
history
of spiritual significance.
was discovered by
tinent
spirituality that
by the present day.
beautiful
Critics like
winged
Minneapolis
like
is
for.
to build better in
Renan, who contrast
electric car
which passes
a thing bewitched,
protest against materialistic ideas
ness to a people's ideal thought.
is
my
a perpetual
and the crowning
wit-
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; DEMOCRACY
1 ;
IN AMERICA.
3
the art and the historic past of an Italian city with
modern America is taking form according to future whose vistas open endlessly. Italy
the apparent commercialism of a vvork-a-day world, forget that
an ideal
has a glorious past glorious future
work
its
;
is
America has a
done.
seeks a perfection not yet realised,
it
;
a completeness which only the future can contain.
The unperformed advances " Shadowy vast shapes smile through the
Now
may
materialism
may be manifested in religion as a
ward forms
;
take
many forms
uncreative
in
and sky."
air
:
in art
it
conventionality
worship of idols and service of out-
machinery
in the State as a trust in the
of government to accomplish what only a people's active will can facts of
wisdom.
shown
do
education as an emphasis of the
in
;
knowledge as contrasted with the In
society
large
at
in a blind faith
in
of
spirit
may be
materialism
creed or organisation, in
observance of ceremonies from which the
spirit
has
departed, in obstruction to reform, in actual inability to change, in dullness to beauty or truth, in general
Philistinism, even in a worship of the past,
idolatry of
In
all
freedom
these ways
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
it
in
even in an any idolatry of means as ends.
may be
that
American society
less
materialised than that of Europe.
less
conventional and more volatile.
teristic
has often been
seldom noted that the complete that
it
is
it
is
change springs from
Nothing
cannot be made
is
This charac-
commented upon, but
ability to
a desire for improvement.
America
is
better.
held to be so
The
past
is
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
32
but the future
great,
is
ward, not backward.
great also
the face
;
ment, or of religion, or of education, easily take
Experiments are readily
forms.
without
the
ideality.
to
method.
the spirit of
It is
man
has,
I
takes soul to
It
believe,
pessimism. is
equal to
informing the material,
moment, emerging again when
give shelter.
may remain
it
for
the form ceases to
move
America
mass.
one great and abiding passion,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
make God to
to
the reason, the soul of man, and the will of prevail.
new
operation
in
.Execution
creating fluid structures in which
the
set
obstruction of conservative
Method succeeds
for-
is
either of govern-
Institutions
Such a statement is perhaps not subject is arrived at by a discerning spirit.
to
proof, but
"
Of
these years
How
I
sing,
they pass and have pass'd through convuls'd pains, as through parturitions,
How America
illustrates birth,
muscular youth, the pro-
mise, the sure fulfilment, the absolute success, despite
of people
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; illustrates
evil
well
as
as
good,
The vehement struggle so fierce for How many hold despairingly yet parted,
and
How
caste,
to infidelity
myths,
unity in one's self; to
the models de-
obedience,
compulsion,
;
few see the arrived models, the athletes, the
Western States, or see freedom or or hold any faith in results."
Whitman: Have you marked
spirituality,
Songs of Parting.
the dominant, ever dominant note
of hope of American speakers and writers
?
Have
DEMOCRACY
IN AMERICA.
33
you read the message of Whitman in its entirety ? At this moment the people are confronted by as
momentous a question a question which trial
"
war.
We
is
as
has
come
to
any nation,
resolving itself into one of indus-
But light-hearted, nothing daunted
take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers
!
O
pioneers
" !
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; :
IV.-DEMOCRATIC TYPES. There
have been two great crises of democracy
the
New
war
for union.
World, the war
The
first
ation and individual
life.
for
in
independence and the
event was fought for separ-
Of
this principle
Emerson Emer-
and Thoreau became the
literary exponents.
son
and sweetest voice of the
is,
at once, the truest
Puritanism which founded the nation and declared
independence.
for its
He
was the
emancipator.
first
In his quiet, sober way he annulled the whole of
He
tradition.
was, in an especial manner, the guar-
dian of thought.
was
at
when the
In 1832,
slavery agitation
height, he wrote in his journal
its
:
quite other slaves to free than those negroes
imprisoned thoughts, far retired
far
back
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
in the brain of
have
to wit,
man
and which,
the heaven of invention,
in
" I
important to the republic of man, have no watchman, or lover,
or
defender, but
I."
And
expansive influence has been chiefly
probably his
felt
by scholars.
His oration on The American Scholar, delivered in 1837, was called by Holmes, The Intellectual Declaration of Independence, and Lowell says to the same "
The
Puritan
revolt
and the Revolution were
still
socially
English thought
till
had made us
effect
ecclesiastically,
we moored to Emerson cut the cable and gave politically,
and
independent, but
intellectually
DEMOCRATIC TYPES. us a chance at the dangers water."
and the
35 glories
of blue
While a mystic, and teaching the principle
of spiritual union, yet Emerson's chief stress lay
the individual.
He
and was wanting
in
upon
was, primarily, a lover of ideas,
wide popular sympathies.
Thoreau was similarly an uncompromising individualist. It was on July 4th, the American Day of Independence, that he took up his residence in his self-constituted Arcadia in
Walden Woods.
All his
social doctrines lead finally to this end, that the indi-
must be given complete freedom for the development of character along the lines of natural vidual
Failure to follow the
qualities.
unpardonable " Only so
ideal
was
for
him
sin.
far as individual progress takes place will the
real progress of the race follow,
and those persons
contribute most to this real progress who, stepping
aside from the ordinary routine, give us by their
and thoughts a new sense of the is best of the ideal towards which isation must aim.
lives
what
3
reality of all civil-
'
Journal,
The ible
socialism of men seemed " their most contempt" In this matter of and discouraging aspect."
reforming the world we have tions."
With the
social
Thoreau was unquestionably
but end in
Thoreau,
as the
failure.
"I
think
faith in
corpora-
then
right.
present,
The time was
not
The People. Collective Brook Farm experiment, could "As for these communities," said
ripe for the realisation action, such
little
conditions
I
of
had rather keep bachelor's
hall
$6
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
in hell than
go to board
The
in heaven."
individual
— What does the world mean
to the individual
upon the
merely a war,
it
" Thunder on
And do you
Strike
!
States,
;
it
was not
on,
Democracy
!
higher than ever yet,
rise
Strike with
;
O
days,
O
" !
Never have the
The
sincerity.
a note of unity
was a revolution.
vengeful stroke
cities
and
War was
Civil
And
me?
both Emerson and Thoreau preached
the worth of simplicity
The
to
stress
first
of the transcendental philosophy was thus
results
of a
moving en masse of
fighting for their
own
idea,
war so their
justified
own
understood for the
The war
time the meaning of the people.
war.
choice and first
resulted in
national fusion and in the creation of a distinctively
American and democratic spirit, which shall last " for The people gained a thrice a thousand years," spiritual
sense, gained character,
also emotions, learning to call
—
winning
brothers.
word over all, followed so closely on strife.
has reconciliation
sky"
—
solidarity,
men
Never
beautiful as the
"
The
last
event
of the war, the forgiveness of the armies, was one of the sublimest acts in history. strife,
upon
tried
so as by
their full
fire,
Emerging from
democratic career.
Lincoln, proved by that struggle,
very
civil
the United States entered
embodiment of
is
revered as the
the democratic faith.
" The sweetest, wisest soul of
all my days and lands.'' WHITMAN Burial Hymn. :
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; DEMOCRATIC TYPES.
37
" The kindly, earnest, brave foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise not blame,
New
birth of our
new
soil,
the
name
American." Commemoration Ode.
first
Lowell
:
the
two
noblest of songs, which are the chief thing the
New
Happily,
Lincoln's
enshrined
is
in
World has done thus far in poetical creation, Lowell's Commemoration Ode, and Whitman's Burial Hymn. Lowell and Whitman sound the new note of brotherhood and love. Lowell, especially the younger Lowell of the Vision of Sir Launfal and author of the Biglow Pai^ers, is pre-eminently the voice of the Christian democracy,
one
own Prometheus
like his
"
Heard
By
A great
in the breathless
truth
voice
pauses of the fight
and freedom ever waged with wrong,
Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake
Far echoes that from age
to
age
live
on
In kindred spirits."
As deeply Puritan
as
Emerson, with as deep a
the sacred nature of the individual, Lowell
democratic
in the
in
his
The
sympathies for every Christ-nature has never
been interpreted by poetic insight life.
One
more
proclamation of the brotherhood of
man, more Christ-like weak and outcast one.
human
faith in is
in truer terms of
gains from Lowell the sense of that
essential Christianity
which
America, which manifests
is
the foundation of moral
itself in
emphasis alike of
the sanctity of the individual as a being of action and
— BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
38
thought, and of the social principle of sonship which
makes
for
visions
is
Lowell with his spiritual
union.
social
the national
seer.
appreciation that another
speak
is
Lowell
in his stead.
It
is
chosen is
from no lack of study to
in this
secure of a crown of
flowers perennially.
The world
slow
is
in
accepting the significance of
Recognition has come more frankly
Whitman.
a strange irony
— from
well-loved land.
Now
—
by England than from his own that his message is finished, we
may make a more just estimate than hitherto. I will When first I heard him state my own faith freely. speak
— " Camerado
"
Then
When
felt
a
I
like
new
was the word he used
"
some watcher
of the skies
planet swims into his ken.'
I believe that his writings
5
complete are the most not-
able utterance in the literature of America.
own person and poems Whitman is the comembodiment of the democratic sentiment that
In his pletest
the Christian world has produced. 1
A
greater,
all-
1
But compare Sidney Lanier, The English Novel, page "The truth is, that if closely examined, Whitman, instead of being a true democrat, is simply the most in45:
masquing in a peasant's costume." "I complain of Whitman's democracy that it
corrigible of aristocrats
Page 60
:
has no provision
for sick,
or small, or puny, or plain-
hump-backed, or any deformed people, and that his democracy is really the worst kind of aristocracy, being an aristocracy of nature's favourites in the matter of muscle." Yet says Whitman, " I bestow upon
featured, or
DEMOCRATIC TYPES.
39
comprehending, all-sympathising soul has not lived
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; you
who
him not, have you Thoreau saw something almost supernatural about the man. As a guide and
upon the earth
like
learned his lesson complete?
inspirer to
men he
has indeed been placed by the side In the book in which the tribute
of Jesus of Nazareth. paid,
is
seem
Towards Democracy, the comparison does not
irreverent.
message
is
that passion
is,
Western World "
But
it
sufficient to say that his
is
the expression of his deepest passion, and
beyond thus
cavil,
far.
the choicest fruit of the
1
heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in
I
them what you wanted."
Whitman any man or woman the entrance to universe," and his invitation extends
woman,
all
life,
that size
is
is
Inscriptions.
the gifts of the
to every
poor, or weak, or heavy-laden.
perfection of
show
:
The
man and ideal, the
a sound mind in a sound body.
Would Mr.
only development."
"
I
Lanier
present deformity as an end to be striven for? 1 Whittier is a sweet name truly, and together with Bryant and Longfellow and Hawthorne, is as characteristic
of a phase of
Whittier
is
American
life
New
came for conscience' sake). Whitman of world-wide significance.
pilgrims
and Whitman. England (whence
as are Lowell
the soul of moral
Lowell
is
of national,
V. -WHITMAN.
Whitman's
significance
is
chiefly prophetical.
He
has seen more clearly than others the necessity of
and he has on before singing constructively the idea of
ideals to direct the building of America,
gone
far
democracy
;
past.
in conclusion,
But he
after him.
he announces what comes
by no means unrelated to the
is
In his poems are embodied the distinctively
human and
therefore primal experiences of the race.
There
English one body of writings with whose
in
is
form and
spirit
Leaves of Grass quite directly coheres,
the works of William Blake, the passionate poet of
freedom. " Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field,
Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright
air,
Let the enshrined soul shut up
in
darkness and
in
sighing,
Whose
face has never seen a smile in thirty
Rise and look out
!
his chains are loose
!
weary years, his dungeon
doors are open."
Blake Mr. Swinburne, there are so
in his
many
:
Prophecy on America.
Essay on Blake, remarks that
points of contact between the two
40
WHITMAN. poets as to afford
41
some ground of reason
"
To
each,
all
and shapes of
sides
From
or endurable.
life
who
to those
preach the transition of souls or transfusion of
spirits.
are alike acceptable
the fresh, free ground of
workman nothing is excluded that is not The words of either strike deep, and run wide and soar high. They are both full of
either
exclusive.
and passion.
faith
democratic
.
.
.
Both are
and both
spiritual,
both by their works recall
;
fragments vouchsafed to
us
of the
.
.
.
the
Pantheistic
Their casual audacities of
poetry of the East.
expression or speculation are in effect well nigh
Their outlooks and theories are evidently
identical.
same on
the
all
points of intellectual
and
social
5
life.'
Essay on Blake,
These words were written been
fully gainsaid.
They
in 1866,
first
Blake was one of
disciples of that principle of mysticism, of the
essential unity of the universe,
of
inspiration
Blake sought the
and have never
are chiefly true with refer-
ence to the poets' mystical creed. the
p. 301.
which became
later the
Emerson, Browning, and Whitman. in his best
work
to
marry the reason,
the soul, which he called heaven, and the
spirit,
energy, the material, the body, which he called hell.
And Whitman announces of Myself "
The
pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with
The
a similar purpose in Song
:
first I
graft
me,
and increase upon myself, the
translate into a
new
tongue."
latter
I
browning and whitman.
42 Blake,
be
A
?
it is
was not quite sane
true,
spirit
once more with
faiths
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; how could
and
he
vision, baffled,
shut up in the prison-house of an unsympathetic age.
Whitman is always sane, though there are not lacking who would class him also among the egotists of
those
insane genius
He
*
!
of thoughts and
His poems,
Blake.
own
response to his evolution,
and
touches
life
with a wider range
sympathies than was possible for are wrought in direct
short,
in
century, a product of the world's
follow, with Browning's, in literary order
as naturally as the Scriptural succession
:
"
Abraham
begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat
Judas and his brethren." The primary and determining quality of Whitman's nature
is
emotional and religious.
naturally to rapturous utterance.
His thoughts tend Everything
is
garded with wonder, with reverence, and with Creeds and schools are held pute about
God
he
Columbus upon "
My My
hands,
the sands
my
is
dis-
that of
:
limbs grow nerveless,
will cling fast to
buffet
is
;
Thee,
I
will not part,
O
God, though the waves
me,
Thee, Thee
He
In the
prayer
Still his
brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd,
Let the old timbers part I
abeyance.
in
is silent.
re-
love.
at least
I
know."
pantheistic in sentiment in that he beholds
1 See H. H. Ellis' translation of on The Man of Genhis.
Prof.
Lombroso's work
whitman. God
43
every object, the Eternal Presence perfecting
in
the world
;
but he holds such belief without reference
he still leaves room for and freedom of the individual who has
to the Eastern philosophy, for
the moral his
life
part also to
perform.
Browning given statement
It
is
the
in Christinas
pantheism of Eve :
" God's all, man's nought God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away, As it were, a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at Him from a place apart, :
But
also,
And
use his gifts of brain and heart,
Given, indeed, but to keep forever."
That he is an apostle of Christ none will dispute. Thoreau wrote in 1856 of Leaves of G?'ass that not all the sermons that had been preached in the land were equal to
it
for preaching.
Nearest to Paul, the poet
enthrones love above every other form of truth or virtue.
In
philosophy
Whitman
is
an
idealist,
having
democracy it. He wonders how the system cculd have Germany, when only America has room for
frankly adopted Idealism for the uses of to justify
arisen in its
application.
" And thou, America, For the scheme's culmination, its thought and For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived." Song of
reality,
the Universal.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
44
Idealism was a search for the universal
man
;
it
brought unity into a divided universe, identifying the
world of matter and
Democracy
the relation of
spirit,
the individual and society.
upon the answer
rests
man
to the question of
From
to the universe.
the newly
gained point of view, Whitman, thinking of the question,
reconstructed the ideas of personality and love,
of the
From
and democracy.
self
his
philosophy
springs his splendid optimism, his creed of an har-
monious world,
his intent
"to compact you ye parted,
diverse lives," his thought of
with
God
" For
"justified,
blended
it
:
[the soul] the mystic evolution,
Not the
right only justified,
what we
call evil also
Song of the Universal.
justified."
The
man
"
conclusions of science, he averred in his preinteriorly tinged the
face of 1876,
The
verse for purposes
beyond.
Leaves of Grass
one of great
is
chyle of scientific
significance.
all
his
basis of
Whit-
man, more than any other of the transcendentalists, had thrown himself into the new current of scientific
and may,
thought, which, while without nationality,
realistic
at that time,
called English.
conservation
under the influence of Darwin, be Science, by
of energy,
its
laws
of
evolution,
and other processes which
prove the unity of Nature, came to the help of his philosophy " To put rapport the mountains and rocks and streams, And the winds of the north, and the forests of oak and pine,
With you,
O
soul."
Songs of Parting.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; WHITMAN.
45
due his sense of the infinite exWhitman's imagination outruns even Milton's in conception of vastness and splendour, and in the midst of limitless space and limitless time he dared to set man consonant, and greater than Also to science
is
panse of the universe.
Nature.
Evolution,
interpreted
by
philosophic
a
mind, brought an escape from the sense of necessity
which had oppressed
man
" This, then, is life, Here is what has come
from the beginning.
to the surface after so
many
throes and convulsions." Starting
"
All forces have
from Paumanok.
been steadily employ'd
to
complete and
delight me,
Now
on
this spot
I
stand with
my
robust soul."
Song of Myself.
And
there
progression
is still
;
his soul
cannot
rest
" Forever alive, forever forward."
