Life of Robert Browning eBook

William Sharp
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 287 pages of information about Life of Robert Browning.

Life of Robert Browning eBook

William Sharp
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 287 pages of information about Life of Robert Browning.

Nor was he whom she loved as a man, as well as revered as a poet, unworthy of her.  His was the robustest poetic intellect of the century; his the serenest outlook; his, almost the sole unfaltering footsteps along the perilous ways of speculative thought.  A fair life, irradiate with fairer ideals, conserved his native integrity from that incongruity between practice and precept so commonly exemplified.  Comely in all respects, with his black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features, ready and winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous, expressive gestures—­an inclination of the head, a lift of the eyebrows, a modulation of the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand, conveying so much—­and a voice at that time of a singular penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate any woman of kindred nature and sympathies.  Over and above these advantages, he possessed a rare quality of physical magnetism.  By virtue of this he could either attract irresistibly or strongly repel.

I have several times heard people state that a hand-shake from Browning was like an electric shock.  Truly enough, it did seem as though his sterling nature rang in his genially dominant voice, and, again, as though his voice transmitted instantaneous waves of an electric current through every nerve of what, for want of a better phrase, I must perforce call his intensely alive hand.  I remember once how a lady, afflicted with nerves, in the dubious enjoyment of her first experience of a “literary afternoon,” rose hurriedly and, in reply to her hostess’ inquiry as to her motive, explained that she could not sit any longer beside the elderly gentleman who was talking to Mrs. So-and-so, as his near presence made her quiver all over, “like a mild attack of pins-and-needles,” as she phrased it.  She was chagrined to learn that she had been discomposed not by ‘a too exuberant financier,’ as she had surmised, but by, as “Waring” called Browning, the “subtlest assertor of the Soul in song.”

With the same quick insight as she had perceived Robert Browning’s poetic greatness, Elizabeth Barrett discerned his personal worth.  He was essentially manly in all respects:  so manly, that many frail souls of either sex philandered about his over-robustness.  From the twilight gloom of an aeesthetic clique came a small voice belittling the great man as “quite too ‘loud,’ painfully excessive.”  Browning was manly enough to laugh at all ghoulish cries of any kind whatsoever.  Once in a way the lion would look round and by a raised breath make the jackals wriggle; as when the poet wrote to a correspondent, who had drawn his attention to certain abusive personalities in some review or newspaper:  “Dear Sir—­I am sure you mean very kindly, but I have had too long an experience of the inability of the human goose to do other than cackle when benevolent and hiss when malicious, and no amount of goose criticism shall make me lift a heel against what waddles behind it.”

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Project Gutenberg
Life of Robert Browning from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.