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Browning and Shelley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Richard C. Keenan
Richard C. Keenan
Affiliation:
University of Maryland–Eastern Shore
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Extract

The question of Shelley's influence on the young Robert Browning is hardly a disputed one, but the question of how far it continues into the life and work of the later Browning is quite a different matter. While the early influence is readily acknowledged, the later hardly receives the amount of attention it deserves. The consensus among critics has long been that in his youth Browning had a great enthusiasm for Shelley, an enthusiasm clearly apparent in Pauline and Paracelsus, but abruptly extinguished in Sordello. Generally speaking, it would seem that Browning's ardent enthusiasm for Shelley the poet ends with Sordello in 1840, just as his respect for Shelley the man ends in 1856, with the discovery that he had abandoned his first wife. Any evidence for a lapse of his disaffection in later life seems effectively countered by Browning's own testimony in a letter written in 1885 to F. J. Furnivall, refusing the presidency of the newly formed Shelley Society: “For myself, I painfully contrast my notions of Shelley the man and Shelley, well, even the poet, with what they were sixty years ago, when I only had his works, for a certainty, and took his character on trust.” With these highlights of the relationship, most Browning critics and biographers terminate the discussion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 1 , January 1973 , pp. 119 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

NOTES

1. Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, ed. Hood, Thurman L. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1933), pp. 242–43.Google Scholar Hereafter referred to as LRB.

2. Browning: Poetry and Prose, ed. Nowell-Smith, Simon (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950), p. 674.Google Scholar The edition provides the only reprint of the Essay on Shelley that is generally available.

3. Raymond, W. O., The Infinite Moment, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1965), pp. 234–43.Google Scholar

4. LRB, p. 223.Google Scholar

5. The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845–1846, ed. Kintner, Elvan (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1969), I, 9.Google Scholar

6. Honan, Park, “Browning's Testimony on his Essay on Shelley in ‘Shepherd vs. Francis,’” English Language Notes, 2 (1964), 27.Google Scholar

7. This book is now in the Taylor Collection at the Firestone Library, Princeton University. For complete details of the book and its contents, see Pottle, F. A., Shelley and Browning: A Myth and Some Facts (Chicago: Pembroke Press, 1923).Google Scholar

8. Raymond, , p. 201.Google Scholar

9. Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, ed. Kenyon, F. G. (London: Smith, Elder, 1906), p. 141.Google Scholar

10. Norman, Sylva, Flight of the Skylark: The Development of Shelley's Reputation (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1954), p. 101.Google Scholar

11. Norman, , p. 163.Google Scholar

12. Browning: The Critical Heritage, ed. Litzinger, Boyd and Smalley, Donald (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970), p. 39.Google Scholar

13. The Complete Works of Robert Browning, ed. King, Roma A. Jr (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1969), I, 13.Google Scholar (Pauline is edited by John Berkey, Paracelsus by Morse Peckham.) All subsequent references to Pauline and Paracelsus are from this edition, hereafter referred to as Complete Works. Other references to Browning's poetry are from The Works of Robert Browning, ed. Kenyon, F. G., Centenary Edition, 10 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1912).Google Scholar

14. Shelley, , Poetical Works, ed. Hutchinson, Thomas and rev. by G. M. Mathews (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 228, 252, and 412Google Scholar respectively. All references to Shelley's poetry are from this edition.

15. Miller, Betty, Robert Browning: A Portrait (London: John Murray, 1952), p. 10.Google Scholar For a similar conclusion, see Cohen, J. M., Robert Browning (London: Longmans, 1952), pp. 47–48.Google Scholar

16. Bloom, Harold, Yeats (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), p. 5.Google Scholar

17. Bloom, , p. 11.Google Scholar

18. Shelley, , Poetical Works, p. 14.Google Scholar

19. Raymond, , p. 161.Google Scholar

20. Complete Works, II, 125.Google ScholarSordello is edited by John Berkey.

21. Complete Works, II, 127n.Google Scholar

22. Thorpe, James, “Elizabeth Barrett's Commentary on Shelley: Some Marginalia,” Modern Language Notes, 66 (1951), 455–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Letters from Elizabeth Barrett to B. R. Haydon, ed. Shackford, Martha Hale (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1939), p. 9.Google Scholar

24. Kintner, , Letters, I, 207.Google Scholar

25. Kintner, , I, 218–19.Google Scholar

26. Kintner, , I, 220.Google Scholar

27. Chesser, Eustace, Shelley and Zastrozzi: Self-Revelation of a Neurotic (London: Gregg Press, 1965), p. 108.Google Scholar This book contains the complete text of the novel and a critical essay.

28. Kintner, , Letters, I, 63.Google Scholar

29. Kintner, , II, 704.Google Scholar

30. Kintner, , II, 701.Google Scholar

31. Kintner, , I, 189–90.Google Scholar Browning's reference is to Italy, by Samuel Rogers (1763–1855), which often served as a guide book for English tourists (Kintner's note).

32. New Letters of Robert Browning, ed. DeVane, William C. and Knickerbocker, Kenneth L. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1950), pp. 30–35.Google Scholar Not too oddly, perhaps; Elizabeth was one of Horne's unofficial collaborators, and “since Home sent her most if not all of the page proofs for her marginal criticisms shortly before the book went to press,” she may well have requested this particular omission. See Taplin, Gardner, The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1957), p. 117.Google Scholar

33. LRB, p. 36.Google Scholar

34. LRB, pp. 367–68.Google Scholar

35. Norman, , Skylark, p. 221.Google Scholar

36. For the first recognition of the parallel between Browning's “Contemporary” and Shelley's Defense, see Benham, A. R., “Shelley and Browning,” Modern Language Notes 38 (1923), 503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. The Complete Works of Walter Savage Landor, ed. Welby, T. Earle (London: Chapman and Hall, 1928), IX, 127–28.Google Scholar

38. Miller, , p. 210.Google Scholar

39. LRB, pp. 206–07.Google Scholar

40. Kintner, , Letters, I, 7.Google Scholar

41. Kintner, , I, 17.Google Scholar

42. Essay on Shelley, p. 687.Google Scholar

43. LRB, pp. 47–48.Google Scholar

44. LRB, p. 179.Google Scholar

45. The undated note (quoted by courtesy of the owner, the Humanities Research Center Library, the University of Texas at Austin) consists of paraphrased lines from The Witch of Atlas, apparently quoted from memory by Browning.

46. New Letters, p. 345.Google Scholar

47. In the case of his son, at least, Browning's hopes were high. On 30 Aug. 1883, he had written to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Skirrow the following: “Pen's news are [sic] very pleasant too: he has been hard at work at Dinant; finishing three large landscapes–and, as I hope to be assured by today's post,–well forward with a subject from Shelley which promises to be equally satisfactory” (New Letters, p. 289).Google Scholar

48. DeVane, William C., A Browning Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), p. 405.Google Scholar

49. Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas FitzGerald 1876–1889, ed. McAleer, Edward C. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1966), p. 193.Google Scholar

50. Ward, Maisie, Robert Browning and His World: Two Robert Brownings? 1861–1889 (Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1969), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar

51. Ward, , p. 255.Google Scholar