Chapter II.
Browning.

The sea plays no such part in the verse of Browning as
This is to be expected in a poet

in that of Tennyson.

for whom nature has no value in herself; she is merely an

Browning is wholly

incident, and not a very important one, a slight, background for the drama of the individual life. occupied with the problems that confront the soul of man, and with art and society as the products of man; he even, as it seems to me, neglects the very important part that nature often plays in the spiritual growth. Pauline is of course

in some respects an exception, but, retained in the writer's works "with extreme repugnance" it has no claim to be considered an expression of his mature mind.

He seems,more

over, unlike Tennyson, to have consciously rejected anything remotely resembling the Wordsworthian view of nature: "You

did not feel what was not to be felt." (1)

to try

It is somewhat perilous to deduce the personal feelings of a poet from

works which are largely made up of "so many utterances of so many imaginary persons", but after all there must be some significance in such consistent subordination of nature.

(1) Prince Hohenstiel-Schwargau.

This study, however, concerns itself only with his

treatment of the sea.

Sea-poetry, strictly speaking,

there is none, unless an exception is made of Home Thoughts

from the Sea, with its splendid recognition of England's
naval prowess and its noble and reverent spirit of patri-
otism.
In Fifine at the Fair the sea is used slightly as
a background and extensively in a figurative way, but it
does not necessarily belong to the theme of the poem.
The fine spirited ballad of Hervé Riel is the story of the
heroism of a poor coasting-pilot, but the amount of sea-col-
oring is surprisingly small when the subject is considered.
Browning's poetry, however, contains a considerable mass of
sea-allusion, most frequent, and most detailed when serving
to explain some spiritual state; purely descriptive passages
are very few, the most notable being found in Meeting at
Night and Parting at Morning, -exquisite lines, so faithful,
so lucid, so lovely, that, they might almost have come from
the hand of Tennyson himself,

"The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:

And straight was a path of gold for him,

And the need of a world of men for me.

These descriptions are very exceptional.

Browning does

not, as a rule, like Tennyson seize upon that which we have all seen and loved for its beauty; rarely does he constrain

us to cry out: "This I have seen and heard.

felt.

Thus I have

He prefers to select some unusual or grotesque

phenomenon,

"A dead gulf streaked with light From its own putrefying depths alone.

volcanoes bursting forth in mid-ocean,

Paracelsus, II;

"The wroth sea's waves are edged

With foam, white as the bitten edge of hate,

When in the solitary waste, strange groups

Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like

Staring at each other with their eyes on flame."

"As he loomed

Paracelsus, V; (1)

O'er the midland sea last month." (of AEtna) Sodello,III "The volcano's vapor-flag winds hoist

Black o'er the spread of sea.

Ibid, VI.