Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/300
the root I did take, well. I hope to do much more yet; and that the flower of it will be put into Her hand somehow.”
For this one touch of tender and true feeling we forgive the sort of thing that follows—forgive it to the man who, though he was a poet, was no doubt obliged to chronicle small beer for his acquaintances—but scarcely to the biographer.
“Cartwright arrived here a fortnight ago—very pleasant it was to see him. He left for Florence, stayed a day or two, and returned to Mrs Cartwright (who remained at the inn); and they all departed prosperously yesterday for Rome. Odo Russell spent two days here on his way thither—we liked him much. Prinsep and Jones—do you know them?—are in the town.”
What light is this sort of thing supposed to throw on any man’s character or life?—to be sure “dear old Landor” is mentioned further on, but not to any satisfaction: and why in the name of wonder should we be supposed to care for a hotel list of the people who passed through Siena in the year 1859?
After some twenty years of neglect, Browning’s fame became at once a thing established and unchangeable; by what queer revolution of public opinion or bursting forth into the light of those seven thousand who have never bowed the knee to Baal, or, as he himself thought, by the rising of a new generation, it would be difficult to tell. The change, when it came, was sweeping. It is true that for long before, his name had been placed with that of Tennyson, the greatest distinction this age has to give. But his books were neither sold nor read; and his fame remained most barren and inoperative, especially among his own countrymen. At last, however, the practical test of success, which had been so long wanting, confirmed his eminence as a poet. The cause of this was perhaps not so recondite as he himself and the special coterie of his worshippers thought. The general public will not buy poetry which it does not understand. “Sordello” and “Paracelsus” were too much for that general public. Life was not long enough for the study of these poetical enigmas; but when their author chose to write so as it could understand, it was prompt to stop and listen. The “Men and Women” turned the tide: no one needed to spell over these wonderful poems or ask an interpretation from any pundit. And then came the “Ring and the Book,” one of the most marvellous pieces of skilful workmanship, and the triumph was complete. It would have been so, no doubt, long before, had the unostentatious but quietly supreme general reader found something which he could understand. The “Sordellos” are all very well for the enthusiasts, to whom it is an additional charm that no one but themselves comprehend the foundations of their faith; but the writer who insists upon demanding the common acceptance of enigmas like these must make up his mind to neglect, however really great he may be.
Mr Browning spent the last thirty years of his life in London, and entered largely into society there—almost too largely, people were apt to say. “My dear,” said a caustic critic to an anxious inquirer who asked what poor Mr Browning was doing after his wife’s death, ‘“he is dining out.” It was from no want of honour for her memory: that memory was too strong and poignant to permit him ever to enter his beloved Florence again after her departure left it desolate: but rather from the instinctive grasp of a nature which,