Whitman's facts of life
tion
it
"
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
is
realistic
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;"
method,
his
bold facing of the
accept Reality, and dare not ques-
I
derived from that modern
spirit
which
is
Huxand the
peculiarly scientific, consisting, as stated by Mr. ley,
in
"veracity
of thought
resolute facing of the world as tive
of the
new
spirit,
action,
Mr. Havelock
him with a contemporary Henrik Ibsen.
and it is."
in
As a
representa-
Ellis
identifies
a far different land,
—
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
46 Like the
scientists,
Whitman
deals with types
Like them, he has a certain reverence
averages.
and
for all
matter and their sense of the sweet purity of organic
There
life.
poems
often in his
is
scientific description,
such as
in the
a happy touch of Leaf of Faces :
" The face of the singing of music— the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top; The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows the shav'd, blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens
The
pure,
extravagant, yearning", questioning
artist's
face."
But Whitman
' k
is,
in
no proper
Gentlemen, to you the
Your
facts
my I
first
sense, a scientist.
honours always
!
are useful and real— and yet they are not
dwelling
;
but enter by them to an area of
my
dwelling"
Song of Myself.
"
When When
I
heard the learn'd astronomer,
the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns
before me,
When
I
was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, and measure them, sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured
divide,
When
I
much applause in the lecture-room, soon unaccountable I became tired and
with
How
Till, rising
and gliding
out,
I
wander'd
off
sick,
by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time
Looked up
in perfect silence at the stars."
By
the Roadside.
WHITMAN. In truth, avoiding the dead
47
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; since
merely
intel-
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
and temporal statements of science, Whitman repeats them significantly in terms of feeling, which
lectual
In other words, with a poetic vision
alone are eternal.
equal to the range of science, he relates the laws of Nature, by means of the emotional, to the life
of man, assigning
their
all
common
poetic place in the
united universe.
As an artist, Whitman is the legitimate successor in America of the romanticism which has inspired, if not directly
every
fashioned,
great
artistic
creation
in
Europe since the work of its inaugurator, Victor Hugo. The purpose of the romantic movement, which is itself but a
towards
phase of the general progress of the race
was
liberty,
to free the personality
thrall of classical formalism.
and needed ticists,
spirit
Whitman
and one of the
He
renewed.
real
from the bondage,
broken that the true Greek
to be
might be gained.
This was a
is
spirit
the last of the romanfruits
of the antique
has yearned to
make somehow
first
vocal the aspirations, the promise, the affections of his
own
people,
" sweet-air'd
to
dreams, which
tally in
and the ocean),
movement
make somehow
interminable
to
real
plateaus "
the
as
land the grandeur of the skies
convey in song something of the
of free-flowing rivers, and of the mystery of
the pine forests,
and of the enthusiasm and hopefulness
of the perfect air and sunshine of his short,
sense of
(beautiful
own land
he has purposed to interpret the
Modern Man
in his
own immediate
days*
life
;
in
of the
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
48
"The
conceits of the poets of other lands I'd bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library
But an odour
I'd
;
bring as from forests of pine in Maine,
or breath of an Illinois prairie."
Whispers of Heavenly Death.
And to the
this is
or Parnassus' holy heights a
For
Hellenism.
it is
;
it is
not by the learning of
Johnson or a Milton, or by the
Keats, that
we win the
of Greek art
The
ideal
filled hills.
not by invocations
Muses, or by allusions to Helicon's sacred spring
is its
spirit
dream-lore of a
fine
The
of the Greek.
virtue
acceptance of the environing nature.
which Phidias sculptured
The Parthenon sprang
that of a people
is
with the joyful sense of their
own
violet-tinted
out of the
hill
of the
column merging gradually of the rocks, and issuing in the
Acropolis, pediment and
along the natural lines finer
human beauty
of capital and
frieze.
Burns
is
more Greek than Keats, Lowell than Pope, Millet than The grey English Leighton, Whitman than either. cathedrals which harmonise so well with the shadowy skies of the north, and which rose into upper air out of the " interior sphere " of a people's thought and aspiration
and love
the pretty country churches which
;
have taken form from generation to generation under the hands of the villagers themselves
homesteads which of the
hills,
fit
;
even the old
so harmoniously into the
nooks
or by the edges of the woods, or along the
banks of the streams
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; these
are
more
truly indicative
WHITMAN.
49
of the classic spirit than the cumbrous, ornate churches and mansions of the " Renaissance " style of the dull which was neither Greek nor eighteenth century
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
modern. " Phoebus' chariot-course
Look up poets
Pan, Pan
In this aspect of his art there
Whitman
with
to
compare.
who
:
!
dead." hardly another poet
is
He is
best understood by Dutch 1 painters of the seventeenth
reference to the old century,
is
run
is
sun
to the
exhibited
men
in their natural environ-
ment, and more especially to Jean-Francois Millet, a
exponent of similar principles in the plain of Bar-
later
bizon.
Millet,
removed from the
romanticism, was one of the
direct influence of
first
principles to the delineation of the
to apply classical
Of
modern man.
about the same age as Whitman, he resembled him
An
even in appearance.
James Parton " Millet was
tall
in
1889
account was given of him by (in
the
JVeiv
and of a powerful
York Ledger)
build, his
head
:
large,
and bushy, flowing back from his manner a little wild. His face was handsome, with excellent features, and large, gentle eyes. His studio nickname was The Man of the Woods.' His pictures were often bold and expressive, but the method of treatment was unusual, and the execution apt to be rough. Most of the students regarded him and
his hair thick
face in a
.
'
.
.
.
.
.
as a queer fellow with talent, but too eccentric ever to
make 1
effective use of it."
Whitman's Dutch relationship
is
always significant.
D
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
50
The and
general character of Millet's work
is
truth to
All things were beautiful for
nature.
life
him which
The hand of the peasant was beautiand the labourers at work in the sun. Everything in the neighbourhood of Barbizon was conveyed by him to canvas. He painted the trees, the were congruous. ful
and
true,
great Fontainebleau forest, the rocks, skies, land.
painted the peasants about him ing,
sowing,
reaping
and
at their
gleaning,
goose-herders.
All scenes which
cant, preferring
men
shepherds and
were
inaction, were
He
work, plough-
really
welcome
signifi-
material.
Le Depart Pour le Travail [Starting for Work) is Whitman's style. It is of a young man and girl going to the field in the fresh morning air, full of light and motion; it has a cheerfulness rare in Millet's work, which is touched generally by the sadne s of the old world. There is Whitman's energy in especially in
the strong Les Glaneuses (The Gleaners).
On
the other
mystic meaning
hand there
in the
many
Millet's
is
action and
picturesque bits in Whit-
man's poems. "
On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner, He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs, He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he With
lightly closed fists
and arms
By "
By the curb toward
A
runs,
partially rais'd." the Roadside.
the edge of the flagging,
knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife
;
Bending over, he and knee,
carefully holds
it
to the stone
;
by
foot
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
1
WHITMAN. With measur'd tread he turns
5
rapidly
;
as he presses with
light but firm hand,
Forth issue then
in
copious golden jets
Sparkles from the wheel."
Autumn
Rivulets.
" The big doors of the country-barn stand open and ready,
The
dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-
drawn waggon,
The
clear light plays on the brown, gray,
and green
intertinted,
The
armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow."
Song of Myself.
Every picture has a mystical significance.
"As Or
I
watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
the sower sowing in the
fields,
or the harvester har-
vesting, I
saw
(Life,
there, too, life
is
O
life
and death, your analogies. and Death is the harvest
the tillage,
according.)
Whispers of Heavenly Death.
The common occupations joys of the farmer, the in his
" O, to
of
woodman,
men
are sung, the
the engineer, each
way
work in mines, or forging iron, Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample and shadow'd space, The furnace, the hot liquid pour'd out and running.'' Song of the Open Road.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
52
Some Dutch "
have the quiet contentment of old
pictures
paintings.
Behold a woman She looks out from her Quaker cap, her face !
and more She
sits in
is
clearer
beautiful than the sky.
an arm-chair under the shaded porch of the
farm-house,
The sun just
shines on her old, white head."
From Noon "
Through the ample open door
to
Starry Night,
of the peaceful country
barn,
A
sunlit pasture field with cattle
And
and horses feeding,
haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away." 1
By Thus
the Roadside.
related to the old, starting from
where he was born,
after
Paumanok
roaming many lands,
after
studying at the feet of the great masters, having studied
men and
birds
and
stats
singing in the West, strikes
"Victory, union,
The
Walt Whitman,
up
for a
solitary,
New World
:
faith, identity, time,
indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.'' Start big from 1
A
discussion of
tion to that of section.
Whitman's
artistic
Richard Wagner,
is
Paumanok.
method,
in its rela-
reserved for another
VIâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;BROWNING AND WHITMAN. "
Do
you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems and processes of
Democracy
?
"
Between Browning and Whitman contact not
a
there are points of
Browning was born
few.
in
1812,
Whitman in 18 19. The two poets started in life with much the same thought and passion capital. A few metaphysical conceptions underlie their writings from first
to
last,
Teutonic 1
tendency to philosophic thinking
the
being accounted
for,
perhaps, by a similar strain of
Whitman
ancestry.
Philosophy
thinker as Browning. his nature.
1
Even
as a
little
is is
as
profound
a
fundamental in
boy he listened with
Whitman's mother was a Van Velsor of true Dutch
temper, an hereditary fact which answers for far more
than the poet's philosophic tendencies. As we now know (cf. The Puritan in Holland, England and America, by
Douglas Campbell, New York), the characteristic American sentiments and institutions are of HollandPuritan heritage.
Browning's
mother was Scotch-German, her father Hamburg German. From
being William Wiedemann, a her,
Browning derived
his
thoughtful nature, as
probably, as his evangelical and liberal temper.
53
well,
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
54
amaze
No
one
He
superficially.
as a pipe."
more
is
There
taught the duality of the repulsive than he,
if read not so " easy to be played on
is
not a body of writings in
is
demands
ture which
who
preacher
at the
universe.
that has been thought or said in the world. his
works are shown only
The
obscurity
as Sordello
"
You
in
will
—
For
in
never processes.
results,
— and Leaves of Grass
is
thus that connected
is
litera-
a wider conversancy with the best
as hard to read
with prophecy.
pardon some obscurities," said Thoreau
Walden, "for there are more secrets in
my
trade
than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable
from
very
its
and
essentially a dramatist,
but by other and
Grass
first
indirect
appeared in 1855
the author
" I
:
greet
When
means.
—
that strange
so unlike a book, so very like a to
you
man
That
for
foreground
such a
Sordello,
which are
and the
writer's
is
volume,
beginning of a
had a long
fore-
may be found
Pauline,
Paracelsus,
in
and
in so large a degree autobiographic
own
upon the
laid
Leaves of
first
start."
thought
of
Browning's earlier works,
is
— Emerson wrote
at the
great career, which yet must have
ground somewhere
Browning
nature."
arrives at a similar result,
thought-basis.
development
of
Therein the
soul,
stress
the
and self-governed, and the necessity of passage from selfish into sympathetic
individual as self-centred
existence.
The either
ethical
problem
of
good and
evil is
solved by
poet in the precisely similar terms of ethica
idealism
which, postulating the universe as a unity,
1
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. requires the presence of what
we
call evil as
sary condition of man's spiritual energy
The
scientific basis,
such as belief
evolution, continuity of organic
55 a neces-
and growth.
in doctrines of
conservation of
life,
energy, will be found to be likewise identical.
Oddly the criticism passed on Pauline in 1833, " Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat and not a little unintelligible," served with varied phrase to welcome Leaves of Grass in 1855. sensual,
One
thing,
at
in
least,
common
—they
were
both
misunderstood.
§
"
I
only
And
I.
—THE
knew one
this, or
PERSONALITY. poet in
my
life,
something like it, was his way." ITow it IStrikes a Contemporary.
Whitman's first great thought on life is of the Self. Pride and love, or self and society, constitute " the unseen impetus and moving power ings.
But
the
self
is
prior,
" of
gives
all his
writ-
meaning
and
vitality to all life, law, love, or beauty.
"
And
I
will
not
make
a poem, nor the least part of
a poem, but has reference to the soul,
Because having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul." Starting from Paumanok.
" The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual namely, to You."
—
By Blue
Ontario's Shore.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
56
" One's-self must
Out of
When
— that
remains
is
the
final
all is sure,
triumphs, battles,
politics,
finally
way
never give
— that out of
substance
life,
what
at
last
?
shows break up what but One's-self is sure ? " Whispers of Heavenly Death.
" The only government
is
which makes minute of
that
individuals."
By "
We
Blue Ontario's Shore.
consider bibles and religions divine
—
I
do not say
they are not divine. say they have
I
out of you
not they
It is
grown out of you, and may grow
all
still
who
;
give the
it is
life,
you who give the
life."
A It
as a
is
is
a
means
;
is
to society
and for himself. but one of the human
member, has a meaning
the side of society he
and
Song fur Occupations.
that the individual, while related in
on the side of
his personality
related to the Absolute, has divine attributes his
end
in himself.
Whitman has ality,
And to To
essayed.
own
he
is
and has
sing the divinity of exploit his
On race,
man
person-
candidly and uncompromisingly, was the pur-
pose of Leaves of Grass
;
nothing goes forth that
not penetrated with himself.
The
is
personal element
comprises the unique quality of his book more precious than houses
and gold.
" Camerado,
Who
this is
no book,
touches this touches a man." Songs of Parting.
"
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. Every
line
ence to the
and thought
soul,
of
his
S7
poems have
refer-
but
" Thou, reader, throbbest same as I,
life
and pride and love the
Therefore for thee the following chants." Inscriptions.
Whitman
takes as his starting-point
in average circumstances
No
one
who
is still
excepted, for organic
is
man
an average
grand and heroic.
life
must be
inter-
dependent. "
Do you
think matter has coher'd together from
and the soil is on the water runs and vegetation sprouts For you only, and not for him and her ? diffuse float,
surface,
Children of
Each
here as divinely as any
is
fect
loveliness which writers
men
of culture
is
shown
like
its
and
Adam,
here. That perGoethe profess for
is
to belong to the complete
ordinary character.
" Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre-figure of
From
the
all,
head of the
centre-figure, spreading a
nimbus
of gold-colour'd light,
But
I
paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without
its
nimbus of gold-colour'd
light."
Birds of P<issagc.
For the ordinary has meaning the same as the excepthe need is that our eyes be opened. Each, no matter what his birth, or occupation, or condition, is out on the same open road of the Universe. tional
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
53 " Forever
alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled,
mad, turbulent,
feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected
by men." Song of
The is
equality of a democracy,
it
Open Road.
the
should be observed,
not one of possession or attainment
equal to another in that way
Human
destiny.
from the
and
is
past,
is
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no
one
is
with respect to
rights are not " natural " or derived
but are related to ideals of what ought
The
to be.
another "
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but
idea that " one
and
a foreign
man
is
as
good
false interpretation
as
of the
American conception of equality before God. Democracy recognises we are out on the road together travelling to the
"
I
show
same
destination.
that size
is
only development."
Song of Myself. "
I do not call one greater and one smaller, That which fills its period and place is equal to any." Song of Myself
" The universe
What
be
The
is
duly in order, everything
has arrived
in its place,
is
in its place.
.
.
is in its
and what waits
place, shall
.
and and the
child of the glutton or venerealee waits long,
the child of the drunkard waits long,
drunkard himself waits long." Tlie Sleepers.
Whitman
yields the
utmost of homage to the woman.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN. "
59
I am the poet of the woman, the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of
men."
Song of Myself.
memory
In
own mother, "
of his
woman,
the ideal
to
love,
life,
me
America
line.
practical,
spiritual, of all of earth,
the best," he graves a is
reserved
and "to her
to her, buried
gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,"
monumental
by him as the "great
woman's land," and his only fear is that with all the of wealth and power vouchsafed his country
gifts
"What
if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving,) The gift of perfect women fit for thee what if that gift
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
of gifts thou lackest ?"
By
motherhood the woman is given the But her claim is an equal selfhood. She, too, is out on the
virtue of
superior place in the race-economy. finally for
open road.
He
A
and
detects a similar equality in things
leaf of grass
is
no
less
External objects furnish
stars.
events.
than the journey-work of the their part
towards
happens
anybody
eternity.
"
And it
I
will
may be
show
that whatever
Starting from It
tion,
to
turn'd to beautiful results."
Pmimanok.
would seem that he lacked the sense of proporbut his position
is
logically consistent.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
60 '*
The
soul
is
of
All verges to
itself,
all
it,
has reference to what ensues,
All that a person does, says, thinks,
is
of consequence."
Autumn All
and "
Truth compacts
finally truth.
is
liividets.
all,
the false
true.
And And
I will go celebrate anything and laugh and deny nothing."
henceforth sing
From Noon This
to
I
see or am,
Staff y Night.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
no doubt a form of pantheism is that so word ? Modern thought is rapidly becom-
is
hateful a
ing pantheistic in the
same
problem now presented
is
sense.
And
the ethical
the reconciliation of the
idea of a universal benevolent law and that of a moral
being under that law, yet free to choose or to refuse.
This
the problem which Browning meets
is
without
He
fear.
fairly,
relinquishes no jot of his belief in
power of love and the essential is no hero-worshipper or event-worshipper. In thought and method the idea of personality is given supreme expression the
all-pervading
divinity of
Like Whitman he
man.
;
this is alike
the central principle of his philosophy
and the burden of his art. He has faith in spiritual manhood, which proves for him an essential democracy. Tennyson plucked a flower from the crannied wall,
and
said,
" If
What you I
should
I
could understand
are, root
and
all,
and
all in all,
know what God and man
is."
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. Browning would
glorify the
am
say, " I
man
meanest
as a like
With Shelley he
manifestation of creative thought.
might
6l
the friend of the unfriended poor."
In his parleying with Gerard he matches the worth of the
commonplace with
The world
cap. forth
whatever of
there
(cf.
spiritual
Epilogue).
action of a
man
Festus' robe
and Fortunatus'
gathers about each of us to draw
—
failure
it
may be
worth
Nothing
is
potential
The
in vain.
may be
—
is
least
a step in his
Each incident in the wider conscious development. arena of history is " a pulsation of the life of the
Each person, however neglected by the simple Briton pilot, Herve Riel, for
highest."
historians
instance
— the
—has
scheme of "
Go
importance
the
in
organic
general,
life.
to Paris
:
rank on rank
Search the heroes flung pell-mell -
On the Louvre, face and flank You shall look long enough
!
ere you
come
Herve
to
Riel."
