Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Oh those days of Elizabeth! We call them the days of Elizabeth, but the glory fell over the ridge, in illumination of the half century beyond those days of Elizabeth! Full were they of poets as the summer-days are of birds, –

  No branch on which a fine bird did not sit,

  No bird but his sweet song did shrilly sing,

  No song but did contayne a lovely dit.

  We hear of the dramatists, and shall speak of them presently; but the lyric singers were yet more numerous, – there were singers in every class. Never since the first nightingale brake voice in Eden, arose such a jubilee-concert – never before nor since has such a crowd of true poets uttered true poetic speech in one day! Not in England evermore! Not in Greece, that we know. Not in Rome, by what we know. Talk of their Augustan era – we will not talk of it, lest we desecrate our own of Elizabeth. The latter was rightly pre-figured by our figure of the chorus of swans. It was besides the milky way of poetry: it was the miracle-age of poetical history. We may fancy that the master-souls of Shakspeare and Spenser, breathing, stirring in divine emotion, shot vibratory life through other souls in electric association! we may hear in fancy, one wind moving every leaf in a forest – one voice responded to by a thousand rock-echoes. Why, a common man walking through the earth in those days, grew a poet by position – even as a child’s shadow cast upon a mountain slope is dilated to the aspect of a giant’s.

  If we, for our own parts, did enact a Briareus, we might count these poets on the fingers of our hundred hands, after the fashion of the poets of Queen Anne’s time, counting their syllables. We do not talk of them as “faultless monsters,” however wonderful in the multitude and verity of their gifts: their faults were numerous, too. Many poets of an excellent sweetness, thinking of poetry that, like love,

  It was to be all made of fantasy!

  fell poetry-sick, as they might fall love-sick, and knotted associations, far and free enough to girdle the earth withal, into true love-knots of quaintest devices. Many poets affected novelty rather than truth; and many attained to novelty rather by attitude than altitude, whether of thought or word. Worst of all, many were incompetent to Sir Philip Sidney’s ordeal – the translation of their verses into prose – and would have perished utterly by that hot ploughshare. Still, the natural healthy eye turns toward the light, and the true calling of criticism remains the distinguishing of beauty. Love and honour to the poets of Elizabeth – honour and love to them all! Honour even to the fellow-workers with Sackville in the ‘Mirror for Magistrates,’ to Ferrers Churchyard, and others, who had their hand upon the ore if they did not clasp it! and to Warner, the poet of Albion’s England, singing snatches of ballad pathos, while he worked for the most part heavily, too, with a bowed back as at a stiff soil – and to Gascoigne, reflecting beauty and light from his ‘Stele Glass,’ though his ‘Fruites of War’ are scarcely fruits from Parnassus – and to Daniel, tender and noble, and teaching, in his ‘Musophilus,’ the chivalry of poets, though in his ‘Civil Wars,’ somewhat too historical, as Drayton has written of him – and to Drayton, generous in the ‘Polyolbion’ of his poet-blessing on every hill and river through this fair England, and not eloquent in his heroical epistles, though somewhat tame and level in his ‘Barons’ Wars’ – and to the two brother Fletchers, Giles and Phineas, authors of ‘Christ’s Victory’ and ‘The Purple Island,’ for whom the Muse’s kiss followed close upon the mother’s, gifting their lips with no vulgar music and their house with that noble kinsman, Fletcher the dramatist! Honour, too, to Davies, who “reasoned in verse” with a strong mind and strong enunciation, though he wrote one poem on the Soul and another on Dancing, and concentrated the diverging rays of intellect and folly in his sonnets on the reigning Astræa – and to Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who had deep thoughts enough to accomplish ten poets of these degenerate days, though because of some obscurity in their expression you would find some twenty critics “full of oaths” by the pyramids, that they all meant nought – and to Chamberlayne, picturesque, imaginative, earnest (by no means dramatic) in his poetic romance of ‘Pharonnida,’ though accumulative to excess of figures, and pedantic in such verbal learning as “entheon charms,” the “catagraph” of a picture, the exagitations and congestions of elements, et sic omnia! – to Chalkhill, wrapt – even bound – “ in soft Lydian airs,” till himself, as well as his Clearchus and Thealma, fall asleep in involutions of harmony – and to Browne, something languid in his ‘Britannia’s Pastorals,’ by sitting in the sun with Guarini and Marini, and “perplext in the extreme” by a thousand images and sounds of beauty calling him across the dewy fields – and to Wither, author of the ‘Shepherd’s Hunting’ and how much else? Wither, who wrote of poetry like a poet, and in return has been dishonoured and misprised by some of his own kind! – a true sincere poet of blessed oracles! Honour, love, and praise to him and all! May pardon come to us from the unnamed.

