Browning's England A Study in English Influences in Browning   By: Helen Archibald Clarke (-1926)

A STUDY OF ENGLISH INFLUENCES IN BROWNING

BY HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE Author of " Browning's Italy "

NEW YORK THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

MCMVIII

Copyright, 1908, by The Baker & Taylor Company

Published, October, 1908

The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

To MY COLLEAGUE IN PLEASANT LITERARY PATHS AND MANY YEARS FRIEND CHARLOTTE PORTER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I PAGE English Poets, Friends, and Enthusiasms 1

CHAPTER II

Shakespeare's Portrait 42

CHAPTER III

A Crucial Period in English History 79

CHAPTER IV

Social Aspects of English Life 211

CHAPTER V

Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century 322

CHAPTER VI

Art Criticism Inspired by the English Musician, Avison 420

ILLUSTRATIONS

Browning at 23 Frontispiece

PAGE Percy Bysshe Shelley 4 John Keats 10 William Wordsworth 16 Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth 22 An English Lane 33 First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare 60 Charles I in Scene of Impeachment 80 Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford 88 Charles I 114 Whitehall 120 Westminster Hall 157 The Tower, London 170 The Tower, Traitors' Gate 183 An English Manor House 222 An English Park 240 John Bunyan 274 An English Inn 288 Cardinal Wiseman 336 Sacred Heart 342 The Nativity 351 The Transfiguration 366 Handel 426 Avison's March 446

BROWNING'S ENGLAND

CHAPTER I

ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS

To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:

I

"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems and new!

II

"But you were living before that, And also you are living after; And the memory I started at My starting moves your laughter!

III

"I crossed a moor, with a name of its own And a certain use in the world, no doubt, Yet a hand's breadth of it shines alone 'Mid the blank miles round about:

IV

"For there I picked up on the heather And there I put inside my breast A moulted feather, an eagle feather! Well, I forget the rest."

It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost worshipful admiration felt by Browning for the poet in his youth, which he had, many years before this little lyric was written, recorded in a finely appreciative passage in "Pauline."