Herve
Riel.
" There is no last nor first," sang Pippa. Browning portrays no character without relations
the Infinite.
There
is
no
to
creature, but that
" Some way it boasts, could we Its supreme worth."
investigate,
Fijine at the Fair.
Not Pippa,
or Ottima, or Fifine, not Paracelsus, not
the Grammarian, not Halbert or Hob, not
Dog
Tray,
!
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
62 not
Guido
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; him
couth that he
Even Caliban, who
undeveloped the
mud
event and
cannot speak
but " thinketh
personality,
monster
not
is
the
of
resources
so un-
his
" saith,"
even
own the
to sprawl
What
God. of his
in
the
is
masterpiece,
Browning should lavish mature genius upon them ?
his
dug out
nimbus
is
terms of
content
characters
the
the Boole, that
case
and
"
The Ring and
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a
in
complaining of the
who
"
even, are without their
of gold-colour'd light."
of
yellow-leaved
a
record
of
crime, long thrown aside on old book-stalls,
the in-
cidents of which had long since passed from
human
memory Guido
!
Pompilia an obscure commonplace
great
only
crime
in
girl
Spenser would have
!
scorned to spend such pains: his song was of "knights
and
ladies gentle
deeds
;
he loved the
"
nobles and the courts of kings.
stately hall of
Shakespeare, too,
natural aristocrat, the poet of feudal forms cesses.
Kings and
are.
true, portrayed with equal care
it is
lords, citizens, fools,
but what commonplace character a
aristocracy
We
of woe.
word when he urges us
The Iago
great criminal is,
Guido.
is,
hirelings fidelity
;
thought worthy of
him down an
compound
But observe the difference
amounts
dramatist of the
ass.
however, given tragic meaning.
dramatic thought and
He,
a
take Dogberry at his
to write
perhaps, a greater
ment, which
"
is
pro-
Like the Greek drama, Shakespeare exhibits
fate.
the
is
and and
and
to
a
complete revolution of
purpose.
Whitman
of crime than
in the poets' treat-
Browning
is
the
principle.
at least, believed in Soul,
was very sure of God."
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. He
of man in himself by showing men and women, various in being
justifies the pride
in dramatic process
and
63
action,
under every condition of evil or of error, but
never unguided by the light of an interior motive and the hope of ultimate attainment.
ment is general he Browning animates ;
sonal
knows
characters !
"
Whitman's announce-
thinking of average, typical men.
is
his
pages with specific and per-
who may be
"
sunk enough,
God
but never so sunk but that this or that poor
impulse, which for once had play unstifled, indicates the
spirit's true
endowments.
" Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?
O
Lear,
That a reason out of nature must turn them
soft
seems
clear."
Halbert and Hob.
It is the
logy. feats
custom to complain of Browning's psycho-
Few can
repress a fling at his
"marvellous
A
truer insight
of psychological gymnastic."
might have revealed the important nature of such dramatic habit, which is ye who like him not one of the very profound indications of the Christian and
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
democratic temper of modern pretation of concrete
human
life,
namely, the
inter-
existence.
The tendency presentment. its
of modern drama is towards psychic Honouring to its worth the play-house,
simulated stature, painted scenes and stage,
it
takes
" For a worthier stage the soul and celestial lights,
Its shifting fancies
itself,
yet
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
64 With
all its
To keep
grand orchestral silences
the pauses of the rhythmic sounds."
Aurora Leigh.
Modern drama cratic
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
could not
fully
is
in
The growth
Wagner.
His
illustrative.
mystical symbolism. life
by the
of Wagner's dramatic principle
works were projected
first
He
was
fact of
at first
pessimism of his world,
is
man's helplessness.
from without,
still
and
The
life reflects
the
a very type of fate-driven
In the two more Christian
man.
after
artifice
impressed in his
dark-visaged wandering mariner, whose
comes
to the
spirit
the music-dramas of Richard
the Greek model, with added mediaeval
study of
demo-
Shakespeare
passage from the old
presented
is
in short, internal, personal,
escape from the Greek tragic sense of
The
necessity.
new
is,
inward evermore to outward."
"
in
romances help
Tannhihiser by the inter-
vention of the Pope, in Lohengrin by a knight of the
Holy in
Grail.
Tristan and Isolde has
love-drink.
the
With
the
its
fate-principle
Kibelung tetralogy
Wagner's pessimistic views become most conspicuous. to each drama is in externals. Wotan embodiment of arbitrary will. Men and
The key is
the
gods
together
are
impelled by blind, unintelligent
Wagner was then
power.
of Schopenhauer;
directly under the influence and the Eddie mythology, con-
structed during the long winters
and nights and amid
the pitiless nature of the northern clime, probably in terror
of sea and
material.
weather,
furnished
him
suitable
But the dawn of a new heaven and earth
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. came soon
after the twilight of the gods.
with his world.
The empire
6*
Wotan sank
of external will ends, so
Wagner is concerned, with the fall of Valhalla. is demand for restoration. The poet is saved from pessimism, and carried far beyond it, by the creation of Parsifal, who is to redeem the world far as
There
from curse by love and by his heart's mastery over Siegfried
Still in
fate.
we recognise the precursor of
and Brunhilde's victory over the lower
Parsifal,
ciples of nature typifies the final
Siegfried
world
;
is
redeemed from the gods
but his destiny
is
fixed
prin-
triumph of the soul. of the elder
even before
his birth
magic sword against which not even the spear of Wotan has might voices of wood-
as a youth he wields a
;
birds lead
The
him on
;
and against
fate
he cannot
only satisfaction to the character-motive
his activities spring
from his love of
endowed with the magic sword by and that he remains without fear. Parsifal comes before us first as
life,
his
prevail. is
that
that he
own
a youth,
is
efforts,
full
of
more than a hero; he is a Saviour. Redemption by love and by man is the theme of Wagner's last and in every way abounding
life,
greatest work. tragic
collision.
like Siegfried.
He
But he
is
reconciles the forces hitherto in
Love and
will
operate within the
human human
The area of their working is the one person who passes from stage to stage in pro-
cesses
of spiritual
spirit.
is
Man
The dramatic solution has passed forfrom gods to men. The whole play of Parsifal
conquers ever
and psychical education.
fate.
radiant with light
and hope.
And
Parsifal
redeems E
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
66
not because of any external compact, but because he is
what he
because he has attained by struggle with-
is,
own
in his
soul the conquest over sin
Kundry, as a type of a struggling and soul,
Wagner's most striking character, and, at the
is
same
and death. redeemed
finally
time,
one of the most impressive and original Wagner's last word on life is,
creations in literature.
modern, psychical, democratic. Between Wagner and Browning, Ibsen stands mid-
in this respect,
Wagner
way.
has,
perhaps,
dealt
with
weightier
matters than Ibsen, but both singularly illustrate in
method of
their
own
art.
Ibsen has the same northern imagination, the
life-struggle the
psychical
same Teutonic melancholy. He Norway winter, its ice and night that
all
there
is
the land
is
is ;
bleak, barren,
their
the poet of the
one would think
and storm-beaten
hardly a suggestion of sunshine and flowers.
As a child, Ibsen loved darkness rather than light. Nor are his works uninfluenced by the pessimism of fatalism. The Emperor Julian is conquered at length by the world-will which favours the Galilean, and he falls
Of
with the cry,
"Thou
key of interpretation, a in
hast conquered Galilean."
the writer's earlier works, the idea of a call
Brand,
to
which seems
had been shattered by the
Commune, he seems
to
delight in picturing social chaos.
is
the
at times, as
After his dream of
be one of necessity.
social regeneration
of the Paris
call
failure
have taken especial
The Wild Buck
is
pessimistic in the extreme.
Up
to a certain point, Ibsen
philosophy of Carlyle.
He
is
the dramatist of the
believes in aristocracy
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. " I
of
67
mean," he explains, "the aristocracy of character,
He
of mind."
will,
movements and of
has Carlyle's distrust of popular
of England
cerning the people
dictum con-
Carlyle's
majorities.
—
•"
mostly fools,"
is
paralleled by a similar remark of Ibsen of the Nor-
wegians
—
society
upon
-"
cats
They both would build
and dogs." of truth
pillars
and
sincerity
— the world
has not seen more intense haters cf falsehood and
But observe how they
sham. ence
the
lies
Ibsen believes
works.
in the
and
differ,
dramatic
peculiar
in the differ-
quality of
In a letter written to Georg Brandes says
:
— " The
What
The absorption
and geographical
soldier. is
the curse of
is
the
liberty.
1871, he
in
individual.
has been the price of Prussia's strength as a
State ? ical
State
Ibsen's
utmost of personal
Away
with the State
accomplished
of the State,
of the individual in the polit-
I will
The
entity.
be there
let free will
and
waiter
When
!
:
is
the best
that revolution
undermine the notion
spiritual affinity
only recognised basis of union, and you
will
beginnings of a liberty worthy of the name."
Whitman,
task
becomes then
that of
man
in the land a
nobleman."
He
" to
be the
have the 1
His
make every
dreams
for
man-
kind a redemption through love into a state of free
and
purified will.
He
individual development.
insists,
by consequence, upon
All vital development must
be from within, and natural.
This principle
is
em-
bodied in his dramas. The " action, action, action/' of the Greeks is set aside. In his first dramatic effort
1
Life,
by Jaeger, trans, by
Bell, p. 205.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
;:
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
68
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; written
at
twenty
Cataline, there
within Cataline's
deeds so life.
All
much is
own
is
The whole
and no proper counterplot.
hardly a plot,
play
enacted
as the results of deeds as exhibited in a
The
inner, psychological.
play as The Doll's House, which
is
interest of
such a
without impressive
accessories or heroic action of any kind, in the psychical
centred
is
development of the characters them-
The interest is human and uncertain.
selves. is
is
Ibsen does not portray
soul.
intense, because the solution
To
take an opposite case
when we see personalised Good and Evil in Goethe's drama striving for Faust's soul, there can be little doubt as to the result, and we are not at all surprised when Faust is borne aloft by the angels with triumphant song.
When
the strife
is
within the
self,
a
man
woman's worth something.
or
The by
first
hint in English literature of redemption
spiritual struggle
is
perhaps contained in Milton's
Paradise Regained (and
interesting to note the
is
it
accord of Milton and Wagner in this matter, however at variance their
Milton that
first
was
conceptions of the Christ
may
be).
suggested the way to recover the paradise
lost,
the heaven within the soul,
redemptive idea
set forth
in
and the
Paradise Regained sur-
passes as a justification of the ways of
God
to
men
all
Milton the stupendous machinery of Paradise Lost. himself preferred, it is said, the former to the latter it
has better philosophy
"
if
not higher
art.
I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to
all
mankind,
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
69
By one man's firm obedience fully tried Through all temptation, and the Tempter In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden
foiled
raised in the waste wilderness."
Paradise Regained.
A
commentator remarks about
this passage, stating
the popular opinion, no doubt, even of to-day
seem a
odd
little
that Milton should
:
" It
may
impute the
re-
covery of Paradise to the short scene of our Saviour's life
upon
crucifixion
etc.
was but the culmination of a
had gone on
struggle which
own
and not rather extend it to His agony, But Milton clearly saw that the
earth,
crucifixion,"
The
soul.
Cross,
central fact in the
life
spiritual
for long within Christ's
he would
say,
not
is
of Christ, but the
life
the
itself.
His redemption was not wrought by magic, not by Christ was never a mere
contract.
world-drama it is
He, most of
;
all,
took
actor
life
ill
seriously,
that
and
Him that He never laughed. May it Him as for others the incidents of the
recorded of
not be that for
were
earth-life
" Just a stuff
To
try the soul's strength on,
educe the man."
In a Balcony.
So Milton
rightly chose a
typical
incident
at
the
beginning of Christ's Messianic mission. "
Now
On
enter,
thy glorious work
and begin
to save
mankind."
Paradise Pcjained.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
yo
We many
now
are prepared
understand the nature of
to
Browning has
of the psychological problems
Browning
for us.
As
is first
set
and foremost a dramatist of
to the disputed point of his sub-
the inner
life.
jectivity, I
think he must be taken at his word that his
poetry
"so many utterances of so many imaginary
is
mine
not
persons,
"
(Preface
subjective in that he gives jectivity of others,
democratic.
We may
shoulder." I
am
only
better,
"Hand
is
is
sub-
always above
quote Whitman's
line
my
:
he who places over you no master, owner, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in Birds of Passage.
yourself.''
There
the
and as such he is Christian and is no hint of a fate save as "God's
the heaven," save the
in
"
There
He
Pauline).
to
expression to
no suggestion of pessimism for at least love, and loving ranks with God." ;
" each one may
Holding firmly
to the belief that the
love, actuating all created being,
world
is
ruled by
he held with equal
tenacity to the idea of the possibility of the will of
man
acting freely within that law
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
free to reach the
goal in various ways, even by error and failure.
Will-
freedom, soul-struggle (inward evermore to outward),
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which imply opposition, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; are the three phrases which indicate Brown-
and soul-progress hate, sin ing's
failure,
dramatic significance.
the error,
and
the earth
life,
Evelyn
Hope
in other lives,
attains.
there
is
Paracelsus
If attainment
fails,
corrects
be not won in
the leaf in the hand of dead
to suggest that there are " other heights
God
willing."
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. The
crux of a democratic philosophy
is
7 plainly the
outcast, the abandoned, the soul-hardened criminal
K oh, a crime will
do
How
to serve for a test."
can
they be included in the moral and social scheme of life
Whitman, with a cheery optimism, includes
!
them
all
:
"
To
you."
Not
till
the sun excludes you will I exclude
the universal banquet
" The kept-woman, sponger,
The heavy-lipped invited
There
slave
thief are hereby invited, invited,
is
the venerealee
is
;
no difference between them and the
shall be
rest."
Song of Myself. "
I
will
make
them
the songs of passion to give
their
way,
And your songs
outlaw'd offenders, for
kindred eyes, and carry you with any.
I
scan you with
me
the
same
as
:'
Starting from Paumanoh.
Browning, in
like
criminals,
specific
manner, crowds
not,
like
describe them, but to justify them.
the truth beneath the falsehood. that each of the
many " helps
his pages with
the school of Zola,
to
He would show He would show
to recruit the
life
of the
race by a general plan," be his soul's fruit hate or love.
In some way the existence of Fifine must be else is she created in vain, " which must
justified,
not be."
His
trial
of strength was his
Franceschini,
whose
life-story
is
defence of Guido
found
in
an old
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
/2
record of crime, a "blotch of black."
was no
It
light
If the facts of life were against his philosophy,
task.
the only alternative was despair or the quiet acquies-
Guido was one of the
cence of the lotus-eater.
compounds of
criminality which literature or
life
vilest
have
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
Browning set the case in order there The " main monster " the book to show for it. recorded.
painted with unsparing literalism
is
is
:
" Count Guido Franceschini, the Aretine, Descended of an ancient house, though poor,
A
beak-nosed, bushy-bearded, black-haired lord,
Lean,
pallid,
low of stature, yet robust,
Fifty years old."
liing
He
is
and
the Book,
780-84.
i.,
environment, in the midst of a
set in a suitable
dark, subsidiary brotherhood, " denizens o' the cave
" :
Paolo, the "fox-faced, horrible priest;" "the boy of ; the brood, the young Girolamo " " then comes the gaunt, grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, the hag that gave these three abortions birth;" "last, these
God-abandoned, wretched lumps of life," the murderers.
And
ranged against them are old Pietro and Violante,
not over scrupulous^ "sadly mixed natures." the one pure white woman-lily, the newly
serene aged Pope to serve as contrast to
priest, the
the shade.
and
is
Guido
is
permitted to wreak his worst
brought to judgment
Rome condemns â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " Out light,
for
and
Only awakened
air,
and
life
of man."
Guido much excuse.
at
last.
One
with you from the
"
He
The is
common
other half finds
noble and
innocent," suggests the upper class.
half of
may be
Judgment which
—
—
I
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. is
"honest enough as the way
bouring in the centre of
all
same
the
at
passion,
" Leave Guido all alone Back on the world again that knows him now I
har-
sense a hidden germ of
its
Guido mutters, " Hardly misfortune, and no all." But Caponsacchi, in the heat of his urges upon the judges,
failure."
fault
is,
'J
think he will be found (indulge so far
!
!)
Not to die so much as slide out of life, Pushed by the general horror and common hate Low, lower, left o' the very ledge of things, I seem to see him catch convulsively One by one at all honest forms of life, And thus I see him slowly and surely edged Off all the table-land whence life upsprings
—
.
Aspiring to be immortality.
So
.
.
leave Guido in the loneliness,
I
Silence,
At
.
.
.
and dusk,
till
at the doleful end,
the horizontal line, creation's verge,
From what just
Whom
is
to absolute
nothingness
onward still, he meets Judas, made monstrous by much solitude is it,
straining
?
.
.
.
!
are at one now There let them grapple, denizens o' the dark, Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound, In their one spot out of the ken of God Or care of man, forever and evermore !" Ring and the Book, vi., 1908-54.
The two
There
commend
is
!
.
.
awful earnestness there, and the words
themselves to many, perhaps to most.
Pompilia has for that
.
all
But
along " sent prayer like incense up
most woeful man
my husband
once."
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
74
" So far as lies in me, him for his good the life he takes, Let him make God amends, none, none to me. We shall not meet in this world nor the next, But where will God be absent? In His face Is light, but in His shadow healing too Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed !" Ring and the Bool; vii., 1707-21. give
I
.
.
.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
.
.
.
;
The
wise Pope,
who
has light nor fears the dark at
sums up the case in the quiet of his soul. Of previous judgments he comments that truth, while not
all,
in
any one,
is
reviewed
Guido began
well, " fortified
life
by progood breeding, with
pitious circumstance, great birth,
the
Church
the
man
The matter
evolvible from the whole.
is :
But
for guide."
tills
black
mark impinges " Not life.
that he believes in just the vile of
What then
one permissible impulse moves the man." Is
he to be excluded
In
?
the
strength enough, intelligence enough. that love also
complete.
is
limitless.
