James Thomson

“ With a masculine soul for passion, a masculine intellect for thought, and a masculine genius for imagination, all on a vast scale, and all fused together in one intense fire when the theme is great and imperious, we have the highest results of which poetry is capable; and such results I recognise in the noblest poems and passages of Browning as authentic and impressive as in the noblest in our literature ”

“ But whatever may be the ultimate judgment on this matter, it may be fearlessly affirmed that whenever the subject is so great and solemn as to possess the poet, instead of him possessing it, be its supremacy of terror or pathos, beauty or awe, he ever rises in expression as in conception with his theme; and he has a most noble natural affinity with noble themes. Then not the mere talents or the piercing perceptions are in the ascendant, but the Divine genius holds imperial sway ”

“ Many years since, in 1864 or '65, I wrote: "Robert Browning, a true and splendid genius, though his vigorous and restless talents often overpower and run away with his genius, so that some of his creations are left but half-retrieved from chaos." This now seems to me put much too strongly, save perhaps in reference to "Sordello" and a very few of the minor poems but I still think that it points to a real fault in his art—a fault, however, be it observed, of overplus, not of insufficiency. Such overpowering talents are almost as rare as the sometimes overpowered genius. ”

“ Manliness.—Further, Browning's passion is as intense, noble, and manly as his intellect is profound and subtle and therefore original. I would especially insist on its manliness, because our present literature abounds in so-called passion, which is but half-sincere or wholly insincere sentimentalism, if it be not thinly disguised prurient lust, and in so-called pathos, which is maudlin to nauseousness. The great unappreciated poet last cited has defined passion as noble strength on fire ”

“ The heaped-up knowledge is as heaped-up fuel: the questions occur. Is the fire intense enough to kindle the whole mass through and through into clear glow of light and heat? or but strong enough to smoulder smokily under it? or so relatively weak as to be crushed out by it? Here the admirers of Browning directly join issue with the common critics, and the public led or misled by them, who assert that his fire is of the second or smoky species. ”

“ If he is a writer or orator, it means that he stamps with vigorous clearness his own image and superscription on his word-mintage; affirming thus his true sovereign prerogative, instead of issuing the common currency with the common image and superscription half-effaced by multitudinous usage, not to speak of debasement by sweating and clipping—the demonetised, vulgarised vocabulary of the newspapers. .
Browning himself expresses just as much esteem for the public that accuses him of harshness as for the critics who accuse him of obscurity. ”

“ Vitality.—Browning's immense range and depth of sympathy or geniality, which has been rightly con- sidered as of the essence of great genius, is naturally united if not identical with an intense and exuberant vitality, that "manly relish of life" which Lamb so well notes in Fielding; and this is all the more remarkable in these days, when so much of our poetic literature, whether in verse or prose, is, like Hamlet, "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," or altogether divorced and alien from the real living world. ”

“ His strong, intensely original, and many-sided individuality has, among finer savours, a keen relish for the odd, the peculiar, the quaint, the grotesque; and when these offer themselves in the subject-matter, his guiding genius is apt to throw the reins on the necks of the vigorous talents and eager perceptions, which run risky riot in language as quaint and grotesque as the theme. Students will recall Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," "Old Pictures at Florence," the Lawyers in "The Ring and the Book." ”

“ Not all of us have the opportunity of mastering the contents of libraries and museums and art-galleries; but all of us have the opportunity of mastering the common facts of nature and human life; yet it is precisely in these departments of knowledge that Browning's pre-eminence appears to me most decided. ”

“ And throughout all we have ever the dominant theme of the development or revelation of human souls; naturally most wonderful, and to myself simply overwhelming, in his immense masterpiece, "The Ring and the Book." ”

“ For us ordinary men the cardinal fact is, that such and such a theory or doctrine was found probable, tenable, reasonable, or irresistible, by such and such a profound and subtle and dauntless and sincere thinker. The wise and the simple, nay, the various wise and the various simple, never tread the same path to the same goal; but for common purposes we must class together all those who do reach the same goal; and each goal, be it Christianity, or Copernicanism, or Comtism, is entitled to respect in proportion to the aggregate worth (not number) of those who have reached and rested in it. ”

“ Heine says in one of his rough jottings, "Shakespeare's big toe contained more poetry than all the Greek poets, with the exception of Aristophanes. The Greeks were great Artists, not Poets; they had more artistic sense than poetry." The same may be fairly said of many modern distinguished writers of verse, if poetry be regarded as the reflection at once intelligent and beautiful of the whole world of nature and human nature ”

“ The restless activity and rapidity and subtlety of intellect which confound the "general reader" (who has been termed the laziest and haziest of human animals) , accustomed to the too-easy sauntering through popular novels and periodicals, are apt at first to perplex even the student, as perturbing the exquisite calm of the simply idyllic conceptions with which he has been familiarised by less intellectual poets. As our French neighbours say, "one must have the defect of one's qualities;" ”

“ And such comments but mark what Coleridge has noted in a certain stage of the development of Shakespeare: "The intellectual power and the creative energy wrestle as in a war-embrace." And the wrestling is mighty when both the athletes are Titanic.
Admitting that "Sordello" is very hard, if not obscure, I would observe that the difficulty is not so much in the mere language, as in the abrupt transitions, the rapid discursions, and the continual recondite allusions to matters with which very few readers can be familiar. ”

“ A test fatal to the supremacy of not a few of the very greatest, as Jesus, Dante, Shakespeare, Pascal, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Leopardi, but which certainly reveals the nature of the poet who chooses it.
7. Christianity—Finally, I must not fail to note, as one of the most remarkable characteristics of his genius, his profound, passionate, living, triumphant faith in Christ, and in the immortality and ultimate redemption of every human soul in and through Christ. ”

“ Confident and rejoicing in the storm and stress of the struggle, he has conquered life instead of being conquered by it; a victory so rare as to be almost unique, especially among poets in these latter days. ”

“ Affectation means Naturalness.—Lastly, as to the affectation, I have come to learn that it usually means, when objected, even by persons of superior intelligence, against any great artist of whatever kind, the direct contrary of what it is commonly supposed to mean. ”

“ In many of these cases it may be fairly contended on behalf of the poet, that he but asserts and vindicates his own artistic sovereignty over the subject by holding it aloof and beneath him, by now and then good-naturedly laughing at it, as Richter, I think, says one must be able to laugh at or sport with one's faith in order to really possess it. ”

“ It does not come home to men's business and bosoms, so its cultivators and students are but a very small class apart, and, it must be admitted, not generally of robust natures. For myself, I have frequently been constrained to reflect, How small and weak are the singing birds! ”

“ It means that he is supremely and exquisitely unaffected, being scrupulously true to his own individuality. It means that he wears the garb befitting his peculiar stature and complexion, and does not affect the passing fashions which uniform the undistinguished multitudes. ”

“ Charge of Obscurity.—But we have heard of great scholars who could only communicate a plentiful lack of ideas in many languages, of very learned men who were simply Dryasdusts, of people with keen perceptiveness and tenacious memories, whose minds or nominds were of the Dame Quickly order ”