  Honour also to the translators of poems – to such as Chapman and Sylvester – great hearts, interpreters of great hearts, and afterwards worthily thanked by the Miltons, and Popes, and Keats’s, for their gift of greatness to the language of their England.

  Honour to the satirists! – to Marston, who struck boldly and coarsely at an offence from the same level with the offender – to Hall, preserving his own elevation, and flashing downwardly those thick lightnings in which we smell the sulphur – and to Donne, whose instinct to beauty overcame the resolution of his satiric humour.

  Honour, again, to the singers of brief poems, to the lyrists and sonnetteers! O Shakspeare, let thy name rest gently among them, perfuming the place. We “swear” that these sonnets and songs do verily breathe, “not of themselves, but thee;” and we recognize and bless them as short sighs from thy large poetic heart, burdened with diviner inspiration! O rare Ben Jonson, let us have thy songs, rounded each with a spherical thought, and the lyrics from thy masques alive with learned fantasy, and thine epigrams keen and quaint, and thy noble epitaphs, under which the dead seem stirring! Fletcher, thou shalt be with us – prophet of Comus and Penseroso! giddy with inhalation from the fount of the beautiful, speaking out wildly thought upon thought, measure upon measure, as the bird sings, because his own voice is lovely to him. Sidney, true knight and fantastic poet, whose soul did too curiously inquire the fashion of the beautiful – the fashion rather than the secret! but left us in one line, the completest “Ars poetica” extant, –

  “Foole, sayde my Muse to mee, looke in thine heart, and write.”

  Thy name be famous in all England and Arcadia! And Raleigh, tender and strong, of voice sweet enough to answer that ‘Passionate Shepherd,’ yet trumpet-shrill to speak the “Soul’s errand” thrilling the depths of our own! having honour and suffering as became a poet, from the foot of the Lady of England light upon his cloak, to the cloak of his executioner wrapping redly his breathless corpse. Marlowe, we must not forget his ‘Shepherd’ in his tragedies: and ‘Come live with me’ sounds passionately still through the dead cold centuries. And Drummond, the over-praised and under-praised, – a passive poet, if we may use the phraseology – who was not careful to achieve greatness, but whose natural pulses beat music, and with whom the consciousness of life was the sentiment of beauty. And Lyly, shriven from the sins of his Euphues, with a quaint grace in his songs; and Donne, who takes his place naturally in this new class, having a dumb angel, and knowing more noble poetry than he articulates. Herrick, the Ariel of poets, sucking “where the bee sucks” from the rose-heart of nature, and reproducing the fragrance idealized; and Carew, using all such fragrance as a courtly essence, with less of self-abandonment and more of artificial application; and Herbert, with his face as the face of a spirit, dimly bright; and fantastic Quarles, in rude and graphic gesticulation, expounding verity and glory; and Breton, and Turberville, and Lodge, and Hall (not the satirist), and all the hundred swans, nameless, or too numerous to be named, of that Cayster of the rolling time.

  Then, high in the miraculous climax, c
ome the dramatists – from whose sinews was knit the overcoming strength of our literature over all the nations of the world. “The drama is the executive of literature,” said De Stael: and the Greek’s “action, action, action,” we shall not miss in our drama. Honour to the dramatists! as honour from them! Shakspeare is our security that we shall say so less briefly soon.

  PART III.

