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Browning's Literary Reputation at Oxford 1855–1859

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Maurice Browning Cramer
Maurice Browning Cramer*
Affiliation:
University of Tampa
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Extract

In an article published in ELH I attempted to describe the intense admiration for Browning that existed in Pre-Raphaelite circles during the years 1847–56, and to suggest the importance of this admiration in furthering the growth of Browning's literary reputation. I pointed out that the proselytizing zeal of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the chief source for the enthusiasm of his friends, and that the Browning worship of the whole group of Pre-Raphaelites reached its height at the time of the publication of Men and Women in 1855. In the present article I propose to trace the influence of Rossetti in kindling devotion to Browning's poetry, especially Men and Women, among certain Oxford undergraduates in the years immediately after the publication of Men and Women, and to draw conclusions about the significance of this in the story of Browning's gradual advance to fame.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 1942 , pp. 232 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1942

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References

Note 1 in page 232 “What Browning's Literary Reputation owed to the Pre-Raphelites, 1847–1856,” ELH. viii, 305–321.

Note 2 in page 232 Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorial of Edward Burne-Jones (New York, 1904), i, 76–77; J. W. Mackail, The Life of William Morris (London, 1899), i, 46.

Note 3 in page 232 Georgiana Burne-Jones, op. cit., i, 115 ff.

Note 4 in page 232 D. N. B. under Hatch.

Note 5 in page 232 D. N. B. under Dixon.

Note 6 in page 232 Georgiana Burne-Jones, op. cit., i, 130.

Note 7 in page 233 Ibid., i, 128–129.

Note 8 in page 233 Mackail, op. cit., i, 108. See also Georgiana Burne-Jones, op. cit., i, 139.

Note 9 in page 233 H. S. Salt, The Life of James Thomson (London, 1889), pp. 8, 22, 31–32: “you will probably not care for these poems at first; but they are worth your study,” etc.

Note 10 in page 233 Georgiana Burne-Jones, op. cit., i, 153.

Note 11 in page 233 Mackail, op. cit., i, 131–132.

Note 12 in page 234 Ibid., i, 133; Ruskin: Rossetti: PreRaphaelitism Papers 1854 to 1862, ed. W. M. Rossetti (New York, 1899), p. 219.

Note 13 in page 234 Rossetti Papers 1862 to 1870, ed. W. M. Rossetti (London, 1903), p. 299; Mackail, op. cit., i, 133.

Note 14 in page 234 William Morris, Men and Women, Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, i (1856), 162 ff.

Note 15 in page 234 Mackail, op. cit., i, 91–92.

Note 16 in page 234 R. G. Watkin, Robert Browning and the English Pre-Raphaelites (Breslau, 1905), p. 9; Mackail, op. cit., i, 58, 219.

Note 17 in page 234 Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner, R. A. Sculptor and Poet (New York, 1917), p. 126; Georges Lafourcade, La Jeunesse de Swinburne (1837–1867) (Paris, 1928), i, 105 ff.; Edmund Gosse, Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne (New York, 1917), pp. 40, 47.

Note 18 in page 235 Lafourcade, op. cit., ii, 123 ff.; H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce (New York, 1927), i, 48–19; Gosse, op. cit., pp. 38 ff.; D. N. B. under R. W. Dixon, G. B. Hill, John Nichol, and Swinburne.

Note 19 in page 235 Gosse, op. cit., p. 56.

Note 20 in page 235 D. N. B. under Nichol.

Note 21 in page 235 John Nichol, Fragments of Criticism (Edinburgh, 1860), pp. 92, 99.

Note 22 in page 235 Ibid., p. 159. See also ibid., pp. 76, 88, for further examples of Nichol's Browning enthusiasm.

Note 23 in page 235 Lafourcade, op. cit., ii, 160. Nichol became an influential professor of English literature at Glasgow 1862–89, and one wonders how much he may have helped to foster the unusual Scottish enthusiasm for Browning.

Note 24 in page 235 Lafourcade, op. cit., i, 125.

Note 25 in page 235 Gosse, op. cit., pp. 38–39.

Note 26 in page 235 Fisher, loc. cit.

Note 27 in page 235 I shall discuss Pater's Browning enthusiasm later in this paper; for Symonds's interest in Browning commencing with his undergraduate days at Oxford see H. F. Brown, John Addington Symonds: A Biography (London, 1895), i, 187, and the attractive, well-written, and intelligent short appreciations of Browning by Symonds in Academy, vii (1875), 389–390; viii (1875), 543–544; xii (1877), 419–420; and in Macmillan's Magazine, xix (1868–69), 258–262. See also Browning in index of Letters and Papers of John Addington Symonds, ed. H. F. Brown (New York, 1923).

Note 28 in page 236 For a public expression by T. H. Green in 1877 of admiration for Browning see Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Browning (Boston, 1891), ii, 450.

Note 29 in page 236 Lafourcade, op. cit., i, 125–126.

Note 30 in page 236 Ibid., ii, 160.

Note 31 in page 236 Ibid., i, 125.

Note 32 in page 236 Gosse, op. cit., pp. 39–40.

Note 33 in page 236 Lafourcade, op. cit., i, 119.

Note 34 in page 236 Ibid., i, 120.