The Tope
The
has,
there
creation
universe
therefore,
!
is
Christ proved is
thus
faith
shown in
the
world, faith that sin and sorrow have their purpose to
The foremost
evolve the moral qualities of man. is
fact
that
" Life
is
Why
man compel him strive, man, as good as reach the goal,
but the starting-point of
Which means,
in
institute that race, his
life,
Ring and
The Pope But he has
will
for
:
at all ?" the Bool;
x.,
1436-39.
not stay the execution of the criminals.
Guido the hope of a suddenness of
fate.
—— BROWNING AND WHITMAN. "
I I
75
stood at Naples once, a night so dark could have scarce conjectured there was earth
Anywhere, sky, or sea, or world at all But the night's black was burst through by a blaze Thunder struck blow on blow, earth gioaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountain visible There lay the city thick and plain with spires, And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see one instant and be saved." Ming and the Book, x., 21 17-28. :
:
The end
is
There
not yet.
is
makes but vain
;
The
which must not
finds
at
essential
out
its
element
made
else
un-
first in
forthwith to the
carried
prison-house
the
exerted his strength against
an
God
be."
sentence of death,
Governor,
He
remake the soul
to
There
other hope.
a " sad, obscure, sequestered state where
is
good
all
human
in
one who had
in vain
nature,
Love
!
and
is
will find
way.
"Abate, pilia, will
— Cardinal, — Christ, — Maria, — God, you
let
them murder me."
flash struck out
from the
soul's
cry of the thief
upon the
cross
It is
midnight ;
it
is
moment may seem
for the conclusion
drawn, but
I
;
it is
as the
an impulse from
the soul, realising at the last what love
This single
Pom-
the spiritual
is.
insufficient
evidence
can only answer, aside
from the witness of insight which requires such conclusion (and compare Mr. Westcott's paper on Brownings, View of Life, a
fact
p. 15), that
obliquely.
In
it is
Browning's way to state
Prince Hohensteil-Schvangau
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
76 there
is
a story told of an
Laocoon group, save the
who covered up
artist
the
central figure, with neither
sons nor serpents to denote the purpose of the gesture.
Then
a crowd was called to
explain the reason of
such energy of legs and arms, and eyeballs starting
from their sockets.
One
said
"
:
think the gesture
I
some obstacle we cannot see." All " Tis a yawn of sheer fatigue subsiding the rest said the statue is 'Somnolency' clear enough." to repose The problem here is to know the mind of the maker. against
strives
:
;
Now
Browning, unlike Shakespeare, seldom dramatises
for the sake of
the
dramatic action alone.
and
Statue
the
Bust;
The Last Ride Together
He
rather
is
Gold Hair
The The Grammaziaris Funeral;
dramatist of a principle
;
(cf.
Halbert and Hob,
:
etc.),
hold-
ing further that
"
Art's fittest triumph
Lurks
is
show
to
in the heart of evil
that
good
evermore."
In the present instance, the whole interest of the book is
comments
centred in Guido's conversion and the
of every character, and especially the last words of
the Pope, as well as Browning's love,
and
his stated intention to
beyond mere imagery on the suggestion that the record
own philosophy
wall," as
lives,
well as his
"if precious be the
man to man," lead directly to the combined remorse and hope, " Pompilia." soul of
One
said, in his haste, that
meanness But
it is
in
that
it
of
"twice show truth
was
still
cry
of
a sign of
Guido to seek safety from a woman. Guido realised in himself at the last the
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
-
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
J?
power of divine
love, which can only operate in the man, and which is revealed in its most pure and perfect form through woman. For a somewhat
heart of
similar use of the principle of saving love,
Wagner's Der Fliegende Hollander
Der Ring the
first,
compare
Tannhauser and
and Goethe's Faust.
des Nibelungen,
Senta, leaping into the sea at the
In
moment
of
Jew surcease of sorrow. by the body of Elisabeth
shipwreck, achieves for the
Tannhauser sinks
lifeless
with the cry on his
mich
!
"
" Heilige Elisabeth bitte fur
lips,
while the pilgrims sing in chorus,
" Heil Heil Der Gnade Wunderheil " Hoch iiber alle Welt ist Gott !
!
Und
sein
Halleluja
Erbannen !
ist
!
"
and
!
"
Helleluja
In the postlude to Die
kein Spott
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
!
Gotterddmmerung, amid
basses which review the
fall
the
of the ancient rule of
gold and greed, the violins, with ever finer harmonies,
up the melody heard before in the song of prophetical of the redeeming love of Brunhilde, and now actually symbolical, proclaim
take
Sieglinde
that
" the
woman-soul leadeth us upward and on."
In Faust the Chorus Mysticus, in the same manner, sings at the close,
" Alles Vergangliche Ist nurein Gleichniss
Das
;
Unzuliingliche,
Hier wird's Greigniss
;
Das Unbeschreibliche, Hier
ist
es
Gethan
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
yS
Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan."
"
All things transitory
But as symbols are sent
:
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows
The
to
Event
Indescribable,
Here
is
it
done
;
The Woman-Soul leadeth us Upward and on " Bayard Taylor, Translator. !
And compare "
Das Ewig-Weibliche.
Lowell's
must the body starve our souls with shade But when Death makes us what we were before,
Still
;
Then
shall her sunshine all our
And
not a
shadow
depths invade,
stain heaven's crystal floor."
Hate, as Pompilia suggests, was the truth of Guido.
His choice
Energy sought
of
was the beginning
evil
characterised it
with his whole strength.
have been reason "
adoption
his
of
of
hope.
evil.
He
Indifference would
for despair.
you choose to play !â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is my principle, man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will." The Statue and the Bust. If
Let a
In "
m
much
Pecca
the
same
fortiter."
spirit
And
Luther was wont to urge,
the
Pope
finds
the half-hearted ways of the parents
s
much
amiss
— —
—
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
79
Never again elude the choice of tints White shall not neutralise the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so !
:
Life's business
being just the terrible choice."
Ring and
Guido
And
which was true
lived out the
life
was
way
this
life
issue join "
his
— to the goal of
tion of self
showed the
the Bool;, x. 1234-38.
— "you
for him.
his higher nature.
futility
of a loveless
is
Blake's
way of
For the soul cannot reserved at
And
all
this,
"If
become
stating the fact of progression.
rest in
sin.
hazards, or there
it is
The
Faust.
Asser-
life.
the fool would persist in his folly he would wise,"
we
of the virtue
is
worthy of note,
The will must be no human world.
is
the conclusion of
angels sing, concluding,
"
Who
ever
Strives forward with unswerving will
Him There
is
can we aye deliver."
demanded,
severer moral
strife.
however,
merit of his own, rather by grace. soul
is
really
by
Browning,
But the law of the
And Browning's soul of man to man."
progressive.
lives " if precious
be the
ever,
"
It's
wiser being good than bad
It's
safer being
It's fitter
a
Faust was saved by no great
meek than
;
fierce
being sane than mad."
:
record
How-
— BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
SO
In any case,
"
My own The That
hope
a sun
is,
will pierce
thickest cloud earth ever stretched, after Last returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be
fetched,
That what began best can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." Apparent Failure.
§ 2.
— MAN
Whitman's subject the ultimate reality.
is
AND NATURE.
soul, (love,
constitutes the universe
will,)
universe becoming.
meaning. "
How
Only man
is
Nature alone
;
Thought
is
gives to Nature
but a all
its
sacred.
dare you place anything before a man."
By It is
Thought is and reason, and
the soul of man.
The
not the earth that
is
great.
Blue Ontario's Shore.
It
is
man who
is
great.
"
have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise, Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern I
solitary wilds,
No more
the mountains
roam
or sail the stormy sea."
Drum- Taps.
"
"
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. Once only Whitman " Give
me
the splendid silent sun with
dazzling-.
Give
me
turns to greet the sun.
.
.
all
his
beams
full
.
solitude, give
me
Nature, give
Nature, your primal sanities
me
again,
O
!
Drum-Taps.
But
his soul tramples clown at
once what
it
asked
for.
" Keep your splendid silent sun, Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your
fields
fields
Keep
of clover and timothy, and your corn-
and orchards,
the blossoming buck-wheat fields where the ninth-
month bees hum
;
Give me faces and streets People endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, .
pageants,
Manhattan chorus
*
crowds,
*
.
.
*
with
their
musical
turbulent
!
Drum-Taps.
While thus asserting the superiority of
man and
his
works, he yet identifies himself with the whole objective world.
" When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night), saying, He is
mine ; P
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
82
But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous, and unreconciled, Nay, he
mine, alone
is
;
— Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand
And
;
to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands,
Which he
And
will
never release until he reconciles the two,
wholly and joyously blends them." Good-bye,
This sense of the blending of often to remark,
which
poems
Once alone I
alone
in the
—
in
? "
spheres, one has
with a great oak tree
feeling that the qualities
man
exist consciously in
unconsciously
Fancy.
the chief characteristic of Whit-
is
man's philosophy. he questions " Am
all life
my
exist
He
Nature.
—
shall
it
be said
found the law of his
wide rolling western
prairies,
and among
the tumbled rock-piles and turbulent gorges of the
mountains.
In the Canons of Colorado he ponders
" Mine, too, such arrays, Was't charged against art?
.
.
for reasons of their
my
own
:
;
chants they had forgotten
.
But thou that revelest here— spirit that formed
this
scene,
They have remember'd
thee."
From Noon Nature
is
never described for
to Starry Night.
itself.
On
the other
hand Whitman excells all other American writers as a word painter of Nature in its human aspect. A near approach to description is The Man-of-War Bird and Warble for Lilac-Time.
But
wishes the bird his soul, then
t:
in
the
first
case,
what joys were thine
he " !
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
83
In the second case, the summer's sparkling restlessness betokens the need of the soul to be up and away, the blue sky, the grass, the
lilac,
the morning drops of
dew, serving as preludes to the soul's
immersed into
poet-speech
his
wood
Nature he translates
in
tree
he
;
is
Rather
flight.
hidden meaning
its
the voice of the Red-
and of the hermit thrush
and the sea
;
(the
old crone) creeping to his feet whispers her secret.
This quality of quality,
and " I '*
I
is
his
his power.
dilate the spirit similar to the
and
my
religious
a
primarily
thought,
one secret of
His poems
thrill
words of Christ,
Father are one."
too inaugurate a religion, each
is
not for
its
own
sake, I
say the whole earth and
all
the stars in the sky are
for religion's sake."
Starting from It is well to
attend to this
Paumanok.
view of man's place in
Nature as indicating the tendency of democracy to conNature, in America, is cern itself with personality. characterised by
vastness and
sublimity.
The
veller's first impressions, in sailing the fresh rivers
lakes, traversing the plains or passing the
tra-
and
mountains,
and cedar of the North and South, are ever of size and infinite distances. It seems as if plain and mountain, river and forest, had At this moment a sister conspired to oppress man. writes to me from central Iowa " Nothing but endless in entering the forests of pine
:
plain
!
Men seem
so small here beneath the far skies
And the winds areneverstill ally in the
!"
!
Thosewho dwell habitu-
midst of the quiet, mellow, English gardens,
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
84
where Nature has been tamed and domesticated by cenhuman occupation, can never know the tension
turies of
of mind, which often must succumb from very weariness,
who make their homes amid
required of those nesses of the
mind than
God and
New
Perhaps a
World.
the vast-
transcendent
less
the early pilgrim, one less concerned about
the soul, would have been subdued
amid the
" forests primeval."
But they went thither to find a refuge-home, and they conquered the forests for con-
Nature was viewed
science' sake.
aspect, or in reference to the
human
in
ideality that gives to Bryant's nature-songs
wood-notes their peculiar
And
in
must come very near
Walden
it
"
To
at all
must be associated with human
To
rela-
to a personal one."
;
that
affections,
must be
her scenes
is,
such as are
She
associated with one's native place, for instance.
most
insure
"a man's
written that " Nature
is
viewed humanly to be viewed
It is
and Lowell's
artistic quality.
health," wrote Thoreau in his Journal, tion to Nature
religious
its
personality.
is
significant to a lover."
give this
latter
Browning's poem,
By
thought the
compare
illustration,
Fireside.
The
lovers are
alone in the Alpine valley, but the twilight and the
evening star have grown aware.
The
lights
and shades
of evening weave the marriage-spell about them. "
The
forests
We caught
had done for a
it
;
moment
there they stood
;
the powers at play
:
They had mingled us so, for once and good, Their work was done we might go or stay, They relapsed to their ancient mood."
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
xlviii.
"
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
85
such moments of passionate significance that in Nature to portray ; the night of
It is
Browning chose
the lightning storm at Naples, suggesting the flash of
Guido's conversion
Pippa is
;
Passes, a scene
the
moment
of the tempest in
which Mr. Lowell has observed
an untrue description of Nature, but truefor theguilty
lovers
the hour
;
stars, all
when David walked home under the in harmony with his thought.
Nature pulsing
For Browning consciousness finds itself in
is
ultimate.
man, prefiguring or echoing "
Of kinship,
I
confess
Called Nature
:
For many a to,
Nature
his existence.
thrill
with the powers
animate, inanimate,
In parts, or in the whole, there's something there
Manlike that somehow meets the
man
in
me."
Prince H-Schwangau.
Love
is
the law at once of Nature and of man.
" Brute and bird, reptile and the
Ay, and
I
nothing doubt, even
And flower o' the field, To worthily defend the Life from the
Nature
is
are
fly,
tree,
all in
a
shrub, plant
common
pact
trust of trusts,
Ever Living." Ring and
the Book, x., 1076-81.
never described in and for
itself.
" The wise thrush, he sings each song twice""over Lest you should think he never could recapture
The
first fine,
careless rapture
Home
!
Thoughts from Abroad.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
86 This
is
one of the most beautiful touches
literature of nature-poetry.
more than
" I think,"
a description of the bird's song. " the
says Thoreau,
scribing an animal
most
character and spirit."
important requisite in de-
be sure that you give
to
is
in the
manifestly something
It is
its
Browning's birds and beasts are
human, with a heart and
The grand
soul.
lines in
Paracelsus, beginning,
"The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, And the earth changes like a human face " and so
are really the projection of a thought,
else-
where.
That is
entire absorption of
rarely indicated, because
men
in
action
;
Browning
but that this
from which he writes states
Nature by the personality
is
is
the
often shown.
is
dealing with
point of view
As Paracelsus
:
"
Man, once
His presence on
Are henceforth
all lifeless
descried, imprints forever
things
:
the winds
voices, wailing, or a shout,
[cf.
James
Wife,
Lee's
vi.,]
A
querulous mutter, or a quick, gay laugh, Never a senseless gust now man is bom. The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts,
A
secret they assemble to discuss,
When
the sun drops behind their trunks, which glare Like grates of hell the peerless cup afloat :
Of the lake-lily is an urn, some nymph Swims bearing high above her head no bird WhisUes unseen, but through the gaps above :
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. That
let light in
87
upon the gloomy woods,
A
shape peeps from the breezy forest-top, Arch with small puckered mouth and mocking eye. The moon has enterprise, deep quiet droops
With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour, Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn Beneath a warm moon
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;And
this to
fill
like a
happy face
:
us with regard for man." Paracelsus.
The
idea of Nature
cess of evolution.
like all other
is
may be
It
thoughts in pro-
unfair, except for the
sake of contrast, to refer to the pretty descriptiveness
Thomson, Dyer,
of
or
Cowper, though fresh and one emerges from
delightful their sentiments are as
the
elegant,
correct
artificiality
of
preceding
the
"Augustan Age." " At length the Its vistas
finished
opens, and
garden to the view
its
alleys green.
Snatched through the verdant maze the hurried eye Distracted wanders; now the bowery walk Of covert close, where scarce a speck of day Falls on the lengthened gloom, protracted sweeps Now meets the bending sky; the river now, Dimpling along, the breezy-ruffled lake, The forest darkening round, the glittering spire, The ethereal mountain and the distant main." Thomson The Seasons Spring.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
:
There 1
A
is
a vast difference 1 between this pretty high-
truer rendering of
Nature was brought
in
early English landscape painters as Constable,
and Gainsborough.
They painted Nature
as
it
by the Crome,
appeared,
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. soundingncss and Whitman's Song of the Redwood Tree, or Browning's presentment of the evolution of the world.
The whole gain struggle
is
on the side of personality.
is
The
worth turned away from man.
which Childe Harold attains to
The
Byron and Words-
directly at this point.
highest aspiration
to lose himself in
is
the solitudes of Nature.
" There There There
By
a pleasure
is
a rapture on the lonely shore,
is
society,
in the pathless
where none intrudes,
the deep Sea, and music in
love not
I
Man
its
:
Harold,
clxxviii.
school-boy has not declaimed approvingly the
stanza
which follows, which
pitiless
conquest of Nature over man.
emblematic of the
is
" Roll on, thou deep and dark blue
Ten thousand
Man marks The wrecks
all
!
;
the earth with ruin
are
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
Ocean roll sweep over thee in vain
fleets
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; his control
upon the watery plain thy deed, nor doth remain
Stops with the shore
A
roar
the less, but Nature more.'' Cliilde
What
woods,
is
;
shadow of man's ravage, save
hib
own,
human element. "John, my boy," said old Crome, "if your subject is only a pig-sty, dignify it." Turner finally asserts the superiority of man, and paints
but added a
the external world in sonality. art of
(Cf.
its
"Modem
Landscape Painting
a graduate of Oxford.")
relationship to the
human
per-
Painters: their superiority in the to all the Ancient Masters
;
by
—
—
-
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. When,
He
for a
moment,
like a
drop of
rain,
sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd,
uncoffin'd,
For the sake of contrast place beside lines
89
and unknown." this
Whitman's
:
" These shows of the East and West are tame compared to
you
;
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they; These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, :
elements, pain, passion, dissolution."