  WE must take a few steps backward for position’s sake, and then be satisfied with a rapid glance at the Drama. From the days of Norman William, the representations called Mysteries and Moralities had come and gone without a visible poet; and Skelton appears before us almost the first English claimant of a dramatic reputation, with the authorship of the interludes of ‘Magnificence’ and the ‘Nigromansir.’ The latter is chiefly famous for Warton’s affirmation of having held it in his hands, giving courteous occasion to Ritson’s denial of its existence: and our own palms having never been crossed by the silver of either, we cannot prophesy on the degree of individual honour involved in the literary claim. Bale, one of the eighth Henry’s bishops, was an active composer of Moralities; and John Heywood, his royal jester and “author of that very merry interlude,” called The Four P’s, united in his merriment that caustic sense, with that lively ease, which has not been too common since in his accomplished dramatic posterity. Yet those who in the bewilderment of their admirations (or senses) attribute to John Heywood the ‘Pinner of Wakefield,’ are more obviously – we are sorely tempted to add more ridiculously – wrong, than those who attribute it to Shakspeare. The canon of Windsor’s ‘Ralph Royster Doyster,’ and the Bishop of Bath and Wells’ ‘Gammer Gurton,’ followed each other close into light, the earliest modern comedies, by the force of the “âme ecclesiastique.” A little after came Ferrys, memorialized by Puttenham as “the principall man of his profession” (of poetry), and “of no lesse myrthe and felicitie than John Heywood, but of much more skille and magnificence in his meter.” But seeing that even Oblivion forgot Ferrys, leaving his name and Puttenham’s praise when she defaced his works, and seeing, too, the broad farcedom of the earlier, however episcopal writers, we find ourselves in an unwilling posture of recognition before Edwards, as the first extant regular dramatist of England. It is a pitiful beginning. The Four P’s would be a more welcome A to us. They express more power with their inarticulate roughness, than does this Damon and Pythias, with its rhymed, loitering frigidity, or even than this Palamon and Arcite, in which the sound of the hunting horn cast into ecstasy the too gracious soul of Queen Elizabeth. But Sir John Davies’s divine Astræa was, at that grey dawn of her day, ignorant of greater poets; and we (“happy in this”) go on toward them. After Edwards, behold Sackville with that ‘Gorboduc’ we have named, the first blank verse tragedy we can name, praised by Sidney for its exemplary preservation of the unities and for “climbing to the height of Seneca his stile,” – tight-fitting praise, considering that the composition is high enough to account for its snow, and cold enough to emulate the Roman’s. And after Sackville behold the first dramatic geniuses, in juxtaposition with the first dramatists – Peele, and Kyd, mad as his own Hieronimo, (we will grant it to such critics as are too utterly in their senses), only –

  When he is mad,

  Then, methinks, he is a brave fellow!

  and then methinks, and by such madness, the possibility of a Shakspeare was revealed. Kyd’s blank verse is probably the first breaking of the true soil; and certainly far better and more dramatic than Marlowe’s is, – crowned poet as the latter stands before us – poet of the English Faustus, which we wilt not talk of against the German, nor set up its grand, luxurious, melancholy devil against Goethe’s subtle, biting, Voltairish devil, each being devil after its kind, – the poet of the Jew which Shakspeare drew (not), yet a true Jew, “with a berde,” – and the poet of the first historical drama, – since the ‘Gorboduc’ scarcely can be called one. Marlowe was more essentially a poet than a dramatist; and if the remark appear self-evident and universally applicable, we will take its reverse in Kyd, who was more essentially, with all his dramatic faults, a dramatist than a poet. Passing from the sound of the elemental monotonies of the rhythm of Marlowe, we cannot pause before Nash and Greene to distinguish their characteristics. It is enough to name these names of gifted dramatists, who lived, or at least wrote, rather before Shakspeare than with him, and helped to make him credible. Through them, like a lens, we behold his light. Of them we conjecture – these are the blind elements working before the earthquake; – before the great “Shakescene,” as Greene said when he was cross! And we may say when we are fanciful, these are the experiments of Nature, made in her solution of the problem of how much deathless poetry will agree with how much mortal clay! – these are the potsherd vessels half filled, and failing at last, – until up to the edge of one, the liquid inspiration rose and bubbled in hot beads, to quench the thirsty lips of the world!

