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Life and Letters of Robert Browning-Part47_Mrs.Sutherland Orr(1828-1903)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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to a discussion on any subject in which he was interested,

and on which he was not specially informed. He never willingly monopolized



the conversation; but when called upon to take a prominent part in it,

either with one person or with several, the flow of remembered knowledge



and revived mental experience, combined with the ingenuous eagerness

to vindicate some point in dispute would often carry him away;



while his hearers, nearly as often, allowed him to proceed

from absence of any desire to interrupt him. This great mental fertility



had been prepared by the wide reading and thorough assimilation

of his early days; and it was only at a later, and in certain respects



less vigorous period, that its full bearing could be seen.

His memory for passing occurrences, even such as had impressed him,



became very weak; it was so before he had grown really old; and he would

urge this fact in deprecation of any want of kindness or sympathy,



which a given act of forgetfulness might seem to involve.

He had probably always, in matters touching his own life,



the memory of feelings more than that of facts. I think this has been

described as a peculiarity of the poet-nature; and though this memory



is probably the more tenacious of the two, it is no safe guide

to the recovery of facts, still less to that of their order and significance.



Yet up to the last weeks, even the last conscious days of his life,

his remembrance of historicalincident, his aptness of literaryillustration,



never failed him. His dinner-table anecdotes supplied, of course, no measure

for this spontaneous reproductive power; yet some weight must be given



to the number of years during which he could abound in such stories,

and attest their constant appropriateness by not repeating them.



This brilliantmental quality had its drawback, on which

I have already touched in a rather different connection:



the obstacle which it created to even serious and private conversation

on any subject on which he was not neutral. Feeling, imagination,



and the vividness of personal points of view, constantly thwarted

the attempt at a dispassionate exchange of ideas. But the balance



often righted itself when the excitement of the discussion was at an end;

and it would even become apparent that expressions or arguments



which he had passed over unheeded, or as it seemed unheard,

had stored themselves in his mind and borne fruit there.



I think it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined

impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually" target="_blank" title="adv.习惯地">habitually reticent



where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness and

the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament.



The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other their sensibility.

In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have modified each other.



But the partial secretiveness had also occasionally its conscious motives,

some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and from this point of view



it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the more expansive quality.

He never, however, intentionally withheld from others such things



as it concerned them to know. His intellectual and religious convictions

were open to all who seriously sought them; and if, even on such points,



he did not appear communicative, it was because he took more interest

in any subject of conversation which did not directly centre in himself.



Setting aside the delicacies which tend to self-concealment,

and for which he had been always more or less conspicuous;



excepting also the pride which would co-operate with them,

all his inclinations were in the direction of truth;






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