Birds of Passage. " sense sublime " of the divine
Wordsworth with a element in the world, "
A
motion and a
— spirit that
All thinking things,
And
through
rolls
was yet unable to presence of of man.
"
On "
impels
objects of
all
thought,
all things,''
rise to
God amid
Man
all
Browning's assurance of the the apparent chaos of the
life
gave him only sadness.
The world
is
too
much
with us."
the other hand,
My heart
leaps
up when
I
behold a rainbow
in the sky."
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
90
The
active principle of Wordsworth's poetry
sense of
life
thereof.
He
habitual
sway."
awakens
thoughts too
A
would
deep
flower
is
the
as a part
"
more blows
that
personality to
for
man would
protest against
life
beneath Nature's
live
The meanest
In Nature
press.
and of man's
in Nature,
ex-
find himself.
such as
Wordsworth's view
is
entered by Coleridge in his ode Dejection. "
Though
I
should gaze forever
On that green light that lingers in the west may not hope from outward forms to win
:
I
The
O
passion and the
Lady
And
in
Ours
is
!
we
our
life,
whose fountains are
we
receive but what
life
within.
give,
alone does Nature live
:
her wedding-garment, ours her shroud
!
And would we
aught behold, of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To
the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd,
Ah
A
!
light,
from the soul a glory, a
itself
fair
must
issue forth,
luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth
And from
A
the soul itself must there be sent
sweet and potent voice, of
Of all sweet sounds
the
life
its
own
birth, !"
and element
Of all men in England Richard Jefferies is perhaps most nearly akin to the Americans.
One
recognises in
him
and Thoreau the same mystic religious temperament,
and something of the same attitude towards Nature. The Story of my Heart contains a beautiful record of the boy Jefferies, in the morning of life, climbing the
1
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. in the sweet air, searching for soul-life
hill
He
myself myself." recording his
" I
:
felt
strove to take from Nature
and energy.
beauty, grandeur,
its
9
desire
the
in
Thoreau
parable
quaint
all
similarly,
at the
beginning of Walden of the hound, the bay-horse and the turtle-dove, sought in Nature
its
But
man
their habitual attitude
Nature
x
with a poet's eye,"
and
itself,
as
a
ideal presence.
as related to
Jefferies, while " observing
quite dissimilar.
is
towards
views Nature more as an end in of external
delineator
faithful
life
follows rather the older school of naturalists, such as
His genius was dedicated
Gilbert White of Selborne.
sun and the
the
to
from the
activities
fields with
detachment
entire
From my home near of his life, " I made a "
of men.
London," so runs the story
pilgrimage almost daily to an aspen by a brook.
The
.
.
.
idea of the pilgrimage was to get away from the
and nameless
endless
... By my
existence.
from
it
circumstances daily
He
back to the sun."
everyday
of
pilgrimage
I
escaped
hopes that succeeding
generations will be able to be idle
:
" I
hope that
nine-tenths of their time will be leisure time, that they
may
enjoy their days, and the earth, and the beauty
Thoreau was not a
of this beautiful world." at
all.
Mr.
Salt
He had
once said
He
naturalist. 1<l
interest in
little
naturalist
for itself.
critic
of society, and went into
Who observing the works of Almighty God with a poet's made himwho have made men happier and
eye has enriched the literature of his country and self
As
conversation, he was a super-
in
was a
Nature
a place
wiser."
among
On
those
Jefferies'
tomb
in Salisbury Cathedral.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
92
Walden woods that he might find out whether life was living, and to gain advantage-ground from which
worth
to lecture his neighbours
and " economy," and "
simplicity.
Walden, " tion,
As
I
on " clothes
but to brag
lustily,
if
hours up."
His
thusiasm
for the individual.
is
It is so with
meant
real interest
to
He
interpreter of Nature.
man, who is
spairful
like
freedom and the souls of men. city,
won
among
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not
every-day
mornneigh-
to
Nature"
the end and
is
man
Wordsworth, nor delights for
In the streets of the
the fight
is
fought and
in solitude or in idleness.
Wordsworth "
affairs,
at
His en-
With Whitman he
Carlyle.
of
life
neither indignant at
Shelley, nor sorrowful like
like
my
with men.
The "return
Browning.
him a return
for
only to wake, is
life
an ode to dejec-
to write
as chanticleer in the
standing on his roost,
ing,
a
into
have said," referring to his
do not propose
I
and " shelter"
"
shame them
to
Me
is
the poet of Nature
:
didst thou constitute a priest of thine."
Browning and Whitman are poets of man and democracy
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; are they not also poets of Nature
?
-MAN IN HIS ENTIRETY, Unity, to repeat,
man's philosophy.
body no
less
is
the dominant
He
asserts
than the soul.
factor in
Whit-
the whole man,
the
—
— BROWNING AND WHITMAN. " Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, the Muse,
say the
I
Form complete
is
93
is
worthy
worthier
for
far."
Inscriptions.
Lo
a ship starting over the
!
ing
unbounded
carrying even her
all sails,
moon
" spread-
sea,
sails
;
"
his
it is
book, himself, complete.
The premise
is
that which William Blake stated so
strenuously long ago
— then written
— the unity of matter and come
down
" indecent "
Before reform can
spirit.
Blake asserted in the Marriage of
in the world,
Heaven and Hell, " first the notion that man has a body distinct from the soul is to be expunged." " Man has no Body distinct from the Soul, for that which
is
by the
called
Body is
a portion of the Soul discerned
five senses."
Throughout the Middle Ages the elements, soul and
On
body, were separated in thought and treatment. the
one hand were ascetic monk and
assuming the body, in
its
Stylites in
be noble, and the
soul, in its nature, to
Advised
nature, to be base.
theologian
St.
Simeon
Tennyson's poem,
" Mortify
Your
flesh, like
me, with scourges and with thorns
Smite, shrink not, spare not.
Whole Lents and In
art, also,
nature. vision,
surely
If
it
may
;
be, fast
pray."
upon the human some unsubstantial
a prohibition was laid
Poets chose
as
ideals
some "Undine" evanescent we can go no farther that way.
as
the
On
the
mist
other
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
94 hand
were
and
Minnesinger
trouvere,
impulsive
romancers, heirs of the pre-Christian traditions, rare protesting spirits against the
dogmatism of the Church
and the infidelity wholesome joy in
They have taken calm,
of
art.
and the world,
life
Lippo, the value of fleshly beauty
Now
"
A So
way
fine
this sense, I
ask?
by painting body stop there, must go further
to paint soul
the eye can't
ill,
And
is
asserting, like
:
There were many,
"
worse
can't fare
it
is
!
true, sunk, beast-like, in
sensual throng of Bacchus
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
way too
this
the
is
seen to be
first
to seek to
error.
seems
It
Blake was among the
that
He
reconcile the antagonism.
was never done pro-
testing against the division of the
being, one activity
and another wrong.
labelled right
The chorus
to his
Song of Libert?/ chants " Let the Priest of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note, :
the
curse lives is
God is
sons of joy.
Again he
Holy."
alone the prolific
I
The same
spirit of
Greek sculptures in the I
human
believe
all
For
everything
bodily reverence emerges again
was never
tired of
in the British
contemplating the
Museum.
" I believe
mind and flesh, form and manner of asceticism to be the
being,
that
"
Some will say, Is not answer, God only acts and
beings or men."
He
.
says,
in existing
in Jefferies.
"
?
.
.
soul." vilest
blasphemy."
On
the whole, the tendency of the present centu
7
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. has been to build
the very
which
stones
bodily
those
social
95
upon
structure
mediaeval
speculation
rejected.
With Browning the "value and flesh "
" flesh
is
a barrier to the "
and
makes
writes.
spirit
error
all
willing "
God
a
being, in
as
"
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but
Life
is
a
" Body and For more
;
sense,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the
regards
antagonistic
the
rather,
mesh" hems
"carnal
of
significance
He
phrase.
characteristic
a
all
" " other heights in other lives,
in
it is
mode
no
ascetic
temper that he
of the soul's revelation.
names
soul are one thing with two
or less elaborate stuff."
Bed Cotton Night-Cap Country.
The
only dualism implied in his writings
tion within man's spiritual nature, between
a separa-
is
knowledge
and love, and never between the body and the soul. Only by For by the body the soul attains identity. the false can flesh
we
we know
find
God.
;
;
only through the
man can
only through
All Browning's practical philosophy " Eternity
held in this truth. production of time," always rebukes those
"
the true
can we reach the soul
is
is
in
love with
Browning
Blake's proverb.
who would degrade
is
the
life.
I say, o'er step no least one of the rows That lead men from the bottom where he plants
Foot
first
of
all,
to
life's last
ladder top."
Pari, with Christ. Smart.
The
strong life-pulse
is
a peculiarity of his verse.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
96
may be
fancy, but I seem to understand knowing London. Though "Italy" Queen Mary's saying serves be engraven on his heart, his thought is English and Londonesque. To It
Browning
but a
better,
—
—
nature of Italy
the passionate
joined
is
London was
thought of England. " life's tor Spenser)
for
native source."
first
place for a dramatic poet to be born
nant sense of the city
The keynote some
sort.
" I
Pauline,
every scene
nearly
it
;
;
is
it
active
It
is
(as
the
The domihuman will.
in.
powerful, active
is
London is rapid am made up of an
persistency
lacks
it
of
the
Browning
struggle of
is
might say with
intensest life," yet
mysterious,
complex,
obscure, capricious, paradoxical, a tangle of myriad All these go to make up the structural warp and woof of many of Browning's poems. It is
threads.
needless to say that Browning
is
an uncompromising
realist.
"
He
walked and tapped the pavement with
Scenting the world, looking
it
his cane,
full in face."
Follow Browning across the square in Florence to the booth
at
the palace-step, where he found his Book,
through the ways of the stood at
home
of Pippa from ret
on the
hill
the
to
fountain
the
Silkmills
above Asola,
House near the even
across the bridge,
city,
again at Casa Guidi
old
railing,
:
the
"
he
to Orcana, to the tur-
to the Bishop's Brother's
Duomo — every clothes
till
or retrace the walk
fact
sweetening
is
accurate,
in
the sun,
doorway where the
begins," the steps where poor girls
sit,
black
and even, as
— BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
97
Mr. Hall Griffin informs me, to the echo on the ridge at
Asolo which Luigi
has
its
facts
;
Even Childe Roland
calls forth.
the frame-work a folk-tale,
Carrara, one scene from a tapestry
castle in
its
once walking
;
in
a
blotchy waste at the edge of an English manufacturing there
city,
was
called
mind by some
to
sympathy, the very imagery of the plain,
abandoned
soil,
Kubla Khan
in the air a square,
fact secreted
and
it
this
when
life
hearts beat hard
two centuries since."
been pointed out how the story
manner of
tragic event has
unknown
make
;
the
actors
probably attend the
And
half,
trial,
the
themselves,
judge's decision.
in
:
and from tertium
hear the witness of
lawyers
the
pleading,
about the time required
The Ring and
to read through
revealed to
inquiry from one half of
London, and from the other quid
is
Take a case
real life ?
happened, the details of which are
We
to us.
be said of
poet takes and tosses
yellow book, " pure crude
old,
from man's
the reader in the
A
— could
The
?
brains, high-blooded, ticked
Has
waste
tools, the little spiteful river, the old
horse, the gnarled scrubby tree
Coleridge's
internal
its
the
Book the whole
case becomes plain. It is
no wonder
from the large,
first in
at all that
abounding,
vital,
he
is
read
in 1859, "
he
is
so
"
marching to fortune "In America," wrote Mrs.
wilful,
not surprised by her."
Browning
Browning was welcomed
the great Western world, which
is
a power, a writer, a poet,
—he lives in the hearts of the people."
The
people of America, themselves living in an atmosphere of " character and situation/' have yet lacked literary
—
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
98
Browning for the first time furand a dramatic energy akin to
dramatic expression. nished an activity of its
—
own.
It
will
seems peculiarly appropriate that the
complete edition of
his
works
in the States
pear in a Railway Time-Table. x
Is there
first
should ap-
another poet
whose tunes were born out of the " thump, thump and shriek, shriek of the train "
from Manchester is
to
cf.
us with regard for
fill
which the man must
crowned It
man and Thus
live.
— " Twine amaranth interesting to
is
note,
of the
sacchi,
the
" Bride
o'
position
when he found
means
(that time he
?
priest
the
Lamb,"
to an end,
are I
!
am
—
for the life
all
this
world
in
and the body
priest."
by the way, how Capon-
Church,
realised first
came down
Well
Christmas Eve).
plighted
to
the
the falseness of his
that
life
and death are
and passion uses both.
indeed more than
art. Art is an agency in "If we had real life we should need no wrote Wagner. There is a curious scorn of art
Life
is
personality. art,"
and the artist, otherwise inexplicable, in In a Balcony, One Word More, The Last Hide Together, Cleon, and elsewhere Browning says, "
Little girl with the I
1
poor coarse hand
turned from to a cold clay cast
Reprint of Smith, Eider
&
the Official Guide of the Chicago
monthly ities
Co.'s Edition,
1868, in
and Alton Railroad,
in
from 1872 to 1874. It is one of the curiosof literature. Mr. Browning procured a set for the
British
issues
Museum.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. have
I
my
99
lesson, understand
The worth
of flesh
and blood
at last.
.
.
.
make The poorest coarsest human hand An object worthy to be scanned
Flesh and bone and nerve that
A
whole
life
long for their sole sake."
James
He
"
Saul.
life in
How All
viii.
no scorner of the body who wrote the glad
is
chant of
Lee's Wife,
good is man's life, the mere living how fit employ the heart and the soul and the senses forever !
to
in
joy."
Whitman
breaks, perhaps,
Probably, as
conventions.
examples
more completely with old Mr.
Ellis
for the first time, since the
suggests,
Greek
reintegration of the natural instincts of the entire
The Greek and the Christian meet in poems are as true to life as the Greek
he
ideal, the
man.
him. statue,
His and
added the Christian element of the inner life. But he has not the refinement of the later Greek; he is Gothic, almost barbaric in his health and brawn. For the future of democracy he
there
is
governing
announces a
larger, saner
future of a free " of litheness,
life,
majestic faces, and perfect physique."
Would you have
the broadest culture?
open
air,
The
secret of
poems and persons is to grow and to eat and sleep with the earth.
the making of the best in the
brood of men and women, a
a simple diet, clear sweet blood,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
lOO Health
unity, wholeness, haleness
is
;
disease
is
sepa-
comes by the body. But this naturalism is no longer opposed to Christianity, but in harmony with its highest truths. " Jesus," said Blake, " was all virtue, and acted from All
ration, disintegration.
impulse, not from rules."
impulses of nature, ethical.
God
is
not a
While Whitman
a nature which
is,
trusts the
as
workman who made
it
were,
the world
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
made does not Paley argue vainly ? or man as a potter shapes his pitcher metaphor of the "Potter's Wheel!" God, who
as a watch
is
who formed that
is
it is
the
Love and Power,
rather the inherent principle of
is
life of the man. Whitupon the higher level of our and is as far removed from lust
work, the evolving force, the
man's naturalism
modern
is
social truth,
on the one hand and asceticism on the other as the
He
heavens from the earth. divided
Lust
being.
is
consecrates
the un-
destroyed by the natural
The flesh says not, " Let us eat and we die," but " All good things are helps flesh more now than flesh helps
activity of love.
drink for to-morrow ours, nor soul soul."
The
theology of Carlyle asserted a perpetual sepa-
ration between the
new theology
human and
divine natures.
of democracy man's nature
is
In the
held to be
The body is the temple Holy Ghost. " If any man defile the Temple of God, him shall God destroy," say the Scriptures. Love is the natural activity of the soul. Sin is an essentially akin to the Divine.
of the
interloper, abnormal, arising sanity.
Life
is
from abuse, disease,
homogeneous with
duty.
in-
—
—
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. "
I
IOI
give nothing as duties,
What
others give as duties
Shall
I
give as living impulses,
I
give the heart's action as a duty
?
" x
Birds of Passage.
Observe now the meaning exhibited monologues, that Success in living
is
Browning's
in
whose law is love. obedience, not to duty, which may
life
is
only bring happiness
a progress
but
Bifurcation),
(cf.
natural impulses of one's
own
to
the
nature, which lead to
God.
How the world is made for each of us How all we perceive and know in it
"
Tends
By "
some moment's product
to
When
a soul declares
its fruit,
the thing
it
!
thus,
— to wit,
itself
does
.
!
.
.
am named and known by that moment's There took my station and degree So grew my own small life complete, As Nature obtained her best of me I
feat
;
One born
to love you,
sweet
!
.
.
.
1 Sidney Lanier, in the name of art and artists (evidently impelled by his " taste " and not by his philosophy),
utters
a fervent protest
" against a poetry
which has body, and which shouts a
painted a great scrawling picture of the
human
has written under
;
it,
'
This
is
the soul'
profession of religion in every line, but of a religion that,
when examined,
man must be
reveals no tenet, no rubric, save that a
must abandon himself to every and which constantly roars its belief in God, but with a camerado air as if it were patting the Deity on the back, and bidding Him, Cheer up, and hope for further passion
natural,
;
encouragement."
English Novel,
p. 62.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
102
" So earth has gained by one man the more, And the gain of earth must be heaven's gain
By The tendency which makes In other words, love
selves.
duty "
may
too."
the Fireside.
for righteousness is our-
the claim of the soul,
is
be only the requirement of the world.
God
never is dishonoured in the spark gave us from His fire of fires, and bade Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid
He
While that burns
on,
though
Browning does not deny the which he sings includes and "
the rest grow dark."
all
Any
Wife flesh
to
any Husband.
because the love
exalts the flesh.
Where is the use of the lips' red charm, The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, And the blood that blues the inside arm
" Unless
The
we
knows how, end divine ? " The Statue and the Bust.
turn, as the soul
earthly gift to an
Browning speaks Ben Ezra.
quite in
own name
his
in
Rabbi
" Let us not always say, '
I
Spite of this flesh to-day
made head, gained ground upon As the bird wings and sings,
strove,
Let us cry
Are
'
All
' !