Note 35 in page 236 Rossetti had returned to Oxford to paint the frescoes at the Oxford Union, and brought with him in addition to Morris and Burne-Jones such stalwart Browningites as Arthur Hughes and Alexander Munro. This group was in Oxford from about June 1857 to February 1858 and by their influence doubtless did much to further Browning's cause in the University. See Lafourcade, op. cit., pp. 133–148.

Note 36 in page 237 Ibid., i, 139, 163.

Note 37 in page 237 Gosse, op. cit., p. 55.

Note 38 in page 237 Harold Nicholson, Swinburne (New York, 1926), p. 62; Lafourcade, op. cit., ii, 142–143, 160; Paul de Reul, L'Œuvre de Swinburne (Bruxelles, 1922), p. 370.

Note 39 in page 238 Jowett was an important Browningite and had a great influence on Browning's career in Oxford. The most important instances of his influence belong to a period beyond the present discussion, but his interest in Browning had already begun. He read or discussed Browning with his students. See H. F. Brown, op. cit., i, 187; E. Abbott and L. Campbell, Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A. 2nd ed. (London, 1897), i, 402; ii, 354–355; Swinburne, “Recollections of Professor Jowett,” in Studies in Prose and Poetry (London, 1897), pp. 35 ff. After 1865 Jowett kept inviting Browning down to Oxford to show him off to undergraduates (E. F. Benson, As We Were [London, 1932], p. 148), and saw to it that Browning was showered with the highest academic honors. See Letters of Robert Browning, collected by T. J. Wise, ed. T. L. Hood (New Haven, 1933), p. 90; W. H. Griffin and H. C. Minchin, The Life of Robert Browning 3rd ed. (London, 1938), p. 238.

Note 40 in page 238 Thomas Wright, The Life of Walter Paler (New York, 1907), p. 172.

Note 41 in page 238 See for example William Sharp, “Some Personal Reminiscences of Walter Pater,” Atlantic Monthly, lxxiv (1894), 803–804.

Note 42 in page 238 Arthur Symons, “Some Browning Reminiscences,” North American Review, cciv (1916), 603.

Note 43 in page 238 Walter Pater, Review of Symons's Introduction to the Study of Browning in The Guardian, November 9, 1887. Reprinted in Pater's Essays from ‘The Guardian‘ (Macmillan and Co., New York, 1928), pp. 42, 45.

Note 44 in page 238 Ibid., pp. 48–50.

Note 45 in page 239 See for example Thomas Wright, The Life of John Payne (London, 1919), p. 14. John Payne, who became acquainted with Browning's poetry about 1859, said late in life that “Browning was the delight of my boyhood, and I still treasure and love the two little volumes of the original edition (1855) of Men and Women, which, to my taste, contains all his worthiness.” Many of Browning's early admirers turned against his later poems.

Note 46 in page 239 Walter Pater, The Renaissance (Macmillan and Co., London, 1925), pp. 214–215.

Note 47 in page 239 See Sharp, loc. cit. Sharp wrote a life of Browning in 1890. See also F. R. G. Duckworth, Browning, Background and Conflict (New York, 1932), p. 56.

Note 48 in page 239 See Symons, loc. cit., and his Introduction to the Study of Browning (London, 1886), which he wrote when he was twenty-one. He says that he adored Browning “to the point of idolatry.” See also F. R. G. Duckworth, op. cit., p. 56.

Note 49 in page 239 Thomas Wright, The Life of Walter Pater, i, 173, footnote. See also F. R. G. Duckworth, op. cit., p. 52. Wilde said in true Pre-Raphaelite fashion that Browning was “the most Shakespearean creature since Shakespeare.”

Note 50 in page 239 Letters of R. B., p. 90.

Note 51 in page 239 Selected references that give some idea of British academic enthusiasm for Browning after this period are as follows:—Cambridge: Orr, op. cit., ii, 452; S. Colvin, “Some Personal Recollections,” Scribner's Monthly, lxvii (1920), 77–80. St. Andrews: Orr, op. cit., ii, 403, 454. Edinburgh: R. Masson, “Browning in Edinburgh,” Cornhill Magazine, xxvi (1909), 226–240. Glasgow: Letters of Robert Browning to Miss Isa Blagden, ed. A. J. Armstrong (Waco, Texas, 1923), p. 194; Orr, op. cit., ii, 453–454; Griffin and Minchin, op. cit., p. 238.

Note 52 in page 240 Mackail, op. cit., i, 44; Walter B. Scott, Tennyson and His Age, 1850–1875 (unpublished thesis in the Princeton University Library, 1934).

Note 53 in page 240 Letters of R. B., p. 90. Aubrey de Vere in 1865 said that all at once Browning's poems “have leaped into popularity so great that I hear the young men at the Universities run after him more than Tennyson,” Letters to William Allingham (London, 1911), p. 175. C. E. Mallett, A History of the University of Oxford (New York, 1924–28), iii, 368, suggests that by 1855 Browning was blazing into fame at Oxford.

Note 54 in page 240 For later examples of the Oxford Browning cult see Letters of R. B., pp. 107–109, 114–115; Letters of R. B. to Miss I. B., pp. 144–145, 151, 176; Orr, op. cit., ii, 449; Griffin and Minchin, op. cit., p. 271; Abbott and Campbell, op. cit., i, 400–402; C. E. Mallett, op. cit., iii, 459.