The poem was characterized by its author,five years later,in a fantastic note appended to a copy of it,as 'the only remaining crab of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise.'This name is ill bestowed upon a work which,however wild a fruit of Mr.Browning's genius,contains,in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos,so much that is rich and sweet.It had also,to discard metaphor,its faults of exaggeration and confusion;and it is of these that Mr.Browning was probably thinking when he wrote his more serious apologetic preface to its reprint in 1868.
But these faults were partly due to his conception of the character which he had tried to depict;and partly to the inherent difficulty of depicting one so complex,in a succession of mental and moral states,irrespectively of the conditions of time,place,and circumstance which were involved in them.Only a very powerful imagination could have inspired such an attempt.A still more conspicuous effort of creative genius reveals itself at its close.The moment chosen for the 'Confession'
has been that of a supreme moral or physical crisis.
The exhaustion attendant on this is directly expressed by the person who makes it,and may also be recognized in the vivid,yet confusing,intensity of the reminiscences of which it consists.
But we are left in complete doubt as to whether the crisis is that of approaching death or incipient convalescence,or which character it bears in the sufferer's mind;and the language used in the closing pages is such as to suggest,without the slightest break in poetic continuity,alternately the one conclusion and the other.
This was intended by Browning to assist his anonymity;and when the writer in 'Tait's Magazine'spoke of the poem as a piece of pure bewilderment,he expressed the natural judgment of the Philistine,while proving himself such.If the notice by J.S.Mill,which this criticism excluded,was indeed --as Mr.Browning always believed --much more sympathetic,I can only record my astonishment;for there never was a large and cultivated intelligence one can imagine less in harmony than his with the poetic excesses,or even the poetic qualities,of 'Pauline'.But this is a digression.
Mr.Fox,though an accomplished critic,made very light of the artistic blemishes of the work.His admiration for it was as generous as it was genuine;and,having recognized in it the hand of a rising poet,it was more congenial to him to hail that poet's advent than to register his shortcomings.
'The poem,'he says,'though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch,has truth and life in it,which gave us the thrill,and laid hold of us with the power,the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius.'
But it had also,in his mind,a distinguishing characteristic,which raised it above the sphere of merely artistic criticism.
The article continues:
'We have never read anything more purely confessional.The whole composition is of the spirit,spiritual.The scenery is in the chambers of thought;the agencies are powers and passions;the events are transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another.'
And we learn from the context that he accepted this confessional and introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life --of the essence,therefore,of religion.
On this point the sincerest admirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr.Fox.Its sentiment is warmly religious;it is always,in a certain sense,spiritual;but its intellectual activities are exercised on entirely temporal ground,and this fact would generally be admitted as the negation of spirituality in the religious sense of the word.
No difference,however,of opinion as to his judgment of 'Pauline'
can lessen our appreciation of Mr.Fox's encouraging kindness to its author.
No one who loved Mr.Browning in himself,or in his work,can read the last lines of this review without a throb of affectionate gratitude for the sympathy so ungrudgingly,and --as he wrote during his latest years --so opportunely given:
'In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselves about such matters [as a few blemishes].Time enough for that afterwards,when larger works come before us.Archimedes in the bath had many particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown,but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted 'Eureka!''
Many persons have discovered Mr.Browning since he has been known to fame.
One only discovered him in his obscurity.
Next to that of Mr.Fox stands the name of John Forster among the first spontaneous appreciators of Mr.Browning's genius;and his admiration was,in its own way,the more valuable for the circumstances which precluded in it all possible,even unconscious,bias of personal interest or sympathy.
But this belongs to a somewhat later period of our history.