''
' !
good things
ours, nor soul helps flesh
helps soul
the whole
more, now, than
flesh
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. By reason the
of The Statue
Browning's
Fair,
and
name
the
103
Bust and Fifine at
has been joined
with
Shelley and Byron as confusing distinctions of moral right is
and wrong.
It
may be
so,
and
that conventional morality
well
But
turbed.
in the
ing, consisted in the
"
poem
former
it
may be
that
sometimes
is
the
absence of valour,
sin, for
it
dis-
Brown-
in the failure to
He who
desires and acts not breeds way of putting it. The latter poem is an attempt to find room in an optimistic " Not philosophy for the lowest of God's creatures. till the sun excludes you do I exclude you."
put forth
will.
pestilence,"
is
Blake's
§ 4.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; LIFE
AND IMMORTALITY.
Browning and Whitman ment as to the meaning of one may be given
in the
" This world's no
Nor blank "
;
it
are in substantial agreelife.
The thought
of the
words of the other.
blot for us,
means
intensely,
Law must be active
and means good."
in earth or
They have not been vanquished,
nowhere." like
Carlyle
Byron, by the problems of man's destiny.
Life
and
is
for
the individual an episode in the history of an immortal being.
It is the
for identity,
period of probation or opportunity
character
building,
with reference to eternity. are, for
and
self-realisation
The present and
them, thoughts inseparably blended.
the future
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
104 "
know the past was great, and the future will be great, I know that both curiously conjoint in the present
I
And
time,
And
that
where
centre of
And
there
is
of races
I
am
or you are this present
days,
all
all
day
is
the
races,
the meaning to us of all that has ever come and days, or ever will come."
Birds of Passage.
present proves the soul worthy, and
The
work moulding the soul
are at
all
things
into finer form for pur-
poses beyond. " It
not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother
is
and
father,
it
is
to identify you."
Proud Music of the Storm. " And
have dream'd that the purport and essence of the
I
known Is to
life,
the transient,
form and decide identity
for the
unknown
life,
the
permanent." Proud, Music of the Storm. "
I
count
To
life
just a stuff
try the soul's strength on,
educe the man." In a Balcony.
"
Machinery
To
just
meant
give the soul
its
bent,
Try thee and turn thee
forth, sufficiently impressed."
Rabbi Ben Ezra. "
What
good,
O
life ?
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
That you are here that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
By
the
Roadside.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
105
As a condition of probatory education, stress is laid upon the presence of what we call evil in the world. "
I
make
the
poem
of evil also,
I
commemorate
that part
also."
good
Evil blends with
education of a is
in a
manner proportioned to the and religious being, who
free, rational,
kin to God, and intended to yield "
gress requires failure.
We
gression," said Blake.
world and
Pro-
praise.
no pro-
is
are beginning to believe
"Death came
by which
that the "Fall,"
Him
Without contraries
into the
our woe," was a necessary step in the
all
evolution of the moral nature of the race
advance out of
evil consists in
;
that the
the elimination of the
lower elements of nature, that evil can be but transient, a chastisement of the Father, a stepping-stone, as
good continues and one of the
is
This philosophic insight
There
ness of temper
of
;
is
the secret of the poets'
an optimism which
there
life,
to see the good. streets of
is
There
fault-finding. ills
;
earth's words."
optimism.
see the
it
means to an end only the Why, " amelioration is eternal.
were, to our higher selves, a
is
is
is
mere sunniis mere
a pessimism which
an optimism which refuses to
as there
is
a pessimism which refuses
Carlyle took
London, propounding
Emerson through the at every step
if
this or
that were evil, but Emerson's eyes were blind, refusing to
acknowledge what the other saw.
mism was
far
Carlyle's pessi-
deeper than Emerson's optimism
;
it
recognised the good and the evil of the world, though failing to correlate.
Of
this
same deeper nature
is
the
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
106
After coming in and mistakes of life,
optimism of Browning and Whitman. with the misery
direct contact
never blind to the actual results of that
good
and
universal.
It
the heart of
is
all
for
;
evil,
God
love, eternal
a restatement of the Scriptural hope, that
is
things are working together for good. directly from
the
they yet hold
is
German
many
asserted by
all
more
the optimistic philosophy set forth by
idealists.
The thought was
by Blake, and,
literature
It arises
in this century,
recognised in
has been
re-
of our most profound thinkers, by
Browning and Whitman, by Kingsley, by Roden Noel in
A Modem
Faust, 1 by none so pertinently as by
George Macdonald. not do, by the way, to ignore the contribution
It will
of the poets and secular writers to current theologic
We
thought. literature
ideas in
of a
deemed
often
is
how
the higher
pervaded by religious
way the eighteenth century would have and from which its fine wits would
impossible,
have turned with
had a message
much
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he
the most significant. lies at
disdain.
to deliver
Browning's message
which
of seeing
fail
century
this
He
is
too set
no is
That the poets have failure of their art.
a prophet
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
is
of
all
himself at the problem
the basis of religious philosophy.
His
solution that
" is
We
fall to rise,
are baffled to fight better,"
a justification of the ways of 1
God
to
men,
"It may be the All draweth breath From good and evil, life and death.
;;
in
com-
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
107
parison with which such a solution as that of Milton
seems superficial. For us a new gladness has been given, a gladness deeper than Emerson's, not shared by Byron or in Paradise Lost
by Matthew Arnold, and but hardly "There's a great attained by the Poet Laureate. not
Carlyle,
between him and me," said Carlyle of
difference
"
Browning. takes
much
He
seems very content with
satisfaction
in
the world.
and curious spectacle
strange
to
these days so confidently cheerful."
life,
man
behold a It is
and
a very
It's
in
a confidently
cheerful voice that these days most need, an afifirmer,
without doubt, without despair, without suggestion of cynicism.
Democracy necessary, that
a hope, a promise that
is
that
conditions
social
cannot and
poverty, disease, crime,
For " God's
endure.
in
evil is
not
may be remedied,
His heaven," and
shall t:
all's
not right
with the world."
In the Song of the Open Road, Passage Pioneers, essential
Man
is
One
is
good and
no
idle,
evil.
necessary spectator
Morality
is
energy of
Whitman's
doubt, defiance, revolt.
Spiritual
is
is
for
man's own
winning.
fought for liberty and the souls of men. struggle
India,
side of the square Deific, in
mystical song,
attainment
He
a war.
in the strife of life.
to
and often elsewhere, Whitman shows the two conditions of the earth-life, battle and progress.
we gather a "
My
Wars are Out of every
spiritual fruit.
book and the war are one."
——
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
IOS "I,
too,
haughty Shade, also sing war, and a longer and
greater one than any, in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering,
Waged
(Yet methinks, certain, or as good as certain, at the the
last,)
the world,
and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, am come, chanting the chant of battles above all, promote brave soldiers."
For
Lo I,
field,
life I,
!
too,
Inscriptions.
" Through untried roads with ambushed opponents
Through many a sharp defeat and many a
lined,
crisis often
baffled
Here marching", ever marching
war
on, a
fight out
aye, here,
To
fiercer,
weightier battles give expression."
Drum-Tapis.
"
am
he who tauntingly compels men and women, nationsCrying, Leap from your seats and contend for your I
lives."
Song of '•'
Swift to the
head of the Army
places, Pioneers
!
O
Swift
!
the
Open Road. Spring to your
!
Pioneers." Pioneers.
Man "
is
a progress.
Sail forth, steer for the
Reckless,
O
with me,
soul,
deeo waters only,
exploring,
I
with
thee and thou
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
IOQ
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we
and
will risk the ship, ourselves,
all."
Passage to India.
He
The universe is The road opens in never-
must out on the open road.
a road for travelling souls.
ending
To
" stretches
vista,
There
passes on.
be idle
is
no
is
and waits for you," and There is no rest.
tarrying.
to cease to live.
" Through the
through defeat, moving yet and
battle,
never stopping." Pioneers.
Apparent
failure
may be
" Have you heard that I
also say
it is
good
it
in truth success.
was good
to gain the
day
?j
to fall."
Sony of Myself.
The road
is
"none
endless, brings
terminus, or to be content or
There
that
it
is
final.
Thought
is
her
earth the
What have we
broken arcs," said Browning. with creeds or formula?
to his or
"On
full."
to
do
nothing so fixed
ever constructive and
is
ever takes vista.
"What
has
succeeded?
Nature ? Now understand
me
of things that
well
Yourself?
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
it
is
from any
matter what shall
come
provided
in
the essence
no something to make
fruition
forth
Your nation?
of success
a greater struggle necessary."
Sony of the Open Road.
!
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
110 There
no stoppage
is
of
side
this
the
Infinite.
Whitman
dedicates his songs, his thoughts, himself " In heaven for completion to the Invisible World. the perfect round," agrees Browning.
" Reckoning ahead,
The
seas
O
soul,
all cross'd,
when
thou, the time achieved
weather'd the capes, the voyage
done, Surrounded, copest, frontest
God,
the
yieldest,
aim
attain'd,
All
fill'd
with
friendship,
love complete,
the Elder
Brother found,
The Younger
melts in fondness in his arms."
Passage It will
be unnecessary to consider
ing's statement of the thought.
of
all
his works.
Towards the
Brownand parcel Browning sought at length
It is
last,
,
to India.
part
to establish a dualism within the spiritual nature of
man, separation between knowledge and unknowable, the other knowable
Ezra and The Ring and
the
regarded as undivided in last
"
words ring clear
No
at
noon
its
;
love, the
but in Rabbi
Book the human
one
Ben
spirit
progressive activity.
is
His
:
clay in the bustle of
man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, Strive and thrive !' cry 'Speed !' fight on, fare ever There as here."
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
'
Asolando.
Both
scientific
and
religious
doctrines, as well as
poetic, underlie this conception of
life.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
I
T
T
" In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within
central heart,
its
Nestles the seed perfection."
Song of the Universal.
Nature outside of man
is
complete
;
with
man
begins
a tendency to God, progress being man's distinctive
mark
alone,
" Not God's and not
Man
partly
is
the beasts,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; God
is,
they are,
and wholly hopes to be." Death in the
Desert.
With imperfect though growing knowledge, and with freedom of choice and consciousness of final ach eve:
ment,
men
battle
is effort,
set
man
and the tendency
forward in the
I,
strife
;
of
of the
working
its
effort
Each must achieve
ence lowers.
" Not
The law
strive for self-realisation.
raises,
to
is
depend-
for himself.
not anyone else can travel that road for you,
You must
travel
it
for yourself."
Song of Myself.
The
struggle
is
personal and
alone.
"
When
the
fight begins within himself a man's worth something."
"
Thus we
half
men
struggle."
Browning and Whitman are men of will, men of action, such as Blake would class among the demons of his " Hell," radiating infinite energy and joy. contrast
is
very truth).
democracy,
need
;
The
again with Wordsworth (a "lost leader" in
When it is
for rest
the time
comes
for the strife of
the conception of the former that
and recovery from the strong
we
diastole
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
112 of
we may,
life
perhaps, wish to turn to Wordsworth
ourselves,
lose
to
the
for
moment,
the quiet of
in
Nature.
The meaning
of
life
is
constructed, as has been
To
already indicated, with reference to immortality. this
thought
both poets ascend
finally
here they cul-
;
minate.
"Thus
believe, thus
I
I
affirm, that
I
am
certain
it
is,
and that from this life I shall pass to another better where that lady lives of whom my soul was enamoured."
And
this,
democracy
and
;
1
by the way,
is
the supreme thought in
for the soul
is
seen at length to prevail
govern absolutely.
to
Browning, resting in the fundamental
and consciousness
La
(cf.
statement of his
in the
intelligible
growth
— why
motive
?
why
evil ?
character
?
?
considered as a probation.
Only by a future harmony.
And I
say
A
be
other 'tis
life
must
love
Spiritual
?
failure ?
?
— only
when
force persists.
tell
life
to
come
!
Festus that)
awaits us not
— for me
a poor cheat, a stupid bungle,
wretched failure
Against
God
can the universe become a
life
all (I
of
is
aspiration
why
" Truly there needs another If this
facts
more intellectual plea than Whitman. Life is Saisiaz),
it
— and
I
;
I
hurl
one protest back with scorn."
for it
Paracelsus. 1
A
note from Dante written by Browning in his wife's
Testament.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. Browning believes
demands
Mrs. Orr,
with
Hope imposes plea
immortality because of the
in
On
of reason.
that
we may agree
the other hand,
"his
challenge
and
Faith
to
through any intellectual
itself far less
which he may
113
advance
in
his
support than
through the unconscious testimony of genius to the marvel of conscious
creative
all
life."
and truer to simply process) not a and his art (which is intellectual though the same affirms, without argument, Whitman, confident
in his inspiration
a result
appeal
"
I
is
present.
do not think
Life provides for all
Space, but
and
for
Time and
believe heavenly death provides for
I
all."
Songs of Parting.
"
Is
it
a dream
?
Nay, but the lack of
And And
failing all
it,
life's
the world a
it
the dream,
and wealth a dream, dream "
lore
!
Birds of Passage.
" The untold want by
Now, voyager,
sail
life
and land
ne'er granted,
thou forth to seek and
find."
Songs of Parting. "
It is
not chaos or death eternal
life
—
it is
—
it
is
form, union, plan
—
it
is
Happiness.'' So)ig of Myself.
However, by Nature.
for
Whitman, the
final
assurance
is
given
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
114
" Ah, the dead They fit very
to
me mar
not, they
fit
well in Nature,
well in the landscape under the trees
and
grass,
And
along the edge of the sky
the horizon's far
in
margin."
Autumn " The smallest sprout shows there
is
really
Rivulets.
no death."
Song of Myself. It is the sea, that, creeping to his feet, whispers the word, " final, superior to all " ; the grey brown thrush
cedar
in the
prairie life
swamp
dog
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
cat,
The
pulsations
to the
" dark
the chickadee, the
animals, he sees the
all
and death.
spirit
welcome
carols a
In the moose, the
mother."
same old law of all matter and
of
throbbing forever prove that
" Death
but the beginning, and that nothing
is
be
lost,
nor ever
die,
is
or can
nor soul nor matter."
Specimen Days.
For
if
one
life
be continuous,
all
life
must be con.
tinuous.
"
I
swear
I
think
now
that everything without exception
has an eternal soul
The
!
ground
trees have, rooted in the
the sea have
!
!
the weeds of
"
the animals
!
Proud Music of the Storm. " And
limitless are leaves, stiff or
And brown
ants in the
little
drooping
in the fields,
wells beneath them."
Song of Myself.
"
:
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. To
both poets old age
larges itself
1 1
5
but the estuary that en-
is
and opens broadly
into the great sea.
" Old age, calm, expanded, broad, with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing
free with the delicious near-by
freedom
of death."
Song of
" Grow old along with
The The
best
me
the
Open Road.
!
yet to be,
is
which the first was made in His hand saith A whole I planned,
last of life, for
:
Our times are
Who
'
Youth shows but half afraid
;
trust
God
see
:
all,
nor be
' !
Rabbi Ben Ezra.
Whitman
will
sing the very loveliness of death
:
death was never sung so tenderly and joyously as in his
two
finest lyrics,
Hymn, and " Thee,
Out of the Cradle and Lincoln's Burial sweet farewell song
in his last
holiest minister of
guide at last of
Heaven
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; thee, envoy, usherer,
all,
Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call'd
life,
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death." Death's Valley.
Hitherto death has been for the most part a sombre figure in literature, charactered throughout the
Ages
as a grim musician, leading all
dance, the dance Macaber. fellow's gallery.
Middle
men upon
his
Prince Henry, in Long-
Golden Legend, shudders
at the paintings in the
—
"
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
Il6 Prince
Henry
:
— " Let us go forward, and no longer stay In this great picture-gallery of
hate
I
Elsie
:— "
Why
Prince Henry
:
it
ay, the very
!
hateful to
is it
you
Death
thought of
it
!
!
?"
— " For the reason That
life,
and
that speaks of
all
life, is
lovely
And
Death, and
Death,
is
speaks of
that
all
hateful.'
5
So might have answered the poets of many former For the men of the age of Elizabeth, the grave was a vast charnel-house which could not be generations.
contemplated without a shudder and a
own
Earthly Paradise, has done its
thought, which chills
rises
In our
fear.
century, William Morris, like the mariners of his in his
all
all
may
only to the hope that good
For Whitman there
off to all.
no "other"
life.
power
he enjoys. fall
to escape
Tennyson at last far
no death, there
is
is
In the midst of the valley he sees
God's beautiful, eternal, right hand. to his shipmate, "
"
Joy
!
"
he
calls
"
Joy There are the same !
joyful
tones in
Browning's
thoughts on death. " Easter
Day
breaks, Christ rises,
Mercy every way
is
infinite.''
Very
characteristic
ing with join
is
the song at the end of parley-
Gerard de Lairesse.
hands with a young
The
lover, singing,
old poet could
"
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. " Daisies
On
the
Dance you,
"Love The
is all,"
and
reds,
and yellows
whites,
he concludes, "and death
satisfied that
17
heart's bed-fellows
spares and sunshine mellows
character of the future
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they are "
my
and grass be
mound wind
1
it is
know it not, O soul, Nor dost thou, all is a blank
life
;
!"
nought."
is
they cannot
know
something good.
I
before u
All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible
land."
Whispers of Heavenly Death. "
They go
they go where they go,
But
I
!
know
!
know that
I
that they
they go, but
go toward the best
I
know
not
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; toward some-
thing great." So)ig of the
Open Road.
In This Compost, and in one passage in Song of Myself,
Whitman
suggests an immortality of the dust
he bequeaths himself and,
if
you were
mortality, he
grass "
to
grow from the grass he
to protest that the earth
would question with the
is
child,
loves,
a poor im-
"What
is
?
How
could I answer the child any more than he."
?
I
do not know what
it
is
Song of Myself
But
in
the end he asserts for the spirit a separate
existence. It is
pathetic to see, once or twice,
how
the poets'
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
Il8
Amid
faith falters.
the sorrows of the world, oppres-
and shame, "the meanness and agony without end," it is not to be wondered at that there comes to Whitman the terrible doubt of appearances, that sions,
"The may-be
reliance
and hope are but speculations
after
all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave
is
a beautiful
fable only."