  It is hard to speak of Shakspeare, – these measures of the statures of common poets fall from our hands when we seek to measure him: it is harder to praise him. Like the tall plane-tree which Xerxes found standing in the midst of an open country, and honoured inappropriately with his “barbaric pomp,” with bracelets, and chains, and rings suspended on its branches, so has it been with Shakspeare. A thousand critics have commended him with praises as unsuitable as a gold ring to a plane-tree. A thousand hearts have gone out to him, carrying necklaces. Some have discovered that he individualized, and some that he generalized, and some that he subtilized – almost trans-transcendentally. Some would have it that he was a wild genius, sowing wild oats and stealing deer to the end, with no more judgment forsooth than “youth the hare”; and some, that his very pulses beat by that critical law of art in which he was blameless! – some, that all his study was in his horn-book, and not much of that; and some, that he was as learned a polyglott as ever had been dull but for Babel! – some, that his own ideal burned stedfastly within his own fixed contemplations, unstirred by breath from without; and some, that he wrote for the gold on his palm and the “rank popular breath” in his nostrils, apart from consciousness of greatness and desire of remembrance. If the opinions prove nothing, their contradictions prove the exaltation of the object; their contradictions are praise. For men differ about things above their reach, not within it; – about the mountains in the moon, not Primrose Hill: and more than seven cities of men have differed in their talk about Homer also! Homer, also, was convicted of indiscreet nodding; and Homer, also, had no manner of judgment! and the Ars Poetica people could not abide his bad taste! And we find another analogy. We, who have no leaning to the popular cant of Romanticism and Classicism, and believe the old Greek BEAUTY to be both new and old, and as alive and not more grey in Webster’s ‘Duchess of Malfy’ than in Æschylus’s ‘Eumenides,’ do reverence this Homer and this Shakspeare as the colossal borderers of the two intellectual departments of the world’s age, – do behold from their feet the antique and modern literatures sweep outwardly away, and conclude, that whereas the Greek bore in his depth the seed and prophecy of all the Hellenic and Roman poets, so did Shakspeare “whose seed was in himself “ also, those of a later generation!

  For the rest we must speak briefly of Shakspeare, and very weakly too, except for love. That he was a great natural genius nobody, we believe, has doubted – the fact has passed with the cheer of mankind; but that he was a great artist the majority has doubted. Yet Nature and Art cannot be reasoned apart into antagonistic principles. Nature is God’s art – the accomplishment of a spiritual significance hidden in a sensible symbol. Poetic art (man’s) looks past the symbol with a divine guess and reach of soul into the mystery of the significance, – disclosing from the analysis of the visible things, the synthesis or unity of the ideal, – and expounds like symbol and like significance out of the infinite of God’s doing into the finite of man’s comprehending. Art lives by Nature, and not the bare mimetic life generally attributed to Art: she does not imitate, she expounds. Interpres natu
ræ – is the poet-artist; and the poet wisest in nature is the most artistic poet! and thus our Shakspeare passes to the presidency unquestioned, as the greatest artist in the world. We believe in his judgment as in his genius. We believe in his learning, both of books and men, and hills and valleys: in his grammars and dictionaries we do not believe. In his philosophy of language we believe absolutely – in his Babel-learning, not at all. We believe reverently in the miracle of his variety; and it is observable that we become aware of it less by the numerousness of his persons and their positions, than by the depth of the least of either, – by the sense of visibility beyond what we see, as in nature. Our creed goes on to declare him most passionate and most rational – of an emotion which casts us into thought, of a reason which leaves us open to emotion! most grave and most gay – while we scarcely can guess that the man Shakspeare is grave or gay, because he interposes between ourselves and his personality the whole breadth and length of his ideality. His associative faculty, – the wit’s faculty besides the poet’s, – for him who was both wit and poet, shed sparks like an electric wire. He was wise in the world, having studied it in his heart; what is called “the knowledge of the world” being just the knowledge of one heart, and certain exterior symbols. What else? What otherwise could he, the young transgressor of Sir Thomas Lucy’s fences, new from Stratford and the Avon, close in theatric London, have seen, or touched, or handled, of the Hamlets and Lears and Othellos, that he should draw them? “How can I take portraits,” said Marmontel, in a similar inexperience, “before I have beheld faces?” Voltaire embraced him, in reply. Well applauded, Voltaire. It was a not for Marmontel’s utterance, and Voltaire’s praise – for Marmontel, not for Shakspeare! Every being is his own centre to the universe, and in himself must one foot of the compasses be fixed to attain to any measurement – nay, every being is his own mirror to the universe. Shakspeare wrote from within – the beautiful; and we recognize from within – the true. He is universal, because he is individual. And without any prejudice of admiration, we may go on to account his faults to be the proofs of his power – the cloud of dust cast up by the multitude of the chariots. The activity of his associative faculty is occasionally morbid: in the abundance of his winged thoughts, the locust flies with the bee, and the ground is dark with the shadow of them. Take faults, take excellencies, it is impossible to characterize this Shakspeare by an epithet – have we heard the remark before, that it should sound so obvious? We say of Corneille, the noble; of Racine, the tender; of Æschylus, the terrible; of Sophocles, the perfect; but not one of these words, not one appropriately descriptive epithet, can we attach to Shakspeare without a conscious recoil. Shakspeare! the name is the description.