Calamus.
Even there
in the
Browning "
Prayer of Columbus
strong, beautiful
a pathetic
is
Doubt comes
questioning.
to
also in the midst of triumph.
Sudden turns the blood
to ice
All the late enchantment
!
:
a
chill
What
Epilogue
wind disencharms be error."
if all
Ferishtdhs Fancies.
:
But both return from the doubt with a surer In the dialogue between
the present.
faith in
Fancy and
Reason, Browning pleads that uncertainty as to the soul's future
struggles
is
upon
needful
lest
"You must mix some With
the soul, abandoning
After
earth, fail of its probation.
faith if
its
all,
uncertainty
you would have
faith be."
Faster Bay.
God,
whom
I
praise
;
how
could
I
praise,
might understand, Make out and reckon on his ways,
If such as I
And
bargain for his love, and stand,
Paying a
price, at his right
hand
" ?
Agricola in Meditation.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. Whitman's doubts are solved his lovers' hands, "
I
at
I
T9
once by the grasp of
by companionship with dear
friends.
cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of identity
But
He
beyond the grave,
walk or
I
ahold of
5.
§
sit
indifferent,
my hand
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; LOVE
I
am
satisfied,
has completely satisfied me." Calamus.
OR THE SOCIAL SIDE OF
LIFE.
(ARTISTIC METHOD.)
The tion
last line
quoted leads directly
of Whitman's
to the considera-
second great thought on
While singing One's-self he
Life.
the word
democratic, ministering at once to the individual and to society, to the self and to the love which annihilates mere selfishness. In a complete world society is as necessary as the individual.
a potentiality.
utters
By himself
the one
is
but
In community, in action and inter-
action, the individual
becomes
real
and
progressive.
But given a number of self-governing people, how can a nationality be compacted ? " Were you looking to be held together by lawyers ? Or by an agreement on a paper ? Or by arms ? Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.' Drum-Taps.
How men
but by a spiritual together
relaxed.
The
principle,
is
in
principle which
proportion as
will
draw
external bonds are
recognition of love, as such a unifying
comparatively modern, and the complete
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
120 history of fessor
its
Henry
working has yet to be written.
has finely said
seems
"
:
Love, which
in
Pro-
theme of
Jones, treating of the
its
love,
earliest form,
to be the natural yearning of brute for brute,
appearing
and
disappearing at
physical needs,
passes
into
the
suggestion
of
an idealised sentiment,
into an emotion of the soul, into a principle of moral activity,
which manifests
in a
itself
man.
flow of helpful deeds for
It
permanent overrepresents,
when
one side, at least, of the expansion
thus sublimated,
of the self luhich culminates when the ivorld beats in
and the joys and sorrows, of mankind are felt by him
the pulse of the individual,
the defeats
and
as his own.
victories
It is
no longer dependent merely on the
incitement of youth, grace, beauty, whether of body or character age, in
and
all
;
it
transcends
finds objects
that
God
all
limitations of sex
on which
it
can spend
and
itself
has made, even in that which has
own law of
life and become mean and becomes a love of fallen humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming the conscious and permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolution of love has been written by the poets. Every phase through which this ever-deepening emotion has passed, every form which this primary
violated
its
pitiful.
It
power has taken in its growth, has received from them its own proper expression. They have made even the grosser instincts
lyric
with beauty
;
and,
ascending with their theme, they have sung the pure passion of soul for soul, its
idealism and heroism,
charm and its up to the point
its
strength, at which,
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. in Browning,
it
sheds
ence,
all
transcends the limits of
of religious
surrender to God."
As
exist-
1
a spiritual principle love has never been sung with
With Whitman
such poetic insight as by Browning. love
finite
and becomes a aspiration and self-
earthly vesture,
its
principle
spiritual
121
less
is
principle than
a
he allowableâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and
tinction
much from
not so
a practice his
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
if
the dis-
confidence
springs
from
his philosophy as
vation that love has lain latent in
all
his obser-
men, therefore
beneath metaphysics, beneath Socrates as beneath
His songs are of personal love between com-
Christ.
compact-
rades, with the intent, however, of national
He
ment.
calls
and penetrating
to
human brotherhood
with clear
voice, saying with Christ in Palestine,
" All ye are brethren."
Like Christ he
personal, emotional force, probably the
is
a direct,
strongest in
this century.
" Publish
my name
and hang up
my
picture as that of
the tenderest lover,
Who
was not proud of his songs but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour"d it
forth."
Calamus.
The
critical
period of Whitman's
War, during which he served
war purified a mother
From 1
his nature,
and
filled his
life
in the
was the Ci\il
hospitals.
The
rendered him sympathetic as
mind with emotive thought. and
the war emerging, he sings of comradeship
Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher,
p. 15S-9.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
122
He
democracy. ing
popular
of
understands
not
is
it,
as to the
Democracy,
government.
He
stitutions.
now
has no doubt
wholly a
question
would agree with Carlyle
Liberty
part
not
is
in
derived
House
"
a
from
a
Institutions are extraneous, the
he
of
in-
that
men
vote and one
are not free because possessed of a
ten-thousandth
meanas
of
State
Palaver." legislature.
mere clothing of the
body, and clothing, as Mr. Clemens suggests in his
study of King Arthur's Court,
become rags, to
"
ragged.
To be
may wear
worship rags, to die for rags
of unreason,
it
is
pure animal
archy, was invented by
and
out
loyal to rags, to shout for
it
;
monarchy
;
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that
is
a loyalty
to monmonarchy keep
belongs let
it."
" But really I am neither for nor against institutions. Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every
and sea-boaid, and woods, and above every
city
of these States, inland
And
in the fields little
Without
The
keel,
or large, that dents the water, edifices, or rules, or
any argument,
institution of the dear love of comrades."
Calamus.
Upon no reared.
other basis than love can democracy be
Selfishness
"And whoever to his
is
separation, death,
and decay.
walks a furlong without sympathy, walks
own
funeral drest in his shroud."
Song of Myself.
In the evolution of nations, as of individuals, only May we not fittest, the most helpful survives.
the
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
:
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
23
English race occupies the forefront of
say that the civilisation
1
because taking most heed of the law of
Brotherhood becomes
brotherhood.
leally a question
of national survival. "
Be not
dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problems
of freedom yet."
Drum-Taps. "
I will
make
inseparable cities with their arms about
each other's necks,
By By
the love of comrades,
the manly love of comrades."
Calamus. "
I
dream'd
in
a dream
I
saw a
city invincible to the
attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I
dream'd that was the new
city of Friends."
Calamus.
A
beautiful vision, as true as beautiful,
the world will not willingly
The emotional
key to Whitman's artistic on the side of love. Caring the wounded soldiers in war time, he bore deep in breast "a burning flame." Afterwards he could
method. for his
and one which
let die.
If
he
is
the
err, it is
write,
" Beauty, knowledge inure not or three things inure to
to
me â&#x20AC;&#x201D; yet
there are two
me
have nourished the wounded and soothed many a dying soldier, And at intervals, waiting in the midst of camp, comI
posed these songs."
Drum- Taps. Whitman's method,
let
me
repeat,
is
not derived
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
124
from formal
but from
art,
life
itself.
It
may be
novel thing in literary criticism to scrutinise a
war
the genesis of poetic forms, but
for
demands novelty of view
a
civil
Whitman
or he will not be understood.
" Arm'd year [1861], year of the struggle,
No
dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year,
Not you
as
some
pale poetling seated at a desk lisping
cadenzas piano,
But as a strong man
To "
I
clothed in blue clothes,
erect,
advancing, carrying a
rifle
on your shoulder." Drum-Taps.
a certain civilian he answered,
have been born of the same as the war was born. lull yourself with what you can understand, and .
.
.
And go
with piano tunes,
For
I
lull
nobody, and you
will
never understand me."
Drum-Taps. Till the war,
he was seeking the law of his poems.
His best work, more pure, refined, was subsequent
With respect
to literature,
Whitman
is
to
it.
related in
so directly to Browning as to Richard Wagner, with whom, however, both poets have often
method not
the closest affinity. that
Let
such relationship
it
is
not be thought strange
attitude of the northern Teutonic
same under whatever
Wagner and Browning of an old culture
unconscious
artist
skies
The habitual mind is much the
possible.
or whatever conditions.
more conscious products and civilisation. Whitman is a more are
of not altogether dissimilar thought-
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. tendencies in a freer world.
what we understand
to
It will
25
1
be well to indicate
be Wagner's
place in the
While a legitimate successor of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, in that he has
republic of
extended
art.
province
the
of
Wagner
music,
related rather
— taking into account difference
and conditions
—
the
to
yet
is
He
primarily a poet, only secondarily a musician.
is
of time
Greek tragedy-writers who
were not only writers of plays, but also composers of the music and lyric rhythms which were an essential
And,
accompaniment.
who
of
as with the plays of ^Eschylus,
the Greeks best observed the function of
all
poet-composer, the
final
appeal
Wagner has himself
literature.
to the student of
is
indicated that this
is
the point of view from which he wished his works to
"
be contemplated.
my
works,
so, I at least
what
I
call
I
most
offer
I write
no more operas," he said
can invent no arbitrary name
in 1851, ''and as I
them dramas, because by
my
clearly define the standpoint
must be accepted."
It
for
doing
whence
seems a
little
strange that to this day the majority of his critics
Even House at Govent Garden announced Niblung cycle among its "German Opera," and judging him as a musical performer.
persist in
the Royal Opera the
literary journals
have discussed their performance
But Wagner
the columns devoted to music.
much more writings
than
a
musician,
and published
letters
wisdom, gathered by the truest subjects
—
art,
his
in
so
numerous prose
are
so replete
insight,
philosophy, religion, politics
subjects of world-wide significance
is
—
that
with
—
all
many human
it
is
folly to
up'on
:
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
126 neglect the
wish to
you
more comprehensive view. " Now if you paper," Wagner wrote to Uhlig, "I beg
start a
to get rid of all that smells of
'
musical paper
'
always conceive the undertaking from a general standpoint, art and life and truly, according to their core and essence, not according to their husk." Now Wagner is first and foremost a dramatist, and deals in his artistic works with thought, and character, and situation. It will be remembered that his first ambition was to be a poet. As a school-boy he worked ;
upon a
for years
and Lear,
And
to
in
tragedy,
which
more
terrible
than Hamlet
his forty-two characters perished.
supply a musical setting to his drama, he
began the study of music, borrowing Lozier's Thoroughbass
Method
for his purpose.
poetry was written
first.
And
the thought conveyed by his
In
all
it
will
music
his
dramas the
be found that is
not
poetic,
strictly musical.
The thought-soul of a sonata is musical own laws, and own manner and medium of
When Mendelssohn
;
has
it
was asked what was the meaning
of his Songs without Words, he replied that they
what they
said.
its
expression.
Musical thought
is
meant
untranslatable
:
it
appeals directly to the emotional nature and to the imagination.
Wagner's compositions are not
embedded history,
pose,
a philosophy of
almost a theology.
and
life,
so.
In his art are
an interpretation of
Every drama has
its
pur-
contains, even in the structure of the musical
phrases, a criticism of his art that, starting
life.
And
from ideal
it
truth,
is
the triumph of
he has succeeded
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. in giving
who
To
are those of Shakespeare. it is
and
are as clearly
27
in the action
such truth concrete expression
of characters
1
skilfully
drawn as though
his philosophy,
never obtrusive, and to the characters
who
are
its
mouthpieces, the song and orchestral accompaniments
and explanatory. The instrumentation becomes very near articulation. Wagner has simply
are subsidiary
constructed a language of musical sounds which, with the word-sounds, body forth the emotional
element which
music
is
is
below
all
and
rational
language whatsoever.
speech, not merely song.
His
In a few instances
the orchestra assumes the function of an actor, as in
Death-March, where the orchestral harmonies make an independent proclamation of heroic grief (with all the joyful notes, by the way, of WhitSiegfried's
man's songs of Death) in a manner impossible to any
The
other instrument in the drama.
has a prophetical function, as when, in
Wotan
tarries a
bridge, there
long
after,
is
is
moment
in
orchestra again
Das
Rheingold,
thought upon the rainbow-
heard the prophecy of the sword which,
hand of
destined, in the
Siegfried, to
power and restore a divided world. In no case, however, is the music absolute, but always Someone at my subsidiary to dramatic harmony.
shatter the spear of
elbow suggests that Schumann ing than Wagner.
is
more akin
to
Brown-
But the suggestion contains the
confusion of identifying music and poetry, which
have tried to avoid.
It is idle to
seek to
dramas conform to the laws of a music were never intended to conform. the comparison with
Whitman
I
make Wagner's to
which they
The whole
force of
upon the
distinc-
relies
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
128 tion.
You may
— that
is
think Wagner's system to be in error
another matter.
With the thought-content of Wagner's dramas, we have not here to do. juxtaposition of the
Whitman, from a
I
"
I
as a justification of the
cannot forbear quoting a single passage
Wagner
letter of
Teutonic principle of three
But
names of Wagner, Browning, and to Uhlig,
which
illustrates the
common
liberty held in
by the
:
will
be happy, and a man can only be that if he is but that man is free who is what he can,
free
and,
;
must
therefore,
Whoever,
be.
therefore,
satisfies the inner necessity of his being, is free
because he
feels
;
himself one with himself, because
everything which he does answers to his nature, to his
Whoever follows a
true needs.
from within, but from without, pulsion;
he
The
man
if
free
necessity, not
subject to com-
not free, but an unfortunate slave.
is
laughs at oppression from without,
only inner necessity be not sacrificed to
can only cause
fly stings,
what, according to
So shall me."
I
my
nature,
be right even
if
it
;
not heart wounds.
don't care what happens to me,
a
is
no
if
only
ought
I
I
to
it
I
become become.
idler take notice of Letters. 1
In the manner of expression we are confronted by new problem, and the three artists are alike in this,
also a peculiarly Teutonic
trait,
accepted conventions of form
in
departure from
— " sow song sedition."
In Die Meister•singer von Nilrnberg there 1
Translated by Hueffler.
is
a sug-
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
29
symbolism of the antagonism between the
gestive
formalism of art and
freedom, the reconciliation of
its
Wagner, Whitman, and
which
1
said to have striven
may be
Browning
The
for.
creative principle
is
associated in the play with the enthusiasm of love,
who unmindful
with the poet-knight Walter,
pedantic code which governed
of the
composition of
the
master-songs, gives free expression, joyful, birdlike, to
the native poetic impulses of his heart
The
thereby of the prize.
;
regulative
but he
fails
principle
is
associated with age and moderation, with the guild
who
thinks songs can be made as shoes on a last, with Beckmesser who " marks " and sings by rule, who is
also "
outdone and outsung."
cobbler and poet ing,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Richard
Finally,
Wagner
Whitman, any good craftsman
Hans
himself,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sides
Sachs,
Brown-
both with
Walter and the guild, recognising the power of the
one and the need of the other, adapts form to spirit, something of each to make the union possible, and by Sachs' help Walter wins his bride
sacrificing
And Hans
and medal. "
warns his fellow-workers,
One way you measure
A
work your
rules
solely
do not
fit
;
Resign your own views wholly,
Some
other rules apply to
it."
Wagner's music dramas have two supreme characteristics.
The
first is
their
deep emotional element.
His subjects were chosen that he might appeal to the feelings
;
their
the emotional.
but strengthen
intellectual
qualities
It is for this
reason that he chose the 1
;
:
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
ISO
medium
of music, in addition to language, to convey
the burden of emotional thought.
" Such led to thee,
O
soul,
shows and objects lead to thee, But now, it seems to me, sound leads o'er all the rest." Whitman Music of the Storm. All senses,
:
" Consider It
it well; each tone of our scale in itself nought loud, soft, and all is everywhere in the world
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
said
Give
it
And
me
there
to use !
!
mix
I
with two in
it
ye have heard and seen
the head
Complete examples of emotional last
Wagner reaches
The second harmony
of Wagner's
Vogler.
heroic
Ring
of which
the highest expression of art
form we have yet attained
Abt
:
art are the love-
the
Isolde,
Nibelungen, and Parsifal, the
senses
thought
"
dramas of Tristan and
religious
my
consider and
:
!
Browning
haps,
is
:
to
bow
is
is
is,
des per-
its supreme Through the
in
to.
the soul.
characteristic, with reference to form,
of content
method
is
and expression.
The tendency
to seek artistic effect in under-
and tonality. The music and the words from the music
lying harmonies of thought
springs from the words,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " the verse being as the mood wrote to his friend Uhlig, " bars worth listening to."
it
me
" Unless the subject absorbs I
And
paints "
(cf.
Pauline).
completely,"
Wagner
cannot produce twenty again he writes
:
"
The
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
:
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. musical phrases
themselves on to the verses and
fit
my
periods without any trouble on
grows as therefore,
part
The
wild from the ground."
if
131
;
everything
orchestra
is,
no mere accompaniment, but an essential " Every bar of
expression of the thought and action.
the music," the author explained to Liszt, "
only by the fact that
it
is
justified
explains something in the
In a
action or in the character of the actor."
letter to
Uhlig, he says
"Just at the beginning of the second scene of this act when Elsa steps on to the balcony it struck me
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
how
in the
prelude for wind instruments, the 7th,
8th, and 9th bars where Elsa appears by night, a theme is heard for the first time, which, later on,
when Elsa advances towards
the church, in bright
daylight and
is
plete it
full
splendour,
development broad and
became evident
to
originate coherently plastic
me
presented in com-
Thereupon themes always
bright.
that
and with
my
the
character of
phenomena." Letters.
In other words, renouncing the
artificial
symmetry of
beat and measure he endeavours to correlate physical
and psychical phenomena. The word which best describes the beauty of the Wagnerian drama, as indeed
and of highest art, is characteristic, and is of it, a beauty may include even discord and harshness as
the beauty of Nature
that which belongs to the idea,
which
essential elements.
Beauty, can
we agree? has no
objective existence.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
132
The
great art of the world
is
beautiful because
it
first
has power.
" The rhyme and uniformity of perfect pcems show the free growth of material laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a and the fluency and ornaments of the bush finest poems are not independent but dependent." .
.
.
is Whitman's dictum and it is interesting compare the words of Blake in his preface to the Jerusalem, where its form is characterised as follows
This
;
to
:
"
Every word and every
is studied and put into its numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and gentle parts, and the prosaic for the inferior parts
The
place.
letter
terrific
;
all
are necessary to each other."
In literature, the lyrical forms proper for song have
been found inadequate emotive thought.
And
been to advance from
for
our century's burden of
as in music, the tendency has Italian
song and melody to
those complete orchestral harmonies
which Wagner
describes as the invention of the Christian in literature the poets
grander,
have passed from the
more harmonious epic
structure,
spirit,
so
lyric to a
midway
be-
tween speech and song, wherein both thought and passion find their
common home.
Whitman's method take a
man
at
his
is
best,
seen at to
its
best
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
it is
fair to
measure him, not bv
his
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
1
33
shortcomings, but as Browning would estimate him, by his highest faculty
and attainment
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
in the
threnody on
the burial of Lincoln, a song which is, as Swinburne notes, " the most sonorous nocturne ever chanted in the church of the world." thought, in phrase,
and
in
It
The
defence to any real tone-artist. istic
chief character-
Love, uniting with
emotional quality.
its
is
a master-song in
is
movement, and needs no
Nature's lyrical mourners, chants of death in strains
of passionate music, death's outlet song of
life,
and the
whole emotional and rational being can but respond to its is
glowing
human
The second
appeal.
characteristic
and rhythm to the thought and Motive, metre, and tone-quality are pre-
harmony of
motive.
sented
in
line
The chant form
a predestined unity.
lends
emotional utterance, and has always been so
itself to
The
employed by Hebrew psalmists and Celtic bards.
chant removes to the farthest the limits of time, must
be read as a whole
in pulses
and
tones, appeals to the
The
synthetic rather than analytic perception.
form of the felicity
hymn
interprets the
The
of phrase and tonality.
fect, in its
own
verse
emotion with rare prelude
way, as that to Lohengrin
it
;
is
as per-
announces
the subject, and strikes the recurring chords of the lilac
and the
star,
and "thought of him
a cluster of powerful passion
is
of
and Nature, the
life
thought
;
stirred to the depths.
till
I love."
By
spondaic lines the dominant
lines
the poet, rapt by the
carol, the voice of his spirit
Then
follow pictures
branching with the
charm of the
tallying the
bird, rises to a height of lyrical ecstasy.
bird's
song of the
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
134 "
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
The chord ence of the of
One
of feeling
is
is
staring
at
or
space,
like
The
anthems.
the
The
first.
page,
one
quite
plays
being,
off
far
no
part
passion,
the
permitted
un-
hardly
and are
effect
mu<-ic.
oblivious
to
listening
Imagination
synthetic
death."
completed by a correspond-
intellectual
perception.
complete
O
produced by solemn
that
left
time
in
is
thoughts with the
last
whole
the
to
with joy, with joy to thee,
float this carol
I
movement, so completely has harmony, flowing and volatile, taken the place of metrical melody. Not less characteristic are the war lyrics, though Whit-
hindered
man
never attained an equal perfection of poetic ex-
However,
pression.
Browning man. ing's
is
Whitman's writings
as a whole,
are not to be viewed as a
mere
artistic
performance.
apparently less emotional than Whit-
Prof. Sharp, in his biography, speaks of
" fatal
excess of cold
But
to this opinion I venture to
true
if
said
Browning reverse.
;
of Wordsworth, but the former
is
Brown-
over emotive thought."
demur. it
is
It
would be
seldom true of
meditative, the latter
is
the
"Cold," rational processes are indeed often
present, but that they
are "fatal"
is
not certain, for
we have to deal to-day with an art which is all inclusive. Our creed declares Browning in the words of
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
The Book of
the
Poets said of Shakespeare
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " most
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. and
passionate
which
into
open
us
leaves
most
us
casts
to
rational
thought,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of of
an
35
emotion
reason which
a
Both
emotion."
1
emotional
nature and emotional expression have altered some-
what since the days of Minnesingers. the emotional quality of Wagner's it is
Agreeing as to
and Whitman's
art,
within reason to say that they are as profound
thinkers as Browning. It is a
matter
the personality
;
difficult to argue, for
and from
the appeal
is
to
this standpoint, for myself,
the emotive element in Browning's
poems
their
most
in the poet's nature (cf.
Mrs.
is
characteristic quality.
Impulse predominated Orr's Biog.
p.
3S8).
He
was a lover of music, the
most emotional of the arts, and for the mystic an echo of the eternal life " music which leads us," said Car-
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
lyle,
" to the verge of the infinite."
The
more
often pas-
sionate and intuitive than strictly logical.
Intensity
processes of his thought are
and concentration or fusion are the way of the passions, not of the intellect.
Premising love as the supreme
Browning reasons mystic from the whole to the parts.
living principle,
cally
it
in
is
attempting
to
in the
If
justify
manner of a
he
his
fail artisti-
emotional,
spiritual experiences to his conscious philosophy.
do
this
he must descend from the heaven of his
he does even But,
a
in
One Word More,
to analyse
and
To
art,
as
define.
on the other hand, his very analyses are those of full of emotion, and a vital imagination rescues
man
at the last
even his
temporality.
later philosophic
poems from mere
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
136 "
Love proceeding Power, and with much Power always much more Love." Paracelsus.
Professor Jones says his preface " In
some
upon
this point,
quoting from
:
of these
poems we might even seem
to
be
re-
ceiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetical inspiration,
were not
if it
for those powerful im-
aginative utterances, those winged words, which
Browning has always of his argument.
ranks
in reserve, to close the
be stated
If the question
in a
prosaic form, the final answer, as in the ancient oracle,
is
in the poetic
The obscurity facts, is
more
language of the gods."
of his poems,
when not
obscurity as to
often emotional than intellectual, for
emotions, far more often than thoughts,
Such, for instance,
for words.
Lyric Love,
is
lie
too deep
the "obscurity" of
which demands an
inner
spiritual
adjustment of phrase to phrase rather than grammatical is
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a
synthetic not analytic vision
plain to a lover.
in his
pages
atmosphere
(cf.
in
The dashes
;
the
poem
scattered abundantly
Lxion, etc.) often indicate the spiritual
which the
thoughts
float free,
like
sea-weed in the waves.
His method, again,
is
like that of
Wagner,
inner,
emotional, having to do not with logical, but with psychical
consistency.
The
monologue,
his
own
characteristic creation, adapts itself to the expression
of moods and impulses. in 1S33,
accepted
its
Mr. Fox, reviewing Pauline
peculiar confessional quality as
indicative of the highest emotional
life in
the writer.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. Only a highly passionate nature, with
its
1
37
power of
be successful with the psychical method. At the worst, poetry and philosophy are near akin, and it becomes a question of moment whether fusion, can
Browning,
appealing
in
has really
philosophy,
to
For the mystic, poetry stepped upon alien ground. reasoning of things alike are "a philosophy and They seek the same truth and the same together." kind
of
truth,
philosophy of the
assumes, the unity phrase,
Shelley's infinite,
what
proving
Both
universe.
" participate
in
the
poetry to
use
eternal, the
and the one/' and Browning is surely not the Perhaps never before among artists.
only thinker in
the world's
history have serious
such possession of of art
is
first-rate
art.
thoughts taken
The
real antithesis
not to philosophy but to science.
The whole
effect of
to arouse never the
any given poem
thought
is,
alone, but
moreover, the whole
And
personality.
This
Browning
almost unique in the manner in which
is
is
the real point at
issue.
he adjusts the entire nature of the reader to see and
know
the truth.
He makes
vital
the
imagination,
quickens the emotions, and sets flowing within us
mingled streams of thought and will-impulse.
"The
words of true poems give you more than poems." "Only the poet begets." Like Luria to the Florentines,
Browning brings
" Fresh For us
New
stuff
to mould, interpret
feeling fresh
and prove
from God."
right,
— BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
I38
"Nay
Thought?
"
sirs,"
"what
Caponsacchi,
said
was not thought."
shall follow
have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard have stood before, gone round a serious thing, Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close, I
I
As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar. God and man, and what duty I owe both, I
have confronted these but no such faculty helped here. put forth no thought,— powerless all that night paced the city it was the first spring. dare say
I
In thought I I
:
:
By
the invasion
new
In rushed
I
lay passive to,
things, the old were rapt away."
Ring and
There can burden of
be, at
least,
Browning,
love.
if
the harp back to the heart.
when, so some
critics
habit of thinking
passion
songs
!
in
has more
that
937-48.
vi.,
but one opinion as to his
His highest theme
teaching.
Book,
the
It
assert,
love,
is
his
song a
ever poet did, called
was
in
cold
the
had quenched the
fire
his
old age,
philosophic of his poetic
he penned one of the sweetest love
literature,
Summum Bonum.
strongly asserted
the
over knowledge.
" For we
phesy
His theory of
in part."
know
No
one
superiority of love
and we proand society is
in part life
passionate, not scientific. " Love, hope, fear, faith
His
interest
is
—these make humanity."
with the salvation of men, his sympa-
thies with the failures
and unheroic.
Love
for
him
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. is
the greatest thing
Drummond,
of the great
quotes centrally,
Paul,
and Professor theme of St.
the world;
in
treating
in
chapter of
13th
the
after
39
1
Corinthians, a few lines from Browning's Death in the Desert.
" For
life
And Is
j) 1st
Hoio
with
all it yields
onr chance of the prize of learning might be, hath been indeed and
love
Browning
is
a
more
the
and the regulative
new and
principles),
success of poetry as a minister of
The English
more
perfect.
inite
expansion.
spirit
imprisoned in
ing,
retaining
sense
glad
always
scan
;
is
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
is."
the old (the
on which the
depends,
its
own
far
is
capable of indef-
Thought, in Pope's couplet,
is
a
But Brown-
expression.
something of the form, liberates the
genius, permitting
a
life
heroic
love,
than Whitman.
artist
skilful
The adjustment between creative
and woe,
of joy,
and fear,
hope,
to escape
it
of
the
from
line to line with
His verses
freedom.
form of Bed Cotton
not
will
Might-Cap
Country and of other poems approaches the freedom of prose.
Applying the canon of correlation of form
and
Browning
spirit,
rarest
technic
begun
to
hitherto
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; how
appreciate,
is
seen to be an
artist
of the
we have hardly yet taken up have we been
perfect
so
by discussions of
his
Already in Pauline his active
philosophy will
of
life.
was shaping the
form to his purpose.
" So
I
will
sing on fast as fancies come,
Rudely, the verse being as the
mood
it
paints."
;
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
f40
And
in the first preface to Paracelsus he insisted that work should be judged by the laws of its own production aiming at effect, power, careless of mere
his
—
He would
beauty as the stars about numbers. the
spirit,
make
as sovran nature does, to
" inward evermore to outward."
The whole
of Browning's artistic forms awaits
trust
the form
question
an investigator
;
it
depend upon what we mean by form, and whether form be an end or means of power. That grotesqueness which Mr. Bagehot finds so repulsive in Caliban upon Setebos may be found to be its characteristic What more perfect example of adaptation of beauty. will
rime, metre, word,
and tone
to the informing thought
than The Flight of the Duchess or Fra Lippo Lippi ; or the twilight passage in Andrea del Sarto where the
down to movement contri-
youth, hope, and art of the painter are toned
sober Fiesole, line and tone and buting their
effect.
Or under what
possible formal
canon of
art
can
Ottima be placed, where the scene
this conversation of
alone informs the words
:
" Night ? Such may be your Rhine-land nights perhaps But this blood-red beam through the shutter's chink We call such light the morning let us see How these tall Mind how you grope your way, though Push the lattice Naked geraniums straggle Behind that frame Nay, do I bid you ? Sebald, Why, of course, It shakes the dust down on me The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content, Or must I find you something else to spoil ? Kiss and be friends, my Sebald Is't full morning? Oh, don't speak then " !
;
!
!
!
—
—
!
!
!
BROWNING AND WHITMAN. not some
Will
Rhyme," Browning for us
interpret
not
skilled
psychologist,
" Science of
141 in
the
but in the art of soul-expression,
1
?
common to Browning, Wagner, and Whitman, which I may be permitted to make mention One
quality
of in passing,
is
tonality of their
harmony
Wagner sought
song.
of consonantal sounds.
alliteration
fore,
the consonantal rather than vocalic to create a
chose, there-
or consonantal rime for his verse,
quite indifferent to the vowels. is
He
The body of the tone The lighter,
thus heavier and seemingly harsh.
more tuneful Tannhmiser and Lohengrin
are capable
of translation into Italian song, but the heroic
would than
way German.
lose in every
its
native
if
sung
in
Ring
any other language
In the same way Browning
gains strength by the use of consonants, which are as
marked a
characteristic of the English as the
speech.
Alliteration
but psychic.
German
never mechanical with him,
is
In the following lines the consonants
form the body of sound
:
" Thunders on thunders, doubling and redoubling
Doom o'er the mountain, Now shone, now sheared
while a sharp white its
Hardly the fir-boles, now discharging its ire Full where some pine-trees solitary spire Crashed down, defiant to the last." Gerard de
As an I think
illustration again
one may study
fire
rusty herbage, troubling
Lairesse.
of psychic sound-harmonies,
to
advantage the liquid flow of
the bird's song in Whitman's Out of the Cradle. 1
Cf.
History of JEsthetic, Bosanquet, 1892: chap.
and App.
II.
XV.
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
142 " Shake out
carols
!
Solitary here the night's carols
Carols of lonesome love
!
death's carols
!
!
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning
moon
!
O
under that moon where she droops almost down into
O
reckless, despairing carols."
the sea
A
!
comparison
so often
with
would serve
as
consonantal
tonality
a
contrast. arises
which
poems,
Poe's
purely mechanical
their
in
The no
are
construction,
preference
doubt
from
for
the
and northern temperament, which mere elegancies of singers and rimers of the southern races, which, devoid of truth, can but be conceived by a less imaginative race as mere "lascivious pleasings," heaviness and strength of harmonies being preferred to lightness and sweetness of melodies. The modern study of phonology may help us to peculiar Teutonic
despises the
appreciate the emotional beauty of consonantal effects
which now seem harsh to our vocalic the day of lautlehre
is
ears.
Perhaps
coming.
Browning, Wagner, and Whitman have been introduced in this study as indicating the new spirit in art, whose operation has resulted in what some schools of critics lament as destruction of form. But form has
That
not been destroyed.
is
an impossibility in any
The whole secret has been poured into new bottles. between the old and the new is art
whatsoever.
is
that
The
new wine distinction
not between the
formal and the formless, but between different forms.
Art has changed
in
recognition
of
the
needs
of
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
A more plastic, extensive medium,
emotional thought.
employed which
been
has
half-speech,
half-song,
143
responds more readily to the passionate beat of the heart.
Love has of is
late greatly increased
among men.
It
indicated everywhere by a growing sense of com-
radeship,
and interdependence, and organic union.
In a democracy the emotional must ever be the solvent, the unifying
often divides men. love,
force
;
for the intellectual
but liberty cannot.
The work
of fusion
is
assigned
the poet, arguing that poetry, in
dominant moral "
too
Despotism may govern without
its
by Whitman to entirety,
Phantom by
I
listened to the
I
heard the voice arising demanding bards
By them
is
the
factor of progress.
Ontario's shore, :
and grand, by them alone can these States be fused into the compact organism of a native
all
nation."
By Looking one that
to England,
is
Whitman
I
and
them
as they are
insult to
democracy ?
discipleship.
is
to
not a
"
cannot follow Whitman here
unreasoning
and are
one whose underlying basis
Is there
denial
questions: "Is there
consistent with these United States or
essentially applicable to
be?
Bine Ontario's Shore.
in
the
Browning's
spirit
of
message
to
democracy, though with a wide difference in manner of statement, in
its
is
essential
Whitman sum of the
yet singularly like that of
purpose.
To
strike the
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
144
Whitman are alike upon the value and dignity of personality, man or woman, each of whom is created different for a purpose, given his own centre and own government, equal with respect to destiny. They are alike in regarding the soul as the end of the evolution foregoing estimate, Browning and in the stress laid
of Nature, which
and
is
higher, therefore, than animals
and appointed
trees,
nising,
world
beyond them
to progress
They
the goal of Infinite Spirit.
not scorning, the uses of the body and the in
which the body must
exist,
and
alike in their
faith in the present and their hope in the future.
They all,
message
their
far
to
are alike in recog-
is
the sake
for
So
of individuality.
are alike, to continue, in their word, high over
of love, which
is
the greatest
principle in the world
;
good and the supreme
both are
willing, therefore, to
way in shaping word they have given for the sake of Thus the poets join hands in linking literature
give emotions, not the intellect alone, their verse unity.
with
life,
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
this
for this,
I
submit,
is
very creed
the
of
emancipation and democracy.
Nor can democracy be unmindful who never ceased to hold up the
poets,
of English freedom. "
Was
open road," journeying
other
pilgrims
passed, but
the
to
of the earlier light
and song
not Chaucer out on the
in
Becket's
bond of shrine
road goes on.
!
fellowship with
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the
shrine
is
Thinking, too, of
Milton and Burns, and especially of Shelley,
whom
whose love of freedom and " passion for reforming the world " no man has exceeded, and now
we
celebrate,
of William Morris, our later prophet, whose hope for
:
BROWNING AND WHITMAN.
145
and labour contains the prophecy of the golden is to be, I am inclined to quote for them all the lines of Whittier on the Child's Memorial Window to Milton in St. Margaret's Church at Westminster art
day that
New World honours him ivhose lofty plea For England's freedom made her own more sure, Whose song immortal as the theme shall be
" The
Their
common freehold
while both worlds endure."
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
The New World? " How little the New after Whitman said, " how much the Old, Old World."
THE END.
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